Tuning by Ear.

Because I’ve begun a round of work with a new mentor recently, we’re talking a lot about “god.”

Specifically, this past Saturday, I read to her my current conception of this ineffable “power”:

“My Higher Power is in all things.  It lives & comes from a place inside me where I’ve never been scared & where there is always calm wisdom.  This place doesn’t give me instructions or guidance, it simply can reinforce or reassure my own decisions.  (Though I wish it did give guidance & instructions!)

This force is impersonal in some ways, because it belongs to everybody, and because it also doesn’t act out of reward or punishment because it is not human or personified.  But the force works toward health & wholeness.  It is the source of wholeness & would be satisfied for all to connect to it & recognize it.  This power is one of divine flow and order; it is unrushed.  It is often seen in nature, because it is in the natural cycle of life & death, but it is bigger than that. 

When I feel in touch with this power, I feel calm, energized/alive, unrushed, wise & accepting — accepting of myself & of the outside world & circumstances.  When I feel in touch with this power, I feel a stable ground to stand on, and I don’t have racing questions about my life.  I feel at peace. 

I sometimes get impatient with this power because it is so slow/calm & not clear w/instructions or answers to my questions.”

My friend/mentor listened to this. I anticipated we’ve move on but she said gently that it sounded like there was a bit of conflict there. Did I agree? Hell yes! It makes me mad that I can’t get answers, but I don’t believe that I’m supposed to. That’s not what this power is about. 

Then she sagely suggested something: “You have a belief that makes you unhappy.”

But, what can I do about that, I asked? Am I supposed to reconceive my higher power, or just come to accept that I don’t get answers? I like this conception of a higher power. 

She agreed it’s a good one, but … she has an alternate belief, which I don’t have to subscribe to, but she wanted to propose her own experience: She does get answers. She believes she does get information and guidance and instructions. (Not like, crazy woo-woo hearing voices.)

As we spoke, I posed my own question: Is it possible that I am receiving answers, but I’m simply not hearing them? My ear isn’t attuned to them? 

She said she doesn’t believe in a working toward whatever is “God’s will” kind of spiritual world, but rather toward whatever is for the “Highest Good.” Which makes a lot more sense to me. Because this whole “God’s will” vs. my will thing is a real bitch to suss out. 

And then she said something radical for folks among my kind: The Highest Good often is what I want. Where I get f’ed up is where I believe that “G-d” doesn’t want me to have what I want. 

She said that our desires and impulses and intuitions are often calls and pulls from that deepest place within us. (Surely, that doesn’t mean Ice Cream for Dinner, but you get the point, I hope!)

So, I gave myself the assignment this week of trying to attune my ear to hear the guidance that I feel I’ve been deprived of. 

And this morning, I had an odd experience of noticing. 

I’ve been doing the Deepak/Oprah 21-day meditation challenge, as I tend to do when they come around. 20 minutes, free, a good start to the day (no matter what may be happening in the news about them personally, thank you).

This morning, the “centering thought” was: “I receive the wisdom of life.”

So I tried out my friend's theory. A bit frustrated and tangled up in my own thoughts: “Alright, “God,” Should I try to go to school this Fall or not?”

I’ve been waffling on whether to go to grad school for my teaching certificate without having the proper knowledge foundation at the moment. There are 3 more exams to be certified, 2 to get entry into the grad program. One of these tests, I believe I can pass; one will need a LOT of studying; and the third, I’ve signed up for a summer Physics course at the local city college, because I need all the help I can get. 

Do I float another year? Do I try to push myself to do it this year? There’s still room in the program, and my acceptance is contingent on passing the 1st two tests before school begins. 

What do I do? 

What happened this morning (in aggro-meditation!) was this: I had a simple thought that sounded exactly like all my other thoughts do: “You can try for anything you want, Molly.”

There was no magic bell or deep baritone indicating whether this was the “Voice Of The Universe;” it sounded like most of my other swirling thoughts. But it held my attention differently, because this is not a thought that I usually have. 

I do not usually believe that I can have or try for anything I want. I am usually talking myself out of things. Flaking on social engagements. Procrastinating with Netflix. I am used to believing that the road to abundance is a scrappy struggle against myself, where I wind up exhausted and often, not having even left my apartment!

You can try for anything you want, Molly.

But it sounds so impulsive to just “try”! It sounds to ungrounded, and I don’t want to take developmentally unrealistic steps and then simply get disheartened. I don’t want to charge into something half-cocked and half-prepared because I want to stop waiting on my life!

But I believe the point of what that thought was saying was that I can try, and I can fail. I can try, and not fail. I can wait for next year. Or not. 

Seems like it’s back to my original idea of not getting clear instructions, doesn’t it???

Yes. And. 

I think what I heard was that the road of life is less narrow and forsaking than I imagine it to be. That the road is wide, and forgiving, and will get me where I want to go. 

The point is to make a decision. To try, however falteringly, to believe that I can have what I want. That the road will be there to support me. That abundance is for me, too. 

I don’t know what I will do yet. This is all very new, as of about 30 minutes ago. But, I’d kinda like to try — and see what happens. 

