Perhaps It’s All in How You Handle The Situation

The way I see it, there are two ways to handle your situation: put up and shut the hell up or find a new job. Seriously, you’ve been there for less time than I have; you see how the management treats the employees; you see how incoming employees treat the old timers like us. Nothing good can come out of this situation.

But yet you persist in staying in this job you hate. And more importantly, you continue to grip about the situation. Do you do anything about your current state of employment? What’s that? No? Why not? You’re well qualified to go do something else. What’s that you say? No one is hiring you?

Is it because of the large hanging dark cloud of gloom and doom over your head? No?

Then, my dear, I have run out of options for you.

Shut up or find a new job. Don’t come wailing to me because I was there. I know all about it. And no, you talking about it won’t lessen the situation.

Find a new job or just be quiet.

Unjustifiable Friendships

I’m so tired.

I’m so tired of having to listen to the same stories over and over again. I’m tired of hearing you bitch and moan about work. I’m tired of hearing you complain about your brother and your ex-husband. I’m tired of hearing – between the lines – of your crush on him…a married man, I might add.

I’m just…tired.

Look, I like you. If I didn’t, I would have ended the friendship a long time ago. But give me something in return. I am not your therapist. I cannot solve your problems. I am not your fairy godmother to wave her magic wand and have all your problems disappear.

I’m just not that damn good.

I know you don’t have that many friends. At least that many friends you can bitch to. But…why me? Why must I be your dumping ground of trouble? I know you once told me that once you say something it doesn’t have that much hold on you…but you know what? I think you lied.

You don’t like your job? I can understand that. But actively seek another job. I can’t hold your hand and lead you to a new job.

Don’t like your brother? Kick him out of the house.

Don’t like your ex-husband? Don’t let him control all the strings concerning your child.

What I’m saying is that I don’t feel like we’re equals in our friendship. I seem to have given you more than you have given me.

And that makes me very tired.

I’ve Never Felt This Way…

And it makes me sick.

I don’t think I’ve been completely well since I started here (nausea among the things that I can talk about without grossing people out). This is an incredible amount of pressure that I am under…whether it is real or imaginary, I don’t know. All I know is that I haven’t felt…sane since I started. I haven’t really told anyone about it mainly because I don’t want people to see me as a quitter – which I honestly think some people already see me as being.

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed how sad I’ve been. I guess they’ve been counting my sadness as just being tired…all the time. I’ve tried to justify it as getting up earlier, but no. I don’t think that’s the case. I think the case is regarding my dissatisfaction with my current position.

That being said, I feel like my soul is being sucked out of me. And I don’t know what to do. What I really want to do won’t pay dividends until later. And honestly, I can’t just up and quit – we need the benefits. It makes me sick and sad that I have to choose between a dayjob and being creative. I don’t know how to find a job of my choosing that I enjoy and won’t suck the life out of me.

I know that I’m not the only one out there who feels like this. And probably most of those people would just say “join the club.” But I don’t want to just “join the club.” I’m trying to make my own life here – one where I am happy and content. Is it so bad that I want the money in the process?

I read somewhere that more and more people having going the “two job route.” Meaning, they have a dayjob and do their passion at night or on the weekends. Why do we have to go the two job route? Why can’t we all find that “perfect” job that makes our hearts sing and leaves us satisfied?

No, I’m not happy here. But at the same time I don’t know what I can do about it.

You can’t go back

You can’t go back.

I remember summertime when I was young.  It had a certain something that I don’t think you will ever be able to put your finger on no matter how hard you try.  It was like a certain smell, a certain breeze, a certain sound, a certain taste all rolled up into one giant ball of summertime freedom that you can never have again.

Even if you were able to figure out exactly what type of ingredients went into childhood summertime magic you still would never be able to reclaim those moments of sheer joy.

Forget it! It’s over and done with.

You lose, it wins.

It went by without even a whisper or hint that it wouldn’t be returning. But the thing is I want it back.

I think it’s the smell I miss the most, must be something to do with the grass. Fresh cut grass and three friends going down to the baseball park to play catch and chase the girls.

I can’t believe we have grown up to accept this life of weekend summers.  Collectively we all get excited when a long weekend rolls its way through town in July or August. We are all suckers!

Now we spend what little time we have on summertime days off going to look at dishwashers and garden hoses. We spend the summertime nights drinking our lives away until Monday comes around like a bitter ex girlfriend and slaps you in the face, then the whole thing starts all over again.  At least we can all agree that nobody liked her anyways….and nobody likes Monday’s.

Even though I know I can’t have my summertime back. I am still going to try and see if I can find it. I think you all should too.

JS

Here we go again

You, my darling, are full of shit.

I think I can say this safely; and what’s more, I think I have the right to say it.

You are a lovely man. Witty, charming, attentive, with both a sentimental side and the resume of a power broker. You’re good with words. You’re not so good with telling yourself the truth.

You have cheated on your wife more than once. I can’t begin to count the number of emotional affairs you’ve had. Are all these psychical? I don’t know. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter where your dick is, it matters where your heart is.

