oh, that again.

So, I’ve restarted my work on relationships with a new mentor, someone who shares the lineage of the woman I’d been working with, which means that this morning, I got to read aloud my entire sad history of relationships and sex. Again.

Good. Times. 

Interestingly enough, though, I was struck this morning about how my avoidance of or aversion to commitment in relationships parallels my aversion to commitment in my career and work-life. 

I’ve said and heard it a thousand times: Romance and Finance are two sides of the same coin. And I knew that working on one would bring about change or awareness in the other. 

But, somehow rereading my pattern — of splitting when things get weird, or choosing partners I don’t want, or not being open to those men who are into me — highlighted what is happening for me in career-land. 

A friend said to me last week that it sounds like it’s time for me to choose a career path. Not a job. But something I can follow through on. 

Eek. I hate that. I’ve always hated the idea of having to choose one thing. But I recounted this all to my mom and told her that it’s similar to how I had to choose theater over music. I miss music. And it’s not like I’ll never play again, but I had to choose to put my creative efforts into theater if I wanted to get anywhere with it. 

I hated that. I hate that I can do and be so many things, and I have “so much potential,” and so many varied interests, that choosing one is incredibly frightening for me. Like I’ll choose poorly, to quote Indiana Jones. What if by choosing theater, I’m turning my back on a fate in music or painting? What about all the other roads my life could take?

And yet. By not choosing one, I take no roads, or follow a little of each, and I feel stymied and frozen. 

Commitment leads to freedom in that way. 

And when it’s going to come to career, I’m going to have to choose. Sure, I could easily and very successfully be: A teacher, a writer, a psychologist, a mediator, a community engagement executive. 

I could be any of these things. Hell, I could even be a doctor or a lawyer or a spaceman if I wanted. 

Well, maybe not a spaceman. 

But I haven’t wanted to choose. Because what.if.I’m.wrong. 

What if I choose something and it doesn’t turn out well? What if I fail at finding "my calling" this lifetime? What if NONE of those things listed above actually make me want to get up and go to work?

What if I put my trust and faith in the wrong career, or -- to parallel -- in the wrong man?

Well, sorry, lady, you gotta eat. 

And you gotta choose. 

Sure, people change careers throughout their lives, but I’ve changed mine so many times before age 30 that I think I’ve played that card out. 

Therefore. One of these things is going to have to be it. Whether it makes my heart sing or not. No, I didn’t want to “give up” music. But I did, and the theater thing I love, even if it’s slowed down for now. 

None of the above professions makes my heart sing, per se. There’s no glow surrounding any of them saying, Pick me Pick me. But each inspires me to help bring others together, to inspire others to heal, to bring unity into the world. 

So, no. I don’t know, still, what I want to be when I grow up. But I am warming up to the idea of choosing one path. And actually moving forward on it. 

From Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving.

Last Tuesday night as I sat at a rainy Oakland BART waiting for the shuttle to take me within walking distance of my apartment, my friend called.

She’d remembered that it was my first day of training for my department store sales job and wanted to know how it went. I told her, Good. A lot of corporate training-style stuff. Different department managers introducing themselves. Lots of powerpoint presentations about the history and brand of the company. And there were to be 3 days of this.

I told her I was most nervous (I told her I was trying to call it “curious”) about what would happen when I actually got onto the sales floor the following Saturday.

I haven’t worked retail since high school.

She told me we were both having “first day” experiences. She’d just this afternoon signed a contract with a small graphic design firm to be a partner with them, and she, too, was “curious” as to how it would all work out.

She told me that morning, she’d read this story about a guy who’s mentor suggested that he make a decision to not worry for one year. That whenever he got nervous, or tried to “figure things out,” or was anxious about an outcome, he made the commitment that he would simply not worry, that he would trust in the “universe,” and understand that he didn’t have to know the outcome. He just had to do what was in front of him and take small actions.

Needless to say, he had a great year.

As I huffed into the phone on Tuesday night, walking through the dark blocks toward my house, I asked my friend if she wanted to make a pact with each other. That for one year we wouldn’t worry.

And so, we did. We each announced to each other our commitment (middle names and everything) not to “not worry,” but to catch ourselves as quickly as we could, and to remember to “let it go,” and, for me, to have faith in the benevolence of the universe and the unfolding of my path.

When I’m scared of not making my sales numbers, and this whole retail thing doesn’t really work if you don’t. When I’m worried that retail hours and theater hours are the same and how will I be able to do both. When I am concerned that I quit a full-time time to have time to engage in creative project, to find a “fulcrum” job (more pay, fewer hours), and I've ended up in another full-time job…

I've been telling myself this past week, “From Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving.” Because that’s a year for my friend and me. One year of not worrying. Of trusting that it’ll not only be okay, but that it’ll be great.

To trust that if I simply do what’s next, make that next phone call to a friend, hang up that next sweater, show up to that next audition, the world will have a way of working out.

Sure, I’ve been nervous this week -- making calculations, staring wide-eyed at rehearsal schedules, wondering if this position will be temporary or not -- but I’ve been remembering that catch phrase, whispering it aloud, and it’s helped.

Today will be my second day on the sales floor. I am scheduled with them through the start of January with an option to extend. I have an audition set up for late January for a great musical. And I have COBRA payments to starting this month.

But I'm not going to worry one bit. ;P

Doing Sh*t

On my way into my first audition last Saturday, a good friend texted me support, saying:
“You’re DOING SHIT!”

This is in stark (pfft, get it?) contrast to one of my most read blogs, Magical Accidental Orgasm (and I can tell from the stats list that many people find it by searching “Accidental Orgasm” on Google!). The blog was about my realization that I was waiting for someone to come along and prescribe for me my life, my bliss, my path without me doing much of anything. I was waiting for someone to (metaphorically!) “give me orgasms,” as I cribbed from The Vagina Monologues.

But today, two years later, I am no longer waiting. Today, I am doing shit.

This morning I woke up and practiced the bass line for the set my band is playing on Saturday. Tomorrow, I’m going to take my first voice lesson from someone who comes with great recommendations. And Sunday, I will start rehearsal for Addam’s Family: The Musical (which still just gets such the kick out of me!).

(Side-bar: Coincidentally, when I was in 4th or 5th grade, I dressed as Wednesday Addams for Halloween. So I guess it’s appropriate that 20 years later, I play her mother!)

Doing shit. Despite my thinking – always despite my thinking – I continue to put good things in my path. I honestly don’t remember how I found that audition call.

