Bad at Faces

My college roomie (Cade) and I bonded during our freshman year by playing Kingdom Hearts, alternating our mental breakdowns, and watching lots of shows and movies. I'd never been all that into TV, especially the not-cartoons kind, so Cade gave me a visual media baptism, for which I was deeply grateful. It turns out that I like TV.

One show we watched was about a butt-kicking special agent-type woman. The structure of the show alternated between the past and the present, showing the adult woman on modern missions, and then her younger self (I assumed from the context) training in what was basically spy school. I was having trouble following the plot, but things really got messy when present protagonist busted into past protagonist's school.

"What kind of convoluted time travel twist is this?" I exclaimed in disbelief.

Cade was understandably confused. "What do you mean? Character A is rescuing Character B. Where did you get time travel from that?"

And that's when Cade had to explain to me that everything I thought was happening in the story was a total lie. There were no past/present shenanigans, and the people who I thought were the same person (slender build, light skin, long dark hair) were actually entirely separate characters.

"They're different races," Cade told me, baffled by just how lost I'd been. 

And they were. When I saw them side by side, I realized one person was taller and had a different eye shape. As soon as they were apart, even though I knew their eyes were different, I couldn't envision either face. Their actresses could be replaced, and I'd never know the difference.

Soon after this (and several other) incidents, I heard neurologist Oliver Sacks (my idol and potential name inspiration for a future child; may he rest in peace) talking on a podcast about a neurological condition that inhibited facial recognition, and suddenly, things started making sense to me. My years of shyness, of describing my first friend as "the girl with the hair," of my mistaking teachers for each other, of losing the names of people I saw every week at church... All this time, I'd assumed I wasn't paying enough attention, or was rude without even trying to be. 

I had a name for what one of the most frustrating aspects of myself: face-blindness (AKA prosopagnosia, but prosopamnesia may better describe my particular struggle).

When I tell people that I'm face-blind, it tends to cause confusion. The most common question goes kind of like this: "So, you can't see faces? It's just blank skin?" To which I answer something like: "No, it's less like Figure A..."

Figure A

"... and more like Figure B."

Figure B

Except, maybe not as creepy. I can see eyes and noses and mouths. The problem is, once I look away, they are gone from my memory. I cannot picture the person I just saw, and I definitely can't imagine their head at a new angle. I compensate by describing their features in my mind as I look at them (like, "She has a mole above her lip and her eyebrows look like check marks"), but that's a weak fix.

The problem with poor facial recognition is that humans have evolved to rely on that ability to the extent that faces are used as a memory tool for keeping track of the other humans you know. Let's think of your mind like an office:

Source

Yes, exactly. There's a section of your brain office that keeps track of the people you encounter. In this analogy, when you see a face, your little office workers open their filing cabinets, find the file with the matching face on the tab, and grant you access to things like that person's name, biographical information, and shared memories. This doesn't happen for other features, like the voice. You get a slight delay with voices as your workers search their cabinets. No, faces act as a special memory shortcut, and seem to be uniquely tied to recognition and recall. [Source]

Well... for most folks. For people with face-blindness (and there's a spectrum, by the way), the files are missing that useful face tab feature. In fact, there may be no stored information about faces at all. This makes for a messy office environment. When a face-blind person sees a face, their brain office might look a little like this as the workers paw haplessly through unmarked files and try to gain identity clues from much less efficient details, like voice, hair, and stature:

Source

Couple that with anxiety and the following scene may occur:

Source

Luckily, my face-blindness isn't too severe. I usually recognize friends, family, and myself, if I'm expecting to see them/me (though I did recently startle myself by glimpsing my reflection and thinking it was a stranger stink-eyeing me in a McDonald's). People with exaggerated or unusual facial features stick in my mind a bit better as well. Exposure helps, but I require quite a bit of it before anything stays.

