Without Defense

In the summer, I’d texted friends nearly daily, asking them to help me not quit my desk job. I wrote to them that quitting my job without a plan would be just like an alcoholic taking a drink: Disastrous. Painful. An uncharted trip through hell. 

But. I wasn’t connected to the things I knew to do. Few meetings, no sponsor, stuck in the middle of step work I’d started months before. 

And so, I drank. Metaphorically. 

In the fall, I quit my job, without a plan. I felt elated, relieved, free. Exactly like taking a drink. 

And now, I am living the consequences of that decision. 

Yesterday, as I walked back to my apartment after more than 8 hours on my feet and little to show for it, I catalogued all the things I missed about my old job. 

The short commute, with no bridges or tunnels involved. The normal hours. The flexible hours, when I could take off to go to Trader Joes at lunch, or walk around the gorgeous suburban landscape, or nap at a nearby friend's before rehearsal. The co-workers I could have conversations with about things that were intelligent or fun or informative.

The kids. The chickens. The pianos.

The sitting. 

For all I wailed about wanting a job that didn’t require me to sit in front of a computer for 40 hours a week (and granted I still don’t) the ability to actually sit at all during the day sounds vastly luxurious. 

And as I walked home, the catalogue ever increasing, I said aloud, “I made a mistake.”

It was a mistake to quit my job the way I had, without a plan. I knew and had catalogued all the ephemeral perks of that job countless times, knowing what a cush place it was. But I was antsy, restless, hopeless and defiant. And I made a decision to leave. 

Now, in the school of life that I’ve come through, I hear much about “not regretting the past,” and true, through the interim period without work, I befriended another unemployed bright person who suggested a crowd funding campaign to pay off my back-rent cancer debt. The campaign was wildly successful, and a check is in the mail this week. In addition, because the goal was quickly reached, a very generous family gave me a donation insisting I spend it on “something fun,” which is how and why I have this fancy new laptop to replace the dinosaur I’d had. 

But… other than that? I mean, couldn’t those goals have been accomplished anyway? A campaign have been suggested another time? 

Look, I know this retail job I’m in now is temporary. I am trying my best to stave off the Stockholm Syndrome that seems to have engulfed everyone who works there, or anywhere in retail, into thinking that the paltry, hiccuping pay-scale, weak health insurance, and unpredictable schedule is acceptable. 

Today, I am trying to forgive the faulty thinking of mine that sent me on this fool’s errand in the first place, comparing it to how I did behave when I was drinking: It’s not cuz I was an awful person that I did what I did, it was because I didn’t know any better, and I didn’t have any tools to combat my insane thinking. 

I have to offer myself compassion for the misguided, instant-gratification seeking decision I made. I was not using the tools I knew to use. I was disconnected from the community that helps me not make insane decisions, financial and otherwise. 

I do feel, however, that admitting that I made a mistake in quitting that job without a plan is a good first step for me. I am not immune to my own thoughts. I am not solved from throwing myself into the abyss because I think my house is on fire. 

I have decades'-driven ruts and habits that I fell over into. And I did not have the diligence or connection to haul me out before I burned my life down instead. 

That’s okay. 

I mean, it has to be. Right? 

"There's gotta be something better than this..." ~ Sweet Charity

Why, didn’t every 7th grader want to become a botanist and live in a tree to be away from people? 

I am at the radically awful and hopeful place of beginning to work on relationships, and my relationship to relationships. 

Coincidentally or not, the last time I started this kind of work, I was into the deep and dredging and combing-over-my-sad-history-of-self-abandonment-and-isolation part when I was struck with a bout of Leukemia, and had to stop.

Now that I’m through a round of work on my relationship to money, scarcity, “under-being,” under-earning, me and my mentor agreed that we could work on the other side of the “romance and finance” coin.

Color me thrilled. 

In fact, I am looking forward to it, … sort of. Not the work itself, but the results of it. 

I am not meant to continue my early patterns of self-insulation through isolation or self-abandonment/-destruction. Or, rather, I’m not content to. What I’m meant to do is really only up to me, isn’t it? And a few strokes of fate, I imagine. (hello, cancer.)

But, whatever role I can have in loosening the noose of “Trust No One,” I am signing up for it. 

I do feel that I am in a better place to begin this time than I was about 2 years ago. I’m working with someone who knows me well, who’s walked this path with and before me, and whom I trust and love.

Even though our particular histories are dissimilar, their endings and the feelings they’ve evoked in us became the same. 

She’s told me that my feeling of imminence, urgency & impatience with myself and "the world" will fade: I am a 33 year old healthy smart beautiful woman. Why the fuck have I never been in a relationship that’s lasted over 6 months, and only two of them at that? Why have I been unintentionally celibate for years on end or find myself particularly attracted to taken men? My “hot” years are fading; I want to take advantage of them!

And yet. I seem to land in the same place each time I try to throw myself into the ring, or try to avoid it. And so, it’s time to try something else. Something I know will work, because it works for thousands of other people who walk a path of recovery. 

I’m not stoked. But I am. 

It’s sad stuff to riffle through. There is a Trail of Tears that’s led me here. But I feel ready for this. No, not eager to riffle; yes, eager to heal, move on, move forward. Let whoever I’m supposed to be, or whoever I’m hiding, to integrate. 

Does this look like a bright shiny pot of gold(en haired children) at the other end? Likely not. 

I finished the work on money, and I’m still in the thick of the results of patterns that brought me here. But I imagine they’ll shift over time. 

So, too, I imagine with the love and relationship stuff. I won’t buy a wedding dress at the end of it. But perhaps I’ll buy date one. 

(p.s. this missive is in no way a passive request for dating invitations. but thanks.)  ;) 

The Truth Will Out.

(A quick note before I run off to our full-day tech rehearsal. To Kill a Mockingbird opens this Friday!)

On the heels of the “Don’t forget your North Star” blog yesterday and contemplation this week, I went to have a voice lesson with a former castmate. We spoke afterwards about my job transition and how he’d realized what his North Star was years before, and sure, he had to jump through hoops to get there, but it was and is worth it. 

He was telling me we have to listen most of all to ourselves, not to others, and to not let their voices drown out our own. But I replied, Their not giving me their ideas, they’re asking “What do you want to do?” and I keep on answering, “I don’t know.”

But I sat with that for a moment, and I corrected myself: No, That’s not true. I do know: I want to perform; I just keep dismissing it.

That, performance, is my North Star.

I went last night to see a friend of mine perform at her CD release party. The talent was phenomenal, but beyond that was the brilliance of her pieces. Honed, practiced, cultivated brilliance. That’s beyond, “You’re talented.”

I sat in the audience, and during one of her songs, I was brought to tears with its beauty. With the privilege of being alive and able to listen and be moved by such art. She created an atmosphere and an experience that wouldn’t have existed if she didn’t.

I want to do that. 

And I think it’s possible. I just have a few hoops to jump through. And a lot of learning and honing to do.

It is very easy for me to dismiss what it is I want, because it sounds frivolous or flighty in the light of day. It sounds vague and too artsy and too uncertain. But I’ve fought with myself for years to cop to my desires, and each time I dismiss it, I pull myself back into the dance of "I don't know what I'm doing with my life."

I can dismiss performance for many reasons: believing I’m not good enough; that it’s too late; for financial reasons; for I-want-to-be-approvable reasons. I want the easy check-box on the form of life: What do you do for a living?

Or, more accurate, What does your soul want to do?

In talking with my voice teacher, he basically said it’s possible, and it’s worth it. I drove back from there to meet with two women to get some perspective on all this job transition stuff, and to firm up actions steps I can take in the maelstrom of “What the F* are you doing?” that invades my brain.

