I had another extremely long Zoom training meeting and another one, followed by more portals. I almost got most of my work done before that. I don't much feel like talking about it, but I will pass on the following bits from my boss: (a) her kid is studying the Spanish Flu and NOT enjoying doing that right now and said "I don't like this assignment," (I'll bet) (b) "We're like a soap opera, As The World Turns."

She also said that Lioness is coming back but part time, and she will not be allowed to help us forever because technically she is a public service person and not a records one. And they HAD picked two candidates to hire, were waiting on HR about the offer, and now... limbo!

I’d like to know when I am supposed to find time to do my own work, in between 2.5 hours of training/Zoom meetings a day, 2 hours of portal questions, and the rest of the time having to answer emails. Just saying.

That's all I feel like saying about work, but I'm not utterly fried today, so there's that.

My mom called to say that she's watching Tiger King and it is the bizarrest show she's ever seen. I still haven't gotten to it yet because I keep watching YouTube and sometimes Hulu. I need to catch up on Zoey and the like.

I watched a lunchtime brief storytelling workshop by Matthew Dicks, who made the point that stories aren't about what external things happened to you, but what happened inside your head. Did you ever change your mind about something important? Did you become a different person? Did something change? All good points.

I watched yet another Pick A Card video and the girl doing it is sick. This is an old video, but does anyone else freak out every time they hear someone being audibly sick now on old videos?

Anyway, it was a video on crushes and I have to say that the deck I picked (#2) pretty much nailed our fucking issues right there. Both parties are interested but being all prideful and stoic and not saying anything and holding back because the other one does, one of them feels more than they let on (I’m assuming him) and the other (that’d be me) assumes that they aren’t interested because the other party doesn’t do much of anything, and are considering bailing out on the situation.

The advice this one gave--and can I say, yay for actually giving concrete advice?-- was that both parties are interested and want to take action, but don’t want to show that they are attached and are being all prideful. I can’t speak for him, but that certainly applies to me even though the cat is out of the fucking bag on my end (ughhhhhhh).

I honestly do not think he is as attached as I am, though, considering that (a) he’s not over the ex, (b) has crushes on other ladies as well, so it’s not like I’m the only focal point there and (c) generally speaking is keeping his distance enough of the time, not showing to karaoke, etc. Whereas I haven’t been interested in another dude in a horrendously long time and obviously one goes off the deep end in those circumstances when they have very limited options in life. I don’t particularly like that I think I’m more into him than he is into me, rather than it being equal, but there you go, given the circumstances. And given said circumstances, I feel like I need to hold back and not be Too Much and all that jazz.

Whether that is the correct course of action or not, fuck if I know?

So the advice was to put yourself out there, stop holding back, and not play so hard to get. Try to be vulnerable and let them in, this is not the time to be holding on to secrets and keeping things to yourself. “That’s when things can really happen.” There was some oracle card called ‘Higher Power” which meant a divinely guided relationship, intuition is giving you a next move (come in, intuition, kick in here!), pay attention to signs (good luck with that happening indoors, I guess?), and you could get some kind of communication from the universe. “The universe is definitely looking out for you in this, but you have to help yourself as well.” And finally, “someone’s going to have to make the first move, why not you?”

This is most likely true with this fellow. It’s not like I mind, per se, I’d just (a) like to know I’m not going to make him run screaming if I do anything prematurely before he’s ready*, and (b) I do admit that decades of cultural conditioning about guys having to prove themselves first before a lady can reciprocate sure does come up in one’s head, along with the perennial shaming of a lady who doesn’t passively wait around.

* Though literally THIS NO LONGER MATTERS ANY MORE because coronavirus has killed that possibility but dead..

I had my first Comedic Storytelling class online tonight with Lisa, my previous instructor from a while back. It was a good class, somewhat similar to the one I had taken before, but with a focus on making stuff funny. We talked a little about story structure, listened to Tig Notaro's Taylor Dayne story, and then a story by Mike Birbiglia about how he performed at some children's hospital gig where everyone was very serious and talking about cancer and he knew a comedian did not fit in this crowd and it went terribly. And he is all, "I know," and "I'm in the future also," when talking about it.

The thing I noticed in both stories this time is that both of them aren't going for suspense at all. The gag with Tig is that the same situation keeps coming up and everyone knows she's going to say the same thing every time. She makes commentary like "You'll never guess who it was," and "You're good with patterns." Likewise, Mike lets you know from the getgo that this is not going to go well and he's awkward and weird all day. He's the "celebrity guest" at a golf tournament and nobody knows who he is, he only brought one pair of pants and had to iron them in his underwear, and then he goes on after a kid with leukemia and Phil Simms and everyone's been crying. I like the use of NOT suspense, as it were. I know Matthew Dicks says you should have mystery and surprise and man, I just don't wanna....

Notes from the class about humor is that you should show vulnerability, put in funny descriptions/visuals, have your own delivery and style, you can use a callback or punchline as a resolution. People like the Rule of 3, they like commentary on events, and you should know your audience when you choose cultural references.

After that, Lisa put us into "breakout rooms" to tell some story on the spot to a partner. I told the marshmallow one, and then my partner told me about "the last normal day" she had on March 13 when she went to go pick up sandwiches for her girlfriend and she has a new car she just got, a white one, and she gets in and is all, "this car's a little dirty" and "is this my drink container?"... I figured it out halfway through that she'd gotten into the wrong car and was all, "But it's a new car, how did you get in?" She left hers unlocked usually. It wasn't even her model of car! I was all, "this is why I got rainbow plates on my car, so I can tell it apart from the other cars!" And so it finishes with "that was the last normal day," and I know what she meant by that. I briefly told her about my hot water issue from the other day before we got shut down.

After we finished the breakout rooms thing, we had one volunteer tell her story, which was about accidentally buying tickets to The Book Of Mormon IN NEW YORK CITY rather than SF as she'd thought she'd done... which would have been more of an issue except well, this just happened and everything got closed for coronavirus, so she got a refund after all.

Homework for next week is to come up with a 5-8 minute story, and to watch a few videos. One of them was Return to the Scene of the Crime in which he's in a car accident and thanks to the faulty reporting of the cop on duty, ends up owning $12k to the guy who hit him. Mike argues the point and gets nowhere, but his girlfriend eventually convinces him to let it go, she's just glad he survived. Mike gives in on that--and gets married even though he wasn't into the idea of marriage-- "I have given up on the idea of being right." Good ending.

I think my idea for next week is going to be the hot water issue.... Well, I wrote it up and I like it, but frankly, I don’t know how funny it is. Maybe it’s funny in the second Mike Birbiglia story sort of way, which Lisa cited as not being funny subject matter, but it was the tone of how he told it. It sure is a lot of ranting (about two minutes of it by my timer) about how much I can’t stand the apartment manager before I even get into the hot water thing... Well, I emailed Dawn to ask if she wants to hear it/vet it before I make that decision. We’ll see.

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