I haven't had a lot of experiences to report, thanks to the quarantine (which I actually broke on Day 4, which would be yesterday). Unless someone would like to hear about all the dishes I broke thanks to not having light (still) in my kitchen (thanks to the water damage that still has not been repaired from the leaky roof) and being low on brain function, or that I came very close to dressing up my cat for my own amusement (because I got sick of watching television when the work was done), you're in for a big storytelling goose egg.
All I have to do today is some sundry writing and to interview someone for a story later, so I'm taking this opportunity to enjoy the 70-plus degree sunny weather and go on another run. Hopefully today I won't feel like my face is going to blow up afterwards. It's all about progress ...
Friday, April 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Day 3 of Quarantine
So, I'm on Day 3 of my doctor-imposed viral meningitis quarantine, and while I certainly have the headache that launched a thousand aneurysms (and a thrilling head rush that happens about once every 5 minutes and almost makes me pass out), the symptoms otherwise are dissipating.
What does that mean?
It means bat-crap-stir-craziness that has reached epic proportions. I'm really only half-way through my sentence too, so I can't imagine what I will feel like in 48 hours, when I am almost free. For now, I am thinking of the list of things I want to be doing right now but can't:
1. Running outside;
2. Not eating more;
3. Shopping (you know when I say I want to go shopping, I am really desperate to get out);
4. Rolling around in a pile of puppies (this is not likely going to happen soon with or without the meningitis, but a girl can dream);
5. Do laundry (I probably could do this, but I'm feeling too conscientious about my building community).
My big accomplishments for the week (aside from the usual work progress) include watching some old lady get her amethyst jewelry appraised on "Antiques Road Show" and washing one dish.
I will obviously update on Day 4, and hopefully have even more exciting news to report.
What does that mean?
It means bat-crap-stir-craziness that has reached epic proportions. I'm really only half-way through my sentence too, so I can't imagine what I will feel like in 48 hours, when I am almost free. For now, I am thinking of the list of things I want to be doing right now but can't:
1. Running outside;
2. Not eating more;
3. Shopping (you know when I say I want to go shopping, I am really desperate to get out);
4. Rolling around in a pile of puppies (this is not likely going to happen soon with or without the meningitis, but a girl can dream);
5. Do laundry (I probably could do this, but I'm feeling too conscientious about my building community).
My big accomplishments for the week (aside from the usual work progress) include watching some old lady get her amethyst jewelry appraised on "Antiques Road Show" and washing one dish.
I will obviously update on Day 4, and hopefully have even more exciting news to report.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Hey, did you happen to see the most boring update in the world?
At least to myself, I said I was going to try to write something down every day, in any form. While I'm sure there are speak-worthy events from yesterday (we played a show last night, I ate overly-fishy Korean food with my friends Rick and Rebecca and there were a lot of ukuleles going on to boot), none of them feel like great topics of conversation for those not present.
Today I'm working on my first pawning adventure, letting go of something that doesn't have meaning attached in order to build a little capital before job-like things kick in. I'll be pretty excited, even if only means I can go grocery shopping. I will be even more excited if it means I can get some jeans that don't have holes in untoward places.
Today I'm working on my first pawning adventure, letting go of something that doesn't have meaning attached in order to build a little capital before job-like things kick in. I'll be pretty excited, even if only means I can go grocery shopping. I will be even more excited if it means I can get some jeans that don't have holes in untoward places.
Friday, April 23, 2010
What did your mom put in your lunch today?
While riding the L train, I was treated to quite a sight: a young "man" dressed in a likely-mis-buttoned striped sweater, white sneakers Harry Potter glasses and carrying a backpack with his first name and last initial stitched on it. I can only assume he was going to work, as he was too old to be in high school or college, but it was a quintessential "hiptard" moment.
My first thoughts:
1. Did his mother pack PB&J and Hi-C Ecto Cooler again today in his lunch (and is he totally bummed out about that)?
2. Did he leave the last name off so he could protect himself from child abductors (they used to always tell us not to wear t-shirts with our names on them)?
I guess I will never know, "Nate R."
My first thoughts:
1. Did his mother pack PB&J and Hi-C Ecto Cooler again today in his lunch (and is he totally bummed out about that)?
2. Did he leave the last name off so he could protect himself from child abductors (they used to always tell us not to wear t-shirts with our names on them)?
