Bleach Mode
Last post of the decade! WooOoOOOoooO!
Nope. That's not what this is gonna be. Life didn't really get better, it just got different. The last two entries here were super depressing so hopefully some kind of a yearly wrap up will bring out the better instances of 2019 instead of the two that really destroyed me.
In 2019, I only had to go to immigration one time. One. Time. Last year I think I had to go eight or nine times to the decrepit little office on the outskirts of Brno where the clientele mostly looks like the third class cabin from the Titanic. Lots of phrase books, interpreters, people getting handcuffed, some people who just said "fuck it" and went down with the bureaucratic ship. After solidifying my position with IBM, I got to drop off my contract with a shit-eating grin and not care so much that I was getting yelled at in Czech. Again.
Getting yelled at in loud Czech is a common facet of an immigration office visit. Most employees there can actually speak English, but they won't. Passively armed with the pseudo-Czech I know, I was able to slide my IBM contract under the glass and give a woman who has zero time for me a quick smile. Pieces of paper were stamped and I signed where I was pointed to sign and I left. Twenty minutes, in and out, and I'm good for another two years. Usually this process takes a lot longer.
I'm not going to say my position at IBM is easy. The job itself is actually quite simple, but the communication with my team and other technical teams based around the EU can be challenging. I spend my time double, sometimes triple checking the phrasing of emails or the instructions on a task just to make sure the air quality of my snark is perfectly clear. A lot of my time is spent in Excel or IMing other folks on my team because we all have our headphones in but refuse to have a real conversation with the person sitting across from us. I really can't complain. I have good relationships with my superiors and I've only been late once in the last 11 months. I'm a 10 minute bus ride from the office and I can work from home two days a week if everything isn't really crazy, but January 2020 is going to be really crazy.
I also got to visit Seattle and Tucson in November like I did last year. I'm the only one on my team not taking any vacation during Christmas so instead I took two weeks during my birthday and Thanksgiving to go home. This trip was fraught with travel-inducing headaches but I was able to schedule time with the people I wanted to see and I got to headline my first club back home. I think when I come home next year I'm going to try to record my first album, but that's gonna depend on how much stage time I can get in Bratislava or Olomouc or wherever I end up performing beforehand. I have the material, but like last year, I was spending a fair amount of time on stage figuring out what jokes actually worked in Bratislava but not Portland, OR. I have a new closer in the US, but not in Brno unless I want to waste time explaining who the Zodiac Killer is (or isn't.)
In Tucson I spent time with my dad, step-mom, and uncle for some nuclear family time. My uncle gave me my favorite gift and it came with an unknown story. Before getting a job building Boeing planes during WWII, my grandfather practiced his machinery skills with small projects. He made a silver ring in an Art Deco style that my uncle has had for a number of years, and at Thanksgiving he passed it on to me. I haven't taken it off since I got it. In a way it's incredibly reflective of my grandfather's personality: simple, nothing flashy, but purposeful.
When I returned home to Brno, I came home to Gossamer, a cat I adopted in May after Patrick died. Gossamer's very different but equally cheerful and entertaining. His name was initially "Ragy," translating to "rags" in Czech. I sat around with him for a day before deciding on Gossamer, the delicately named big red hairy monster from Looney Tunes. He's a younger cat, definitely in his terrible twos. He's got a lot of energy but he has calmed down to snuggle since the weather got colder.
The woman who fostered him got him fixed and cleaned up and medicated after he had been on the street for an undetermined amount of time. When he was found at my neighborhood Tesco, he looked like he had just gotten sober so I knew we'd get along. She thinks he's a flame-point ragdoll because of his markings and serious floof and size. It's hard to imagine such a cat to be alone on the street. I'll never know his full story, but some people I've talked to actually don't think he was homeless and that perhaps he was abandoned, or a family moved and didn't take him. It makes me really sad to think about, but I'm happy I can give him a good life and all the little crinkled up paper he can handle.
Right now I'm writing this and Gossamer is playing with his new favorite toy, a condensed ball of his own hair. He's a little crosseyed and it makes me chuckle. He can't not look like that. Sometimes I ask him if he's a nerd and he has to look at me with his goofy expression. He's an amazing cat, a good companion. He likes stealing my glasses off of my face, headbutting me, and waiting outside my shower to get little drinks out of my drain.
One thing I'm going to try to do more in 2020 is travel because I'm a white woman in her 30s. It probably sounds ridiculous for a person living in Europe to say that, but it's true. Most of the travel I did this year was mostly little 18-24 hour trips for comedy, there and back in one night. These were mostly jaunts to Poland, and while I love Poland, I was technically at these places for work and wasn't taking the time really needing to relax or experience anything culturally significant. So I put down some money, something I hardly do because I'm...what's a good way to say this, thrifty as fuck, and I bought at ticket to Pearl Jam and the Pixies in Italy next summer.
After doing some research, it turned out the show at the Ferrari autodrome was the cheapest option because all of the tickets are general admission. The shows in Vienna, Budapest, even Krakow were more expensive and they didn't give me the option of exploring uncharted territory, so off to Bologna I'll go next July. I'm happy because I'll be doing some traveling just for me. Not for stand up or holiday obligations, but just for me. The concert is on a Sunday night so I'm debating about taking the whole week off and doing some exploring in the Balkans or something. I dunno, I have six months to figure it out but that doesn't mean I can't start the incessant, impulsive planning meant for late spring.
Now that I have some decent job security, I've been able to be more flexible with my appearance. I spent half the year platinum blonde and half the year bright pink. I got my hand tattooed and I put my septum piercing back in. I'm basically the person 23-year-old Liz wanted to be. I honestly don't notice myself looking that alternative except for when older Czech people stare me down with the same eyes that have witnessed multiple political revolutions. My look definitely isn't conducive to the semi-conservative atmosphere in Brno. In Prague or Vienna, I'm more anonymous, part of a seamless crowd. Now if I see people staring at me, I stare back at them because I'm no longer a shy, language-less foreigner.
So here's the official nonsense count for 2019:
Three notebooks/jokebooks
Six pairs of headphones
Two vaporizers
Three hair colors
Two bouts of serious depression
Six flights
One break from Facebook
Seven countries visited
Two new medications
Eight phone chargers
Five vet visits
Three books read
One minor heartbreak
Two refrigerators
Two new flavors of Skittles
One political demonstration
Zero hospital visits
Pretty good overall. The 2020 election will most likely decide where I'll be spending my time in 2021. But if I have to stay here, it's not the worst thing in the world. I'd actually prefer that. In terms of "resolutions," which aren't really resolutions but a romanticized list of things I'd like to accomplish once I get my shit together, there's only a few:
Write poetry more regularly
Pay more attention to gut instincts
Take some kind of Czech language course that isn't just Slavic memes
Continue good control of my blood sugar and a1C (6.3!)