Unfortunately, even with fairly mild face-blindness, I'm in a job that often necessitates quick facial recognition, and that's part of why face-blindness has been on my mind so much lately. Assigned seating at school and working in a call center worked in my favor in the past, but now I'm sitting at the front desk of a small business that has a number of clients in a similar age range who could drop in at any time. I've had panic attacks during networking events because I'm so terrified of accidentally reintroducing myself to someone I already know and offending them. Not only that, but because of the intrinsic relationship between facial recognition and semantic memory, I have a harder time coming up with information about the people that I should know. [Source]

I'm nervous about the repercussions this may have for my future as a writer as well. Because I've self-published, I need to handle most/all of my marketing, which, to be honest, involves a lot of schmoozing. I can't afford to let my face-blindness make me shy in settings where I must promote myself or be lost in the crowd. I also can't afford to insult important connections because I can't tell the potential agent I've been chatting with apart from a complete stranger wearing the same blouse.

I could certainly have it worse. There are even celebrities I recognize pretty consistently, though I wonder if that has to do with their celebrity status in the first place (do certain facial traits correlate with fame, either because they're more attractive or more memorable than most?). I question whether I even have this admittedly self-diagnosed condition sometimes.

Until, of course, I lose sight of my wife in the grocery store and wonder if I'll ever see her again.

The solution for now is to work on my other memory tools and, as uncomfortable as this makes me, to be forthright with my acquaintances. My boss has encouraged me to note my face-blindness to people who I may meet again. The risk here is that I'll be taken advantage of (fat chance I'll pick an assailant out of a lineup, for example!), but in my business circles, it's a risk I need to take. 

All this to say: next time I try to introduce myself to you for the eighth time, please know I'm trying my best, even though my best is a cartoon office fire in my brain-pan.

Useful Writing Junk 3: The Virtue of Repetition

Hold up... this is only my third Useful Writing Junk? Yikes. What kinda seat-of-the-pants blog am I running here? Don't answer that. My ego can't handle the truth.

So much in writing (and any creative endeavor) revolves around the ego. It takes a degree of narcissism to say to yourself, "I have a story to tell, and by gum, people are gonna want to hear it." And yet, contradiction of contradictions, creators of all kinds can have such fragile self-esteems. It's what chokes us back and stops us from sharing all the things we want to share. Once we do put our work out there, it's what keeps us clinging to every Amazon review, every fluctuation in website traffic, every offhand comment from a family friend.

Creators need constant reassurance about their work, even when they feel in their souls that their creations are valuable and good. Or, they feel that way just enough of the time to justify making their work public. Need a source on that? Talk to my poor, long-suffering wife about all the times I've snuggled up against her in bed at O dark thirty and demanded to know if she thinks I'm a good writer.

There's a reason for this dichotomy, and Ira Glass sums it up pretty terrifically in a 2009 interview. Check out his words in motion in Daniel Sax's short film (and click here for a transcript and some additional info):

In summary: creators enter the game because they have good taste, but it takes practice and practice and practice for their work to live up to their own standards. 

I have this friend. She is intelligent and observant and creative and has incredible taste. I know her taste is great because of the interesting podcasts she's introduced to me, and the diverse array of books on her shelves, and her strangely intimidating streak of perfectionism while recreating a Bob Ross landscape. 

Why, would you look at that. Source

She's considering writing a story, because she has a number of stories floating around in her inner world, and is ready to bring them out. However, that involves exposing some ego. Like I said, the girl is hecka smart, and knows what she's getting into. She knows that the content she's starting out with will not meet her high expectations. It's frustrating enough to shut down everyone but the most tenacious (and/or most foolish). 

Her brain does to her what mine does to me, and it's what tons of artist brains do. We write a little bit, recoil in horror when it isn't the perfect thing our egos believe it should be, and have to talk ourselves back from the ledge. Giving up on our writing starts to look really appetizing and really safe. It feels better to say, "I'm a crappy writer and I'll never be able to do this" than to say "I need to keep working and working and failing in front of everyone until I like my writing enough not to puke on it."

But like Radio God Ira Glass says, we just need time to catch up. We need to build up a mountain of work, and hopefully within that mountain a diamond will form. 