I guess I will never know, "Nate R."
Thursday, April 22, 2010
A Chaptered Snippet
Here's where the disorganization comes into play, because I'm about to share a piece of a chapter from my second novel that I've been revisiting lately. And I'm not even about to put it into context either, so in your face, professional writing career:
I can no longer tell the difference between the dialogue spoken aloud and the dialogue that resides in my heart where I think no one can find it. I think, therefore I am lost. It’s funny how some moments seem present forever, no matter how often I retell them.
I think I will miss the cats more than I will miss him. There is one, gray, brown, black with white socks that curls up on my stomach every night, purrs and shakes my hips, stirs me more than “he” has in a while. I remember a time when my legs would curl around this human him from the inside-out and he would shift inside me, his feet vanished beneath the bright yellow of the bedspread given to me by the last lover, the last one that thought I might be cold and decided to warm me for a few months. We’d wake up in the morning, sunlight streaming through the window setting the sunflower comforter softly ablaze. And we’d do it again. And now I wonder, “Doesn’t it get better than this?”
But they all discover I am crazy, like so many explorers, they set foot on me as if for the first time, months after months of promises, and decide I should no longer bear them, as if I had no choice but to be claimed for a desperate country. Usually I warn them, with blazing flares, but they don’t recognize the signals, don’t yet know what all the fire means, uncivilized men who speak my language only brokenly. On the surface I seem so sandy, warm, so beachy and full of sun. This surface is too boring for me not to stir it up. But boring is exactly what he is looking for. His periscope is ill-equipped to find the cliffs beyond the beach house, the temperate climate beyond my tropics.
His boxes are everywhere, stacked high to the ceiling, traces of him even though I haven’t seen him lately in my space. I have allowed him to live here lately only for the sake of the cats and the occasional drunken thrusting that bursts when he rolls on top of me after a night of avoiding my presence. When we moved to this large loud-mouthed hub of activity four months ago, he never unpacked, but shoved his boxes in an alcove, pushed them up against a wall and trapped our clothes in the closet next to each other. There was some understanding that he would eventually leave nothing lasts forever, but still we were well, still we were wrapped up, even if the wrapping was less transparent, less saran, more aluminum and armored, mostly my armor. And now all I want to think is that it’s a good thing there will only be a little dust behind all those boxes instead of something substantial left behind, a little fly-away cockroach that crawled off to die in peace when the cat only maimed it. The boxes, with the exception of a few, were sealed up the whole time with brown packing tape, since the time we packed them together, when we had to move his things out of his Chicago apartment with a beautiful view of the lake, downtown … you probably remember holding my hand in your bed with downtown lights on our faces and music playing drifting to sleep. You will probably always remember that, but I will eventually forget and into my Chicago house. We were scrambling and leaving furniture, only taking what would fit into a mini-van, what was necessary for the faux life on the lam he lives.
And now it has come to this. I want to capture that moment when someone first meets someone, before she knows it will be anything, that moment on the brink of happening like when I picked Fred up for the first time outside his apartment, and he got into my car, and we parked, and we got out and were walking down the street, height-checking. He was in a gray coat, dark gray pants, maroon sweater with stripes, when they don’t even know what is ahead of them ... how does that feel, to not feel the future for that one brief instant? How blissful is that?
Cognoscenti … It has come to this, when it began with a moment that was a polar opposite of this you always suspected I was bi-polar, and yes you were right, but at least I am interesting. Now his friends are here, and he won’t even look at me. His friends are eying me as if I’m going to steal purses and wallets to get strange revenge, as if I’m really so small that I will take something that is not mine while as if I would take someone else’s money, someone else’s soul, someone else’s heart they are downstairs, outside.
F,
“Thanks for the talk. How poetic ... rain, then thunderstorm ... I love that thunder.”
“Seriously, I've been very happy lately. Life is filled with uncertainty, but I am certain that we get along incredibly well, and that everything we do is sprinkled with just a bit of magic … I do apologize again for making you feel ever pressured or like I'm not happy, that I am dissatisfied in some way or have been. I'll try to be more sensitive to the fact that some of the things I say might be interpreted in other ways.” And then I'm done apologizing. See how flexible I can be? I just let it all go just like that, just like I stopped funding your unemployment. You couldn’t even handle a little brain difference, too much synapse activity.