They said, too, it’s possible, and it takes work. Don’t give up. Do not go back to sleep.

Here are some steps to take, Yes you’ve taken some of them before, but here they’re being suggested again. Try again. Talk to my friend, my sister, this guy I know.

No, it won't look like being a self-supporting performer, but it will look like earning enough to support those endeavors.

The artists I’ve met and spoken to this week all have day jobs. But they do it in service of their dream. It’s not an either/or proposition: Art or Financial Stability. Dream or Devastation.

It’s hard for me to keep my eye on where I want to go, and that’s why I have you guys to help me. When I finally ask. And when I finally am open enough to listening. To you, and to myself. 

a short note, just to let you know I’m not dead.

the end.

just kidding.

I have to leave to go meet up with some folks at 9am I haven’t seen in a very long time. I had my dailey method shift yesterday at 530am, so I didn’t write, and sunday mornings are my check-in with my mentor, and usually lead to more emotion than can settle enough to show up here – which is good. so, tuesday, it is!

i just wanted to reflect on something that occurred to me as I sat in meditation this morning, back into another one of those deepak/oprah 21-day meditation challenges: I am living the schedule I wanted.

sure, it’s not perfect! but I’d wanted my days divided into thirds: mornings in private work, working on art, or music, or writing; afternoons working in the community somehow – how I didn’t know; and the evenings spent in performance.

and here I sit today, my morning spent in meditation, a little writing. this afternoon, I’ll head over to the synagogue to teach 4th grade. and this evening, I’ll have rehearsal (well, we’re off tonight, but you get the point!).

without intending to, I’ve come to the structure of the day I’ve always wanted or thought i wanted. the one I didn’t think I could achieve until I was 50, and had more going for me.

but, today, even though it doesn’t look perfect, even though I am only earning about a third of my needed income through teaching two days a week… this is what it will feel like. this is what it does feel like:

awesome. fulfilling. purposeful. open. creative. engaged. important. 

thanks, universe, for this taste of what it will and what it is like. i was right when i discovered that’s the day i want for myself. now, help me achieve it sustainably. thanks. 

Tossed.

On a shelf high in my closet sits a box. This morning, I took it down, dumped it over on my bed and picked through the pieces of paper I’d written and thrown in since it was given to me as a one-year sobriety present.

Someone mentioned recently the idea of dumping out their “God box” every once in a while, to see what “god” may have already taken care of, and to see what we’re still holding onto, even as it’s been "surrendered" to the box.

It’s sweet and astonishing to me, all the things that tortured me so hard, I found them listed on multiple post-its, torn pieces of paper, even a square of toilet paper.

The ones that I got to separate from “still actively seeking hope/help” included a lot of men’s/boy’s names that haven’t gotten a rise out of me for years. I had to wrack my memory at one of them, and then got to see the number of times others' names had been tossed in there in the hope for resolution and divine intervention, and indeed, they've become completely old news. Today, those got tossed to the resolved pile.

In that pile, I also tossed, Food issues and Smoking. Issues that I haven’t had to box with for years, so much so that I am surprised to remember them, and to notice they caused me such pain (well, smoking was a bitch to quit – and I never doubt that one will always lead to more).

The ones that remain in the box, that I am throwing back in there, are varied.

One reads:

      Jesse Morris will live.

      And he will find recovery.

      And he will be beautiful.

      Amen.

Jesse Morris did not live. But I believe him to still be beautiful.

I also have the memorial service booklet from Aaron Brown’s funeral following his heroin overdose.

I have the necklace my father gave me when I was sick with cancer. A photo of my mom holding my brother, age 2. A photo of the ex whose innocence we shared.

And the torn shreds of a fortune cookie I didn’t understand why I’d ripped and torn in there until I pieced it back together: “As long as your desires are not extravagant, they will be granted.” – I can easily see why I would bristle at such a fortune!

Finally, what will stay in the box, rethrown in, and recommitted to allowing them to be “taken care of,” are those issues which have remained “issues” to this very day.

The best illustration of these being an actual illustration:

Home, Love, Health, Security, Happiness.

(Or at least I think that’s happiness, and not Pirates.)

There are a bevy of papers with some amalgam of these on it. Some verbose pleas to a higher power, others simply a heart drawn on a post-it.

It is cleansing and reaffirming to dump and sort this box, this box that over the years I’ve begged over for things to change, hurled words in there like grenades, or exhausted, dropped them in tear-stained.

There are ones that I don’t know if “resolution” is possible, like those untimely deaths of beautiful people. And they will stay in the box.

There are ones where I still can’t see what resolution will look like at all, as with my dad, my career, and “my life,” as I wrote it again and again. They will stay there, too. 

But, luckily, there must be hope from a sorting such as this, because the pile of “resolved” issues is nearly half. Those torturous achings that caused me to toss names and circumstances in that have simply fallen out of mind, out of importance, into the fate and design of my past...

These ones that make me smile now for the girl who wrote them, and for the wisdom of time that solved them: They give me hope for the others. 

Progress is Boring.

(in an effort to release perfectionism, I’m going to admit this blog kinda bored me, but I’m putting it up anyway. achievement unlocked!)

I’ve heard there’s a difference between planning and projecting.

Do the first to create peace; do the second and create angst.

As with most of my plans lately -- job stuff, the Boston trip, even the acting (I’ll be auditioning again on Saturday) -- it’s been a lot easier, though not easy, to take the action and let the results be what they may.

What I’ve gotten to see out of this way of being around the trip and the acting is that indeed, the action was worth it, regardless the results. In fact, that the results are still positive: I get to feel the joy of trying, and the smile associated with remembering. I get to feel proud for showing up, and a sense of peace around having not “gotten my way” or gotten in my way – unlike the outcome of projecting.

It’s nice to be able to recognize that the effort was worth the effort. It could be easy to dismiss, and say, That wasn’t worth my time since I didn’t get what I want – but, we know, I did. I got to spend time with someone I enjoy; I got to experience auditioning (and even acting). I got to see who and how I am in relationship, in perseverance, in something new – and I like who I was, and who I saw.

I’ve been hemming around signing up for my work’s retirement plan. I’ve been eligible for almost half a year, and it’s been on my list of “action items” to talk to the accountant at work, find out how much would be taken out of my paycheck to hit the minimum, which would be matched by my employer.

Some people dream of this kind of benefit… and I’ve been scared to look. What if there isn’t enough for me now? What if there won’t be enough for me later? What if it’s too late? What if …

“Clarity leads to freedom,” is a phrase I hear around now. And the truth, like my student loans, could be a lot more palatable than I imagined/feared/projected.

So, this week I did ask for those numbers. I sat, listened, saw the highlighted figures on the page, and then stuffed the paper into my purse! Carrying around this step toward clarity without actually looking is still being in vagueness.

I’m still scared. As if looking at a page will harm me!

Clarity leads to freedom. It’s better to know than not know. It’s better to try than not try. It’s better to live in reality than in fantasy, mostly because my fantasies are pretty nihilistic.

If I’ve gotten anything out of the last few months, or even year, it’s that trying can actually be fun. No matter the outcome.

I think about my band. I think about playing bass in that band. And how freaking fun that was. It was some work, and not always serene, but it was fun. It was enlivening.

And I quit.

It was time to move on, but that doesn’t discount the value and the importance of that experience in my life.

From the vague listening to the accountant, I don’t think my salary can support those retirement contributions, modest though they are. But, also, I’ve learned that my estimation of things can skew toward scarcity and fear, so I’ll be taking those numbers to friends who can help me get more perspective on them, since there may be a truth that I can’t see through that fog.

