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Wendy News
October 12, 1998
Issue #3
Whatever you do, panic.
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In This Week's Issue:

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o Dedication
o What I'm Doing
o My Nightmares
o Stuff
o Kitty Update!
o Official Credits
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Dedication
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I want to dedicate this newsletter to a former co-worker and friend, Van Garrett. I didn't know Van all that well -- he and I never did anything socially -- but I worked with him every day for three months at my last job in New York. Van loved '80s music, which I appreciated, and he called me "sweetie," which I also appreciated. He was smart, down to earth, and he had a great sense of humor. When he played especially cheesy songs on his PC, I'd come by and dance silly next to his desk for him. I wanted to know Van better outside of the office, but I never did.

A few weeks after I quit that job and moved to Florida, Van died. He was only 32. We all knew he was sick -- he had lots of kidney problems and had been in surgery a couple of times while I worked there -- but no one had any idea he was THAT sick.

His death has really affected me, as any death of someone "around my age" has affected me. Van was a sweetie. I don't like it that he had to die. It doesn't make any sense. That's about all I can say about it. But I just wanted to dedicate this newsletter to him, because he was a really cool guy. He deserves to be remembered, and he will be. Bye, Van.


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What I'm Doing
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So as you may have gathered, I quit that awful job I hated and got the hell out of Dodge, too. I moved to Florida because it's where mom and other family live. And it's cheap. This is all For Now, which is turning out to be longer than I thought it would be. "I'll stay unemployed, for now" has turned into about eight glorious weeks. Man do I love it. If you can afford to save up and take some time off, just DON'T WORK, I highly recommend it. It cleanses the palate, for real.

Of course, my intention was to move in with mom, set up my computer, and write the World's Greatest Novel OR the World's Greatest Screenplay, depending on which came out of me first. I did manage to move in with mom, and I even set up my computer ALL BY MYSELF (I was so proud), but the writing thing has eluded me. In fact, save for the e-mails I've sent to friends, I haven't written a thing since I left New York. I don't really know why except to say that I just didn't feel ready.

But I feel ready to write this. And maybe, someday, I will feel ready to write that novel or screenplay. But not today.

So here's what's been up:

Well, I watch a lot of TV. I've been trying to wean myself off of it, slowly. Since I haven't been writing, to do something creative I've been doing a lot of stained glass. This involves designing patterns, cutting up glass, grinding it and then soldering it together. It's AWESOME and except for all the cuts and burns on my hands, I absolutely adore this. I figure eventually I'll try to sell my pieces. If I do say so, they are wonderful.

I've also been reading. I'm currently reading "A Prayer for Owen Meany" for the third or fourth time (go get it!) and the next book I wanna read is "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." I saw the movie and could tell the book would be really good and have lots more juicy details.

I'm also in a sculpture class every Thursday night. Right now I'm working on a big head (bust?), modeled from a Soutine painting I dig.

Obnoxious, isn't it? I mean, what the hell am I DOING? Well, I ask myself that question all the time. "Aren't you wasting time?" I think. "REAL people don't just quit their jobs and then not go get another one right away. You haven't even LOOKED for another job." And the reality is, I could get a job in a second. I'm in Orlando, where jobs are plentiful and tourists are stupid. But I don't feel ready for that, either.

The truth is, I was really wiped out by New York. And I don't know if it was JUST New York, or the awful, mentally and spiritually draining jobs I had, but I am POOPED. And I have no desire to jump back into the rat race -- not yet. Everything was such a tremendous struggle, and now I don't have to struggle so much. I still have to do stuff I put off doing, like laundry (I'm almost out of underwear again -- well it's true), but I don't have to get up every day and go to a job I don't want to go to. That's one of the worst feelings in the world.

The funny thing is, all this good stuff happened around me while I was making this decision: My book came out! Yep, I have a book. It's called "The Totallyl Terrific $10,000 Trivia Challenge." It has the world's stupidest title (given by the publishers), but the inside is pretty good, if you like trivia and, well, my writing. You don't even have to buy it, but I'd love it if you'd look at it and send me a note telling me what you think. (Unless you hate it. Heh.) It'll be in Barnes in Noble and other monster bookstores that are closing all the little guys down.

