I’ve been insular lately. Like, even more than usual. Even for me. And considering 90% of my non-work life consists of hunching over my laptop in the library or taking Sporcle quizzes, it can be hard to tell, but just ask my Roomba. He and I haven’t had a good heart to heart in weeks.

No, it’s not my recent heartache or the grisly autumn weather or the cache of three-dollar Malbec I recently picked up from the liquor store. I’m afraid the real reason is a bit more sinister: in three weeks, I’ll be submitting the first crop of applications to the fourteen MFA programs I’m applying to, and in addition to the general monkey work of grad school applications, I’ve got to do something pretty scary: finish my fiction portfolio.

If you’ve never applied to an MFA program in writing, the scandalous truth: forget your transcripts and GRE scores; the selection committees are looking for one thing and one thing only. Twenty to thirty pages of fiction telling them whether you have a future viable enough to encourage them to fund your dreams. According to all the source I’ve seen, these 20-30 pages are 90% of the consideration you’ll receive before you either get embraced with open arms or unceremoniously rejected. No pressure, huh?

While I can’t control what mood the selection committee will be in when they look at my stuff (someone gets the wrong flavor creamer in their coffee and, bam, there you are, stuck at your desk job for another year!), I can write ’til my fingers bleed to put out the best fiction sample I can. So while I usually put some of the best of myself into maintaining this blog, dudes, it’s been all fiction, all the time over here.

Which is why my brain is currently the consistency and decay-level of a plate of potato salad locked in a car trunk since the fourth of July. And yes, I’m aware it’s October now. Go ahead and hold that image with all of your senses for a moment.

Anyway, I know a decent number of my readers are also writers. So I’ve decided to make myself feel a bit better before yet another weekend of banging my brain open and pawing through the contents (wait, Halloween’s this weekend?! Don’t tell my social life — it’s depressed enough as it is) by reflecting on the few things I know for sure about writing.

1. Two hours to write, two years to edit. Right now I’m cobbling together a second portfolio story out of one of the three half-finished fiction drafts lined up like gravestones on my desktop. Drafting is friggin’ hard, dude. Beginning afresh on a draft of a story is something akin to taking an abortion and trying to frankenstein it into a real baby. You add plasticine to the parts that aren’t fully-formed, clip deformed tissues, gently — lovingly — sponge off the most obvious of the gore. Finally, it looks a little better, but your hands have too much blood on them already, so you push it aside and start again when you can stand it.
2. If you look too long at a blank Word document, it will burn your retinas.
3. If you’re an OCD grammar nut, writing in natural-sounding dialect without giving yourself an ack-wrong-pronoun! rash is a delicate balance.
4. If you’re rereading something you’ve written and you skim over a section, the reader is going to skip it outright.
5. Whichever line you love the most — I mean, the one that’s so exquisite you want to hand-stitch it in a needlepoint pillow and sleep on so you constantly rest on its glory — the line you wrote the story to say: you’re going to end up cutting it. Sucks.
6. If you’re writing a story in past tense then go into flashback, use the past-perfect a few times to anchor the reader to the time change.
7. It’s a fine idea to give drafts of stories to good readers, people who revel in language and read like detectives, sure to catch all your breaths of nuance. But you should probably also give the story to someone who’s just going to skim it on the bus, to protect yourself from being too subtle.
8. Most writers I know are the “wry observation from the corner” sorts. This character type is primarily relatable to other writers.
9. For every day’s work you put into a story, save a different draft. Sometimes it’s a whole day’s work just undoing what you’ve spent the past week creating.
10. People say if you don’t ever try, you can’t really fail. That’s ridiculous. If you decide not to try, then you’ve already failed.

My heart is jackhammering at 200 beats per minute. Three more weeks of this torture; fourteen applications between December 1 and January 25. Hopefully I’ll feel like a real human again afterwards.

In the meantime, hey all you writer types, what are some of your hard-fought fiction lessons? Or, if you’re not a writerly dude, recommend some awesome novels or short stories to help me keep my strength up!

I am: taking a few days off.

I am not: sure I’ll actually be able to stick with that, but we can dream, can’t we?