The other thing that comes up lately, is that I think I wanna band again. Active verb. To band. I want to band.

So, I'll plan, not project. 

The B Word.

Balance. Without it, I tend to become the other B word.

Someone asked me how the whole, "I need friends who don't live hand-to-mouth," blog went over, if there was any push-back from it. I said, not that I know of, but that I’d spoken to some other folks over the weekend, and was reminded of something very important in life: Things are not black and white.

When I stopped drinking, it was because I was an alcoholic. I put the bottle down, looked around, and declared everyone close to me alcoholic, too. Whether they were or not, I was on a crusade of reform, and they all were alcoholics who needed to stop as I did.

Well… two things: a) yes, most of the people I was associated with “at the end” were in fact drinking alcoholically, but b) that didn’t mean they or anyone who drank were alcoholics. In the beginning, I needed that kind of black and white thinking, because being close-ish to people who were drinking was too difficult a gray line when my line had to be crystal clear.

But, just because that was the way for me, I came to realize that wasn’t the way for everyone. And after some time passed, and indeed the folks who were hopeless sops like me faded from the foreground of my life, I got to see that some people (god bless them) can drink normally.

There’s one friend who stuck through my own transition. She described this "normal" drinking to me: she literally says to herself, “Hmm, I’m beginning to feel buzzed, I should switch to water.” Uh… I didn’t get that memo. “I’m beginning to feel buzzed,” was always followed by, “A few more will get it done right,” or if I was feeling temperate, “I should switch to beer.”

So, my friend does not react to alcohol how I do. And I have to come to see that there is a world between sauced and tight-ass.

In the same way, I recognize that as I begin to assess my behavior and extremism around money, scarcity, and deprivation, I am being called to allow others their own experience, even as I diagnose and address my own.

Just because a friend opened a new credit card, doesn’t mean I have to stop hanging out with them. Just because a friend is earning less than I think they deserve in the world, doesn’t mean they’re addicted to deprivation. Just because other people behave differently than me, doesn’t mean my way is the right way, and most importantly, doesn't mean I don't have anything to learn from them. 

As with getting sober, I do have to admit that some of the folks around me may indeed have trouble in this area – water seeks its own level, after all. But, that doesn’t mean I have to be an asshole about it.

And, that’s what I’ve gotten to see these past few days I’ve been declaring myself needing to “move on” from friends and communities who have what I’d declared a “faulty, diseased, and only rectifiable by a spiritual solution” relationship to money, and thereby the world.

It’s a good thing people don’t take me that seriously!

And it’s a good thing I can remember to not take myself too seriously, too. If I’d stuck to every declaration about myself… by this point I would have been:

Vegetarian

Israeli

A prostitute

A suicide victim

A daily exerciser

T.V.-less

Caffeine-less

An organic farmer

and a truck driver.

The thing is, I can’t make blanket declarations for myself or anyone else. I have no idea what my path contains or eliminates, thereby no idea what others’ do.

There is some truth to wanting to learn from and be around people whose relationship to money can model my own. But that’s because I have a problem with it. Not everyone does, and if they do, it’s really none of my business.

It comes to equanimity, and allowing others and myself our experience without judgment. It means having openness, compassion, and respect toward all people on all paths. It does certainly include me getting help for a pattern of beliefs and behaviors that have led me to despair and insanity, but it also includes me being more generous in my assessments of life. Allowing for the gray, for the middle-ground, for difference, for balance.

Because, solvent or not, nobody likes a bitch. 

Cleaning House.

There’s a phrase in Al-Anon: Let it begin with me.

I’m in the process (or supposed to be) of looking back through my life and writing down where underearning/underbeing/debting has affected my life, and eventually caused it to be unmanageable.

I’ve often and easily thought about my dad’s parents and his half-brother when I think about the history of this “disease” in my family. It’s easy to do. They are the ones who hoarded, let the dog go to the bathroom in the house, and despite brains that cognitively thought at high levels, lived like people who were under a crushing weight of despair, which looked on the outside like the crushing weight of filth.

These folks, my kin, would have been the people who Hoarders would have descended upon, who would have reluctantly and silently allowed their belongings to be sorted, sifted, and discarded. And after the cameras left, would have as quickly as possible returned their home to the state of dishevelment and insurmountable disarray. The familiar state of it. The state in which they felt most comfortable, even if not comfortable at all.

After my parents’ divorce when I was 20, my dad let our childhood home fall into much the same state, with the dead bugs on the hood of the oven, the flies belly-up on the window sill, and the tree that shaded our home, that stood sentry in our front yard, so long-neglected it had to come down. And though it’s easy to see these patterns of neglect, hopelessness, resignation, and simple denial in that side of the family, through my inventory work, I’m also getting to see a different strain of ideas around money, belongings, worthiness crops up from my mom, too.

I spent some time with my brother last year in his apartment he rented alone. The same silt of neglect, of using half-broken items, of allowing the home you live in to be in a state of disrepair lay over his home, too. But, from the same familial miasma, his attitude toward money became very different than mine.

At some point, I brought up money and my not knowing how to manage it, to save it, to “make it work for me” (whatever that means!), and he admitted, surprising me, that he is a miser with it. He hoards and saves his money, and is virulently opposed to being indebted to anyone.

He hoards money. I hemorrhage it.

In the end, though, the result for us both is the same (and I recognize that my assessment and diagnosis is unfair to him, simply in that I am not him, so please forgive my hubris). But the result is that neither of us have money to spend on fun things, nice things, things that make our lives fun and easy and worth living. If he’s loathe to spend anything, even if he has it, then life becomes smaller than it needs to be. If I simply spend whatever I make without thought to long-term or significant goals, my bank balance becomes zero, and my life shrinks with it.

I may not do my dishes as regularly as I should (though I am better now!), and my fridge may house food that is unidentifiable with mold, but my home is neat, clean, organized. It feels light, despite its size, and I endeavor to make it so. But there’s an article I read recently on home decoration that said, "Do it: Clean, organize, make pretty, and then GET OUT." Get out and into and on with your life. There’s more to life than decoration.

So, as I tally my numbers each month, calculate my income & expenditures, as I put money into a savings account and a vacation account, I have to remember it’s not just so that I can have a neat and orderly spreadsheet. That, in fact, even if there were a million dollars in my account, I’d have to remember, like my brother, that it’s there for me to enjoy thoughtfully. That it’s there for me to live, to support a life worth living. I have to remember that I do all this work so that I can go out in the world as my family was unable to do.

I let it begin with me. 

Risky Business

There’s a funny little book I picked up a few years ago entitled, Steal Like An Artist. One of the tips in the book is, If you find yourself to be the smartest person in the room, go to another room.

I’ve been considering this sentiment as applied to satisfaction, success, self-love, financial security. At the risk of sounding like a self-aggrandizing schmuck, I think I’ve been heading to another room for a good little while.

But, I’m hesitant. I’m hesitant to leave those who I’ve met in this room, and all the rooms before it. I’m hesitant to let those friendships go, when I notice that how I’ve been ordering and focusing my life is not really aligned with how they are anymore. I don’t want to leave, but I kinda already have, simply by the efforts I’ve been making in the past few years.

It sounds like an asshole thing to say. It “sounds” judgey and materialistic and conceited. But, I don’t think it is. I think it’s one of the most honest things I’ve said about where and who I am in my life now.

