Madam Truly,

Sincerely,
A Serious Lady

This is a really weird time in your life and I commend you for approaching it thoughtfully and honestly! I can definitely speak to these issues, although not the part about the kid. However, I know some local readers who have kids and hopefully they will chime in with some thoughts in the comments.

Finishing grad school is both hugely relieving and kind of scary. It’s been so long, such a big thing in your life. It’s governed your schedule and the way you think about yourself. On the one hand, I found it to be wonderful to finally finish and no longer be tied to my institution. It was a refreshing novelty, to just be a person in the world, no longer having to sign into my school account every quarter to deal with registration or whatever. You will not miss stuff like this. Also, I assume you are in the humanities because you say nothing about having a job, so that means dissertation. Finishing a dissertation means you have WRITTEN AN ENTIRE BOOK. That is a huge accomplishment and you should feel awesome about it. Turning that thing in and getting the stamped piece of paper and having the lady at the registrar’s office call you “Dr. Truly” for the first time….that’s sweet stuff.

So, savor it! Feel proud! Have a party! Frame your PhD and have a ceremony! Bind a copy of your dissertation and stick it on your shelf! My undergrad advisor always says: “They can never take your PhD away from you,” and this is a cool thing to hold onto in the coming years when you may feel profoundly confused about what to do with your life. No matter what else happens, you jumped through kind of the ultimate hoop, for a non-scientist. Not many people do what you have done! CONGRATULATIONS.

So, but. Now what? Unfortunately these are dark times, and getting a job is hard. I imagine getting a job with a baby is harder still, although not so hard as it would have been 20 years ago. You don’t say in your letter, but are you actually on the job market right now? Or are you waiting until your baby is older? If you’re on the market right now, don’t become discouraged until three years have passed without you getting a job. You can idly think about your Plan B, but don’t let yourself get truly bummed unless 3 full years (with PhD in-hand) on the market pass. These days, that’s what it takes. Okay, now that’s out of the way.

If you’re waiting til your baby grows older, how long are you planning on waiting? There is definitely an expiration date on your PhD but no one will tell you exactly what that date is. At a certain point search committees are gonna be like “Wait, she got her PhD in 2012 but now it’s 2018 and she’s never had a job, WHAT’S WRONG WITH HER.” Sucks, but I believe this is true after talking to a lot of people. Unless you have spent the interim publishing tons of shit, then you’ve still got a chance. Same with adjuncting, which is what I’m doing right now–you can’t do it forever (unless you want to do it forever).

But that’s okay, right? That’s just life, normal life. There’s an expiration date on your ovaries, your hot tight bod, your eyes, your teeth, the milk in your fridge. You do have to make decisions and live with them, but that’s no biggie, that’s just what it means to be a human.

You ask several questions, so lets dig in to them separately:

1. Deciding about academia: What do you want? When you picture your Ideal Grownup Life, what do you picture? Make a list! Do you picture yourself with your fancy briefcase, sitting in your office with a window overlooking the quad, with your special pen and your big desktop computer the school bought for you, and students are coming in and respectfully calling you Doctor and asking for help formatting their weird essays about Pink Floyd? Or do you picture yourself working in a garden with tons of vegetables and goats and chickens and you’re wearing a big floppy hat and your child is tottering idyllically around in its childhood and you are beatifically watching it all every moment of the day? If you are like most people, your Ideal Grownup Life probably has elements of many different un-reconcilable Possible Lives (I just told you my main two, sans child: yours may be different). This is why list-making is crucial. Write down everything you would like your grownup life in terms of “career” to consist of, and then take a look at that list and see what’s what. You may find it is more heavily weighted toward one thing than the other. I can’t tell you how many times I had no idea how I really felt about something until I made a list. Do some pros and cons!

Academia Pros:
intellectually challenging, teaching is important social work, summer vacations, actually getting paid to do what you are trained to do, doing for money a lot of stuff you’d want to be doing anyway (reading, writing, talking, thinking)
Academia Cons:
sometimes thankless, students can be total buttheads, your society does not appreciate the work you do, it’s pretty low-paying, you have to move to some random town you don’t care about because that’s the only place you got a job, job interviews are AWFUL, AWFUL, AWFUL

etc.
Plan B Stuff:
Also make some lists about other stuff you might be into doing, for money. What other skills/experiences do you have? What other weird dreams have you had? My old man and I talk about starting a coffee shop/bar/venue/reading room if we fail at academia, and after talking about it for years I now feel like, sure, why not. “In THIS economy?” but seriously.
– going to library school
– starting a small business
– teaching high school instead of college (involves getting a teaching certificate, which is annoying)
– not getting any job but instead growing all your own food
– are there non-academic avenues that you can parlay your degree into? There have been many articles on the Chronicle about this, about Plan Bs that still use your degree. I have not found them helpful because they are rarely about the humanities, but still, you never know. I know a guy who made obscene amounts of money curating the Barnes & Noble classical music section on their website or something. Something you’d never think of, but that you are qualified to do because of this crazy body of knowledge you’ve amassed!
– copy-editing: thankless, but you make your own hours and are still sort of using your brain. You can edit people’s dissertations! I know someone who does this. His degree is in English but I assume anyone with a PhD could do this. Put up some ads
– Write a Great American Novel and become a millionaire

I’m also going to add an important addendum to your question about academia, which is: Continuing To Be An Academic Post-Grad School. Something I learned once I was done with my PhD is that you don’t get to just Be An Academic now that you’re not in school anymore. You have to keep doing work. You have to somehow find a new project to work on. This seems impossible, after the dissertation–you are like, “I will never have an idea again.”–but you have to! Especially if you aren’t teaching, you really need to continue Being An Academic in various ways, or else if you do decide to continue in the field you will feel totally behind and weird. You have to keep yourself oiled up and in practice; you have to learn how to stick to a schedule and deadlines, now that you have no adviser hectoring you. Honestly, this year of post-grad-school has done more to define me as a scholar to myself than all my 6 years of school. Because now you’re doing it on your own–not to pass a test or a defense, not to impress a scary professor, but because it’s Who You Are. Here are two things I did this year that helped me feel like a real academic (aside from teaching, which, obviously):

– I picked a really extreme hole in my knowledge and set myself the task of filling that hole. Did you somehow get through an entire English PhD without ever reading Faulkner? Or, I don’t know, are you a History PhD who has literally never learned a single thing about the Renaissance? Maybe you’ve somehow always avoided digging into whatever “theory” means in your discipline, because it’s boring and awful. Challenge yourself now! For me it was 21st century art music. I don’t know anything about it! So this became a new project. Researching! Reading! Taking notes! And now I know about it! You need something like this in your life.

– I found a new project. Maybe this is continuing your dissertation–adding chapters in preparation for publishing it, or else starting a new book that continues on the ideas of the first book–or maybe it is something completely unrelated. For me it is something completely unrelated, and it has been hugely awesome. I feel like I didn’t know how to describe myself as a scholar–my ideology, my beliefs about my discipline, how everything I do ties together, my teaching philosophy–until I started my new project. Then it was like it all came together. It was like “Oh my god, THIS is why I think scholarship is important! THIS is what I want to say to the world!” Plus you need a new project if you are going to be on the market. Everyone is going to want to know about this. In this coming year, if you think you might want to stay in academia, find a new project and research it and write an article. Just do it!

Oh god, one other advice: to continue feeling like an academic you could also start working on your job materials. They take forever to get together and it is hard and you will feel great if you get some of them in the can before actually going on the market.

Oh and very practically: you might look into adjuncting. PSU has this thing called Sophomore Inquiry that they always need adjuncts for, check it out on their website. See about teaching in the various CORE departments at Reed, LC, UP, community colleges, etc. Do some research on what you could teach, ask around, and then submit your adjunct letter, which is an email saying “Hey, here’s who I am, here’s the widest possible variety of classes I could teach, I’m in town, please keep me in mind for teaching opportunities,” and then you attach your CV. Adjuncting is actually a great thing to do at this point in your life because it gets you teaching experience outside of your home institution, which not only looks good on your CV (somebody felt you were competent enough to hire!) but is also tremendously good experience. And you make some money and get some experience but you DON’T have to do all the other time-consuming stuff involved in being a real faculty member (meetings, committees, advisees). Look into it!

Oh and of course you need to keep submitting abstracts to conferences and presenting at them whenever possible. Nobody likes doing this but it must be done.

Ok, as for the other stuff:

2. re-encountering your past in PortlandEncountering your past in your new present can be disturbing; it can shake your identity in weird ways because here are all these people who knew you Then, but they’re seeing you Now and those two versions are overlaid on one another. Perhaps since last you saw them you have drastically changed your diet; quit/started smoking; gained/lost a shitload of weight; had a kid e.g.; got a bunch of terrible tribal tattoos; changed your sexual orientation; etc. Or any number of more minor things. You may feel like, Who Am I, when confronted with all these metaphysical reminders of who you once were. Then again, you might not. I actually didn’t. I feel like I just slid easily right into my life here–a little bit of the old (friends, activities, jokes) and a little bit of the new (very different schedule, no longer playing in bands, etc.).

Encountering Friends:
Great! You say “hey, so nice to see you!” You make a plan for them to come over and meet your kid. You tell them how weird grad school was. You talk about your life, your Life Fears, your hopes, your dreams. Normal friend stuff. It is enjoyable to see one another grow up, as friends.

Encountering Enemies:
You say “hey, so nice to see you!” and then you do not make plans. Or perhaps encountering them now that you are both all grown up will make it different. Maybe something in you will loosen and you will be like “why did I think this person was such a big deal? S/he is just a person in the world, like me,” and maybe they will be thinking the same about you. And maybe even if you aren’t ever friends you will lose that need to identify them as enemies. This can be a cool thing about returning to your past as your Present Self. Sometimes you are able to encounter your Past Self and be like “Girl, what was your problem?” I like this feeling.

3. Having a Grownup Life in Portland: It’s easy! Rent is still sort of reasonable here. I am going to advise you to make another list. This one is more general than the first one. What should a grownup life consist of, REGARDLESS OF CAREER? This will be different for everyone but for example here are some of mine:
– house, not apartment
– nice pots and pans; nice knives
– gas stove
– domestic projects in addition to academic stuff (sourdough starter; garden; cooking projects; cleaning projects; reading books about hippie household projects to save the environment; grocery shopping; etc.)
– yard you can work in
– healthy life schedule (having a kid probably helps you with this)
– ?

Make your list, and then do the things on the list! One thing my old man and I have slowly realized is that you can basically have the life you want, even while you’re waiting for other stuff to happen. In fact, this is actually just what your entire life is going to be like–you’re never going to get to a point where you’re like “Well, I did it, I did everything on my list, now I can ‘just live my life.'” Never gonna happen! Realizing this has made me feel a lot more grounded and good about my life. I can build the life/lifestyle I want wherever I am, even if I’m also waiting to see if I will get a job and move away in a year, etc. So plant that garden! Start that kombucha fermenting!

Portland is a great place to have a grownup life. Farmers markets every which way! Weird things to probably take your kid to, to meet other grownup weirdos like you to make friends with! Amazing coffee! Lecture series and readings at Powells! Go meet all your favorite authors! For cheap date nights you get to go to the various pizza/beer second-run theaters. Ride your bike somewhere! Take a cooking class at New Seasons! Go on a tour of all the food carts! Lovelies 50/50 is full of screaming children until about 6:00, take your kid there and eat a pizza! Mississippi Pizza also has tons of childrens’ activities. Posie’s in Kenton is kid-friendly and has a whole toy room where you can dump your kid and listen to it scream from afar as I am doing right now because that is where I am. Parents here are insane–you will find tons of kid stuff to do that will make you feel awesome and like you have a community. Going to lectures and readings at the various schools and bookstores will make you feel like you are still an academic. Try to make connections with the various professors in town who work in your field! I haven’t actually done this but I should. Stay up to date on various talks happening at schools around town and go to them and ask questions and meet the person talking and be like “Oh hey I just got my PhD” and they will be like “great, lets publish an edited volume together!” or something, probably not, but maybe.

