Bruce’s Online Journal

“I write because I don’t know what I think, until I read what I say.” — Flannery O'Connor

Week of March 12, 2001

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March 14

Shitty First Drafts.

If I ever give up the metaphor and name of Scenic Route, that’s the name I’ll use for the journal. Shitty First Drafts.

And I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense at all. It’s something I need to remember here. Lemme ’splain.

My AA friend lent me a book titled Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. Just before a chapter called “Perfectionism” is a chapter called “Shitty First Drafts.” In it she says that all good writing begins as shitty first drafts. No one that she knows turns out really good stuff on the first pass. She says it’s a writer’s blessing that no one ever gets to read those shitty first drafts.

Unless, of course, the writer is an online journaler.

It’s something I could never quite put my finger on. Every journal I read goes through some sort of filter in my head that makes me overlook a lot of the writing itself. Instead, I look for and latch on to the unpolished, uncut gems I find in amongst the slag.

Yet I can’t quite do that with my own writing. The times I’ve been the happiest with the journal have been when I just say to myself “fuck it” and click on the “Publish” button. The times I’ve been most frustrated have been those days, weeks and months when nothing ever seems “good enough” to post and I drag it to the Recycle Bin.

I’ve got to back off there. Like Lamott says in her book, I lose a lot of good stuff when I don’t give myself permission to save those shitty first drafts. Mixing metaphors, I many times throw out the baby with the bathwater.

It leads me to frustration on two levels. First I’m upset with myself that I’ve written such dreck, and second I’m upset that I’ve tossed out some perfectly fine ideas that just needed a bit of reworking.

I somehow have bought into the fantasy that it’s only good if it comes out perfect on the first try. I need to lose that somewhere and go back to posting everything I write. True, it can lower some people’s opinions of my writing. So what? The upside is that others may discover gems I’ve missed and I would hope they’d let me know.

In an earlier chapter of the book, she writes:

E. L. Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass on the way. You just have to see two or three feet in front of you.

I’m not writing a novel, but that strikes me as a good way to think about life. All too often I won’t start on something until I can see the destination and everything along the way. Since such a view is impossible, the effort has been wasted. Unless you count making myself frustrated and miserable; I’m frequently too successful in that.

I have to give in more often to that same blind faith, that same hope that I had when I started recovery. I couldn’t envision the destination. All I could see, quoting Marlowe, were the “miles to go before I sleep”. And it was a daunting view, but I had faith in the journey and the outcome. Thus far, that faith has proven to be well placed.

To merge the metaphors, when I have to push on through the darkness, looking inward at the pain of my past and so on, I need to be concerned only with what I can see in the headlights. What lies beyond is simply the rest of the trip. There are no dragons lurking there. When I have the luxury of traveling in the light, I need to slow down, observe and then write a shitty first draft.


Blind faith is something I’m blessed with huge quantities of. (Yes, I know it’s grammatically incorrect, but I’m going for the shitty first draft here, okay?) I guess I discount its importance because there’s so much of it available. Despite my steak of cynicism, I remain an eternal optimist. And it gets me in trouble with alarming regularity.

For example, when I looked at the weather forecast yesterday, I saw it all, overcast, high in the 40s, windy with rain in the afternoon. Since, at 7:00AM it was sunny and in the upper 30s, all that stuck in my head was “high in the 40s”. I dressed for that, got wet and froze my cajones off.

I decided I didn’t need to wear longjohns since it was going to be warm. I considered wearing them only because I was down to my last pair of jeans, the ones with so many holes they’re practically perforated. (My Saturday night gotta get laid jeans.) I wore a regular shirt over a regular t-shirt and threw on my brown suede jacket. I even put on my sunglasses. It was a wonderfully nice morning with all the promise of an early spring day.

Just before group ended, it began to rain. In buckets and horizontally because of the high winds. I hadn’t even thrown a hat into my backpack. I got drenched walking from the Chemical Dependency building to the Mental Health building. I had an hour to kill before my psychologist appointment and I used the time to dry off and recover from the catastrophic hairspray failure I’d experienced in the wind and rain.

The walk from Mental Health to the main entrance of the hospital is all indoors. The covered entrance concentrated the wind, which all but whistled through the holes in the crotch of my jeans. My exposed knees turned a bright cheery red as I stood outside having a smoke while I waited for the bus. Still, I knew I could warm up in the bus on the way downtown.

