Day Jobs.

Yikes. Unintendedly, I apparently freaked my mom out. I guess "What goes around comes around" is a less than spiritual comment here.

When I was camping this weekend, one of the women said she’d used this 23andme site that did genetic mapping and testing. She said she found it to accurately confirm things she knew she had and “labeled” her cousin as her own on the site, so she felt it was reliable when it came to the things she wanted clarity on or might not know. So, on a whim, I looked it up yesterday. Part of it is my own rampant curiosity about my dad’s father’s side of the family, about whom we know nothing (very hush hush, gramma got pregnant at 15 in an Irish Catholic family under-the-rug), so I’d like to know about that fourth of who I am.

Secondly, and importantly for me, my mom’s mother died from Alzheimer’s and I want to know if I have the gene or not. You can get it without the gene, and you can not get it with the gene. But, I’m curious. And a little excited. If I don’t have the gene, I can (and would) worry less; and if I do have the gene, they’re coming up with all kinds of new things people can do these days to stave it off or minimize the effects – and I’d look for more information on stuff like that.

So, in an effort to “share the good news,” I emailed my mom and brother yesterday to let them know about it (though women are more likely than men to get Alz). I got an email back this morning from my mom saying that no matter what to never [BOLD FACE] EVER tell her the results of it.

Yikes. Granted, my mom is a class-A worrier, anxiety-disordered woman on medication, but… yeesh. That obviously wasn’t my intention, to freak her out – I guess I imagined she’d react as I did – “Cool, what can I learn, so that information can be useful in how I lead my life?” … Best laid plans, I suppose.

It’s Friday, so it’s a little rough to go into what I remember of my mom’s parents’ deaths, and what I consider to be and have been “wrong” ways of grieving. And so I won’t do that today. It’s NOMB – None Of My Business.

So, I’ll undeftly switch topics, as I’m uncomfortable. ;)

Yesterday, in reading Tina Fey’s book, I had a sort of realization about “day jobs.” Fey worked at a YMCA for $5/hr in Chicago when she left undergrad. She wanted to take improv classes, so she angled for a job “upstairs” in the office of the YMCA. When she was asked on the interview why she wanted the job, she replied unabashedly, So I can afford improv classes. She got the job, took improv classes, and quit the job less than a year later when she got work with the improv group.

I had my informational interview with my former acting teacher last Friday, and she said nice things like I have “great instincts,” and that "it’s obvious [I] really enjoy it.” She didn’t really give me the “constructive criticism” I was looking to get – areas that I could improve in, and as I was recounting this to my friend last weekend, she said it sounded like I wanted to hear places I could just do X, Y, and Z, so that I could “fix” it, and suddenly everything would fall into place. Yes, give me a set of movable problems, let me fix them, and then let me be free of problems forever. That sounds about right.

So, I didn’t get that. I got what felt like nearly reluctant suggestions. Again, I guess I had expectations. But, I heard that acting classes would be a good idea to continue with. So, yesterday, I looked up the classes at A.C.T. Studio, and their summer program. It’s not very expensive, but surely more than I have now.

And I remembered what Tina Fey had said: she took a job so she could afford to do what she really wanted to do. For SO long I’ve been agonizing over what is my “ideal” job, or what will feed me spiritually, intellectually, and creatively – what one thing would fit all my needs. I don’t feel this way about people, why would I feel this way about work? I don’t expect one person to fulfill all my needs – that’s ridiculous, unfair, and leads to disappointment. So, why should I feel that a job would or ought to do the same.

There’s something in this. It takes a shit ton of the pressure out of whatever job comes to me next. That it is a means to an end. And further, I’m honing in more closely on what I’d want those “ends” to be – what I want my job to afford me to be able to do. Lessons, classes, (acting & music, for now). I’m not sure what this realization will bring me – except that I already feel less internal pressure about “What I’m going to do next.” Chances are (G-d willing!!!!!!) that the job that I get next can afford me the disposable income to take classes like that. Or, rather, the chances don’t have to be there, I can just start angling the satellite dish of my focus in a slightly different direction, picking up on things that I’d dismissed, as they wouldn't “fill me spiritually.”

Like a person, it’s not a job’s … job to fill me spiritually. That’s up to me. That’s up to me to take the kinds of actions that will allow me the freedom from financial worry to do things that do feed me spiritually and creatively. I have a phone call date with another acting friend next week, having been inspired by the new angle of my satellite to be able to continue having these conversations with people.

What comes of it? Who knows. But I feel more open to things, and I’ve noticed that makes a world of difference.

(Sorry, Mom – didn’t mean to freak you out. LU, m.)

Movie Magic

In an effort to vary what’s become to me a rather one-note blog lately, I’ve decided to lie.

I recently earned a decent wage from my spirituality & creativity workshops, and am supplementing my income with sales of my art work. Further, I am feeling so rejuvenated and supported by these avenues of income and service, that I have enough energy and creativity left over to practice with my new band – We play our first show this weekend.

There … did that work?

Well, in some circles, one might call that a “vision,” or dream. A goal, per se. And in those circles, Visions are highly regarded as lighthouses for us in the dark nights of the soul. So, I’ll take what I can get. It may feel like pretend, like fantasy, as I cannot see how to get from A to Z, but I don’t have to. Those are places that resonate with me to my core. If we add in that I’m a member of a local theater company, and we just ended our sold-out run, I think I’d hit nirvana.

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this here, though I’ve used this metaphor before.

It’s like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Yep. That’s right. I’m going there.

When Indy, as we affectionately call him, is on his way through the cave to get to the Holy Grail, he comes to a ravine. There is no way to cross this. As it appears, Indy stands on one side, clinging to a statue of a Lion, and about 15 or 20 feet away, is the other side of the ravine, and the path to the Grail.

There is no way. He cannot “jump” it, it’s egregiously deep and sharp and craggy. And so, he recites the clue, as if the words somehow will give him wings.

“A leap of faith from the lion’s mouth.” A leap of faith. This is nuts. A leap of faith. But there’s nothing down there. A leap of faith. Fuck It.

He takes one step forward from the safety of the rock... and is held, solid and firm. The camera pans out from his angle, and we see that hidden, blended into the ravine walls, is a firm, stone bridge. Had he not stepped out from where he was, he wouldn’t have the vision to see that he was firmly taken care of the whole time. That there wasn’t a moment at which he was unsafe. He just needed to take that first step out from perceived safety to perceived risk.

Metaphors like this keep me going.

I’m a visual person, and a child of the 80s, so throw in a "Goonies never say die," and I’m ready to pack my rucksack, hitch up my courage, and step forward.

Despite my crawing about it here, it’s been suggested that I let other people know about the state of my affairs, if only to take my isolation out of it. Funnily, a woman whom I’m not fond of yesterday instructed me to “Figure It Out.” I could have slapped her. (Funnier still, it's already been strongly suggested that I choose another woman for these monthly meetings I have with my financial folks - which I haven't done yet... point taken?)