Oh, and it's written by Seth Godin AND Wendy Hall, because he just HAD to have his name on the cover. It was a "branding" thing, he said. Whatever.

And the other hilarious, grown up thing I'm doing is being a SPEAKER at a conference in Chicago! Ha! It's at The Third Annual Intranets and Corporate Communications Conference in early December, and I'll be speaking about online publications and how to add humor and interactivity to them. Nice gig, eh? When they first asked me I thought "Why would I do that?" But then I thought, "Why WOULDN'T I do that?" And so I said I'd do it. My talk will be about forty five minutes long, and then fifteen minutes for questions and answers. I have to get that all together by early November. Eek!

Anyway, as it stands, that's about all that's going on. There's tons of other soul searching garbage I'm doing, but this is getting long, so I'll talk about it next week -- yes, you heard me right, this newsletter is going weekly starting TODAY! I have to give myself deadlines or I can procrastinate indefinitely (obviously).

Read on, and I'll see you next week.


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My Nightmares
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Some of you may remember me writing about these high school nightmares I STILL have, even though I've been out of high school for almost a decade now. They're always generally the same: I'm back at high school for one reason or another, usually because it is discovered that I did not complete all my credits and therefore I have to make up classes so I can graduate. So I'm back in my classes, bored and miserable, or I'm trying to find my classes but I don't know where they are. Or -- and this happens a lot in the nightmare -- I'm skipping classes and fretting about how much trouble I'm going to get into and how I won't graduate and my life will be ruined etc etc.

I wrote about this over two years ago, and I STILL have these nightmares. But I think I'm making progress. Here's why:

A couple of weeks ago I had the nightmare. I was back in high school and having to take these classes I didn't want to take (most especially Physical Education, which I REALLY hated in life and dread in my dreams). I am sitting in a class, miserable, when I say to myself, "How about if I just DON'T go to high school anymore? I mean, what if I just quit, and didn't come back? What's the worst thing that could happen? I think I should just do that. I think I should stop coming to high school." I woke up feeling kind of refreshed and happy the dream had taken that turn. Maybe the nightmares would stop -- maybe I was ready to stop going to high school; to let it go.

A few nights ago I had another high school nightmare, and I got angry in the dream. I thought to myself, "High school isn't even GOOD for you. You HATE it. Why do you come? Buck the system and don't go! It's CRAP anyway!" I woke up from that dream feeling kind of pissed, but also wondering what it meant. I made my own connection rather quickly. I went to high school because I had to. Because it was the law. I hated high school. Every day I hated it. No, I wasn't picked on. I wasn't even what you would call "unpopular." I was mostly invisible to people. But I had to be around all these people I didn't like, and these teachers I didn't like, and the classes were so terribly boring and inane.

To this day, I wish I had had the courage to drop out of high school. I admire anyone who does, because most of the people I know did it for the right reasons, and not because they were busy being delinquents. Those delinquent people I don't usually befriend, I guess, because I haven't heard their stories. What I'm getting at is for some people, high school was not a nurturing place, and here's the connection I made: For the past three years, I've been doing stuff that a lot of the time wasn't nurturing to me. Yoyodyne started out great but ended up being the wrong place for me to be. The new job I got sounded good on paper but ended up being awful. I was bored and miserable -- everything was all high schoolish again.

So I QUIT. And I gave up on the notion of having to have "a career" or even a "real job," whatever that means. Some people work within the online industry and have a blast. They love marketing, PR, sales. I'm just not one of them. I have more fun in my sculpture class than I did in a year of working at Yoyodyne (that last year especially).

There's got to be room for everyone, even the freaks like me, right? And maybe now that in my waking life I'm not stuck anymore, maybe I can stop having those nightmares. Think? I'll keep you posted.


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Stuff
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I just love making these frivolous lists:

My Most Favorite Commercial: Salon Selectives (?) Shampoo, with the "Who's That Lady?" song in it. Totally cheesy, but notice after the crowd of people sing "who's that lady" to the blonde flitting by them, a fire truck goes by. Okay, perhaps I have a weakness for firemen, but there is the BEST LOOKING fireman on the back of that truck that lip-synchs "who's that lady" as he goes by. I mean, YUM. Every time I hear this commercial I rush to look.