This isn't too crazy of a list. I think I'm intentionally setting the bar low knowing I'm in a funk right now and I've yet to come completely out of it. I have the whole year to work on it once we stop hibernating.
Come Back to Me
Hi, bee bum. Today I brought you home.
My apartment is so quiet without you. Ever since I moved here I've always said I just wanted three things: my job, my apartment, and my kitty. For some reason the universe is set on me only having two of those three things at a time, and your absence is enormous. It hurts. It stings. It slows me down. I didn't have a life in the Czech Republic without you until last week. Your back legs became paralyzed from an embolism in your heart. As soon as you shouted, I knew something was wrong, and when I turned on the light, you were giving me the most pained and panicked face. Your big bunny feet, the ones I like to put on my face and kiss when you're sleeping next to my head, they were lifeless and floppy. While I rushed to get things together to take you to the emergency vet, you dragged yourself across the bed and hid in my pillows. I've heard of dogs doing something like that, where they isolate themselves in their time of dying. But with you I didn't know.
Once we were at the vet, your diagnoses was quick. The veterinarian told me it was very unlikely you would recover from your paralysis, and if you did, you would be in tremendous pain and in need of therapy. Until she was explaining to us what was happening, I hadn't heard of the condition but apparently it is common in cats. They can go into cardiac stress but normally paralysis and heart issues aren't completely symbiotic so they aren't immediately recognized. You were so very fine at bedtime that it was hard to believe such a tremendous event was happening in your chest. But you were crying, weak, and I found out you only weighed seven pounds. You used to be such a tub, throwing your weight around and being not just "a little heavy" as one vet called you, but actually fat. In the end you were so small. You shrank and I could completely hide you in my lap while you were napping and I was working. The vet said they would do what they could, but your outlook was bleak. The last time I saw you before being drugged was looking out of your little spaceship bubble at me. I promised you I'd be back no matter what.
I took the first operating tram at 5am back home. Everyone else on the tram was dressed and going to work, but I was wearing your favorite sweatpants and a beanie and sunglasses and had clearly been crying. While everyone went to work, I went home to wait. The four hours you were in treatment were painfully ambiguous. I kept whispering come back to me in hopes a very unlikely divine intervention would manifest through one of your nine lives and reanimate your little legs so you could shove them into my face while I was sleeping. Come back to me, please come back to me.
I called the vet at 9:45am. I was supposed to call at 10am but wanted to know how you were doing, and your prognosis wasn't good. The treatment given to you didn't work. The vet said these events usually end up in the cat being put down. Her English skills put my future actions in a number of different ways over the course of the morning. Forcing you to sleep. Euthanizing you. To be brought down. I made her promise not to do anything until I got there.
In our last moments, you were so drugged but all that mattered was that we were together. You responded to my voice and my hands near your head, but your vision was distorted. I smelled your forehead. Even now I can smell that clean, natural scent because you took such good care of yourself. I kissed you and cried. "You smell like a kitty," I used to tell you. Your arm was bandaged up in green medical wrap holding in two different IVs. And then I apologized relentlessly. I told you I loved you and that I would take you with me everywhere. I told you I would love you forever and that you'll always be my bee bum. I had thought in your old age your decline would have been more visible or at least forecasted. But you were fine, and then you weren't.
The vet brought you out onto the steel examining table. I had never seen you so out of space but so close to me. Your body was so limp and small, so delicate and fragile. The vet sedated you first and you went completely limp. I had no idea if you could hear anything I was saying but it was the same things I always told you before bed or when I left for work. And then I said a final I'm sorry. I was stroking the soft spot behind your ears when the vet checked for your heartbeat.
You were gone. In a span of seven hours, you woke me up to get a snack and then you were gone. The vet was very patient with me while I sobbed and made arrangements to pick you up in eight days at the crematorium. And I went home. And I had no idea what to do. I didn't want to go home because you weren't here. I had your collar around my wrist and your spaceship with me on the bus ride home from the vet. I looked disheveled and uprooted, freshly beamed down from an undisclosed location. Occasionally I would catch a glimpse of myself in a window reflection. Sulking, heavy, shocked. Who was I looking at? I didn't know, but neither of us had you.
I didn't realize how much I talk to you. I still make suggestions. Let's get ready for bed. I expect you to be in certain places. I make space in bed for you. I quickly pick things up off the floor when I'm cooking because the jury is still out on if garlic is bad for cats so I want to be safe. I expect cat litter to get stuck to my feet when I walk into my bathroom. There's no little bell wandering around in the middle of the night, jumping up to where you're not supposed to be or swatting at old receipts stuck underneath my bureau.
I also didn't realize how many people care about you, people who haven't met you or seen you ever. But they know you through me because you are my life. There are still messages I haven't responded to because there are so many. People told me they felt like they knew you even though you've never met. You were a character, my ham, my little bee bum with the biggest personality. You were the perfect cat for me. You were so many things. I have only seen you hiss one time in the eight years I've had you. You had to get a few teeth taken out a few years back but you recovered and it gave you the best little lip. You never gave me any problems, at least any problems worth complaining about. Occasionally you would sing the song of your people at 3am for a snack or decide it was time for third breakfast while I slept in late so you'd bite my nose or paw at my hair, but you never complicated my life or made me wish you weren't in it because now you aren't and it is unimaginable without you.
You were my best friend and today we are back together. I took a bus way out to the sticks. The crematorium is located in the middle of a bunch of farmland and rundown refineries, scrapyards and warehouses. It was the very last stop on the 40. I hadn't been out that direction since I had to pick up a UPS package shortly after I arrived here and I ended up at a bus stop that shared its border with a yard full of emus and other leggy birds. The bus went through huge fields of yellow, past big trucks with the flat faces, around potholes that were more of an obstacle than a nuisance. At the last stop, I was the only person on the bus. From the bus loop, I had to walk about a half mile up a frontage road with chemical factories and automotive automation software companies. I remember thinking this wasn't the place for my blood sugar to go low so I let myself run high before leaving. I walked up the road full of potholes and found the crematorium. There was a Japanese bridge half eroded in the front of the building with some unattended construction materials and loose scraps from an abandoned project.
I entered and introduced myself and said I was looking for you.
Hledam moje kocka, Patrick?
