Why Power Up When You Can Melt Down?

I am an anxious person. I've started going to the gym right when it opens at 5, because I get preemptive stress about how many people are there by 6:30-7. Like, what if I need to use the squat rack and someone is already there…? Or more importantly, what if someone tries to talk to me?

This behavior is one in a long line of quirks that span back to high school when I was at my stressed-out peak. Looking back, it's hilarious because… why?! I was fifteen and my biggest concern was getting As in geometry and hiding my sexuality (Oh… wait, there it is.)

All this high school stress manifested in the most bizarre ways possible. The one I still don't understand was band class. In band, I developed a mental distortion where I thought everyone was listening to my tenor sax. Yes, the tenor sax, that in a marching band has the melody or lead about 1% of the time. But I was sure that everyone in the band was hearing my horn and sure that I was offkey. (I was actually quite good at the sax and rarely majorly out of tune, so once again… no idea.) When I was sure everyone was listening to me, I'd begin to break out in cold sweats. This created this bizarre cycle where I was sure that people were listening and judging me and also looking at me and seeing the sweat accumulate on my brow and armpits. This is why from 9th-12th grade I wore undershirts beneath my t-shirts; it was not for style, but to try to ward off mammoth pit stains.

I also had this fear of the mall. I think this was tied to the fact that all the cool kids hung out there and I was never invited, so I was sure when I was there with my mother I would be seen and harangued for months.

(As a side note, I think it's important to point out that recently I hung out with one of my old high school friends and they literally said: "Oh yeah, everyone made fun of Tedd all the time. Like 'He's gay' and 'What a gay!'" – So, this was not entirely in my head. You can imagine what the village queer being at Talbots with his mother would have done to my already stellar, fifteen-year-old reputation.)

But the weird thing is that this anxiety overflowed into any and all mall interactions. If I had to go into a store and someone said "Hi" to me, I would go into a tailspin. I couldn't talk. I'd start sweating. I'd go hide in the corner. I wouldn't look at anything I wanted to look at if it was in the line of sight of the individual who said "Hello."

All very healthy stuff, right?

Well, the thing is, as a 37-year-old, I'm a fully functioning member of society with a mortgage, a 401K, and professional job. But I still have MOMENTS.

The best/worst was recently at a Gamestop. Yes. A Gamestop.

The mall anxiety is still present, even when not at a mall. If it's a small, boutique store where direct eye contact is possible, you can bet my heart rate will be elevated. Once again, no idea why. It's probably the same distortion where I think I'm the center of the universe and every worker in every boutique shop questions why I exist… Who knows?

Well, I have recently discovered the brilliance of Gamestop. I have a PS5 and partake in the delightful loop of buying a game, beating it, then taking it to Gamestop to get 30-50% of the cost back to use toward another game. It's ideal capitalism… Everyone wins! (Except, maybe, the poor kid who comes in and buys my used games for like $1 cheaper than the new price.)

I've been into the store like three times in the last six months and I ALWAYS get nervous. I don't know why!!! Every time I go in, everyone is delightful. They ask how I am. They give me tips on games. It's always a great experience.

I'm laughing out loud right now because the following story is so ridiculous.

I went into a store this past week to exchange a couple games. When I walked in, there were two women working and neither of them said hello, which of course started mental gymnastics.

Why didn't they say hi? Why didn't I say hi? Do they think I'm some old weirdo? What vibe am I putting off? Do they hate me?

Once again… I'm at a Gamestop.

This is all going on in my brain, but then my physical body is also not well. This particular day it was 50 degrees and lightly raining out, literally my ideal weather. But that means I had a rough time adjusting from the 50-degree, rainy weather to the 80-degree store. My brow is starting to sweat and pit stains are emerging. I also was wearing glasses, so they were fogging up nicely, too. So, now, on top of the emotional mental gymnastics, I'm also thinking how weird I look sweating profusely on a cold day.

I look around, trying all my adult rationalization to get through this.

No one cares that you are here. You are not the center of the universe. Other people have lives, and you are not the focus.