You can do it! Life is always uncertain. Make lists and be honest and really meditate and picture all your desires and all the possibilities and try to see if you can craft a life that gives you a little bit of everything you want. And give yourself the leeway to change your mind later.

God it’s packed in here, what on earth? Oh yeah, it’s fourth of July. GO USA

Dear Mr & Mrs,

Yours,
Elizabeth

Huzzah! This young one, undaunted by the lengthy rants of yore, writes to Yours Truly with a simple request for simple advice, unmindful of the lengthiness (or rantiness?) of the possible response! Which is considerable, as you will see!

Also Huzzah to you, young lady. In this Bacon Age, I tell you it does my heart good to see people still turning to vegetarianism. I think changing your diet in any number of ways can be a really positive, healthy experience for a person, because it encourages thoughtfulness. Even just eating less meat, or eating a different kind of meat, encourages this thoughtfulness. The one thing I can not stand is when otherwise intelligent people pride themselves on refusing to consider the food they eat, like it’s some sort of mark of courage or coolness when really it’s just incredibly defensive and lazy. I think a lot of us grow up without ever thinking about the food we eat–where it comes from, who makes it, what’s even IN it–and once you start making actual decisions about it it can be very empowering. I remember when my mother in law finally realized that her constant terrible yeast infections were tied to eating too much sugar, which made her start reading labels on food for the first time in her life. She had this huge epiphany. Realizing that the 16 ounce caramel latte she gets every morning from Starbucks actually has an incredible shit-ton of sugar in it, etc. She had NO IDEA how much sugar she was eating on a daily basis. A lot of people don’t think about this stuff. But once you make a decision–eating less sugar, not eating meat, eating locally, whatever–it allows you to turn your perception onto your food intake and actually pay attention to it in a more mindful way. I am a fan of mindfulness, generally. Like even if you’re going to eat meat, there is a vast world of difference between some hippie-dippie field-raised hand-slaughtered cow and the meat you get at Safeway, and it’s not just a price difference. And a lot of people don’t even think about that difference, and I think they should, is all I’m saying. Because our planet is fucking dying. Fun!

On to the advice:

You’re right that you need to stop buying prepared meals! I don’t even know what this means–do you mean you are going to restaurants all the time? Which is one thing, but if what you mean is that you’re buying, like, frozen dinners? Or something? Then yeah, you should stop! Not only is it expensive but it is not that healthy.

The one mistake a lot of vegetarians and vegans make, especially if they switch over while young, is that they just start eating a shit-ton of fake meat. Everybody knows the vegan who eats only tofurkey and that vegan is not your role model! I hardly ever eat fake meat. I only eat it in the context of a fun junk food experience, like a barbecue or if I’m drunk.

Also, the one mistake vegetarians make is eating too much cheese. Don’t eat cheese with every meal! It’s too intense!

So, lets talk about WHOLE FOODS. Not the grocery store–the actual thing! Whole foods are foods that have not been processed, that don’t have added shit, that haven’t been turned into anything else. Think of things in their natural state. Beans, rice, the dreaded kale–you want to eat a lot of whole foods. Not 100% whole foods–you aren’t a crazy person, we all have other shit we need to do in our day aside from obsessively deal with our nutritional intake, plus, come on, things like BREAD and SOY SAUCE and tempeh and the occasional awesome coconut ice cream–but just, like, kind of a lot of whole foods, is what you need to focus on. At first it is difficult to transition from prepared foods to preparing your own whole foods, but after awhile it becomes normal and you find yourself getting mildly ill if you go to your family reunion and every single thing everyone makes involves velveeta cheese and white bread.

Helpful Motto: Buy ingredients, not meals

When you go to the store, think about ingredients rather than meals. What are ingredients? They are the vegetables themselves but also things like spices and nutritional yeast and soy sauce and vinegar and noodles and bread and beans and rice and whatever. You fill your kitchen with ingredients and then you create food out of those ingredients. In a second I will give you a list of staple ingredients to maybe think about. I’ll also give you some health tips, lifestyle tips, and then finally a couple recipes/meal ideas and cookbooks. Okay here we go!

HEALTH THINGS:

People will tell you, “oh god, but you have to eat meat, IT’S NATURAL, etc. etc. protein iron.” One thing you might want to do is read Carol Adams’ truly bonkers book The Sexual Politics of Meat. It’s obviously about gender issues and is very theoretical, but in her early chapters she also digs into the history of meat eating. And actually–and this is obvious, if you think about it–most people in the world, for all of history, do/did not actually eat much meat. Eating meat every day was a rich man’s game. It’s largely the product of marketing, coupled with the cheapness of factory farming, that led Americans to believe you have to eat big slabs of meat with every meal. That’s how kings eat, historically, not the rest of us. And what else did kings experience that the rest of us didn’t? Gout! Obesity! Weird digestive problems! “Eating like a king” is not actually that good for your body. Obviously you also don’t want to eat like a medieval serf (gruel and/or nothing), but I do think there is a balance to be found, and that the cultural perception that if you don’t eat tons of meat you’ll be unhealthy is largely bullshit. Lately there’s this whole thing of, like, oh, if you don’t eat meat, you stop ovulating and you can’t have babies! To this I would simply submit: The country of India.

Cultural vegetarianism has been around a lot longer than you or I, and those people do just fine. So don’t let your weird uncle hassle you about how you have to go to Applebees and eat a steak or you’ll turn white and die. We have the privilege and the luxury of thinking about our diet and picking and choosing our diet, rather than scrabbling desperately for survival like everybody else does/has done, and that’s great, and lucky, and an amazing gift. So lets think about it and make some calls!

So! No biggie! When you give up meat, I believe the two things you need to focus on getting enough of in your diet are iron and protein. I am not a doctor (not that kind)! But after nigh on 25 years of vegetarianism (!!! I am a million years old), and reading about it and thinking about it and experimenting with my lifestyle, this is basically how I roll, and I feel healthy and good in my body and am not anemic or anything. My last physical exam came back “all systems go.” KNOCK ON WOOD. Also, re: ovulation, I chart my cycles and am definitely still ovulating, for whatever that information is worth to you. I know people who are WAY MORE UPTIGHT than I am about getting x number of servings of x number of things every day, and to those people I say chill out! Or don’t, whatever works for you.

(Also: everyone is different. Some people’s bodies really don’t like wheat. Some people (ahem) just can’t fucking stand squash. etc. etc. A lot of people claim they don’t feel good unless they are eating meat regularly, which could totally be true, although it hasn’t been my experience. So I just want to stress that these are the things that work for ME and for MY GUTS, but you should feel free to experiment with other ideas, other amounts, etc., and also give yourself the leeway to not like certain stuff. And don’t beat yourself up if you fall off the wagon and eat a hamburger sometimes–this isn’t a zero sum game! Just be thoughtful and try to listen to your body, and introduce changes slowly and thoughtfully, and think about the long game rather than completely changing your entire life overnight, and you’ll be good)

I focus on:
– eating at least one big serving of dark leafy greens a day (if you don’t like kale, experiment with other greens–or with your cooking methods? See below–but I’m sorry, you definitely need to eat your leafy greens. Spinach salad? Collards with sweet potatoes? Secretly putting them in a smoothie? Get it done! Major source of iron and calcium, super important)
– eating some amount of protein every day–beans, nuts, eggs, even cheese, the occasional tempeh or tofu, etc.
– eating at least one piece of fruit a day (everyone should do this, not just vegetarians)

That’s it! It’s easy, you can do it. Using these 3 guidelines, you can plan your meals and be delighted at the sweet bounty of the earth or whatever. Okay moving on:

Staples I Always Have In My Kitchen:

Some of these might not work for you–you need to find your own flavor palette!–but just for something to start building from, here’s a list of stuff I basically always have on hand. It doesn’t mean I use only them, every day, but they are a pretty foundational part of my diet. It took me a long, long time to figure this out, during my years-long transition out of eating mainly boca burgers. Some of this stuff may not be super healthy, even, I don’t know, but since you asked, this is what I do:

– couple pounds of dry beans of various types (pinto, black and lentil are the current faves (see below re: cooking/using them))
– brown rice (see below re: cooking it in such a way that it does not totally suck)
– various pastas (a lot of people don’t love pasta–it’s a big wheat gluten blast–but for me it is foundational and I love it and I don’t give a shit)
– soy sauce
– rooster sauce (sriracha (sp?) you can make your own if you get the Hot Knives cookbook, see below)
– olive oil
– various vinegars (balsamic, brown rice, white, and maybe a red wine)
– toasted sesame oil
– nice honey
– spices: chili powder, basil, oregano, cinnamon, turmeric, dill, crushed red pepper flakes, cayenne, these are my main go-tos, plus salt and pepper obviously
– nutritional yeast
– vegetable stock or boullion cubes
– dark leafy greens (kale, chard, collards, mustard, beet, spinach–can be raw or cooked, also see below)
– plain yogurt (or soy yogurt, however you want to roll. You need the cultures, and the calcium is good too, plus I assume some protein. I use it instead of sour cream and I also just eat it plain but I am a weirdo (it’s super sour))
– peanut butter or some other nut butter
– assorted raw nuts (walnuts and almonds, though recently my parents have been spoiling me with 1/2 pound sacks of crazy expensive hazelnuts)

Most of this you can get in the bulk bins/tanks at your local hippie store. Bring your own bags and bottles, save some money and waste less plastic! Spices especially are INSANELY CHEAPER if you buy them bulk, but also beans and rice and really everything. And even if it’s only a few cents cheaper you still get the satisfaction of not throwing millions of jars in the garbage or whatever. I’ve had the same olive oil bottle for almost five years, I love it. You just get them to weigh it before you do your shopping (this is called a “tare” weight) and then they subtract that weight from your purchase. I get olive oil, vinegar, honey, peanut butter, laundry soap, dish soap, soy sauce, braggs, plus all my dry goods (beans, rice) and spices, in bulk. The hippier your co-op the more normal this will be–the Alberta St. co-op here in town has a scale where you can do your own tares, and they even have bulk vegenaise and tofutti cream cheese and margarine and salsa and kombucha. Next level!

I also enjoy keeping all this stuff in jars rather than bags. It is easier to keep track of and looks better in the cupboard. So I have all these pickle jars and peanut butter jars and big mason jars, all filled with beans and rice and couscous and yeast. My soy sauce is in a kombucha bottle. My sugar is in a tomato paste jar. I also like looking in thrift stores for cool vintage tiny jars for my spices. Thrift stores are great for mason jars, too. Etc etc have fun in the kitchen

Also decent pots and pans can not be overestimated in terms of enjoying your cooking life. I got a set of Calphalon pots/pans on ebay for like $150 (retail $500) and will have them until I am old. Scour thrift stores for Le Cruset and Calphalon and other top durable legit chef-approved cookware, although you probably won’t find much because people hold onto it. Estate sales! If you get married, definitely make a set of pots and pans and a set of knives a priority in terms of telling your mom to tell your rich relatives to buy for you.

Okay, here’s some specifics!

