500 Miles in Someone Else's Shoes

I've been hesitating on what to write about the Camino. I'd thought the lessons would all become apparent to me along the Way, but to be honest, they're only just starting to peek out of the shadows. It is like the ease with which one can solve the problems of others but not one's own: the issue has to be seen from a different perspective. Now that it has been nearly a month since I finished walking, the experience is finally folding together to the point where I can start making sense of it.

That's not to say the Camino was completely free of life lessons learned. In fact, I ran into an Italian hippie in Galicia who pointed out that the roads were paved with cow shit (I'd noticed) and said he had the realization one day that the more time he spent watching the road to avoid the cow shit, the more beautiful scenery he was missing. I agreed and added that, even if one steps in the shit, it can still be washed away. However, it was the "missing" aspect that I've only recently begun to notice.

I've been working heavily on another blog, Bill Beaver's Best Laid Plans, a travel blog. As I've been writing and incorporating pictures, I noticed how few pictures I have of some areas and how few are actually of higher quality. This may be a standard ratio among photographers, but it has only highlighted what has been missing: time.

There are ten commandments of the Camino. I have been unable to locate a full list online, only references to the list I saw but did not fully process in Castrojeríz, but one stands out right now: You shall not change your pace to match another's.

I had mapped out my Camino to start on March 3rd and conclude on April 8th. A day behind in Pamplona, I figured I would sacrifice a day in Santiago to compensate. Instead, I met two other peregrinos with whom I decided to keep pace, not the least reason of which being that one was close in age to me and attractive. I kept pace with both of them for half the Camino, hurrying through some towns I'd originally planned to explore in more depth. I caught up to my missing day and surpassed it. True, we seldom walked together for long, and by the midpoint of the Camino, both went further than they'd said, and I was left behind.

Someone wiser could have seen these two as faces who had entered and left my life, as is the natural way of things, but instead, feeling hurt and abandoned, I continued at the pace they had set. I made photographic sacrifices: it was too much of a hassle to take out the camera, and I was losing time and distance behind them. What if I didn't see them again in Santiago before they left, four days before I arrived? It became this huge, important matter that I somehow catch up with them, so much so that, even on the days where I decided to go slower, I still put in the same distances and made the same photographic sacrifices. I stopped making friends in the same way as I walked. I became hurried and impatient with people who wanted to chat. I was pushing myself to catch up with someone else's Camino and had given no more than a fleeting glance at my own Camino and what it meant to me. That, at least, has affected my journal and work afterward, especially as I read more into these places and learn more of what I missed.

Now, that being said, 480 miles is a long walk with lots to see and limited memory card space. I was subject to the complaints of my body and the more pressing matters at hand than just snapping photos, like where to rest. However, the fact remained that the complaints of my body were directly proportional to the number of kilometers walked in a given day, as set by my desire to catch up to my past friends in the future. This is a very important parallel to daily life and one that demands awareness.

I'm a people pleaser. After a year in Codependents Anonymous, this still presents a problem, especially in the way I pace my life. Right now, I am unemployed, but my biggest concern right now is not that I'm running out of money (I'm okay for a while longer); my biggest concern is that I will have to justify myself to my mother. Each time I get a text message and see it is from her, even if it's a funny picture of the dog, I immediately get ready to explain my actions in a way that she will find acceptable and thus let me off the hook. It is a mentality that regularly takes me away from what I was originally doing. I'm trying to walk her Camino.

On a project level, for the last year, I have been floundering in a field of non-creativity, owing to one of my college lessons that said something to the effect of "You only have a few years to make it in the business." This thought led me to blaze through and submit my first screenplay to multiple companies, a screenplay with which I was not personally happy but which I thought the readers needed to see soon. I jumped to match their pace and sent them inferior work. I have tried to churn out short scripts for my director friends quickly, the idea being turnover, turnover, turnover. Thus far, I have not had anything produced because the work is hurried and inferior. I'm noticing the same in my photography, ignoring lighting and rushing framing to churn out content before I'm overlooked by someone who does not exist. I am walking the Camino of the professional world.