But, of course, the other half of my brain is like: FREAK. EVERYONE HATES YOUR SWEATY ARMPITS AND CHEEKS! WHY DON'T YOU JUMP IN FRONT OF A TRAIN!

Then, there is that small sliver of consciousness, which is like: Should I get Bravely Default II or this Zelda figurine with my store credit?

Eventually, I have to give up and call it. I had 2 games to turn in for credit, so I get in line and wait to get called.

Of course, the woman working doesn't acknowledge me, but she has been super nice to everyone else. So like the FREAK! Part of my brain is humming along with new fodder: SHE WON'T EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE YOU. WHY IS AN OLD MILLENNIAL LIKE YOU EVEN IN THE STORE?!

By the time I get to the counter, my entire human CPU is overworked and not well and my face is covered in sweat and my glasses are fogged up.

"Hi," the woman says.

My natural, human response is to push my two games across the counter and then say, "I—well—I—uhhh---I wanted you to have these."

"What?"

"Like, I'm giving them to you."

"I'm sorry?"

I think for a moment: "Buyback? I'm selling them.” 

"Ohhhhhhhh!"

"Haha," I say, "Words!"

She goes to town on her computer entering in the information. My brain has finally unified behind the feedback I deserve: "How could you say anything that stupid? 'I want you to have these' followed by 'Words!' Great work, Hawks."

So I stand there (still sweating profusely, mind you) and she starts talking to me again:

"Do you want to join our Power Up Plus program? It's usually 14.99 but it's 9.99."

"So it's 9.99?"

"….Yes." She then reads off the benefits (which are actually great) and I agree.

"That sounds good," I say. Then, because I haven't acted oddly enough, I somehow bring my hand down and crack my knuckle on the counter. She ignored this, but I'm pretty sure she by this point, she thought I was either selling stolen games or a serial killer.

We finally end the transaction and I bumble out of the store, pit stains, fogged glasses, bruised knuckles, et. al.

I emerged in the cold, rainy day and take a deep breath of air.

On the walk home, I contemplated why I had a level-3 anxiety meltdown with a 25-year-old stranger trying to sell me a Power Up membership, and I can honestly say, I have no idea. There is really no reason other than that I'm a human and, therefore, a pile of neurosis and buried trauma that somehow equates to erratic behavior at a video game store. I can say that afterward, I treated myself to pizza.

In the future, I may try to train myself to at least appear human in boutique store interactions. I could enter a Gamestop and say "Hello!" rather than ferreting my way into a corner and sweating. And, maybe, I'll see what my mom is up to. She may want to take an anxiety-laden test run to Talbots.

Vamos a una Aventura!

I recently spent a week with Ernesto’s family in Mexico. His family is amazing and has infinite patience with me speaking C- Spanish. This is often jarring for them as I will be following a conversation and then the second I lose footing, go dead in the eyes and smile benignly as they finish a story.

Ernesto was with his family for 2 weeks before I arrived, so he was looking for a way to take a little mini vacation inside his time home. His friend on Instagram posted pictures from a mountain resort an (alleged) 90-minute drive from his hometown. Yahtzee! We could take a 2-day trip up to the mountains, see some sights, smell some pine trees, see cows or something, and then return to his parents’.

It is not quite what happened.

It started when Ernesto started looking for rides up to the resort. The place stated they could do a pickup from his hometown to the hotel. When he called to plan this, he was met with an “Lol, no. We only do that for big groups.” This led to research for a way to get a car to take us up. The 90-minute trip seemed like something manageable we could hire a service for. Upon further research on Google Maps, however, it appeared that the trip wasn’t 90-minutes but nearly 2.5 hours… less… manageable…

The night before we were about to leave, I was like “So, how we are going to get up to the resort?” Ernesto says, “I’ll order from the app tomorrow.” To which my Type A personality immediately responded, “Oh… that’s the plan?” I was reassured, and we got up early the next day and went to put in the info on the app to request a ride. The app had a similar response to the hotel. It was like, “Lol, no.” No cars were available, and the app didn’t really even want to accept the ride. There was a flurry of conversation around how we could get up to the resort. One, last-ditch possibility was me taking Ernesto’s mom’s car and driving. This is technically allowed with my US license, but well… you’ll understand what a good option this wasn’t in a moment.