Nutritional Yeast
excellent source of vitamin B12, which mostly just vegans have to worry about, but still it is very good for you and tastes awesome and probably has other health benefits I’m forgetting. Here is the main way I use it: salad dressing! I stole this recipe from my friend Geneviève who is an amazing cook: make a nice olive oil/balsamic vinegar dressing, add the juice of maybe 1/3 of a lime, a little salt, mix it up, then add nutritional yeast until it turns into a pourable paste. HOLY SHIT! I get more compliments on this salad dressing than on probably anything else I have ever made. We eat this basically every day.

Beans
Well, so you put a pound of dry beans in a big soup pot, cover them with 2 inches of water, let them soak overnight. Then in the morning you drain them, fill the pot back up with water (or veggie stock, which is much better), add a chopped onion, a couple chopped jalapeños, a chopped bell pepper, several minced cloves of garlic, a couple tablespoons of chili powder, a dollop of olive oil, some salt, maybe some oregano. Bring to a boil, cover, turn down to a very low simmer, simmer for like 30 minutes or until very very tender. I sometimes add half a chopped apple like 10 minutes before they’re done. Now you’ve got a huge pot of rad beans! Make burritos, enchiladas, chili, or just eat in a bowl with rice and tortillas. Lasts for days, also you can freeze them in mason jars for lazy nights when you don’t want to deal with cooking.

(High Altitude Cooking: stuff boils at a lower temperature. So like growing up, my parents would take an entire day to cook beans–they’d just simmer on the stove all day. Then I moved to Oregon and made my first batch of non-high-altitude beans, and cooked them for 8 hours like usual, and they were unbelievably ruined. Turns out you only need like 45 minutes. I told my dad and he was stunned. Does anyone reading this live at high altitude? It’s crazy, right? There are also arcane baking substitutions you have to make but I don’t know about that because I never bake)

Brown Rice Not Being So Boring You Want To Die
brown rice is terrible. So you have to cook it in veggie stock, instead of water! Then when it’s done, add a tablespoon of butter or margarine. Suddenly, this rice tastes good!! Amaze your friends

veggie stock
yes, you can buy this in big jugs, or you can use boullion cubes. But it is more fun to make your own. I keep a giant tupperware in the freezer and I throw all my odds-and-ends into it. The ends of carrots, the weird tough ends of kale that you don’t want to eat, onion skins, garlic tips, the ends of green onions, potato peels, and any veggies that are about to go bad that you don’t want to deal with. When the tupperware fills up (usually takes me like a week or maybe 2), it’s time to make stock! Dump all the frozen bits in your big soup pot, fill the pot up with water, add some salt, soy sauce, olive oil, a whole thing of parsley, an onion cut in quarters, a head of garlic, maybe some tomatoes and mushrooms. Bring to a boil, turn down to low and cover, and simmer for like 45 minutes. Drain, and you’ve got stock! I keep my stock in an enormous jug in the fridge and use it for everything–cooking beans and rice mainly, but it is also the foundation for any soup, and can also be used to thin things, like if you’re like “crap this spaghetti sauce is too thick,” don’t add water, add stock! etc. (note: too many carrots, and your stock will be grossly sweet, as I recently discovered to my horror)

cooking dark leafy greens
Why do you hate kale?? My life would be but a thin charade without kale to delight me each day! But this is fair, to each his own. Still, there is a possibility you just aren’t cooking it right? Maybe??? Here is how I do it:
chop up the kale, rough chop (I usually do a whole thing of kale at once. If there’s leftovers then great)
put in big pan with like a tablespoon of soy sauce, juice of half a lemon (the lemon helps you digest the kale, somehow, but mainly it tastes good), splash of balsamic, squirt of rooster sauce, dollop of olive oil
then cook until JUST BARELY tender, like it’s still bright green.
Tastes so good! Do you really not like it? Okay if not, maybe try collards? I cook them a bit differently, I go southern style–chop them up, put in pan with some veggie stock, salt, pepper, and a lot of rice vinegar. Delicious!

Simple Meal Ideas
– burritos with your homemade beans, non-shitty brown rice, and a big salad
– tempeh chili with the rest of the beans once you’re sick of them
– spaghetti and kale and garlic bread
– spicy lentils (look up recipe; they are different from other beans) with braised cauliflower (cauliflower cooked in big pan with cilantro, curry powder, and tons of lime juice, until just tender), rice, and yogurt
– blackened tempeh (from Veganomicon (see below), you will die it’s so good), potatoes, green beans, maybe some sort of squash with onions and tomatoes? I hate squash
– soup, salad, bread (with your veggie stock, experiment with soup-making! Soups are awesome)
– peanut noodle bowl (peanut sauce (peanut butter, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, green onion, garlic, cilantro, lime juice, rooster sauce, brown sugar), noodles, marinated veggies just barely cooked in a big pot or wok)
– in spring and summer, I like to make big pastas with veggies–I marinate asparagus, mushrooms, tomatoes, bell pepper, whatever else you can get ahold of, in: olive oil, balsamic, minced garlic, dash of soy sauce, then very lightly stir-fry or roast them until just barely tender. Put into big bowl with noodles, tons of chopped parsley, and nutritional yeast or grated parmesan. So good!!
– in general I eat a lot of roasted veggies. Beets, carrots, potatoes, fennel, mushrooms, green beans, yams, in various combinations, put them in a little oil and salt and balsamic, and roast. Delightful
– sandwiches! avocado, sprouts, cucumber, bell pepper, pickles, vegenaise/mustard/cheese if you want. With chips and salsa, why not?
– crazy pasta: chop up a ton of almonds, a ton of kalamata olives, a whole bag or jar of sundried tomatoes, a whole thing of basil, a can of artichoke hearts, and sautee it all for a minute in some oil and garlic, then put over spiral pasta. What? It’s so good! Eat with chard on the side or a salad!
– if we have been having unhealthy times (family reunion with velveeta, e.g.) we sometimes come home and make what we call Plate Of Veggies, to recuperate. It’s kind of boring but can taste amazing if you’ve been eating like shit for awhile: mashed sweet potatoes or yams, green beans, kale, and yellow squash sauteed with onion and canned tomatoes. I don’t like squash but somehow it seems inextricable from the rest of this meal. (green beans: pick off the tips, then put in a big pan with a tiny bit of water and a bit of olive oil; put a lid on it; steam until BARELY tender, then add some butter and salt, WHOAAA)
– straight-up lasagna

Eat a handful of nuts every day, just do it

One Other Thing To Think About
I do not do this every day, but I really would like to. Sometimes I get in the zone of doing it every day and I feel awesome. And that thing is: SMOOTHIES, or what my dad calls POWER DRINKS. This is a really good way to get a health blast and eat some of the things you maybe don’t feel like actually eating (for me: flax). I make a huge thing of power drink and then keep it in a big jar in the fridge, and drink a glass of it a day (diluted with water or juice because it usually thickens as it sets, which is great because it lasts longer that way) until it’s gone. Here’s what I put in a power drink. Remember, this is meant to be a health blast, not a milkshake. But still, it usually actually tastes pretty good:
– banana
– other fruit on hand (half an apple; blueberries; gross cantaloupe; whatever you’ve got)
– couple spoons of plain yogurt
– big dump of ground flaxseed meal
– juice of entire lime
– couple spoons of peanut butter
– couple leaves of raw kale (here is how to get your kale without tasting it!)
– carrot
– beet
– juice enough to make it thin enough to drink
– optional: garlic clove; parsley; protein powder
– Hot Tip: I have a big tupperware in the freezer where I put fruit odds and ends–fruit that’s about to go bad, or like if I buy a cantaloupe I chop it up and put it in there, etc. This way you’ve got frozen fruit, which makes the smoothie more like a cold slushy treat. Also having a place to put stuff that’s about to go bad, so you don’t waste it, is awesome. All hail freezer technology!

Okay, and finally, get a couple of good cookbooks and just set yourself the task of making something out of them at least twice a week until you develop a stable of 5-10 recipes you know you enjoy and can make.

Cookbooks I Have Loved
I don’t use cookbooks that often, but here are a couple life-changers:

The Hot Knives: Salad Daze UrHo friends and all-around great guys, I know these dudes personally and can vouch for every food item I have ever tasted from their hands. They have also won some sort of California-wide grilled cheese competition. This cookbook has so many really weird amazing recipes and is all vegetarian. Written in their charming personal voices; absolutely stunning food photography! A bit on the elaborate/fancy side but that can be so fun!

Veganomicon! Can’t say enough good things about this cookbook. Here is the everyday, non-elaborate companion to the Hot Knives one. It has recipes ranging from really involved to incredibly simple; it has an informational section in the beginning that tells you what stuff is (like, tempeh vs. tofu), what’s the point, where to get stuff, etc.; and it’s written in a really comforting colloquial tone that I appreciate–NON FANCY. I got this book at a time when I was so sick of everything I was cooking and it really changed my whole vibe, and introduced several new staples. The blackened tempeh in here is not to be believed. Baja Surf Tacos! Also they have this crazy corn casserole that is so good I gave it to my friend who eats nothing but KFC and he loved it so much he ate it with his hands.

I’d start here, and work outwards. Find what you like, what works for your lifestyle. Don’t try to bite off more than you can chew (LOL)–don’t, like, suddenly decide you’re going to make enormous meals at home 3 times a day if that’s not how you have traditionally rolled. Start small. Make one thing, see how it feels/tastes. Make another thing. Experiment with ingredients and leafy greens and whatever else. Read these books I have recommended. Think about what you like and how to accomplish it.

A lot of it is really about changing your ‘tude. A lot of people don’t cook very much, anymore, and it is a learned lifestyle you can get into if you want to. But it takes thought and effort. If you’re not accustomed to cooking regularly it can seem like a drag–so you have to be mindful and change your outlook. I find it incredibly comforting and grounding, cooking in my kitchen most nights. It gives me a lot of comfort and joy to see all my jars of nuts and grains lined up in the cupboard; to know I can whip up a weird soup out of stuff in my house; to have the confidence to experiment with recipes. My freezer is full of food I made, just waiting for me to thaw it out and eat it! These things feel good, to me. Even the increased labor of the kind of shopping that involves filling up your own jars, etc., I really enjoy. It’s like, actually spending time during every day, caring for your body and thinking about the things you spend your money on/the things you eat. I have come to appreciate this very much. I really like having a busy day and then just putting on a podcast and spending 45 minutes in the kitchen, having quiet time, chopping and mincing and stirring and sniffing things and making decisions about the meal I’m preparing. For me it can be very meditative and peaceful and then so satisfying when you’ve finally turned all these weird raw materials into a beautiful plate of food. And having the routine of eating dinner at home can be really wonderful. I hang out in my sunny kitchen, cooking, and then my old man and I sit down at the table with napkins and wine and everything, and we eat and talk and hang out, and then I go play online scrabble while he does the dishes. It’s fucking awesome.

Good luck! We should recipe-share in the comments, I know everyone out there has their own cool food items they make. Every time I go to Freddy’s house she makes something I literally can’t believe I’m eating, maybe she can weigh in. I know so many good cooks! Also follow-up questions are always welcome.

HUZZAH TO US ALL

Dear Ms. (Mrs.?) Regarding –

Thanks,
Dog Contemplater

First of all I will point out that in real life my husband did actually take my name, which does make it really weird to be called “Mrs.” I can’t imagine ever thinking of myself as “Mrs. My Actual Last Name.” I am the patriarch here, and I would really prefer that my husband be called “Mr. My First Name Last Name,” as in “Mr. Jennifer Fremont,” but that will never happen.