I had lunch with another friend this weekend, and she mentioned that she and her mother read my first (and currently only) novel, Necessaries. I duck-taped my ego to the back of my mind and asked what they honestly thought. She said it was funny, comparing it to the witty writings of Douglas Adams, which was nearly enough for my ego to bust through the duck-tape forcefield and scream in triumph. But she also admitted that she and her mother could tell it was a first novel. 

And it's true. Necessaries is an open wound of a book, in some ways. When I published it, I knew I wasn't completely satisfied (but let's be real: I'm never going to be satisfied with my own work). However, I wanted to toss it into the world, as if it were an anchor and the world were the sea, and the anchor line was wrapped around my leg, and... OK, so, the metaphor is that I forced myself into the deep end, knowing I might crush my pride in the process. 

But now it's out there. It's the first lump of a foothill on the road to my eventual mountain of work. There are things I love about it. There are many more things that I know I can improve with enough repetition. 

The takeaway on this weird third edition of UWJ (oooge?) is that sometimes the best thing you can do for your writing is to keep doing it and ignore the protests of your ego. Given enough practice and quantity, you'll start to close the gap between your creations and your taste.

I'll leave you with this excerpt from David Bayles and Ted Orland's Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking:

“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

Thanks for reading my pounds of writing, and I hope you go forth and produce pounds of writing yourself.

Bad at Time Management

If I learned anything from seeing the Chicago production of Hamilton this weekend, it's that I should be writing like I'm running out of time. Also, that I should look into bringing back colonial-era fashion. We own two tricornes in our house. Two. My wife and I would rock the heck out of the Winter's Ball.

THE BEAN. AKA, Cloud Gate. Which is a baller name. For Chicago's giant bean mirror.

OK, first, yes, my whole family spent the weekend in Chicago, trotting up and down the Magnificent Mile and eventually seeing a Sunday matinee of that revolutionary musical, Hamilton. I could rave about that for hours. In fact, I already have, mostly in the car ride back. It's a show I want to see over and over again, hunting for the nuances, charting the perfect usage of light and timing, melting at every spectacular segment of sound. It's the best kind of overwhelming.

I'm haunted by the character of Alexander Hamilton, and by his modern day vessel, Lin-Manuel Miranda. There is a dogged, ferocious ambition about them both. I'm jealous of their genius. I can't help but reflect on my own ambitions, and I question whether I have the smarts or the personality to exact the kind of change I'd like to bring to the world. Who will tell my story? More significantly, will I even leave a story worth telling?

"Why do you write like you're running out of time?" Aaron Burr asks of the bulldoggish postwar Hamilton, who churned out essays at a breakneck pace. The answer is obvious: Hamilton is running out of time. We all are. 

OK, I'll take my foot off the gas of the Existential Express. Still, the thought lingers. Am I doing enough? Is the quantity and quality of my writing sufficient? What about my other creative endeavors, like art and music? I could be doing so much more. Right?

It all comes down to time management. As you may have guessed from the title of this entry, it's not my forte. I can't seem to concentrate on one thing at a time, so my way of getting things done is this chaotic, round-robin method of jumping from one project to another, minutes, sometimes even seconds apart.

Here's how my system of time management tends to shake out:

• Read a paragraph of an article about women in the financial sector
• Leap over to my blog entry (on a completely unrelated topic) to insert a photo
• Back to the article for three minutes, the first minute of which is spent rereading the paragraph from my first attempt
• Switch to reading a section of CFP homework
• Read the same page of homework three times in a row without absorbing a single concept
• Get distracted by Pokemon Go, dump inventory of pinap berries
• Google "pokemon go what the hell do pinaps do"
• Realize I've just thrown away gold in digital fruit form
• Comfort myself with a snack (but not fruit, because the wound is too fresh)
• Gaze vacantly at the article I started reading an hour ago
• Abruptly hyperfixate on designing a cover for my next novel
• Stare at a list of stock photos until my contacts dry out and begin to fuse with my corneas
• Fail to complete any of the tasks I've started because my eyes are too blurry to see the screen anymore
• Somehow manage to play Breath of the Wild for two hours anyway

All that nincompoopery, and I didn't even accomplish anything. Yeah, a lot of the bouncing around has to do with my super-intense-focus-on-one-thing or inability-to-focus-on-anything duality. But it also has to do with my anxiety (it always comes back to anxiety, doesn't it?).

