I saw The Youngster last night at a screening of our mutual friend’s film. Lots of great things happened, like seeing Tony Shalhoub sitting two rows away and Kojak parking and a gigantic platter of shrimp at the after-party, but really, the best thing about the evening was it was full of milestone howdys.

That’s my new name for in-your-face reminders that if you combine your own effort with enough time, stuff happens. Big stuff. Good stuff. Stuff that is delightfully surprising in its bigness and goodness.

Take, for starters, the fact that The Youngster and I were there together at all, laughing and joking and having a good time as excellent friends. Someday, I will tell the sad, sad tale of our tumultuous time together and the explosive way in which it…well, exploded. (Hell, he’s a writer; he’ll probably tell it, too. Or maybe we’ll tell it together.) For now, know that six years ago, I doubt either one of us believed in our heart of hearts we would—even could be friends at all, much less friends of the excellent variety: fast friends, the ones you have walked through the fire with, and thus would run into a burning building for.

Then there’s acting.

Oh, my god, is there acting.

You have no idea of how badly I wanted to be an actor. Or maybe you do. After all, I’ve described how late I came to the game, how I wept when I was dumped from the place I was sure would be my everlasting theatrical home and for how long I’ve grappled with the fame thing. In a business where it’s death to take anything personally, I took pretty much everything personally. A continual oozing wound was the Jan Brady-esque relationship I had with my own theater company: someone else was always getting the good part in the school play, and it wasn’t until I discovered my metaphorical knack for scenery painting (in this case, graphic design) that I gained any respect, self- or otherwise, at all.

Last night, my former artistic director lobbed a request at me: did I know of any actors who would fit a certain set of specs—a set of specs which, except for an illustrious résumé that would dazzle the producers, pretty much made for a good police sketch of yours truly. And really, all I could think of was how fun is this? I get to flip through my mental Rolodex of fab actresses and solve this really interesting puzzle.

Eight years ago? I would have frozen in place while my heart dropped to my bowels, spent the car ride home weeping and railing (at The Youngster, probably, who did his fair share of talking me down off the ledge during our three years together), then carefully added the slight to the large and musty heap of umbrage I kept locked in the closet.

There were more milestones: me, the hapless introvert, being social and enjoying it—probably a four-year conscious effort. Me, ambulatory with health and heft (six years); then me, with a slight reduction in heft and bump in endurance (three months of walking daily). Me, happily ensconced in an amazing primary relationship with an equally amazing man (we’ll call that 20-odd years of lessons on and off the field, with a considerable assist from my therapist for a good 4-year stretch).

It all comes down to this: you can sit there and bemoan your lousy fate—which I freely admit I’ve spent great swaths of time doing, and the hand I was dealt wasn’t half-bad—or you can change what you can. Most of the big change, like it or not, happens incrementally, over a long time. As Chris Gillebeau says in his delightful ebook* on effecting meaningful personal change, “we tend to overestimate what we can complete in a single day, and underestimate what we can complete over longer periods of time.”

Or, as the rejoinder to someone who rebuts encouragement to earn that degree, learn that instrument, master that sport with a “Do you know how old I’ll be by the time I can practice/play/take my picture on the top of Mt. Everest” goes, The same age you will if you don’t.

For the love of all that’s holy, start a project. Today. Pick one thing you really want (the end you want) and start plotting the route to get there. If you are like me—like most people, if the quote stands true—you will set unreasonable goals for yourself. You will try to cram too much living into the hours, days, even weeks. You will—like me, like most people—overestimate your shit like crazy. ‘Sokay. It evens out over time. (I’m hoping that one’s ability to guesstimate, time-wise, also improves over time, but whatever.)

There will always be stuff left over on the to-do list. What matters more, I see now, is that we actually did something. Went after something. Something, hopefully, that we really wanted, that was really important to us.

I am sure I will never get everything I want.

Then again, I am positive I am underestimating my ability to chase it.

xxx
c

*Download A Brief Guide to World Domination, and behold how eBooks should be produced. Well, for starters, and horizontally-oriented, as Seth points out.

TOPICS: change.

As with many who self-identify as Survivors of Well-Intentioned-But-Ultimately-Fucked-Up Parenting, the confounding mix of messages I received in my formative years served to demagnetize my self-esteem compass for decades to come.

“We expect a lot from you” really meant You will not be good: you will be excellent. Or else.”

“You can do it!” was mainly true, most of the time. Unfortunately, the critical phrase—“…and without any help, or it doesn’t count”—was left unspoken but did its damage anyway.

What has been the hardest thing to reconcile, however, is the idea that I should take pride in my accomplishments, but not too much.

W as the kids say TF?!

Not being able to discern between appropriate rejoicing and vile showboating has the same effect as not knowing which fork to use: you end up giving a wide berth to a lot of invitations, just to be on the safe side.