Sometimes I do think you just need to let it go. Let go the past, let go your disasters and heartbreaks and get on. You get on (or around) in other ways, but your heart sometimes needs help. You know this, of course. Self-aware you are to your emotionally closed off-ness. And that’s shit.
This definitely doesn't have to be difficult. It definitely isn't difficult. The difficulty comes when he begins to try to find difficulty or think too far ahead. That's at one point what I was so inadequately trying to express tonight. That and the question: How can anything have a chance to be anything with this kind of pressure? No need to pressure things that are working, that are happy inducing. But the tip of it got lost in my desire to rearrange furniture.
You said to me a couple months ago, you wished you could be as open, emotionally, sexually, as you are when you've had a little or a lot to drink. It's a good place to be. It's a happy place to be … easy … scary.
Both of he and I have enough emotional baggage to go on a trip around the world (I thought someday we’d take that trip and not even have to pack rat bastard). But there's a fear of being exposed as less than interesting, less than intelligent, less that one thinks he/she is. The fear at its deepest level lies in the idea of getting hurt, or in the concept of being misinterpreted or of misinterpreting. Or of letting go just a little. Those last three things tied up together is probably the real root of that "fear" (or whatever a less strong but still powerful word would be). I'm speaking of course, not necessarily specifically. I'm just speaking about my theory on the whole idea of having any sort of a relationship with anyone that means anything more than a toothbrush on the sink and a place to crash on weekends.
“I'm just thinking out loud. I’m just thinking a little bit out loud.”
Every moment has been enlightening in some way ... every moment I've been glad we've had, looking back on it.
But I've had plenty of moments all over the place. I can name most of them, though some happen in the fraction of an instant when I'm barely paying attention. Most of mine happen when I'm driving. These reminiscences I know you'll appreciate because they are filled with description, definite images you eventually tuned out. I remember one in particular a few years ago. I was driving home from my friend Melissa's house. She lived in Minneapolis, and I was driving back to St. Paul, driving east. I think it must have been Fall. But I was driving, and there was no one else on the road. It was the middle of the week, somewhat late at night. I went over a hill, and all of a sudden was coated in the orange glow of the most perfect full moon I had ever seen. It was huge. You don't know how huge the moon can be until you've traveled far enough north. At the moment, nothing else mattered but that huge orange ball surrounded by stars in a blackened sky, offset by metallic buildings. And I followed it as I drove into it, then drove away from it, until it disappeared. Beautiful. Moments are like that. Split-seconds where nothing else matters. As I sit here with him packing, I think I am in one of those moments. Because I just don’t care that he is leaving, another straggler to shake off. But I wonder sometimes if I could let go like I let go at that very instant when I saw that moon, just let go of everything and let myself soak it all in, I could have these moments constantly, not based on nine months here with you.
I'll tell you something specific and involving you. I try not to do that because of who you aren’t, but I will because I want to. I had a moment one Saturday in Chicago. We were sitting listening to Prince: "Starfish and Coffee." I was staring at the clearest blue sky, the skyline, lying on my stomach. I was in a world, thinking of other things, daydreaming about possibly nothing, but I was definitely not there. And you put your arm around me, clasped my hand in your hand. Ridiculous moment, but it meant something because I pulled you into me when I thought we were through. And nothing else mattered but the fact that we were two people making some sort of a connection, however brief. They just keep happening, changing, transforming, becoming more and less and more beautiful again. And it’s how the heart hungers for something that makes it beautiful.
I'm funny because I like to leave things open. You just never know what's going to happen. Like ending sentences with a preposition. It leaves things unfastened. It keeps things interesting. But when he leaves, I will deadbolt the door, lock it up with a readiness to let someone new in.
I don't know what I'm saying. Just babbling. I like the babble. Especially with you, I ramble. We are definite ramblers -- truck driver, gas station attendant ramblers with traveling mouths, packs of Pall Mall cigarettes tucked into our flannel sleeves.