To find a parallel that is perhaps less alienating, let’s look at alcohol. In two weeks, it’ll be 8 years since my last drink. Since that time, the folks who are in my life tend to also be people who don’t drink, or simply people who don’t drink alcoholically. I began to hang out with people who behaved in ways I did or I wanted to, and in the process, those who I used to spend time with began to fade. This wasn’t a judgment on them; it was simply an acknowledgment of what we now had or didn’t have in common. I’d simply moved to another room.

If you can hang with the non-judgment of that move, nearly 3 years ago, I began to spend time with people who didn’t accrue unsecured debt, who tracked their income and expenses, who were attempting to live a full life without bouncing along the disheartening bottom of “paycheck to paycheck,” “I can’t hang out because I’m broke,” “I eat popcorn for dinner,” and “I have holes in my socks.” (Each something I'd said...repeatedly, for years.)

As with alcohol, I had simply come to the end of my rope by how small and anxious and exhausting my life was. And, since then, I’ve been endeavoring to live differently.

In that difference, I’ve begun to notice that many of the folks whose room I’ve shared are still, in some manner, living a pinching, struggling life. And I’ve begun to notice that we don’t talk as much, that I have less to share about, that I don’t really relate or want to relate anymore. Just like I don’t really have much to say if you share about your drunken escapades, I don’t really have much to say about how you don’t know how you’ll pay rent next month.

All I really do have to say about that is, I GET IT. I have completely been there. I have, many times in my “adulthood,” had less than $3 in my bank account, and NO JOB. I KNOW what it feels like to have a life so small because you can’t afford the bus to see friends, or the $8 for the movie they're seeing, or just the $2 coffee chat. I know what it’s like to despair that you’ll never get out of the hole. What it’s like to assume that you’ll eek out a living … and then die. I know what it’s like to think about killing yourself because you can’t see any other end to the horrible cycle of constriction.

I know what it’s like to live small and afraid. And I know, now, what it’s like to find a way out.

I can talk to you about that. I can tell you I’ve found a way that works for me, and I can help or hope you find it, too. But, ultimately, that’s all that I can do.

And in that knowledge and acceptance of where and who I’ve become, a non-drinker who is attempting to live a larger life, it should only make sense that I would want to be among others who are living the same. Simply so I can learn. So I can hear, model, get hope, get help for myself. Because I am that person who was begging for help before, and now I want to be around those who can help me. Who have moved into a different room and found help themselves.

It feels so fucking lonely, right now. It feels judgmental and abandoning and selfish and crass. It feels like I’m waving a hand over a community that has loved me, and I’m declaring that world, “Not enough.”

But, in truth, it isn’t. For me.

I want to live larger, freer, more boldly. In the end, it's not actually about money at all. I simply want financial stability because it allows me to dream bigger, or dream at all, since I’m not agonizing over how I’ll feed my cat this month. Stability leads me to ease, and ease leads me to dream.

Today’s sentiments may sour in the mouths of someone reading this. I may have backs turned to me. There is a loneliness that happens when you’re transitioning to a new phase of yourself. But, perhaps in my acknowledgment that I want to be in that next room, I can help myself to get there. Perhaps in simply stating I love you and I have to leave you, I am offering more love than I had. I don’t want to be lonely; it’s part of why I do all this work, man. I don’t want to leave you, but our conversation has flagged. And it is/I am worth the risk of saying, Thank you, and maybe I'll see you over there.

No Soup For You.

It’s astonishing, the lengths I’ll go to deprive myself.

The thick pattern of deprivation, living small, quietly, unobtrusively, knocks on the door of all my actions and insists on being allowed in.

Luckily, my latest personal recipe is: Me + G-d + Friends + Action.

I was on the phone with a friend the other day discussing the fact that I needed a spending plan for my upcoming trip to Seattle and Boston this Saturday. I told her that I’d already “found” $235 in my usual monthly spending plan, which means whittling funds from other line items, like entertainment, personal care, household purchases--line items that fluctuate anyway, so I consider them “fundgable” when they’re really not. (I’ve learned.)

This isn’t to say that my spending plan is a monthly set of 10 Commandments, chiseled in stone and fatal when not adhered to. It’s an ideal, a goal, a guideline, and the actuals that I tally at the end of each month tell me the story as it happened, instead of how I thought it would. Usually they’re pretty close these days.

However, when my friend and I were speaking about my trip, and we calculated aloud bus fare, BART fare, coffee&food at 4 airports in 10 days, groceries, eating out, incidentals, tchotckes, gas money… well, we figured it out to about $400, a number I’m supposed to double check before I leave.

Immediately, I begin mentally looking at those fundgable categories, which I’ve already cut thick slices from this month to support the trip. And I start to get panicked and fearful about the trip and how much I can spend, and try to pre-manipulate how I can spend less than I actually know I’ll need.

This, friends, is the compulsion. How can I whittle down my needs, how can I deny what is actually true about my needs, hide them, dismiss them, and discard them, so that I can live in a way that I misguidedly think will support me?

Luckily, I was on the phone with my friend as we spoke all this out, and I admitted to her that I have nearly a grand in my vacation savings account… but, I told her like a child revealing they’ve stolen a Snickers, I’m "supposed to" be saving it for my hypothetical trip to Paris with my mom next Summer.

I don’t want to give up my Snickers. I don’t want to break part of it off to eat now, because I believe I just need to save it for later, or there will never be enough.

This is preposterous. And where voices that don’t live inside my own head are so valuable.

She didn’t even have to say anything, as I admitted my vacation savings money could easily provide the additional $200 that I’ll actually need for this trip. I just talked myself through it, admitting it, accepting it, saying that I see the fallacy and the deprivation in that kind of save it ALL for some unknown date and live in fear right now thinking. And I told her I would move that money over this week, so that I could use it in today, for the intended purpose: vacation.

It’s not actually called “Paris Vacation with Mom” savings account: It’s just called Vacation. And if this isn’t the time to use those funds, when I need them, when I’m plotting to slice myself and my funds even thinner than they already are this month, then I haven’t learned a thing.

Yesterday, I did move that money. It felt illicit, illegal almost. I felt nervous and anxious and excited and proud to know that I was supporting a vision for myself without putting myself in deprivation.

The ridiculous part is that I will easily replenish that money in the vacation account over the next few months. “Vacation savings” is a line item in my spending plan every single month. It’s not like I’ll never get to go on a vacation again because I’m using this money now.

But my addiction to deprivation and fear continues to knock on my door and insist entry into my life and my decisions. So, luckily, today I have an antidote: Me + G-d + Friends + Action. 

Bus Stop Boy

Well now.

So, I guess I should tell you about Bus Stop Boy, now that I’ve finally broken down and updated one of the people I have in my life whose main relationship with me is about helping me work on relationships.

Over the summer, I began to see Bus Stop Boy, as you might imagine… at the bus stop. I was temping in the city, and was sometimes taking this bus, sometimes that. I’d just begun to pay attention to how I interact with men, trying to focus less on if they’re noticing me or not, how I’m interpreting or internalizing that information. And Bus Stop Boy was one of these people. I was aware of him, and he was aware of me. There was nothing more or less than that, but a definite vibe. Not even flirty, just aware.

One morning, a few months ago, I had come from meeting with the aforementioned woman the previous day, highly aware now of how I was walking in the world, and I saw him at the bus stop. Suddenly, I had no idea how to behave. I didn’t want to be all coy, I didn’t know how to just stand there. I felt a wave of panic wash over me, and as some of you may remember, I had to leave work as soon as I got there and come home and crawl into a fetal position. Everyone on BART was standing too close. Whatever it was that my being aware of who and how you were reacting to me – it had acted as a buffer somehow between us. And suddenly, seeing Bus Stop Boy, … it was like seeing the Matrix. Suddenly I could see that everywhere I looked and every move that I made, I was hyper aware of it, and I was aware if you were aware of it. I felt stripped of some defense mechanism – I felt utterly exposed, and completely unsure of how to act.

