November 12, 2015.

I can now play the following songs on ukulele:

"Do You Swear To Tell the Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But the Truth, So Help Your Black Ass," and "Map of Tasmania" by Amanda Palmer.

"A Beginning Song," "Grace Cathedral Hill," and "O Valencia!" all by the Decemberists.

"Take a Walk on the Wild Side" by Lou Reed.

"Ahead By a Century" by The Tragically Hip. (I really want to learn "Bobcaygeon" but the chords I'm finding online don't sound right to me. I don't know if that's the fault of me, the ukulele, or the transcribers. Not going to happen until I find the right ones, though.)

I can also play "Wicked Games" by the Weeknd but it just sounds weird on the uke. I also attempted "Hotline Bling" but the chords I found for that also don't sound right. Disappointing. I wanted to make a "Hotline Uke" video SO BADLY. And "Missed the Boat" by Modest Mouse. Really hard to do the fast chord changes without it sounding weird. 

But, all in all, not bad for owning it under a week and, you know, maintaining a life and working and commuting and dating and writing and such. Apparently I'm a natural. Slash all those years of musical training haven't completely left my brain. Basically I'm obsessed with Amanda; it's a ridiculous, all-consuming love. Yes my ukulele is named Amanda. I have no shame. I am a ridiculous human being.

Anyway, today I worked at tech trade show for my company. I've worked one other show in my time in tech, down in Pasadena. It was a bust of a show, and we were hardly busy. This time, however, was very different. This was a huge convention, well-attended and well-staffed. Quite impressive, actually. The thing that was annoying this time (beyond the typical annoyances of serving the public for 8 hours) was the sexism. Now, it wasn't rampant, per se, but Silicon Valley and the tech industry has a distinct lack of women. Our booth was different in that my company had two women and one man, and our co-sponsor in the booth was three women. The company across from us also had a woman staffing their booth. We were an anomaly in a sea of men. Going through the presentation list for the three-day event, there was over 150 presentations. In a scan-through, I see around a dozen women (almost all on panels) presenting. That's it. Out of 150 presentations, and probably a good 175 people to present over three days, only 12-15 were women. Isn't that outrageous?!

I got a weird mix of men talking to me because I'm a woman, and men who wouldn't talk to me because I'm a woman. Granted, I am the administrative assistant, and I don't have as much tech knowledge and experience as my coworkers (one was in marketing, one on our tech consulting team) but I know to ask them if I have questions, or to direct people to our website. Basically, I'm not a total idiot, but I am not a programmer/expert, by any means. There were lots of men who saw me standing there and then made a beeline for the booth, just so that I would have to talk to them. There was also a number of men who completely ignored me if I was free, even if I greeted them, and waited to talk to the only man working at our booth. 

I took a late lunch break. I got there around 10:40 so we could finish setting up, as the expo hall opened at 11. I took an email break around 1; then didn't take a lunch break until 3. By that point my feet hurt, I was very hungry, and just wanted to sit and be alone for a while. After overpaying for a pre-made crappy sandwich and some greasy (but actually sort of delicious) garlic fries, I wandered around until I found a place to sit. It was upstairs, off the escalators. There were three big 6-8 seater tables, two of which were already occupied by single men on their laptops. I sit down, start eating, grateful for solitude and greasy fries. I'm texting one of the men about how glad I am to have a few minutes alone when, and I shit you not, some random middle-aged man plops himself down at the table across from me and pulls out his laptop. Now, he didn't go to a table with a man at it. He didn't ask if he could sit there or even say, "Hey, you appear to be alone, I'm going to sit here. Cool?" At almost the exact same time, a different man went up to one of the solitary men and politely asked if he could sit at the table. My dude just kept making eye contact with me, as if I was going to spark up a convo and MPDG his white male life into meaning. Instead, I'm pretty sure I cut him into pieces with my stare of death and destruction. I was not. pleased. Yeah, okay, it was a large table. Yes, of course if he had come up and said, "Excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?" I would have said he could. But no question, no politeness, just fucking sitting down across from me like it's the most normal thing in the world. RUDE. 

The other thing that kept happening today was that people (mostly men, but a small sprinkling of women) wanted things for free. We had samples of our hardware out on display and were raffling off some at the end of the day. The amount of people that came up and just grabbed them and said, "So I can have this?" is mindboggling to me. Or people just wanted free stuff. I get it. Swag is fun. I myself took home a fair amount of swag. There was also the men who tried to convince me to just give them things, with a wink and a little shrug. Sure, random man trying to charm me into giving you that $120 piece of hardware, that's TOTALLY going to work. I'm just a silly woman; pay attention to me and I'll give you anything. There was also the tried tactic of just complaining. "But I just want the t-shirt! Why do I have to register for your website?" Them's the rules. Don't like it? No shirt for you!! Yes I see other people giving away t-shirts willy-nilly, that's not how we do things here. It was a strange day, but I'm glad to have done it. I got to be out of the office and gain more experience in actual techland. 

Cons: rude people; grabby people; entitled men; aching feet and calves; general weariness; shitty lunch.

Pros: more experience; swag of all sorts (including a hat, a screwdriver with a built-in flashlight that I'm calling a sonic screwdriver, little brain teaser puzzles for my desk, and a plastic beer glass); seeing cool technology being demoed; meeting a hot Australian guy and giving him my business card because I'm just that smooth (I don't expect to hear from him but DAMN how could I NOT?!); free coffee from said Australian guy (he was demoing a fancy coffee maker that connects to WiFi and keeps track of the coffee stats); meeting the ladies in our partnership business who are super lovely and talented; a free beer at the end of the day. Oh and listening to Missy Elliot's new song on repeat for a good half hour on each way of my commute. Not ashamed; shit's fantastic. AND coming home to my ipsy makeup bag and two new Jeffree Star lipsticks (I'm obsessed with this stuff). 