The Scene: The Boston Public Library after an intense day at work, swinging through my beloved Wodehouse shelf, then setting up shop at a well-lit table in the mezzanine to to do my first post-project fiction writing. After a madcap year, everything I’d been dreaming of: spare time! luxury! new projects! Closed down my email, opened a Word doc and — nothing.

Well, not nothing. Panic. And then nothing. And then more panic. And then a very long, boozy bubble bath. ’cause, hey, I’m nothing if not consistent.

Turns out I … don’t really know what I’m doing with my life without the project? I remember vividly a little over a year ago, sitting on my Las Vegas veranda with my father at an ungodly hour, a secret cabal of insomniacs, dreaming about what to do with my newly reclaimed life.

“I think,” I ventured, “I think I have a project. Something I need to do. Maybe a few people will read it, maybe not, but it’s right for me.” Going to Boston, I may not have had friends or furniture or a job, but I had one little point of certainty, and that was enough.

I was thinking last night about the fantastic serenity of that moment. The 3am air still hot, velvety and perfectly still the way it can only be in the desert.

Maybe I’m foolishly sentimental, but I think there’s a sort of magic to the desert. All auxiliary life is fire-ravaged; the undeveloped land is austere, unadorned. I read somewhere that at any given time, the sun’s rays have a physical weight of five pounds, spread over the globe. On a desert day, you feel that weight — all of it — draped across your chest and thighs, pushing you down, keeping you still.

I don’t spend a lot of time keeping still. I’m also not very good at knowing what I want. It strikes me that these two problems might be related.

I mean, we are talking about the girl who spent years wanting to marry the guy she didn’t want to marry, who poured thousands of hours into writing apple pie recipes instead of novels, who ended up making such a mess of things that she had to ninja-kick herself cross-friggin’-country to start over. So. There’s that.

In the spirit of continual self-improvement, I think right now’s a good time to get a little still and audit my needs, make sure I’m being good to myself. To wit, the three things that, this time last year, I knew for sure that I wanted:

1. To get into a kickass MFA program in creative writing for Fall 2011. I’m almost entirely sure this is still on the docket. I can’t even imagine the luxury of spending 10-12 hours a day writing, without snatching my writing time in dissatisfying pinches on the bus, at my awful job, riding up elevators…
2. Not to make any friends in Boston. A year ago, this was incredibly important to me. I’m only going to be there for two years, I figured! Humans are distracting! Sometimes they try to hug you! But halfway through my time in Boston, this incredible city has become my home — and what’s the point of a home without some friggin’ faces around the hearth? Plus, I totally need someone to go to Sox games with.
3. To write a blog that someone, somewhere, would read. Sweet, year-ago self! Nailed it! And this blog is still very much alive and — this week’s post-project sigh of relief pending — ready to keep evolving and adding new features. That said, I guarantee you it will remain what it always was: a chronicle of my fledgling attempts at self-improvement and, more importantly, incurable talent for making an ass of myself in public all. the. friggin’. time.

Those are the few things I know for sure right now. But before I get ready to make next steps, I need to take a little time to figure out a few more things. I hate getting still, ’cause it lets me hear every thump of the friggin’ pterodactyls in my chest right now. But even if it’s scary to be quiet, I guess it’s the only way you can hear yourself.

Oh goodness. I’m going to take a hiatus ’til after Labor Day, then, uh, remember that time I used to write funny stories about flashing people on trains? We’ll get back to that.

Until then, though, what do you want out of life right now, dudes? Allow me to cheat off of your spiritual crib sheets!

NTKOG #223: The kind of jumpsuit-chaser who, not content with her current social milieu, jumps at the chance to add inmates to the mix.

I am: not sure I know anyone who’s ever been in prison. Primarily because I haven’t stayed in touch with anyone from high school.

I am not: well-acquainted with prisoners’ rights or psychology. Heck, I don’t even watch movies that involve prisons.

The Scene: My local CVS, where I picked up five pleasant by generic birthday cards. At the check-out aisle, the clerk asked if I had a lot of friends. “Not — not at all, actually.”

Afterwards, went online to Write A Prisoner. Y’know, as one generally does after visiting the stationery store.