But, I do remember finally having coffee with a friend/acting mentor last Sunday to help me in my newbie, greenness. She is the one who suggested the song I sang for my auditions, and who recommended this voice teacher. She invited me to come over last Wednesday and practice my monologue in front of her.

And last Friday, I invited a woman to coffee who is making a go of the “life as singer” life to ask her how I could get out of my bubble of not being seen. She had many great suggestions, just to get me out and singing. Like choruses, and meet-ups, and this piano bar I didn’t know about that’s here in the East Bay.

I don’t want to do shit. Doing shit is scary!! But I also don’t want to wait for someone else to press play on my life, because that person is not coming. I don’t want to wait for the trumpet blast or starting gun or treasure map or even Ed McMahon, because they’re not coming.

This doesn’t mean that I move any quicker, but despite my fears, doubts, self-derision, scarcity mind, I continue to ask for help and put myself in the path of ... shit.

That’s how all these things have happened. I ran into a friend and jokingly said if you need a second bassist, and in fact, he was just trying to put back together this side project, but thought I wasn’t doing music anymore. Well, now! Yes, please! And so, here we are, about to play a show.

I like the responsibility and accountability it gives me to myself and to my dreams, not to mention to others. Having to show up with other people means that I can’t flake out. I have to wake up and practice, or I’ll be disappointed and disappointing. I have to make audition dates, or I’ll languish in “someday” and “wouldn’t it be nice.” I have to take voice lessons, show up at piano bars, take suggestions, or I will continue to say, “Not good enough, not really, not me.”

If wishes were horses… Apparently, I’d ride. 

Note: In this evening's performance, the role of Pride will be replaced by Truth.

She held up her fingers:

“One: Is it a theater company or director you really want to work with?” No, not really.

“Two: Are they paying you really well?” No, zilch.

“Three: Is it a play you are excited about and really want to do?” No, not at all. It’s awful.

“Then don’t do it,” she concluded.

But I auditioned for him three times.

“So, what? Say that something else came up and you’re really sorry. The thing is, that’s a huge commitment for somewhere you don’t want to be. You’d be wasting time that you could use honing your craft, going on other auditions, taking classes, and finding something you really want to do.”

But it’d be my first lead role.

“Yeah, in a play where the actors outnumber the audience for a play you don’t want to be in. That sucks; take it from me.”

* * *

This was the conversation I had last night with my friend who’s a semi-professional actress when I told her I was having doubts about the play in which I'm cast. She said these were the 3 golden questions her acting teacher said the actor had to answer for himself. The instructor, being at a higher level, said that for him, he has to answer Yes to all three of those questions. For my friend, mid-tier, she was told, No more crap jobs: She has to answer Yes to at least two of those questions.

And for me, beginner, I have to answer Yes to at least one of those questions.

Otherwise, what the hell am I doing with my time? What am I saying my time means to me?

I am very much associating all this with my job/career search. If a guy continues to get promoted up through the ranks at a company he doesn’t enjoy, doing work he hates, but is paid really well, is that enough? I can't say.

If we’re not getting paid well, doing work we love or working with people we enjoy… well, what are we doing?

If we can’t answer Yes to any of these questions in regards to career, why are we there? Why are we wasting any days of this short life?

I don’t yet know if I’m going to bow out of the play in which I’ve been cast. When I told her again that I auditioned for him 3 times — meaning, I feel that he's already put such time and effort into me and my performance I'd feel guilty dropping out — she replied, “Take care of yourself, not them.” … Oh… right.

Because the reality is that I will be in rehearsals for 3 hours nearly every day of the week for two months… for a really awful play. It’s really awful, folks. Not like, passable, manageable, I'm just being picky — It’s really awful. It’s terribly written. I’d walk out, if I were an audience member.

Because it wouldn’t have been worth my time.

No matter how great I am or am not in the play, my heart wouldn’t be in it – and if it’s not, then that’ll show up, too. I roll my eyes every time I read the script. I say aloud to my cat, “This is a really awful play,” each time I start to rehearse it.

I don’t know yet. It’s a hard judgment call, you know? I asked my friend, What about having to work your way up the ladder, and take shitty jobs at first? She pointed me back to those three questions. Where are my values?

Is my hesitation to drop out about my having a lead role, so I can feel pride? Pride over a notation on my resume? Pride over something that I’m not proud of? Is it about status? Is it about feeling this proves that I’m worthy; that I'm good?

How can you feel worthy about something you’re not proud of? That doesn’t compute.

I’m meeting with another actor friend of mine tomorrow to run lines for this play. I’m hoping to get insight in conversation with him – if it’s really as awful as I think it is.

But, I already know it is.

What my friend told me was that I should audition for everything, but don’t go to callbacks if it’s a terrible play!

I’m reminded, once again, of the dating/job interview corollary: It’s great to say Yes to the first date or interview. But after that, you’ve garnered enough information to know if you want to try it out again or not. I don’t have to show up a second time, if I’m really sure this is not a fit.

So, yes, it would be really great to say that I’m the Queen of the Amazons. It makes me feel worthy and proud and like I'm not making a huge mistake in going after this dream. But isn't the mistake not respecting what really want, and settling for (way) less, just so I can say I have a lead? Isn't the mistake I've been loathe to make in relationships settling for less than I want, just so I can say I have a partner? 

Wouldn’t I rather be somewhere where I’m excited and learning something, instead of just clocking time? 

Yeah, But…*

Here’s something nobody knows about me: When I access something very truth-y in my morning journaling, my handwriting becomes miniscule.

Written like those boardwalk booths that used to write your name on a grain of rice, I find myself getting really tiny with my words – and that’s when I know I’ve struck something important. Shh, don't say it too loud or it might whisk off the page.

Let’s back up a little though.

Yesterday, I got to see my therapist (the Rosen Method therapist I’m still seeing. Despite my doubts before every time I go, I always leave laughing that I doubted). We hadn’t seen one another for about a month due to schedules, so I had a lot to catch her up on.

Last time we spoke, I told her I felt like I didn’t have any options available to me in dating land. Like Goldilocks, I’d experienced the too hot, the too cold, but have yet to find the “just right.” I mentioned this yesterday because I was talking about my job search. I told her that as I was driving over last night, I realized that it’s not that I don’t have any options available to me in job land – it’s that I refuse to commit to one path.

She challenged me on this a little, and asked if it was “refused” or something else. And, surely, it is fear and paralyzation.

Because here is the secret, sacred truth: I do know what I want to do.

