To Write or Not to Write

The headline is as follows: Self-Proclaimed Writer Gives in to Bout of Selfish Lethargy, Questions Identity Due to Lack of Discipline and Product.

It may seem over-dramatic for me to be thinking along these lines when all that’s really happened is that I’ve let my blogging slide, but I feel like a contestant on a reality show that isn’t making the cut. I’m like one of those chefs that hasn’t prepared enough for the final bake-off on The Next Great Baker; my German Chocolate layers are going to be sagging and I’ll have to try to even out the finished product with extra fondant – but you can always tell that someone has cheated when you cut into the cake. In other words, my blog is the regular writing exercise that I need to maintain at least a sense that I’m moving forward as a writer – that I’m continuing to use and hone my skills, keep track of my thoughts, and amass material for the book that I will theoretically someday write. But I haven’t been writing and posting too much lately – I’ve been more interested in sleeping and reading after work.

This leads to the dramatic question of whether or not I really have the chops to make it as a writer – or am I simply a good communicator? I am, after all, only a self-declared writer and don’t really feel comfortable calling myself an author at this point, since I have only published a couple of academic articles, and haven’t even produced (let alone published) any short stories, novels or non-fiction books.

Of course, anyone is free to disagree with the way I am parsing the definitions of writer and author, but it is important to understand that in my mind, having published my critical opinions on other people’s works of fiction does not fulfill my ultimate goal of writing and publishing memoirs and fiction. This isn’t to say that one type of writing is better than others, merely that they are different, and that I still feel as though my goal of writing stories of any kind is a far-off dream. I think I have become one of those people who says things like, “I always meant to write a novel…” Or perhaps I qualify as one of those people that says, “I’m writing a novel,” when really they have a few scribbles and dead-end ideas that they haven’t worked on for months but they can’t consciously acknowledge that they will never actually finish their project. I’m not sure whether it would feel worse to know that I am someone who failed because I didn’t have the discipline to even start, or someone who failed because I didn’t have the discipline to keep going.

In any case, I sometimes question whether or not I should really call myself a writer. Sure, I write for a living now, so I suppose that counts – I write pages and pages about how communities in the Bronx and other parts of New York are poverty-stricken and need various types of support services; I write blurbs and press releases about the events and fundraisers at our social services organization. I write web content and email updates; I engage in the act of writing plenty. I can even claim fairly accurately that I do all that well – because I am a skilled communicator. My boss seems fairly pleased with me, others have praised what I have contributed to the organization so far – I should be happy.

But although I have found a good career, it doesn’t help meet my personal creative goals. Writing for a living isn’t the same as being the author of a novel, something that I would be proud to contribute to the world’s accumulation of art. (Cue the song “Glory” from Rent – the one where Roger sings about his desire to leave behind one thing that will “redeem this empty life” when he dies.)

Maybe the problem is that we aspiring artists set the bar too high – Roger wants to “find Glory / in a song that rings true / truth like a blazing fire / an eternal flame.” But that is a seriously ambitious goal, and we can’t all be Bonos and Dostoevskys. Even if I published a novel and it got some buzz for a while, what are the chances that it would gain the kind of readership that Fyodor and Charles Dickens still enjoy? How many of us really express “truth like a blazing fire” that cuts to the heart of everyone who reads our work?

The other day, my husband asked me, “Do you still want to write a book someday?” His question seemed to come out of nowhere, and it bewildered me for a minute. Yes, of course I want to write a book… perhaps even more than one. But how realistic is that dream? Is it realistic enough for me to consider it a goal and not just a fantasy? Is it any more realistic than my dream of owning a yacht?? I have to question the practicality of my own goals if I can’t even maintain a regular (creative) writing schedule while I’m working a nine-to-five job.

It was nice to realize that my wonderful husband was asking that very question because he was contemplating scenarios in which he would work full time and I would stay home with our kid(s) and write a book, so perhaps it will be more feasible for me to devote more time and energy to writing longer projects at some point in the future. But even so, one has to question the feasibility of a goal that may always have to be put off for something more immediate. I’m reminded of a refrigerator magnet that my grandma used to have: a bright pink elephant with the words “I’ll diet tomorrow” stamped into his flank. More than a reality show contestant, I resemble that elephant; I might as well be tattooed with the words, “I’ll write tomorrow.”