Maybe Baby 2

I have been looking at porn.

This porn comes in the form of a Facebook page for local moms who are selling or giving away baby stuff. 

I’m on this page because one of my best friends is pregnant, and I have hopped so far aboard her baby-train, I’m surprised I’m not morning-sick myself!

In the past few weeks, I’ve begun reading a book on pregnancy that she read and loved (The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy), crocheting baby bibs, buying scrap fabric for burp clothes, and practically stalking her to ask if she wants a breast pump I found online. 

As I spoke of in my 2014 blog post “Maybe Baby,” I am not sure whether I want children. 

As then, I am not in a serious relationship, and I still am not willing to go the motherhood route alone, so there’s no real reason to question if I do or do not. But, reasonable or not, that doesn’t stop me from thinking about it. 

With every article on our drought, the cost of living, the planet’s imminent demise, the expansion of the stupid class — I am convinced for a few moments never to bring children into this hateful world. 

And with every true breath of fresh air, every warm hug, every belly laugh — I am convinced for a few moments that I want another human to bear witness to this world’s incandescent beauty. 

I am the age my mom was when she carried me (33), and then my brother at 36. I have been emailing and asking her all kinds of questions about her pregnancies since I began reading the pregnancy book — what was your morning sickness like? what does pregnancy feel like? did you have food aversions? stretch marks? hemorrhoids? (god help us, she did not!)

I have had the liberty and the luxury of asking my mom these questions, and too, my friend who is pregnant, does not. And I am very aware of this fact, and I think it has spurred my devoted interest in her pregnancy — I want to be there as much as I can, because I want to make up for any absence she might be feeling (real or imagined, to me, since I haven’t spoken to her about it yet). 

I was on the phone with my mom this morning, telling her that I feel my heightened interest in my friend’s impending mommy-hood is also that she’s my first local BFF to be pregnant. One of my other best friends in Long Island had a baby last year, and I was able to be there for a few days when the baby was a month old, but that’s all. There wasn’t the same imminent babyhood. 

I told my mom that I’d been thinking about my very best friend from childhood, a woman I’ve known since we were 3 years old, and how I can’t imagine what it will be like if and when she gets pregnant across the country from me. And I began to cry. 

Of course, it’s about her, my New Jersey friend, and it’s also about me. About how I’ll feel, if and when I also choose to have a family — assuming I’m able — so far from her and my own family. 

This is big business. This mommy stuff. 

And I am wanting to prepare to make that decision in a realistic way — so I have doubled-down on my work around intimacy and relationships (or in my case, habitual lack thereof). This morning, I told the woman I’d been working on these issues with by phone for about 6 weeks (a stranger whose name was passed along to me from a woman I admire) that I have reached out to someone local to work the rest of this stuff with. 

And I have. I will continue this relationship work with this local woman who has known me for nearly 8 years, who has seen me at my best and worst, who can call me out, see patterns, and provide so much space for my feelings and vulnerability that I can practically swim in them and still feel safe. 

Yesterday morning, this same woman (as we were talking about what my issues were and what I wanted to work out) said that she'd always felt for me that my issue was around deprivation. 

… 

She’s very astute. 

And it’s also funny to me because it’s one of those things that doesn’t come into focus about yourself until someone else (who knows you well) reflects it back. 

I am very aware of this time in the generation of women around me. My friends who are certain they don’t want kids, ones who know they do, the ones who can't, and ones who, like me, are unsure.

It’s a particular, cordoned off time in our lives. And I’m holding the space for that, leaning into the grief of potentially not seeing friends change their whole lives, them not seeing me do the same. I’m aware this is “future-tripping,” but it’s fair to acknowledge my feelings around it, anyway. 

I’m allowed to not know what will happen (for me or for my friends), and I’m allowed to have feelings either way. 

Today, what that looks like is picking up a bitchin' breast pump for my best friend. Continuing to do the work toward an intimate relationship with a man. And letting myself be both sad and happy for and with my peers. 

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. 

Pumpktoberfest

I’m sure I write about it every year, but as the wafts of pumpkin spice glide out of my coffee mug, I’m moved to write about it again.

Fall. Fall on the East Coast. Growing up where Fall means a certain smell of chill and decaying leaves. Kind of wet, sometimes, the piles you’ve helped stuff into enormous black plastic bags that I’m sure are illegal in California by now. And heaping them into the street, spilling off the curb, where you and your little brother will take a bounding head-start and leap into the center of the pile, the slightly moth-eaten leaves enveloping you up to your shoulders, softening your fall and bathing you and your senses in its musty, alive scent.

I noticed the leaves blowing last night, and here, they sound different as they tumble across the pavement; they sound dry and tired, each one brown and curled up on itself. Back East, they’re still half-alive when they fall, some of them. So they lilt and are soft, and … colored. How many people must write about the color of the leaves, the ombre fade of red and orange and gold. There’s something about their display that radiates joy and change and marks something miraculous, something that we, as humans, have the unique privilege to recognize and admire.