I see you starting again and I wonder why you don’t just divorce her.  Be a dad, be a lover, but stop being a husband.  You’re not really being one anyway.

Play It As It Lays

Too much of something is always exhausting.

There are times that I believe if only he was this affectionate all the time, things would be better.  There are times that I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t pushed my point just that one last time, if our night would have turned out different.  If I had of stopped at one bottle of champagne that night would I have remembered exactly how the conversation ended.

Do we really want sunshine all of the time?  Brilliant skies, blindingly blue, dazzlingly perfect all the time.  Sometimes you need a little rain, cooler breezes and grey shadows to balance out your mind.

I document my life through photography, a constant reminder of that fight we had while we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, walking ten feet in front of him but coming together to pose for a photo through clenched teeth.  Or that time that he left my friend’s wedding early, leaving me to explain to my friends that not only did he not like them but he was so done with me that he had to take a cab home.  I flip through the dozens of albums recalling the grey in our memories together and the shimmering lights of those perfect moments that balance all of that out.

There isn’t anything worse than white picket fence perfect.  There needs to passion and challenge, plateaus and silent waters.  I love pasta but really no matter what I tell my friends I could never eat it every day for the rest of my life.  How do you grow as a person and as a couple eating pasta every night?  You don’t.  Sometimes you just really need to eat a burrito.  I don’t really think I could take it – the everyday – if we didn’t force each other to understand exactly why this time I was wrong….and guess what this time you were wrong.

There is nothing better than knowing that you both understand exactly what the other is feeling, grey or brilliantly blue.  Knowing that you have the perfect balance of shitty and stunning.  Knowing that tomorrow is another day to document and that your smiles in the photographs will be spilling over with love that isn’t through clenched teeth.  Sometimes it’s me and sometimes it’s you, but it is always love.

‘That’s all right, what’s done is done, and I’m gonna play it as it lays.’

Patti Scialfa

Anonymous Violence

I have a habit of taking off my clothes in the middle of my bedroom not realizing that the blinds are open. Not such a problem if you live in a house – but in the world of over developed condos in Downtown Vancouver you can see into every body else’s windows and watch their slightest movements just like a Thursday night episode of ‘The Office’ on the couch. So I was mid strip as per usual when I noticed that the blinds were open. I jumped up onto the bed covered with the six tops that I had tried on that morning and reached to close the blinds. Then a saw it.

‘Holy Shit!!’

We are officially victims of a drive by shooting!

I couldn’t believe it. A gaping bullet hole in my bedroom window – the glass splitting the across to the frame. Is there crime in Vancouver? Of course.

Are there shootings? Of course, it is a large city – we have gangs – we have shootings.

But is it a scary place to live? No.

It is beautiful…the downtown core is snuggled in between huge mountain ranges and the Pacific Ocean. Hardly a place that would make a tourist envision drive by shootings.

Then I realized that I was being naive and I had ‘not in my neighbourhood’ syndrome happening in a major way. Shit happens. Random violence happens. But wait – what if it wasn’t random? I know that there are a lot of people that I know that don’t like me….they don’t like the blunt honesty….but who hates me this much? I racked my brain to remember all of the uncomfortable moments that I had caused recently and tried hard to remember one that warranted my death. Nothing came to mind.

When did this even happen? Did it happen when we were in NYC last weekend? Did it happen during the day while we were at work? I can’t imagine gangsters so brazen that they are doing drive bys in the West End of Vancouver in broad daylight. The West End is a happy place, a Gay place…a place with history…

I’m pacing all over the apartment deciding if I should call Rob first or the Police…but what would I say to the police? I don’t even know when it happened and I am very far from figuring out the wanna be killer’s motive.

‘HOLY SHIT!!’

There’s another one in our computer room window!

I run outside onto the deck that wraps around to the outside of the computer room to better inspect the second bullet hole. My heart is pounding the shit out of my chest so hard it feels like it’s bruising my lungs. I gingerly maneuver around the deck so I don’t step on broken glass from the fallout – I look down at my toes – and what rests at my feet….

A marble.

If you decide to visit Vancouver any time soon, please be wary of the gang of vicious 7 year olds roaming the West End streets trying to take people’s lives with slingshot marbles.

Where am I?

Welcome to 86 Bedford, the blog.

Who are we?

We’re a collection of writers who write whatever we feel like here. Fiction, non fiction, ramblings, funny stories, crazy stories, shit we don’t want our mothers to read.

Why this site?

86 Bedford is the address of a famous bar and former speakeasy in Greenwich Village, New York City, USA. Writers have frequented this bar for generations. Homey, funky, lined with book jacket covers and full of corners and a fireplace on a cold night, it’s the perfect place to get rowdy or settle in. Temporarily closed due to a construction mishap, it provides inspiration for us to settle in and write what we feel and when we feel it.

Hopefully, one day we’ll be able to go back inside and have a pint or two.

Thanks for coming, and cheers!