What I’m getting at here is that I give exactly zero fucks. Because for some reason that is light years beyond me (that’s a lot, right?), I have managed to score this dude who is so on top of his shit he makes Martha Stewart look like a total assclown. I guess Martha Stewart is kind of an assclown these days, but I’m way out of the loop and you guys totally know what I meant by that. Also, my brain’s only half-functional right now so that’s as good a metaphor as I can conjure up.

Anyway, seriously…my boyfriend is so on top of his shit that he wakes up early on Sundays (his only day off) to go grocery shopping for the week. He does all that meal prep bullshit, he fills a blender full of frozen fruit and protein powder at night so that in the mornings he just has to push a button and his breakfast ready to go, he goes to the gym FIVE TIMES A WEEK MIN, and budgets a certain amount of his weekly paychecks to be put into a savings account “just in case.”

In short, my boyfriend is a fucking saint.

And for some reason he’s in love with ME.

ME!

A girl who may or may not have had a $5 bottle of red wine just called “blend,” one string cheese and two packs of Star Wars fruit snacks for dinner. (I did.)

And that’s not even the crazy part. Because the crazy part is this: That saint of a fucking dude who’s for some reason in love with me just suggested I quit my day job and let him take care of me so I can write full time and attempt to make a career out of what I love. No bullshit. That happened.

He says that taking care of rent, utilities, groceries, etc. would be his pleasure if it meant seeing me write every day.

Naturally, all I can do is cry about it. And I figured I ought to blog about it, because I don’t ever want to forget how good it feels to be loved so much by someone you’re so head over heels in love with. It’s awesome. It’s indescribable. I don’t know what else to say because truly there are no words in the English language that could possibly express how much you love this one person. EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE REALLY FUCKING GOOD WITH WORDS. WORDS ARE LIKE, YOUR THING. YOU HAVE A GOSH DANG BACHELORS DEGREE IN WORDS, AND YOU STILL CAN’T DO IT!! YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN HOW YOUR HEART STOPS EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU SEE THIS PERSON WALK INTO A ROOM. OR HOW WHEN THIS PERSON KISSES YOU ON JUST THE RIGHT PART OF YOUR NECK, THE WHOLE WORLD PAUSES, IF ONLY JUST FOR A SECOND, TO RECOGNIZE WHAT A MONUMENTAL OCCURRENCE JUST OCCURRED WITHIN THAT KISS.

That there exists another human being who could want to do so much—who could love me so much—is really, really difficult for me to understand. But that’s okay. I don’t need to understand it. Because I can feel it, and man does it feel good.

Oh, and P.S., he looks like this:

Pinch me, right?

#finally

The point of the story is, this is what we actually left the outlet mall with:

1. One pair of jeans for him;
2. Three super cute Billabong tank tops for ME;
3. One neon yellow blouse with sea horses on it for ME;
4. One pair of all-black Chucks for ME; and
5. One new Fossil purse for ME.

The thing about shopping for other people is I’m just not very good at it. I never really thought myself to be a selfish person, but apparently I’m like the most selfish person ever because not once have I gone shopping for other people where I didn’t end up buying as much, if not more, shit for myself than we did for them.

If you’re not convinced I’m the most selfish person ever, let me tell you about how I Christmas shop. It’s like this: “Okay, here we have one present for Mom and…one present for ME! One present for Dad, one present for ME! One present for each brother…that equals two presents for ME!”

I hate that I’m like this, but at least it’s something I recognize and can now work on changing, right? The good news is I don’t think I’ll need to buy myself a new purse for a while because the Fossil one I just bought is everything I ever dreamed of and more. Side note: I found it in the men’s section. That was pretty weird to me, considering it’s a fucking PURSE and all. But check it out; I feel like Indiana Jess:

As I was modeling it in the full-length mirror prior to purchase, I asked my boyfriend if it was indeed too manly. He looked at me like I was joking. “It’s a purse,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a ‘too-manly’ purse.” Then he shook his head as I charged my new manpurse to the credit card I was just bragging about having paid off the week before.

• Learn some type of Martial Arts
• Learn to play piano
• Learn to play guitar
• Learn to surf (Sometime when I was 16)
• Get a tattoo (17th birthday…& then 9 more times after that)
• Go on a hot air balloon ride
• Write for the school newspaper (2006-2007)
• Get an article published outside of the school newspaper (Dec. 2006)
• Get an article published in an internationally (or at least nationally) recognized Magazine
• Write the screenplay to a TV pilot
• Write a feature length movie script
• Write a novel
• Get a novel published
• Learn a second language
• Watch all 6 Episodes of Star Wars in one sitting
• Try caviar (Sometime in 2012. It was gross.)
  
• See at least one of the Beatles perform live
• Go bungee jumping
• Go skydiving (June of 2009)
• Swim with sharks
• Travel to every continent
• Win a “Best Halloween Costume” award
• Start a photography business on the side
• Live in Africa (Summer of 2006)
• Live on the beach (2008-2009)
• Plant my own garden
• Kiss in the rain
• Graduate college (Dec. 2007)
• Meet Bill Murray
• Hit a Royal Flush
• Backpack Thailand (March-April 2010)
• Travel South America by train
• Pay off all credit card debt
• Get a boy to write a song about me
• Learn to drive a motorcycle
• Invent an iPhone app
• Build a school in Africa
• Fall in love like the movies (Feb. 2013)
• Teach English as a second language
• Fly in a helicopter but don’t die

[For any of you slow folks, the ones in strikethrough are the ones I've done, or, "crossed off my bucket list."]