Pumpkins start popping up on doorsteps. We hang Indian corn, the same set of three tied to our front door for as long as memory serves, and three small palm-sized pumpkins decorate our own stoop, before squirrels begin to bite chunks out of them, and a jack-o-lantern we've spent all day carving.

Fall begins the part of the year when I felt and feel most loved and normal and inviting and, again, loved. It begins with Halloween, and follows through Christmas (celebrated at my dad’s folks house, who are/were vaguely Christian). The time of year when we feel swept up in something, in something communal, town-wide, Jersey-wide.

We celebrated, we decorated, we invited, and we lit fires in the fireplace, and ate my dad’s pumpkin pie. Our one time of year when my family could gather together in a semblance of normality, and put on the most average and happy face we could, and it was all decadent. The feeling of it was.

The change of the season with its scent and sights, and the length of the days, the incoming dusk approaching like a secret to encase you. Creeping slowly closer and closer, but welcoming, the cool still amenable, coaxing and gliding you home in the dim light, toward a mug of hot apple cider perhaps. Maybe one of the gallons we’d picked up from our annual apple-picking trip, harvesting hoards of apples, plucked in those wire basket poles that my brother and I would wave menacingly at each other, slipping on fallen rotting apples in the orchard, filling up woven wooden baskets we could barely carry out.

It’s the change of the light and the scent that’s been my indicator these California days. It’s not the same as Back East, but there’s still the aroma of crispness and an excitement.

I will begin to buy all things pumpkin, like the rest of America. Like the pumpkin pancakes my friend treated me to yesterday, and the abomination of flavored coffee that I’m drinking right now.

I will use the pumpkin ganache cookie recipe that was given to me by a college roommate and make the pumpkin pie that my dad’s passed down through trial and error – a recipe that would never, ever, include “Pumpkin Pie Spice,” but itself includes about 8 individual spices, which I own expressly for the pie’s creation.

Fall is a time of coming back to center, of reigning in the resources. Of whittling down excess and getting the necessities done in the light of day. It’s a time that rings with good memories, full, warm, joyous memories. Fall reminds me of the earth, of how the natural world has shaped my experience. And it tastes like the release of a constriction you've held the whole year, the exhale and inhale of a breath you haven't dared relax to take. 

To me, Autumn tastes like love.

Having My Cake and Eating It Too.

(Yes, I’m gonna go there. Bear with me!)

In 12-step recovery it is custom to acknowledge lengths of sobriety or abstinence. Within the first year, we often acknowledge monthly mile-markers, and after a year, we acknowledge annual “birthdays” or “anniversaries.”

Why do this? Why stand up in front of others and say that you’ve accomplished something? Isn't that selfish and self-seeking? Why does it matter?

Well, the conventional wisdom is that it shows others that it’s possible. You’re not actually doing it for yourself, although that’s quite nice; you’re helping others to see that “one day at a time” adds up to months, and even years. You’re offering hope to others.

In our “belly-button birthday” world, why acknowledge our birthdays either? I have friends who eschew celebrating their birthdays. Why celebrate? It’s not like you *did* anything. You just lived another day.

And, just as with recovery, to me, that’s the point these days.

It’s to celebrate and share the fact that you made it. That you are alive. You did do something: You lived.

A former mentor of mine used to call this our “precious human life.” A Buddhist, her meaning is how rare it is to inhabit a human form this lifetime. We could have been a tree or a toad or a fruit fly, alive for 24 hours, unconscious. But we’re not.

We’re animated, active, Fate-affecting. And Fate-affected.

We’re constantly learning and changing and fighting and hoping and loving and hating and struggling and triumphing. We’re constantly forming ideas of who we are and who the world is; where we are and where we want to be.

We’re creating our lives with every breath we have the privilege to draw.

So when a co-worker the other day shushed everyone as we wished her a happy birthday, saying she doesn’t do birthdays, I did whisper to her, But imagine the alternative.

We do fight to be here, conscious or not; every day, we are making a decision to try. No matter what that looks like, even if it looks like stagnation or the mundane. Even if we are the tired, poor huddled masses. We try.

The celebration of a birthday is an acknowledgement of a year of living. A year of something precious and rare and teeming with uncertainty and, hopefully, love.

Today, I turn 33 years old. I have survived alcoholism, dysfunction, gang rape, and cancer.

I have formed and smashed relationships. I have melted and embraced. I have survived my own machinations. And become a metallurgist.

I, my friends, am an alchemist. And I honor us all today by showing you:

We live.

And how!

With love,m.

Yes, We Can.