I told her that I see my job options like a scene from Sliding Doors. If you haven’t seen the movie, the premise is based on Gwenyth Paltrow in one version of her life catching a subway train before the doors shut; in another version, she misses that train. At that point in the movie, we follow both these lives and their divergent challenges and successes (and haircuts). 

I told her I see three options of my job life for myself:

One: Be a Jewish professional, or a community professional, a leader, an organizer, a bringer-together-er.

Two: Do something counsel-y and social work-y, working directly one-on-one with the populations I want to serve, particularly youth.

And three.

And this is where I began to cry.

Be an artist.

I laughed through the tears, and said, “Well if tears are any indication of truth, then the third one’s the charm.”

The third one is also the hardest. Requires the most work, the most vulnerability, the most action, the most fortitude, and… the most uncertainty.

I told her I’m not willing to be a starving artist. But perhaps there’s another way.

As a note, by “artist,” I mean in all disciplines, starting with performance, starting with that Yoshi’s singer I mentioned yesterday. Starting with that dream.

I think I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve been told I don’t let myself dream. It came up a few times yesterday when I had to correct my “Yeah, But”s to “Yes, AND”s.

Every time I even begin to think about following this path, I get buried under a mountain of “Yeah, But”s. I don’t think I need to list them for you, since I’m sure you have your own bevy that attack your own dreams.

So, we/I were careful to reframe them. I told her at the end of the session that I feel like my whole life has been an exercise in “Yeah, But.” And she told me that that is changing; that I am changing it.

And it was in my morning pages today that I recorded something I thought of after I came home yesterday that actually knocked the wind out of me. What I wrote in the miniscule, micro-truth script:

When we are in alignment with our highest good, the Universe will rearrange itself to help us.

I don’t have to know how to do this. Because I don’t. What struck me so suddenly and viscerally were the words I’ve heard repeated for years: When we take one step toward (G-d / Fate / the Universe / our Highest Good), it takes a thousand toward us.

I will be carried. I will be helped. I won’t have to do this alone, because, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

I was floored by this revelation. I was floored that I actually heard and felt and believed it. It was a moment of belief.

I take care of the What and G-d takes care of the How. I’ve heard this for years.

What I have needed to do is admit and commit to the What.

I have “Yeah, But”s coming up as I write this. About money, and too late, and this is for other people and other lives, and what are you thinking of me right now as you read this and are you doubting me and rolling your eyes, and how, and how and how.

Yes, I have doubts and fears. AND. I only have to hold onto the “What.” I only have to hold on to my dream. That’s my only job right now – to not go back to sleep, to not abandon my dream, again. To not continue to break promises to myself. To not drown myself in those fears and doubts. Because I am trying to live my truth. And all this wisdom says that’s all I need to do.

(You know, along with reaching out, asking for help, seeking people in these professions, gathering intel, honing my vision, practicing and learning the fuck out of it AND remembering that the pain of avoiding all this is SO MUCH GREATER than the pain of trying to do it.)

Molly, you want to be a singer in a band? You want to perform onstage in dive bars? And at Yoshi’s? And be a lounge singer? You want to feel proud and full and felt and heard?

All you have to do is say, “Yes.”

*(Thanks, Joel Landmine, for the title grab. See: Yeah, Well...)

Dream Girls

If we can pass others on the street and think to ourselves, “There, but for the grace of G-d, go I,” isn’t it possible that others can pass us and say the same thing?

I spent last evening at a Queen concert. It was balls-out amazing: the talent, the showmanship, the technique and the bravery to stand out there, bounce around a stage and invigorate a crowd of thousands.

I had a moment while watching Adam Lambert, who was filling Freddie Mercury’s shoes pretty darn well, when I realized that only the slightest differences existed between the two of us.

Go with me here. A plane takes off for New York, but the compass is one degree off. You end up at the Nyack mall instead of JFK. One degree. Completely different destination.

If there is just the “grace of god” between me and the person I see huddled under the freeway gathering up their belongings as the cop car pulls two wheels up on the sidewalk to shuffle them along to another temporary spot, isn’t there just the “grace of god” between me and Adam Lambert? Or that woman I saw perform at Yoshi’s a few years ago: She wasn’t perfect. Her pitch wasn’t always on, but she was a performer. She had the crowd completely, she enjoyed herself, she was proud, vivacious, and seen. And she wasn’t perfect.

I don’t even remember who she was, except she was the singer of a bluesy/jazzy band, and she was fierce. She was a large woman with a large smile. And as I watched her, I thought to myself that I wanted to do what she did; get up there and perform, without needing to be perfect – because if that were the case, I don’t think any of us would ever do anything, including Adam Lambert.

Over the last year, I have adjusted my compass to be bringing me closer to that point on the map. I am not so far away in the Canada hinterland, but perhaps flying somewhere over Buffalo by now. (Can you tell I grew up back east?)

Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way that it isn’t talent that creates success; it’s tenacity. It’s being a dog’s fierce jaw chomped around a toy rope, refusing to let go.

The guitar player, Brian May, dazzled the crowd with a 10-minute long epic, cacophonous solo. It was like a safari inside of music itself: strange, elegant, mystic, and ancient. I said to my friend, That’s what happens when you spend 40 years doing only one thing.

That’s what happens when you decide that you love one thing, that you’re good (enough) at one thing, that you want others to know you do this thing: You become great.

Here’s to finding—or claiming, rather—my thing. 

Band Aid.

You know, it was right around a year ago last June that I stood up with a group of 4 other people and played bass with a band in front of actual people in an actual venue. – I’d started playing in May.

This month, I’m being invited to do so again.

I’ve picked up my bass literally once in the last 6 months, since our final show on New Year’s Eve, or the final show I played with them before I left the band to pursue theater.

This switch, this focus of my energies in one creative direction (one that I’ve always wanted to pursue, but never let myself try or admit or commit to) has turned out pretty darn well in these last few months: I got real headshots, auditioned about a dozen times, performed in one play, one staged reading, and am preparing as the lead in a play at the end of the summer.

These are all great things.

But I miss the band.

I miss the immediate gratification of playing with people. I miss the noise, the movement, the sound, the collaboration. I miss the laughter.

Theater is performance; being a musician is a performance; but there’s a difference. The former is literally more staged. It’s not like I have acres of experience in either, and maybe I simply fell in with a great group of people for my first band – which I did. But whatever the formula is for happiness, I felt that when I played.