I have so much I want and need to do that I find myself overwhelmed at the prospect of prioritizing my actions. There's the matter of keeping the house in order, fixing the little quirks that pop up in it, preparing dinner, etc. Then there's classwork, which is partially scheduled, partially on my own. Then there's writing, both fiction and this blog, and all the marketing that goes with it (that I know I'm not devoting enough resources to as it is!). There's painting commissions, and my interest in writing/producing music with Kelsey, and maybe putting together a podcast. There's networking events for my job. There's exercising. There's puppies. Oh gawd, are there puppies.

I've decided there are two things that I need: a schedule and a kick in the pants. 

In terms of a schedule, I'll have to go against my wacky-inflatable-arm-flailing-tubeman nature and box out my hours. A few things I have in mind for weekdays:

• Use my lunch break at work for reading homework
• Get in my daily PoGo on my way home from work (of course I'm still playing, even after the pinap mishap)
• Either walk the pups or spend some more time reading once I'm home
• Attend my online class when it's scheduled. When it's not, use that time to study or write
• Prepare dinner. If someone else prepares dinner, do some writing or housework

After dinner, it's pretty much a crapshoot. It's generally either bedtime or watch-some-shows-as-a-family time, both of which I'm down for. 

Or...

I could write like I'm running out of time. 

Maybe the Hamiltonian kick-in-the-pants is too much for me to feasibly maintain. Still, I'd like to try. I want to make a mark. I want to produce stories about people who don't get to see themselves in stories very often. I want to bring sunshine to the lives of my family, friends, and readers. I want to give animals good lives. I want to take action against social and political evil. I want to succeed as a financial planner so I can make the future a little safer, a little less scary for other families. 

I want to be good.

Also, I want to hear your suggestions. Organized people: how do you schedule your days? Do you have any tips? I'M IN NEED OF ASSISTANCE.

Alrighty, my scheduled writing time is running out. Until next time!

(P.S.: If you need a kick in the pants, I challenge you to participate in the July Camp NaNoWriMo! Let's get writing!)

Happy Birthday, You Potatoes with Eyes

A simple fact of life: when you get pets, you get weird. Sometimes, you get sharing-licks-of-candy weird, or dress-the-dog-in-a-sailor-suit weird, or talk-in-a-specific-voice-to-denote-you're-speaking-on-behalf-of-your-animal weird. Often, it's all those variations of weird and more.

It's no surprise, then, that Kelsey and I threw a party for our puppies, Billie and Binx, on their first birthday last Sunday, complete with hand-decorated doggy cookies.

They are obviously having a wonderful time and Binx is definitely not crying in my arms.

Look, I never expected to be this kind of pet owner. I love animals, of course. Anyone who knew me growing up can attest to that. But the birthday-cookie-decorating, the puppy-sized "I heart my mummy" Halloween shirts, the way we pack our girls a "diaper bag" for every outing? Yup, we're in deep.

Kelsey and I aren't the only ones guilty of babying our two chihuahua-maltese mixes (malchis, if you're in the know). It all started with Kelsey's mother, Laura. That's right, folks, I'm blaming the mother-in-law, who shares her birthday with the dogs, and for whom I did NOT make birthday cookies. 

Billie and Binx are the only two pups from a litter belonging to Laura's dogs. Around the time of their birth, Kelsey and I had been not-too-seriously looking at shelter pups. In true lesbian fashion, we had our eyes on a sweet pitbull girl named Tulip (if you're out there, Tulip, we still love you and hope you're doing well). But two pups in the hand are worth one in the pound, right? So we agreed we'd take the puppies once they'd been weaned.