But, it all reminds me of another phrase, “You can’t save your face and your ass at the same time.”

I suppose belly-aching is different than sharing. Different from being open. I’d like to submit that I’ve done a little of both, and what I recognize is that I do have some blinders on. I do stand like Indy with a limited view of things.

And if sharing with other folks my honest truth, without being maudlin or Debbie Downer, can help me to take the next leap into the unknown, then alright.

Camera Pans Right.

Lights up on microphone. 

R-E-S-P--...oh you know the rest

Things I have the power to change:

my hair color

my perspective.

That’s the list for now. Sure, it could be really long, but that’s what occurs to me at the moment. I haven’t, in fact, changed my hair color in a few years – after the blonde debacle, and subsequent re-browning – and, it sort of feels that i haven’t changed my perspective all that much lately either.

I met up with a friend in SF yesterday, as I went about my day flyering the city (note the gazillion workshop flyers on the lampposts of Hayes Valley), and basically, she told me that although she could see that this was important to me to talk about – where I am in my life, basically, … or rather, my opinion of where I am in my life – that she just couldn’t process with me anymore. That she herself, as I well know, is in a similar position, going through similar changes in her life, and I guess she’s just fed up with the whole “Let’s figure it out” routine. And so, she told me, gently, that I’m still in the problem, and not the solution, and that until I start to do things or see things differently, of course it’s going to be painful for me.

I was both disappointed, and heartened – our friendship is that strong, that we can let one another know when we’re being crazy, basically, and that the other just can’t bear witness to crazy right now.

I have a few marching orders, work I’m doing with a woman one-on-one, that I can proceed to progress on, and that’s where the change will come. But, for now, my friend is right – as Jung said (loose paraphrase): we cannot solve the problem at the level of the problem.

So, if all I have at the moment is my ground level view, it’s better for now to stop reporting back from the (perceived) bleak front lines, and do the work I have in front of me which will help me to get a foothold up and out.

Perhaps this all sounds sort of vague, but it’s all I got.

I was reflecting this morning on respect – that something that I can change is how I respect myself or don’t. Who am I to disparage myself for not being x y or z? How would I react if a friend came to me and “should” all over me? (You should know, it should be different, you should have figured it out already, you should be better…)

I’m realizing that all the time that I spend in lamenting this situation is time I’m spending beating myself up, and treating myself unkindly – and without respect. What would it be like to respect myself – to look at myself from an outsider’s view? To congratulate myself on my accomplishments, take real stock and account of things that I have done and talents that I have. What would it be like to take a more well-rounded view of myself? Would I ever disparage myself as in the above paragraph? Discounting all that I am? No. Because here are a few reality checks – a) I’m human – guess what, I come with assets and liabilities. b) I’m hosting a workshop that I’ve dreamed up, crafted, advertised and implemented all by myself today. (with due thanks to all my helpers!) and, c) I am poised to graduate from graduate school. I didn’t make it to my college graduation. I got high as fuck after my high school one. This time, I’m showing up – period. I’m showing up entirely differently.

I’ve changed. I have become someone worthy of respect – most emphatically of my own respect. If I can begin to take ownership of feelings like that – or rather facts like that – then I can begin to move from the problem into the solution. I do not need to know anything about what “will happen.” What I do need to be very careful I count along side of the things I have “to work on,” are the things that are worthy, lovable, respectable about myself.

Because in the end, I’m the person with the power to change my perspective. Because I will inform others’ interactions with me, Fate’s interactions with me, by leading by my own example of realistic, balanced, and earned respect. 

Poetic Noise.

I was all set to write a blog about 7 years. How really when someone is 6 years old, they’re beginning their 7^th year of life. How I’ve been here in the SF Bay Area 6 years to the day, and so I begin my 7^th year in the Bay. And how, further, and don’t quote me, that our cells are said to regenerate every 7 years – all of them – so that I am now beginning a set of 7. Any and all cells that I had in my body when I arrived in San Francisco have absolutely been purged and regrown, replaced.

I think about this, and intended to write about all the things that have changed in these 6 full years. About where I am not as I begin my 7^th – about how I feel it’s completely cosmically appropriate that I stand ready to graduate from a Master’s program and contemplate a return to the East Coast, and even maybe a career.

I wanted to list things like getting my teeth fixed, a several-year process that I started here, after 10 years of having a few molars pulled in high school but never replaced, which made me self conscious in photos, though few others noticed (I certainly do now, as I smile entirely with every ounce of my cheeks).

I was going to write about my return to art. About taking up the pencil after several years' neglect and the first tentative and judgmental sketches which I shoved away for another few years before warming up and into myself – culminating in selling a painting last year – me?! of all people.

The last 6 years witnessed a return to the stage, auditions, head shots, community plays. Two acting classes, and two performance poetry classes, and some modeling to further my return to being present in my skin.

They also signaled a return to writing, the scribbled in margins and the back of notebook hobby of mine. Who knew that beginning to post my poems as Facebook notes for several years would morph into what it is now – reading in public, (almost) owning my mantle of poet. 

I got a cat, for chrissake. Something I was loathe to do – my first pet-able animal I’ve ever owned, and having her hasn’t make me a crazy cat lady… so I’m told.

I put up curtains, set root in San Francisco, didn’t run away, cut and run, shrink or hide. I’ve emerged slowly, shyly, tentatively, reluctantly and painfully for sure.

I took guitar lessons and voice lessons. Which I dropped, but the piano creeps in these days, sending crescendos of joy into my marrow.

For years, while I’ve been here, whenever someone told me that they were in school full-time, I looked at them as though they were a movie star, a little starry eyed and goofy and admiring, and said (I remember so clearly), I envy people who do that – go to school fulltime. And now I’m one of them. I forget that I really asked for this. I asked for it often and deeply.

As each of the cells on this corporeal form have dived their swan song into the ether, I have changed. People sometimes use the term inwardly rearranged – how literal it is here.

Yes, I intended to write my blog about that – about the nature and surprise of continuing to beat a heart consistently for 7 years.

But I read my email before I came to write this, and there’s some poetic noise in the interwebs about some highly public class tension that occurred last night in the direction of a classmate, and I’m just sort of sad about it.

We are all human. We are all trying to be free from suffering and doing the best we can. 

How we act and react -- teacher, student, classmate ... parent, co-worker, acquaintance, dude who cut me off on the highway -- is simply and ultimately the best we can offer for that day. We may not like it or approve - we may reprove ourselves for how we acted or reacted or neglected to act - but we also get to reflect and change what isn't working for us, whether that's our perspective or action. 

So mixed with the awe and gratitude I feel for not being the sloppy, grubbing, manic splash of a young woman I was when I arrived in San Francisco 6 years ago today, I also feel a melancholy compassion for last night's wounded artist (who for all I know, may not be), and for the reality that we are all somewhere in the process of this perpetual self-renewal.