A friend once asked me what it was like to play with the band. What it felt like. And I took her question with me to band practice that week, and noticed how I felt as we fiddled and fixed and went over and over and moved into a rhythm, and went totally off the reservation with funny lyrics and made-up progressions: I was smiling. I was bouncing on the balls of my bare feet – the only way I could practice – and I noticed that I felt content, engaged, in the moment, fun, funny, “on.” That’s what “happy” felt like.

Next Sunday, I’ll get to practice with a new group of folks, a friend and his friend, to prepare for a potential show in July, before my theater rehearsal gets going. I’m feeling nervous and jittery – wanting to get the music charts NOW so I can practice, be perfect, be better – because if you haven’t followed along, I’ve only been playing a year, and not that consistently at that!

I want to build my calluses back up. I want to remember where C is on the fret board. I want to bounce on the carpet in my bare feet.

I love this theater stuff, … but I love the band better.

(P.S. I’m just reminded to reflect that it was only a little while ago that I wrote here that I wanted to “band” again … and here it is. Word.)

"This is the way to a faith that works."

I heard yesterday that another definition for resilience is to move ourselves out of harm’s way, to get ourselves out of dangerous circumstances. That resilience means to move toward health, wholeness and joy.

…There are plenty of “definitions” I hear around, some more Webster’s than others. But I get that part of resilience means to get out of circumstances and situations that cause us to need to be resilient. – If you are the inflatable clown, resilience means to step out of the way of the punch. You know, if you had legs. Which I do. Long ones.

I didn’t actually intend to get healthy when I walked into a room 8 years ago. I just wanted to stop getting punched. I listened, bawled, accepted help, and getting healthy was the byproduct.

If it wasn’t my intention to get healthy, but by listening to the voices in my head that told me to go somewhere I thought would help, I got healthy anyway… is it possible that the same voices that feed me lines like, “It’s worth it; You can heal; You are important; What you offer is important,” can get me healthier almost without my willing it?

I mean, that’s the point, wasn’t it? It wasn’t me that implanted that thought 8 years ago – the thought I had was, “Have another beer, it will solve this moment, and nothing after that matters.” But the thought that wasn’t mine was, “Go to a meeting.” Who the f*ck thought that?!

Wasn’t me. So that means there’s something inside me, beside and under the voices that usually crowd out the cheerleaders and the still calm being, that is there, speaking, helping, wanting for me things I can’t seem to accept I want for myself.

There is something else inside me (not like a scene from Alien, though it feels as alien sometimes) that wants me to be healthy, whether I like it or not. And most significantly, whether I know how to or not.

I don’t know how. But the undergirding and buttresses of my soul do. And if that now long-ago experience was any indication, they’re there, talking, waiting for me to listen, to follow, to accept.

I was also at a point that I’ve later come to define as surrender. All my best ideas gave me were the same thing, day after day. A Groundhog’s Day existence. An eeking by, scraping at the dregs of my self-esteem, morality, energy. I was running on fumes by then, and in short supply they were. I feel so much the same these days. So wan and worn and tired and unknowing and lost.

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read, When you’re lost, you can always follow your dreams.

Platitudes, sure. But it was a kind of wink to someone like me who right now feels lost. It means there’s always something to hope for. Without dreams, without hope, there’s nothing.

If what you can expect for your life is the same thing you’ve always done, and the same experiences you’ve always had – if all you can see for yourself is a life as an inflatable clown, … well, for me, there’s a point at which I’m so exhausted of being it, that I simply don’t stand back up into the firing line. And in that moment of surrender, of giving up the fight, … well, that’s when it seems to me the change comes.

I’m not the first nor last to write about surrender as a gateway to freedom. I’m not the first to terribly despise that that is so, or to attempt lipservice to it in an effort to bypass the deflation. It’s not the first time I’ve felt eviscerated by life and my efforts in it.

But, if I can recognize, remember, maybe even take comfort in the fact that my evisceration led me to a place of light, friendship, joy, health… I can try to let this time not feel as bleak. Doesn’t mean I don’t feel like my butt has been kicked by life these past few years. Doesn’t mean I don’t get to feel voraciously and vehemently angry. Doesn’t mean that I’m not going to drag my fingernails down the face of “god.”

But the voices, the good ones, permit me all these feelings, and gently – sometimes not so gently – whisper in my ear the directions toward getting my heart inflated again.

Forte. Più Forte. (Loud. More Loud.)

It’s come into my awareness again this week the fallacy of perfection, and its venomous tendrils. The three “p”s: Perfection, Procrastination, Paralyzation.

I’ve also read that procrastination is simply another way for us to prolong feeling crappy about ourselves, and to delay feeing proud of ourselves.

This week, after a conversation with some people of authority at work last week about my position, my ambition, my vision of “Where I’d like to be;” after I was given the feedback that, great, sure, put it in writing and we can talk more... I stalled and dragged my feet.

It wasn't acres of time, this time; it was only from Friday until Tuesday evening, when I finally wrote what I needed to write. But I could see those tendrils curling up around me, waiting to choke my ambition and self-esteem from me. The tendrils of hopelessness (What the use anyway), uncertainty (What about acting, my art, moving), and simple perfectionism (If it’s not perfect, they'll reject it, and then I’ll be stuck answering phones the rest of my life, anyway, so f* it, I’ll just watch some more Once Upon a Time).

It was so helpful to hear other people talk about how this weed of perfectionism crops up in their lives, marring their attempts at a full life—it reminds me that I’m not alone, and mostly, as I heard people talk about their struggle with perfectionism, I sat there in that chair and decided (for the hundredth time) to go home afterward and do the write-up I needed to hand in to my superiors.

I heard them battling the beast, I heard them being flayed by it, and I decided I wasn’t going to let that be me, if only for an evening.

I cannot tell you how many times I make this declaration to myself. And then, simply do come home and watch Netflix, or surf Facebook. I wonder if the advent of television and internet has created in us a generation of procrastinators, but I certainly know that I am none too helped by it! (in binges, especially)

But for whatever reason (and I won’t call it exasperation, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been exasperated, and still done nothing), I came home on Tuesday night, wrote what I needed to write, emailed it to a few friends for feedback, and handed it in yesterday.

And here’s the/a reward for overcoming perfectionism: It may not go the way you wanted anyway. I may hear, “Thanks, Molly, but we’re not in a position to… We’ll think about it for some undetermined date… This just isn’t in our vision or budget… We just need someone (you) to stay doing what you are doing indefinitely, or at least through the next year or more.” I may hear things I don’t want to hear in response to my action on behalf of myself and my ambition, BUT, the reward is that I get to hear something at all, instead of sitting, spinning, resenting, foaming, fuming, and … watching Netflix.