And so began the messages, sent on behalf of the puppies to their "parents." Little "good morning, Mommies!" texts with pictures of the hairy potatoes cupped in Laura's hands, that kind of thing. We took it one step further and essentially did a pregnancy-reveal photo shoot with our dogs-to-be's tiny, girlish collars.   

The gay agenda.

My parents aren't absolved either. I've caught both Mom and Dad holding Binx to their shoulders like an infant, bobbing in that soothing, parental way, and stroking her mess of wiry fur. A couple weekends back, my parents, our newly-wed friends Luke and Alé, Kelsey, and I were hanging out at the lake, having a gay old time. We four millennials lounged on the docked deckboat, not quite ready for the chill of the early summer water. On the deck of the cabin up the hill from us, my mother paced with Binxie cradled in her arms.

"She needs grandbabies," Alé observed.

Grandbabies are going to have to wait. In fact, I wonder if the degree of our dog-doting is related to how long we're going to wait for actual babies. When I say "we," I'm also sweeping in the rest of our age bracket, who have a lower birthrate than any previous generation. 

The thing is, I can't see financial stability or affordable healthcare in my future. A huge chunk of my peers are staring toward the same grim horizon of high debt, low wages, and a hostile political climate. Young people who can naturally have children could incur financial ruin with a surprise pregnancy. Queer couples and folks facing fertility-related obstacles can't afford to try for kids even if they could maybe afford to raise them. 

Besides that, I wonder if it's even ethical to bring other human beings onto a planet that's hurtling toward an environmental meltdown. 

But I could be wrong. Maybe it's too early to assume we'll never afford a family. Maybe things on the world stage will turn back around. Before I get too gloom-and-doomy, I have to remind myself that Kelsey and I are just getting started. Even if finances and biology weren't considerations, I don't think we're emotionally prepared for actual baby-rearing. Right now, we have the freedom to work on our own creative projects, to wander off on weekend adventures without weeks of preparation, and to simply waste time on the couch playing video games. 

This is a special window of time in our lives, and my professional-grade fretting about the future isn't doing us any good. I hope someday we'll have the resources, health, and all-around stability for the mostly hairless kind of kiddo, but for now, I'm satisfied with coddling our doggos. 

Happy birthday to the ambulatory cheese curds.

Update and Bonus Fiction: "Air Hunger"

I've been a little quiet lately, huh? There are a number of reasons, I promise, and though many of those reasons are related to the newest title in the Legend of Zelda series of video games, there are a few more legit reasons, too. The biggest thing standing between me and putting out my desired quantity of writing, both on this blog and in my current LGBT romance novel endeavor, is my quest to become a Certified Financial Planner. I've been cramming for my intro course exam, and unfortunately, I'm worried the test is going to go a little like this:

Here lie Abi's hopes and dreams. (Source)

I'm a weird kid with a bachelor's in psychology, a minor in studio art, and a tendency to become emotionally attached to horses in video games. My primary media are the written word and acrylic paint, so the often abstract and number-based world of finance feels especially foreign to me. Don't get me wrong: I love a good puzzle, and I like the idea of helping people plan for their futures, but I'm studying philosophy in a language I never learned. Plus, I'm 88% sure Kelsey and I will never afford things like a house or children or maybe even lunch tomorrow, so what gives me the right to manage someone else's wealth?

But, before I knock myself down too far into the Pit of Unworthiness, I must remind myself that this is an introductory course. This is dipping my toe into the water and exposing myself to the chill of it. Haha. Exposing myself. AHEM. As I've been told, there always must be a first experience, and so much of financial planning seems beyond me right now, I am picking up on things as they're repeated to me, and it's OK that I still have a long way to go.

Alrighty, there you have it, the personal update, AKA: Why Abi Has 30 Half-Written Entries Saved in Her Drafts That She May Never Get to Complete. 

For the sake of sharing at least some content while I work on bigger things, I thought I'd include a rough piece I wrote a few years ago, after my grandmother died. This is half fiction, gathered from several surreal and casually existential conversations with my dad with a healthy dollop of artistic license. It's a bit grim, and I describe my wonderful father in perhaps an unfairly unflattering way for the sake of the visceral mood of the essay. I definitely put my own words into his mouth as well. Sorry, Dad. Like I said: little fact, little fiction. Lotta drama, to be honest.