I was wrong. The bus either didn’t have any heat, or the driver had shut it off. And the last available seat was next to a window that didn’t quite close all the way. Arriving downtown, I was chilled to the bone and had ten minutes to wait for my transfer. Of course the wind whipped right through the bus shelter.

Looking through the window of the shelter, I watched the wind blow a rivulet of water uphill on the sidewalk. Okay, it wasn’t much water, more like several layers of damp stacked one atop another. And it’s not much of a hill, just the slight pitch of the sidewalk to the curb. But the wind rippled the surface into what I was sure would become whitecaps as it pushed it up and away from the street.

It took me hours at home under the blankets to get warmed through.

And that’s why I have trouble with blind faith and hope when it pertains to me, and why my streak of cynicism is generally directed only at myself. These pages are filled with examples of how my hope springs eternal for others and how no matter what happens, that hope is never quashed. I need to find a balance between hope and cynicism in both myself and in others.


Finding balance between any two or more things is a tremendous chore for me. The twisted thinking of addiction pops up everywhere. To illustrate, I had a lot of fun at the euchre tournament this past Saturday afternoon. When the day was done I wanted nothing more, after my nap of course, than to play in another one. The theory being, if one’s good, two’s got to be better. Hell, let’s try one a day. And twice on Sundays.

That’s the voice of my addiction. And that’s what I mean when I say that for me, addiction is a disease of more. It doesn’t matter if it’s a chemical I ingest or something I do. If it brings even a tiny bit of pleasure, all I want is more. Left to my own devices, I’ll seek that more until I either suck it dry, become bored, or find something else the trips the more switch.


$99.99. It sounds like something on sale “for under a hundred dollars!” It’s what my grocery bill totaled last night. I couldn’t do that again if I tried.

It would have been more fun had I been paying cash, or even with the old style paper food stamps. Hand over $100 of government printed paper and get a penny in change. Instead, last night bits and bytes flew around the financial system debiting one account and crediting another.

Last month Monroe County went on the electronic benefits system they’ve been using downstate for over a year. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but the state did something right. They hired Citibank to handle the accounting and telecommunications.

The same old benefit card I’ve been using, now works like a debit card. I can go to any ATM to check my food stamp balance or to collect cash benefits (if I had any). At the grocery store I just swipe my card and the amount is deducted from my food stamp balance and the remaining balance is printed on the receipt. It works fine for me, although I imagine there are those who can’t remember how much they have left in their account.

The reasons for changing to an electronic system, besides saving money on printing, distributing and redeeming the paper food stamps, are to cut down on fraud, abuse and the secondary economy that runs on them. In fact, that secondary economy is the main thrust of all the documents I’ve seen heralding this new electronic era of government benefits.

That secondary economy is, of course, the drug trade. Nearly every drug house in town will take payment in food stamps at 50¢ on the dollar. You can sell stamps for cash at the same discount. So on the surface, an electronic system looks like it will curb that sort of abuse. It won’t.

There are still two holes in the system that the government can never plug. First, anyone can use your card. Just give them the PIN. Second, at many drug houses you can trade stolen goods at 50¢ on the dollar. Those stolen goods include food. Steaks, frozen shrimp and lobster tails are perennial favorites. There’s nothing in the electronic benefits system that could ever stop the person who’s so inclined from purchasing those items to trade for drugs.

On the other hand, the electronic system makes it difficult for those legitimate users without transportation to the major grocery stores. Many corner stores used to take the paper stamps. Many of those same stores can’t take the electronic equivalent because they can’t qualify for, or they can’t afford a credit card reader. Further, it completely kills off one entire segment of the food sales industry, the farmer’s market.

My ex, Vince, and I once had a stall at the Public Market. In fact, he still does. Anyway, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning many people try to stretch their grocery budget by going directly to the growers and wholesalers at the Public Market. Some farmers were registered to take the paper food stamps, and they did a booming trade with families on welfare feeding themselves and their children.

I haven’t been to the Public Market since the new system began. But I know many of the growers personally. I doubt that any of them are willing to shell out $700 for a cellular credit card machine, plus the monthly account fees and the per transaction fees just so they can continue to take food stamps. And even if they did, I think many of their customers would assume they didn’t. They’ll take all their business to the large grocery chains and pay the higher price leaving the growers with lots of unsold produce.