In romance, well, hell, what haven't I already said about romance? To the present, I've operated my relationships on the idea that my date needed constant entertainment, a complete sharing of interests, and anything else they may request, as soon as they request it. Otherwise, they would leave me behind. And this was important to me. I have put down my own work, beliefs, and interests because someone else, whom I happened to find attractive, found them subpar. I have been walking the Camino of everyone I ever dated and completely lost myself in them each time.

So what now? The physical Camino is over, and now I'm almost a month back in Los Angeles. The question now floating in and out of my head is "How do I get back on my Camino?"

It's not an easy process. I've built so much of my worldview on expectation and assumption that the idea of dropping them is confusing. I've lost so much of my ideation process in the grand hurry that I now have to dig deep in order to get it back. I have to find a job that, yes, will pay the bills, but at the same time, I may also need to be a little more picky with what I choose instead of just picking something to be employed again and not have to explain. Hovering over this is the concern that, if I couldn't figure this out with all my alone time on the Camino, how could I possibly figure it out back in the big city of LA?

The process is already starting. It takes a return to the old world to see what has been picked up from the new one (or is that reversed?). Writing Bill's adventures, above all things, is highlighting how much is lost in trying to walk someone else's Camino. The point is, people will wait if they know it's worth their while, and if not, it is no catastrophe. I have walked to the End of the World, and I remember enough to know that this is not it. So the plan, as of now, is to finish the blog, to focus on writing a good book instead of a quick book, and to find a job that lends itself to both of the previous. It may take until May to accomplish; it may take longer. I have time, and I have my lessons to back me. However, I have to stay on my Camino now. The plantar fasciitis reminds me of that.

You Know... (Part 5)

You know you're getting older the first time you tell your youngest cousin "Geez, you've gotten tall."

Googly Eyes

So I'm back from China. Technically, it was almost a week ago, but you know how things go when you have a thousand pictures to upload, three blogs and a website to update, a full-time job, an apartment to find, and roommates to avoid. This is a comment on the latter, plus a few other things. But to preface this rather gloomy musing, watch this first. If you actually come back to the blog after watching it, well, cool!


Christopher Walken is about as awesome as it gets. When you're done reading here, go watch his dance video to the tune of "Weapon of Choice." But I digress. I'm here to talk about googly eyes. No, not quite the same googly eyes adorning cactus, shrub, and palm in this greenhouse; I mean the principle of googly eyes: inventing a way to know where you stand with people.

After three days in China, I noticed how regularly I was making fun of people, the customs, and especially my other family members. Ninety percent of my sense of humor is based on pointing out flaws in others and exploiting the shit out of those flaws. I try not to make them overtly mean-spirited, but one of the nastier parts of Asperger's, the one that has cost me a lot of friends over the years, is not recognizing when that line is crossed. That's a topic for another blog post. I want to talk about googly eyes.

Snarky remarks, showing attitude, dealing back double what's dealt unto you: these are my googly eyes. By keeping people mildly amused, annoyed, or even angry at me, I know exactly where I stand with them. My default assumption about other people is that they don't like me, even when I do nice things for them; ergo, it's become second nature to adopt behaviors that enforce their dislike so I don't have to play the guessing game. This helps me to avoid more complicated emotions like Love, Empathy, or even Like, and to keep people at a distance with the conviction that, if we were to build something great without googly eyes, I would ultimately destroy it anyway. They who hope for little are seldom disappointed. Therefore, bring on the snarkasm.

My roommates and I are finishing up our time together, and honestly, I can't wait. We were great friends for years, until last November, after an attempted favor went disastrously south, spawned a monster. Conditions were laid out before me; I had to change a number of my behaviors. Having self esteem half the size of a public school teacher's paycheck, I asked one thing in return: tell me when I do something wrong. Since then, we have sunk into a silent war over the dishwasher. I have learned, by watching them silently correct the positions of what I put in the dishwasher, how to put the glasses in correctly, load the dishes from back to front, wash all dishes by hand before putting them in the dishwasher, and avoid washing all plastic items because they'll melt.

The latter is where I'm drawing the line. There is a measuring cup and a spatula sitting in the sink as I type. They have been there for four days. The evening before they appeared, I put them in the dishwasher. Good plastic. Durable. It won't melt; I promise. Yet, after months of ignoring my one condition of verbal openness in favor of passive aggression, I've decided to leave them in the sink. They took them out of the dishwasher; they can put them back if they so desire. These are my googly eyes, and so I know at all times where I stand with them. By the time our lease runs out and I find my own place, I don't expect to see or hear from them again, but I know they will leave with a bad final impression of me.