Ernesto didn’t give up on the car service. He ended up calling the company and talked to one of their dispatchers. They explained it wasn’t our 9,000-mile trip that was rejected but that the app itself was having errors. The dispatcher was able to manually input the request on their end and Voila! We were in business.

A guy took our ride and we hopped in the car and took off. A gas fillup with a stop to put air in the car’s tires and we jumped on the highway toward the mountains.

I figured this smooth, highway drive would be the bulk of our journey… And was gravely mistaken. After about 30 minutes on the main road, we turned off and got to a kind of gravelly two-lane road. Very manageable.

Then, 15-minutes later, we turn onto a single-lane dirt road.

Sure! Doable.

The dirt road, however, got very potholey. Not just potholey but rocky-with-deep-gashes-due-to-erosion potholey. Our driver’s speed slowly dropped from 80 km/h on the highway, to 30 km/h on the gravel road, to about 5 km as we entered the off-road, mountain path.

After about 30-minutes on this path, we hit a legitimate river cascading over the road. About six inches of water is just rushing over a concrete path. It’s important to note that our driver was in a small, Peugeot. It is very much a two-wheel-drive economy car. And it was now being tasked with fording a river. Our driver gets over it and we get back on the rocky, gashy path up the mountain. At this point, he turns to Ernesto and goes, “Do you mind if I smoke? I’m really stressed out.” This made me feel better, because I thought I was being a very judgmental foreigner thinking that this was a brutal way to get to a resort.

Ernesto immediately agreed to the smoking.

We were still about an hour from getting to the hotel. So, we have 60-minutes left and we are supposedly about 24 km (15 miles) from our destination. That is a lot of time to go not very far. We come to a branch in the road, and the app navigation tells us to go to the left, but the sign for the resort actually tells us to go right. We trust the app and go left.

There are a group of dudes at the bottom of that hill who confirm that we could go either way.

At this point, the road gets worse. Yes. Rocky, gashed, eroded roads got worse. The road actually turned into a trail. Ernesto and I are looking at each other as we are bounced and jostled around the car. The driver is smoking yet another cigarette, and we are all saying prayers that this little Peugeot can make it through this last leg.

Then we come across a collapsed tree. There is a collective gasp as the driver, Ernesto, and I wonder what to do… like, do we try to lift it? The driver, however, notices a tiny trail that goes around the tree, so he gears up his Peugeot and plows through an even rougher, weirder trail to off the terrible, nearly unpassable trail we are on.

At this point, I remember that it could have been my fate to drive Ernesto’s mom’s tiny Mistubishi up this trail. You can imagine my relief, that was not the course we decided to take.

After this final obstacle, we drive for about 20 more minutes and get to the gate of the resort.

When we finally do get to the resort, there is a lot of “I guess we didn’t die…”, laughter, and well wishes to the driver, who now had to do the entire, rocky, eroded, off-roading journey back down the mountain.

It was also about then that the skies opened up and it started to rain. Not bad rain, but drizzle. Steady, steady, drizzle. It was too early for Ernesto and me to check in, so we got lunch at the restaurant and then got situated in our room.

The rain continued, so that by the time we ate lunch, checked in, and were situated, we kind of stared out the window and wondered what to do next. The forecast said that we should have a brief window without any precipitation. And lo and behold, there was! We got to do a zip line through the treetops. This was evidently a gift from the Aventura gods, because the moment we finished the zip line, the rain returned. It once again wasn’t bad, but a nice, steady drizzle. We had raincoats, so we decided to walk around the resort and scope out trails for the next day. After a couple of hours in the rain, my jeans were chafing me, my clothes were all wet, and I was getting very cold.