A rather large reaction to simply seeing a dude at the bus stop. But, that’s what happened. It took me days to get back to feeling right. And, in fact, I stopped taking the bus, and opted to take carpool with a friend of mine during the rest of my temp gig.

I’m still aware of how others react to me, and, duh, that’s going to continue to happen. People interact. However, I am trying to pay less attention to if “he,” whoever “he” is, saw me. Noticed. If you’re noticing how I’m holding myself or not. I’m trying to keep myself to myself when I’m out and about. Not closing myself off, but simply focusing more on me, and what I’m doing, not on you.

This said, things have progressed.

I ran into Bus Stop Boy when I was on the bus going into the city for an interview about a month or more ago. I was aware, he was aware. We both went for the one seat that was open, and he let me have it. When getting off the bus, I got off in front of him, and turned around and thanked him for the seat, held out my hand, and said I’m Molly, by the way. He took my hand, said his name, said he hadn’t seen me on the bus for a while. I replied I hadn’t been on the bus for a while, we both smiled, said see you around.

In reporting this later to my friend, I talked about “getting a hit” off it. I was nervous about this job interview, and I knew I could get a little hit from talking to this guy. Sure, there’s the normality of introducing yourself to someone you see nearly daily just for the sake of that, and I could file this under that, but I know my underlying reasoning – I wanted to feel better, and talking to an attractive guy who seems to think I’m attractive too is a reliable way to do that. (I was about to write it’s a “good way” to do that, but, this is where I run into trouble.) I felt more spring in my step on my way to my interview, now that I had gotten that burst of acknowledgment from this stranger.

A little while later, I am on my way to another interview, and I see him on the street in plain clothes with a girl, walking a small dog. Girlfriend, I think, and keep walking. Well, I say to myself, there’s that taken off the table. He’s got a girlfriend.

A little while later, about 3 weeks ago, I’m on my way home finally for the evening, having had an awful day at work – feeling my feelings of despair around administrative work, around having worked so hard for months to get something so menial, I’d come home from work bawling on the phone with a friend, before I went back out to meet up with some folks for an hour. Suffice it to say that I was drained of all emotional guile. Of all resistance. Of all pretense.

Funny, then, that I should walk into Peet’s coffee, and there he is. Bus Stop Boy at 8pm on a Wednesday evening. My eye make-up long cried off. My incognito hat. Glasses. This is not the look of a temptress. He’s on line ahead of me, and so I say hello. We chat a bit; we’ve both started new jobs. We small talk, laugh a bit. I say see you around.

And now, suddenly, we are seeing each other around a lot. I next run into him unexpectedly on the shuttle from BART – again on a day when I'd sat at the bus stop from work in near-tears. Waiting – FORTY FIVE MINUTES – for a bus from Berkeley. Taking me nearly two hours to get home from ONE TOWN AWAY.

And there he is. The second time in a row when I'd felt depleted, and, perhaps, open. 

It hasn't eluded me that these unusual times that I've seen him are at times when I could most use a nod from the universe, some semblance of, Molly - you're not a worthless, aimless, trundling-along broke spinster. It has not escaped me that during my new days of data entry, receptionist calls, arguments with xerox machines, I'd begun to think of that morning's conversation with Bus Stop Boy, and it takes me out of my vile existence. It reminds me that I am more than my job. It reminds me that I am something more than that. Simply by recalling the smile of a near stranger, my chest feels less constricted - I feel less trapped. Is this "meaningful"? Is a nudge from "THE UNIVERSE"? Is it just a coincidence? Is it simply pointing out to me the pleasure I take in fantasy rather than reality?

I moved my bags, and he sat down next to me. After some chit chat, I said, I think I saw you with your girlfriend walking your dog a few weeks ago (she says leadingly). He got a sudden look, and said, “Ex...” That was their goodbye. She came to visit for two weeks. She’s been living in D.C. for the past year, looking for work there and here, and she got a job there, and, as he told to me, he wasn’t ready to move back East.

He seemed pretty bummed. Secretly, I thought two things. One: emotionally unavailable. Two: Single. ...

So, finally, friends, here’s the kicker. What I admitted to my girl friend earlier today: I have invited him to come with me to a party my friend is having this Saturday. “As friends,” I said. But as I spoke to my friend earlier today, … I have no interest, really, in being this guy’s friend. Nor do I know that I want to be in a relationship with him. I barely know anything about him. Do I want to get to know him better? Yes. Am I dating right now? No. Is he? I should hope not! Long-term relationship break-up does not really equal available for a new one any time soon.

So, what to do? Well, my friend and I spoke earlier about some “bottom lines” I could set around this. The only thing I could come up with, which she suggested, was not hanging out one-on-one.

She asked me at the end of our meeting how I felt. I said Stubborn. (She laughed.) I said, Disappointed. The addict part of me wants those hits. Those doses of feeling something other than overwhelmed with money or lack thereof. With feeling lost as to my life’s direction or purpose. With feeling lonely, mainly.

As I begin to get some “recovery” or sense of what is healthy behavior around relationships, I realize that the majority of my recent women friends are actively engaged in behavior that I just don’t identify with anymore. I just don’t have anything to say to my friend who’s texting an unavailable dude daily. Or who just bought sex toys for a threesome. Or who is in and out of her relationship with the phases of the moon. Which means, and has meant for me, that several close friendships I’ve had are being let go of -- are fading.

Further to the "lonely" part, as I said to my friend this morning, I haven’t been dating for a year. I haven’t had sex in a year. I am only human. And there’s only so much I can take.

She said she gets it. She felt the same when she was going through this work. The truth is that I’m doing inventory on my relationship past, and I don’t want to be involved with anyone while I’m going through this emotionally raw stuff. I don't (really) want to use someone else to band-aid the work that I'm doing. The truth is also that I’ve finally gotten paid, and much of my financial crisis is averted, so I finally have the chance to feel a little less stressed out.

Yes, there is only so much I can take. Luckily, I feel a modicum more freedom right now, yes, due to money, what-the-fuck-ever to people who say it won’t make you happy – sorry, food in my fridge makes me fucking happy, assholes. But that release from imminent worry creates a little more ease. That little more ease means I won't have to reach out to false idols for solace, false idols like the green-fade-to-brown eyes of the Bus Stop Boy.

I can do things to help me bolster and support myself, now that I’m not as "man the battleships!" Things which will provide more sustainable relief and support – I can reconnect with friends who aren’t stuck in unhealthy patterns. I can finally feel the room to write and paint again. 

Do I still absolutely want to just rest my head on his shoulder and relax to the marrow of every organ in my body? YES.

Go Toward the Open Door.

Wise women have told me this occasionally over the last few years. And, this is just the opportunity I got this weekend – to go toward the open door.

Originally planned for this weekend, was helping my immensely talented and ambitious friend by volunteering at her art show benefit for Japan. My volunteering for her had come as a status reduction from being in the art show, as during the time of my unemployment, I realized I was not energetically inclined toward creative production, nor, unfortunately, toward the donation of any art I currently own. So, I downgraded myself to volunteer last month.

Then, I continued to be unemployed, and although now (halleLUjah) employed, I don’t get paid until the 15^th of this month. Her show was planned for last night, Saturday night, and I have $40 to my name until Friday. I had to tell her I couldn’t do it. I simply couldn't afford the roundtrip to the city. It just wasn't feasible.