“Take care. I’ll see you later.” He picks up the litter box, the last box, the last asshole box, the place where things shit, where shit becomes reality. It is midnight, and he is not coming back up, even though he left his underwear in the drawer. He will get it when I am not there, then leave the keys on the tipsy table that tips because the room is so slanted.
Sometimes something good and enlightening emerges ... sometimes not, but sometimes it does, or tries to.
**********************************
I can no longer tell the difference between the dialogue spoken aloud and the dialogue that resides in my heart where I think no one can find it. I think, therefore I am lost. It’s funny how some moments seem present forever, no matter how often I retell them.
I think I will miss the cats more than I will miss him. There is one, gray, brown, black with white socks that curls up on my stomach every night, purrs and shakes my hips, stirs me more than “he” has in a while. I remember a time when my legs would curl around this human him from the inside-out and he would shift inside me, his feet vanished beneath the bright yellow of the bedspread given to me by the last lover, the last one that thought I might be cold and decided to warm me for a few months. We’d wake up in the morning, sunlight streaming through the window setting the sunflower comforter softly ablaze. And we’d do it again. And now I wonder, “Doesn’t it get better than this?”
But they all discover I am crazy, like so many explorers, they set foot on me as if for the first time, months after months of promises, and decide I should no longer bear them, as if I had no choice but to be claimed for a desperate country. Usually I warn them, with blazing flares, but they don’t recognize the signals, don’t yet know what all the fire means, uncivilized men who speak my language only brokenly. On the surface I seem so sandy, warm, so beachy and full of sun. This surface is too boring for me not to stir it up. But boring is exactly what he is looking for. His periscope is ill-equipped to find the cliffs beyond the beach house, the temperate climate beyond my tropics.
His boxes are everywhere, stacked high to the ceiling, traces of him even though I haven’t seen him lately in my space. I have allowed him to live here lately only for the sake of the cats and the occasional drunken thrusting that bursts when he rolls on top of me after a night of avoiding my presence. When we moved to this large loud-mouthed hub of activity four months ago, he never unpacked, but shoved his boxes in an alcove, pushed them up against a wall and trapped our clothes in the closet next to each other. There was some understanding that he would eventually leave nothing lasts forever, but still we were well, still we were wrapped up, even if the wrapping was less transparent, less saran, more aluminum and armored, mostly my armor. And now all I want to think is that it’s a good thing there will only be a little dust behind all those boxes instead of something substantial left behind, a little fly-away cockroach that crawled off to die in peace when the cat only maimed it. The boxes, with the exception of a few, were sealed up the whole time with brown packing tape, since the time we packed them together, when we had to move his things out of his Chicago apartment with a beautiful view of the lake, downtown … you probably remember holding my hand in your bed with downtown lights on our faces and music playing drifting to sleep. You will probably always remember that, but I will eventually forget and into my Chicago house. We were scrambling and leaving furniture, only taking what would fit into a mini-van, what was necessary for the faux life on the lam he lives.
And now it has come to this. I want to capture that moment when someone first meets someone, before she knows it will be anything, that moment on the brink of happening like when I picked Fred up for the first time outside his apartment, and he got into my car, and we parked, and we got out and were walking down the street, height-checking. He was in a gray coat, dark gray pants, maroon sweater with stripes, when they don’t even know what is ahead of them ... how does that feel, to not feel the future for that one brief instant? How blissful is that?
Cognoscenti … It has come to this, when it began with a moment that was a polar opposite of this you always suspected I was bi-polar, and yes you were right, but at least I am interesting. Now his friends are here, and he won’t even look at me. His friends are eying me as if I’m going to steal purses and wallets to get strange revenge, as if I’m really so small that I will take something that is not mine while as if I would take someone else’s money, someone else’s soul, someone else’s heart they are downstairs, outside.
F,
“Thanks for the talk. How poetic ... rain, then thunderstorm ... I love that thunder.”
“Seriously, I've been very happy lately. Life is filled with uncertainty, but I am certain that we get along incredibly well, and that everything we do is sprinkled with just a bit of magic … I do apologize again for making you feel ever pressured or like I'm not happy, that I am dissatisfied in some way or have been. I'll try to be more sensitive to the fact that some of the things I say might be interpreted in other ways.” And then I'm done apologizing. See how flexible I can be? I just let it all go just like that, just like I stopped funding your unemployment. You couldn’t even handle a little brain difference, too much synapse activity.