The reward for overcoming perfectionism (and it’s paralyzation) in just this one moment is that, no matter the results, no matter the response, I am actually moving forward, internally, for sure. What this does is tell me that, See Molly, once you did something. One time you took action on your own behalf, and instead of delaying your good, instead of languishing in a sea of self-pity, you get to feel proud, pro-active, like a leader. You get to feel like yourself, instead of like the skin of mutating fear that creeps up yours and mimics you out in the world.

I don’t know the result of the action I took, externally, at least. However, having put things in writing and gotten clarity around my vision and desire, if I don’t get the result I “want” here, in this environs, then I get to take that information and that knowledge and shop it around elsewhere. Because I took the action that I did, suddenly, I have a beginning instead of what my brain and that malevolent skin tells me is an end, a sorry, pathetic end.

Finally, I’ll repeat something I heard a long time ago, which I’ve agreed with and disagreed with over the years: We ask “god” for what we want; “he” gives us what we need; and in the end, it’s what we wanted anyway.

I know that what I wanted anyway was clarity and self-esteem, so, Team: Mission Accomplished. 

For you, not me.

As is custom, yesterday I got the chance to sit with two other folks who work on their relationship to money. We met in the monthly group of three to hear and discuss and provide suggestions and feedback to one of the group. It was this woman’s first group like this, she being new to addressing her vagueness and impulsiveness around money.

And I got the melodious chance to see how far I’ve come since I sat with a similar group of two strangers almost 3 years ago.

As I watched her discomfort, shame, panic, and hopelessness, it reminded me of how I was when I sat in that first group. I hated that I had to seek help around money; I already spent plenty of time in groups about alcoholism, now I have to do it about debt, scarcity, and … (dread) abundance?

I came to that first small monthly group with my numbers tallied from the month before, my income and expenses. I came with my mounting student debt, my checking account bouncing along the bottom, my credit cards bouncing along the top. I came with starvation in so many areas, and I was so sure they were going to tell me to cut more, since my income was not meeting my expenses.

Instead, what they told me was that I was living in deprivation, and needed to increase the amounts I was spending in certain categories of self-care (clothing, entertainment, food). They told me that my needs weren’t too great to be met; that I needn't be ashamed of actually needing more.

It was horrifying! It was so uncomfortable to be validated that I wasn’t living too big for my britches, but have no idea how to change the income side. At the time, I was barely making ends meet with temp jobs, and felt I was doing all I could to get out of the hand-to-mouth hole. But I was powerless, I was desperate, and I listened to these two who said, We believe it will get better for you; it has for us.

Things didn’t really begin to change for me until last Spring when I began working one-on-one with a new woman I’d admired from those groups. For whatever reason, things didn’t really change when I’d worked diligently with the first woman I’d worked with.

When I started again with J., at one point, she told me that I needed a car, and I would get one. SCOFF!! What?? How? What money? Me? No….

I didn’t believe her in the slightest. At all. But, I did believe that she believed, and that was enough. She said, I needed a car to get to band practice, to get to auditions, to get to work, and it would happen for me.

And, as you now know, last October, maybe 6 months after her proclamation, it did. It’s not a beater car, an “underearner’s” car, it’s not a jalopy. In fact, it is the exact make, model, color, mileage and price I’d hoped to get. Seriously!

I didn’t “come into money.” I didn’t stop buying clothing, or going to the movies. I just kept showing up to groups and meetings and writings like the folks I saw get better do. And things changed.

I know the woman yesterday thinks we’re full of shit, just like I did. I know that she thinks to herself, "Yeah, maybe for you, but not for me," just like I did.

But, with my life as evidence, with one credit card paid off, my $90,000 student loans in repayment (slowly), with food I want to eat in my fridge, and most importantly, with the specter of "I'll never get out of this; I'll just kill myself" long faded – if it can happen for me, it can happen for her.

And if the course of one year of real change can produce what it has, maybe I no longer feel the same militant resistance to where else abundance wants to enter my life. (Maybe.)

The Lionhearted

I didn’t want a cat. I sat for a friend’s once, and their constant up-in-my-grillness was off-putting to my isolatory nature.

My aunt had cats; was/is the stereotypical cat lady, unmarried, living alone, 3 cats of circulation when one dies.

They’re nice and sweet sometimes, and good for petting. But all that fur! Forget it.

My ex had a cat. It was good enough, companionable enough, but there were so many things in his apartment that identified him as a cat-lover/owner: the framed New Yorker cover with a cat; a magazine about cats (that he swears his brother bought him as a gag-gift); the industrial vacuum meant for all that fur.

It took me almost a year to put up curtains in my last apartment, because to do so would mean that I couldn’t abscond in the middle of the night. I would have to unscrew it slowly, with meaning and intention; I was committed to something.

Commitment was the largest reason I didn’t want a cat. Not the commitment of keeping it fed and littered, but the commitment of caring.

My brain would go immediately to, “I don’t know how I could deal with its death.” The hypothetical death of a hypothetical cat. The consequences of feeling that deeply for anything frightened me.

And yet. During the time I was with that ex, I moved to Oakland from San Francisco for grad school, and I was living a bridge away from anyone I knew, and things were a little lonely here in my studio apartment.

After a side-track story I won’t tell now, I ended up adopting Stella from the SPCA. A green-eyed (no freaky yellow-eyed cats please!), silken, mottled brown/black two-year old cat.

She has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.

She’s not an in-your-face’r. She’ll hang when she wants to, and over the 3 years we’ve lived together now, she began to sit more and more in my lap as I meditate in the morning or nap on the couch. Over time, we’ve grown more accustomed to one another; and over time I’ve gotten to see how much my love wants to express itself.

I say things that only my mother must have said to me in endearment. They come naturally and without thought, these names and phrases that I whisper to her, or chide at her. The sweetened names of love that were hanging out inside me until there was a vessel in which to pour them.

I didn’t want a cat.

I didn’t want the responsibility of love.

But it’s opened rooms in me where there were only walls. 

Give me some wool, and I’ll spin you a yarn.

I have another audition tomorrow, this one for the role of a mother in her early 40s. And I’ve been thinking about who I can believably "play," what my “place of life” would be as a woman in her early 30s? I feel too young to be the queen, to be the mother of adult children, but I feel too old to be the ingénue or the lover. But I suppose I fall more easily castable into the latter category. Lover, Romantic, Unwed.