6 x 6 and 5 x 5

Six years ago this very morning, the Monday after Easter of 2006, I packed everything I could carry – i.e. a few suitcases and a pillow – into my car, and headed West.

I drove from New Jersey in the rising light of a near-Spring morning, muddy headed, giddy, nervous, and a little puffy eyed. I got on the highway, and drove.

This was a planned trip – albeit, not very well. Having arrived home after my 2^nd completed teaching contract in South Korea, and a few pitstops along the archepelago, I found myself to be 24, living at home, with no thought of what to really do next. It was March.

I thought, and had the idea, that I would “break onto Broadway.” It hadn’t really occurred to me that people often spend years of their lives in training and working their way through auditions and classes and various local troupes, and still don't make that leap. I simply thought I could “make it work.”

So, I envisioned that I would get a roommate or two in Manhattan, get a job as a waitress (cuz that’s what actresses do, right?), and start my way up.

I did get a job as a waitress. At a lower Manhattan Italian restaurant, and was told that I needed to wear all black as the uniform, and start the next week. Great – perfect – falling into place.

I’m in H&M clothing store. I’m in the stall changing room, and trying on black clothing for my new job, and I have a sudden thought – New York will eat me alive.

I suddenly realized that I had no business being in Manhattan the way that I was drinking and drugging. That I would die if I stayed. I somehow knew it. I was setting myself up to fail, as I had no coping mechanisms and almost no community or friends, having lost most of those prior to leaving for Korea.

I walked out of H&M without buying anything. I left the black clothing, the representation of this pipe dream, and walked outside. I called the restaurant, and told them I wouldn’t be coming in to work … That I was moving to California.

What made me think that? I don’t know. But I had a friend/acquaintance who lived in San Francisco, who’d invited me to come visit. And somehow, San Francisco – California Dreamin’ – was for me. How 'bout I come to stay?

I don’t know what sense of intuition it was that let me know that NYC was too much for the addled and fragile sense of self I was, but I am grateful for it. In Korea, there weren’t many drugs around – a few here and there, spilling off the army base – but mainly, it was drinking. And for that, I am grateful. But, in New York? It was a buffet of ways to murder myself slowly. And I had zero capacity to turn anything down. I knew it was a ticket to the bottom, and I really didn’t have that much further to go.

So, San Francisco. I coordinated with my friend out here. Let the Cousin know I would come to visit him in Ohio before I hopped on to Route 66 – the cool way to go – and got gone. I bought the Lonely Planet guide books for California, and Coastal California, and Route 66, and simply followed that map the whole way down. I arrived in Santa Monica on April 25^th, 2006, stuck my feet in the Pacific Ocean (on this side of it) for the first time, and headed up north to San Francisco.

I arrived that night in time to induct my friend into my nighttime tornado as she showed me around via a few bars. Two weeks later, I got sober.

I had no intention of this, mind you. It didn’t at all occur to me that I was heading West to leave a life I’d known for many years in exchange for one I knew nothing about. I didn’t know that I would eventually fix my teeth, live alone, go to graduate school, actually audition and be in a few plays.

I just knew that SF was better than NYC for me.

6 by 6. Six years ago. I don’t know why I chose “by 6,” not sure what it’s “by,” - perhaps "2006" - but 5 x 5, I get.

Five by five is the catch phrase of TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s character, Faith. Which I suppose is an apt name here at the moment. When things are good, in answer to how are you, when life is not filled with monsters and demons and chaos, Faith replies that she’s “Five by Five.”

My life is no longer filled with monsters and demons and chaos. There are bumps in the night, and scary creatures that lurk still, but 6 years have taught me how to deal with, talk about, and work through those fears and scary patches.

Over this past weekend, I have run into, at complete coincidence, people from communities as variant as school, Jew, and recovery. On the street, in a taxi, on the bus, on BART. I am “a part of.” I am a member of. I am not a lost little pigeon anymore – I have community, and several at that. I have been surprised and humbled as I’ve realized this weekend how many friends I now have – people I now know. I arrived knowing one woman marginally.

And I’m learning how to “break on to Broadway,” or whatever my current vision equivalent is, with the grace, fortitude, and support that I never would have dreamed I’d have. For a dork, lost, wild, alone, sad, chaotic, pipe-dreamy me, well, five by five doesn’t even feel adequate. 

R+D

The past two days, I’ve been functioning according to my new time plan – or schedule. My friend who helped me on Tuesday morning suggested things I would never think of myself (or let myself) like “walk,” and then insisted that I write down “piano” in capital letters.

I spend more time than I like (cough – resentment) traveling to and from school because of the shuttle schedule (though I am grateful to have it at all). On Thursdays, for a 4pm class, I’m on campus at 2:30pm, because the next shuttle doesn’t arrive until after 4. So, I have over an hour to “kill” on campus before class.

My friend knows that a spiritual nourishment of mine is playing the piano in the school chapel, and suggested I use some of that time at the piano. If it weren’t written down, I wouldn’t do it. Like, take a walk, or… the “important” piece, R+D.

Research and Development. That’s what we’re calling actions relating to job, career, income earning. I like it so much more than writing down in my new little schedule, “Job hunt.” That just sucks. Makes me dread and despise it before I begin. But “Research and Development” sounds like something significant and helpful for me. Just research. Helping me develop. Not a whip or a chastisement.

So, over the past two days, I’ve spent 4 hours in R+D. This is huge. Usually, it’s looked like a few minutes glances at craigslist, a loud harumph, a resentment, despair, and click the browser closed … and then go off to some other mindless activity to get my mind off my despair!

So, R+D for an hour, I set my alarm clock, then I have something in between before the next hour. Something nourishing. A reward perhaps. Tuesday it was “art,” and I made two little acrylic painted postcards, out of the blank postcard pad I’d bought last week. I sent one off that afternoon. Yesterday, my nourishment was a walk. Although it also included calling my mom and coordinating logistics for her and my brother’s visit in a month. But, that’s alright. I got out of the house, up into the gorgeous hills near me with houses so beautiful (and enviable).

Yesterday, I also began “development” of a newsletter to send out to the masses, announcing my new workshop that I’ll be facilitating in SF in May (G-d willing). Part of my “Go big and go home” movement is to really take ownership of this workshop, and to really put it out there. I have great support around it, and have been encouraged by numerous parties. Now, the action ball is in my court, and with those structured moments of time, I’m picking up that ball.

So, yesterday I went into Constant Contact, that mass email newsletter site. I logged in, actually, although I couldn’t remember when had been the last time I did – I knew that I had an account with them. Turns out, saved in the draft section was a newsletter I was working on in November of 2010. It was a very ambitious letter about starting an creative events company. It’s more than overly ambitious, and I think very sweet, now that it’s two years later. But what it tells me is that I’ve been working on stuff like this for a while. And there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work.