The technician took you off the shelf. Your urn was in a cardboard box meant for transporting fragile goods. She showed you to me, a modest wooden urn that was far less flashy than some of the other receptacles available. You were the most valuable cargo I've ever had anywhere, my handle with care, and here you were. Your approximate birthdate and day of passing is on the outside. Your name is spelled correctly and not the Slavic "Patrik." I picked you up and felt the weight in my hands, how the shape and material was different but it was still you in there. The receptionist spoke no English but took her time with me. After figuring out some billing mistakes, I put you in your cardboard box and walked back down the road to Brno's most convenient bus stop. Once I stopped to wait, I asked you if we should go home. I waved to the emus on the way back.
You were my home. You are my home. You are my companion, my bestie, my ride or die, my emergency contact, my everything. I promised you I'd never go anywhere without you. You made me want to be a better person. You made me responsible, reliable, dependable. One of the reasons I'm sober is because of you. I told myself I might not always have you but you will always have me, and as long as you have me, I'm going to be the best person I can be for you. I still think I have to run home to you, and after work last week, it was incredibly hard to come back here. But you're back with me now. You came back to me.
I love you forever.
The Gun Show
I've never held a gun. I did "riflery" at Camp Orkila as a kid, but when you hand a bb gun to a 13-year-old wearing a tie-dye shirt, there are a few confederate soldiers who might like a word with you about using the term "riflery" so casually. Or maybe not. The 1860s weren't exactly a hotbed of safe and harmonious activities for Americans.
If my circle of people encountered someone with a gun, we would shout "Oh fuck, someone with a gun is here" and not "Hurray! Someone with a gun is here!" I grew up in a family who didn't have guns and they had their reasons of not wanting them around future generations. My parents were both within six degrees of gun experiences that weren't pleasant, stories I didn't find out until I was almost 30. Me personally, I've never had a bad experience with a gun that would have influenced my opinion about them one way or another. Experiences were exposed to me, however, that turned me into someone who isn't necessarily anti-gun, but someone who is anti-certain-type-of-person with a gun, or anti-military-grade-weapons-available-to-the-general-public. The instances I'm speaking about are the mass shootings at schools, concerts, and nightclubs, places where people of any background or history should feel safe and not feel scared of other Americans who turn their political beliefs into violent cries for help. One might say the new millennium hasn't exactly been a hotbed of safe and harmonious activities for today's Americans, either.
When I was teaching last year, I taught one of my classes about the second amendment, the one where some 18th century guys with syphilis said that we (men) had the right to bear arms (shitty muskets) as long it was well regulated (not regulated at all). I explained that the legal tenets of our society had not properly forecast the changes in technology over the next 250 years. We no longer fight each other with cannons and death does not arrive via guillotine. I suppose a group of five cannons could be well regulated. You push them off one ship and onto another. You have to pull it by a rope. It's tough to lose them. You'll always know if it's loaded, god forbid a cannon gets into the wrong hands.
This piece of law hasn't aged gracefully and its benefits are often the first straws at which people grab when defending their rights to own a gun. Some people own guns simply because they can. I can legally own a horse, but I don't. I'm sure there's some research out there proving that horses are more deadly than guns, but I'm not clinging to colonial law for my right to own a horse. This is the conversation I imagine people having when making a case for the second amendment:
"I'm going to eat some ice cream, mom!"
"Not right now, Johnny. You'll spoil your supper!"
"BUT DAD SAID I COULD!"
That's what people sound like, and when I say "people," I mean large white men with a particular rural accent who are somehow deathly afraid the government is going to go door-to-door to make them surrender their semi-automatic ice cream. I'm also not trying to get into a huge debate or an argument about why certain people act the way they do when they're in possession of certain guns. When I spoke with my students about the gun rights in the Czech Republic, they seemed supportive of their laws, probably because there are only an average of 165 gun-related deaths per year. We often equate gun-related deaths to homicide, but this figure includes suicides, hunting accidents, accidental discharges, or improper training. We were able to hold a civil discussion about our countries' differing laws, our views on violence, society, social constructs, and stereotypes, and no one lost an eye or got blocked on Facebook. It didn't boil down to the popular argument of guns vs. mental illness or white men vs. everyone else. Most of them supported the idea of owning a gun simply because of the stricter laws in the country.
During this class, a student of mine asked me when was the last time the United States had a school shooting. This was the day after Parkland last year. Now I have to clarify which mass shooting I'm talking about. Was it the outdoor concert? Was it the college or the high school? Was it the synagogue or the mosque? There are too many to keep track of. I asked my students when the Czech Republic's last school shooting took place, but they told me they've never had one.
The Czech Republic has a population of ten million people and it boasts as having less strict gun laws than the rest of the EU nations, but when compared to American gun laws, they're actually fairly comprehensive. Multiple tests need to be passed, you can only own certain types of firearms, and education and licenses must be acquired prior to purchasing a gun. You have to complete on-course training and clear a medical check. I explained the complexity behind gun laws in the US as we have 50 different states, meaning there are 50 different sets of laws and ordinances that are sometimes fully enforced or not enforced at all. Czech people are always mystified by the size of the United States. 350 million people are spread out across a country whose width is equal to the diameter of the moon. Imagine how many guns are in a place like that.
I don't know a lot about guns. To be honest, mostly what I know about guns comes from the ballistic analysis scenes in Law & Order: SVU. I know about muzzles, gel tests, accuracy vs. precision, the components of a cartridge, etc. But I don't know what they cost, which states have which laws, where to acquire one in which country. I am not the most knowledgable nor the most confident when talking about firearms. I can identify guns, as in I can stand here and say "that is a gun." That's the extent of my education when speaking with people about their collection, arsenal, bunker, stockpile, or whatever.
About two weeks after losing my job last November, I got a call from a Czech "engineering company" I had applied to for a social media management position. He spoke to me in Czech and I greeted him with much poorer Czech, but we continued the conversation in English when he asked if I was American. I told him I was from the States and had been in CZ for a little over a year. He explained they needed a marketing specialist who would be in charge of their social media presence and content creation. I have eight years of experience and they needed someone who spoke English, so it seemed like a perfect fit. But then he asked me, "So let me ask you, how do you feel about guns?" I laughed nervously and gave him a non-answer. "Well I'm American, so..." He laughed and didn't inquire any further. I couldn't tell if asking my opinion about firearms was job-related or the fact that he found out I was American, and as you know, every American is from Texas and obsessed with guns and 1980s butt-rock. He gave me instructions on what to do when I arrive and I scheduled the mysterious job interview into my phone.