So many actors have sordid pasts and upbringings, making it easy and understandable to want to lay on the skin of someone else, the idea that it’s easier (safer?) to be someone else than it is to be yourself. However, I think I’m realizing that to take on the skin of someone else means that I have to find that person within me, those feelings, and then face them, understand and inhabit them. And not all of those feeling are easy for me to have. Not all of those parts are natural for me to play.

And I think that’s why I love it and am challenged by this so much. (With all my scant experience!) I will have to find the romantic within me, the tyrant within me, the tortured within me. I’m going to have to let my internal flashlight illuminate corners I’d rather mark off-limits. Some of those corners I avoid because I’m afraid I’ll enjoy them too much—Who doesn’t want to dissolve into rage instead of pulling yourself up to decency? Who doesn’t want to allow the gnawing chatter to become a cacophony and play itself into Ophelia’s mad death? How easy it is to go mad; how very hard to stay sane.

And, surely, some of the corners of experience I may be asked to play, I don’t want to go into because I’ve spent so many years avoiding what they demand of me. To fully feel passion, desire, or even (don’t say it!) love?

It’s amusing to me that once I changed up my blog settings to list the subject tags in order of frequency, “love” became the first one. I think it makes sense if you put before it the words: “avoidance of,” “challenges with,” “attempts at,” “softening to,” “fear of.” But, just “love?” Hm. Yes, it makes me smile.

I also know that acting isn’t therapy, and can’t be primarily intended to process my own demons or fears through its use, but I can’t help but imagine there will be some side-effects like that. I imagine that I’ll get to see where my flashlight is happy to go, and where it isn’t. Where I’m naturally at ease, and where I’ll have to cull my acting chops.

But, isn’t that the thrill of anything new? Isn’t that the thrill of being alive? Being challenged to feel, do, and be that which you weren’t able to before, simply by the act of showing up with intention?

I have no idea how long or wide this acting path will be for me. But the caves it is already calling me to explore are worth the price of admission. 

The Runner

I attended the new writer’s group on Sunday that my friend put together of East Bay folks. We were circled in plastic chairs, old-fashioned arm chairs, and couches tucked inside the spacious two-car garage that had been repurposed into a library/workshop/extra living room. (Only in the East Bay!) I was one among 9 of us, the only girl, and though we spent copious amounts of time arguing whether Stephen King was a writer or a storyteller, and if David Foster Wallace was a genius or simply mentally masturbating onto the page, eventually, we did actually write some.

We wrote from a prompt I’d invented that morning, “You walk into a coffee shop and etched into the linoleum are the words:….”

In response, I came up with this story. No editing, no forethought, you just write, and when the time’s up, it’s up, and we shared around the room. I love that part of prompt writing in a group (not that I’ve done it much), but I love the variety of ways people go with something. The disparate styles we had became obvious, and also, we all visibly relaxed a little after the reading was through, as if we’d marked one another with a nod of approval, Yes, you are a writer, I feel comfortable having you in this group. It’s funny, but it’s also important, I think, to have that kind of respect for one another in a group like that.

We’ll see how often I’m able to attend. But I’m very glad I went.

The thing that’s been occurring to me about this story I came up with spontaneously is that I am the girl in it--the one we never meet. I am the girl who gets up in the middle of the night and leaves her lover. And then unceremoniously dumps him.

Fiction though that story may be, the seeds of myself are there. I was curious to find who in the story I was, since, well, I have an opinion that we are all or some of the characters we create. I am both the runner, and the lover calling after myself to please stay.

I think I’ve reported this anecdote before, how in college I was in a casual “relationship” with this guy, who was by all rights a decent fellow. One evening after we’d been in flagrante, he was holding me in his strong early-twenty’s arms and intoned that he’d like to take me out sometime, like, to dinner. I gasped, Why?? And he replied, because he liked me, and wanted to get to know me.

I never called him again.

I am the runner.

I have two songs in draft form, one that goes

Send me somebody that I can say Yes to.

Send me someone who I can come home to.

Just gimme somebody  somebody to make me say

Yes Yes Yes

and the other:

Married men make it so easy

To wanna misbehave

I never have to do their dishes

Just be their    sex slave

CHORUS:

I wanna be the girl who spends the night

And doesn’t sneak out around two

I wanna be the one who stays over

To wake up next   to you

I think my ambivalence about commitment is pretty clear! And to clarify, “Married Men” is a song, not an autobiography. It’s an impulse, a thought, a cop-out, a desire, a fantasy, an avoidance, a way to stay stuck and alone, since ultimately, I won’t follow through on those impulses.

So, I’ll work it out in song, in fiction, in blog. I’ll tell you how skittish I am, I’ll let myself be surprised at how I show up in my own work and reflect myself back to me. I’ll warm up to the sword-wielding, 2-a.m. sneaking, rabid runner. I’ll tell her that commitment to living in one place has only brought me health and stability; I’ll tell her that, in owning a cat for the first time, the love I have for her I’m happy and proud to give; I’ll tell her that in the many places I’ve used “Stability First,” I am the better for it.

And then I’ll let her go on a run. But maybe this one will be shorter. 

Get Real.

Blogger lets you see what posts are being read, how many times, and where in the world the reader is (HELLO! Those of you in Poland, Germany & Israel...whoever you are!). This morning, I saw that someone had read “Pulling a Carmen,” my first blog-a-day in November of 2011. I haven’t stuck with it daily, but fairly enough.

Amazingly, a) it’s the same things I talk about now (wanting to act and perform; letting myself be in a relationship; owning my dreams), but b) it also shows me where things have changed: I have been a bass player in a band – I certainly wasn’t in Winter of 2011 when I wrote that; I wasn’t until Spring of 2013.

In that blog, I write that my relationship with others is reflected in my relationship with myself: how am I not committed to myself and my goals? And here I am present-day, whittling down my goals to only theater, finally. 

This week, I wrote the lead singer in the band I play bass in that I can’t be in the band anymore. It’s sad, but I know it’s ultimately for the best. It’s a pruning game—like a bonsai. Or fichus. (cuz who doesn’t love the word fichus). And I think it will ultimately help me in my attempts to focus on and even achieve anything at theater.

I write about all the same things that I write about now, but I do think I’m at a different place with them. I mean, I guess I write about the same things all the time: relationships, healing, self-care, self-derision, past experience, authenticity, perseverance.