I went to brown paper tickets to check out their policies, and saw you can have free tickets too, so as to be a great way to manage RSVPs … not via a “Yes” on Facebook. (I don’t know about you, but I tend to click yes to all kinds of things I later have no intention of going to…!)

Then, through a girl friend, I saw her website for her creative coaching company. And started some work on one of my own. Because really, I know if I were going to attend a workshop, I’d want to see a website.

So, here we are. Taking action. Moving along as scheduled (although yesterday, despite being “art” time, I took a much needed nap!). I will allow for the changes I need as I come to know how I work best. I know 2 hours of R+D in a row is overwhelming. Splitting it up is helpful. I know that 15 minutes on dishes and cleaning a day will save me time in the end, and also help me to feel proud of my home I’m trying so hard to keep.

I have been building toward things like this for a long time. I have co-run this workshop before; I have a teacher singly devoted to helping me put on the free version later this month; and, as irony would have it, I have a decade of administrative, secretarial experience – so I know how to organize an event.

I’m supported in my effort of self love. Which in the end is what this is. 

Cacophonous Joy

Yesterday, I finished my draft of my poetry thesis. It is dark, and humorous, and sad, and scared, and thoughtful, and loving, and aimed toward health. It represents a period in my life, which I’m glad to recognize as not current, even though the feelings may arise as current.

This is a memoir of sorts. It chronicles a period of time which, I see now, I do have a degree of distance from, in order to be able to write about it so fully. I know too it leaves gaps and holes, but I don’t mind – it’s show, don’t tell, right?

Yesterday, I sort of fell apart around 3pm, as I knew I needed more time to edit it, little visual changes and some word sorting here and there. But, I was also supposed to be at class from 4-6:30, and be at a poetry reading/open mic at 5:30 – 9. How was I to be in so many places at once?

Well, I couldn’t. And the reality of that fell on me at about 3pm. I made some phone calls; I was told that my main job right then was to finish my thesis – perhaps you remember some of the craziness when I hadn’t turned one in, and may not have been graduating in May? Yes, the thesis was my main job – all other things were secondary.

I spoke briefly to a few friends, wrote emails of apology to my class teacher and to the organizer of the open mic, and got back to work. I was not to use the club of self-flaggellation on myself, I was told. I was not to think that I’d done it again and over-booked, and I’m a bad person, and here was this opportunity to put my work out, and I’ve missed it.

I had one job. Thesis.

So, I left those internal critic voices at the door. Strangely enough, when I did, something miraculous happened.

I finished my thesis. I sent it in multiple document formats for maximum readability; I cc’d and bcc’d to ensure maximum accountability of the documents. I sent it off. It was now out of my hands.

I called two friends, let them know that I had sent it, as I’d told them 3 hours before that I would. And I felt relief. I felt relief as though it were that cartoon image of someone getting hot, and the thermometer level inside them fills up with red from the bottom all the way to the top and bursts out their head. I felt swallowed with relief.

I told my friend, Now, I’m going to drink some water, make a nice healthy meal, and watch a Disney movie. – That was going to be my celebration. She found that hilarious: “I’m going to drink … some water.” How times have changed.

So, I did, but as I was cooking my chicken and broccoli and yummy organic pasta, I had my iPod on shuffle, playing my joy into the kitchen. And Metallica came on. And for why, who cares, it was that moment. I began to bob and jam and jump around as I stirred that chicken. Then I abandoned the chicken to just rock out in my kitchen to the raging flare of electric guitar and passion.

The song finished. But I wasn’t done. I placed my delicate, hearty, thoughtful meal on a plate, and went into the main room of my studio apartment. I proceeded to happy dance. That thermometer level radiated out of me and I DANCED – I shimmied and kicked and ska danced and booty danced and jumped as very high as I could. I waved my arms like a lunatic and smiled till all of my teeth shone bright.

This was more than relief at finishing a project for school. This was pride and gratitude incarnate. This was my joy at having released a clog in my emotional arteries. I’d moved something. Something big. And I danced until I couldn’t dance no mo’.

I have released something big here – truth, despair, hurt, trauma – I’ve let it go. And I’ve opened it to you. I’ve let it have its own purpose outside of my experience. I’ve given it, and myself, life. It feels like I’ve surrendered something I’d been holding on to. The clogged artery metaphor feels pretty apt. But more, it was my throat, my voice, constricted by these stories – and now that they’re out, birthed, something new can be said, or seen, or felt.

I am humbled by the process of putting this out into the world. I do hope people enjoy it, or get something out of it, or find their own voice through reading it. But the personal gift I have gotten, I could not have predicted: the grin of sheer bliss as I tucked into my bed last night. … and woke up with again this morning. 

Judgy McJudgerson

or “Spiritual Arrogance”

Through some inventory work I’ve been doing lately, digging out the past-prime labeled items in my psyche, and assessing what I’ve been holding on to long past its due date, I’ve been getting to see that I am spiritually arrogant.

Now, no one likes to admit this, certainly not me, but it’s been coming up more lately, much more front and center, and I thought I’d try to parse it out a little bit as I (hope to) come to a place of letting this character defect go.

It takes one of two courses: I happen to know you’re not doing the same arduous work that I’m doing, and therefore when you complain and bemoan your troubles and your life, I get to sit in moral superiority, knowing that if you were only doing what I was doing, you’d get better.

Yummy, isn’t it … More like sour, I tell you.

Or, it looks like well, no, basically, that’s it. It just takes several more devious forms from that.

For example, you have success in your field, but I happen to know that you’re not tending your spiritual garden with regularity. I feel affronted. And self-pitying. Why do YOU get the goods without the work??

Or, Why do YOU get to go on vacation to Barbados when you’re still so messed up in all these other areas that you don't even see how messed up you are??

Basically, it’s another form of jealousy. And laziness. I want what you’re getting without doing the work. But when I don’t do the work, I get all kinds of cuckoo from it. When I rest on my laurels, or feel, hey, you know what, I’ll keep my internal stockroom filled with rotting fruit, I’ve got a good job now – well, it usually turns out badly. The fruit turns nuclear.

The other side of this spiritual arrogance toward others is the idea that I have any idea what the path is for other people. When I sit in my head and judge others by their continuous and bile-vomiting cycle of pain, it’s not doing them, or me, any good. It’s none of my business if someone is attached to their pain cycle.

It’s my business that I am.

It’s been said that anything negative we think or say or act toward others, we are 10 times as harsh to ourselves. What we say or feel toward others is just a reflection of the internal dialogue we have.

So, when I’m sitting in judgment of others, I do know that I use the same sword to bludgeon myself. Why aren’t you doing better in your field? Why aren’t you going to Barbados? What is so wrong with you that you have to do this continuous daily work?

Sounds pretty shitty, doesn’t it?