Safe may be safe, but it’s hardly fuel for growth. With the possible exception of Emily Dickinson, no one ever changed the world by making it smaller (and one could argue that even though her physical world was profoundly limited, that chick was 100% down with the Truth.)

Safe is also not very joy-making. I’m not a happiness addict—well, okay, I am, but I’m 12-stepping my way out, and besides, “happiness”—or really, “pleasure”, as it’s come to mean—has relatively little to with living in a joyous state, which I’m going to come right out and call “ability to live in the moment and thrive because of it.” Safe is about keeping things as they are, and any boob will tell you that it’s impossible to reside permanently in a state of pleasure. The ice cream melts. The orgasm passes. Crafting the buzz is theoretically possible, but even if you spend the time to become a Jedi knight of the bong, aren’t you eventually going to have to do something else with your life, if only to replenish your stash?

The Youngster, who in many ways was wise beyond his years, had a great saying: “Don’t save happy.” It is one of the World Champeen Sayings precisely because of its obliqueness-to-brevity ratio.

Don’t hold back on a compliment. Don’t be stingy with a loving impulse.

Pointless to hold on to a snowflake, or a gallon of whipped cream—they won’t keep.

And those gift cards? If you’re living in most other states besides California, land where the consumer reigns supreme, they expire, dude; use them.

I think the application of this rule works beautifully both for people with no self-esteem issues and for those of us who feel like tooting our own horns means forever branding ourselves as That Asshole. Slow and judicious application is the trick to digging your way out.

For example (WARNING: HORN-TOOTING ALERT!!), last year I was approached by a representative from a fairly large publishing house about writing a book.

(Hang on—gotta wait for my heart rate to go back down.) (Okay…)

The odds of this actually culminating in my being hired and paid actual cash money to write this book are long, and the steps along the path to getting there are many. Still, one cannot deny that it is a fantabulous thing just to be asked, and on the basis of nothing more than a bunch of blog posts. If a friend told me that, I would think it was hot stuff.

So that’s what I did: told a (few) friends.

And when I got the word back from my contact that she liked the chapters? Again, I told a few friends.

And when I heard that it had cleared the next hurdle of my contact’s boss, the editor? Friends got told.

It was not, shall we say, easy. My heart raced and my face flushed every time I said it out loud.

But to not say it out loud—at least to some one—is no longer acceptable. It’s something I need, for now, if for no other reason than it is, for whatever reason, difficult out of all proportion.

There is another reason, though: if I hold back and play it safe, how can I be of any use to you, who might need a nudge to break through your own personal roadblock? If I can’t deal in the Truth, how can I expect to anyone else to give it to me straight?

If I don’t move forward—if you don’t, if each one of us doesn’t—how will the world?

The truth is, something will always be hard. When a thing gets easy, if you’re living your life out loud, you move on to the next thing. You climb a bigger mountain or tackle a bigger equation or break a tougher record. Cynicism prevents me from dragging out that confounded Marianne-Williamson-not-Nelson-Mandela quote one more time, but it’s true, cheese factor and all.

Being small doesn’t serve. It just takes up less room on an airplane seat.

xxx
c

Image by Mike_fj40 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: change, life, self-promotion.

Ask any self-help guru and they’ll tell you straight up: getting there is equal parts thinking and doing: thinking, to figure things out and doing, to—well, to do the damned things.

Of course, if it was easy, we’d all be there, right? Happy, graceful and accomplished, speaking five or six languages as we waved to our two perfectly behaved children while playing a mean game of tennis in the same shorts we wore back in high school. Or rather, the same-sized shorts: we’d be so rich, we’d own a few shorts factories.

What usually happens is more like a variation on the spinning-plates scenario—children and waistline going to ruin while we apply proboscis to grindstone—or worse, a Rip Van Winkle approach to change: we fall asleep for 40 years while plate detritus builds up in scary towers around us. It’s not that our intentions aren’t honorable; it’s just that it’s such a pain in the ass, dealing with all those fucking plates. The idea of real change is enough to make anyone run screaming into the night, and isn’t that what falling asleep really is? A really quiet way to run screaming into the night?

I’ve been piling up plates for what feels like forever. There’s always some great plan to help me keep them spinning: an electronic whojamawhatsit, a new system, a new book. None of them work—or at least, they don’t until you close the gap between thinking and doing. And lo, there is the rub that will keep the self-help industry thriving forever.

So how am I closing the gap? Uh…slowly? Painfully? One heinous, long-put-off task at a time.

And for me, there are two things that keep me going.

The first is a dream: me and a laptop and an ocean view. The clearer I get about what I really want to be doing and where I really want to be doing it, the more my precious stuff looks like what it is: a bunch of crap I’m holding onto in lieu of doing the hard work I must to get myself there.