The next week I took two buses way out to the suburbs of Brno. This part of town is mostly factories, warehouses, sanitation facilities, the old airport, giant smokestacks, highways with no crosswalks, weird smells, and trucks with flat faces. I'm no stranger to the public transportation system here and I'm accustomed to looking slightly disheveled whenever I show up somewhere, but I tried to look my best. I wore my nicest flannel to cover my tattoos and my thicker boots to stay warm. After arriving at their facility, the sprawling warehouse campus had no reception but instead had a buzzer with a secured door. I hit the button and introduced myself in bad Czech. A voice responded in actual Czech and buzzed open the door.
There wasn't much to see at first. There was a drop ceiling and some ignored dusty ficus plants in the lobby. I looked out the windows while the sun set behind the smokestacks across the highway I ran across to get there. By 4:30pm Brno was dark but busy with commuters on trams and buses. I toodled around on Facebook and checked the forecast when a guy came out of an office and introduced himself as Jan, the man I spoke to on the phone. He asked me a few questions, like how long I've been doing social media work and how in the everliving fuck did I end up in Brno? The answer to the latter has a million different possibilities and the explanation is usually longwinded, but I've learned to stick with "I traveled through here ten years ago and really liked it" and not "well this tanned tangelo asshole got elected and he threatened to take away my health insurance and the cost of the life-saving medication I'm on has risen 600% in the last 15 years and I couldn't risk it so I moved to your former communist country for the socialized healthcare, cheaper cost of living, and the chance to live for myself and no one else."
Jan asked about my working status in the country and I explained I could work on my trade license as my visa will be held through IBM, but he didn't tell me much about the job aside from most of the work could be done offsite and I'd be able to work remotely. The nice part about working in social media is that it can be accomplished from anywhere: you're no longer tethered to an office with specific work hours, especially when working for an international company who operates through multiple timezones. While Jan was taking some notes about my trade license, I noticed the pen he was writing with had a bullet casing as a cap, but I smiled and kept my hands in my lap to hide my knuckle tattoos. Jan ended the last sentence he wrote with purpose and led me into another office to meet the owner of the company. I still wasn't sure what it was exactly they produced in their huge warehouse, but as soon as I stepped into the owner's office, it was clear this was not your garden variety Central European engineering plant.
Henrik was an Austrian man who commuted to Brno from Vienna. He drove a BMW and donned a style of simplicity and efficiency. While he finished a phone call with his feet up on his desk, I examined the elk head hanging on the wall behind him. The glass coffee table to my left was stacked with magazines featuring tactical gear and survivalist advice, and the long gun mounted above the door to his office had been recently dusted. He ended the call with an auf wiedersehen and brushed away some loose bullets on his desk to make room for his phone. We greeted each other with a strong but appropriate handshake.
Like Jan, Henrik was curious how I ended up in Brno, but he wasn't satisfied with my "ohh, you know, I just wanted to live somewhere else" answer. I talked about my employment history, my writing skills, my social media work, my "comfortability with public speaking," my life in Seattle, and my knowledge of firearms. While Henrik's company did indeed specialize in engineering, they specifically manufactured firearms. Brno does have a rich history with the military and the weapons developed here to assist with imperialism, so the idea of a functioning firearms manufacturer in the Czech Republic wasn't completely absurd.
Henrik was impressed with me. He said the difficulty they've had with social media is that gun production must be treated as a sensitive process: it is way more delicate than marketing lightbulbs, charcoal toothpaste, or mobile phones. But he figured with my past experience combined with my native language and commitment to research about an industry on which I knew next to nothing, I was a good fit for the position. I discussed my freelance rate with him and what sort of hours I would be looking at per week, and he told me he'd call me the following day.
I bundled myself up and left for the bus stop. I was happy I had a job with however many hours it would be, but I also didn't feel wildly comfortable discussing the nature of my new position with anyone. I told my parents I got hired with "an engineering company." Prior to making this post, only five people knew what I was doing a few evenings a week while waiting for my start date at IBM. In someways it felt hypocritical to be anti-gun in a very gun country while working for a gun company. I was mostly afraid of the frustration or backlash following the announcement of my new employment. I felt like I was betraying my own beliefs, or that I was so anti-American while living in America that I became even more stereotypically American while not living in America. I should be doing the social media work for a cat cafe or a goat yoga studio or a food truck. Somehow this felt wrong, but also kind of exciting.
Before I made it to my bus transfer, Henrik called me and asked if I could come back the next day. One of their partners from Bahrain was coming in from Vienna and he saw an opportunity to introduce me to some higher ups. The company was known on an international scale but I didn't realize how quickly I would encounter it without even leaving Brno. Henrik had only just met me an hour ago and he already wants to introduce me to others? I was proud and impressed with myself, even though I was a little fish in a big pond filled with guns.
Mr. Aabir reminded me of Frankie Sharp from Wayne's World in that he looked like he'd own a stretch limo with a huge antenna on the trunk. At my height, the Bahraini businessman had a messy ponytail and a giant ring on his pinkie finger so I figured he was doing okay for himself. Mr. Aabir didn't know what to do with me right away. He appeared skeptical and hesitant to have a small white woman with tattoos representing a company in which he held more than one stake. Henrik introduced us and the three of us sat around a conference table. Mr. Aabir took the remote for the television and muted the stream of Fox News. He seemed to know his way around the office, or at least seemed to be the type of guy to make himself comfortable wherever he is. Henrik gave him a recap of our talk the day before but his business partner decided to continue the conversation with me in depth.
"What do you think the gun problem is in America?"
"Can you clarify 'gun problem?'"
"Americans are known for their guns."
"...I don't think it's a matter of the guns necessarily but more of the hands they get into that are contributing to the violence."
"So you agree that guns aren't the problem?"
I was mildly annoyed but tried my best to maintain professionalism during this meet-and-greet turned sudden political discussion. I continued while trying to keep my new job but still be a faithful bleeding libtard.
"I believe...that the laws in my country did not accurately anticipate the advances in technology or accommodate the changes in our political culture. Unfortunately the documents which give Americans the freedom to own guns also protects them from scrutiny after any tragedy."
Mr. Aabir cocked his head to the side while looking at me, like a puppy trying to find its good ear.
"Do you own guns?"
"No."
"Did you in America?"
"No."
"What do you know about guns?"
Fair question.
"I'm familiar with the measurement system and some of the terminology, the main manufacturers--"
"What do you really know about guns?"
"...I'm familiar with the measurement system, some of the terminology." At this point I was more about people accepting my answers and not about giving them what they wanted to hear but this was just the beginning.
"We have a YouTube channel with videos and some of them have proven to be controversial."
"Controversial how?"
"Marketing firearms can be a sensitive issue. How would you go about marketing a controversial product?"
