Yelping: An Exercise in Assertiveness

I am not a naturally assertive person, I am sorry to say.  I try ... but it runs counter to my instincts.  I often find myself wondering if my opinion or my displeasure with a situation actually matters ... That is why, I suppose, I am so fascinated with yelp.com.  For example, I was reading the reviews of a used furniture store I was considering visiting and I noticed a bad review and, in return, the owner wrote back and scolded the reviewer for his comments.  All I could think was how I would just die if I had spoken up and, in return, got a dressing down like that in print ... in public ... online!  However, I had, in a few short months, come to rely on yelp for useful information and I wanted to contribute.  When I realized that yelp strongly encourages using one's real name, I thought and thought before I decided that not only could I contribute to yelp but that I could use it as a therapeutic tool.

OK, to be fair, so far most of my reviews are glowing ... I have always been a big advocate of remembering to compliment as quickly as one might complain.  Recently, though, I've written some more lukewarm reviews.  These reviews are hardly scathing ... but, nonetheless, I can imagine myself walking into one of my not-so-favorite businesses and having someone yell, "Get the %*&! outta here, TWO STARS!"  But, that's the trick of assertiveness, isn't it?  You say what you think even if you risk angering or offending someone.  Complimenting is important but, for someone like me, it's also easy and safe.

So, as I work myself up to give a genuinely bad review the next time I get genuinely bad service, I realize yelp is a good assertiveness training ground for me.  I can mentally argue that I am not just griping on my own account but putting out useful information for others and encouraging, perhaps, fairness and civility by being honest about what I have experienced.

So there.




 

Home and Not Home

I have mixed feelings about almost everything.  In that way, I am made a little crazy by how most people process doubt.  I find that so often people assume that, if you are questioning your decision-making, you should take that as a sign that you are making a mistake. That you only know you are making the right move when you can say, "I've never been more sure about anything in my life!"  I can't stand the question, "Are you sure about this?"  Of course, I'm not.  It is my position that, if you are sure of something, you haven't considered all the angles.  Every one decision, as I see it, is a million decisions to not do something else.  In the immortal words of John Piche', "Everything is a mistake." In so many ways, he's not wrong.

All that is not meant to be as fatalistic as it sounds ... but I do find that it can be either freeing or a burden, depending on the day.  Freeing in that it stops you looking to only enact the perfect plan.  It's a burden because there are incalculable permutations of every decision to consider ... even as you are picking one you know you haven't even scratched the surface of considering the others.

What does all this have to do my current circumstances?  It's that no matter where I am, I can see the merits to being somewhere else.  For some reason, the question of place has always weighed heavily on my mind ... more than I think with other people.  I am always home and not home at the same time.

I say that as I prepare, in a few days, to sign loan papers to purchase a co-op unit in San Francisco.  These loan documents tie me to a piece of property for more money than I thought I would spend on anything ever.  In Cleveland, this plain, 1100 sq. feet, box from the 1960s would sell for about $80K these days, I reckon.  Well, my friends, not so here ... no, not so here.  That's life in the BIG city I guess.  Financially, it is long term relationship.  How will I feel about this place just based on the idea that I can't easily get away from it?  I'll be home and not home.     

I ran away from home.

The last few months have, by far, been some of the most surreal of my life.  I am sure I am not the only one who ever transferred her job and had to live in hotel while house-hunting for a place for her husband and father ... who were about 2,500 miles away.  I simply cannot be the only one with that story but there have been many, many days in last two months when it felt like it.

     

Ever since I moved back to Ohio in 2003, I have been trying to claw my way back to the Bay Area.  I love Cleveland but, for me, it had become like a difficult childhood friend.  We never quite got along again after I got back from San Francisco.  I don't want to be a city snob ... there are great things about every place and good people everywhere ... but I just needed a something other than Cleveland.  It was personal.  In the six years I was back, I re-met John Piche' (that's a story for another time) and I knew he was it.  I almost immediately began to sell him on the idea of the West coast.  It was sometime around New Year's Eve 2008-2009 that the stars really aligned and I could see how it could be done.  I think that I cursed us a little when I said to John, "If we're going to do this, it is just going to be a complicated year."  Why did I have to say it would be a year?
     

It seemed almost impossible to explain to anyone in my life why we were doing what we were doing.  John and I had a cute house in Cleveland Heights.  We both had good (for Cleveland) paying jobs.  Why would we (or as most people saw it, I) throw everything into chaos?  We aren't kids after all.  By most people's estimation we were finally in a place that most people work through their 20s and early 30s to get to ... nothing left but to have babies, right?  I was grateful to my friend, Val, when she bottom-lined if for me saying, "Look, what you guys are doing is crazy.  It's just nuts."  It's what everyone was thinking but she said it unapologetically ... and without whining.
       

When my plane touched down at SFO on June 27th, I felt every ounce of that craziness and everyone else seemed right.  It was hard to walk calmly out of that airport and into a Super Shuttle with my head held high and not like someone in a blind panic on a crazy mission.  It was hard to wake up every day in a residence hotel room fit for a meth addict on her way to the bottom; rally my spirits and look at house after disastrous foreclosed house.  I have always sort of liked being an anonymous character but never before had I blended into the scenery of a place when a whole real life existed for me somewhere else ... and I just wasn't there.  It was like running away from home.

I miss my dog.

Love Bunni Press West Coast

Today, for the second time in my life, I went to the San Francisco Zine Fest. This time I was solo but it brought back fond memories of the first time ... in 2006. On that day, I was there with my now husband, R. John Piche'. We were on a trip to San Francisco and had gotten engaged the day before (actually, we had agreed we'd get married). John happened to notice in the paper that the Zine Fest was happening and, as the creative force behind what is and has been Love Bunni Press (LBP), we had to go.

Fast forward three years later ... It has been a crazy summer of transition. John and I are moving to San Francisco. I have already relocated and John, being such a trooper, is trailing behind trying to sell our little house in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. (I had asked for a transfer and, when my job gave it to me, they needed me to move right away ... lest anyone think he just picked the short straw.) I miss him a lot and can't wait for him to finally be here.

I think that the transition is going to be interesting for him and a shot-in-the-arm to his beloved LBP. On our wedding day, I was describing what it's like to be with John in Cleveland to the mother of close friend of mine and she said, "Oh, so you've married a local character." Truer words, truer words ... But, of course, he won't be that out here. His reputation won't precede him. On the other hand, there is so much more for him to be a part of here. I have heard (but I am not the one to know these things) that the zine community is big in San Francisco ... as are other small press, independent publishing endeavors. So, looking around the County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park today, I thought, "Don't worry about it, John. The 'kids' will love you here."