Hey

This might not exist anymore but fuck it, I can make it, because nobody knows about it anymore, and because I just want to.

Chris, in your initial post, you said something to me about the after. Well, this is the after.

I am in New Orleans, right now. I'm in my white-painted room with Christmas lights over my bed, as I imagine Weetzie Bat decorates her silly-sand-roofed Hollywood Hills cottage. I'm a few blocks from the bayou, one block into the hood. All my furniture is secondhand and my sheets and blankets are from Target.

I've lived here for about 2.5 weeks after leaving the life and home I had with the person I have loved for 4 years and believed I was going to marry.

Life is the fucking weirdest.

I'm leaving my job.

The after is law school and returning to California and pressing the goddamn restart button until it goes from green to orange to black to green. A neon. Maybe it will flash.

I drink a lot now. I bought two packs of cigarettes the other night. Why two? I don't fucking know, y'all. I just know that the long-haired boy with the soft voice and the two moles doesn't believe we can be together anymore and that intellectually, I believe this is the right decisions, and emotionally, I think it's fucking terrible.

I'm listening to Rainer Maria and I remember when you sent me this album via Yousendit when we were 18. I remember meeting Chris Torres for the first time and playing music with him at the KXLU studio while you were doing something for Michelle. I remember a punk show in a bowling alley that confused me. I remember waiting in line at the Echo for some show we never saw because my tires got slashed.

That was before.

This is after.

A start?

Hello friends. I'm Dorothy.

Background: I graduated from UC San Diego two weeks with an Ethnic Studies major and minors in Creative Writing and Studio Art. I am doing Teach for America and I will be heading to New Orleans to teach Pre-K or Kindergarten in about one month. I am currently at TFA Institute in a desert city, going to too many lecture sessions, and teaching summer school.

Today ended my first week (only four days) of teaching. Here are anecdotes (I believe that is why I was asked to be here):

1) Our first day, my co-teachers and I introduced a racecar theme for our classroom of entering first-graders, complete with chant: Teacher says, "Racecars Go!" Students say, "Work hard, get smart, ZOOM ZOOM!" We try to review it half an hour later; I say, "What happens when RACECARS GO!?" A student raises his hand. "They drive."

2) During a community meeting this morning, when we were going in a circle saying what animal we would like to be and why, a student answers, "A CHORK." "Do you mean a shark?" "Yes. A chork." So. Cute.

3) Kittens, Part I.
Today, I saved a kitten from drowning. I'm not kidding. In the desert, to make grass grow, they flood an entire lawn and let the water soak in over several hours. At my school, I was walking past a group of other TFA Corps Members clustering near a custodian. He had on a sheet of metal, a tiny gray kitten, soaking wet, mewing for dear life, shivering and small. The girls said awww for a minute and then walked away. I asked what he was going to do and he said he had to go back to work, and put the kitten down on the grass, turned on its back, tiny pink feet waving in the air as it cried.

I put down my stuff in my classroom, took an empty plastic box, ran to the nurse's office and stole an extra uniform t-shirt. I picked up the kitten, wrapped it up, and rubbed it to warm it, looking around for milk. Eventually, I had to go to my session, so I gave it to some staff members, one of whom called a bunch of her friends in the area until one wonderful soul agreed to take in a baby kitten.

Its eyes weren't even open yet. Now it is going to a home with a mommy who will care for it, since all the shelters we called said they would euthanize it.



Part 2.
I'm leaving school at the end of the day. I get outside the gate when I hear the person right behind me say, is that another kitten? I turn to see a tiny patch of black and white fur, floating in one of the aforementioned pools of water on the lawn (can I just state for a fact how fucking stupid and wasteful growing LAWNS in the DESERT it?!!?!!). I pray under my breath, automatically, that my eyes are playing tricks on me. Someone walks back in through the gate, splashes his dress shoes through the puddle to check.

"It's gone."

I feel my heart clench.

the idea

since no one really knows that this blog exists, this entry is specifically addressed to those i've written to.

i feel lucky to call each one of you my friend and i believe that we have a wealth of diverse experiences, however i also believe that we all have one thing in common: we're all looking for what we're supposed to become. we're all at a crucial age where decisions are serious and "life changing," yet we're not quite there yet.

i realize this all still sounds completely abstract, so to speed this up, i'll just give you examples of what i plan on writing about. one of my first posts is going to be about the first class i failed in college, which was basically a computer class engineered for me. i'm going to be writing about what the class was, what it was supposed to be and i'm going to be writing about what i didn't learn from it as well as what i had to teach myself. it's not going to get too technical; it'll lean towards the "larger life lesson."

i'd love for us all to write about things we had to teach ourselves in high school or college, what our day to day life or jobs are like and what we feel we need to learn. write about what you wish you had learned or done earlier. write about what you're learning and what you still want to learn. write about the cool shit that you've done and the cool shit that you're doing. think about it this way: if you had a little brother or sister, what would you want them to know?

i'm going to be writing about the useless classes i took in college, how i felt like high school was more effective at times, the few really great professors i had and what i learned from them, etc. i will also be going through the "personal mba" book list and doing short book reports.

this is sort of a blog for ourselves, to track where we've been, but it's also a blog just for me. selfish, yes, but i love to know where each of you are in your lives and this is a really great way of learning about each other/staying close. this blog is also for people just like us who want to learn from our mistakes, our victories, etc.

some of you are thinking, "god, this is way too self-important for me. pass." i will respectfully disagree. as much as you're thinking it's weird/bullshit to talk about yourself so much, just know that i want to read what you write and there are probably at least three more people who will say the same.

and now comes the part where i potentially offend people. i hope i'm not pigeonholing any of you, but these are some things i'd love to see you write about.
justin conway: write about being punk as fuck. seriously. write about not going to school, then going to school, then saying "fuck school" while going to school. write about what school is to you.
ben miller: as far as i know, you read a fuckton of books. write about the things you're learning about from those books.
matt ebert: write about what it's like in portland in the summer where everyone moved to portland and took your job (not really, but you get what i'm saying?), especially moving away from los angeles for the first time. there have got to be some good, funny or fucked up stories from portland.
dorothy young: you're going to new orleans! to teach little kids! write about teach for america. be funny (like you usually are). write about what you're doing after (or how you don't know what you're doing after).
sam song: i can't wait for you to write about not getting jobs after going to the most prestigious film school EVER; don't be a fucking downer though. write about what you learned from the experience and what you wished you'd learned.
john brzezicki: please write about googillions, tony robbins, lazer, everything.
vim crony: write about all the things you've done. i don't know half of the shit you've done, but i know you've made a lot of films and done some really cool shit.
gaku ito: write about living in a parsonage, what you did in college and what you plan on doing!
hider al-mashat: write about law school (or not!) and why you wanted to do it.

of course, i haven't addressed everyone that i'd like to write for the blog, but this is the first wave. i've talked to some of you already. if you have any suggestions for other contributors, please forward them the email and let me know! i know you have friends in mind that would be great for this, so do it! i want this to be a massive, fucking awesome project.