Sometimes I do think you just need to let it go. Let go the past, let go your disasters and heartbreaks and get on. You get on (or around) in other ways, but your heart sometimes needs help. You know this, of course. Self-aware you are to your emotionally closed off-ness. And that’s shit.
This definitely doesn't have to be difficult. It definitely isn't difficult. The difficulty comes when he begins to try to find difficulty or think too far ahead. That's at one point what I was so inadequately trying to express tonight. That and the question: How can anything have a chance to be anything with this kind of pressure? No need to pressure things that are working, that are happy inducing. But the tip of it got lost in my desire to rearrange furniture.
You said to me a couple months ago, you wished you could be as open, emotionally, sexually, as you are when you've had a little or a lot to drink. It's a good place to be. It's a happy place to be … easy … scary.
Both of he and I have enough emotional baggage to go on a trip around the world (I thought someday we’d take that trip and not even have to pack rat bastard). But there's a fear of being exposed as less than interesting, less than intelligent, less that one thinks he/she is. The fear at its deepest level lies in the idea of getting hurt, or in the concept of being misinterpreted or of misinterpreting. Or of letting go just a little. Those last three things tied up together is probably the real root of that "fear" (or whatever a less strong but still powerful word would be). I'm speaking of course, not necessarily specifically. I'm just speaking about my theory on the whole idea of having any sort of a relationship with anyone that means anything more than a toothbrush on the sink and a place to crash on weekends.
“I'm just thinking out loud. I’m just thinking a little bit out loud.”
Every moment has been enlightening in some way ... every moment I've been glad we've had, looking back on it.
But I've had plenty of moments all over the place. I can name most of them, though some happen in the fraction of an instant when I'm barely paying attention. Most of mine happen when I'm driving. These reminiscences I know you'll appreciate because they are filled with description, definite images you eventually tuned out. I remember one in particular a few years ago. I was driving home from my friend Melissa's house. She lived in Minneapolis, and I was driving back to St. Paul, driving east. I think it must have been Fall. But I was driving, and there was no one else on the road. It was the middle of the week, somewhat late at night. I went over a hill, and all of a sudden was coated in the orange glow of the most perfect full moon I had ever seen. It was huge. You don't know how huge the moon can be until you've traveled far enough north. At the moment, nothing else mattered but that huge orange ball surrounded by stars in a blackened sky, offset by metallic buildings. And I followed it as I drove into it, then drove away from it, until it disappeared. Beautiful. Moments are like that. Split-seconds where nothing else matters. As I sit here with him packing, I think I am in one of those moments. Because I just don’t care that he is leaving, another straggler to shake off. But I wonder sometimes if I could let go like I let go at that very instant when I saw that moon, just let go of everything and let myself soak it all in, I could have these moments constantly, not based on nine months here with you.
I'll tell you something specific and involving you. I try not to do that because of who you aren’t, but I will because I want to. I had a moment one Saturday in Chicago. We were sitting listening to Prince: "Starfish and Coffee." I was staring at the clearest blue sky, the skyline, lying on my stomach. I was in a world, thinking of other things, daydreaming about possibly nothing, but I was definitely not there. And you put your arm around me, clasped my hand in your hand. Ridiculous moment, but it meant something because I pulled you into me when I thought we were through. And nothing else mattered but the fact that we were two people making some sort of a connection, however brief. They just keep happening, changing, transforming, becoming more and less and more beautiful again. And it’s how the heart hungers for something that makes it beautiful.
I'm funny because I like to leave things open. You just never know what's going to happen. Like ending sentences with a preposition. It leaves things unfastened. It keeps things interesting. But when he leaves, I will deadbolt the door, lock it up with a readiness to let someone new in.
I don't know what I'm saying. Just babbling. I like the babble. Especially with you, I ramble. We are definite ramblers -- truck driver, gas station attendant ramblers with traveling mouths, packs of Pall Mall cigarettes tucked into our flannel sleeves.