• emailed landlord to ask to use 4th floor abandoned room as art room
• emailed vocal coach to inquire about lounge singing, how to start
• emailed friend to ask about going up in a small engine plane again. (flew one myself this year, and as always predicted, loved it. eventual vision of napa valley tour pilot.)
• have interview on monday for two teaching positions with a jewish organization
• have interview set up for another teaching gig
• have modeling/portraiture session set for next weekend
• replied yes to get minimum wage to usher at a Cake concert in two weeks
• will be reading tarot cards at good friend’s Halloween party on donation basis
• called friend's mom who’s a professional home stager about being her assistant
• have coffee info interviews set up with a few high-ballers in the community
• have action items from previous info interviews to follow up on
• emailed work-out studio to inquire about becoming an instructor and was told it's possible (with a lot of work)
• have a solid lead on fine dining waitress work if comes to that
• registered as a model with a “real person” modeling agency
• updated my profile on modelmayhem website
• got exact amount of pto i’ll be paid out when I leave my job at end of month
• inquired about health insurance exchange
• got flu shot and all blood tests up to date (all negative – which is positive!)
• made appointment for teeth cleaning
• ordered new shipment of contact lenses before these fall apart in my eyeballs
• replied to private tutoring gig from tutoring website I’m registered with (which… i’d completely forgotten about until I started getting these emails two weeks ago… coincidence?)
• emailed yesterday’s blog about t’shuvah to a jewish publication (a little late, obviously, but still.)

...to name a few of the actions I’ve taken in support of my work transition!

I am nervous about leaving the safety of my 40houraweekdeskjob. Yes.

But, I am taking a lot of action. Even as I drag my feet in some places, and have certainly been watching more Netflix than is good for any one person.

But I have a phone call with a mentor today and we’ll talk about smallness and scarcity and healing and changing. We’ll talk about, “Do not go back to sleep.” We’ll talk about the beguiling and insincere safety of being quiet and small. We’ll talk about the pain and bravery of stepping out of the cage and the tenacity and audacity it takes to stay out of it.

It’s not that I haven’t taken or thought to take any of the above actions before. It’s not my first time at this rodeo. But I just feel different. To quote Elisabeth Gilbert quoting a Balinese healer: “Even in my underpants, I feel different.”

But I also know my habit and pattern of swift work followed by years of inaction. I know what it’s like for me to engage in a flurry of activity and then allow it to languish by my lack of follow-up. I know what it’s like to abandon myself.

Which is why I’m telling everyone and their mother (literally) about my impending transition.

I cannot do this alone. I am a creature of habit, and I need you to be like my wagon train – I need you to lead me away from the ruts. If I let you know I’m on this path, you can help me stay on it. If I let you know it’s terribly painful for me to work toward something new, you can hold my hand and tell me you believe in me.

I know the source of all this change must come from within – I know it’s up to my own inner work to be the foundation for a new life. But I also believe in you, who believes in me, and we cycle one another into our best selves and our best lives.

Yes, I am the one who needs to actually look up that professional development course. And I’m the one who needs to continue looking at alternative work websites – and actually reply – but without you to cheer me on, without you to help me hold the lantern of faith, this change wouldn’t work.

That’s what feels so different this time – I feel supported internally and externally in a way these transitions have never felt. I feel optimistic and hopeful, giddy and aware.

Yes, the future is uncertain. But one action at a time, with your help and your heart, I am clarifying the vision of a future (and present) me who is freer than I’ve ever allowed myself to be. 

Fulcrum

(No, sorry, this has nothing to with the group of evil spies on the t.v. show Chuck.)

Ever since I listened to this podcast on the development of energy efficiency, I've been thinking about developing a process to create more while expending less.

In "olden times," the podcast said, a day's work could earn you an hour, maybe, of candlelight. Imagine having to work an entire day, just to get one hour of power to your iPhone, let alone your refrigerator or car.

In contrast, through scientific achievement we now, through a day's work, earn a whole lot more power through our effort.

... I can't remember how many days it reported precisely, but to give perspective to it: I pay on average $12 a month for my PG&E bill. (Granted I have most of my stuff attached to power strips I turn off before I leave, and never leave things plugged in that I don't have to.) But, if I earn more than that per hour of my work, I've earned myself over a month of power in 60 minutes.

The point is, science has created a system whereby we work less to produce more. Our efforts are magnified through efficiency -- we don't have to work as much or as hard to get what we need. Science created a fulcrum, a point on which we can pivot our efforts to enhance them exponentially.

In my life, I am in a process and a pattern where I work a lot, like most of us, and what I earn from that pay supports a life that is getting by. I'm not saving much. I'm not spending much. I'm pretty much working to get by.

And I've decided I'd like a fulcrum.

To be specific, I'd like to work less and earn more. (Wouldn't we all? But yes, isn't that the point -- perhaps we can.)

I did some calculating this weekend, and I can earn what I'd like to be earning (more than a "getting by" amount) by working half the time, 20 hours a week, if I triple my hourly wage. Sounds far fetched perhaps. But stranger things have happened. And the rate I'd need to earn isn't outrageous. It's actually pretty attainable for a skilled service.

The question now is, what will the service, my fulcrum, be?

At various times, I've teased the idea of throwing caution and (my own) morality to the wind and thought of prostitution. I'm sure I could earn there, but at what other cost? Result: rejected.

Other thoughts:
Consulting -- in what?
Counseling -- perhaps -- more schooling then?
Coaching -- maybe -- more schooling, too.

But, we're back to the point of the fulcrum -- I can expend energy now in creating my fulcrum. It'll likely take time and effort, but boy howdy! The results!