A little background here: senior year of college, I got obsessed with the idea of becoming pen pals with Erik Menendez. It stemmed from a Radar article that was running the rounds, about a pop culture journalist, Bill Geerhart, who pretended to be his eight-year-old self, writing to famous Death Row inmates for advice about the kinds of problems eight-year-olds have. (Should I drop out of school? Why do I have to clean my room? Who would win: a shark or a T-Rex? That sort of thing.)

In hopes of getting his story, he also included a self-addressed stamped envelope and stationery for all of his correspondents. A number of them wrote back, including Erik Menendez who, with elegant penmanship, wrote something along the lines of: “Thank you for your letter, but next time there is no need to send paper or a stamp or that sort of thing,” before pouring out a thoughtful and amazingly sweet four-page letter.

I don’t know what it was, but that sentence made me cry. In fact, it still makes my eyes prickle. Maybe because it was so considerate, so hopeful, completely oblivious to the fact that he was being manipulated for a smarmy media piece.

When I first proposed writing to Menendez, Justice and another friend of ours vehemently dissuaded me — for, I’ll admit, the very practical reason that disclosing my name and address to a felon might be classified as a Very Bad Idea.

But while they were dissuading me, the other friend told me: “They’re just inmates. If you really want to do something nice, do it for someone who deserves it.”

Even all these years later, I still find that thought upsetting. It seems so … unforgiving.

So, after I bought the cards, I checked Write a Prisoner and found five inmates who shared my birthday and sent them a card. God knows I’ve had a few horrible birthdays, but never in the solitary-confinement class. Everyone deserves a little recognition on their birthday and no matter what awful things I might have done or might still do in this world, I know I wouldn’t want anyone to forget that small human fact.

The Verdict: To anyone who might be concerned, I did what I could about taking precautions. I used a modified form of my name (full first name + middle name) and a very non-specific address — which will, sadly, preclude people writing back. It was hard, actually, finding five profiles that didn’t begin “Hey ladies!”. Although one was by a man only a few years older than me, who quoted The Odyssey and talked simply and seriously about how he was looking to continue his self-education. I wrote him with my real address.

I’m not worried, because he doesn’t get out until 2028. I don’t know what he’s in for. I didn’t have the heart to look.

Now I’m looking into programs through local churches to actually write and receive responses from people without disclosing my address. It feels wrong not to try this. I call myself a writer because I cherish the absurd notion that I might be able to one day string a few words together in a way that changes someone’s life for the better. What if there’s someone out there who really needs a few considerate words? Wouldn’t I be a terrible phony if I didn’t at least try?

You can mock me or call me crazy all you want in the comments section. Doing this was my birthday present to myself. (Well, that, and about a million drinks in New York, which I’m enjoying even as we speak. A girl can’t strive for personal enlightenment all the time.)

NTKOG #218: The kind of daily philanthropist whose heart is as big as her means are little, but tries to spread joy with what she’s got.

I am: working very hard on trying to do good instead of just being less loathsome.

I am not: able to do much, and, sadly, often wind up doing even less.

The Scene: The Finagle a Bagel across the street from the Boston Public Library, where I seem to find myself eating dinner every. single. night. Asked for my usual (toasted everything with light scallion) but, when I got upstairs noticed my friendly little bagel was schmeared with some horrifying garden veggie concoction.

Being (finally!) that kind of girl, I re-packed my computer and went downstairs to politely request my order be remade. But when the cashier told me I could just throw away the offending mis-order, I sheepishly asked if I could keep it to give to one of the panhandlers who loiter around the library until well after dark.

“That’s a real nice thing to do,” my favorite cashier smiled. “I lived in New York last year on the street. I would have killed for a bagel.”

Heartened by her endorsement, I smiled quietly to myself while I ate, excited to skip outside and enjoy a moment of kindness on a big company’s dime. The second I stepped out the door, the perfect opportunity: a man stood jangling coins in a discarded Au Bon Pain cup, begging for change.

“Hey, do you need money for food?” I asked him.

“Yeah, I’m starving,” he groaned. “I haven’t eaten anything in three days.”

“Here you go!” I chirped, reaching in my bag. “I’ve got a bagel for you!”

His face instantly twisted into a clumsy mask of disgust. “A bagel? What kind is it? Plain?”