“Take care. I’ll see you later.” He picks up the litter box, the last box, the last asshole box, the place where things shit, where shit becomes reality. It is midnight, and he is not coming back up, even though he left his underwear in the drawer. He will get it when I am not there, then leave the keys on the tipsy table that tips because the room is so slanted.
Sometimes something good and enlightening emerges ... sometimes not, but sometimes it does, or tries to.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Florida or Bust
The teen subway candy beggars are getting a bit bolder (and smarter from a marketing perspective) and taking their business off the 6 train (did that sound like the beginning of a news article, or what?). Tonight on my way to the wine store (yep, Pinot Grigio with my solo pork chop and tater tot dinner ... what of it? I'm a classy broad) I was stopped in windfully-saturating sideways rain by two very well-dressed young men holding clipboards with xeroxed pages that had school logos on them and looked very well-signed-up-for. One of them rattled off a speech that began with, "Hello, ma'am, I'm sorry to bother you on this lovely evening" (because fat, wet sideways rain is very lovely indeed) and ended with "Help us buy shoes for the basketball team so we can get to Florida." It's probably a sign that I've lived in New York too long that, first of all, I immediately said, "No" and felt very imposed upon, and second of all, a string of one-lineresque and jaded thoughts came to me: "Are they mentioning the shoes particularly because they're actually planning to walk to Florida?" "I wonder how many of the names and amounts on the sheet are made up to try to trick people into giving." "I wonder how much the adult that's orchestrating this elaborate fiasco is making off these kids, and what he/she is telling the kids they will get out of it." I found it pretty bold that they weren't even giving anything in return (usually they're selling Skittles from a beaten-up-looking M&Ms palate). I was not feeling compelled by the brief, wishy-washy feeling of skeptical satisfaction I would get from forking over the $10 that was in my pocket (and was going to go towards the wine). I was much more swayed by and excited about the impending head lightness I was about to enjoy with my pork chops.
I remember when I was married a lifetime ago (and it really was a lifetime ago, so don't panic about my emotional state or anything) a group of high school kids once came to our door in St. Paul, MN selling magazine subscriptions. At first we thought it was a situation a la Orlando Jones in "Office Space," where they were trying to sell us multiple subscriptions to Ebony, but then we realized they were the ones being duped by some adult promising them something in exchange for executing a grand, down and dirty marketing/money-making scheme. We fed them and tried to talk them down from their publication-peddling cult once we figured out the situation. They had come in on a bus from somewhere in Wisconsin for the weekend and were told they would win the chance to win a trip to California if they worked. The bus would drop them off at various apartment complexes for several hours at a time, and they'd have to work their way up and down the halls to fill their quotas. Still, just because I know there is a whole crazy scene bordering on child slavery doesn't make me want to do anything but be annoyed.
I'm pretty compassionate (ask anyone), but I really do have to be selective about the lost-cause falling stars I hitch a ride with these days. I have to reserve that special space in my heart for dysfunctional yet endearing romantic relationships, borderline toxic friends and family members that I have to talk to because they're related to me.
I remember when I was married a lifetime ago (and it really was a lifetime ago, so don't panic about my emotional state or anything) a group of high school kids once came to our door in St. Paul, MN selling magazine subscriptions. At first we thought it was a situation a la Orlando Jones in "Office Space," where they were trying to sell us multiple subscriptions to Ebony, but then we realized they were the ones being duped by some adult promising them something in exchange for executing a grand, down and dirty marketing/money-making scheme. We fed them and tried to talk them down from their publication-peddling cult once we figured out the situation. They had come in on a bus from somewhere in Wisconsin for the weekend and were told they would win the chance to win a trip to California if they worked. The bus would drop them off at various apartment complexes for several hours at a time, and they'd have to work their way up and down the halls to fill their quotas. Still, just because I know there is a whole crazy scene bordering on child slavery doesn't make me want to do anything but be annoyed.
I'm pretty compassionate (ask anyone), but I really do have to be selective about the lost-cause falling stars I hitch a ride with these days. I have to reserve that special space in my heart for dysfunctional yet endearing romantic relationships, borderline toxic friends and family members that I have to talk to because they're related to me.