I don't know yet what the outcome of this line of thinking will produce, but I like that I'm thinking this way, out of the box of where I usually look. Instead of looking again at the job sites I always look at to get a higher paying job but work the same number of hours, I'm realizing I need a different way.

Because I need to be available to the projects that ignite me, and I have to give myself the time and space to do that. ... Without being a starving artist -- I simply refuse to struggle more than I have to. It's not fair to me anymore, when I know there can be another way.

So, if I can find a kind of steady-ish, scheduled-ish vocation that allows me to produce more while expending less, ... well, as Archimedes said when demonstrating the lever:

"Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth."

Card Reading

I had very specific plans for when I came home last night: watch Apollo 13, “take care” of myself, and go to bed by 10.

Only one of these happened.

For most of the day, I was out & about in lots of conversation with lots of people, expending lots of up, outgoing energy, and I wanted to counter it with some quietude. Before coming home for the evening, I was in a coffee shop, finishing up some extra work, and addressing cards for some friends.

I didn’t have the address for one, so I texted her for it, and told her that I must have 10 of her envelopes at home with her address on it; in fact, I had one of hers on my mantle.

She asked me which one, but I couldn’t recall exactly, and told her I’d send her a photo of it when I got home.

This, was the first domino toward the hijacking of my evening.

I did come home, take a photo and send it to her, a lovely decorated envelope with stickers and curly-cues and kind words, like all of hers. Next to it on my mantle (well, the top of a bookshelf, really) were a card from the director and one from the assistant director of the play I was in in April, with deliciously glowing, appreciative, complimentary, and supportive words. Such kindness and such a reflection of my being “seen” by them, in one of my aspiring avocations. The last one up there was a thank you card from my best friend on Long Island’s wedding, thanking me for being there and what a treat it was to have me there, literally in her bed, the night before the wedding, and helping/watching her get ready the next day; that it wouldn’t have been the same without me.

You can see why I keep these things.

But, it was also time to probably pack them away, do some cleaning. And I wanted to send more photos of my friend’s envelopes to her, since I knew she was in a space to need her own (literal) sparkle reflected back to her. 

And, down the rabbit hole we go, into the desk drawer where I keep cards, envelopes so I can remember return addresses (yes, I know there’s a better way), and art inspiration bits, like postcards from galleries or pages torn from magazines.

I’ve known this drawer needs attending to. If, god forbid, I were to croak, it would be hell for the person cleaning it out, and I know they’d just trash the lot, since, who keeps someone else’s old greeting cards.

But, also, it’s unusably full at the moment. Because in it, too, are all the cards I received when I was initially diagnosed with Leukemia in late September 2012, and also a host of them came in around the Hanukkah/Christmas season that year.

I’ve been avoiding having to carve through them. Because how can you discard those messages?

When I was sick, I lined all the cards up on the walls of my hospital room. I taped every single one up around me, to remind me of the network of support and love that I had. Each card, a message of love, faith, healing, fortitude, just for me. You couldn’t come into my hospital room without immediately knowing that I was loved. And how f’ing important was that.

This was not the room of a dying woman. This was not the room of a woman told she had a 40% chance of living through the next 5 years, even with treatment. This was not the room, either, of a woman who looked like a patient, despite the baldness, weightloss, and IV stuck into my arm and chest. I wore jeans and a sweater, like everyone else. I was a human, not a patient. I was a woman loved, not a pity case.

How rallyingly important was that to know, feel, and remember every single day.

But, when the trips to the hospital were finally over, and it was time to reacclimate to living in my apartment full-time, what to do with those cards?

I’m a keeper of things. Sentiments, magazine pages, interesting rocks I find on a mountain or beach. I wouldn’t say I’m a hoarder, but I do have a bag of gently used tissue paper in my closet … but it’s folded neatly and in color blocks, so it’s okay, right?!

I also have a bag in my closet of the covers to theater booklets of plays I’ve been to; movie stubs; plane tickets; the brochure for a place I went camping or an attraction I toured.

The trouble is, I’m not a scrap-booker, so I just kinda carry this bag of non-chronologically ordered “crap” with me from home to home. But, that’s okay. One day, like the cards, I’ll go through them.

But, last night was for the card drawer.

It was slow-going. I had to take a deep breath before taking the rubber band from around the batch of 2012 holiday cards. I knew this was going to take a while and probably bring things up.

But I began. And with each card, I was reminded of why I’d kept them until now.

Here’s the one from my college classmate, now in LA, saying she’d enclosed a gift card to Trader Joes.

Here’s one from a former colleague saying she loves getting the bloggish updates I was posting then to my lotsahelpinghands website.

Here’s one handwritten from an Etsy company saying “a friend” was thinking of me and wanted me to stay warm. This, I remember, accompanied a package of 6 “chemo caps” ranging from thin to thick, the one I wore most, a fuzzy leopard print that kept me feeling fun and warm. I still don’t know who sent those, as there was no name. Thank you, whoever you are.