Do I/did I feel like a flake? Yeah. Was there anything I could do about it? No.

In the meantime, having unceremoniously bowed out of volunteering, on Friday morning my office was in the midst of heading out for the weekend to a “Shabbaton,” basically, a weekend at an overnight summer camp in the Santa Rosa mountains, where 250 members of the congregation (did I mention I work, now, at a synagogue?), kids, grandparenty-types, Board members, staff members, would all gather and have a hella Jewish weekend (well, hella Reform Jewish weekend – which includes guitars, LOTS of clapping on the up-beat, and the community-sanctioned use of a cappuccino machine on Shabbat).

I, was not going to go. I told them over this week and a half of my new employment that I wouldn’t be able to go, as I was volunteering with my friend’s art show. And, part of me didn’t really want to see these people, as I was still feeling rather resentful at being a freakin’ secretary, answering phones and manipulating mail merges.

However, there was another part of me who is, about 7, I’d say. And she, every time I heard someone wish me a good weekend as they were departing on Friday afternoon, would say to me, I wanna go to camp!.

I wanna go. I wanna go to camp. I wanna sleep in a bunk, and clap during song session, and eat at long uncomfortable tables, and see the mountains. I wanna go to camp!

She whispered this to me all day. Indeed, she’d been whispering it with increasing intensity all week, but adult me was too pissed at these people for having supporting roles in the drama of my life that was once again entitled, “Molly: The Disgruntled Employee.”

Then, however, came the reality that I would not, in fact, be joining my friend for her art show. And I’d been offered a ride by another reluctant employee earlier in the week, that she was going up on Saturday morning, coming back on Sunday, and I could ride with her.

She’s new to the office as well, and I could sense that perhaps we could get along. So I told her I’d think about it. And, as she was generously giving me a ride the the bus stop on Friday afternoon, long after almost everyone else had defected for the mountains, my little girl was screaming to be heard.

I was, in fact, on the bus home when I finally gave in to her. I called the woman, and I told her that if she was still willing, I’d love to ride with her to the Shabbaton.

Because, in reality, my alternative now, without the art show, was to sit on Saturday in my apartment, continue to read my Zadie Smith novel, see a few friends, and putz around, as per usual. I saw that very clearly as I rode that bus through Berkeley. Everything as per boring usual.

I have been camping once this summer. Several months ago now. I have kept my childlike spirit drowned out with the adult business of interviewing, resumes, finance planning, budgeting, cost efficiency, worry worry worry. There has been nearly NO play in the last 3 months. At all. A few movies here and there for a break from the awful soul-crushing of unemployment, but other than that, no glitter, sparse laughter, begrudging fun, and a riotous need to DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

So, I said YES. I went toward the open door.

The adult in me was also very calculatingly clear, with its Cheshire cat smile, that this weekend away would not cost me a penny. That I would have good meals I didn’t have to cook, pay for, or clean up from. That I would get the chance to go to the mountains, and hike there, as I did, without paying for a rental car, gas money, a camp site, anything at all.

I would be able to get out of dodge simply by saying “yes.”

To think that I almost didn’t makes me laugh at myself.

The weekend itself was both satisfying, and exhausting. Exhausting, as I was “on” the whole time, schmoozing with people, making my new presence known. It was not an entirely selfless or avocational decision to go up, obviously – it was/is also important to me that people got to know me as more than the receptionist, should the ears of the executive director be listening to the chatter in the water. Phrases like “raise” and “room for growth” come to mind as I go forward with this job. It was a political decision. – Also, it exposes/d me to people who might be good contacts later on.

Indeed, there was a published/working poet there with whom I got to spend some good conversations. The last one included my bald question, “Is it worth the fight?” [to be a writer, to pursue this {or indeed any} art, to continue to put one word after another as a sign that we mean something to ourselves, others, this world we live in – that we are not floating mindlessly through it – that we value our experiences – that we mold and shape them and ply them and tongue them and pinch them into these characters we imprint on paper and screen … Is it worth the fight to do this?]

His answer, after the knowing laugh, was yes, if you believe it is.

I believe it is. I believe in marking my existence. I believe in questioning it, turning it, shaping it, and being shaped by it.

I believe in inviting you to share it with me. To tell me how you see it, to let me have my own world shaped for a moment or more by how it is you walk in the world.

By saying yes to this weekend, I allowed cherished and often dismissed parts of me to sing in the sunshine. To look at the Milky Way, for Christ’s sake. To dance in a circle of women, to talk blogging with a stay-at-home dad. I got to see a fawn pounce through the brittle brush and pet baby goats, and to sing at my most favorite service in all of Judaism, Havdallah, the closing of Shabbat, where we say good-bye to the week we’ve had, and we welcome the week to come. The service where we invite the sweetness of Shabbat to come with us into and sustain us through the coming week.

It is a service that dances the edge of wistful, grateful endings and limitless, renewed beginnings. And, simply, it has the best music.

Shavuah Tov, friends – May you have a happy week.  

"Love as Burrito" or "This, or Something Better"

Grateful to my friends who gave me feedback, I texted the okJew yesterday morning that I was a fan of getting to know someone before getting physical (I couldn’t help but hear Olivia Newton-John as I typed it), and if that was something he was interested in, then I’d love to continue getting to know him, and if not, no hard feelings. He texted back to say that, in fact, he was looking for something else, and didn’t know how that fit in with me or not.

So, I got to sit with that. Tall, attractive, well-built Jew? What’s not to like? Oh, unavailable. And, I did sit, I questioned, I turned inward for a few minutes to test that option, and ultimately, gratefully, I said I was looking for something less tenuous, and good luck.

Then …

I sat and stared at a wall of books.

I was shocked, honestly, at how “air out of a balloon” I felt, without all that funny noise it makes. It made me realize that I still do have some work to do. I identified very clearly the feeling of a crash after a high. I could almost smell the cigarette smog and late 90s radio.

Hm. Love as Drug. Huey Lewis has a song about it. And, duh, it’s not “love” as in Love. It was intrigue. Oh, Intrigue!! – when’s the next text, what do I wear, how flirty do I be, funny do I be, do I invite him in, scheduling plans, etc…etc…etc… Something to think about, and then the plug was pulled yesterday mid morning, and I sat deflated and comatose for a few minutes on and off till lunchtime.

When I went and bought a burrito. My friend texted me to say that it’s normal to feel feelings, and we get to let them pass. I said my feelings now feel like a burrito in my belly ~ Real feelings TBA. And that much was true. How much easier it is to feel full, or to buy something to feel better – not better, to just feel different. My burrito accomplished both of those. Better to eat, feel full (and mildly grossed out that I ate a pound of tofu and salsa flesh), and to get the thrill that I spent money on lunch when I had a perfectly decent one in the fridge at work.

Cuz, what do I feel when I’m not caught up in the nonsense? Fear. I feel fear about money and work and job applications and directionlessness. Who the hell wants to feel that?? No one. But, better to feel those feelings, and thereby get into action around them, than to stuff them with something else, and continue avoiding the elephant in my psyche.

There’s another okJew who I’ve been talking to – and I’m not entirely sure that I want to pursue it at the moment. I met up with some of my new “relationship/emotional intimacy” folks last night after work, which was a very good use of my time. I’m so glad I’ve chosen to fall in with them – and they were talking about dating, and showing up, and boundaries, and desires, and how to be honest. These are things I want. I want to have desires – I have no … desire… to be celibate, or nunnish. I am a hot-blooded woman with hot-blooded needs, and a great big bag of tools that don’t work.