“It’s, uh, an everything bagel with cream cheese.”

“Ugh, I’ll pass,” the man sneered. Then, as I turned away, he grudgingly consented, “I’d let you buy me a sandwich, though.”

Never has the phrase “beggars can’t be choosers” been so damn literal.

The same story with the next three men I approached. Two asked for money and, that failing, one attempted a counter-negotiation for cigarettes. The third man ignored me completely.

Finally I gave up and worked my fill in the library. On the way home, just as I was about to descend into the T, decided to give it one more try. A man (the one who groped me the other day, in fact) walked up and jangled his loose-change cup two inches from my ear. “Got any spare change?”

“I don’t,” I told him, “but I have a bagel you can have, if you’re hungry.”

“I don’t like bagels. You could take me to Burger King and buy me a hamburger, though. I like their burgers.”

“Look, I have a bagel in my bag. It’s a perfectly good bagel and, dude, it’s that or nothing.”

The man stood silent for a few moments, weighing the comparative advantages of choosing “nothing.” Finally he shrugged and agreed. As I reached into my bag to pull out the bagel, he leaned down and inspected my belongings.

“Hey, you got a bottle in there!”

“Uh, yeah, it’s a Diet Coke I’m drinking.”

“I’ll take that too!”

Um, no?

The Verdict: I couldn’t believe how hard it was to force a small act of kindness down Boston’s damn throat. It started as a bright thought for a tiny act of kindness, but by the third rejection, the friggin’ bagel was a doughy albatross weighing down this aspiring do-gooder’s neck. At least now I finally have a good answer to my mother’s dinnertime admonition that there are people starving to death in Africa: hell, they probably wouldn’t eat my spinach either. Now a burger, on the other hand…

From this experience, I’m choosing to take two lessons. First, given my history with person-to-person food donations, I’m going to channel all future culinary donations to locally operated food banks.

Second, and more importantly: some homeless people are kind of dicks. Counterintuitively, I think that’s a wonderful observation to feel myself making. As a bleeding-heart, I’ve always been taught that thinking homeless people are unpleasant is BAD and thinking they are misunderstood and wonderful individuals is GOOD. But both modes of thought share the same failing: they’re too categorical. Whether you want to romanticize or revile homelessness, taking the people it affects en masse is doing them a disservice. Whichever way you do it, to reduce homeless people to a homogenous mass of “them” is to completely deny their status as individuals.

At least if you’re interacting with someone enough to think “what an asshole” (or, more often, I hope, “that was nice!”) then it’s a sign that you’re looking at them instead of through them. And that’s a long way to come, baby.

Over in Life As A Human I tackle, with my usual grace and aplomb, the burning questions: 1) how to tactfully segue from someone’s grandma’s death to where to eat for lunch; 2) what exactly is in a Miscarriage Omelette?

NTKOG #212: The kind of smug luddite who views the internet as a evil necessity of modern life, and not as a trusted friend, confidante, life advisor, and pretty decent writer of erotica.

I am: unhealthily reliant on the internet. Since the age of 12, I’ve spent at least four hours a day – every day – online and, in the last half-decade or so, seen that number skyrocket to something closer to 12-14.

I am not: sure what people did before the internet, honestly.

The Scene: THE REAL WORLD! Did you guys know it came in high-def? And 3D! You don’t even need to wear those dorky glasses!

My friends (yes, I have real-life ones) have always razzed me for my all-consuming internet addiction. To deflect from their concerns, The Ex (a computer programmer and fellow addict) came up with a neat little solution: we started calling the internet Melvin, and would casually drop his name into conversations.

“Oh, Melvin told me about the cutest little French bistro down the street!” “Melvin has this hilarious new rap about famous presidential nephews!” “Dude, why is Melvin so obsessed with bestiality lately?”

We were in an unhealthy relationship, Melvin and I. He was bad for me, of course, but I needed him. Nonetheless, last week Melvin and I agreed to see other people.

Starting last Monday night – just as an experiment – I unplugged my router and other wireless majigs from the surge protector in my apartment. I cut myself a little deal: “If you really, really want to get online, you can,” but hopefully the extra inconvenience would act as a buffer against my baser impulses.

All of a sudden, as they say in horror movies, weird things started happening.