Last night, with each, if I knew the sender and their cell number, I took a photo of the card, and sent it as a text with a note of thanks to them. Each text, a reminder to us both of what friendship means, even for people who aren’t close.

It was nearly 11 when I finally decided to stop. I’ve barely made a dent into the drawer. But was able to cull a few things out, deciding that with some, having a photo of them now is enough.

At the closing of this activity, I found myself in soft tears of gratitude. So many people surrounded me with love. With funny cards and sentiments, with crazy wacked-out envelopes, with heartfelt messages of hope and healing. And only a handful of these folks were people I keep in regular touch with. So many people came out of the woodwork to support me.

I was told once during the time I was sick, that I had no idea how many people were rooting for me. I agreed. I knew I had no idea, and I knew that was astounding and one of the greatest showings of human generosity that I’ve witnessed.

I had priests, rabbis, Muslims, and Buddhists praying for me. My mom’s hairdresser and my Aunt’s student. I had a class of kindergarteners praying for me.

I remember, too, when I was sick, trying to figure out how I could send thank you cards to everyone who’d contacted me, but I could only handle a few.

In this retread through the cards, in sending them back out to their sender with my note of thanks, I hope I am closing that loop of love, and letting you all know:

Your prayers worked, and I love you back.  

In case you weren’t sure, I was the one dancing.

Last night, I got an email reply to my inquiry about volunteering for a day-long community social action project in the Fall. The call was for artists of all types, and if I’m anything, I am an artist of all types!

The email came back: YES! We’d love to have you; here are some painting projects: Create a mural; touch-up-paint a building; paint a wall; help kids decorate bags for food that will be donated.

If you read my blog, Men at Work, about circumstances that have come to fruition since being put in my “G-d box,” you may remember (as I do, since it’s now tacked to my fridge) that in that box was a list of things I wanted to do, accomplish, or participate in. The second on the list, just after "being in a band," is painting a mural.

At the time I was writing my blog about it, the mural didn’t seem so important anymore. In fact, I reflected, "Sure that’d still be totally rad!" but that doing a mural doesn’t feel as prioritized as some of the other items on the list, like finding a creative job I enjoy, or being in a musical.

And yet. Here’s an opportunity I would never have thought would come to be an opportunity!

The email said the mural would be in collaboration, and there’s more info that I’d gather from the committee members, so I wouldn’t be doing this in isolation at all.

However, I notice, too, that my typical/habitual reaction is to say, "I’m not an artist on that scale or level, so I’ll take the job of helping the kids decorate lunch bags."

I know that’s my automatic response. I know that’s my fear response. But, I also know that there’s validity in saying, I’ve never done this before, and I would love to help, but I’d also need help.

And, so, that’s likely what I’ll say. I’ll be honest with where my talents are, but also where my aspiration is. I mean, if I never, ever step out of what my comfort zone is, how will I ever know what I am capable of, hm?

That doesn’t mean taking risks at the detriment of a community project just to say, “Of course I can do it.” It's detrimental to me (and to them) if I take steps that are developmentally inappropriate out of fear or pride. That doesn’t mean not to stretch out of my comfort zone (which, FYI participating a mural at all is!!), but it does mean that I start with a 5 mile hike, not 10.

This all feels very parallel to the job of the lead role in the play I was offered. I know it’s a stretch of my talents. I know I’ve never done it before, but unlike the play, the mural is something I’d really love to do. I appreciate the organization, their mission, and think it would be a lot of fun.

More will be revealed. I will let them know my truth, and be willing to say, "I don’t know if I can take the lead on this project, but I would love to be 'second in command' or co-chair of it -- truly involved in its creation and completion."

Instead of playing it safe with the colored bags (something I know I can land easily, have fun with but not be learning much), I think the way to “dare greatly” here is to offer to help out on the mural however I can, and learn a whole lot on the way. Then maybe next time, I can confidently say Yes to taking the lead.

Here’s to being willing to cross more items off that list! (And here's to my "daring greatly" in the first place by writing to them that I wanted to be involved at all.) 

Car Conversations

Because the question isn’t: “Would you rather be in a play or not be in a play?” anymore. Maybe that’s what it was a year ago. But my vision has changed, as visions are allowed to do. And more, it’s probably that I’ve allowed myself to see more of my vision, rather than it actually “changing.”

Now, the question is: “Would I rather be in a play, or be in a good play?”

It’s the same coin as the line of thinking that goes: Well, at least you have a job.

That, at its core, is very true, but it seems to me that when we’re living in integrity with our values in as many places in our lives as possible, we’re doing more good – for ourselves and for the world.

When people are living lives that are engaged, they inspire me. There are circumstances that can keep us from this expression of our true selves and skills, surely. There’s war famine racism classism sexism disease and all manner of ill fortune. I recognize the privilege it is that I’ve been able to crawl out of (and partially been born out of) the first tier of “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” out of the pure and simple satisfaction of the needs for food, shelter, clothing, and income.