My lack of desire to sit down and write is not from lack of material, though – I still haven’t blogged about the rest of my weekend in D.C., which on some level I am eager to get down on paper and share with my small but devoted audience. I had some thoughts and experiences that I, being the egomaniac that I am, think were pretty interesting. The stuff of epiphanies, -- absolutely brilliant, you know.

I’ll force myself to get back to that subject in a day or two, but once I realized that I had been putting off the writing most of the week, I couldn’t help but mull over my identity as a writer a bit. My title at work is “Communications Associate and Grant Writer,” which may be a more accurate reflection of my identity overall as my life follows its new course. I communicate skillfully and I write very specific forms. Does that make me an author? Not in my opinion.

But maybe I need to be a little less hard on myself. Maybe I also need to take heart from the very thing that shook me to the core this past December/January – the crazy new direction that my life has taken. I suppose that if it has already happened once or twice, it could happen again. I could end up living on a yacht off the coast of Greece, writing novels and collecting a paycheck as big as Stephen Kings. Of course, it’s more likely that I’ll pop out a baby or two, then try to write a novel in between soccer practices and swim meets.

(Hey, if Stephenie Meyer can do it, then why can’t I? I have to admit that I'm rather taken by the whole story of how she wrote Twilight, staying up late at night after her husband and children had gone to bed, afraid to show anyone but her sister what she was working on. And now she has five novels and as many movie adaptations to her name, not to mention all the fan paraphernalia and a flirty little red sports car that she bought with her bonus check.)

In the meantime, my modest goal is to continue blogging – because if nothing else, it allows me to keep track of my thoughts, accumulate ideas and stretch my narrative muscles in a way that I just can’t do when I’m writing a grant. I don’t need to be a Nazi when it comes to maintaining a strict schedule for my blog, but if I let it slip by too much, I will be abandoning something much larger than just the blog itself. I will be abandoning the idea that I am working toward the book that I promised my grandmother that I would write – and if nothing else, I can’t let her down. That is a pretty good reason to keep thinking of myself as a writer and working toward that goal.

No Place Like Home

I’ve written in previous blog entries how sometimes I feel a bit like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and over the past few days, I’ve found myself wishing that I had a little bit more of the confidence that Dorothy displayed when she squeezed her eyes tightly shut, clicked her heels together and chanted, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” In that moment, at least, she knew exactly where her home was – back in Kansas with Uncle Henry and Aunty Em. She may not have been trying to run away at the beginning of the film, but by the time she has journeyed through the land of Oz, she knows that there’s no place she’d rather be but Kansas. Her voice is fervent and self-assured as she recites the magical mantra, and happily, she ends up back in her very own bed, surrounded by loved ones. But if I had my own pair of magical ruby slippers right now, I’m not so sure where I’d ask them to take me.

My husband and I are originally from Michigan, which has become a wasteland during this fabulous economic recession. We left our home state so that we could go to graduate school and get jobs, but we were a bit ahead of the crowd. It seems like we started a trend – and when it comes to considering your individual survival, it’s a trend that makes sense. We worry, in fact, about our friends and family who are still back in Michigan and are either fearfully monitoring the precarious position of their jobs, or counting down the days until the unemployment checks run out. We miss our parents, brothers, sisters and friends more than we can say – but we also know that we can’t go back.

Moving from Michigan to Washington D.C. was extremely difficult – more difficult than I thought it would be. I had imagined that setting up shop in D.C. would be a lot like going off to college – I would go to parties, meet new people, make new friends. I had a lot of friends in college. A lot. I had eight bridesmaids, for Pete’s sake – and that was the whittled down number. I used to be good at mingling, chatting, being social. But the reality is that once you graduate from college, it’s a lot harder to meet people, so things didn’t turn out quite like I had envisioned. We had been living there a couple of years before we really hit it off with anyone.

I missed being social – and I also missed having a place that felt homey. When I was in college, I felt like I belonged at Eastern Michigan University. During a five minute walk across campus, I would see three or four different people who would want to stop and talk, I would zig-zag my way from building to building, taking care of different pieces of business. I knew how to handle different all my different responsibilities, accounts and social situations. I also felt like I belonged in the town of Ann Arbor. With all it’s little novelty shops, old theaters, restaurants, bookstores and hang-out coffee joints, there were a million different familiar places that I could settle down for an afternoon to read, finish up some homework or catch up with a friend. I knew my way around. I had routines and favorite seats. And all of this gave me confidence.