"I would strive to focus purely on the mechanics and selling points of the firearm while avoiding politics and current events."
Mr. Aabir didn't seem satisfied, but Henrik was intrigued.
"One of our videos has 20,000 comments on them. How long would it take to go through and delete all of the unfortunate and irrelevant commentary?"
I was suddenly doing math I didn't think I'd ever be doing. If I'm on the page of a YouTube video, and I'm scrolling at .035 miles per hour, and each comment takes .5 to 1 inch on my 13 inch screen, how long would it take to completely fabricate an answer to this question?
"If it was just the one video, I could probably do it in a few hours."
"Really? Just a few hours?"
"Many larger companies with a social media presence do not police online commentary as they know everyone on the internet has an opinion. Engaging or making an attempt to alter genuine interactions can sometimes create even more controversy than the original statement."
Henrik nodded and took some notes, and Mr. Aabir confirmed what he wanted to hear.
"So if there were...idiotic comments or something of the nature in the comments, it would take you half a day to delete these?"
"Roughly. Again it's best to let other individuals stir up the controversy rather than engage in it ourselves."
"Liz has a good point," Henrik took over. "We simply want to create and monitor our online presence, not create and monitor the controversy of other users." While he seemed to back me up, Henrik also seemed unsure of what he was saying. Mr. Aabir shrugged and told Henrik they would talk. He retrieved an actual briefcase, shook both of our hands, and left without saying anything. Once the door to the conference room was closed, Henrik seemed relieved. "Don't mind Mr. Aabir. He wants to control the internet. Very unrealistic." I smiled. It felt nice to be defended even after my "non-biased" beliefs had surfaced.
My first real task for the company was to do research. If I was going to market firearms successfully, I needed to know more than just the ballistic information Olivia Benson discovers halfway through an episode. As I gained access to their existing accounts and examined their current status, I clearly had a lot of work to do. Most businesses realized the eventual migration towards social media marketing about eight to ten years ago. They created Facebook pages and neglected Twitter accounts. This company had some catching up to do, and two of my previous jobs had also brought me in at the 11th hour for one of two reasons. Sometimes a company realizes they should have been doing this all along, and they need to get caught up while their product or service remains relevant, so companies either a) hire someone to get them caught up because they don't have the time but are aware of the tasks and measures that need to be completed to be successful, or b) they have no idea what to do and I need to do a lot of hand holding to get them up to speed. And with this new position, I discovered it was mostly Part B.
In the beginning I still didn't feel 100% comfortable with what I was doing. I didn't tell people about my new job and if I did, I chalked it up to doing freelance work for an "engineering company" like I stated earlier. No one really questioned it because a Czech engineering company not utilizing social media doesn't sound like a completely farfetched idea to begin with. As time went on, their demands for success turned from reasonable to unrealistic. Some companies have asked me "We JUST started our social media page last week. Why haven't we gone viral?"Viral. This is a word I've learned to hate. If you look at the reasons behind why some content went viral, it's because it caters to a mindless interest everyone has at the time. Viral content usually fits into a few categories: new media released by a celebrity, an unconventional marketing tactic used by a popular company, a local feel-good story that turns national, or a fad, ie Harlem Shake, where companies make their own version of the original content and it turns out being unnervingly more successful than the first. And then there's the meme.
Memes are mindless and sharable which contributes to their massive reach within a short time. Memes are visual and they don't need to be read for more than five seconds. They're a disgustingly cheap way to attract an audience because platforms like Facebook make it so easy to digest and regurgitate. You can never run out of content to post on social media if you're a business as long as memes exist. Unfortunately for the firearms industry, a gun meme not only will dumb down the serious nature of the business, but it could ultimately destroy it. Mr. Aabir was right: the firearms industry is sensitive and it needs to remain that way in order to be aware and successful of their customers. You've probably seen a second amendment meme and haven't really thought about it until now, but it was likely successful because it was a meme. If you took that same thought or premise and applied to a regular text Facebook post or a tweet, it would remain innocuous, or at most it would be liked or favorited by your one gun-nut friend.
Guns are already viral, which makes them difficult to market. The conversations and controversies are already in front of the internet, especially during a time where the school shooting has, and I don't want to say it, become commonplace in the United States. When a new contender for gun manufacturing enters the arena, they want the attention that Beretta or Glock have been receiving. The problem is that Glock and Beretta abandoned the analog ship ten years ago and have cultivated a social media following based on their legacy, the functionality of their products, and the name itself. Henrik would occasionally say to me, "Why does Glock have two million followers on Facebook and we don't?" And it took everything in my power to not respond with, "Because we're not Glock."
The main pistol we sold was a 7.5 field pistol that sold for $7,500. Even I knew that was a lot for a handgun. The company wanted to emerge internationally as a prestigious manufacturer from a historic area of the Czech Republic. The problem being is that buying a handgun means going through an authorized dealer. You can't buy one off of Amazon and it'll be on your doorstep in two days. It's an experience that must be tested and compared. Only 1,100 of this field pistol are being produced, thus the price and its availability as a limited edition item. The price wasn't the only factor discouraging the public to engage with the gun. There was only one location in the entire United States where you can purchase it: Florida.
With featured posts on Fridays and Sundays, I made sure to post at internationally friendly timezones for our worldly audience, refrain from engaging with politics or sassy internet comments, and explained the social media process thoroughly as I was executing it. There were times where I needed to explain things such as a hashtag or "trending," which is what I referred to earlier as hand-holding. In order for the company to understand or consent to my process, they also needed to fully understand the content, language, and strategy I was implementing. There were a few times I got frazzled phone calls asking for a further explanation about a certain verb I had used that didn't quite translate into Czech or German. One time I brought them back from the edge and had to ensure them that the verb "produce" was not the final nail in the firearms industry coffin when describing our business.
Over time the demands increased and the expertise I had gained over the last eight years was frivolously dismissed. They were incredibly displeased that our paid ads were against Facebook's advertising community guidelines, something to do with us advertising a really expensive firearm to different demographics in the United States. Back in November, I was hired to heighten the presence of a firearms manufacturer, but in the end, my advice for success was no longer needed. Henrik called me and explained they were going to go with someone in-house to do their marketing, which prior to my hiring, didn't go that well as I understand it. We were polite and cordial to one another, he thanked me for my time, and he proposed that if we cross paths in the future, we should go out for a beer. I chuckled and said "sure."