Dogs! I will write at length about all the things to think about and ponder when considering dog ownership. This is everything I could think about when reading your letter, so it is very long. Some of it may apply to you, some may not, but I really think the more you know about dog ownership before you get a dog, the better. So here we go!

The first thing I recommend, before you get a dog, is reading this book Inside Of A Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know. It’s an awesome book and I cried like four times reading it. Read this book because ideas about dogs are changing, and a lot of things you think you know about dogs are actually not true, or at least this was my experience. It’s fascinating stuff, dogs. It’s really humbling and heavy to realize how fundamentally dogs are interwoven into humanity. They basically don’t exist without us. We invented them. They form stronger bonds with humans than they do with other dogs, which is heavy as shit to contemplate. And for 100,000 years dogs have existed as constant members of various human groups–not separate from them, but fully involved within them. Only recently have we started requiring our dogs to spend massive amounts of time locked up alone in a building. It’s fundamentally unnatural and not what dogs are made for. Thus it is perfectly reasonable that they prefer to be with you and not by themselves. The first thing to realize is that: Dogs fucking hate being left alone, or at least a lot of them do, or at least they do at first.

Okay. So some dogs don’t seem to care that much about being left alone all day, while other dogs hate it and spend the entire day barking and howling, which is really really unhealthy for them as well as for your neighbors. You don’t know what your dog’s going to be like in this regard, so just PREPARE AS THOUGH he will hate being alone. Then if he doesn’t, well, great! No harm done.

So: Is your house like a big punk rock house where somebody’s always at home throughout the day, making art or whatever? And, are these roommates stoked about hanging out with a dog? If these two answers were “yes” then I think you are good to go. If somebody’s around throughout the day, and if they are willing to sort of co-parent the dog with you (in terms of understanding/committing to its routine and being on basically the same page in terms of discipline, code words, etc.), then you’ll be fine!

Even if you can only get someone (roommate, partner, parent) to commit to spending, say a couple hours a day with the dog, even that seems okay to me, although I feel sketchy about doing it right away–the dog needs time to gain trust and confidence in his new home and in his relationship with you. Ideally you’d get a dog when you had a bunch of time off work and then you’d hang out with the dog constantly and build a cool friendship before you started leaving it alone. And definitely read the dog training books, because there are tricks to teaching him how to be alone. You leave for five minutes, over and over again, giving him a treat every time you come back. You gradually lengthen the amount of time you’re gone. This is why it’s ideal to have A LOT OF FREE TIME when you first get a dog–you have to work on shit like this. It’s not something that comes naturally to a dog.

But once trust and friendship are established I think having someone come by for an hour or two each day could work. I definitely know dogs who lead this kind of life and are totally mellow about it. It’s hard to imagine my own dog living this way but probably he’s just spoiled. But this is the thing–for a lot of dogs, especially younger dogs, it’s not just about “letting it out to pee once a day,” it’s way more about the actual human contact. So somebody would have to commit to really hanging out at your house for sizable chunks of time while you are at work. They’d have to come hang out and read on the couch for an hour, or play fetch in the yard for awhile–not just running across the street once and letting your dog pee and then shutting it up again.

This is also an issue if you get a puppy. Because puppies need to be housetrained, and you can only really do this to the max/quickly if you are spending tons of time with them for basically weeks. They have to go outside every hour and you have to get up in the night with them and stuff, like a real baby! Because they are a baby. So, you might also think about getting an older dog. Our dog was six months old when we got him, so still kind of a floppy pup, still very impressionable and cute, but he was housetrained in like two seconds. I think he peed in the house ONCE, and then had it figured out. If you do the thing where you get an 8 week old puppy from some breeder (PLEASE GO TO THE POUND, please do not buy from a breeder, millions of beautiful dogs are euthanized every year and lots of them would make such good buddies if someone would just give them the chance), you’re going to have to devote a lot more time to housetraining. Puppies are so beautiful but there is definitely a good side to getting an older dude.

Yard: Yard is so awesome! It sounds like you are set up really well for a dog. I wish we had a fenced yard so we could let him out while we’re cooking dinner or whatever, and he could sniff around in the sun. But remember that the yard is NOT a substitution for human contact time. A lot of dogs actually find it stressful to be alone in a yard all day, and they bark hysterically at everyone who walks by, because they are on Stressful Alert all day long, thinking they are on duty protecting the house. Don’t get a dog if your plan is to just let it sit in the yard alone for 9 hours a day. The MAIN THING is human contact.

Okay. So lets assume you’ve got all that covered–your cool roommates are like “yeah groovy man, we’ll hang out with the dog while you’re gone, no sweat.” Your partner’s able to commit to biking over REGULARLY and hanging out with the dog. You plan on getting a bit of an older dog so housetraining will be less long-term. Great! This is probably going to work out just fine, congratulations! But now you are wondering about the other stuff, the lifestyle stuff, how it changes your day-to-day to have a dog. Again, I commend you for being so responsible. So many people don’t think about this stuff and just get a puppy and then are confused when it’s a living creature with needs. You are already ahead of the game!

So yes. Getting a dog does change your life, especially at first, unless you just don’t care that much about your dog’s feelings, in which case why did you even get a dog?? So yeah, for like 5 months it was like, oh my god, what have I done. I’m never going to leave the house again. The dog screamed and screamed if you left him alone for even 3 minutes. He threw himself around and bit the furniture. He ate a library book. He got in this weird habit of waking us up at 6 a.m. etc. etc. He was afraid of fire hydrants. For awhile he had horrible diarrhea and we could not figure out what was going on, and we spent weeks just fucking around with his diet and talking about it incessantly, and finally found this really expensive fancy food that made him stop shitting. Then you have to switch the food slowly over the course of a week. Etc. Maybe the dog you get will be really easy but you should be prepared for stuff like this! He doesn’t just fit immediately/seamlessly into your life. You will do a lot of insane Googling and then you will regret it because the internet will tell you your dog has canine AIDS or whatever.

But after awhile, you start communicating, you start learning his cues and he starts figuring out what his place is in your life. That’s all he wants, really–he wants to know what his place is, what his duties are. Once he’s confident about that, he will probably calm down. Now we leave him alone for 4-6 hours (NOT every day, but just like if we are going out or something) and he’s fine, but it took a long time to earn that trust and get comfortable talking to each other. Like, at first, you don’t even understand when he’s telling you he has to pee. He doesn’t know what any of your words mean. He has no idea what he’s supposed to be doing. It’s not obvious, to him, what’s “outside” and what’s “inside,” and which one of those places is appropriate for pooping, or, once he does figure this out, it takes him awhile to figure out where “outside” even IS, and how you get to it. His brain doesn’t work like yours! You have to teach him, and to teach him you have to know how his brain works, and you have to read a book about it and actually spend enormous amounts of time just hanging out with him and watching him and catching him in the act (peeing, chewing, whatever) and trying to explain to him non-verbally, etc. etc. and it’s intimidating. But after awhile you get used to each other. He learns so many of your words, without you even trying! If you say “lets go” to your partner, the dog will leap up and go to the door and you have to be like “I wasn’t talking to you, dumbass!” Our dog rings a bell when he has to pee, but these days I don’t even need the bell, I can just tell by the weird way he stands by the door staring at me. Also I just know his schedule and I don’t even think about it anymore. At first though the schedule is stressful. “Does he have to poop? Is he about to poop right now?” “I don’t know, I don’t know!!!” But after some months pass you get used to his poop vibe and it’s not scary any more. Now I literally never, NEVER, worry that he’s going to poop in the house. But at first, this will be an all-consuming worry for you and you will feel like you are going crazy.

So you get used to each other, and it gets easier, and you have more faith in one another. He has faith that you WILL come back, every time you leave. You have faith that he PROBABLY WILL NOT take a dump in your bathtub even though he did that one time. Every once in awhile you’ll come home to find he has inexplicably eaten one of your shoes. That’s life with a dog! You’ll start worrying about things you never even thought about before. House fires. What if you die in a car crash and nobody goes to get him out of your house and he starves to death! What’s this weird bump on his foot? And at first it is really scary to leave him alone while you go to a show, and you’ll be worried the whole time you’re out. BUT, this gradually gets better as you get to know him better and vice versa.

You definitely can still go out to punk shows, it’s just that you have to be aware of getting back by a certain time. If this is a sacrifice you feel is too great to make then you shouldn’t get a dog. For me it is mellow because I actually like leaving things early and going to sleep. But yeah, you absolutely will not be able to have the exact same lifestyle–however, your lifestyle doesn’t have to become COMPLETELY lame and different, either. Obviously you want something to be different or you wouldn’t be wanting a dog! Think about why you want one and what you imagine it will bring to your life, then ponder whether having to be home by roughly a certain time every day/spending a certain amount of time with the dog every day is a sacrifice worth making.

Also: MONEY. Especially at first, you will be spending a lot of money. His food should be decent food, not Purina or whatever other cheapo mass market stuff which is basically just chopped up euthanized dogs and cardboard or something. You need things for him to chew and play with, and a place for him to sleep, which you can make yourself out of pillows but still. And then there’s the vet. The vet is expensive and at first you’ll feel like you’re going all the time, because if he’s below a certain age he’ll have all these weird rounds of shots he needs. And then there’s the monthly heartworm pill and the monthly flea medicine pill and yadda yadda, it definitely rachets up, the price. It’s not like having a cat. I’ve had both and I know. But then after awhile it calms down and you have all the stuff you need and he’s done with his shots and then he becomes cheaper. But you still are dropping big chunks of cash on things like boarding him when you go home for christmas. It’s like $30 a day! Maybe eventually you’ll be lucky and he’ll be the kind of dog who you can just have somebody come feed twice a day while you’re gone but let me tell you this is not something you can count on for sure, that he’ll be that kind of dog.

Lifestyle. So yes, it definitely changes. I think there’s a reason there is this cliché/joke about how couples get dogs as practice for a baby. It’s obviously not the same as a baby, but a lot of it is definitely similar. You do have to think about something aside from yourself, and you have to do it every day, no matter what. You can’t just bop out the door and go do whatever for 12 hours, going wherever the wind shall take you, from party to club to waking up on the floor of somebody’s house at 4 in the morning. You can’t just hop in the car and go on a trip. You can’t go on a trip, period, without kind of a lot of wrangling and money (boarding him at the doggie daycare place). Or, you’re out with your friends and you’ve been hanging out for 7 hours and you’re having the best time but you have to suddenly be like “oh crap” and bail, and go home, because your dude needs to pee. And it’s not just that you don’t want him to pee on the rug, it’s even more about building that trust–he NEEDS TO KNOW that you will not let him pee on the rug. He doesn’t WANT to pee on the rug! He’s holding it so hard for you, trying so hard not to pee. Don’t bail on that little dude’s trust, on his effort to be a good dog for you! This responsibility feels pretty important to me, I know for other people they don’t care that much if the dog pees in the house, but I think it’s bad for the dog. He’s at home in the dark house, waiting, waiting, waiting for you. Emo! So it’s worth taking seriously, as far as I’m concerned.

You can’t take him to shows, because his ears are a million times more sensitive than yours and it’s abusive. He might be carsick, like our dog barfs on even short trips, and it’s a pain, it’s not at all what you imagined when you thought of yourself and your new buddy driving around together. He might be psychotically afraid of thunder and fireworks–this is very common, though thank God our dog is not afflicted with it–and you’ll have to rush home if there’s a thunderstorm or he will bash his head against the wall or destroy your couch. A ton of weird stuff might be not how you imagined it, and you have to be prepared to roll with those punches. You have to read books about dog training, you have to understand WHY he does all the weird obnoxious shit he does, and then experiment with ways of getting him to stop. Some stuff you will just have to accept, like your house is just going to be dirtier than you’d like, all the time, and maybe he’s just going to bark every time somebody knocks at the door, and there’s nothing you can do to get him to stop.