D.C. wasn’t really like that, though. We lived in a less-than-stellar neighborhood and I didn’t really enjoy going out on my own. When I went to visit the campus of American University, I had the biggest thrill that I had experienced in a long time – it was adorable, clean, safe and, as I told my husband when I came home, it was “me-sized!” As soon as I stepped onto the quad, I immediately had a sense of belonging that I hadn’t experienced since we left Ann Arbor. Unfortunately, after I completed two years of graduate school, they insisted on giving me a diploma and sending me on my way. I threatened to chain myself to the furniture in the Literature Department Lounge so that I wouldn’t have to leave, but I’m not sure how I would have gotten my meals on the weekends. So, I felt like I lost the only place that felt truly homey to me in D.C.

Fast forward to July 2010, when we moved to Nyack. Our little village in the Hudson River Valley reminds me so much of Ann Arbor. As we drove down Main Street toward Broadway, coasting slowly down the hill that overlooks the water, I had that feeling again. I gaped at the bright blue façade of the Blissful Spa, the little second hand stores and gift shops, and the wooden sign hanging outside of the Patisserie. I knew I was home, and so did my husband. We hadn’t seen more than a thirty-second stretch of street in Nyack when we turned to each other and said, “We have to find an apartment here.” And even though we don’t know many people here – we certainly haven’t made the kind of good friends in New York like we have in Michigan and D.C. – I still have that feeling that we belong in Nyack. I have favorite spots to sit by the creek at the park, at the Art Café, at the library. I have opinions about local restaurants and certain routines.

So when we went back to Washington D.C. for a visit this past weekend, it threw me for a bit of a loop. We drove down Friday morning and met a friend for coffee and some bookstore browsing. Then another friend had us over for dinner, and we were able to catch up with several people. It was great seeing everyone and after we left, my husband was practically glowing. With a big grin on his face, he told me, “It’s good to be back. It feels like coming home.”

Awkward pause. I didn’t know what to say because despite the fact that I loved every minute of the time spent with friends, there still wasn’t a sense of belonging in my heart. Washington D.C. was where I learned to detach from people, places and things. It was there that I learned how to cope with isolation and long-distance relationships. While I had once been deeply interwoven into a church community in Michigan, it was in D.C. that I became an island, an independent and absorbed academic. I may have met some great people in D.C., but I didn’t allow myself to get too attached to most of them. And I certainly didn’t get attached to our neighborhood, with its punk car thieves and active local arsonists.

My husband made several comments that night, in fact, that made me feel awkward. Usually he and I feel the same way about things like this – we both loved our undergraduate alma mater, Ann Arbor, and some of the suburban hang-outs near my parents’ home like Royal Oak and Birmingham. We’ve usually agreed on places that we have disliked, and we both immediately loved Nyack. But here was my husband sharing a well-spring of happy feelings, practically saying that he wanted to move back to D.C… and my heart just felt hollow. All I could think about was the hours that I spent sitting in the most horrendous urban traffic that you can imagine – the Capital Beltway. Even traffic in New York City has nothing on the Washington D.C. Beltway, and while my husband never had to commute to work on this notorious freeway, I did. His experience and my experience of living in the D.C. Metro Area were quite different, and I’m all too aware of how urban congestion can literally choke you, smother your soul. I now relish the fact that I live in a village, and that if I’m going to get held up by traffic on my way through town, it’s going to be pedestrian traffic.

There were some tense moments that night, as I tried to let my husband enjoy the buoyant feeling in his heart without out-and-out lying to him about how I felt. And honestly, the difference between our reactions scared me. I couldn’t help but wonder, what do I do if he decides that he really does want to move back to D.C.? Now that I’ve realized just how cramped I was, packed into that tightly-packed urban sprawl, I don’t think I can leave the Palisades cliffs and the Hudson River. I don’t think I could survive without the park with the creek where I actually feel safe to go and sit by myself. Now that I’ve learned to live detached from the people around me, I’m not sure that even the idea of moving back to be with some of my favorite people in the world (and there are a few of them in D.C.) is enough motivation to uproot me from Nyack.