My Least Favorite Commercial: Bissel (?) Power Steamer. There's only one thing that's irritating about this commercial, but it's SO irritating that it ruins the whole thing for me. A cup of *black coffee* spills onto a carpet and the voice-over says, "All this fuss just because she spilled her latte?" Well, I know it sounds silly, but it's just such a slap in the face of reality: A LATTE is made with espresso and steamed MILK. That CUP of COFFEE was CLEARLY BLACK. So not only wasn't it coffee with cream, which MAYBE you could mistake for a latte, it wasn't even an espresso product. Look up "latte" and then make your rug cleaner commercial, wouldja?

My Favorite Fat-Free Jello Pudding: Chocolate Vanilla Swirl. My mom gets these because she's on Weight Watchers, but I'll eat them too. At first I wouldn't, because I don't believe in unnaturally "fat free" products, but these are so good I make an exception. You really wouldn't know they are fat free. According to my mom, the other flavors aren't as creamy, which is why I singled out this particular flavor.

My Favorite October cereal: Count Chocula, duh. Made especially tasty by being on sale for $2.49 in the grocery store. God groceries are cheap in Florida.

My Favorite Newly Found Picture: Well, it's a tie, actually. One is me, around age six, passed out on my bed with my Grover doll next to me. I hardly have ANY pictures of my much beloved and long gone Grover doll, and what's even more hilarious is that I have a girl's dress on him. Tee-hee. The other is me, also around age six, lying on the floor with my girl dog Charlie. I look so happy, she looks so cute, and best of all I have a T-shirt on that says "Future President." Right on, mom. I remember her buying two of those -- one for me, and one for my cousin Joanne. These pictures will be scanned at my earliest convenience and posted on my website. Wait with bated breath!


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Kitty Update
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After fretting back and forth, I decided to drive the guys down with me. First of all, plane tickets for two kitties are expensive! And then it turned out Orlando had all these restrictions on when you could send "live cargo" down here, since it's so hot. So I figured, they've made a road trip before (Olympia, Washington to San Francisco) and I'd rather have them WITH ME if something sickly is going to happen to their little bods.
They were stellar. I can't say it enough -- I have the best cats ever. The first day mom and I placed Grover Bean in his cage, between us, and Milo Edward sat on top of said cage, watching the road. Grovey puked a little and pooped a little, but we cleaned him up with handy wipes at the rest stop. The second day we decided to risk having him out of the cage and guess what -- no more accidents, and he stopped screaming. Everybody was happy. Grover took the spot between our heads on the back of the seat, and Milo rotated positions from laps to seat. He also loved looking out the window at the scenery. Other drivers liked it too.

Of course they both were upset that we would settle in for the night at some nice motel which was "home" to them and then want to leave the next morning. We had lots of struggles pulling kitties out from under king-sized beds. That coupled with the moving gave me juicy bruises all over. I bruise like a peach.

But now they are happy and getting used to their girl cousins, Patsy and Lucy. There's some hissing, but no fighting. Yeah, it's really Feline Central around here. But since Patsy and Lucy spend most of their time hiding, it doesn't feel furrily crowded at all. Milo Edward loves the porch and passes out as soon as he saunters out there. "Boy," he thinks, "I really like this porch. It's so nice out here. I love the ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ." (That's my imitation of Milo.) Grover also likes the porch and especially the La-Z-Boy chair in the living room. We had no such extravagance in New York. Mmmm comfy.

All of us are settling in quite nicely, and the kitties understand that mom really likes to move, so be prepared. Four states in four years, so far! Lucky for me they can handle it. And if they can't, I'll just have to crawl under the bed and drag them out. Bruises fade away, man.

How Zen.


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Official Credits!

Editor, Writer, Procrastinator: Wendy Hall

Copy Editor, Mom: Kathy Hall

To write to Wendy, send the lady an e-mail at: hall_wendy@hotmail.com -- she'd love to hear from you.

To visit Wendy's website, go to: http://geocities.datacellar.net/soho/studios/1232 -- this long, torturous URL will be changing shortly to www.wendyhall.com. As soon as Wendy figures out how to update that site. What a mess.

"Wendy News" is a Girl Planet Production. Copyright 1998, All Rights Reserved. Legal blah blah law blah blah sue blah blah legal blah blah blah.

Gets me right here.
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