During my time with the company, I grew their social media presence by 700%. They now have a steady stream of likes, followers, and shares which is all a business needs to get off the ground. I don't feel like I compromised my integrity by working for a company in a controversial industry because they were directly in need of my experience. I don't think my work contributed to school shootings or ended the lives of countless Americans. I took a job to tie me over until I started full time at IBM, which has been going swimmingly well. My parents now know what I've been doing for the last four months, and they both agreed it's a really bizarre situation, especially after I explained the quirks and frustrations of the industry and being micromanaged. I now have a somewhat useless knowledge about certain handguns, which I will put into good use by not owning a gun. The experience wasn't totally pointless. What's pointless is selling a $7,500 firearm in the state of Florida.
You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
[Spongebob narrator]:
Ahh, the first post of 2019.
I'm a week in to my new job at IBM and OH HOTDOG is it different in a lot of good ways. I haven't had an actual committed schedule since October and once again I've turned into that semi-responsible person who cooks their lunch the evening before. Sunday evening food prep has reminded me I can't cook at all. I mean I can. But it's a real grab bag of "frugal fusion" since I'm not getting paid until next month. I've been freelancing on the side to help pay for my morning muffins, but I'm happy to be in an environment that isn't up my ass as soon as I walk into work.
To be blunt, working for AT&T was a fucking nightmare, a just a huge fiery butthole of furious idiots who faxed us copies of gift cards as a presumed form of payment, ran over their dropped telephone line with a lawn mower, or fought with their sister-wife about if Big O Tires offered a cheaper tire rotation than Les Schwab. I originally got hired to become a manager, but I was moved onto a team which was led by a woman who turned out to be vehemently anti-American. I've encountered some misogyny in the workplace, but never before from a woman. Our small team consisted of some folks from India, Scotland, Bosnia, Australia, and Azerbaijan. It was mandatory to speak English at all times, even if it wasn't your native language and I was one of three native speakers on my team. My manager would often coo and blubber over the two Scottish guys, who were polite and soft-spoken on the phone.
I was the only American who was actually speaking with other Americans, and as a result, I was often told by customers south of the Mason-Dixon that they were so happy to talk to an American, or "someone they could understand," or "someone on shore." I had the easiest time of anyone doing tech support because I was helping people I understood and they understood me. There was even a number of agents we could transfer the customers to if they wanted to speak to someone between Canada and Mexico. One of the education modules I had to complete early on was about the NFL and college football because half the calls we received between September and January were about bowl games and schedules which hasn't exactly branched out into the European mainland. But this ease wasn't pleasing anyone. With the full use of my vocabulary, idioms, and nuances unknown to the ESL student, I could express empathy and connect with people more so than any other agent in that call center. I was getting paid more because of it and at some point, I believe I became a threat to those around me, especially my Egyptian manager.
It eventually got to the point where I would be at work for less than two minutes and was already being berated by this woman. She couldn't not say anything condescending or insulting to me. It was always something about having my bag under my desk (for easy access to food and insulin) or about not adhering to the strict schedule by 30 seconds. Then it was becoming obvious to the rest of my team this woman had somewhat of a vendetta against me. I was the best person on my team so why was I being singled out? She would pull me off the phone because she "didn't even want me on the phone right now." The last time I interacted with her she took me off the phone unannounced and yelled at me for an hour and 20 minutes. She came with such hits as
"How did you even get this job?", "I see no evidence that you've done this job before",
and the crowd favorite, "Do you even know what you're doing?"
Instead of offering me ways to improve the already satisfactory calls I was receiving, she insulted my intelligence. I don't even think I answered those questions. I just nodded and shrugged, the only war cry I had left that wasn't NSFW.
What are we going to do, Liz? "
I'll tell you what I'd like to do...
I caved at that point and took a 45 minute break instead of my mandatory 15. I went outside to smoke and text my mom about the situation. I was incredibly close to walking out of the job I had fought so hard for. For the eight months before this, I had been tied up with immigration, translators, bureaucratic meetings, notaries, certified stamps, seals, and approvals trying to get this job. I was already sick and I'm guessing the stress of this made me sicker and when I came back to work from being ill, I was immediately fired on the day before my 10-day paid vacation started. My hair was falling out. I was incredibly depressed. Most of the information I had been told about the job for the last eight months had been a lie. I was given false information numerous times, information I had to confirm with four or five different sources before I landed on the right answer for questions I didn't think I'd be having to ask. This sudden firing also made me have to delay my trip to Seattle, pay British Airways more money, and once again rely on my parents for help. When I asked why I was getting fired, they answered with "legally, we don't have to tell you." Oh cool, doubling-down with the word "legally." I grabbed my shit from my desk and was escorted out of the building. On the way down to the lobby, I told the HR representative that AT&T was discovered to have donated money to white supremacist political campaigns in the United States, and it probably would be a good idea to have an actual American on staff to handle those complaints instead of some people who think the entirety of our country is Texas.
One week later, I interviewed at IBM with a group of four women, three of whom I'm working with directly. The bureaucratic immigration process took roughly eight weeks instead of the usual 20, and even with a small delay, I was able to start on time, get dependable information, and adapt to their much more professional environment. To put it this way, IBM is more of a democracy and less of a regime.
The more and more information I found out about the job, the more relaxed I became. For the last week I've been busy but I haven't been stressed out. I'm at work by 8am and home by 5pm. It's still light out upon my departure and my return. I'm not tethered to a phone so now if I want to get some coffee or some water or go to the bathroom, I don't have to send out a literal signal to all of the managers to let them know where I am for the next two minutes. It's quiet. No one talks to me. Most of the time everyone leaves me alone. At one point one of my managers told me she was worried I'd think the job was boring because I'd be "doing the same thing a lot." I would much rather do the same thing day in and day out with all of the possible repetitive motions than have someone standing over me while I'm trying to tell someone else the reason they can't watch TV right this minute is because there's a Category 4 hurricane barreling towards their quiet little beach community.
But most importantly, I'm happy that I'm learning. I'm doing data security, and without going into all of it, I'm making sure the correct people have the correct access to the correct things. Most of this last week has been spent reading PDFs, doing educational modules designed for the company, and quickly learning an atrocious amount of acronyms. There's no life or death situation and the work is fairly straightforward once understood and experienced. Yesterday was the first day I did any actual work and I got excited because I was finally contributing to the cause of keeping information safe! Or something. This job can take me places. I feel like I'm learning and by the end of the day, I feel accomplished. You can only restart someone's modem remotely so many times before you want to blow your brains out. What I'm doing now is current, freeing, and relevant. They're excited to have me on the team and I'm getting the impression I'm doing well for someone who is only five days into the job. I could tell it would be different solely by the on-boarding process they took me through prior to my first day. It was precise and clean with no room for error. Their HR speaks English incredibly well so if there were any complex questions or concerns, they were answered with clear confidence.