I thought I’d share this letter I wrote to myself on December 14, 2012–my 28th birthday. This was only a few months ago, so it kind of boggles my mind how much things have changed. (I love my job, I’ve made remarkable progress on my novel, and I’ve found the most incredible man who I am 100 percent certain I am meant to share my life with.)

Life can be pretty amazing if you just let it be.

Dear Self,

Happy birthday! Chin up, 28’s not that old. You still have plenty of time to land your dream job, find your dream guy, and adopt those African babies! Why are you stressing so much??

You’ve been stressing a lot lately, actually. About everything. Why do you always feel the need to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders? You’d think that by 28 you’d have it figured out—things are going to carry on, play out the way they should, regardless of whether you worry about them constantly or not. So stop worrying about them constantly.

Quit wondering when your writing will be noticed by the right person and just write. Quit chasing after that one guy and let someone who actually cares start chasing you. Quit worrying about your eggs drying up—you don’t understand how that biology works, and you’ve always wanted to adopt anyway.

Life isn’t the pretty package you grew up believing it would be. You should know that by now.

You didn’t get that internship with National Geographic. You didn’t land a full-time writing gig immediately out of college. You got kicked out of law school. And now you’re a bartender who writes on the side. Get over it. Nobody else’s life goes according to plan either, so why are you so obsessed with your own?

Let’s make 28 about fulfilling your dreams. You’ve had plenty of fun these past few years. Heck, you’ve had a pretty kickass 27 years. So let’s buckle down. Let’s focus your time and energy on being a better person and perfecting the craft you love.

Drink more tea and less tequila. Eat more fruits and veggies and less Taco Bell Dollar Menu. Play more outside and less on your video game console.

Walk your dog every day. Read every day. Write every day. Call someone you love every day.

Pay off your credit card debt. Create a website. Finish your novel. Jesus Christ, Jessica, FINISH YOUR NOVEL.

You’re a good person who works hard, but it’s time to be better and it’s time to work harder. 

This is your year.

I love you,
Yourself

The weird part is that the things I do remember are the trivial, non-consequential ones that have no actual bearing on my life. Like the memory I’m about to share, for example, why does my brain make room to remember this silly moment of my existence but not any of the important stuff?

I was about four years old—maybe three but definitely not five—blowing bubbles in the backyard of our house in Fremont one hot summer day. The sun beamed from the sky, encasing each bubble with its own tiny rainbow. I watched, mesmerized, as the bubbles floated up out of reach before bursting into nothingness, one-by-one. Then I got bored and dropped my bubble wand down the hole of this spool-shaped table we had on the back patio. The hole went clear down the center of the table and was the known habitat of a family of spiders. I hate spiders and don’t know why I did it, but I remember I did it on purpose. I purposely dropped my bubble wand down the hole of this table for no other reason than to go in and retrieve it.

I remember walking inside to put on my pink fleece jacket and a pair of cotton gloves–my armor, if you will–then walking back out and pulling my bubble wand from the spider hole.

And that’s all I remember.

Why is this moment stored so safely, so vividly, inside my mind? Why is it that when my friends want to reminisce about the most exciting times of our lives, I can hardly recall being there, yet I remember, in detail, the time I dropped my bubble wand down the spider hole?

^Some little girl in a stock photo blowing bubbles

Anyway, I’ve been writing like a mofo MACHINE lately! And also killin’ it on Xbox!

I sorta miss writing my sex column, but to be completely honest I’m running out of material. Mostly because I’m not having much sex anymore. It’s weird, but good I guess. I’ve been pretty dead set on focusing on myself lately, and don’t no one got time to be bangin’ hella hoes when you’re trying to make your dreams come true. Know what I mean?

I don’t really bang hoes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If you do it, that’s totally cool. I just don’t.

OMG I almost forgot! I also had a birthday and turned 28, which totally blows. But a few days ago I saw this plaque at a Ross Dress for Less that read, “How old would you be if you didn’t know your age?” And I was like HECK YES! Because I’d only be 24. So I’m just going to tell people I’m 24. Do you love it? I love it.

He also looks like this, this and this:

I’m pretty sure he’s magic.

Personally, I think it’s the lack of distraction between 2 and 4 a.m. that make those hours so perfect for writing. Your chores for the day have already been done, your errands already run. And all the normal people have long since gone to bed so you don’t have to worry about being interrupted by phone calls, text messages, and that burning desire to check your Facebook notifications every 12 seconds. It’s just you, your imagination, and a blank Word document, alone in a dark and silent room.

Or maybe it is just the ghost thing; I don’t know.