They didn’t really believe in heat in this resort, so Ernesto and I got back to the room and proceeded to be very cold in this large, lofted room. We both took hot showers, caught up on general Internet activities and tried to make a plan for the next day.

“They have bikes,” Ernesto said. “Maybe we could do that long trail with those?”

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful. We asked the concierge to get the bikes ready for us in the morning. He also assured us that we could find some kind of ride the next day. We called this a win, so after dinner, we read and Internetted and went to bed.

The next morning, we arose bright and early to grab the bikes and hit the trail. The concierge confirmed we had a ride at 2 pm to take us back down the mountain and then took us outside to two very dilapidated and run-down bicycles. The guys helping around the resort took us down and got us air for the tires and tightened Ernesto’s breaks. I realized in the short trip to the maintenance shed that my front brake actually didn’t work. After tightening my back brakes, Ernesto called this out.

“The front brake doesn’t work,” he said.

The guy looks at it, slaps it with his hand and goes, “Yep. They sure don’t.”

"Can you fix it?"

"Lol, no."

I figured this meant the trail wouldn’t be that bad? Like, if he wasn’t concerned, I probably shouldn’t be either. So we hop on the bikes and start riding toward the main trail. The trails to the hiking path are pretty even, so I didn’t notice that I was on a death trap until we got to the hiking trail. This hiking trail just says “Giddyup!” and then takes a huge downward turn. Like you go from lovely mountain jaunt to OFFROAD TRAIL OF DEATH!!! Very quickly. As I go down the first ascent, I realize that my back brakes also wouldn’t… what you say “work.” So I start flying and immediately stick out and start dragging my feet.

Ernesto looks back and stops.

“I think you’re just really heavy,” he says.

We swapped bikes and then Ernesto proceeds to careen down the mountain towards his death. We immediately decide that maybe bikes aren’t the best idea and start walking them back to the resort.

It was still early, so we imagined that we could grab breakfast, walk the trail, and be back by 2 to catch our ride.

We dropped the bikes, had a nice breakfast, and head back to the trailhead for a reboot.

Soooooo… my stomach sometimes has issues. I don’t ever really know what causes them, but I can go from feeling fine to needing to be sitting on a toilet in like 2 seconds. It happens randomly and my body decided that while I am up in the mountains, on a trail far from bathrooms, that it was the time to go.

We were only about twenty minutes into the hike when it happened. I was like “Oh… no…” But I was trying to keep it together, and I didn’t want to raise an alarm. The OFFROAD TRAIL OF DEATH!!! After it’s initial steep-grade plummet, actually begins to go up hill. And, while the downhill parts of the journey made my digestive system scream in agony, the movement of going up was not bad.

We get to the top of a small hill and then start going down again. There is a small gate you have to open and go through, and it was while standing at that gate that I knew the end is near.

“Ernesto,” I said, “I’m going to have to go to the bathroom.”

Assuming this was one of the 900 times I pee in a day, Ernesto is like, “Just go find a tree.”

And I’m like “No...”

And he goes, “Oh no… poopy?”

But it was already too late. I saw a spot in the woods that was open and I took off.

Ernesto yells after me, “Take off ALL your clothes. I’ll go get leaves!” Which was extremely sweet, but I think if I had to have him see me half-naked taking a dump in the middle of the forest, it would just mean we were divorced. Like the horror of that scenario nullifies any kind of nuptials.

So I get into a hidden part of the woods, take off my shoes, socks, and pants and go.

Not gonna lie, it was actually kind of grounding. And the leaves around me were very smooth and actually very nice on the bum.

I finish up the disaster as fast as possible and rejoin Ernesto on the trail. There is a little stream near the trail which I clean up my hands in and then we start the journey.

At this point, you may be thinking, wow…. After the disaster getting there, the rain, death bikes, and a poop in the woods, that’s got to be it for this 24-hour journey.

And you’d be wrong!

We continue on the trail for about 2.5 hours. We (allegedly) have about an hour left, which will get us to the resort about 30 minutes before our ride leaves. All seems well. From where we are standing with 1.5 hours left, I can see the hotel, and the path is turning back down the mountain.

