Chicken Sludge Chaos

On self-trust, garbage day, and figuring it out as you go.

One of my favourite things about writing is thinking we have nothing to say, sitting down, and surprising ourselves. Often, things just flow. Like turning on a cottage tap, expecting nothing, then needing to compliment the host on their fine water pressure.

I want you to know, dear reader, that this is exactly how this post is starting.

I am typing on this page with zero idea what’s going to come out.

I have a few topics I’m avoiding, but nothing in my “to write” pipeline.

I believe that going in with a plan is beneficial. It’s grounding. It alleviates pressure.

But this is only in theory.

I, for one, am voluntarily planless.

When I’ve managed content teams, the onus fell on me to provide the article outline for writers to fill in.

I found this skeleton work to be soul-sucking and…bone-crushing (forgive me).

Coming up with an outline for technical stuff works, but the type of writing I love is more of an impromptu shake out of the soul. We can’t overplan it; we just create the right conditions, get over ourselves, and start walking.

A couple of years ago, when I was drafting my 70,000-word essay collection, I thought I needed more structure to be successful.

I’ve always assumed that what works for other people is probably right and my way is wrong or, at best, risky.

I’m not sure where demoting my nonroutine approach stems from.

Is it a result of growing up a 90’s girl?

Taking boomer men too seriously?

An eagerness to please?

A history of being rewarded for following the rules?

Not knowing what the fuck I’m doing without borrowed structure?

Without something guiding me to the next thing, whether from myself or some external body, there’s a bottomless unknown. As someone who has learned to play the game successfully but no longer wishes to, self-trust takes a while to regain.

It’s something we’re born with, and something we lose along the way.

I want to believe this period of uncertainty will amount to something pointed. And so, I am actively trying to override the parts of my brain that think other people know best, and that their winning models should become my own.

But for starters, my personality type is the kind that genuinely forgot to file taxes. It’s the kind that doesn’t do the same thing, in the same way twice. It’s also the kind that, after living in a house for two years, had rarely made garbage day.

Last week, with my husband at work and me here to tend to art and home, I thought:

I am going to make garbage day! Won’t that be a nice normie win?

I opened our patio-cushion-storage-box-turned-garbage-room and counted seven torn and tattered garbage bags. An animal had gotten in, exposing coffee grounds, chicken bones, and egg shells.

I put on gloves, rebagged the fallen soldiers, and put them all out on the curb.

With smug satisfaction, I headed into town, grinning at garbage mountain as I pulled out.

Upon return, I found our heap of black plastic still very much summitable. Adorned on the foothills was a passive-aggressive sticker that read: “2 bags max per household.”

Don’t these garbage keepers realize that our disorganization should grant us indefinite volume immunity?

If anything, we’re owed retroactive credits!

The combined weight of our uncollected garbage could rival the body mass lost in the Bravoverse or Greater Los Angeles area to Ozempic.

Dejected, I gathered the garbage bags, put them in the back of my husband’s truck, and closed the lid.

The next day, he was off to a week-long company retreat. With no time to drive the opposite direction to the dump, I mapped one en route.

Unsurprisingly, the garbage attended the company off-site as well.

My husband drove five hours with overflowing bags of banana peels, rib sludge, and hair drain slime. Like a psychopath concealing a dead body in their trunk, he parked far out of range and avoided driving anyone from his work.

Once home, we waited another three days before going to the dump.

When we got there, I sat in the passenger seat while Kevin unloaded our flatbed of sin.

As he discarded our unthinkables, an SUV backed in beside us.

A husband and wife emerged from their car, wearing matching cargo pants with t-shirts tucked in. They had on ballcaps and gloves.

They hit the button of their trunk, and began unloading small bundles of taped-up carpet. Each pinwheel of carpet was no greater than a submarine sandwich in diameter.

Once they were rid of their perfect coils, they moved on to wood trim. The husband held out his arms while she loaded him up with a couple of twigs, also taped tightly.

The wood pile, if set on fire, couldn’t provide warmth to a family of hamsters for more than 90 seconds.

I found this couple infuriating.

In an assessment I’m not proud of, I referred to them as “Twin dweebs who probably talked about their ‘Big Construction Day’ to family, friends, and church groups all month long!”

These people have never forgotten garbage day.

They don’t let chicken sludge marinate in the back of a Toyota Tacoma.

They have grass-stained sneakers only for lawn-cutting, and probably plan a cruise for their anniversary every third year.

They leave nothing to chance or uncertainty.

I understand the mental decluttering systems offer. I also crave rhythm, routine, and order.

But the second something starts to resemble a pair of perfectly pressed cargo pants for “Big Construction Day”, I want to light it all on fire and flee.

We need people like the carpet couple. They uphold civilization.

Meanwhile, people like me spend half our lives trying to build systems, and the other half trying to escape them.

Maybe that’s the trade-off.

Some people move through life with perfectly taped bundles of certainty.

Others marinate in a proprietary blend of chicken sludge chaos until they ripen.

Join us for weekly, often funny essays about our “what’s next” becoming.