It’s not always that vocal. It rarely is. Moreso, it’s the undercurrent – the underground stream that runs with poison, and I drink from that well.

Spiritual arrogance – the belief that I’m somehow better because I do the work, but at the same time, must be worse because I need to do the work.

Perhaps … as I read yesterday: Humility makes us whole. Perhaps, I am no greater or less than anyone around me. Perhaps I don’t have to mark my situation against someone else’s like the height marks on a doorframe. Perhaps I can simply keep my eyes on my own road, and let other people’s paths be their paths. If I’m jealous, go do something about attaining what they have. If I’m judgy, remember the times when I’ve been a screaming sobbing pile of self-pity. If I’m arrogant, remember that, truly, we are all fucking equal, and the lessons that I would have someone learn in this lifetime are not necessarily the lessons they’re here to learn.

So, for today, instead of wielding this double-edged sword, perhaps I can have compassion for others, and a bit of action toward my own lessons and goals.  

Savage Beauty

(if you haven’t read it, you may want to glance at yesterday’s blog for continuity)

(p.s. I have to say, I love the double meaning of "savage" as the colloquial for totally awesome)

So, guess what? I went back “down” today to find out who that woman in the other penguin habitat was. Yesterday on my way out, I’d assumed it was Depression, because of the scene around her.

On the lower left end of the enclosure, a woman stood, her back to me. She stood on what looked like the dangerous rocky shore near a nasty storm-driven sea. Above, the sky/wall dripped in large blackness. She wore a tattered dress, and her hair, too, was wild and matted.

Yesterday, I simply backed away from this woman, partly because it was time to leave (the drumming on the tape indicates when it’s time to return), and partly because her anger or darkness scared the shit out of me, and I wasn’t ready to investigate further.

But, it wasn’t sitting right with me since then that she was Depression. It just didn’t make sense to me. I thought maybe perhaps she was Loneliness, but I wasn’t sure; I just knew that whoever she was, she was mad as hell, and wasn’t going to take kindly to me yet. So, I began to think that whoever she is, perhaps she herself isn’t a “negative” emotion, maybe she’s just surrounded by that.

Turns out, my curiosity, despite my fear to explore further, took me back. I listened to the tape of the shamanic drumming again this morning, and went to go check it out. And, as you might have guessed from the title, indeed, she was not Depression – she is Beauty.

I have a lot of mixed … experience when it comes to honoring, holding, acknowledging, or accepting my own beauty. I am not surprised at how impersonable she is, or how raging, fuming dark and mad she is. For me, since the (first set of) braces came off, the contacts replaced glasses, and I got my first set of make-up near the age of 15, suddenly, I became visible. The ugly glasses, the frizzy hair, the gawky tall figure, these started to fade, and suddenly, people – boys – saw me.

I have used my anger at this “suddenness” for quite some time -- why didn't you see me before? Is this all you want from me? I have had this interpretation reinforced by my own behavior, and by the behavior of others. I have wielded my beauty as a double-edged sword, slicing those who acknowledged it, and thus slicing myself.

I didn’t trust anyone to see me for who I was, and because now all they saw (so I inferred) was my outside, I spent very little effort or time discovering who I was on the inside. At the formative middle-teen years, this was a tragic oversight.

It now meant that my beauty was a Siren song. I would lure you in, and crash you upon the rocks. I didn’t care how you felt, or felt about me. I wanted you to know that my visage was all you would get, and when we were both done using it, I was done using you – on to the next.

I know this pattern of mine is not unique, but it has dictated my behavior and thought for a long time.

When I was outside her exhibit today, I didn’t go in. Her anger frightened me, and I still don’t know how to hold or approach her/it/my beauty. Mostly, I hide it. Because of the pain inflicted from self and others in reaction to how I look, I’ve decided it’s best to turn away from it – to turn it down. It comes out occasionally, but it is rare.

And surely, there’s not much I can do to “turn it off” altogether. I am who I am, and p.s. I am grateful for it. I know this is a gift I’ve unrightly used. However, I can hide it, minimize it, hunch over it, and protect it, I suppose. Which I have done, for a while now.

A few months back, I wrote about wearing this fabulous new skirt to class, and later to a party. I wrote that I felt “embarrassed” or something like it. I suppose, I can see now, I felt that duality of defensive, and brazen – offensive. I don’t yet know how to just let it be. To understand that my beauty is not to be wielded at all. It just is.

The lack of humility – of “rightsizedness” – I have around it. It’s just another aspect of me, like my humor, or my intelligence. Which, both, I will admit, I do much the same hiding of.

Rather you make your own inferences and be wrong about me, than to show you who I truly am, and have you judge me.

The problem with the beauty thing is that I was/am defensive/insecure even when you judge me positively. Because of the trauma that has come as a result of being an attractive woman, and largely in my development, a drunken attractive woman, the idea of showing you how I look or can look feels like a dangerous risk.

After standing outside her “cage” for a little while, and asking what I should be doing, I remembered a suggested question we can ask when in meditations like these. How does she feel about you? How do you feel about her?

I feel mistrusting of her; she feels betrayed by me. Great relationship, eh?

So, in the end, I left. But I get it. I don’t trust my beauty because it has brought me physical, mental, and emotional pain. She feels betrayed by me because I haven’t used her rightly, and have then locked her up.

She’s mad as hell – and she’s not going to take it anymore.

That said, I believe some kind of reconciliation will need to happen – an understanding – before we can both move forward. It’s not like, just let her out. She’s too pissed, and I’m too wary. So, what can I do? I can slowly begin to shed my hiding. I can slowly, and safely, begin to reintegrate those items in my wardrobe which make me uncomfortable, and attract attention. Not like booty shorts, but like “nice” things. Pretty things. Things that make me feel beautiful. This won’t be a hurling of myself off a cliff into a different way of being; this will be a slow dance toward intimacy and trust.

Which sounds like a great way to support myself as I look to build that with others. 

Arrangement

One phrase a single woman should never utter: Cat, stop eating my flowers.

I bought myself flowers this week, as I now do periodically, and the man at the flower stand, who went off on a very long monologue about the upcoming new year for his religion, which I believe I gathered was Russian Orthodox, told me that he’d been thinking about me. This older gentleman, who I didn’t believe worked at the stand the first time I saw him there, and I waited for the woman who I normally interacted with. I thought he was some sort of flower stand hanger-on, or the woman’s husband (which he is), but a person who didn’t know much about flowers or flower arrangements.

That time, he began to randomly pluck flowers from their black watery bins, and show them to me, “This? … This?” and as I shook my head, I became more convinced that he did not in fact work there.

Turns out, he did, and he does, but that first time, I waited for his wife anyway, and walked away with a beautiful spray of day lilies – the kind that smelled, as many in California do not, I found out from the woman – that the kind that do, come from places where the land does get cold in winter – like back in New Jersey, where we grew them along the side of my house, and every summer the whole length of the house smelled of day lilies. So, I always hunt for the ones that smell.