That said, I obviously do have more tools than I used to (burrito coma aside) – because I did let this dude know what I was available for, and he said he was glad we got that worked out early – and it’s true. I know plenty of times when I’ve let my “fear of looking needy” keep me from speaking up about my discomfort at the level of murk in a relationship or sexytime companionship. Once, it took me almost a month, and when I finally broached the subject with the dude, he said he wasn’t available or looking for more. So, I said, great, and was glad to know, and left his house feeling better and confident in my ability to state my needs, and let go of the results.

Sure, I didn’t “get what I want” in that situation – who doesn’t want the person to say, of course, I’d love to continue to get to know you and see if there’s something substantial that can come from this. But … as my “sugar crash” yesterday proved to me, there’s more work to be done. It’s not at all fair to place that amount of expectation on anyone – because they’re not really being asked to be themselves, they’re being asked to fill something in me, or distract something in me, or fix something in me. And, that, my dears, is an inside job.

When I said a few days ago, that if relationships are Miracle-Gro for your character defects, then surely they are/must be for your spiritual growth – this is why. My defect here being the desire to run away from the reality of my professional and financial situation – and when someone says they can’t be that for me, I’m left simply with my situation all over again, like the ugly step-sister you lock in the attic. Still here.

So what do I do? Well, firstly, I meet up with folks and I ask for help. Done, and will continue to do. Secondly, I continue to work on the job front. I was invited to go camping this weekend, and had accepted, as I love to camp, and getting out of dodge sounded so very nice. But last night, as I was compiling job listings into an email draft so I could take a look at them in my spare moments at work… it occurred to me that perhaps going camping was not the best use of my time at the moment.

This temp job will likely end in the next week or two, and after that is a blank horizon. It’s time for me to assist in coloring it in.

Lastly, I offer myself kudos. I made my intentions known, quickly. I listened honestly to what another person was telling me about their intentions. Which I didn’t take personally at all (a thought, I recognize, is also huge progress, but seems so “of course” now). I can try to treat myself kindly with how I treat my body and not go food coma on myself.

I showed up. I got in the ring. I made out. And, I can be confident that what’s available for me is “This, or something better.”

Romance & Finance

The Third Thing. That’s what a woman told me yesterday, after I met up with this new group of folks who, apparently, talk about intimacy, relationships, and habitual avoidance of (or indulgence in) such things.

I was telling her that for years, I’ve been trying to find a balance between Betty Crocker and the Vixen, to find the middle way between them. And she said something I’d never heard before – that likely, whatever it or I turn out to be, it’s probably neither of these – it’s a Third Thing.

I’ve said sometimes, that I don’t like the analogy of “living in the gray,” you know, the balance between black and white – between black and white thinking, all or nothing. Some people call this middle, attempting to live in the gray area. But to me, that sounds pretty awful, like living in a fog bank (looking at you, San Francsico!). And so, I’ve said that instead of the middle of black and white being gray, I call it color. That something other than black, or white, is color. And so, “the third thing” thing makes sense to me (she said it’s a Bill Clinton quote, and g-d love Bill – I’ll have to look it up).

Romance and Finance. I hear so often that these are the things which so often plague, worry, or motivate all of humanity. I’m reading this book on the art and history of Europe (“for the traveler”), trying to get some more info, things I slept through or didn’t care about or was too worried about the aforementioned “ance”s to listen. I have a few books on European travel on my desk, and this one is giving me the history, the why and wherefore of how come art and architecture look like they do. And here’s what I’ve learned: people, throughout history, have fought and been motivated by romance and finance. Kings marriages, new religions, revolutions. Many have been about who has what, who doesn’t have what, and how they can get more.

So, I’m not alone, apparently, in the grand scheme of these issues. Of working on them, and my own grating relationship with each.

This is good. And there is a solution, but as Jung said, (I think I’ve mis/quoted him here recently!), You can’t solve a problem on the level of the problem. And the problem here is that I have only my well-worn resources, patterns, and behavior to help me "solve" these problems of romance and finance. So it’s time to look for help.

My romantic life as having fallen in either Betty Crocker or Vixen territory is very much like my relationship with money. I’m either restricting, meagerly existing, and isolating – or I’m burning money to quench and balm the pain of all that restriction. Binge, remorse, restrict. Repeat. Many people can notice these traits in anorexics or bulimics, and so far in my life, knock on every piece of wood and mock-wood in the vicinity, that has not been an issue for me in that particular way. My binge and restrict is with emotions, money, and sexuality.

And if the middle way is not indeed the “middle,” then I have to keep coming back to those who know a different way, and can help me to get there.

This morning, I queried in my Morning Pages about this desert I go to in meditation. How was that desert, I asked. I hadn’t been there in a long time, and it was a place that I’ve gone to occasionally in my meditations for years, and one which I was encouraged to solidify in myself and my brain while I was doing some EMDR work with my therapist earlier this year.

She said it was interesting that I chose a desert as my “safe place,” that many people choose cozy small place, places where they feel protected. But, no, for me, I want a wide wide field of vision. There are no surprises, no sneak attacks, I have full view of every single thing for miles and miles. It’s a desert like those you see in the southwest, with ocher colored mesas in the distance. And the flat, flat, cracked earth expanse of dirt and dust and a hawk flying lazy circles in the bright, expertly clear sunlight.

This, is safe to me.

I suppose I’m reminded of it today, as I am going to be needing to touch into places like this – safe, calm, where I feel almost in charge. There is nothing hidden, nothing freaky, nothing to shake me or scare me or surprise me. I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of surprises and shakes and scares as I begin to dive into this romance stuff. This emotional intimacy, undoing this very deep pattern of all or nothing. And so, it’s time for me to strengthen my base, root within my safe places, and get the hell out of the way.

This is like a geyser, this work. Or maybe it’s not, what do I know. What I do know is that I am grateful for the help I have available to me, internally and externally. I was asked in my meditation from my Feminine, as I reported the other day, if I was ready – I guess I was being asked if I was ready to work on this stuff – because she/I have reawakened, and is powerful as fuck. It is no wonder to me, then, that it’s taken me as long as it has to come to this place of beginning to integrate and work on my sex/relationship/intimacy stuff – I’m going to need all the resources I’ve acquired, and many I have yet to discover.

Here’s to an assault on old ideas, however that looks as it is coupled with a cosmic cease-fire. 

Sucker

Dear Folks,

My new “normal people” hours are conflicting with my ability to write this with coherence, and eat, shower, become fully conscious. So, forgive its in/coherency, if it is so.

I had two phone calls yesterday that sort of count as informational interviews. One was with my darling Aunt Roberta (technically my mom’s cousin, but all those cousins are sort of like aunts and uncles – that’s how it was when you played stickball in the streets of Brooklyn in the '50s).

She has been a professor of English since the sun was born, and had some great information and tips for me. She sent me her teaching resume to take a look at, as I’m beginning to apply for teaching jobs – something I’ve viciously avoided for so long, I almost forget why. … but I do remember.

For as long as I can remember, what with my interest in literature, and writing, and reading, well-meaning folks have said the following to me:

Well, you could always teach English.

Somehow this phrase has turned into an anathema for me. Is this the only thing that I can do?? It begins to sound like a default, like welp, you could always settle. It has calcified into a job title that brings to mind aging high school professors, eking out their little lives in some underappreciated, underpaid job. My vision of “teacher” has come to also mean “sedentary,” as once you get a job teaching, all I hear is “tenure” and that’s all people are working toward – all they want is to stay as absolutely still as possible. No room for exploration, movement, change. You got it, you keep it, you pipe down, and suck it up.

