This one's for you, Jason!

While all 5 of my readers are welcome to enjoy this post, it is really a letter to Jason Mraz, who recently claimed he had read the internet cover to cover. I know he was just being funny, but on the off chance he comes across this blog he might be entertained to hear from a fan who isn't 15 and doesn't want to have his love-child!

Dear Jason,

Hi! I met you at your CD release party at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia last summer. I may or may not be remembered for such brilliant conversational moments as asking Bill Bell how long he'd been playing the bass(I am near-sighted and he and Ian really do have similar coloring, in my defense) and telling you to call me if you needed a backup singer (and by that I meant "I love your voice! I'm a singer too! It would be a dream to sing with you!"). You were both very polite, and I wish I hadn't been such a drunken ass. The show was phenomenal! I love your gorgeous, genuine voice and brilliantly clever writing! Most of all I loved how much fun you guys were having up there. It made me want to have that much fun at work!
Your journal is about the best thing I've ever read! It's hilarious and insightful and sensitive and wise and well-crafted and generous. Reading it makes me laugh outloud in the public library (my laptop has gone on holiday). It's all I can do not to shout "Exactly!", so perfectly do you capture the world.
So, seriously, do you need a backup singer? Or a cook?

Love,

Erin

Wild America!

So I was just trying (unsuccessfully be because I am still at the G.D. public library, but the laptop is in the mail:) to edit the "Recognition" post because somewhere in the core of my being I find it revolting to be so interested in finding a mate. It sounds like the kind of nature documentary my sister and I used to enjoy as TV-starved children! "The female frequents public places in hopes of exposing herself to an appropriate mate for nesting and procreation." Gross! Have we not evolved beyond this as human beings? So in addition to being from another planet I now feel like I have another person living within my own skin and doing things I don't approve of. Maybe someone should do a nature documentary on me!
A parent, who knows I am on the prowl for new work, put a book called "What Should I Do With My Life" in my mailbox at school yesterday. It's a collection of stories about people who had that question and how they answered it for themselves. While I don't think I can successfully adopt anyone else's particular path, it does help a)to remember I am not the only person floundering in the ocean of life and b)to ask myself the questions that some of them asked. One particularly interesting fellow who went from teaching sex ed. under pitiful conditions to public high school kids, to (eventually and after much turmoil) starting a bakery, had this inspiring advice: sometimes you've just got to say "F- it!" Well at least I am on the right track! I have indeed said "F- it!" to my job and to basically everything familiar. I am in a surreal state of living my old life while constantly conscious that it will change soon and I have no idea what's coming. I am like an endangered animal who's habitat has just been sold to developers. My life is totally a nature documentary!