Perseverance. I’ve written a bunch about that before, but without one goal to head toward, the whole thing becomes dispersed, scattered, and ineffectual.

Yesterday, I put down a deposit for real headshots.

The friends I’ve had who’ve helped me out over the years produced incredible photos, artistic, fun, and fun to shoot—but they’re not “acting headshots.” And there just is an industry standard. I’ve been trying to get the name of someone from an actor friend of mine, but her voicemails are all garbled, and somehow it hasn’t been working.

Enter Yelp. Yesterday after some searching and clicking and emailing, I sent half of the $350 fee to this woman in Berkeley.

Later that day, I got emails back from my other inquiries, friends, who would be willing to do a much reduced rate, or photos in exchange for babysitting.

I cursed myself (mildly) for being so impetuous and imprudent, for not being patient and thereby “wasting” money.

And then, I looked at these friends’ websites, and I said, ya know, it’s worth it.

As Maybelline says, I’m worth it. (or is it clarol?)

Because, after hm, 3 years of headshots that I felt either okay, or less than okay about (fine photos though they were), I've been being prudent and cutting corners and trying alternatives--It’s time to put my money where my mouth is. And I mouth about being an actress.

Does this mean I’m suddenly an actress? No. Does it mean that I’m taking myself seriously enough to invest in myself? Yes. Does it mean that I can focus more on what I’m showing the auditors rather than what I’ve handed them, or emailed them? YES.

Because it IS my calling card, my first impression. And if I want to be a professional, I get professional help. If I want this to be real, then I get real.

I could look at that first blog and laugh/lament that I’m talking and writing and working on the same damned things 3 years later. And a little bit, I do. But I also recognize that big things have shifted since then, too. I’m glad to have this kind of record to mark my progress. Even when progress looks circuitous and labyrinthine.

The last line in that first blog is that maybe there’s a tall attractive employed funny Jewboy who is looking for a “writer/singer/actress…bass player.” At the time I wrote that, "bass player" was only a vague hope and notion, a funny, last second, "doorknob comment" throw-away, because you shouldn't really know that it's important to me. Today, I get to own that mantle. I am a bass player. I play bass, I’ve been in a band. And I am now hoping to own the mantle of actress.

If you glue it, they will come. 

For those of you playing along at home. . .

For those of you playing along at home, below are a few updates on things I have here written about:

• The caffeine-reduction experiment has been a near-fail since beginning the temp job, but continues to remind me to feel guilty.

• I realized this morning that the free bus I sometimes catch to BART can take me all the way to the city, instead of transferring to BART (thank you to my school’s student bus pass, making bus transit in the East Bay free).

• I put back up the series of my paintings that I’d taken down during Calling in the One, at which time I’d realized that women not looking at their lovers was something I wanted to move away from. I put them back up when the okJew was potentially going to come over, and I didn’t want a blank expanse of wall over my bed. I'm not sure if I'll take it back down. 

• I have not yet finished, but I have begun, the art project for my friend’s wedding. It sits on my desk, accusing me.

• I bought cat food.

• I graduated with a Master’s degree a month ago. And I was offered a weekend job at said pet food store. Generously offered (not the compensation), but no thank you. Not yet, at least.

• I have art that I need to make for the September art show my friend invited me to join. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it’s been backstroking through my psyche for a month or so.

• I must follow-up with the boss at where I'm temping to ask her precisely what she meant when she said she would be happy to give me "a recommendation" for auction houses here and in the city (um, I meant NY city – I guess that habit still dies hard).

• My dad will be closing on the sale of my childhood NJ home in the next month or so, and is planning to move with his fiancé to their new Florida home toward the fall.

• I am eagerly awaiting June 20^th, when the results of the daily sweepstakes I’ve been entering for a trip for two to Italy will be announced. You may be the lucky winner.

• My writing style is influenced by who I’m reading currently.

• At the moment, I just finished Nora Ephron’s new book, and began a collection of essays by David Foster Wallace, whom I’ve never read, but seen the author’s name so many times on my BART rides that I thought to give him a whirl. I’m not sure I will continue.

• I will be art modeling this Sunday for the artist who I first worked for, and two of her friends. I’m not sure I will continue.

• I have 9 new voicemails I haven’t checked.

• I went on the walk I’d planned to take on Tuesday evening yesterday evening, and it was glorious. I ate what must have been a small, cherry-sized peach, unless it was of course, a cherry, from a nearby tree which I jumped to pluck from the low hanging branch. I’m not dead, so it was not poisonous.

• As soon as I get paid this cycle, I’m going to register for the summer acting classes at A.C.T., and I can’t f’ing wait. I looked up all manner of electronics yesterday that I could hypothetically use my more regular income of the next 6 weeks to purchase, and yet, I realized that what I really want are those lessons. And new shoes.

• I’m now working one-on-one with a woman who’s found recovery around negative patterns of behavior with sex and men, and I’m infinitely looking forward to freedom around some of this.

• I’m continuing to work with a woman one-on-one around financial recovery stuff, and am looking forward to being “placed in a position of neutrality” around money.

• I love Patsy.

• I haven’t yet played my bass with my friend with the drums up in Berkeley, and it too stares at me, not gently weeping, but with silent mewling.

• I realized that most of the writers I’m reading right now have written as freelance writers, and it occurs to me, that I might be able to do that, if I look into it.

• I haven’t applied to any jobs since last week.

• I used my 3 lb weights yesterday after my walk for about 3 minutes. And began to dread the 3 hour posing/drawing session on Sunday.

• Dr. Palm Reader’s office wrote to ask after me, and so I looked up my soon-to-end chiropractic benefits “in network,” so that I can get back to that kind of thing, without breaking my bank, or participating in a somewhat murky flirtatiousness.

• This is the end of my list. 

Bollocks.

Through a series of work I’m doing right now, I sent out a stack of three letters to former employers yesterday, each with a variation on the theme – I was an unprofessional employee, I am sorry for how I behaved, and I aim to be more responsible in my jobs now and going forward.

The messed up, fucked up, I-don’t-want-to-do-this part of all that is… that now I have to stick to my word – the word about being a better employee going forward. This means, fewer endless hours on facebook while at work (if any at all); it means taking my breaks so I’m refreshed to actually do work instead of sit and stare at whatever I’m doing; it means being efficient in my work. I means, basically, doing what I’m paid to be doing.

I don’t like that. And, yet, I know how completely necessary it is. I’ve been talking here about responsibility lately, how I don’t want it, but that I do want the things that come to people who are responsible – in their work, extracurricular, and home lives. So, if I want what they have, then I must do what they do.