I have 23 days of vacation this year including some national holidays thrown in. I'm more giddy than I usually would be about this because my mom just retired. My happy beautiful mom had her birthday last week and retired the following day. She's worked so fucking hard (sorry, mom) for me, herself, her family, her friends, her former president, the amazing women in her life, and for the causes she believes in. Her last day at her job was my first day at IBM, like she tagged me in to take over so I can take care of her. What this means is more opportunities to travel in the future. I'm not chained to a specific timeframe and neither is my mom. She's looking forward to going to New Orleans with Max and there may be a summer trip to Mallorca taking shape. AT&T had such a hold on me where I had to bail out of so many things and let go of opportunities I wasn't sure I'd ever have again. I lost $450 on accommodation for Edinburgh Fringe and I could never make travel plans due to imprecise information. But now that it's the beginning of 2019, I can fuck around with the dates that are free to me and it'll make my family more flexible in the long run for our plans. I also like Facetiming my mom on a weekday where she's up making coffee and I'm home from work with a snuggly kitty who I whine at if he whines at me.
I'm also trying to be more careful with my money. 25-year-old Liz would have gotten money for Christmas and then immediately booked three tattoo appointments after buying a flat of Coors Light. 31-year-old Liz went to the Czech dentist to get fillings in her teeth replaced because the last dentist she saw before she left the country did a real shit job. Actually, it's because of this heinous contraption that my dental health was compromised:
This is a Herbst appliance, which I'm assuming was named after a German guy named Herbst. This car engine of an orthodontic apparatus adjusts your jaw to replace the need for elongated headgear use or potential surgery. It seemed like a good idea. It sounded like a good idea. But while my jaw slowly shifted into place over 18 months, my dental health was completely destroyed. No matter how diligent I was with a toothbrush, floss, toothpicks, those rubber pokey nibs on the end of toothbrushes, or mouthwash, there was no way to get that actual good clean feeling Orbit always talked about (no matter what). It was like having two pistons on both sides of my mouth, digging into my cheeks and chugging along as I spoke. A few days after getting it "installed," I went to a friend's house for dinner and ended up crying out of embarrassment because I couldn't chew anything . I wanted to be polite and finish what was in front of me but there was this shiny metal shame protruding from every breath, bite, or word.
When I got the thing out, it was a miracle.
I could yawn and not have it get jammed open like a stupid baby bird! I could chew gum! I could brush not the best but better!
After the entire ordeal, my teeth were straight and white just in time for high school. I was no longer an awkward gawky kid trying to be cool while also trying to find out who I really am. But shortly after this I discovered that having the equivalent of a pawnshop renting out my mouth weirdly created some permanent damage for my now structurally compromised teeth. I have severe cavities in the four points where the Herbst appliance connected to my teeth. Had I known this was going to cost me thousands of dollars in dental work in the future, I would have foregone the process of slightly moving my jaw. The dentist I saw prior to leaving Seattle did a shit job and I think I still owe them money but now they're in the same category where I placed my student loans: if I'm not home, I'm not paying for it.
I imagined the Czech dentist to be like a scene from the Saws or Hostel. Deep underground in a putrid stoney cavern, a man with blood for sweat and a metal ribcage would saw my jaw out of my head while I screamed and you wasted $14 seeing a shitty movie. But instead it was...calming. The practice I went to was owned and ran by two Czech twin sisters who get a fair amount of business from expats since they both speak very good English. Initially when I walked in, I thought I had the wrong place. Their reception area was shabby chic and for sure belonged on a Pinterest board somewhere in the Bible Belt. The floors were a gray wood and the furniture was clean, white, unassuming flatpack. They even had a chrome espresso machine on top of a bureau in case the mood struck while you were waiting to get your teeth cleaned?
The equipment, technology, and bad music was the same as every other dentist office I had been in. The procedure of getting numbed the fuck up and then drilled into was no longer a foreign or scary concept to me; as a tattooed diabetic person, I don't exactly fear needles. The cost is also roughly the same IF you had insurance in the United States. This wasn't covered under my state health insurance here, but it was still less expensive than what it would have cost at home with no coverage. A week later, I can feel my upper lip and I can drink hot and cold liquids without flinching my entire face. My next goal is to get my eyes checked because my prescription has drastically changed since I've been here. I started wearing my glasses more often but when I came into IBM on my first day as a platinum blonde with Gryffindor glasses, I needed to reintroduce myself to a few people.
It's about 9:30pm here. Tom Brady is a good football player but holy shit is that guy super boring. What a lame Super Bowl. I can't stay awake for a lot of the primetime television events due to the time change, so I skipped out on the Super Bowl and the State of the Soviet Union address or whatever people are calling Trump's rambling babbles now. The days (err, nights) of staying up until the wee hours of the morning are over. But I'm going to bed early and I'm not stressed so I'll take it. I'll make my weirdo food concoctions of something spicy with protein, vegetables, and a sauce made up of three other sauces. I'll drink my tea with too much honey in it, and I'll snuggle with my cat whose newly discovered affinity for wet food has made him so much more annoying but in the best way.
Teach Your Children
When I was a teenager, there was always some sort of girly magazine somewhere in my house. The now defunctYM or CosmoGirl! would come in the mail or I'd pick one up for a flight to which I hadn't bothered bringing a real book with actual substance. 90% of the content is mindless entertainment. Sexual mishaps! The best night creams! 28 weird sex tips involving a set of silverware! Vests!?
However some of the articles featured were actually relevant to my romantic/relationships/sexual education. One article actually began with a quiz, and not a stupid "Lol which red panda r u this week based on your mom's astrological sign?" but a quiz asking for my experiences with children and if I'd hypothetically be interested in having them in the future. It was fairly short, nothing I needed to take a prep course for. And my results were unenthusiastic: maybe.
I absolutely love kids. One of my favorite things to do with my nephew is to "answer" a banana and hand it to him saying "it's for you." I'm sure he's so sick of it by now and I like picking on him with his opinions about the world around him, mostly the wrong information kids receive about certain stuff. When I was home for Thanksgiving, he was adamant that Ken (Barbie's Ken) was the same person as GI Joe. After some further insistence and some back up support from my mom, Laszlo still wasn't convinced that the army ranger and Barbie's boyfriend were from two entirely separate universes.
It sounds incredibly exhausting to have kids. Both of my step-siblings have kids and I've tried to be around as much as I can in Seattle while they're growing up. They're all under the age of 8 and at varying degrees of communication and exposure to the outside world. Laszlo has discovered YouTube and Maddy asks me to chase her. Emily can't speak much at the moment but she likes eye contact and high-fives. Their development has been cool to watch, and I love them dearly. But within the last eight years or so, I've decided that this enjoyment is best felt as an aunt and not a parent.