HOWEVER: Bonding with an animal is amazing, I think about it every day. How is it that I am actually communicating, on kind of a subtle level, with this creature I am nothing alike? It’s magical and strange. He knows when you’re singing a song about him and when you’re just singing a regular song. When you’re singing about him he gets up off the couch and comes over to say hi. He knows when you’re “being silly.” Like he can read human body language, not just dog body language, and he can tell when you’re “playing,” and he starts playing too. It’s so awesome. He nips your feet when he’s excited but it’s amazing also that you can tell he knows how fragile your foot is compared to some other dog’s face or whatever, or a sheep’s hoof, and he’s like barely biting you at all, he’s being so careful of your little human foot, even as he’s excitedly nipping at it.

And he is all splayed out on the couch, with his chin on my shoulder, sound asleep, breathing into my ear while I read a book. There is nothing more cozy and companionable than hanging out with a dog sleeping all curled up next to or on you. I am so much less scared when I’m alone at night in the house. I know he will bark if someone comes in. He is taking care of me, as I am taking care of him. You are companions! It’s fucking awesome!

He gets you out of the house when you are being lazy. You have to walk him at certain times or he will go fucking apeshit! So you have to struggle up out of whatever lazy k-hole you’re in, and put on your shoes, and get the leash and the poop bag and go outside. What a fun jog buddy! He’s so stoked to be jogging! It makes you rethink jogging. Hey maybe this IS kind of fun!

Every time you come home, you are greeted by a wriggling creature who is BEYOND EXCITED TO SEE YOU. He can’t fucking believe how awesome it is that you are home!!! He leaps and spins and does his weird dance and goes and gets all his toys and shows them to you, so you know he was working while you were gone. No matter how bad your day was, this absolutely can not fail to cheer you up. I love coming home from a long day at work and taking him immediately for a walk, even though on my work days this is more my old man’s job. I shed the stresses of the day and just enjoy being alive, toodling around with my little homie who’s excited to see a bird. You have someone to talk to when you’re alone at night. He watches movies with you and perks up his ears whenever a dog barks onscreen. You get to take him to the dog park and watch him wrassle around with other dogs, and you are filled with pride because he genuinely is the handsomest, most wonderful dog there, and you’re so lucky that he’s yours.

So those are all my thoughts on the good and the bad of dog ownership. I know that people with 9-5 jobs get dogs all the time, and it works out just fine, so I think with thoughtfulness and good planning you can totally do it. If you read all the stuff about the lifestyle and responsibility and thought “that doesn’t seem so bad,” then I say GO FORTH YOUNG PERSON, TO THE HUMANE SOCIETY. But if you read it and thought “ugh, that sounds horrible,” then maybe wait?

But, much like a baby, I think it is very rare that you do feel “ready.” We talked about getting a dog for years and then one day it felt like we were just suddenly at the pound, looking at dogs. I can’t remember what made us suddenly go, but it was very abrupt. Eventually you get the dog, and the thing is that you BECOME ready, as you’re living with him. You figure out how to fit him into your lifestyle, and after awhile it seems really fluid and easy and normal, and you can’t even remember why you thought it was so scary to get a dog, and you can’t even imagine how you went so long without one. He has made my life SO MUCH BETTER. And again I sound like a parent, right? “Yes it’s horrible and awful and you don’t sleep and you have no time to yourself and your body is ruined, ruined! But it’s amaaaaaazing, I’ve never felt a love like this, etc.” Well it’s true for parents and it’s definitely true for getting a dog! At least in my experience. When I think of my life without him it makes me feel hollow and deeply emo. It’s totally worth it. Before we got him we were like “but what if we want to go live in Paris for a month? We won’t be able to!” But now that we have him it is like “Aw who cares about Paris.” Maybe that is terrible, I don’t know.

I’m interested in other takes on this issue. Readers? Any other advice? Especially I’d love to hear from people with 9-5 jobs who made a dog work in their lives.

Also oh man, you definitely need to think about WHICH DOG. Like, an Australian shepherd is WAY too smart and WAY too full of energy to sit in an empty house for 9 hours every day. You will end up with a fucking insane nightmare problem dog. You should learn a bit about breeds and their varying exercise needs, but this is only a small task, because if you get a mutt you won’t really know which breed characteristics will be dominant. SO, you should also really closely question the people at the pound. When we went to get our dog we were like “we want your laziest dog” and they said “here you go,” and it was the snoopy, and he’s been perfect, he sleeps all day long and all night, I don’t know how a creature can sleep so much. Really talk to them about your lifestyle, and be honest about how the dog is going to be alone a lot. They’ll be able to direct you to the dogs that they think will do better in those circumstances–listen to them! Even if it’s maybe not the dog you pictured. If they are really trying to talk you out of the beautiful dog you feel a connection with, because “that guy needs a lot of attention,” LISTEN to them. They know the dogs better than you do!! Like, I wouldn’t have thought a six month old male puppy would be the laziest dog at the pound, but they knew he was. And he was! God, he’s so lazy, what a bum.

If you actually get a dog I can give you lots of quick tips that ended up working well for us. Like tricking him with peanut butter when you leave the house. Or like, he may be lactose intolerant, BEWARE. Or like if you end up with a super anxious dog, you should try a Thundershirt. they’re $30 and some people swear by them. Or like crating–what is it, and should you do it, and if so, how?? Seriously read that book I told you about–you’ll know so much more after you read it. If you get a dog, please feel free to write again for more specific advice! For months after we got our guy, I was constantly asking people for help, it’s totally normal.

Good luck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello!

In looking at the last piece of advice I posted it occurs to me that perhaps it is not always useful to be extremely long-winded–something I have obviously struggled with my whole life. Thus, I would like to suggest that future advice-seekers feel free to specify if they would like a long rambling discourse in response or if they would like their advice short and literal. I think each type has its place but you should get to choose.

Great!

Hello Ms. Regarding,

Cheers,
Pissed in Portland

(Edit: The “advice” I wrote to this person is super long and pretty unhelpful, because to me this issue seems sort of unresolvable and is really more about, like, “how come the world is so disappointing.” So I wrote this huge thing about narcisissm and Baby Boomers and Facebook and genocide and baby diapers and capitalism that was not necessarily the best advice and should perhaps have been confined to more of a personal blog or perhaps even the privacy of my own thoughts. However, having read it, Pissed in Portland emailed and said they think the advice I gave, distilled, might be something like “Have some compassion, or don’t, and vote with your time and attention,” which means basically “don’t hang out with people who bum you out, because we’re all gonna die really soon and so what’s the point.” I totally stand by this, so lets just say that is my advice. But here’s the rant anyway, if you care to read

Lets talk about culture. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about generational differences in culture. I think it’s pretty fascinating. Everyone heaps scorn on the Baby Boomers, for example. Lets examine the Boomers. They ended a war, just by bitching about it! That is pretty tough stuff. But then it seems like that one pivotal generational experience has served as an excuse for four decades of smuggery and self-satisfaction that lots of people find insufferable, like, PLEASE, not another documentary about Woodstock, I can’t fucking take it. Also, due solely to the fact that they lived at a different time, everything was easy for them, relatively speaking. You just got married and bought a house, which cost no more than one year of your salary, and then you had babies, which you didn’t really have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to do, and you sent them to state university for like 20 bucks, it’s so easy, why doesn’t everyone just do that, just follow that great life plan? You know how your parents are always telling you about “networking,” or like sending you some weird clipping about some old man who went to your college and owns a successful business and you should go meet him for coffee, and you’re like, what? Why would I do that? And you think it’s because your parents are crazy, but actually I’m realizing it’s because when they were your age, that is actually how you made shit happen in your life, which is bizarre to think about. You just met some old man for coffee and he was like “kid, you’ve got the goods” and he gave you a job and the next thing you knew you were a millionaire. I don’t know if it’s about more people being in the world or about the constellation of possible careers shrinking due to computers or what, but we just don’t live in that time period anymore, and thus when Boomers talk about how people should be living their lives, it’s infuriating. Yeah, I make $12,000 a year and I don’t have health insurance, hmmmm, I wonder why I haven’t “started a family” yet. Yeah that’s a tough one. IF YOU ARE AN IDIOT.

So, that’s the Boomers. People roughly our age (I don’t know how old you are but I assume you are aged 25-40 because you are aware of this blog) were thus raised by self-satisfied people who believed it was very very easy for “one man to change the world.” They ascribed to parenting techniques that involved praise and freedom rather than harsh discipline. They’d been raised by our mean scary Depression-era grandparents, so these new looser ideals of child-rearing perhaps make sense, but they led us, their children, into a deep, black well of narcissism from whose bourne no traveler returns. We believe we are the center of the world. We believe everything we do is amazing. We have no discipline. We complain if we have to do the tiniest fucking amount of work. We sincerely believe we are owed money and success, just by existing. I’m generalizing, here, of course–lots of Boomers were shitty and abusive or stern and disciplined, obviously, and lots of people our age are not narcissistic at all, etc. etc., talking about culture always involves crazy generalization–and also even seemingly minor age differences seem to make a huge difference in this realm: for example, if you were born before 1980 you probably still got spankings and didn’t wear bike helmets, whereas starting at birth-year 1980 all of a sudden everybody’s decked out in kneepads and helmets and there are no more spankings and your dad no longer drives around with you sitting on the roof of the car yelling while he drinks beers and throws the cans out the window. That last bit may be fairly unique to my own childhood but I am led to believe it is not.

Anyway, regardless of the level of bike helmetry going on, very generally I think the demographic currently in question–youngish privileged people on Facebook–people raised by more-or-less functional, non-abusive Baby Boomers–tend to be sort of narcissistic, and like we don’t want to do any work but we also want to be really successful. And this plus some issues I’ll get to in a second have created a lack of the sense of civic responsibility that really defined a lot of the preceding generations of Americans, i.e. in World War II or whatever. Everyone pulling together. This is the kind of sense the “We are the 99%” rhetoric is trying to re-activate. Togetherness, not narcissistic solitude. In recognizing how many of us there are, vs. “Them,” we could actually become a powerful force. But two things kind of contribute to us having a hard time realizing this.

1. The shitty new world: As previously discussed, the Boomers did not live in a shitty world, regardless of what they tell you. They lived in a world of possibilities and hope; a world of endless jobs and a seemingly limitless possibility for ascension and money-making. I’m talking about white people, here, and mostly just men, but even within the realm of racial and gender issues, these people lived during the fucking Civil Rights movement, they lived during the real rip-roaring bra-burning Supreme-Court-porn-trials era of second-wave feminism. Can you imagine how powerful, how stirring, how filling-you-with-hopefullness-for-humanity that shit must have been? The March on Washington? the I Have a Dream speech? People of all genders and colors were rising up, together, singing with one voice, demanding social change, and largely getting it, or anyway that’s what the history books tell us. Powerful stuff. Or at least this is probably how you felt, if you were there amongst it all.