I am good and properly tired. I will hopefully sleep well tonight, which is good because I have a long and busy weekend ahead of me. I'm so excited. I'm very happy. As annoying as parts of today was, life is damn good. Excuse me, Amanda is demanding my attention.

MPDG Level: Expert

On Friday, I bought a ukulele. I am officially a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I taught myself an Amanda Palmer song, realized I could play another one because it's only two chords, and now I'm working on a Decemberists song and a Beatles song. I don't fuck around. My fingertips are very, very mad at me.

And yes, I failed at my NaNoWriMo write every day challenge. Friday, I picked up my ukulele and played for about four hours straight to learn the Amanda Palmer song. I should've cleaned or written, but it was time well-spent as Saturday my winery had its annual blending party, and one of my gentleman friends came down and joined me from about 3PM Saturday to 3:30PM Sunday. We spent a solid 24 hours together and it was beyond lovely. But my boss had me play the ukulele for everyone last night. I did fuck it up a couple of times, but I recovered well, I think. According to the gentleman, "You're a star. Everyone here is in love with you. You were amazing." I can live with that.

I didn't sleep very well last night, though. It was the first time my own personal bed has been shared here in California, and I couldn't sleep. I must have for at least a little bit, but it felt like I was awake all night. I'm not mad; again, very (very very very very very) worth it. Consequently, I am quite sleepy. But I want to be awesome at ukulele, and therefore, I must practice. Also it's not even 6PM here; I can't go to bed quite yet. Make no mistake, though, if I'm not passed out by like 9:30 or 10 tonight, I will be shocked. My fingertips are pulsing and it hurts to type, but it also hurts to play, and I'm behind on my writing. My apologies. I've been out living my life! Shocking!

I pulled an old Moleskine calendar that I use as a notebook off my shelf to write down lyrics and chords in a easy way for me to memorize and practice the songs. I found a piece of writing from, oh geeze, a few years ago now. I forgot, before I blogged, whenever I had a need to emotionally vomit, I grabbed whatever was nearby and just wrote, stream of conscious, until I felt better. I'm sure I have hidden gems in tons of notebooks that have been thrown out or are wasting away in storage. This, though, seemed particularly relevant to me right now, however.

"So do we ever really evolve from our 8th grade selves? I feel like I'm pretty much that same girl. A taller, bustier, slightly more secure girl, but not some drastically different person. I've experienced and grown, of course, that's what happens in life. But I'm fundamentally the same. Back then I was awkward and bullied but I managed to keep myself together and have a small group of friends. I've always been a combination of introvert and extrovert [now we call that an 'ambivert,' apparently], just as happy to be at home reading as I am to be on a stage performing. I still have migraines and an uncontrollable period. I still worry about things that are far beyond my control and understanding. My handwriting is still the same. I still love the Beatles. My mom still bothers me, but I still love her. Chocolate is still my favorite food. I'll always worry about if I'm pretty enough and how the outside world views me. I'm still not happy with the shape of my body. Back then I would've killed for boobs: huge, enormous ones you couldn't help but see. And I got them, and they are not even close to the blessing I thought they would be. I hated my lack of curves and now my desperately-wish-for figure seems like too much. I still feel like that little girl, but I'm no longer little. It happened so suddenly and I still don't feel like they're really mine. I'm waiting for the day I wake up and I'm 4'10" and late for school.
I still have to get up early during the week and go to a place I don't want to be for most of the day. I still don't have any money and I don't know who or what I want to be. There's still gossip and cattiness and girl fights and boys who ogle you and say rude, inappropriate things as you pass. There are those moments when you say the completely wrong thing. You let people down. People let you down. This is all pretty obvious to me, at least. It is also possible that I'm more mature than my age, which I've been told before. But then I feel like I am very immature, which makes me uneasy if I really am more mature than most people in my age group. Fuck. Middle school was hell. Being in your 20s is hell. Hell is other people. Hell is that voice in your head that speaks from a place of pure negativity and self-doubt."

That last line, tho. (I do want to talk about the rest of it, but right now, I'm so tired, it's just not going to happen. Stop trying to make it happen.) Hell is your own inner critic. It's that weird voice that tells you, yeah, sure, things are great NOW...but what about two months from now? Where will you be then, huh? How are you going to fuck everything up? You just had a great weekend, now reflect on every single little thing, overanalyze it, blow it out of proportion, and worry for no goddamn reason about where you'll be in three months, or next year. Watch that video of you playing ukulele and fixate on how fat you think you look, not the fact that you learned and played a song on a band new instrument with about 4 hours of practice and then performed it for 40 people. Or the fact that you had a lot of sex this weekend, so clearly your body does not turn anyone on and is repulsive. Obviously. Just awful. Life is so tough; you are surrounded by people who love you and support you so clearly you need to focus on everything that could possibly go wrong and how it's all your fault when it all will (oh it will). Why does this voice exist? Why do some of us have this voice so strongly and need to battle it at the most inopportune moments? Sigh. Nicole: things are great. Quit worrying and focusing on all of the bad things. Be grateful and enjoy the moments you are living. That's what you did all weekend until now, where you're being plaintive and self-critical for no reason. Calm the fuck down. Eat some food, play some ukulele, go to sleep early. Dream about the wonderful parts of your life (and there are many). I am, really, a very lucky lady.