[There is more to come on the subject, though…]

Alone at the Clinique Counter

Grief is a strange and changeable monster.

Some days, it is strong and ferocious, washing over me like a tidal wave – an apt comparison to a tsunami even, since my memories of my grandparents become a painful surge with the potential to destroy everything in their path.

Then on other days, I can chatter casually, even flippantly about my grandparents with co-workers, hair dressers and waitresses. With a little smile, I can say something to my husband like, “Remember how grandma used to buy us those horrible sugar free candies at the dollar store? I never had the heart to tell her that I didn’t like them because it made her so happy to bring us a treat she had always two or three more bags for us. Don’t we still have a big jar of them somewhere?” In certain moments, I somehow manage to be detached from the strongest emotions that otherwise threaten to overwhelm me – and I can enjoy the memories of my grandparents precisely because I’m detached.

Sunday was one of those days that I felt separate from my emotions, as though the grief belonged to someone else. I could see it, almost pick it up in my hands and examine it. I was hanging out at the mall – all by myself because my husband was out of town this weekend. But despite the fact that it’s pretty pathetic to go marathon shopping by yourself, I wasn’t sad about the current dismal state of my social life.

I felt lonely not because I was alone, but because shopping was a special pastime that I shared with my grandma.

When we were young, my grandparents would take me, my brother and my cousin to the mall all the time. They would allow us to sit at our very own table and order the grilled cheese sandwiches and chocolate milk ourselves. This is a big deal for a five or a six year old, and as we chattered with the waiter, we felt as though we were independent grown-ups. After lunch we would wander around the mall for a while with grandma and grandpa trailing behind us, peering in the shop windows at the glittering gowns on display. While at the mall, my grandparents allowed us a sense of independence and freedom that was exhilarating, especially to a couple of kids whose mother wouldn’t allow us to go down the block on our own.

Later in the afternoon, we always got to order a giant cookie before we went home. I believe my grandparents might have actually believed that not only were cookies an excellent treat, but were a valid remedy for many minor illnesses. I remember a couple of times that I had a stomach ache and was surprised that when they came to pick me up from school, they didn’t take me home and tuck me in to bed – instead, they insisted that I would feel much better after we went to the mall for a cookie.

In fact, I think I played hooky from elementary school more often with my grandparents than I ever tried to ditch class in high school! I felt sort of guilty sitting out in the open, in middle of the mall at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. I worried that someone would catch us and yell at us for sitting there so casually, munching away on our cookies. My grandparents, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at ease. The funny part was that their remedy worked – I suspect that my stomach ache had more to do with social anxiety than anything else, so a cookie and a little time spent with grandma and grandpa turned out to be the perfect medicine.

As I got older, my grandmother became my best friend and my favorite shopping partner. We would go to the mall at least once every season (spring, summer, fall, winter). Children and teenagers are always growing and always need new school clothes, after all. But these were not just quick trips to find a functional, institutionally-approved wardrobe; these were full-day excursions, complete with a leisurely lunch, during which grandma imparted many important life lessons. She taught me to appreciate good-quality fabric and stitching, to avoid horizontal stripes, and create a clean, uninterrupted visual line from head to toe in order to appear thinner. She taught me to always buy more than one tube of lipstick when I found a shade that I liked – so that you’d have enough for a long time if the cosmetics company discontinued that color. The same goes for a good pair of shoes or nicely-fitting jeans – buy more than one pair and you’ll be set for years. She helped me develop an eye for coordinating colors and her taste for anything sparkly rubbed off on me.

She taught me all of that before the age of twelve and so by the time I was a teenager, I was as picky of a shopper as she was. Even after I started hanging out at the mall with my teenage friends, I still went shopping with her for my clothes because she would be much more honest with me about how something fit. “That doesn’t flatter you,” she would sometimes tell me, wrinkling her nose. “It makes you look pregnant, the way that it poufs out over your stomach…” But before you imagine that her comments were cruel, let me assure you that I appreciated them – her honesty made her a much better shopping partner than any of my peers, who were afraid to hurt my feelings. But there was also the fact that when something did “flatter my figure,” she was a much more gratifying admirer than any of my friends would have been. Her eyes would sparkle and she would begin to beam. I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be nearly as vain if it weren’t for her unadulterated admiration.