Is it my fault? Some of it is, but for the fact that this venom has been building so steadily to the point that one roommate hasn't looked me in the eye for two or three months, there's more to this than the position of dishes. And it feeds me. And it feeds my worldview. And it lets me retain my fear of plants, er, people. And it lets me resent them for being. And it keeps me well supplied with googly eyes, for anger is something I understand, and surrounded by anger, though it fills me with endless negativity, I feel secure.

Family Friends

There was a concept discussed in my Religions of China class during my sophomore year of college that really struck me: filial piety. Filial piety is the respect of the child for the parent, and it is one of the utmost virtues set forth by Confucius. Basically, it is the responsibility of the child to uphold the family name, honor the parents, take care of them, and ensure male heirs. I had trouble with all of these, the least reason of which being that I won't be producing any heirs in the near or even the distant future. By societal standards, since I won't be continuing my family name, I will be doing them dishonor. I took this to heart, and since that class, I've felt responsible for the emotional well-being of my parents.

While reading Boundaries has helped me draw the necessary lines and allow my parents responsibility for their own well being, a big boost came this morning over brunch at Mimi's when it finally clicked to me that my parents had a lot of friends and that they could actually go out and do things with their friends and have a lot of fun. This hadn't occurred to me when they announced their joining a wine club. This hadn't occurred to me when my dad texted me pictures from mountain running with his friend. It only occurred to me when my mom announced that she and my dad had been invited to spend some time in their friends' beach house in San Diego, just parents because none of the kids would be available.

It's kind of funny when I think about the little prison of naiveté in which I've kept myself locked for so long. I seriously believed that being an empty nester was the end of the world, and well, let's be honest here, after watching my dad fall asleep on the couch at 7:45, I'd begun to wonder. Nonetheless, the realization that both of them can still go out and have fun, even when I don't call, promises to be very liberating. They want me around; they don't need me around. If I choose not to accept an invitation home, they won't be permanently wounded. It all sounds so silly, but I'm actually excited, not because I want to see my parents less, but because I don't have to bend over backwards to keep them happy.

You Know... (Part 2)

You know your love life has gotten stale when you wake up in the morning with a big hickey on your nose... from the Breathe-Right® Strip keeping your sinuses open.

You know your family knows you well when, after years of turning down alcohol at family functions, you get beer for Christmas.

You know you've been subjected to false advertising when your Bark-Off® ultrasonic device doesn't actually stop the dog from barking, but instead pisses him off and everyone else as well.

See Saw

My cousin sent me a text message the other day, the first I'd really heard from her in nearly two years, and that includes the times we shared Christmas Eve dinner. Apparently, she just wanted to clarify that, no matter what our grandma may have told me, she wasn't really a bitch. Small talk progressed from there, though I was able to glean that the point of contention in the conversation was myself. My cousin had brought up her current problems, and our grandma had countered by saying that I had it worse.

I continue to be astounded by how opposite my life runs to the remainder of the world. When I'm at the bottom of the world and all is doom and melancholy, everyone is suddenly busy with their own affairs, yet when I'm on top of the world and all is sunshine and peaches, I become the talk of the pity papers. It makes no sense.

It may be dependent on who gets what side of me more. I noticed the other day, as my good friend asked me to write a letter of recommendation for his marriage visa, I realized that for the last four months, the only words I'd received about his fiancé were complaints, and consequently, I felt no inspiration to write such a letter, regardless of how much my friend proclaimed his love for this person. Having received only that side of his relationship, I could not see the positive in it. I think that may be the case with how my life comes across to others.

After many years of self-loathing and fishing for compliments in the pity pool, I've found that it is much easier to change one's own attitude toward oneself than others' attitudes toward oneself. One is with oneself for every mood swing and inflection, but it is not so with others. Thus, there is a delay, and all falls to confusion when, on a bright and cheery day, you are approached with condolences. Once things are sorted out, it's hard to be certain how you felt before the conversation took place, and by the time you've convinced the other person that you were in high spirits, their negativity may very well have reversed that, putting you in a foul mood while they saunter off under the impression that you're just dandy. It's a right mess, it is.