And then the Boomers went on to use that cultural moment as a marketing tool, basically. Corporations started advertising to our demographic using the rhetoric of the sixties. Freedom. Individuality. Self-expression. Be a rebel. We’ve grown up expressing our uniqueness by purchasing the appropriate products from various mega-corporations that tell us which kind of uniqueness their products telegraph. And then we got the cynical re-appropriation even of the backlash against that cynical marketing, like now it’s okay to hyper-sexualize women in clothing ads because the copy writing on the ad is about “choice.” Or like all these jackass millionaires congratulating each other on their “Rosa Parks moments,” which are, like, somebody advocating for rich people starting their own charter schools. Rosa Parks would indeed be proud! That lady fucking HATED the free public school system America was once famed for far and wide! (JOKE)

So anyway here we are now in our new world. Which, in my long-winded way, I am going to sort of accuse of being at least partially responsible for our whiny Facebook narcissism. Because, like, why bother “working hard and doing a good job?” We’ve realized it’s all bullshit, but we still lack the means of creating fundamental change. So we’re mired in this horrible quagmire of realizing “hard work at some random job” is fucking pointless while still lacking the means of really accomplishing any other way of surviving. We have to be self-involved because our sense of global community and pulling together is basically gone–we have to make our own individual worlds. Because our shitty new world is a harsh place, and it’s harder to put your finger on its harshness than it is in, say, some grim poverty stricken famine-ridden land crippled by U.S. sanctions where babies are starving in the streets. It’s easy to say “hey that baby is starving in the street. That is terrible.” It’s harder to say “I don’t like the way jeans are being marketed to me,” even though the jeans-marketing angst actually isn’t frivolous, it actually does point to some super deep, gnarly, destructive shit about our world. It’s Huxley stuff vs., like, Upton Sinclair stuff I guess. Or, it’s those two kinds of stuff combined. Our new world, over here in wealthy America, is shitty in a whole different way. Yes, certain social battles have progressed nicely since those days, particularly in the realms of racial and gender inequality as well as things like LGBT rights and such. To think that when the Boomers were young INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE WAS ILLEGAL and now there are lots of states where two dudes can get married–that’s awesome. Women are CEOs now–not many of them, but some–and viable presidential candidates and soldiers and whatever else they want to be, except hardly ever serial killers, apparently. We have a goddamn black president who is literally named Barack Hussein Obama. How awesome is that?

But then a cynical person might be like hey, women getting to have careers seems to have culminated in this shitty new world where everyone HAS to work–where single-income families are a thing of the past, where we’ve actually just agreed to hook ourselves up to this increasingly gruesome relentless capitalist machine that will NEVER STOP WANTING MORE FROM US WHILE GIVING US LESS IN RETURN, because that is the definition of capitalism, and where, like, one parent has to devote 90% of their salary just to paying for day care or whatever, and yet we’re still expected to poop out 2.5 babies even though it’s increasingly becoming this grueling slog just to get through a fucking day, and we’re filling our entire planet up with shit-filled baby diapers that will be there for 1,000 years, and like, FOR WHAT. And oh, yippee, gay people getting married and just ascribing to basically middle class heteronormative values. And hooray, now women and gay people can join the army and murder civilians in other countries so that Mitt Romney can make another cool billion in his stock portfolio or whatever you call it. like how lovely that all our exciting alternative lifestyles are actually just being co-opted by the über mainstream–like everyone just wants to be a married middle class office worker with 2.5 kids and a huge polluting ecosystem-destroying lawn they mow on Sunday, and that’s equality, that’s utopia? And then you become exhausted and disheartened, like is there nothing a person can believe in anymore? Is there no cause we can espouse without it having a dark flip side? Must we all go live on lesbian separatist land? But I like taking showers and going to the movies, not to mention doing it with dudes!!! IS NOWHERE SAFE FOR ME.

So now everyone has to work, all the time and more and more, and we’re all making like half as much money, comparatively, as our parents were making at our age doing the equivalent jobs, and none of us can buy homes, and we’re all crushed by student loan debt, which our parents also didn’t have, and the gap between the rich and poor is widening and widening and 99% of our taxes go to support that same army that all the gay people just joined, and when we’re old there’s not even gonna be social security anymore, AND we’re gonna have our ancient Alzheimers-ridden parents on our hands, still, because of medical science making everybody live forever, and our kids are gonna be living with us too because there aren’t gonna be any jobs, and Manhattan will be under water, and anyway what are we all gonna DO???? and meanwhile we’re all screaming at each other about abortion and Jesus, like AS IF.

So then you can understand why we are the way we are (hedgehog posts on Facebook). Things feel unlivable, even as on the surface (social issues) they seem to be getting better, and you’re accused of being a grouch if you point any of this out. So your world gets smaller and smaller, and you don’t believe you can make a difference, which makes you cynical and ironic about everything–or makes you hysterically focus on the surface-level good stuff happening in the social issues world, so you don’t have to look at the deeper income inequality/systemic racism/dying planet stuff that is literally unmanageable, both emotionally and in terms of you yourself being able to do anything about it–and you just sort of hang out and limit your world to your friends and, like, your band’s new album, or a funny cat video, because you don’t have control over anything else, and you don’t honestly feel like you have that many options (while simultaneously you feel guilty because you know you’ve been given all the best things in life, you have every possible option, so what kind of loser are you that you aren’t happier, as it seems like you’re supposed to be, surely, compared to everyone else in the world who’s starving to death or being genocided?), whereas in the previous generation it seemed like a basically competent person of our rough demographic couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a lucrative career and a gorgeous 4 bedroom Victorian on a nice street for like twenty thousand fucking dollars. We don’t live in that world anymore. So now we’re stuck with the limitless narcissistic self-love of the Boomers but without their capacity for realizing that self-love. Which makes our love turn to hate and self-destruction, OR twee avoidance tactics.

2. The internet: Now we are finally getting to your question. So at the same time as your worldview is getting ever-smaller and more cynical, your world in terms of circles of acquaintance and access to information has gotten much bigger. Like, so much bigger it’s hard to even imagine/remember how small everything felt before. Now you have daily contact with so many people you don’t even remember–who are they, and why are you facebook friends? No one knows. And everyone feels this simultaneous biggening and smallening of the world of possibilities–limitless on the one hand and incredibly circumscribed and oppressive on the other. AND ALSO, here we all are, having spent our whole lives being told how great we are, how anything is possible, all we have to do is believe in ourselves and our dreams will come true, which is what our Boomer parents told us, because it’s how it happened for them. And so we’re all like “everything I feel and think is worthy of notice.” Hence the completely insufferable “Memoir boom.” Hence reality television. Hence Facebook. Hence blogs like this one. Every idiot in the world now has a venue to say whatever stupid shit is on their mind. Look at me, giving advice! Who the fuck am I? We also think that “being happy” is our singular life goal. Not working for social change. Not doing difficult shit. Not being heroic. Not thinking for two fucking seconds about the food we stuff into our faces. BEING HAPPY. And what does that mean, to be happy? No one could really be happy in this world. So we fail at that too. Then we feel sorry for ourselves for failing at it, because we were raised to believe that “being happy” was all that mattered.

So on the one hand, you’re right. All this stupid bullshit when all around us the world is falling apart, everyone in Africa is dying of AIDS, there are fucking unmanned drones murdering hordes of civilians (but being controlled by a possibly openly gay person or a lady, which makes it progressive or something), the polar ice caps are melting, it’s awful. But, much like the hysterical moms in the park who freak out if your dog is off leash, I think a lot of people, feeling utterly, utterly powerless in the bigger picture (capitalism, global warming, robots spying on you from the sky) turn their crazy controlling energy to things that feel more manageable (leash laws, funny cat videos). Wanting to feel like things are okay; they have control; if there is a funny cat video or if a dog is put back on a leash maybe that balances out some genocide being committed somewhere that they can’t do anything about (it doesn’t). So we create our own little world of friends and message boards and blog posts about how shitty the world is, which ironically just helps isolate us ever-further from the 99% out there with whom we actually have a lot of common cause. Thanks to the internet we see the immensity of The World and it crushes us. Why go to an Occupy protest when you see the utterly unmanageable Whole Wide World of Horror that is going on everywhere all at once, and the enormity of it with regard to the incredible tiny insignificance of You? Just stay home and watch Mad Men.

Or, maybe this is too cynical and sad. If you get too cynical you come full circle and become one of these jackass hipster bacon enthusiasts, like caring about stuff is so emo and earnest and so 10 years ago, lets all just eat a pound of bacon and make jokes about it. And nobody wants to be that guy, in his little fedora. Deep inside that guy and his little fedora there is a deep well of shame. He has given up, or else he’s just stupid, neither of which are admirable qualities. We don’t want to give up. We want to live strongly and courageously. We love the Hunger Games because we recognize our current dystopia in it and we believe we’d be like Katniss and not like all those other assholes (in spite of the Macbooks which we buy in spite of the fact that we know everyone who makes them is so oppressed and disheartened that the factory has to have suicide nets all around it). We want to be brave and awesome, but we have no opportunities to do so, because our entire lives are lived on the internet or just, like, trying to explain to some uncle why you don’t just go work for Citibank for 30 years like he did. We’re all basically waiting to die of global warming, like what is even the point. We simultaneously strive for so much more and achieve so much less, and it is disheartening, and what do we turn to when we feel disheartened? Posts about hedgehog solidarity. I know I do. To be fair, hedgehogs are amazing. I personally have not found the walkable avenue between pointless lazy cynicism and unrealistic twee positivity. I think this is really our quest.

So anyway, here’s my advice: quit Facebook for six months and see how it feels. I recently quit for a full year and while I missed certain things, it actually felt like a huge relief. I am back on it now and already feel myself sliding into bad habits, even though I also think Facebook is really fun a lot of the time. Either quit for awhile and see how the world looks to you with a major social media outlet no longer available, or, intensely re-vamp your settings. Unfriend everyone who has consistently annoyed you. Actually work to create the Facebook that you want, if indeed you want it at all.

I’m not sure what the general cultural solution is. On the one hand I get disgusted with myself and my cohort, but on the other hand I feel deep empathy for us all, because we didn’t make this world but we all have to live in it. And the internet is amazing, even though it’s also disappointing and sometimes nefarious, and lots of people my age are doing amazing beautiful things, in spite of our narcissistic cynicsm. I’m a big fan of drastically re-thinking your ‘tude as a means to a better life. If you’re unhappy with your time management, drastically re-think it and then actually commit to your new vision. If you are dissatisifed by your relationship with the internet (or your relationships on the internet), change them. You don’t have to read all those Facebook posts! I have lots of friends who’ve NEVER been on Facebook in their lives. You don’t have to read the hedgehog posts, and if it bothers you I don’t think you should. Make that stand! That’s a stand you can actually make, and I think you should do it. Drastically re-envisioning your life on the internet might lead you to re-envision other aspects of your life; form new habits; form new ways of seeing the world. I’d say that would be a cool thing. Who knows what it might lead to?

Writing this made me feel really bad, about myself mostly, for this kind of meta-narcissistic rant that probably doesn’t do anybody any good, but in terms of advice it’s the best I’ve got. You shouldn’t hang out with people who make you feel bad, lets just go with that.

Or just take this terrible advice that is maybe the most depressing thing I have ever seen. It’s like, Mission Accomplished, America:

Dear Andrew,

-Just Another Procrastinator?

First of all, know that you are not alone. Far from it. Almost everyone wrestles with deadlines, writers especially. Ralph Ellison and Katherine Dunn come to mind as writers who missed deadlines by years and still made out all right. So you’re in good company.

You’re also well aware of the problem and doing everything a cursory Internet search of how to avoid missing deadlines suggests. Dedicated work space, check. Internet blocking software, check. Setting goals, check. And meeting regularly with a study buddy to keep you accountable, check.

Which makes giving advice a little harder.