This week when I went, it was just the man, and his strange information about seven things that they put on an altar for their new year, including hyacinth and some sort of branch, which he said is why he’d been thinking of me – that it was all very beautiful, but not as beautiful as me. … Now, I play along, I’m charming, and he’s very delightful to have made up this story on the spot, or maybe it was true. But it was a strange ending to this long religious info session. And I walked away, with my bunch of flowers.

These flowers, this arrangement, is not pretty. It’s got some spiky, scaggy deep purple sprays of some sort. An anemone-looking orange one that probably eats live things in its other life. A stalk of not-so-fresh looking sunrise flowers. A few branches of pussy-willow, and one stem of day lilies – the smelling kind.

It sort of looks, overall, like a thanksgiving/fall style color palette, and it is not pretty in the conventional way that I usually like my flowers to be. But, it is beautiful in its own way. It is not something I would have chosen.

I suppose I’m moved to write about it, them, this interaction, because it sort of speaks to a few things for me. The first is that, when someone compliments me, I assume it’s bunk. That it’s to get something from me, like more business in this case. The second is that I knew I wasn’t liking the arrangement he was making, but because of his compliment and certainty in his work, I let it go, and took what I was being given. And third, of course, not all beautiful things are pretty.

The third, I’ll accept. It’s true. Things in this world are to be marveled at, but they’re not always attractive in conventional ways, and you may have to squint to see its beauty. So, this is partly about letting go of my ideas about things in general. My proscribed black-and-white, good/not good, thinking.

To the second, I ought to have said something. Just because I was complimented doesn’t mean I have to take what’s being handed to me. I am glad I have the flowers, but I do wish I had asked for something other than a handful of motley and slightly craggy plants. This, speaks to many things in my life and how I’ve lived it up to now.

And to the first, about dismissing compliments, well, that’s back to the accepting support thing that I’m working on currently. To believe that I am worthy of notice, support, love, and encouragement. And that perhaps people aren't pulling my chain, or trying to get something from me, that perhaps I have something genuine that people like and are attracted to. To believe, as it were, that not every rose has its thorn … 

Hold the Space

It’s a very good thing I don’t have to do this on my own, that I’m connected to friends and fellowships, and to a Higher Power that can help me to hold the space for others. Because Lord, if today is not the day of expanding that capacity.

Already today, I have sat and listened to the chaos and pain and sadness of several people’s lives. I have been on the phone with someone who asked to be given the space, for me to hold the space, for her to share her grief. And then I sat one-on-one with someone in chaos and pain, and offered action steps, encouragement, and hope.

I’m ... well, I guess I’m not exhausted, because I haven’t been doing this on my own power. Luckily, I have enough experience to know that I cannot hold others’ grief all by myself, and so I’ve taken moments here and there during this morning to call upon the inner resources of strength to help me be present – not to check out while they’re sharing, or to be in judgment of them, or think about my opinion about what they're saying – but to really be present and listen.

I found it hardest first thing this morning, when for an hour that was the theme, and there were a few people grounded in their chaos, feeding on it, and looking for relief in a way that felt toxic to me. That’s always the hardest type. A friend informed me that Eckhart Tolle (whom, by the way, I cannot stand…but that’s a story for another day), but that he had a concept called the “pain body,” and it goes something like, when someone wants to share their pain in a way that they want you to get stuck in it too – that they want you to take it on. To stand nearby to someone, just aching to share their pain body with you.

You probably know people like that – perhaps you are even related to them. But they don’t want you to “hold space” for them; they want you to become mired in it with them. A misery loves company kind of thing.

It’s hard to stand on top of the quagmire of trauma and grief and sadness and suffering, and not get sucked down by it. One thing that helps, and which has helped me today is gratitude.

For all the drama around school and finances, and even around my trauma recovery, I am not where those people are, just for today. For today, I am grateful that I woke up early, got to meet my commitments, and will head this afternoon to the chiropractor and later to meet up with a lovely group of cityfolk.

For today, there isn’t active drama or chaos or grief in my life. And I am hugely grateful for that. I’ve heard it said that it’s a good thing we’re not all crazy on the same day. Sometimes people hold the space for me when I am in it. When I’m snot-bubble sobbing the Ugly Cries and I can’t see the end of the abyss. And people hold the space for me to cry it out, and likely sit in compassion and gratitude themselves.

We’re not all crazy on the same day, nor are we all grieving on the same day.

The other thing that I’ve found helpful today as I sit and let the grief of others dissipate from around me, is that I did my dishes. All of them. I vacuumed my apartment. And I will eat some healthy lunch before I head on my way. Because no matter what resources I have available to me from a Higher Power or from my community, if I’m not taking care of my basic needs, I’m not at all available to others.

Water, Food, Recovery, Compassion, Gratitude. It’s been a big day, and it's only noon. But tomorrow someone may do it for me. 

Back to Basics.

Sorry folks, for the interruption in my daily musings. I have been under the weather, and yesterday morning slept in right until I had to run out to do ‘first things first,’ and then over to school. This morning was similar. So, thanks for your patience ;) and for reading. :)

Yesterday, I had to run over to school in order to get my painting professor to sign my “drop form.” Yes, I am dropping painting. A number of things contributed to this decision. One of which was that I was unable to do my morning practice on those Monday and Wednesday class mornings – the commute to class was at an ungodly hour to me.

Another of which was that it wasn’t fun. It came as a surprise to me to realize that I was feeling pinched by the instruction and parameters that the class was offering. Surely, part of it was that my work wasn’t being “well received” and my ego was being hurt. But part of it was that I wanted to do the work I wanted to do – to have fun – and I wasn’t. I was being told things like “not formally correct” and at this stage of my painting game, I’m not concerned with things like that. I’m concerned with expression, not correction. When she signed it though, my professor did tell me I have good instincts and to follow them, but that I need some development on my ideas (which I concur, and will do so with more "play").

Lastly, for dropping painting – the class I was so looking forward to taking – I have to focus on my “real” thesis. Despite my mental flights of fancy into ideas for the thesis such as a visual and language art project, or a 20 minute ballet, my flights have been grounded. For now.

The reality is… that I’m in an MFA program and that program has certain prescribed requirements. This is not a free-for-all, however much I’d been playing it as such. So, I have to play within the rules for now.

As I mentioned in the Reluctant Poet blog, I’m going back to my original school work and am going to flesh that out. In truth, some of the poetry I’m producing for it now could not have been written any earlier. I wouldn’t have had access to writing about this a month ago, and certainly not anytime before that. I’m doing a lot to free my voice and self, and it’s showing up in the writing… now that I’m being forced to go back to it.

So. It turns out maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all. This “having to write a formal poetry thesis” thing. Which is good, since I’m having to do it anyway, I may not as well see it as torture.