I am reminded of a phone conversation I had with my mom several years ago. I was in the car with a friend when my cell rang. I answered, we spoke a few minutes, and the call ended. What struck me later wasn’t the content of the call, but how I behaved during the call. My friend overheard every word and all the manner and mannerisms that came out during my conversation – and those behaviors would align perfectly with how I interact with my friend.

There was little to no difference between how I comported myself in relation to my mom and how I was in relation to my friend. That alignment of “personalities” was completely new to me. I was always someone different with friends, coworkers, family members, lovers. Although there are necessary adjustments you need to make in those various relationships, I was always way out of alignment – they all were completely disparate personalities.

My car conversation allowed me to see that I was “aligning the films of who I am,” as I later put it. It wasn’t about a shift from wearing different masks to wearing the same mask; it was about relieving myself of the masks at all – and being the same ol’ me no matter where, when, or who.

This feels completely parallel to my circumstances and predicaments these days: How to bring the same person, with the same boundaries, needs, and self-esteem, to work, to play, to relationship.

How to live in integrity, which, to me, means aligning the films of ourselves. Not participating in self-abandonment, and bringing every endeavor and relationship into the light, and questioning if it meets our standards of what we want for ourselves, and if we’re meeting those standards through our own action.

It’s all well and good to report and purport that I want to cease settling for less in many areas of my life; it’s another endeavor entirely to take actions that support that desire. Again, that’s integrity – being who you say you want to be.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I am leaving this play. When my friend last night told me that her “intuitive hit” was that I could find work that I love, I began to well up. It's not about permission to do the play or not do the play, even -- it's about giving myself permission to do that which I love. In every arena of my life right now, I’m endeavoring to find that which I love – which starts from acknowledging and listening to and giving enough credence to self-love to do that.

If I am purporting that I want to do what I love, but there are still these fissures of contrary action, I’m offering a divided message to “the Universe,” but mostly to myself. If I engage in that which doesn’t feed my soul and my joy-meter, I’m giving the message that it’s (still) okay to abandon my desires, and that my desires aren’t that important to me anyway.

It’s time for me to have a car conversation with the Universe, one in which I am myself – self-confident with a hint of doubt, a vehement believer in the need for joy and alignment, more than a tad bit wacky – no matter who’s on the other line. 

Thou Shalt...

I’m always hesitant to share my meditations. Like listening to someone report their dream, which to the dreamer is a fascinating pursuit, and to the listener is … not. But. This morning’s meditation was too illustrative and too relevant to current musings not to report. So, bear with.

“What is blocking me from making this decision around the play?” Around quitting or staying in it. I can’t even get to a firm decision either way, get a spiritual “hit” either way – even after conversation, taking an inventory of my fears around it both ways, and even after regular old "getting quiet" meditation.

So, this morning, I plugged the headphones into my iPod, scrolled to the drumming meant for this type of meditation and went in on a Shamanic Journey to find out what the heck is going on since the “normal” pathways to clarity are so gummed up.

Standing, in my mind’s eye, at the edge of the cliff that overlooks all the land that makes up my self (occasionally I'm reminded of Mufasa showing Simba all the land in Africa that is his domain), I asked the above question: What is blocking me from making my decision?

Without warning, the sky turned black, the light sucked out of the land, and a voice stormed, “You have to do this play.” This was no gentle cosmic answer. This was violent insistence. This was, I don’t care whether you want to do it or not; you have to.

This, is not my voice. But, apparently, it’s there inside me, blocking my decisions. I certainly can’t even know whether I want to do the play or not, if there’s a damning demand to do it regardless of my desire. This wasn’t a request, this was an order. This wasn’t a suggestion, this was a decree.

And if you’ve read me for any period of time, you know that voice is probably internalized from a parental source of the masculine variety.

The fear, no, terror, I felt when everything turned black was so evocative of how I felt as a child, I’d forgotten what it feels like to feel so small, so unimportant. On my couch, in my living room, in 2014, I pulled my blanket tight around me and cowered into the cushions.

There are cases and circumstances when, certainly, we don’t want to do things. As you also know, I hate doing my dishes. But, I do them. I know I “have to.” I know that as a child, we’re required to do things that we don’t want to do, because it’s for the good of the family, the good of your education, the good of your health (who wants to get a teeth cleaning?). But, this isn’t that.

As I recorded in my journal what occurred during meditation, I wrote what came to mind after it – the counter, the compassionate response to this demonic, demanding voice: “Molly, You don’t have to do the play if you don’t want to. There is no wrong decision here: If you do it, you’ll have more opportunities to do things you love; if you don’t do it, you’ll have more opportunities to do things you love. This is an abundant world. Just keep honing your vision and asking for help.”

Because there is no right or wrong here. But I haven’t been able to get anywhere on this choice because there's been this internal override preventing me from making it. I can’t know what I want if I don’t think I’m allowed to figure that out.

This still doesn’t make my decision one way or the other ... yet. But, I suspect that identifying, addressing, and removing the block to making one will help. 

Gold, or Coal?

There’s a story in the bible that tells us Pharoah tested little baby Moses to see if he was interested in money, like all good Jews (kidding!), or if he was just attracted to shiny things, like all good raccoons.