My instinct is: this is a tough-love situation. You need greater consequences for missing deadlines.

But the missed journal deadline complicates that theory. I’m assuming that was a potentially career affecting opportunity. Getting published would have helped your career, not getting published won’t. So consequences have been felt. Which brings us to now.

As far as the journal goes, you say you knew the turnaround was unreasonable, but you took it anyway. So moving forward, you need to be honest with your potential employers, publishers, editors, and most of all yourself about what you can do in a given amount of time. I suspect you’ve already planned to do so.

That said, I don’t think this is a non-starter for academic success. You say turning out quality work at the drop of a hat is integral to success in academics, but I think that’s partly your frustration talking. My professor friends have weeks, if not months, to write articles and make changes based on peer reviews, and years to write books. I understand expediency is a virtue, and the more you publish the less you perish, but this journal’s tight deadline sounds more like the exception than the rule.

So yes, there is hope for you. Plenty of it.

Nevertheless, less burn some sage. Finish the article. And send it to the editor with a note of apology and explanation. Doesn’t matter if it’s next week, next month or next year. Don’t do it with the expectation of getting it published in a later issue, although if it’s great, who knows. Do it because by finishing the piece you get to have the last say, not the deadline. And if this editor and journal might play a role in the rest of your career, it’s better to be known as someone who finishes, however late, than never finishes at all.

Moving forward, it would also behoove you to work on articles on your own, at your own pace. Pitch pieces after you’ve finished them, or at the least at a very solid rough draft status. You’ll meet deadlines, and maybe even turn in articles early. If a journal, magazine or website wants to see a proposal first, fair enough. They don’t have to know you already have the piece done. Worst-case scenario they accept your proposal but want you to take a different tack… and you still have a great finished draft to work off of.

Now let’s talk about your dissertation.

You’re getting tangled in the weeds. You set out with a single, simple mission and end up doing major rewrites. The reality is you’re putting the cart before the horse. If you’re still working through the major arguments of a chapter, it’s way too early to be line editing. If you change your argument, you’ll have to re-write the whole damn thing anyway, right? Never mind the fact that fabulous writing won’t save a lousy argument. You’re wasting your time by doing things in the wrong order.

What’s worse, you know you’re doing this, but you can’t stop yourself.

Again, know that you’re not alone. We all have our own idiosyncrasies and strange writing rituals, most of which slow us down rather than speed us up. My personal pitfall for a very long time was having to fix every single problem identified by Microsoft Word spell check. And I’m not a very good speller, so my screen gets filled up with little red dots underlining words an awful lot. Not to mention how often I use proper names or purposely write an incomplete sentence. I work in advertising after all, it doesn’t always have to be perfect English.

So right there in the middle of a great thought or idea, attacking the keys, I would stop short and correct the little mistake. Or correct Word that the mistake was in fact not a mistake. And then I would try to get back on the roll and remember where I was going with my thoughts. It wasted time and my writing suffered.

For a long time I fought this by getting really fast at making those red dotted lines disappear. It made the interruptions shorter, but they still came with the same regularity. Finally, I got very hard on myself. I began to admonish myself for stopping mid-stream to correct tiny errors that I could fix later during rewrites. I got mad at myself. I told myself I was an idiot. I got to the point where I was able to shame myself into continuing without fixing the misspelling because, I told myself, I was cheating myself out of a great sentence or thought if I stopped. Eventually it worked.

Doesn’t sound like telling yourself you’re an idiot is going to work for you. So I propose a system of rewards and punishments. For instance you get to screw around on the social network of your choice for half an hour if you complete your task on time and in order. But you have to unsubscribe from 3 friends if you don’t. Perhaps a bad example, but you get the picture.

Find something you care about and tie it to your writing. And stick with it. I wouldn’t recommend this for everyone, but given your commitment to color-coded calendars, I’m confident you can create and follow through on a system of rewards and punishments like that.

Hopefully this at least gets you taking care of the trees. Now for the forest. The dissertation deadline itself.

Since there’s no real deadline you need to come up with one on your own. Come up with a date. But think it through. Don’t give yourself until when you think you should be done. Give yourself until when you know you can get it done, and take into consideration the fact that you have a life outside of writing this dissertation.

I know there are a lot of jokes about 8-year grad students. A good friend of mine was one. He endured the jokes. Today he’s happily employed as a professor, and publishing like a madman.

So again, this is your deadline. Use your study buddy, mentors, friends, fellow grad students and professors you’re working with to help figure out the date. Use your parents. But come up with a deadline you can meet.

Now, how to meet it.

I’m tempted to say the same punishment-reward system might work, albeit a radical version. Say giving a trusted friend or relative 5 grand. If you meet your deadline, you get it back and buy something you’ve always wanted. (For me this would be a hot tub, and yes, I choose 5 grand because I’ve been led to believe 5 grand is about what it would take to get into a decent hot tub, installation and electric included). But if you miss your deadline, your trusted friend or relative donates the money to a non-profit. Maybe even one you really disagree with if you need the extra incentive of funding a group doing work you’re opposed to.

Or you choose a place you’ve always wanted to visit. As soon as you finish your dissertation you get to go there. But you can’t set foot there until you do. You get the idea. Choose something big, something scary, something life-changing.

Does that sound like it might work? If you got excited reading it, great. Try it.

If not, perhaps some other readers out there have some ideas. Anyone?

But if my idea, or any others that might fill the comment section, don’t resonate, let’s acknowledge this is an online advice column without a back and forth, back and forth and dedicated follow up, follow up. And follow up is probably what you need. More and better accountability.

Your study buddy is not enough. You should consider enlisting some paid professional help. Someone who specializes in helping their clients meet deadlines. I know there are life coaches that specialize in that, I suspect therapists as well. Either way, someone who has helped clients who are deadline-averse meet deadlines is not only going to have really good ideas, tailored to your personality and working style. They’ll also stick with you and make sure you finish.

Is it going to cost money? Hell yes it will. And it will be worth it. Because not only is getting this done on time worth paying for, actually paying someone to help you meet your deadline will make you more likely to meet your deadline. It sounds counter-intuitive, you’re paying them after all. But once you form a relationship with this person based on finishing your dissertation on time you won’t want to let them down. You might even feel worse disappointing them by not finishing than you feel letting yourself down. After all, if their business is helping people with deadlines, and you don’t finish on time (despite working with this person for months or even years), you end up hurting their business.

So, give it a think. Feel free to follow up with questions, thoughts, arguments, or counter ideas. Or just take some of these and run. But do let me know what you decide to do.

The first follow ups are IN! Letter-Writer (from here on out, “LW”) “Ugh’d Out” posted a comment on “Honeymoon Nightmare” stating full satisfaction with the advice given and the outcome of all the advice on her entire life. Also, her comment is awesome and inspiring and you should read it, especially if you were sexually assaulted on YOUR honeymoon!

Send in your question today! And your follow-ups! Even if my advice sucked and led you to a worse place in your life; we are all about honesty here. I will tell you that in college a friend of mine described a weird situation with his girlfriend and asked for advice, and I gave him very specific strongly-worded advice, and he went and followed my advice, which caused the girl to break up with him and he was devastated and I was mortified.

That is my official “grain of salt” warning. However, I believe most of the time my advice is either helpful or neutral.

Two in one day! Business is booming!

Dear Yours Truly,

Thanks for your advice.

Wow. This is a gnarly situation and I can well understand your feelings of grossness. It is personally awkward and politically awkward and just YUCK. Your poor friend! Holding the job and then not getting it: ugh. On the other hand, this is a brutal world and you have to make a living too. We are going to be friends with other people in our field, you know, and thus this will be an issue for us, always. You either cultivate hateful, alienated relationships with everyone in your field, or you get used to making classy phone calls in situations like this.

But first of all, congratulations! This is a big deal and is great. I am so happy for you! This is a tough field and you nailed an audition. Even if some small part of getting the job is based on male privilege–which sucks and is wrong (but also may not be the case, in this case)–it can’t be all of it. You nailed it, you’ve got the goods, and that is very validating! Even male people deserve to get jobs they are qualified for! Ha ha

Second of all, I commend you for even being aware of all this and feeling gross about it. Many many dudes would be absolutely blind to all these issues and would just be like “I’m obviously great, of course I won.” Whether your sensitivity to stuff like this comes from being socialized as a woman or whether you are just a nice thoughtful person (or both), I just want to say thank you for not being a huge dick about denying the complex web of privilege we all live within.

So, on to your problem, which is kind of a sensitive etiquette issue. I definitely think you should talk to your friend about some of these feelings, but not all of them. My tactic with stuff like this (weird apologies; stuff I feel guilty about) is just to try to be super honest and raw. Sometimes the person appreciates it and sometimes they don’t and are creeped out, but if you DON’T get it out there they might be just as creeped out by your silence, so err on the side of greater openness. Just call her up. I mean, it doesn’t have to be a HUGE DEAL, like you are informing her she has cancer or that you secretly had her baby 14 years ago and here is her son and she needs to take him and raise him now because you have to go to jail, or something. It’s tricky and sensitive but it’s not the world’s most appalling travesty. So you say, hey. Can we talk about this awkward situation? I’m glad I got the job but I also know that you also deserved it and would have been great for it. I think you’re brilliant and I like you a lot and I just don’t want this dumb thing to make things strained between us. I know it’s easy for me to say, since I’m the one who got the job, but I guess I’d hope you’d feel the same way if our roles were reversed, as they so easily could have been. I’d love to talk about it with you if you want, and if you don’t want to, then I just hope you know how much I value your friendship and how much I disliked directly competing against you.

It’s tricky because any number of those suggested talking points could come off as condescending, especially if she’s feeling super raw (“oh, it’s sad how I crushed you in that competition”), but on the other hand, I kind of just think you CAN’T just “not talk about it.” Right? That seems so artificial and weird. In these situations you have to be like “God, that was terrible, I’m so sorry, I think you are amazing and I’m sorry you didn’t get it / proud of you for getting it.” Much like the previous letter, not talking about it seems like it will just make it worse.

We must also accept that there are elements of randomness in the selection process that we have no control over. Like, if my amazing male friend gets a job I also applied to, there is a huge list of possible reasons he could have been chosen over me, and only one of them is his maleness, right? They could have liked his jokes better. They could have thought his work was a better fit for their department. They could have a better profile of him because he’s better at networking than I am. Maybe I flubbed my teaching demonstration! Maybe he nailed his! Maybe I had something stuck in my teeth the whole time. Maybe he’s black and I’m white and they wanted a person of color, so then the privilege dynamic is flipped! How can we know? Also the ex-boyfriend is a whole other can of worms that probably has nothing to do with you, with sexism, or anything else. I can’t imagine applying for a job that an ex boyfriend was judging me for. WTF!

So, while sexism is highly likely to have played a part, it’s not really something you can know for sure, or that you can do anything about. Are our nation’s men supposed to all quit their jobs in protest of women not being given those jobs? Are you supposed to cede your audition to her? “I just don’t think it’s right for me to compete against a woman. You should give her the job.” That would be crazy (and actually super offensive). I don’t know. I want my male friends to get jobs even though they are oppressing patriarchs, you know? Culture changes slowly, when people like you slowly replace the old dying sexist people of yore. I kind of think you shouldn’t bring this element up. If she brings it up (“I felt weird that they were all dudes”) you agree with her and discuss it and say you also felt weird about it, but why plant that seed, which can only make her feel worse/more furious/more helpless/who knows if it’s even true anyway. Also, like I said, the whole ex boyfriend thing is probably its own dynamic that she probably has tons of thoughts about.