I’m not saying the new system is all bad. But it’s not the Pollyanna solution the middle and upper classes think it will be. I feel for the farmers who will see fewer sales. I feel for the families who will pay higher prices in the supermarkets. I feel for those who will go hungry because they can’t remember how much they have left in their account. And I feel for those who will have to pull stuff out of their cart at the checkout when they find their hunger has exceeded their budget.

And the drug houses will carry on, same as it ever was.

March 17

A bunch of us planned last night to go to the movies after the meeting. The meeting ran late, the movie was ten minutes earlier than we planned, and the pizza took a bit longer than expected.

So we went this afternoon, and saved $2.50 on the matinee. The film we saw was Pollock, about the painter, Jackson Pollock. I already knew something of his story, exceptionally gifted, exceptionally troubled, bi-polar alcoholic. Remind you of anyone? I used a quote about Pollock for a time on You Know Who’s web site when it graced this server. I even used a Pollock-inspired background graphic.

The film lives up to its reviews. It’s been nominated for two Academy Awards and it deserves more. (The web site also deserves awards for Most Annoying Use of JavaScript Popup Windows and Most Gratuitous Use of Flash. Thank heavens I don’t have my sound card drivers installed. Who knows what sort of annoying audio it plays.)

So much feeling is expressed in so few words of dialog; it’s amazing that the film was made at all. Screenplays are sold on the basis of dialog. Ed Harris directs and stars. As Pollock, he captures the feelings, expressions and intensity so well, that I found the hairs on my arms standing up in recognition.

Yes, the film works on several levels for me. I’ve always admired Pollock’s work. But all I had ever seen was his later stuff. I’d never seen his early works from before he developed the style that made him famous. And I never knew his wife was a pretty good artist in her own right. The film is interesting enough for me on that level.

Then there’s the madness. The film’s portrayal of life with an exceptionally gifted, exceptionally troubled, bi-polar alcoholic is right on the money. I could really relate to the position Pollock’s wife (played by Marcia Gay Harden) was in. I’ve been there too.

But remember, I was dealing with my own issues, mental health and addiction, at the time as well. What I saw today helped me to recognize how much my own madness contributed the whole mess I lived through with YKW. It confirmed for me what things were personality quirks and what things were symptoms. And it confirmed for me how the naïveté of the healthy sometimes does great injustice to the ill.

The film stands well on it’s own merits. See it.

But for me, it’s portrayal of motivations, feelings and emotions between the two lead characters helped me to understand my own feelings for YKW and his issues. While it increased the depth of my feelings for him, it reinforced for me that, like Pollock’s wife, I need a lot of space to protect me from the inevitable. And perhaps you’ll understand what I meant all those months ago when I said that I mourn what might have been.


I’m starting to get antsy about several things all at once. I’m not sure if it’s the time of year or the time of life.

Part of it is the weather. We’ve had a scattering of warmer days lately. I want to get out and walk more, but just as the sidewalks melt clear, we get more snow.

The work thing is bubbling too. As of this coming Monday I can apply at a state sponsored vocational assessment and training agency. I still don’t know what I want to do. And my mind goes completely blank when I try to think of alternative career directions. I’m hoping they can figure out where I have other aptitude, present some choices and help me make those decisions. Yeah, I know it’s a lot to expect of a government agency.

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m getting out of the winter dressing mode of sweatshirts and sweater and wearing regular shirts more often, or if it’s a sign that I’m ready for work. For the first time in over a year, I’ve found myself lately, reaching for a shirt pocket whenever I need a pen.

And I’m a shirt-pocket pen snob. It’s as much fashion accessory as it is a writing instrument. Anything plastic simply won’t do. I dug deep on Friday and replaced my Cross pen. And of course the enameled, chrome or 10K gold ones won’t do either. The 23K gold is simply electro-plated. That’ll wear off in time.

I chose the 14K gold one, just like the one it replaces. The store was out of stock. So I asked if I could take the one in the display case. They had no problem with that and they knocked 10% off the price before I could even ask if they would. I took it as a sign that it wasn’t a foolish expenditure.

Up to Wed

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