I don’t have to. Sure, I can say one thing and do another, but in truth, that feels, obviously, worse. Better to not say anything at all, and continue to slide along on half-steam, than to say that I’m making changes so that I don’t slide along on half-steam and then not do it.

Most recently, having the (rated G) dalliance with the married man, I got to see very acutely where I was either going to stick to the letter of my word or not. I’ve had to make many an amends to women whose boyfriends, and, once, a fiancé, with whom I’ve dallied. I told them each, specifically, that I was making changes in my life so that I don’t act like that anymore – that I was sorry for how I behaved, and that I wouldn’t do it again.

So, when I began talking in the flirtatious way with this man about a month ago, I knew – I felt – how off this was. How against everything that I’d set up over the last few years this was. How, basically, I was breaking my promise to each of them, and indeed to myself – having promised myself that I wouldn’t behave in ways around men that would make me feel bad about myself, or guilty, or ashamed.

And so, I stopped the dalliance with the man, and am now newly engaged in a body of work to help extricate and sever and lay to rest the last of the beliefs and behaviors that influence me to believe that this is all that is available to me, or what I deserve.

So, here I am, now, about work. About telling these folks that I fucked up in the past, and I’m trying to do better. That, specifically, I will be more responsible and work with more integrity. And, I know, now, that I’ll have to stick to it. I know how it feels from that recent experience to come right up against something I said I wouldn’t do – I know how icky it feels, and against my morals. And so, now, I must take that same self-line into the professional world.

And I hate it.

I know it’s good for me. I know it’ll open doors for me, and duh, it’s the right thing to do. But, Oh! My Beautiful Wickedness!, I don’t “want” to. Luckily, it doesn’t quite matter whether I want to or not. Pain will always push me in the direction forward. I don’t want to feel the pain of being a hypocrite, so I will work better. I don’t want to feel ashamed that I’m not living to my word, so I’ll stop accepting jobs that I know I’ll work half-steam at.

I don’t like it. It feels like an entirely new level of adulthood to go toward this direction of integrity. But it’s necessary, and it’s time.

I have no doubt that the opening up of this line of vision will amount to something more in my professional life. I have no doubt that by working to a better standard of duty that I’ll feel better about myself and less like a fraud. I know that this will take me somewhere different internally and externally. But, still, it sucks.

It’s like this is what teenagers experience when they get into their 20s maybe. Or, these days, 20somethings into their 30s. I’d love to learn this now. It’s late, but it is certainly a better late than never.

I also wrote an email last night to a recent former employer to apologize for how I ended my employment there, and to ask for clarity around some money they gave me to pay off the last of my braces when I had them a few years ago. He said that they had dental, so it was covered, and no liability to me. He said that he did think I “handled the separation badly.” And he said that if I ever needed a reference that he has “[my] back.” I’m glad to know that the money is clear. I agree that I could have handled things differently. And for fuck’s sake, I promise that I will handle them differently in the future.

Change sucks. Especially when it’s good for me. 

Turn Left.

Feels like another “toodling along” day. I actually don’t know if that’s a known phrase or word, or if my mom made it up – but, generally, I suppose people know what I mean if it’s not. Or, for all I know, it’s a well-known high-fallutin’ word. … Yeah, I just wanted to write “fallutin.”

Feeling generally optimistic today, or rather a lack of pessimism, so that’s a good start, and a decent change. I’ve been presented with the opportunity to think about choice, a few times in the last 24-48 hours or so. Particularly, the idea that I have the opportunity to choose my perspective. And more than that, I have the choice to do a lot of damn things.

Basically, I’ve been given the power of choice, and I’m recognizing what might be better ways of using that grand choice. That privilege of choice.

I was talking with a friend yesterday, and she was telling me about some places where she was feeling hopeless, and I offered that she does have a choice here. That we are indeed at places where we both can choose to turn right, and go down the all too familiar well worn path of despair, crumbs, victimhood – all the way back to the dry well. Well is dry. It always has been. But sometimes I, and she, like to see if maybe today there’s just one drop I can squeeze out from it. Nope. That well is dry, but I have a choice to still go there if I want.

Or… I can choose a different way. A different way to look, approach, feel, be. Think. I believe part of this is owning that mantle of adulthood – recognizing that we have the power of choice, and are in some ways the steward of our own fates. Sure, Fate sometimes intervenes, Divine intervention happens, and sometimes we are stripped of choice, but, for the most part, nearly everything in my life at the moment, and how I choose to see or hold it, is a choice. I have chosen to engage in despair. I have chosen to stay small. I have chosen to reject responsibility, and then I get to complain about my meager finances. Or romances.

It’s not all as simple as turning on a light switch, but sort of, sometimes, it is. It needn’t be some massive, monolithic effort, or commitment; sometimes, it seems to me now, it’s just a simple shrug, and a turn left. Not so heavy, or burdensome. Not so daunting or scary. Just a left turn. Toward something … not new. It’s not new – I mean, it is and it isn’t. I don’t quite know (obviously) all that’s down a path of Left, but I’m familiar enough with occasionally taking that route that I do know some of the milemarkers.

Peace. Calm. A sense of well-being. These are quite obvious particularly in contrast to the milemarkers on the way to the dry well.

Today, I can choose. I have a choice to see myself roundly, to see my life roundly. I can choose today to notice the assets, to notice where I have a choice – a choice to write my teaching resume. A choice to send it. A choice to decide whether I want to do some live drawing modeling tomorrow, or if I’m feeling a little too tender for that.

I have a choice to buy eggs, instead of eat popcorn for dinner. I have a choice to make a nutritious meal – like the one I’m eating now ;) I have a choice to dress properly today, in a way that makes me feel professional, but myself – not a drone or clone, but not defiant. That may seem like a “silly” thing to think of as a choice, but it’s not.

Last Tuesday, to my second day back to the temp job, I dressed in all black, with my black leather jacket and my fuck you attitude of, I can’t believe that I have to do this work in this office, sitting for all these hours… yadda yadda, fuck you, I’m wearing black. ! Yes, That was a choice. Luckily, that was also the same day I had my wonderful conversation with a friend about whether or not I want to be an adult.

So, today, I can wear something that says, I’m still me, with my quirks and style, but yes, I respect this workplace, and am grateful to be here.

I also have the choice to pack my lunch instead of buy it. To meet my friends later instead of isolate. And to remember to breathe.

I have a lot of choices today. And the well is still dry. 

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.