I started going to sleep at 10pm and waking up at 6 in the morning. I mysteriously gained an hour or so of reading time every evening. My apartment got very, very clean. Jesus H, guys, I took up jogging.

The weirdest change, though, is that I feel less of a driving need to know things, stupid things, right friggin’ away. When I’m plugged into my computer for virtually all of my waking hours, I feel entitled to satisfying the tiniest pings of curiosity.

How does cornstarch work? What was Shakespeare’s most anti-semitic play? Who currently owns the Hope Diamond? Stupid questions would expand into endless Google Chrome tabs and fill hours of my day, with no demonstrable benefit.

I’d always thought of my endless questions as a good quality. TKOG: Leading Pioneer of Brain-Thirst, boldly taking full advantage of the digital age! But after being freed of the urge for a few days, I’m beginning to suspect that my brain was more like a petulant child, nagging me non-stop until I distracted it with enchanting but worthless baubles.

Baubles. I should look up the etymology of baubles. …tomorrow. At work. If I still care.

The Verdict: I thought for sure this exercise would be a frost, but am delighted at how well it’s going. In fact, on Saturday (when I only had two days left before I could plug in the router again full-time!), I fully unplugged every last cord, wrapped them up neatly, and stuck them in a box in my closet. Not to stave off temptation – just because I wanted to.

I’m even going so far as considering not renewing my contract with Comcast in September. I – I just don’t even know who I am anymore. Melvin, hold me.

NTKOG #209: The kind of syrupy do-gooder who pukes virtue all over you, Girl-Scout-style.

I am: taking “being an awesome human being” pass-fail.

I am not: happy about it. It’s hard, being human. That’s the only thing I know for sure.

The Scene: The normal settings of my daily life, but seen a little askew, and that much more clearly. I’ll skip the less-than-lurid details, but I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about faith and ethics – two topics that I’ve never really given much thought before this project, a fact that I suspect isn’t a coincidence.

Over the years, in my quest to become less of a lowly wretch, I’ve uncovered the following highly sophisticated ethical code for becoming a better person: Don’t Be An Asshole.

Fuck yeah, bro, we’re getting enlightened all up in here.

Seriously, though, it may be profane and it may sound reproachfully obvious, but it fulfills my two criteria for solid dogma: it’s hard to do, and feels really good when you get it right.

Wanna save two bucks by “forgetting” to scan that can of Pringles in the self-checkout lane at Stop’n’Shop? Don’t be an asshole. Crazy homeless guy on the street tries to talk to you about the reptilian computer chip implanted in his brain? Don’t be an asshole. Perfect beach weather for calling in “sick” at work and leaving your co-worker to finish the expense reports? Don’t be an asshole. But he was totally an asshole first! C’mon, don’t make me say it again.

Yeah, it’s basically Buddhism For Douchebags.

Anyway, not that I’m perfect at living this motto by any means (just call my office at 4:55pm on a Friday) but I figured, hey, what if I stepped up my game and tried to, y’know, actively do good?

So I tried it. Simple goal: every work day, keep my eyes peeled for opportunities to perform – in the Boys Scouts terminology – three Acts Of Kindness. Not those normal semi-decent things that periodically fall in our laps and make us feel like modern-day gurus. Actively seek out moments to be just a little more than not-an-asshole.

It’s funny how many small, good things there are that need doing, if you’re looking for them. Tiny things that don’t cost you anything, not even energy, yet create a strong positive charge between you and someone you’ll never see again.

The Verdict: Sometimes I think it’s not so hard, being an okay person. Actually remembering to do it’s the tricky part.

I henceforth declare this a good-karma Friday. What small, good things have strangers done for you lately? And isn’t it awesome to be a human?

On Secret Society of List Addicts, check out vacations I’d send myself on if I weren’t so broke I actively have to choose between food and laundry. (Hint: I always choose food.)

NTKOG #207: The kind of modern-age guru who – when casting around the darkest corners of her psyche – realizes, hey, there’s an app for that. (And at $1.99, spiritual well-being comes cheap!)

I am: wary of New-Age jiggerypokery, including but not limited to: hypnosis, “self-esteem” and quinoa.