In short, I'm not having kids.
As I said above, it sounds incredibly exhausting to have kids, and I know what I'm like when I'm exhausted. I practically become a child myself when I've hit strenuous periods of overwhelming stress and the subsequent aftermath. If I could boil my stress down to a few factors, they're definitely immigration, bureaucracy, finances, and my mental health. If just one of these goes into awry, at least one other will follow until I'm contemplating my entire living situation. For instance, getting let go from my job last month sent my mental health into a spiral, which led to applying for jobs in UlaanBaatar. Eventually I caught myself mid-fall and recovered, but it took a while. I was never so low at a point where I felt like drinking, but at one point, the thought of picking up seemed more plausible than dealing with the inclement blow of losing my job. Is having kids just because I'm expected to or have the biological capability worth blurring the lines of my sobriety when things get tough?
I think about adding kids to that equation. Not even plural, but any living human younger than me. It feels selfish to say that I want to conserve my time and energy for myself but it's not necessarily a bad thing. I've chosen to live my best life, which I know sounds like I pulled straight from a 22-year-old's Pinterest board, but it's true. I also don't want to compromise the quality of life of someone else because there are indeed times where I cannot handle my own shit, and they don't deserve that.
You know, this bullshit.
Speaking of quality of life, my shit genetics are also a huge part of my decision. Diabetes doesn't run in my family, and before you make a joke like "hhhnnnuurrrr it's because no one runs in my family," please know that extending this disease to another human is not a type of guilt I want to feel. We already bring kids into this world without their consent. No microscopic embryo can hold up two middle fingers to an ultrasound to give its plea for non-existence. But imagine knowing that the person you're bringing in to this world may end up with the same difficulties that you currently live with or that may have ended someone else's life. It seems incredibly cruel to me. Having kids should be the best part of your life, not a regret or a burden.
There are varying studies about Type 1 and the likelihood of your offspring developing the same disease. Some studies place it around 8%, and others place it as high as 25%. Keep in mind these are just my genetics alone, not paired with someone else's who has the disease in their family, as well. I know what I go through on a daily basis to not die. I encounter extremely misinformed people who, at no fault of their own, have ingested information from the media that "diabetes" is synonymous with obesity, poor lifestyle, amputations, no exercise, food choices, etc. They hardly ever differentiate from Type 1, 2, and the two other types that affect people, so all of the misinformation gets lumped into one disease which everyone thinks I have. Type 1 used to be referred to as "juvenile diabetes," as it was mostly common in children, sometimes as young as six-months. But with factors of exposure to viruses, Epstein-Barr Syndrome, and other autoimmune disorders, adults can be diagnosed into their 40s. I was diagnosed at 22, roughly six years after I had mono, a virus which stems from contact with Epstein-Barr. Doctors I've spoken figure that my body started attacking itself around this time, but the symptoms of my pancreas giving out and no longer producing insulin didn't develop for a few years.
As of now I've been diabetic for 8 and a half years. Managing the disease has become second nature for me and I have to be incredibly in tune with my body to make sure everything is operating according to plan. I'm always on manual mode to ensure my body can function the same as a person without diabetes. The process is exhausting, frustrating, time-consuming, embarrassing, and difficult to navigate bureaucratically. The reason I'm handling it well (most of the time) is because I was diagnosed at an age where I could effectively communicate and use my entire vocabulary to describe different feelings or the difficulties I was encountering with my doctors, parents, and friends. A six-month-old child doesn't have that same luxury, therefore creating an entirely different path of stress for parents to navigate with a diagnosis. I don't want to do that to a child or myself.
Not to mention the financial burden behind it. There have been so many times in the last eight years where I've felt like a financial burden due to my disease. Knowing it wasn't my fault and wasn't avoidable didn't make it any easier. I didn't ask for this, so why am I paying for it? But not just paying for it, why am I paying so much?
To give an idea of what the financial costs associated with diabetes are, here are a few numbers for you:
Between 2001 and 2015, the cost of insulin rose 585%.
Insulin is the sixth most expensive liquid in the world at $9,600 a gallon.
In 2013, diabetics in the United States spent more on their diabetes medications and supplies than the NFL and NBA spent on advertising combined.
If you wanted to know how staggering the numbers are when it comes down to treating diabetes, that's what it looks like. I'm of the belief there will be no cure. It's become a joke in the diabetic community, only five to ten more years! If there's no cure, they keep making money off of us. If we have diabetes and want to live, we have to pay. Bringing a child into the world to possibly take on that burden seems like a death sentence, and if the price of insulin keeps rising, it may very well be. I know I've harped about it on here before, but the movie Arrival got to me in a lot of ways. It didn't only affect me as a language nerd, but it also struck me as someone who has the ability to change the course of life for someone else and ultimately know I could have done it differently. Arrival has been out since 2016 so I'm not going to do a spoiler alert because you had your chance.) Amy Adams has a daughter and at one point in the movie, we learn her daughter dies from an incurable disease. However, Amy has the ability to see time in a non-linear fashion as a result of communicating with the Heptapod aliens. Before she even has the child, she sees that her daughter will die from the disease at a young age. She knew the outcome of her life and her daughter's pain and demise, yet she went through with it anyway.
I can't be that person.
Initially I thought the decision to go childless was easy. I've presented myself with all the evidence, it makes sense, and there won't be any drawbacks. But the only thing I'm hung up on is the opportunity to name another human being. Most of my family's pets have had human-ish names: Jake, Elwood, Gracie, Edgar, Rocky, Cosmo, and Patrick. Patrick came with his own name and the rest were a family effort which took a number of days to come to an agreement. I can't have a kid just because I want to name something, someone. When you're growing up and you get a new puppy for Christmas or find a stray kitten there's a whole "well, what should we call you?" process. It's exciting!
Sometimes their name is an indication of their physical appearance. But most newborns usually look the same. There's no striking characteristic which will sway you one way or another about a particular label or comment on your child's appearance. But with humans, names aren't facts or statements. I had a short list of names I really liked, nothing complicated or tough to spell. I like them still, but at the same time they aren't names for pets; they are names for people.
Josephine.
Vivian.
Cedar.
So I feel like I've had to abandon this little list. They aren't terribly rare or elusive, just an extension of me and what I feel connected to. But choosing to knowingly make someone's life more complicated, arduous, or tragic, isn't worth a name. I know I'm making the right decision.
Plus if I ended up with twins I would fucking lose it. So there's that, too.