(4) Optimal Aging Editing & Pints of Guinness Make Me Not So Strong As I Would Like

Sitting on Kits Beach in the shade, I feel content but once again I'm bridging some sort of gap between the tourists and the locals. I wish I could talk to the dudes playing guitar at the log next to mine, but there's a level of social awkwardness I'd just rather not reach today. Later on I will have my second meeting with an "Optimal Aging" doctor, and I'll hopefully begin my careers as an editor with his work. The fact that I will actually have an editing assignment this afternoon, and that someone will actually PAY me for it is entirely baffling. Last time I was in his office he talked so fast, I barely got a word in edge-wise. Maybe he just likes his editors to be the quiet, mysterious type? Hopefully I can maintain that illusion today.

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The illusion was successfully maintained, as always, and the IDEA of this job is so exciting that I've felt giddy for two days straight now. One small problem exists though: How can I DO this work??? If it was straight up editing I would probably squirm a bit every morning (I'm a natural procrastinator, after all), but I'd get it done. It would be slow going, since I'm not used to this kind of work, but I'd work a few extra hours without pay until I was used to his style and all that. But this... well, I'm hard-pressed to even describe WHAT he wants me to do with the material, let alone actually do any work. I know I should probably just e-mail him and ask him what the fuck I'm supposed to do with this mass of material, but I can't figure out a way to do that without sounding moronic. That in itself is a project.

I hate being new at this whole... life... thing. I'm glad we moved though, because at least I'm testing the waters and learning a bit about myself. If we had stayed in London I would be bored out of my skull in my crap job, not learning anything at all. Graduating university and leaving London was like being re-born into the world.

Now if only I could convince my body to start anew as well. The chemical reactions in my brain are what's making this project more difficult. My brain is freezing up in terror, as usual, but half of the material I'm working on is about not letting fear control you.
Seriously, this job is amazing, but I'm already fairly certain that I will blow it. Fuck! I don't even have a chair to sit in! How am I supposed to convince MYSELF that I'm an actual editor/ghost writer?  It wouldn't feel real, even if I HAD a chair.

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I found a chair (or stool, rather) in a pub downtown, because as Tom Gabel put it so well, "Pints of Guinness Make You Strong." I figured I'd test this theory, since I continue to fail at doing any sort of work for the doctor man. I actually went downtown for a career/job search lecture at the Vancouver Public Library, since I still need a "real" job and I'm also failing at acquiring one. As the librarian spoke I felt my hope slowly renew itself, but I think that was mostly due to the fact that the library itself was so exciting to me. Ok, so it's not quite the New York Public Library, but it's still an impressive work of architecture, and it is certainly filled to the brim with comforting, oh-so-lovely books. Just being in a legit library was exciting, until the seminar ended and I realized I wasn't any closer to to this "career epiphany" I was hoping to have. After wandering aimlessly around on the literature floor I headed back to the bus stop in defeat.

That's about when I decided to test this Pints of Guinness theory. The pint sure felt good, and I even met a couple of people while consuming it. Half of the point of the pint was to relax, and the other half was to show off my Florida ID one last time before it expired. Of course, being in Canada and only two days away from my 25th birthday, no one asked to see my ID when I ordered. I did get the chance, however, when the dude next to me struck up a conversation about Guinness, which led to a discussion about Against Me! and the aforementioned song, which led to a discussion about Florida. I took this opportunity to show my Florida License, as planned, and the girl he was with subsequently admitted that she was also from Florida. A Toronto born Floridian to be exact, which sort of blew my mind because that is more or less the same story I tell.

So I learned that pints of Guinness not only make you strong, but they also induce random, twilight-zone-esque coincidences. I gave the girl my number and told her to call me sometime and then I packed up my copy of The Song of Roland and left. I know she'll probably never call; the whole situation just sort of felt like a last desperate grab at the past. While we were talking about all those inane things what I really wanted to tell her about was giving it all away, both literally and metaphorically. Like when I gave away my green card just the other day (See post "Alien Signature Here____" for a full report of that incident). I mentioned it, but she just smiled politely and congratulated me. I guess that's the sort of thing you can expect when you reach out to random strangers. Her friend was an idiot anyways. When he asked me what the Song of Roland was like I told him it was an epic. He asked me what made it so epic. I replied, "It's an epic..."

I'm probably a snob.