I am not: trying to get competitive, but I might be the most unenlighted person I know. Hey, how many first kisses have you had in Wal-Mart parking lots?!

The Scene: A late evening bus from New York up to Boston, obsessively cataloguing my neurotic thoughts while hungover college students dozed in the seats around me.  In a last-ditch effort for serenity, tried to meditate my twitching, vibrating self into an uneasy physical rest.

Suddenly, a (recyclable, eco-friendly) lightbulb! Hypnosis! Signed into the App Store to check out the free trial contenders: a half-hour program for improved self-esteem (um, no) and another for restful sleep. Jackpot!

Once I downloaded it, wriggled into a comfortable position and plugged in my earbuds as deep as they could go. The closer to your soul the better, right?

After some bird chirping and gong ringing, a disembodied man’s nasal voice started speaking to me from deep within my ear canal. “Close your eyes and relax,” he told me. “Picture yourself outside in your perfect place on a beautiful day.”

All y'all desert rats know what I'm talking about.

As I sunk lower in the bus seat, he directed me to shine an imaginary sun on each of my muscles in turn as they melted into utter relaxation. “The sun warms your face” – slack-jawed, I drooled on myself – “and now it shines on your chest and stomach” – I slowly dripped another six inches lower in the seat – “and now it warms the toes on your left foot. Really feel each little toe relax!

Wait, what?! You mean – you mean the left foot that’s currently crunched at a 160-degree angle to avoid the risk of accidentally making contact with some other dude’s bare foot? You mean that one? Oh, man, Relaxo Towne Express! Choo choo!

I pulled myself up haughtily in the seat and it took fifteen more minutes of deep-ear blathering (something about candles? a sunset might have also been involved?) for him to liquefy me back to a Capri-Sun-commercial-esque puddle of relaxation.

Just as I started to enter the velvety blackness of welcome unconsciousness, Disembodied Voice dropped to a whisper: “You are now completely relaxed. You will leave your unconscious mind open only to my voice. You will absorb every bit of the very important information I am about to tell you.”

On the count of three, you will chant your Visa card number...

Wait. What. The. FUCK?!

My whole body jerked upwards like a marionette, wild-eyed and desperate to protect myself against Disembodied B’s attempted brain-rape.

Disappointingly, he just wanted to tell me lots of stuff about how I’m a good person for trying to take control of my unconsciousness, and how restful sleep is this big noble gift I’m giving myself and how I’m basically a Chivalrous Knight of Olde for vanquishing my fear of unconsciousness with this free trial iPhone app.

I’d already sunk halfway under the chair in front of me, murmuring incoherent agreement (“Yes I am great!”) and was three milliseconds from sleep when, damn it all, the Disembodied Bastard trotted out the old healing sun motif yet and – curses upon you, you nasal bastard! – directed my personal consciousness-sun to wake me up, muscle group by muscle group, and face the day alert and alive.

Dude. Psyche-blocked.

The Verdict: A two-pronged upshot to today’s tale, loves. First: I obviously found some aspects of hypnosis at least somewhat relaxing, and so am interested in re-trying it in a more appropriate physical context. Despite the fact that this experience suggests I won’t be able to turn my conscious mind off for long enough to experience much joy. (What else is new.)

Second: When I started the hypnosis, I felt especially well-dressed for the part, because I was wearing a long, floaty hippie skirt – one of those loose, elastic-waisted numbers. NOT THE CASE. Between all the relaxation puddling and jerking abruptly upward in my seat, after the half-hour course I realized that, without noticing, I’d managed to roll my skirt entirely off my hips. Yes. I was sitting bare-ass on a bus seat.

Cue two full hours of TKOG attempting to subtly stand up enough to readjust the skirt without a) flashing the couple behind her, or b) waking the girl next to her. Both of which I ultimately did. No fewer than four times.

Yeah, maybe I should have bought that self-esteem hypnosis course after all.

NTKOG #162: The kind of old-school swami lover who relies on a combination of occultism and body language reading to let others determine the path of her future success.

I am: on a psychic binge lately, ever since my buddy High Priestess Doris cured my shrieking nightmares.

I am not: sure even somebody who sifted through the contents of my brain could divine my future, let alone someone who’s just glanced at the label on the jar.