But then we get to a trail sign. I am not making this up. The sign is on a single path. To the right is a steep incline, no trail, and trees, which leads up the mountain. To the left, is a steep decline, woods, trees, etc. and no trail. The sign says “Lookout point right! Hotel left!”

Ernesto and I confer and decide that this sign must be simply incorrect. Because why would the only way back to the hotel force you to sprint through a dense forest down then up a mountain?

It still made me very uneasy, though. What if it was the right trail? We already saw that the road to the resort was a single-lane, rugged, eroded trail of death… What if…?

So we continue walking. And the trail continues to turn farther away from the hotel. It’s getting to be an hour before we have to meet our ride and things aren’t looking good.

I’m beginning to panic but not seem like I’m panicking, so I turn around when we are approaching 45 minutes to get back to the hotel and go “So… should we go back to that sign?”

Luckily, Ernesto was smart enough to pull Google Maps up and he’s like “We should be close…” And he was right. There was a gate about 5 minutes down the path which led back to the hotel. Either way, we got back to the hotel way closer to the cut-off time than we thought. We ran up to our rooms, grab our bags, then go back to the lobby.

The concierge goes “Ready?” And we give him a thumbs up. He then points to a truck in the parking lot, so we go to the truck.

“Wait,” I said, “HE’S driving us back?”

“Yeah,” Ernesto says. “I think his whole family is coming with.”

So we proceed to get into the truck: the concierge, his wife, his son, his brother, Ernesto, and myself.

At this point I’m both trying to hysterically not laugh and also growing very nervous. Because the only thing that could put the cherry on this weekend of woods poops and near-death experiences is literally our car exploding or us getting kidnapped.

I am very happy to report that those things did not happen. The concierge was very nice. The truck was large and handled the death trail with ease, and his son was only 3 and learning Spanish, so I picked up a few Spanish words myself.

We got down the mountain and back to Ernesto’s hometown. After paying the concierge, we grabbed our bags and stood on the sidewalk, waving to the concierge as he drove away.

Immediately, Ernesto turned to me and gave me a high-five.

“We MADE IT,” he said.

Which was a small miracle.

When we got back to his parents’ house, his mom asked us how it was. She asked me, and with my weak knowledge of Spanish, the only thing I could say was “Fue una Aventura.”

Because what is an adventure if not survival and learning a few things? Like Peugeots are actually rugged cars and not weak, French garbage vehicles. Walking in jeans in the rain will chafe the crap out of my legs. Don’t ever take a bike without working brakes. Find smooth leaves when you need to defecate in the woods. Stick to the trail when a sign tells you to run through rugged forest terrain. And (thanks to the three-year-old) shoulders are called hombros in Spanish.

Would I do it again? Lol, no. Shut up. But would I trade the memory of this bonkers/gonzo vacation in a vacation?

Also shut up.

Also no.

The Hiatus

I feel like this entry is the equivalent of an acquaintance asking me how I am doing and me saying something longer in response than just "Fine." But here we are. Below are some updates about what I've been up to during my blog break. Spoiler: I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted to.

Writing

The whole purpose for the break was for me to finish up a better draft of the sequel to Beatrice. I did make a lot of progress, but I'm pretty sure it's still terrible. If any of you ever write a book, you'll understand that the process makes you feel very much like a hormone-soaked teenager where you oscillate between joy, despair, and indifference all in the same 10-minute period.

For example: I posted a quote from the revision on Instagram a few weeks ago. At the time I thought it was HILARIOUS. I now look back on it and consider myself the biggest goober of all goobers for posting the stupidest quote from the book. That is my emotional state.

That being said, I'm hoping to polish up the Prologue to post on my Medium blog in the next month or two. This not only affords me the opportunity of sharing it, but it is also way easier than writing a new blog post for my Medium blog. Cheers to laziness.