Anyway, I figured I’d spend the next couple hours writing a quick post since I’ve been terrible about maintaining this blog and so I can use “dead time” to work on my new novel. Spoiler alert: It’s about a beautiful 26-year-old piano-playing prodigy who loses both her fiancé and her right hand in a devastating car accident. Brutal, right? We’ll see how many pages I make it into this one before dropping it into the “unfinished manuscripts” folder on my desktop.

I don’t know if it’s all the NaNoWriMo juice I’ve been drinking or what, but lately I’ve been feeling the need to focus all my writing endeavors on finally finishing a book. It’s just starting to seem like the only avenue I have left to making a career as a writer. Every effort I’ve made to land a steady gig with a local magazine has failed, I’ve proven time and time again I’m not disciplined enough to earn a legitimate income freelancing, and I’ve got this weird apprehension that the writing projects I have been working are starting to hit a plateau. So really it’s like, why not give this whole novel writing thing a serious shot?

Also, I really have dreamed about becoming the world-renowned author of some best-selling series since I was a little girl. Book signings, Today Show interviews, phone calls from Christopher Nolan begging me to let him turn my books into movies—it would all be mine!

In all honesty, it’s about so much more than just that. Because writing isn’t all about getting published. In fact, any true writer—those who eat, sleep, and breathe their craft—will agree that publication is only a tiny fraction of the satisfaction we get from writing. It’s not the bylines or the fame we are addicted to as writers. It’s the process.

It’s spending whole days reading in search of new ideas, then being struck with one out of the blue one night while showering or driving or watering your plant. It’s the panic that overcomes you the moment that idea strikes, to find the nearest notebook or piece of paper or fuck it, just give me that napkin, so you can jot down your thoughts before they escape forever. It’s turning on your laptop at 2 a.m. and sitting down to do work in the silence and candlelight. It’s rummaging through the deepest crevices of your brain and allowing whatever you find in there to spill unapologetically through your fingertips out onto your keyboard. It’s about pushing the print button after that final edit, and the pride you feel once you recognize you have just given life to something that was once nothing more than a figment of your imagination.

That may have sounded like a bunch of deep hippie bullshit, but whatever. If you’re a writer, you get it.

I actually wrote this piece a lot quicker than I figured it would take, so I’m going to go Google “hand amputation” for a bit. On a related note, I just realized why my dreams have been so weird lately.

I was recently fired from one of my bartending jobs the day after quitting the other. That’s not even the dog shit part because the reason I was terminated is so stupid it’s a joke, but not really one that made me LOL or anything. What did make me LOL was when my manager ended her “We’re going to have to let you go” speech with, “but that’s a really cute dress!” Swear to God that happened.

Anyway, it ended up being one of the best things ever because I have since picked up a new bartending job where I work half as often and make just as much as I did at the other two joints combined. I mean yeah, I’m still a 27-year-old bartender and whatever, but at least I can pay my water bill this month. Boom shaka laka.

Still, I’m a total sack of dog shit.

Here’s why: I am finally in a place where I’ve got all this extra time to write—to really make a name for myself and maybe even finally turn this writing dream into a full-time gig! I have whole days off now…WHOLE DAYS. Sometimes even two in a row. That’s two days in a row where I could be pounding out words, one after another, charming the socks of readers and literary agents and whatnot.

Instead, here is a list of things I haven’t been writing lately:

• Anything for this blog (obvi)
• Freelance articles that could potentially earn me legitimate income
• A single word for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, a writing challenge I’ve “participated” in the past three Novembers)
• My own column (I took Halloween off since it’s my favorite holiday and all, and have yet to write anything since. I’m probably going to get fired.)

Essentially what I’m getting at here is that since being granted all this free time for writing, I have spent exactly zero minutes of it writing.

While I’d love to say the problem is I’ve been sooooooo busy, I can’t. Because I’m a terrible liar. And it’s not like I have nothing to write about, either. So I can’t even use that CREATIVITY IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN BE RUSHED!!! excuse.

Mostly, I’ve just been a lazy fuck. I recently deleted all my Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 data by accident, so a good chunk of my life has been devoted to getting my rank back up in hopes that 13-year-old boys will quit calling me a noob. The rest of my time has been allocated between working (pouring beer into cups, etc.) and drinking this one bottle of 192 proof vodka I just bought that tastes like gasoline mixed with farts.

Oh, I have also developed a sleeping problem, which sort of makes me feel like the guy in Fight Club. Side note: I was Marla Singer from Fight Club this Halloween. But yeah, I can’t seem to fall asleep before 3 a.m., and generally wake up around 6 or 7 all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to take on my super exciting day of pouring beers into cups, etc. and NOT writing.

Do you guys think I’m in a funk or what? What do you, fellow writers, do when you get into this pattern of non-writing? How do you get back into the groove?

Any and all suggestions/criticism welcome.

Also, if you’re participating in NaNoWriMo, tell me about your progress. I was thinking about finishing my mermaid novel this year, but then I was like, Ooooh maybe I should just get a mermaid tattoo instead!

It’s Election Day and let me tell you what, I’ve never been less enthused about politics in my whole entire life.

Regardless of my enthusiasm (or lack thereof) this election season, I will always be a proud and hopeful American, genuinely grateful for freedom and democracy. I hope you took the time to exercise your right to vote today.