The Scene: The unconvincingly named readmypic.com — a site that cleverly manages to divorce the idea of reading from those nasty connotations of “words” and “knowledge” — where beleaguered mystics can post their glamour shots for perusal by Real! Live! Psychics! who email you back with their predictions for your future.

Full disclosure: I don’t not believe in the possibility that so-called psychics can pick up very subtle vibrations from an open-minded client and use these intuitions to give excellent advice. Though I rarely tell people this, I only made the final decision to move to Boston and break up with The Ex after an extremely teary consultation with a cute old lesbian psychic in Santa Monica. (Yeah, it’s true about us Californians. Scorn us at your will, prim New Englanders.)

Uploaded my favorite recent picture (TKOG wearing a fedora and standing in an old-timey elevator, as is her wont), and asked the standard question: career? love? changing cities?

"Do you foresee me growing a sweet-ass 'stache in future?!"

Bippity, boppity, boo — within three days, two responses. Kittens, LET’S SEE HOW THEY DID!

“the city you live in is dragging you down — it’s obstructing your natural motivation!” – Uh, tell that to the 1000+ pages of prose I’ve written since August.

“you will move soon, to a city that you will call your permanent home” — I hope not, soothseeing lady-dude! The only move on the docket will be to start a MFA Program in Fiction sometime in fall of oh-leven. And spoiler alert? I’m only applying to programs in horrible cities where no one would live on purpose. (Just kidding, Syracuse. Smoochies!)

“as for love, you have some chaos right now” – Well, I guess everything in nature can be said to simultaneously exist and not exist IN A TOTAL VACUUM.

“this summer will be FULL of change” — God I hope this doesn’t mean my favorite diner goes cash-only.

“For some reason, I feel some force calling you to Chicago” — Hey, one out of five ain’t bad.

Hey Rick Bayless! Call me! No, seriously, I could totally write menu descriptions for you.

The Verdict: Though I kept my mind open, I didn’t have high hopes for the veracity of this particular task. Still, highly amusing bit of is-it-Friday-yet? silliness. If you were to submit your pic (or if you have!) what questions would you ask? (Y’alls know I’m going to come up with PSYCHICALLY ACCURATE RESPONSES based on the pic in your Gravatar.)

NTKOG #154: The kind of new-fangled self-help guru who charts her daily success as a citizen of the universe who can’t see why there isn’t an iPhone app for personal enlightenment.

I am: kind of a self-helpy dude at heart. In case this blog hadn’t tipped you off.

I am not: ignoring the fact that the self-helper has a fool for a guru. But a cheap fool!

The Scene: MY FRIGGIN’ HEART, GUYS. Which was pumping blood to my eyes while they perused a back issue of O Magazine, wherein the Self-Help Empress dished stage-candidly about her regrets, the ways she sabotages herself, and — her pet topic — how to live your best life.

Reading the interview, I was arrested by one question: “How do you know what you’ve had a good day?” She gave some radiant/glib Oprah-y response, but when I tried to answer it myself — nothing. “I just. I just hope I have, I guess.”

This started me thinking about a hole I’ve felt in my life lately. I’m not a super big religious dude and am no great hand at gratitude journaling; this blog captures anecdotes of my day but ignores whole swathes of my daily existence; I blaze through some days, enchanted, hitting all the high notes, then look back a few weeks later and can’t even remember the tune. What I needed was a way to take daily stock of my actions and clear my mind for ten minutes to reconsider my place in the universe and my motivations to take that place.

What I came up with was the Daily Self-Satisfaction Survey. It’s basically a daily Yelp review of whether I was an acceptable human being. A journal entries comprised of eleven questions for which — on a great day of my life — I would have completely awesome answers.

As it stands right now, my questions are:

1. In what way have I contributed to my personal excellence today?
2. What did I create today?
3. How did I reach one new person today?
4. Who did I tell I loved today?
5. Who did I love without telling?
6. What did I go out of my way to do for someone else today?
7. What art did I love today?
8. Who or what inspired me today?
9. What was today’s small, good thing?
10. How happy am I with my progress today?
11. What lesson from today am I going to take into tomorrow?