Letting Go of Conventions
Since in my professional writing life, I follow so many rules -- and in general have found myself lately getting pretty hung up on writing structure to the point where I fail to experiment as much as I should -- I decided to create this blog as an attempt to give myself free range to write with less rhyme and reason about potentially nothing in particular. I'm sure I will not be able to resist the temptation to challenge myself with a variety of themes and overly-plotted-out opinions, but I'm going to try harder to be less concerned with my public life as a "professional writer" and be more concerned with being an actually interesting writer that indeed has some personal thoughts every once in a while that sometimes aren't polite.
I also really want to challenge myself to be a bit more laissez-faire and not take myself so seriously, because that is definitely one of my biggest faults. I was not always like this; I used to fake-vomit up pudding in college at the dining hall when friends would request that I "do something" to get irritating, unwelcome dinner guests to stop talking. In adulthood, I care much more about what people think, even thought the Internet and other invasive inventions have more often than not blurred my personal and my professional lives. Still, I worry too much that I will not be fantastic at everything, so I hold back. As an example, once upon revealing that I could tap dance to a close friend while standing in front of a bar in Williamsburg, I was asked to do it on the spot, in front of a large-ish group of strange onlookers. I refused adamantly and got fairly angry about it, as if the casting director for a Cole Porter musical looking to give me a million dollars to dance in the chorus was going to be standing by and hanging his/her head in shame at the sight of my soft shoe. Sometimes -- and frankly most of the time --people are not going to expect me to have a fully-rehearsed song and dance number (or the equivalent, depending on the situation) ready to go at a moment's notice.
Maybe something about habitual, unbridled creative word release in a public forum will improve my attitude and bring me back to completely un-self-conscious comedy. A dear friend of mine said quite recently (Thanksgiving weekend, in fact) when describing something she had admired about me all these years that I really don't give a damn what people think about me. I think this might be partially true, and could likely be fully true again with a little effort. A status message I posted on my Facebook profile yesterday (not real life, I realize, but sometimes biggish ideas happen there anyway) as haphazard philosophy made me think about myself in more detail and what would make me a much happier human and maybe return to some of my more appealing roots:
"Sleepless with a crowded headful of thoughts from a terrible day,but resolved not to let fearless hopefulness and risk taking go out of style. Our lives will likely be a series of epic failures, but so what? If we're lucky, they'll be hilarious."
I can only hope this is true, and that even the failures bring some degree of personal success ... or at least really great inwardly-directed Schadenfreude.
I also really want to challenge myself to be a bit more laissez-faire and not take myself so seriously, because that is definitely one of my biggest faults. I was not always like this; I used to fake-vomit up pudding in college at the dining hall when friends would request that I "do something" to get irritating, unwelcome dinner guests to stop talking. In adulthood, I care much more about what people think, even thought the Internet and other invasive inventions have more often than not blurred my personal and my professional lives. Still, I worry too much that I will not be fantastic at everything, so I hold back. As an example, once upon revealing that I could tap dance to a close friend while standing in front of a bar in Williamsburg, I was asked to do it on the spot, in front of a large-ish group of strange onlookers. I refused adamantly and got fairly angry about it, as if the casting director for a Cole Porter musical looking to give me a million dollars to dance in the chorus was going to be standing by and hanging his/her head in shame at the sight of my soft shoe. Sometimes -- and frankly most of the time --people are not going to expect me to have a fully-rehearsed song and dance number (or the equivalent, depending on the situation) ready to go at a moment's notice.
Maybe something about habitual, unbridled creative word release in a public forum will improve my attitude and bring me back to completely un-self-conscious comedy. A dear friend of mine said quite recently (Thanksgiving weekend, in fact) when describing something she had admired about me all these years that I really don't give a damn what people think about me. I think this might be partially true, and could likely be fully true again with a little effort. A status message I posted on my Facebook profile yesterday (not real life, I realize, but sometimes biggish ideas happen there anyway) as haphazard philosophy made me think about myself in more detail and what would make me a much happier human and maybe return to some of my more appealing roots:
"Sleepless with a crowded headful of thoughts from a terrible day,but resolved not to let fearless hopefulness and risk taking go out of style. Our lives will likely be a series of epic failures, but so what? If we're lucky, they'll be hilarious."
I can only hope this is true, and that even the failures bring some degree of personal success ... or at least really great inwardly-directed Schadenfreude.
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