Without further ado:

Air Hunger

The glass case in the front of the China Inn restaurant contains a mint-in-box Elvis doll in his white bejeweled suit, a series of McDonald’s toys from around 2007, and a set of Star Trek Pez dispensers. It’s easier to look at these American souvenirs than to look at my dad as he spoons the stringy, salty slime of egg-drop soup into his mouth between sentences.

“We call it air hunger,” he says and washes the soup down with Japanese beer served in a Bud Lite glass. “When she was gasping for air right at the end. She made that gurgle-hiccup sound in her throat for a few minutes, remember? Like uururggh-aah… uurrrrghhh-aah.”

When he tilts his head back to imitate death he reveals an impressive forest of nose hair creeping from his nostrils. I nod to signify that yes, I remember. He slides his hand over his smooth head and the harsh lights reflect on the sheen of grease there.

“The body doesn’t want to die, even if you think you’ve psychologically resigned to death. All this afterlife stuff you may tell yourself over the years doesn’t mean shit when you’re lying there about to die in a stiff hospital bed. I think she saw that. Suddenly, it’s not Jesus and glowing gates in your future. It’s nothing. It’s curtains. The end of your narrative. Not even darkness, just void. There’s no peace there, and however much you may be suffering, it must be horrifying to face that sudden stop to everything you could ever comprehend. People don’t want to end.”

The kung pao chicken arrives and we silently scoop our portions onto our rice. My chopsticks fail to snap completely apart but I pretend not to notice. My dad continues with his speech.

“We evolved to sense something bigger out there, some reason for existing. We’re complex organisms with a hyperactive frontal lobe that constantly reminds us: ‘hey, you’re going to die, and there is nothing that you can do about it.’ And so our brain forms a mysterious, wondrous perception of a world beyond our own that explains what we don’t understand and provides a continuation of ourselves once our meat rots away. Religion. Extremely important to psychological well-being and social cohesion. Divisive too, sure. That would have been an adaptive characteristic for a group of people thousands of years ago. Shared beliefs created camaraderie and distrust of other groups with different beliefs was a trait that could save your family.

"She believed in the Christian afterlife, or heaven and hell. Maybe God exists,” says my dad the Sunday school teacher. “But if an actual god exists, why would he need to give a reward to 'good’ people? Or punish 'not good’ people? For eternity? After our tiny blip of existence? That makes no sense. Being good for the sake of an eternal reward is cheap, fake. We must be good for the sake of being good and contributing to the health and happiness of other humans. If you know you’ve done that while on your deathbed, that must be heaven.”

The vegetables are savory but a little tough. A few dark, dry pods are strewn through the meal and when I bite into them they burst with a fiery, flavorless burn on my tongue. My dad collects a few of them in one bite, which he chews languidly as if he were numb to their shock. I can’t think of anything to contribute to the conversation. Much of Christianity has labeled me as inferior because of my gender and damned because of my sexuality. It’s a relief to hear my dad discount that belief system. It means I’m spared and that those rules are as stupid as I always hoped they were. But for some reason I feel hollow.

“Now Hell,” says dad gravely as the fortune cookies and check are placed before him by a white woman in athletic shorts, “I know that exists too. Hell is when you’re lying in the certainty of death and you realize you’ve failed completely at the human mission. You’ve done nothing of significance to anyone. You are ending forever and you’ve left no act of kindness, no great thoughts, and no legacy behind. You’ve made no impact in all your years. As you die, you remember the stories you didn’t tell, the helpful impulses you ignored, all the days you spent doing nothing. You amount to nothing. You are a carcass still hungry for a little oxygen, but what does it matter? You are void. And that is Hell.”

My dad reads his fortune to himself as he chews the cookie. He then tucks the paper into his breast pocket and pulls out his wallet to pay. There is no fortune in my crushed shell.