Because of both her honesty and her appreciation, she was also the first and most important person to take when shopping for special events. She and my mother accompanied me to choose every single prom dress I ever bought, and while in college, she once convinced me to go out and look for a black cocktail dress – when I didn’t need one for any particular reason. (We actually ended up buying two that day!)

Grandma and my mom both obviously had to be present for every single trip to the bridal salon when I was planning my wedding as well. She became obsessed with Oleg Cassini, the designer that created my gown. She was also the one who insisted that I buy a $200 wedding veil simply because it was the only one that had sparkles… if I wasn’t going to buy it, she was going to buy it for me, and that was that. According to grandma, you cannot ever under-estimate the value of sparkles.

Once I moved to Washington D.C., I never did find another shopping partner and so my trips to the mall became lonely affairs. I sometimes drag my husband in to the dressing room once I have tried everything on and vetoed the losers – his job is to apprise the second round contestants. Sometimes he helpfully offers comments like, “that pattern looks like cauliflower,” and then I know I have to return that shirt to the rack. But he lacks the critical eye and the ability to color-coordinate that my grandmother had. I started calling my grandma from the dressing room, trying to describe the items that I was trying on, which met only with limited success since she obviously couldn’t see how the clothing actually looked on me. But at least it was a little bit like having her with me.

The day after she died, I decided that I had nothing appropriate to wear to her funeral – and something that would have been incredibly important to my grandma would have been my wardrobe and appearance when I got up to give her eulogy. I knew that in order to honor my grandmother properly, I had to go shopping.

And so, despite the fact that I hadn’t slept more than 45 minutes and I felt like I was a zombie that had been drained of even the desire to consume human brains, I went to the mall the day after my grandmother died. It was the most miserable shopping trip of my entire life.

I wanted to find some kind of a black or dark dress, or perhaps a fancy top and black pants. But there wasn’t a single dress or dress blouse that didn’t either 1) have awful-looking ruffles all up and down the front or 2) look like a skanky clubbing outfit. "Oh, grandma,” I muttered to myself, “I'm glad you can't see all these hideous ruffles. What are they thinking this season?” When I couldn’t find anything to wear at any of my favorite stores, I stopped and thought, “What would grandma do? She would tell me to look in Macy’s and the other department stores. She would tell me to persevere, at least until I had exhausted my options.” So I trudged around the mall for another two hours without success (the hideous ruffles were everywhere), and ended up buying four different sparkly scarves in a fit of self-indulgence and self-pity. I came home in despair, knowing that I still didn't have anything nice to wear for the funeral. (Thankfully, I was able to find a dress in a last-ditch effort at a little shop near my parents’ house. I made my mom buy something new to wear, too -- reminding her that Grandma would have told us to go out and get something nice.)

Now when I go to that mall by myself, I can’t help but think of that horrible day, the day after she died, at least for a moment. Because of that epic shopping failure, even my mall in New York seems to have a strong connection to my grandma.

And when I took myself to the Clinique counter on Sunday, of course I thought about her. She is the one who scheduled me for a Clinque pore-cleansing and make-over when I was in high school. She was the one who insisted that I buy two tubes of Stellar Plum the last time we dropped by the counter in Macy’s together. After all the time I spent fusing over foundations and powders and lipsticks with grandma, I suddenly found myself going for a consultation at the Clinque alone. And although I didn’t cry while I was there, I felt very hollow inside knowing that I couldn’t even take home my new lip gloss to model for my grandma and ask her if she thought it was too dark.

Keep Myself Awake

I’ve spent several comfortable years in the academic life, which allowed me to teach classes from 8:30 to 11, make it home in time for lunch, then enjoy a nap or a walk before throwing in laundry, then reading or writing for the rest of the afternoon. Don’t get me wrong – there were some long, torturous 8 hour days of paper-grading thrown in there, too. But I had it pretty nice. If I wanted to take the afternoon off to read a novel or go shopping, I could usually do so. But now I’m up every morning and driving across the TappanZee Bridge by 8 AM, knowing that the return trip won’t come until 5:30 or later.

