top fears and doubts (unordered):
- i meet my father and find out he has no qualities i admire and strive toward. i've only met him a couple times. haven't talked to him since high school. a couple months ago he mailed me a check for $5000 and invited me to visit in nicaragua. i'm flying there in july.
- my not being career-minded will me leave me destitute in someone's garage, wasting away in a bathrobe watching game show reruns.
- i die before my mother.
- my teeth rot and fall out. my teeth are fine now, but sometimes i want extract them with pliers so they can never turn black and crumble. ugh.
- i break sarah's heart. i met sarah in georgia while at a training seminar for my job. she's gooey sweet with the cutest southern accent, but...
- i'm too insular, isolated. i sit around and think too much. i don't go out. i wander around alone, wondering about stuff, looking at clouds and ferns.
- i'm too american, too industrialized. this culture shapes me more than i realize. i invest in mutual funds. you know what that makes me? that makes me the man. i own a sliver of every major company. yes, i recycle and conserve electricity in my house, but i own all the corporations that rape this planet and exploit people's brain chemistry. i am a CEO of destruction. so i can grow my savings 8% to 10% a year.
- i exhausted my creative drive in my early 20s. i don't know. i used to take a hundred pictures a day, but a lone weed growing through a chain link fence isn't that profound to me anymore.
- sasha died thinking she made a mistake. sasha was my obstinate rottweiler puppy back home. she died from an abdominal infection after being spayed. heartstabbing, yes, but you have to accept that. i did. many months later. but i'm scared that when she was writhing in her death throes in the corner of the basement, she thought it was her fault, or that she did something wrong. you didn't do anything wrong, sash. it was just germs.
- i'm not having enough sex. my sex-having is probably average, but it could be above average. hot young sex! all the time! yeah!
- I know my father and I don't want to say he has no qualities I admire and strive towards, but I probably have to. He's effectively retired, but my mother forces him to do a little work at the office so he doesn't fall over dead. He's old and acts it and has ignored my entreaties to write down his story to keep his mind sharp in his old age, and because for god's sake no one knows it. His children sure don't, and when he goes, a lot of his value, meaning his life story stored in his brain, will also disappear like a hard drive crashing with nothing saved. I don't want the story for myself, but for 1) his memory; 2) his grandchildren, who should have access to this piece of their family history. My parents always pay my travel expenses when I visit, otherwise I likely wouldn't go.
- My not being career-minded has left me metaphorically destitute in someone's garage, watching game show re-runs, but I'm still more glad that I paid attention to the things I considered important to life, rather than being career-minded.
- My goal is to die before my mother, otherwise my life will have been a waste.
- My teeth rot and fall out. My teeth are fine now, but they shouldn't be. I don't take care of them. I realize how lucky I am to have healthy teeth, but even so, I know that won't last forever. Or even necessarily for much longer. I see the human condition in the metaphor of teeth.
- I'm not afraid of breaking anyone's heart. No one's interested in letting me handle theirs, but...
- I'm too insular, isolated. I sit around and think too much. I don't go out. I wander around alone, wondering about stuff, looking at clouds and ferns. And walking through the candy store.
- Maybe I'm not very "american". I don't invest, I pay off my credit card every month. I just read Maxed Out and I'm useless to the credit card company. But I treat them like a legitimate business so that they can go about their real business of making sure many "americans" are perpetually in debt. I don't have savings to speak of. Whenever I've saved something, I consequently quit my job and spent it. I'm thinking of doing that now again. I guess, here, "american" means "capitalist", which means screwing someone or getting screwed.
- I exhausted my creative drive in my late-20s. That's arguable. But it's alright. What I've lost in creativity, I've replaced with appreciation, whether it be seeing things in movies other people don't see, or K-pop girl groups, or 30 Rock, or my 14,500 song strong iPod.
- Sesame died in Amina's care. And she did. And I don't even remember if it was Sesame. I had so many gerbils in college. When Amina told me, I just felt bad that I had put her in a position that she had to tell me my gerbils had died.
- I'm not having enough sex. Wait, I'm not having any sex. I'll never have sex again. And I probably won't. Deal!
Tina Fey: I won't. I don't want to know. Are you a man?
Salma Hayek: Really? That's your guess? A man? Do you want to see me naked?
Tina Fey: Kinda.