Obviously, many of these ideas are unrealistic and quite ridiculous, but that hasn’t kept them from keeping me away from the whole idea of teaching – teaching English, teaching high school, teaching college – as if I’ve ever thought that I could.

But…

The reality.

Firstly, as Roberta was quick to assure me, teaching does not mean wasting away in some small town or inner city for eternity – it doesn’t have to mean that, and particularly in the beginning, it doesn’t mean that – as chances are, as a beginning teacher, you’ll have to sort of go where the job is.

Secondly, … and here’s the hilarious irony … I like teaching.

Sure, it’s hard work – I’ve done it before, but never considered what I've done as “real” teaching. I had a job at a Sunday School last year, once a week (and had lots of lesson planning experience to really really learn that lesson planning.is.not.paid.). I also taught ESL in South Korea for almost two years, but I don’t “count” that either, as I was hung-over most of the time, and worked out my lesson about 10 minutes before class, if that.

However, I do like being in a classroom. I also think I have a lot to offer – I, if I may be so unhumble, think I’m pretty cool. I’m funny, performative, creative, a good listener, and a very good judge of classroom dynamics and social cues (i.e. they’re not listening - change it up, or so and so is interested in so and so, so I better move them). I also have a lot of outside interests, which makes for a well-rounded incorporation of things into the lesson plan.

Thirdly, I'm technically qualified to do it now, with my degree and all. 

So, I could do it.

And as I’ve reminded myself a lot over the last year, “Can I do it?” is a different than “Do I want to do it?”

But here’s the change occurring. My wonderful sunshine ball, Maila, came over for tea last night. Here’s what she said:

“If it wasn’t hard, they wouldn’t have to pay us.”

BAH! Oh, right. It’s work. The ideal is that work include some play or interest, or a lack of soul-crushing mindlessness that leaves zero energy available for outside pursuits. And the thing is, I want and would love to pursue a LOT of outside pursuits.

As she was leaving, I thought of something else which has probably helped to keep me at arms-length from a “real” job. I’m reminded of my life several years ago, which I know is similar to a lot of folks I hang out with.

In the cheepy-birdie hours of the morning, in the hours when the sky is beginning to lighten, and the new day is dawning, I and we, were usually heading home. Weaving and wending our way to some pass-outable location, or so red-eyed and clench-jawed that the chirping birds were a mockery of all that is holy (Shut the fuck UP! Don’t remind me it’s a new day, I’m still … still … STILL up!).

And as we were wending home, or at least one well-worn path I remember particularly, as I was wending my way home in my second tour of teacher duty in South Korea, I would pass by a church on Sunday morning. There, people, humans, were walking to church. And I would sneer, Suckers.

These people, in their pressed, clean clothes, with a full night’s sleep, and a full refrigerator. With brushed teeth, and combed hair, and a place to get to at 8 or 9am. Who paid rent, and taxes, and didn’t have their utilities turned off monthly. Whose teeth were not ground down with clenching, or livers distended with liquor, or clothing bathed in a cheap bath of smoke. These people, with real jobs, real lives, real responsibilities, were Suckers. They knew nothing of the way things ought to be, the nocturnal, hedonistic, nihilistic counter-culture. They were suckers.

And as I begin to accept that it’s time for me to take on those same responsibilities, there’s a part of me that calls myself a Sucker.

But, I’m not a hedonist anymore. I don’t reek, or steal, or slink anymore. If a balanced check-book, paid rent, cat and people food, and some bass lessons are what I want, then I have to do what they do. I have to be a Sucker,

which I guess is another word for Adult. 

Positions.

Over the last few years, I have gone from smoking maybe half a pack or so a day, down to nothing -- this, by no virtue of my own. There have been times when I was smoking a pack a day, and sometimes hardly at all, having started back in college, when I said Fuck It, I Need a Cigarette, following a dramatic break-up with my first “real boyfriend” my freshman year.

But, over the last two years or so, I’ve had to stop. Despite having developed strep throat several times a year in the past, and continuing to smoke until really, ultimately, I couldn’t breathe fully or swallow, whereupon I’d “quit” until I could get that nicotine relief back into my lungs, a different ailment began to happen when I’d smoke recently – after several a day, at night, I began to wake up from my sleep, not able to take a full breath properly. So… slowly, I cut back, and realized that even after one a day, I’d still get this tight chest pain, and shallow breathing, which was always not so fun. And slower still, testing the waters still… I’d go down to a drag from someone else’s or splitting half a cigarette with a friend. No. Dice.

Without fail, I’d go to sleep, only to wake up a few hours later unable to breathe. So, I “quit.” Or rather, I stopped. I had to – it wasn’t my choice, I’d rather not have, despite the health and smell and cost and yadda yadda – If I could, I would, but I can’t.

Yesterday, as I was sitting at my temp job in SF, I had a similar experience. Something being crossed off my list by no virtue or choice of my own. Within a few hours of sitting, doing data entry basically (I’m organizing the massive library for the interior design firm that I’ve temped with before – hired to work with them until it’s finished – so about two weeks) – my back began to hurt. And this isn’t like "oh, silly back pipe down," this is like "stop sticking a fucking fire brand into my lower spine."

I’ve known recently that sitting for extended periods of time has been aggravating my health, but it’s been easier to moderate as I haven’t been working full-time. So, yesterday by about 3pm, with near tears in my eyes, my three or four lower vertebrae about ready to jump out the back of my skin, I told my boss that I was going to leave for the day.

This was fine – she knows the work is grueling, and I’ll be back this morning, and I’ll attempt to moderate my sitting time more consciously. But, when I came home yesterday afternoon then, and came to my computer to apply for jobs, what am I looking at? Admin jobs.

For the love of Christ.

This, is being taken away from me as an option through no virtue of my own. Sure, I’ve been applying to admin jobs at cooler places, like the SFMOMA and galleries and art schools – places that seem more aligned with where my values lie – but, it seems, and is evidenced, that this too is not an option – or not in this way.

I simply cannot sit down for 8 hours. The job that I applied to yesterday listed under physical requirements that I be able to sit for 80% of the day and type for 50% of that. It’s a cool-ish job too. And yes, I applied, before I began to put two and two together.

So, this option is being wiped off the slate, and I’m left with another question mark. I’m honestly glad that it is being taken away from me – it’s a default position, it’s a fall-back, it’s what I’ve always done, sit behind a desk like a good worker bee. I’m good at it, but like I recently told a friend when she asked me if I liked those kinds of jobs, I said it’s like (forgive me) farting – it’s something I can do, but really I’d prefer not to.

Sorry. ;)

So, it’s been suggested for me to make a list of all the jobs that don’t require sitting for 8 hours a day, or more schooling at this point – though, maybe that’s just what will happen – though, sincerely, I hope not. And doesn’t require standing for 8 hours, like waitressing. Although, I do have a few offers for some catering work over the next few months, … which I haven’t replied to yet.

I was with a group of folks last night, and we were listening to a tape of a suggested meditation. This was about money, our relationship to it. We were to stare at a monetary bill of some denomination, and really look at it, and imagine it nearly animate – we, Americans, Humans, give money a lot of power and anima all the time, may as well find out what it has to say! The first question we were to ask it was, How do I (Molly) feel about you (money)? Its answer: Distant. … Duh, no wonder I am where I am.

There were a few other questions along these lines which need some more marinating and change, but as I change my relationship to money, how I can earn, how I can earn respectfully and with integrity and health, how I can be of service to others which is reflected back to me as a monetary value, how I can be responsible to myself, to money, to my jobs or career … I will apparently also be changing my position, physically and otherwise.