Pharoah puts a lump of hot, glowing coal and a rock of gold in front of the baby, and waits to see which he’ll reach for. Moses goes for the gold.

So, G-d sends down an angel to move his hand toward the coal, and when baby Moses touches the coal, it burns his hand, he stuffs his hurt fingers in his mouth, and thus develops a speech impediment.

Thus Pharoah is satisfied that the little tyke is just precocious and not going to usurp him.

I’m looking at this job description right now. I’m perfect for it, have the experience, though certainly would learn and do more on this job than I had previously. It’s in the community I would like to stay in. And it pays up to double what I’m making right now (“commensurate with experience,” of course).

But. I have near to zero interest in it. It doesn’t put me closer or further on the path that I’ve seen I want. It won’t, in several years, be a stepping stone, really. It’s over in X land, and I want to be in Y land. They have the wall of Jerusalem between them.

So, Gold? Or Coal?

I can apply, see what happens. May not even get called in for an interview. I could land the job, and gain a bargaining chip with my current employer. Or, I could land the job, take the income increase, finally put money into savings and retirement, come what may. So what, clock in clock out, so what.

Perhaps this job option is both the gold and the coal, then.

It’s good to keep looking. It’s good to see that the same realm of what I’m currently doing is getting paid a much different wage than I am, even if my current employer is really not set or able to offer me anything more.

It’s also good to see what values have formed from being at the job I currently have: Did you know that I can walk 5 minutes to an organic co-op café for lunch? Or to a Peets? Or to a park with large swaths of grass where I can lie down in the sunshine when I need a break from people and computer screens?

Did you know that I can drive 30 minutes to and from work, and can actually work out in the morning and meet up with people or cook dinner or audition in the evenings because I stay on this side of the Bay?

Tell me then, about BART rides to a Muni bus and back? About adding an hour to both sides of my commute? About the urban detritus?

And then tell me about a realistic and abundant retirement plan….

I will probably apply. I will certainly keep looking. And I will have faith -- that sordid word (look what “He” did to Moses’ hand!) -- that I can have the ease, expansion, and fulfillment I want with a salary that supports a life of ease, expansion, and fulfillment.

Right? 

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.

Manic Panic.

It’s what the junior high and high school kids were using to dye bright streaks of their hair in the 90s. There was one store in the mall that sold it (Nature Works? - The Nature Company! that's it.), and if you said you were going there, you meant that you were going to dye your hair a brilliant shade of rebellious.

I never bought Manic Panic. I was as straight an arrow as they come until the end of high school. There was too much order to maintain, and too many rules to follow, for me to diverge any bit off the path I was expected to walk.

And so, as I am very apt to do, once I hit college, the pendulum swung so desperately and frenetically in the direction of “off the path,” that it swung right around and hit me in the now-pierced face, like a rogue tetherball.

Obviously, this wasn’t the “way” either. This wasn’t my authentic way, at least.

I had a therapist tell me a long time ago that if my mother had killed herself when I was young, as her behavior threatened she’d do, that I would have probably gone down with that ship. I’d spent so much time and energy attending to the needs and expectations of someone else, there wasn’t room to explore or attend to my own.

Years later, I had another therapist tell me that this life was my own, that I didn’t have to make choices anymore based on whether I thought my dad would approve, or disapprove and retaliate anymore. That this life was my own was such a novel concept, I’d rejected it for years. That I could choose now to dye my hair, pierce my face, be alone, reject the world, participate in it, smoke, not smoke, date, not date – is still a concept I’m adjusting to, but the marination of this understanding and awakening has been long underway.

The idea that I am a master of my own fate … well, it seems just as rogue! That I can choose the kind of toilet paper I want; toothpaste I like; friends I call. That I can choose how I want to dress in the world; what hobbies to pursue; … job to have … partner to love.

Fulfillment, is the end game, or the suspicion of the end game. Am I happy in my path? Note, Molly: this is your path. There is no mother to care for, no father to obey. What is it you want in life? And do you feel free and brave enough to pursue those desires?

Do you feel free and brave enough to apply for a new job? Do you feel free and brave enough to wear clothing without stains? Do you feel free and brave enough to accept that you want a partner whose clothes are also without stains?

Do you feel free and brave enough to accept that you want a good life? A job you respect? A partner you admire?

Do I feel … stable enough, secure enough, self-supporting and self-worthy enough to not only admit these “taboo” desires, but also to express them to the world, through action?

Do I feel ready to tell you, world, that I want in? That I want in on the goods, on the joy, on the self-respect, on the intellectual stimulation, on the bed-rocking sex, on the critical, yet specious-seeming ease?

Well, I guess I’m telling you. I guess it’s been long enough that the tetherball has hung limp and impotent, and it’s time to begin playing again. I no longer am… tethered to ideas of being and living that aren’t my own. The cord is cut, the apron strings untied. The life, really, is my own. 

And though today that may not mean dying my hair green or copper, as I wish I’d been able to do a dozen years ago, it means I now know that I could. And that I would be awesome besides. 

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.