I squint against the sunlight both ways, but when I first started my new nine-to-five, my worry wasn’t that the sunrise would affect my eyesight so much as the fluorescent office lighting. Thankfully, I don’t work in a cubicle; I have my own office and can shut the lights off. I only have one narrow, high-up window, but it lets in enough sunlight so that I can read the stacks of papers on my desk, so I’ve developed a habit of working for most of the day in the dark. I believe this is saving me from developing a dangerous addiction to Visine or Clear Eyes, and it’s far more Zen. Then again, maybe I've picked up one too many habits from my favorite film noir characters and broody vampire detectives.

But when I began working a more traditional schedule, I had far greater fears than the possibility of developing Bleary Eye Syndrome. Mainly, I was – and continue to be – concerned that a 40 hour a week job eats up a lot more time than just 40 hours a week. Let's do the math. There’s the commute, which I estimate takes me another 7.5 hours a week on average. But that is still less than 50 hours, and there are 168 hours in a week, so even if you sleep 56 hours a week (8 hours a night), you should still have somewhere between 60 and 70 hours to yourself. Right?

But you can’t forget to add all those pesky household and personal hygiene things in to the tally – showering (and for some of us, blow-drying your hair), preparing food and washing the dishes… let’s say there goes another ten to fifteen hours during the week. We’re down to 50 hours, but you have to remember that half of those hours are your two weekend days. In that time, you’ve got to do laundry, go grocery shopping, go to church, take the car for an oil change – and you should probably at least acknowledge your husband at some point. So when am I supposed to find time to write??

I’m aware that all these things are the normal concerns and activities of normal adult human beings and that I shouldn’t be so irked at having to fit my life into this schedule, but as I’ve explained before, I’ve been extremely spoiled. Not only did my parents, grandparents, and even my husband cater to my desires to a certain degree, but my chosen career as a professor often enabled my whims. I could take papers to correct at the bookstore, which made grading feel less like work because I could go browse the shelves. I could make the rounds of local coffee shops and restaurants during the afternoons, or choose to put off my work until the middle of the night if I wanted. I thrive on flexibility, and a career as an academic allowed me to do so much more reading, writing – and ultimately, living.

When I started this nine-to-five gig, I was afraid that I wouldn’t have much time left for “living” – although admittedly, my definition of the word would seem fairly boring to many, since it basically involves reading and writing out of doors as much as possible, whether at the park or the beach, or by an open window. It also involves long walks and the general ability to kum-bah-yah with nature on a frequent basis.

What I’ve discovered is that even though the different responsibilities at my new job are actually pretty interesting and enjoyable (to me) and I’m happy to devote time to these tasks, I come home exhausted and unable to fully enjoy those twenty-five free hours that I’m supposed to have to myself during the week. Sometimes I can’t keep my eyes open for more than an hour or two after eating dinner, so I’ve found myself falling asleep to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report; my routine is starting to remind me of graduate school, which is not a time in my life that I particularly want to repeat. Ever. Again.

Over the past week, I’ve been even more drained for some reason; I think I fell asleep around 7:30 or 8 PM almost every night. Look at me – I’m not even thirty and I’m already turning into my grandpa. He was a sweet man and I love him dearly – but wasn’t I already boring enough??

Honestly, I can live with being a generally boring person to the outside world, but it is important to me that I am able to continue reading and developing myself as a creative writer and memoirist. I want to be able to recapture the more amusing, self-depreciating tone that used to come a lot more easily to me as I wrote. (Anyone else miss those posts?)

I also just want to be able to enjoy the simple pleasures in life. Is it too much to ask that if you’re earning enough money to be able to buy a few books and a dinner out, that you also be able to enjoy said books and your husband’s company? I really don’t want my life to be all about a paycheck – or even about a career, for that matter, even though it’s a career that I’ve decided is interesting, valuable and fulfilling. I still crave the freedom to freely express myself – consistently, constantly.

In order to be able to do that, though, I may need to resort to more coffee and diet Coke to keep me awake. I may gain a new appreciation for my chronic insomnia, and you might start to notice that my blog posts begin appearing at 2 AM, there to greet you when you come bleary-eyed to you computer in the morning. I may develop an addiction Visine after all.

Whatever happens, I know that I’ve spent too much time lately in a haze of one kind or another – grief and exhaustion have defined my life, weighted me down and limited my sense of adventure. Everyone has been urging me to get out and make new friends, which will certainly become more of a priority soon. But first I need to simply be able to stay awake…