It’s been about two weeks since I started this project and I haven’t missed a day so far. After all, it only takes ten minutes, and who doesn’t love filling out a survey?! I can think of dozens of other questions I’d like to include (what nice thing have I done for my body today?, what opportunity did I miss today?) and might edit it in future, but for now, I’m satisfied.

So far, reading over the daily results has revealed some trends I usually try to keep myself from seeing. Turns out I’m pretty hard on myself for stealing writing time for petty needs like sleeping or having a social life; this doesn’t surprise me. I’ve also started drawing much of my daily inspiration from music, which does.

Some of the questions are consistently hard to answer; others reveal that I’m taking greater personal strides than I give myself credit for. Probably the most important thing is to realize that even though my daily schedule offers little variation (home, work, coffee shop, repeat ad infinitum), my days are different from one another, and each holds the potential for personal greatness.

The Verdict: Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a stressed-out nutjob for a statistically significant portion of the day. But now a quantifiable one! And a slightly more self-accepting one.

What questions would y’all ask yourselves in order to determine whether you’ve had a productive, happy day?

NTKOG #146: The kind of urban-artsy asshole who lugs her shiny MacBook from coffee house to coffee house, living off of lattes, second-hand smoke and smug productivity.

I am: high-strung enough. You don’t want to see this mess caffeinated.

I am not: good at productivity, deadlines, or any of the other requisites for success.

The Scene: Every friggin’ coffee house in the Harvard Square area. Last Wednesday, instead of dragging myself home from work and floomping straight into bed for a 30 Rock marathon, I hauled my dysfunctional workday brain (and the body that reluctantly houses it) to the Peet’s at Harvard Square and vowed to write ’til my laptop battery drained.

Fun fact: I loathe coffee shops of any ilk. For starters, I haven’t regularly drank caffeine since I was eighteen years old; add to that my noise-triggered migraines, antipathy for coffee culture, soul-crushing fear of becoming an accidental table-hog, and, yeah, this scene gets nasty.

Nonetheless, ten seconds after placing my first-ever non-social coffee shop order, I became that which I hate: there was one table left in the crowded store, and a cute young girl was beelining for it while her friend walked to the back of the line. Spun around and planted my iced tea on that beezy. Sorry, dude!

Opened ye olde MacBook, plugged in my headphones, and — dude, wrote. For three hours. No Twitter, no Snopes, no ex-stalking on da book. My hour-long internet grace period ran out, but I just grabbed another iced tea and an internet code, and plowed on through. Whatever, other Peet’s patrons. Right now it’s not a table. It’s my work desk.

When my computer finally powered down and I caught a bus home, I was everything for which I profess disdain: smug, over-caffeinated, corporate whore. I was also something else that I love and so rarely am: kind of almost a useful member of society. I mean, inasmuch as prolific blogging and occasional sonneting is “useful,” anyway.

And maybe it’s just a side effect of the caffeine, but another result of the hyper-productive cafe hop: totally addictive. Not only have I returned to cafe-write every weekday since, but I pulled eight-hour days both days of Easter weekend. Check out my friggin’ to-do list:

Not bad, considering my usual weekend activities consist of: catching up with Hulu, three-hour pep talk to clean apartment, fifteen minutes actually trying to clean apartment, depressing music, obsessive self-google-stalking, shame spiral, insomnia, brunch. Can't miss brunch.

So, I guess my body better get used to all the damn caffeine (and the other people at Peet’s better get used to my incessant in-chair dancing), ’cause this is going to be happening five days a week from now on.

The Verdict: God, I am so glad I tried this. I think the biggest difference in my cafe consumption now from the last time I tried is a few years ago is that I now use music to block out the offensive sound of other people existing. I never got why other writers were so into cafes, but now I see: taking yourself out of your usual environment helps underscore the fact that writing is your work; it’s important and it’s okay to take yourself seriously when you do it.

Lately, I realize, I’ve been treating my personal pursuit of excellence as a hobby. But frig that. It is both my responsibility and my privilege to spend every possible hour of every day sweating blood to make my dreams come true. I always tell myself, “You’ve got to write, dude, or you’ll die,” but maybe I had to change my physical surroundings before I could actually start taking that advice.

Other writerly dudes, what do you do to help push your process along?