Old Books

During the past month, I've also read a few books from previous centuries. (That sentence sounds absurdly pretentious, but I'm leaving it in.)

Mansfield Park – This is a Jane Austen novel. I told my friend I'd read it with her, and regret immediately followed. I have read Austen and enjoy her, but I'm not even joking when I say the dry professor writing the introduction to the edition I read was like "Yeah… this is known as Austen's 'boring' one." It was said in a more academic style, but… woof… Fanny Price is a snooze, and the back cover sells it as a story about a marital affair… But *spoiler alert* that marital affair happens on page 425 of 450. You really have to care about a bunch of twenty-somethings putting on a play in an estate house to connect with it. That being said, though, the book does have lots of those brilliant Austenian flourishes that mark her work – Mrs. Norris and Lady Bertram are hilarious, and some of the lines are hysterical.

Tom Jones – I had absolutely no idea what this book was about for the longest time. It's really hard to describe, though. It's… literally about a life, the life of one dude. I'm only 150 pages into it, but it's wonderful: funny, insightful, and fast-paced. It's one of those books that keeps you reading from one chapter to the next, and I have been shocked at the number of characters introduced that die or vanish; it's a more domestic, soap-operay Game of Thrones. I may lose steam at some point, but, for right now, it's a blast to read.

A Little Bit of Horror

My buddy was a miracle-working-gem and helped me get a PS5 this summer. Because of his benevolence, I got to play through Resident Evil 8: Village during July, too. I like slightly scary things, and this was perfect, a blend of jump scares with campy, over-the-top villains. Tbh, the last Resident Evil game was far too scary, and I couldn't get through it until Ernesto sat by me (not even lying). This one was a fun thrill ride with a lot of great moments, the pinnacle being an all-puzzle sequence in an old house full of scary, vintage toys. So. Satisfyingly. Scary.

*I also want to know that I exclusively played this game during daylight hours. I am that big of a goober-wimp.

The White Lotus

There have been some great shows over the past year, but I loved this one. The tone is odd, which is perfectly illustrated by Jennifer Coolidge's performance which teeters on the brink of hilarious, uncomfortable, and tragic. Somehow this shows rides that fine line throughout, dealing with privilege, racism, appropriation, wealth, and success. This is further captured by the show's theme song, which incorporates elements of lush, island sounds with sonic undertones of dread, sex, and violence. I am not easily impressed by anything, but this show was a wonderful surprise. (Yes, that is another pretentious sentence I'm leaving in.)

Music

I also went to a real, live concert. Weezer, Fall Out Boy, and Green Day played at Wrigley and my friends and I went. I'd never seen Weezer, but they were great; Fall Out Boy is just my fave, so I will biasedly say they were the best; Green Day's Billy Joe Armstrong is awesome, though. He can somehow get 40,000 people to vibe together. That is charisma.

The highlight of the entire show, however, was the high school girl who sat next to us. Fall Out Boy did a weird video sequence for their show. The sound was terrible, so we had no idea what it was about except some sort of forest was involved? No idea. Anyway, my friends and I were laughing about it and the high school girl was NOT having it.

"Well," she said, "if you're Fall Out Boy and have put together one of the greatest video albums of the century, then you can do whatever you want."

She was very intense, and I was very supportive of her fandom.

Montana

Along with consuming media, I also did stuff! Ernesto and I went to Montana for a wedding, and it was amazing. We stayed at a tiny cabin, which I was sure would result in one of us getting murdered; perhaps from each other, as the bed creaked and screamed every time you took a breath in it. The wedding was phenomenal, Glacier National Park gorgeous, and simply getting outside of Chicago was 10/10. Being in the mountains and seeing endless blue sky and towering green trees made me realize that I'm really not a city person – not only for the scenery, but the lower temperatures made my frosty Northern European DNA feel right at home.

That's a bit of the catch up from the last two months. Some progress, some fun, some scares, and some good experiences. Overall, I'd say it was pretty great. Now I just have to buckle down and finish that book draft – summon all my lazy-goober-wimp powers and get'er done.