With the graciousness and generosity of the Universe, yesterday before I went to get my drop form signed by the painting instructor, I went to see my academic advisor for her signature, and to check in. This woman, is NOT the same as my “thesis advisor,” and has known me and things about me for almost 2 years. I have a wonderful rapport with her, and I value her immensely. She’s like a guidance counselor for grad students ;P

And, that was precisely what I needed yesterday. The first question she asked was “how’s the thesis,” and although at first I was reluctant or cagey about the state of distraught I’ve been in over it, it eventually all came out, tears and all.

She smiled. Kindly. She said that if the work wasn’t pushing me, if I wasn’t coming up against blocks against it, if I wasn’t kicking and screaming and being activated by it – then I wouldn’t be doing good work. I wouldn't be changing as a writer. She said that this reaction is normal; she said that she had an all out break-down during her own dissertation. (Which, btw, she’d shared about briefly at our student orientation, which is why I then asked her to be my advisor. Her own journey and humanity made her feel like the right person for me.)

She said that I needed to tell my thesis advisor what was up with me and the work – why it has been so hard for me to reapproach it. What’s been going on. And I sort of freeze up, and say, Yeaaahh….. I know…..

And she says, I’d be happy to write her an email note as to what’s going on. A short note, just to inform her. The relief I felt was palpable. I had an advocate. I didn’t even know I needed one, but I said yes. That I feel tender around all this, and get defensive, and that yes, I’d really appreciate that.

See, my last interaction with my thesis advisor was that I’d bring her all my work on Tuesday and we’d see if we can cobble something together. So, I show up on Tuesday, and spend the half hour before our meeting on the floor of the hallway with all my poems spread out, and I shuffle them into an order, and I realize, I really do have a “body of work” that makes sense – that has a theme, is coherent, and has a message, or a story arc. A theme that is in perfect alignment with the work I’m currently doing.

And then, at 2pm on Tuesday, I knock on her office door, and she’s not there. I wait. I fume. I’m all defensive in advance. And she doesn’t show. … Turns out, she meant next Tuesday, and I thought this one.

But, it all works out. I get to work through my resentment some more before I see her; I get to have my academic advisor as my advocate, helping to calm the waters; and I get to see that I might actually have something to say. In poetry. 

The Reluctant Poet

I had the wonderful opportunity yesterday to sit in a park with one of my best girl friends in the SF sunshine and shade and download the mental vomit of my thesis bananas.

She had some interesting perspective too. She said that it seems like I’m meant to be a poet right now. That I’ve tried to hand in and do something else, and I’m being blocked, and that perhaps, I’m supposed to write poetry right now.

I don’t want to. I have ALL these “thoughts” and “opinions” about “poets” and “poetry.” I can’t tell you how rankled I am at conversations that have included the following after I reluctantly reveal what it is I study at school:

Oh, I hate poetry. (my dentist's receptionist...)

I don’t really like poetry.

I don't know any poetry.

What are you going to do with that?

There’s no money in that.

Uh, I don’t know anything about poetry.

I hated poetry in high school.

I think I read Walt Whitman once.

I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck. I don’t give a fuck what you think about poetry. And, further, I ought to not give a fuck at the moment what I think about poetry.

I have some messed up ideas and beliefs about poetry. Like it’s not cool; nobody likes it; nobody cares. Why can’t I be a painter, or a musician, or some other “acceptable” form of artist? Why do I have to write like that?

So, yesterday before I met with my friend, I went into the nearby indie bookstore, and I went to the poetry section – which although toward the back, was not underlit (!). And I began to pick up titles that interested me. I got to put some back ... skip over the Walt Whitman, and … buy two I’d skimmed and thought I’d like. I bought two books of poetry.

I never buy books. Ever. (Well, unless you count the Harry Potters, but they’re always OUT at the library!) I therefore never buy books of poetry. I’ve had the opportunity through school these last 2 years to read a lot of books of poetry, and buy a lot of books of poetry. But, they’re not “for me.” They're not ones I’ve chosen, ones I’ve looked at and been sparked by. My hand, like Moses, was being pushed away from the gold. And I burned my tongue -- I lost my taste for it.

I’ve been so steeped in poetry, and the language of poetry, and the analysis of poetry, and the conversations around poetry that I could probably puke enough letters to make poetry.

Therefore, it is not suprising that I have not been all that enthused to reapproach the project I’d vaguely been working on. I know what I was working on. I know that it’s raw, and honest, and revealing, and vulnerable. I know that it talks about trauma, and I don’t really want to talk about trauma. I know some of it is revealing of my parents' human fallibility and I don't want to come off as a thirty year old woman blaming her parents. 

My friend asked me what the work wants or needs right now. I said … it wants to be honored. I thought it would be enough to write some of it out, have some folks read it in class, and shove it away as random pages in random drawers. But apparently this work wants to be held differently. Apparently, it wants more of a laying to rest than that. That’s what the work is. It’s an honoring of the past. Like the purpose of a funeral to provide a space and a container for grief and letting go, this work wants to be compiled, honored, and set to rest. Not left as it is, scattered parts of a whole.

Which I suppose is its own metaphor.

So, I, the reluctant poet, got to read some really good, funny, poignant, clever, honest poetry from my newly purchased book yesterday, one which I bought with my own sense of attraction and desire, not assigned, not suggested reading, not a professor's newest book. I got to sit on that train with a slight grin, reading art with a perspective shift about my own work that I’m not completely on board with yet, but which apparently is happening anyway.

Y E S Sleep Til Brooklyn!...

Hey folks. So, I'm going on hiatus from the post-a-day once more. Until I get settled back into the school routine, I'm making the choice to let this outflow close for a little while.

Thank you for reading, it's always a pleasure to know you're there - but, ;) you're there anyway.

So, cheers, and may the schwartz be with you,
Love and Light,
M.

I cannot do everything all at once.

Bummer.

I can perhaps do most things, and many things, and maybe even “all” things in turn, eventually, in time, but all at once? Not so much.

I met with a beloved teacher of mine on Sunday, and she said something which my dear friend Chris had once said to me, You’re going to have to choose.

OH! How I Hate To Hear That!

To give some grounding information to this broad proclamation about the reality of physics (unless it’s quantum physics, in which case they can be in more than one place at once, but I digress). Yesterday, I had to cancel the final of my 4 scheduled auditions for this month. A) I was pooped. Too much outflow energy, not enough restorative. b) in contemplating whether to go to the audition or not (by two buses in the rain), I read the performance details, and the performance overlaps day for day, word for word with the month before my graduation. Which means rehearsal is right then too, which means I’d be doing school, writing a thesis, and rehearsing for a real play? (Assuming ofcourseofcourse I got cast.)

It was all too much. And I asked myself that if I were my own best friend at the moment, what would I tell myself about going to the audition? I would tell myself to take care of me. And so I did. I wrote and called the casting director, full of chagrin and appreciation, and then went to meet up with my fellows. Which is really what I needed to do anyway.