So yeah, in short: Call her up and basically be like “I’m really sorry that was so awkward. I hated it and while I’m glad I got the job I also thought you deserved it too. I hope you don’t feel gross about me now, because I really think you are a genius and I value our friendship.” What else can you say? That is so real, I would be touched if someone said this to me, even if part of me was mad at them unreasonably for succeeding where I had failed. I would think, “he is pulling a classy move in an awkward situation and I respect that.”

I’m interested to see if any commenters disagree with this advice, because frankly it’s a tough one and I’m not sure I nailed it. This is just what I would do, and since I am often incredibly socially awkward I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily a selling point.

Obvious Don’ts:

– don’t offer her any advice whatsoever unless she specifically asks for some (“I’m happy to show you how to do a better job in the future” = not a good way to pitch this)
– don’t buy her flowers, it’s not a funeral or a date, she’s not in the hospital
– don’t be too abject–you earned the job and you don’t have anything to apologize for / be forgiven for. You’re just acknowledging that it sucks.
– don’t make it all about her–instead of saying “that must have been so awkward for you, that the whole committee was people you knew,” say, “wasn’t that awkward how we knew the whole committee???”
– don’t talk about how excited you are that you got the job, obviously
– don’t ask HER for advice about the job!!!!!! This has happened to people I know! No! You don’t say, oh, sorry, I took your job, now can you give me some tips on doing it? I know you would not do this, I’m just saying.

?? What do you guys think, anyone? What would Miss Manners say? I don’t think women even have jobs in Miss Manners’s world, though, so we’re on our own.

EXTRA ADVICE!!! Kind of prepare what you’ll say if her voicemail picks up instead of her human person!! Be prepared to concisely and elegantly explain why you’re calling.

Dear Yours Truly,

Ugh’d Out

Oh no!!!!! Man, there are few things I hate more than having awesome memories ruined by contemporaneous awful memories. And while this experience would be a bummer no matter when it happened, the fact that it closed out YOUR HONEYMOON seems brutal. It seems like there are two main issues here:

1. How to come to terms with your reaction/actions in the wake of this experience
2. How to develop fond memories of your honeymoon in spite of this other memory

These are obviously very related. Lets discuss and then talk about telling your husband or not.

First of all, I don’t think you should feel guilty. Not only is this like textbook victim self-blaming and we are never supposed to do it, but also, really, what could you do? The idea of trying to prosecute this guy at this point for creepy behavior just makes me feel so exhausted I need to go lie down with an ice pack. Even if he had raped you, I imagine it would be an extreme costly disaster to try to get anything done about it, especially from afar, in a different country, now that you are home, although obviously if he had raped you this advice would be different. But for “just” force-kissing you? I feel like nobody would take that case and you would just get more and more obsessed and frustrated and feel more and more helpless and ultimately these aren’t good goals. So lets be glad he did not rape you, and try to focus on the future.

Which leads me to a thought that might be controversial…he did not rape you. I’m not saying what he did was even vaguely acceptable. He’s obviously a creeper. He did assault you–grabbing and forcing your face onto someone else’s face counts as assault in my book–but I must point out that actually you DID do an awesome correct thing, which was you prevented anything worse from happening. You pushed him off of you and got into a safe space. At which point he left you alone. He creeped on you, you said “no,” the situation ended. This is pretty good, when it comes to sexual assault! You did a good job! You did everything you are supposed to do in that situation, and he reacted in best-case-scenario fashion, which was that he left you alone rather than stalking you or breaking down the door or something horrible. Also, while totally creepy, I don’t think this guy is NECESSARILY a psychotic serial rapist. He could be, but also he could just be a creeper, which is bad enough, and of which god knows there are millions in this shitty world. But my point is you don’t necessarily have to take upon yourself the burden of saving all the women of the world from rape nightmares at this man’s hands. That’s just not an ethical burden I feel it is justified for you to carry. We’ve all been creeped on at various times, and it’s not really reasonable to expect that every time it happens we should all embark on nightmare legal battles. This kind of guilt is just a new twist on the old “I asked for it” guilt. Now we know we didn’t ask for it, but we still make ourselves sick feeling like we didn’t do enough to hold the guy accountable. Isn’t that kind of the same thing? “It’s my fault if this guy is creeping on people.” But like, you just can’t hold everyone accountable for everything. You have to live your life. Remember that guy who stuck his hand in my crotch on the bus, and I didn’t do ANYTHING, and felt shitty about it for weeks? Also in high school on a camping trip I woke up and the random dude sleeping next to me had worked his hand down under my shirt and was feeling around in there, and I didn’t do anything but pretend to wake up. Yeah, sure, you SHOULD punch a guy in the nuts, but I just don’t feel like that’s a reasonable expectation to have of all women everywhere. If somebody was actually holding me down to rape or hurt me, yeah, I would punch him in the nuts, but barring that I’ll probably just be like “EWWW STOP” and run away and feel dirty, which sucks but that’s just my reality. I’m glad there are women in the world who would immediately go for the nuts, I love those women, but we can’t all be those women all the time. TOO BIG A BURDEN TO PUT ON YOURSELF. Also just by calling and telling the resort what happened you have “done something,” and a pretty major something that a lot of people wouldn’t have even done.

So. No guilt, no shame. You reacted exactly appropriately, you took care of yourself, you registered a complaint. Short of, like, shooting this guy with a gun, which would legitimately be overreacting, what else could you possibly do? STOP FEELING BAD. You didn’t do anything wrong; you did everything right.

“Coming to terms” is a really difficult life skill to cultivate. How do people do it? Think of all the things people have come to terms with throughout history. Seeing your entire family raped and murdered. Getting your face burned off in a fire. Running somebody over with your car. The Holocaust. Somehow people seem to have come to terms with all these things, in one way or another.

I kind of think the only way to come to terms with something (of this nature–I have no idea how you come to terms with murdering someone or your family dying on the Titanic or whatever) is to talk about it. You have to talk about it. Talk about it to all kinds of people. Tell all your friends. Be like “I feel so creeped out and bummed and dirty and mad and my honeymoon was RUINED.” Then your friends can be all “oh my god!” and “that sucks!” and “what an asshole!” which will make you feel validated and supported. But also as you talk about a thing like this, you are slowly diminishing its power over you. I really believe this. Holding things inside is like, you think you’re doing it because you want the thing to go away and you think letting it out into the open will make it more awfully present, but the opposite is true! Holding it inside allows you to develop obsessions and fantasies and crazy shame spirals about it. Letting it out into the light allows you to see it and name it and be realistic about it. It’s like popping a zit–you have to get that stuff out from inside you (note: doctors say you actually shouldn’t but we all know they are wrong) or it will just keep throbbing and getting more and more painful and obsessing you more and more until you don’t even want to leave the house.

HUSBAND. Well, what kind of a dude is your husband? I am struggling with this part of your question because I feel like a major way to break this experience’s dark power over you would be to discuss it with your husband, who was there, who shared in some way in the experience, and who also remembers how wonderful the rest of the honeymoon was and can help you remember this too. Like anything, I think the longer you wait to tell him the weirder/more emo it will be when you do tell him. If you plan on never telling him, that is one thing, but I don’t think waiting a year is a good idea. He’ll be like, “so for this entire year whenever I bring up our honeymoon and how great it was you’ve been thinking about being sexually assaulted while I was happily asleep in our room????” It will bum him out, as it should, and it will make him sad that for so long you have been holding something like this inside. He is your lawful husband and you must tell him everything! Just kidding, but seriously I can’t imagine not telling my husband about this. I certainly don’t ascribe to the “brutal honesty at all times” model of marriage but this does seem like something I’d want to talk to him about. NOT just for the sake of brutal honesty, though, is my point, but because talking to him about it actually seems like it would be helpful to you. Marriage isn’t about shielding the dude from your blobby feelings because they might make him feel shitty. It’s about facing shitty feelings together.

HOWEVER, you know him and I don’t. Is he a macho jealous type? Will he fly to the resort and try to sock this guy in the mouth? Well, that sounds kind of awesome to me, frankly, but I could see it being stressful. I don’t know. If your husband is a sensitive dude I just feel like he will hear you and be appalled, and he will help you decide how to come to terms, and then you can talk for hours about it and this will be a really great way to exorcise these demons. This is how I come to terms with everything I feel bad about–I make the old man listen and weigh-in, sometimes many many many times over the course of months or even years. Tell him everything you told me! Tell him that the memory is ruining your memory of the honeymoon and you don’t want that to happen. Tell him you need his help in transforming the memory into something manageable, like, this one bizarrely terrible thing that happened at the end of the honeymoon, can you believe that shit??? Instead of this dark looming secret obsessing you and ruining all your joy forevermore. Maybe eventually you can start making jokes about it. I know that seems dark, but really there is no better way to break something’s hold over you than to tell everybody about it and then make jokes about it. Yes I realize that now 2/3 of the advice letters I have written have included advice about making jokes about trauma. That’s just how I roll, not saying it will work for everyone!

As for whether you’re overreacting, I would maybe say both yes and no? On the one hand, you were assaulted, and creeped on, by someone who feels it is appropriate to just grab whatever random woman is near him and try to force himself physically on her, and that is wrong and horrible. But on the other hand, I mean, maybe it could make you feel better to try to get some shitty perspective, like how much worse it could have been, how well you performed under pressure, etc. It’s really giving that guy way too much power in your life, to let him ruin your honeymoon. RUIN YOUR HONEYMOON?? Fuck that guy! No way can he ruin your honeymoon, he’s just some stupid asshole you’d just as soon run over in the street as look at. You had an awesome honeymoon and you love your old man–what a blessed life! Don’t let this guy take that from you or taint it. He’s not worth it, it’s not worth it.

So to sum up:

1. Tell everybody about it
2. Don’t let this guy ruin your honeymoon, because he is a piece of shit and doesn’t deserve to play that big of a role in your life
3. Don’t forget the rest of the honeymoon! Once your husband knows about this bad part, it will probably be more rewarding to talk about the good parts with him. Keep talking about the good parts! Overlay your dark memory with good memories. Think of this experience like an allegory for life, which is a delight and a joy but which ends in suffering.

Very Specific Concluding Remarks Based on Personal Knowledge Of This Letter Writer: I was trying to find Gus’s great monologue he delivers to Lori after rescuing her from Blue Duck, because although I can’t remember any of it I assume it was very wise and helpful. Isn’t it about putting her life together and moving on, and how she’s young and strong, and she’s going to have a great life in spite of having been gang-raped for like 2 weeks straight out in the desert? And she finally cries and says “they shouldn’ta took me Gus” and he says “I know honey, but THEY DID.” Damn, that is heavy. Be your own personal Gus right now. Shit happens, you get shot in the leg with an Apache arrow, and like, what are you gonna do about it? Even if you end up dying, well, oh well.

In trying to find that monologue I found this, maybe it will cheer you up, maybe your husband could buy you that book after you tell him about all this:

http://www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu/research/a-z/lonesomedove.html

In conclusion, you are smart and brave and I think you can conquer this experience’s grim hold on your life and memories. Your honeymoon sounds amazing and I’m sorry this gross thing happened at the end of it, but you don’t have to let it ruin your memory of your honeymoon if you don’t want to. You can just say “that is a thing that happened and it sucked, and I handled it, and it’s over now,” and let it be what it is, and remember that you did take action and you did do all the right things, and you are not at fault, and you are just someone a shitty thing happened to, and that’s okay and it doesn’t have to become a Life-or-Marriage-Defining Experience for you.