There, I was given the divine opportunity to hear a woman in pain, and asked her to coffee after the meeting, and now we’ll be meeting on a weekly basis. Werd. Go G-d.

In reference to Sunday, and Patsy’s comment about having to choose; she was saying this because I came to her exhausted already. I've learned there’s a lot of externally flowing energy involved in theater auditions. And until you’re working with the other folks in rehearsal, or on stage with an audience, it’s really one-sided. Once you’re with those folks, it becomes symbiotic, and you exchange and feed off and are buoyed by one another's energy, but, it’s been too much all at once for me.

I also told Patsy that I was already overwhelmed by this HALF CREDIT class I’m taking, the 2^nd half of the workshop I’m implementing on Creativity and Spirituality (um, someone ring an irony bell?). I was feeling ALL kinds of WHOA BUDDY, it’s a half a fucking credit, back off with your emails at midnight demanding information.

None of my business when other people want to send emails (though my judgey judgerson wants to be like, hmm, lady, that can’t be healthy). But hey, some people work best at midnight. I’m not one of them.

In fact, I’ve gotten into the wonderfully cozy habit over the last few weeks of going to bed around 9pm. Yep. Lame, but I really really don’t feel that way. I realized it’s about 3 hours after the sun goes down, or after it’s dark, and my body and brain are like, alright, shutting down now. It’s been nice to not force myself to stay up till some “normal” hour, which is what I usually do.

So, that’s a form of self-care. So was canceling the audition. So was not emailing my professor back a snipey email in answer to her questions.

It’s all information, I guess is my point. And however loathe, really truly so uninclined to admit it, I can’t do everything.

I can’t audition for plays, rehearse for the one I’m in, start working with a woman on my financial stuff (which I begin this morning, in fact), meet with the girls I need to meet with, go to class, prepare and facilitate a workshop, write a thesis, do my homework ….. (without a car at least, sneaks in the thought). But, with or without a car, I have to choose where my energy will be going, and choose places where it’s not just outflow, but inflow.

Like my painting class yesterday. *Joy incarnate.* We, or I, practically shoved my hands into the paint and began to finger paint with it. I was so relieved and thrilled to be back to it. I love it. We were doing some, "Don’t think too hard about it" exercises, and it was marvelous. I could spit rainbows I was so … in my element.

I know too, from having taken a similar class last year, that by the end of the semester I was done with painting, that there’s, with me, a burn-out with everything. I used to say I need crop-rotation for my brain. A few months art, few music, few cooking. Give my brain a new toy, let the land rest, refuel.

But, friends, I hate to not be able to do it all. The painting, and the acting, and the writing, and the modeling, and the running in and out of the city, and the meeting up with folks, and going to see music, and keeping my home orderly. Mostly, I can’t do all the art at once.

This does not mean I cannot do all the art – I just don’t agree – my constitution is not made that way. My friend Chris had said, choose one thing, and that’s it, you do it, and you’ll succeed at it. I don’t work that way, or maybe I don’t work that way yet. I like crop rotation. I like playing in all these pockets of my brain’s creativity. I just can’t do it all at once. In order, one season of crops at a time, perhaps. One at a time, I can.

So, theater, for now, (as I head into rehearsals and my acting class, lol), I’m going to lay you down. For now. I thank you. You’ve been thrilling and helped me be brave, and open, and walk through fear, and have fun anyway; but for now, you’re moving down my speed dial. I’ll call you when the season has turned. 

The Buddha says hello first.

It’s a good thing a friend of mine told me this yesterday in regard to another situation, as I ran into a woman today who I have some discomfort with.

Earlier this year, I was attempting to make Oakland friends and so was having lunch with this woman who I'd begun to pal around with a little. She was telling me about a person who'd offended her, and began to generalize about people who were “doing it wrong.” I got a little defensive at her blanket statement, and thought that her thinking someone else was doing it wrong was wrong. Of course, I did not see this irony at the moment.

Instead, at the moment, I pulled a Molly, and began to give her my own bit of unsolicited advice. I am a Queen of unsolicited advice. It has so many different disguises, it should own a costume shop. Sometimes, it looks like me telling you what I’ve done, so as to insinuate what you should do. “Well, I know when I was in a similar situation, I did xyz,… [pregnant pause, where they're supposed to get the hint of what I’m actually telling them to do].”

Sometimes, my unsolicited advice looks like me telling you what other people have done who I believe have done it the “right” way. “Well, I know when my friend went through a similar situation, she did xyz,… [pregnant pause, where they're supposed to get the hint of what I’m actually telling them to do].”

“I’ve heard about this book/website/meditation/ointment that might be helpful...”

“Have you considered…”

“I used to do that, but now I…” (ha! that’s always a good one - people loooove that)

Cuz F U, Molly D. Who the hell am I. I don’t know what’s “right”. What’s right for you - even what's "right" for me. Places where I get mired in the “right way” to do something are usually places where I’m scared to let go of my perceived control. If I don’t tell you what to do, you won’t survive. If I don’t figure out what the right way is to do this thing, I’m not valuable.

All of these are crap.

I dated a guy once who had a gluten allergy, and when we’d be out at restaurants, I found myself making sure he knew what had gluten and what didn’t … as if he hadn’t lived for 30+ years without my help ordering from a menu. I caught myself on it eventually, and laughed, but yeah, the idea that without *me* people are not going to “be okay.” I know where this comes from – there were years when I did have to take on doing things "the right way" to ensure that things got done at all, that shades got drawn in the morning, that hair got combed. But, I’m not 10 anymore, and the situations are entirely different. 

And most importantly of every single thing, these people are not asking me.

That’s something that's pointed out to me regularly – “Are they asking you?” Hey Friend, so you’re telling me about this situation in your life (housing, job, money, love, family), and obviously I’m a guru about this shit, so why don’t I tell you precisely what I think you should do.  …. No. 99.9% of the time that they’re not specifically asking me my opinion or my advice, they’re not asking my opinion or my advice. Actually, it’s probably more like 100%, but I still want to get my wedge in there somewhere! ;P

So, anyway, back to the woman I ran into today. We haven’t really seen or spoken to each other since our mildly combative lunch date several months ago, when I began telling her her perspective was (perhaps) skewed, and she told me very directly that she was not asking for feedback on her perspective, period. So, I saw her today. And sure, I still have my opinion, but she’s not asking me, and really, it’s none of my business. (Mind my own business and have business to mind.) And I remembered that quote from yesterday, that “The Buddha always says hello first.” And so, I said hello, she said hello, we were cordial with superficial pleasantries, and said goodbye.

I don’t need to be "right" here. And I would really like to stop telling people what I think about what they’re doing when they’re not asking me. As, no matter what costume I dress it up in, I end up looking like a witch.