The second is support. I’m a loner and an introvert and kind of a crabapple, besides. I like to do stuff by myself because that way, I get all the credit. There—I’ve said it.

Only the more I really looked at things, the more I realized that nothing I did—not one single thing—did I truly do all by myself. Someone’s always got some kind of damned hand in there, even if it’s not in an immediately obvious, collaborative kind of way.

If that’s true—that I’m not really getting it done all by myself—why not outright ask for support to get there? For…everything? If one of the keys to getting to the next place is acting “as if” one is already there, why not solicit help from people on the other side of the divide, who don’t have to act “as if” because they already are that, exactly? The fittest I have ever been is when I hired a personal trainer to help me get there. The best headshots I have ever taken were when I employed the specific help of my agent as well as many-minds (for a referral) and the photographer (for…well, duh.)

Support can also come from people with a like-minded goal, even if they’re still in the “as if” stage. Alcoholics Anonymous? Built on that. Accountability, accountability, accountability.

This humble slice of the web has been a bit of that for me, and I thank you for it. Toastmasters, similarly, has been a huge help: when people expect you to show up, you show up. Or at least, there’s a better chance you’ll show up.

I’m ramping it up a bit now, with a few accountability partners for getting my shit together and putting it out there. I have a lot of shit, as it turns out, and shoveling shit is no one’s idea of a good time. Neither, for that matter, is putting it out there. It’s about as much fun as not eating ice cream or saying “no” to a trip to Disneyland.

It’s “no” for now, though, so that it can be a resounding “YES!” to other things—that laptop, that ocean view—soon.

Not soon enough, of course. But soon…

xxx
c

Image by robertvoors via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: change, decluttering, fear, procrastination.

In the spirit of Do One Thing Differently, I have been: getting up early.

Now by “early,” I do not mean “farm-early” or “elite-athlete” early or even “holy-shit-I’m-late-for-work” early. I mean that I’m actually rousting my own ass from the comfort and security of my delightful bed every morning and…wait for it…WALKING!

It started in sort of a grudging, half-assed way, as many things do. Way back in November, The BF got a dog, a.k.a. Arno J. McScruff, a.k.a. the Furry Love of My Life. We walked the dog together when I was there, and I’m fairly sure that most of the time, The BF walked the dog when I wasn’t there. Except when he didn’t, which I started to realize was kind of often and almost certainly irregularly, because if there’s one person who hates morning with an even greater vengeance than I, it is The BF.

Still, even if they weren’t walking as much as that dog whisperer dude said you were supposed to, at least they were hanging out together most of the time. And that was the main thing to me: that this unending and fur-covered source of unconditional love get a little back, in the form of human companionship.

But then The BF got an onsite job, which meant leaving the house, which meant leaving Arnie. Alone. And what I wouldn’t do for myself—interrupt whatever Unbelievably Important Thing in my life that I was doing to take even the mildest of exercise—I realized I would do for this dog. AND drive 11 miles round-trip, to do it.

If I happened to wake at my place, I usually would wait until afternoon to make the trip. (Animal freaks please note that he was well-fed and watered, with a fine yard in which to frolic and poop, and 24/7 access to said frolic/poop-land via doggy door.) When I’d overnight at The BF’s, however, I’d take care of the walk first thing, and early, so as to miss the morning rush hour traffic home.

No one was more surprised than I was to discover how much I enjoyed the morning walk. Two horrible things put together usually equal one massively horrible thing; this, however, was…kind of nice. Peaceful.

There was something else to it, though, which I kind of hate to admit for fear of sounding (no pun intended) pedestrian: it lent shape to my day. I know, I know: this is the kind of advice you read everywhere from every source, exercise to lifestyle to productivity blog. First things first.

I didn’t actually get this until I stopped walking. See, The BF’s onsite stint drew to a close, which let me off the hook. Only I realized I didn’t want to be let off the hook: I wanted the structure, I wanted the shape. So I started getting up early (7 or 8, for me) and walking first. Before bed-making, before email-reading, before coffee-or-tea drinking. Walking, not running. I understand how incredibly lame this sounds, that in a land of ferocious plenty and a time of ridiculous unease, I am crowing about walking—at an old-lady pace—a grand total of 2.5 miles in the morning. Whoop-dee-fucking-do.

Thing is, what had fallen from my life was that shape. Don’t get me wrong: I systematically worked at scrubbing that routine from my life. But some structure? Is good. It’s how bridges get built and insurance gets paid for and children get raised properly. And yeah, it’s how art gets made, too: let’s not kid ourselves. Novels don’t write themselves. Neither do blogs, while we’re at it. Seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Wax on, wax off. Do or do not, and all that hoo-hah.

So when I don’t write here, know that I’m working on writing elsewhere. Only it appears that the first step, for me, is the walking. (Oh, okay—pun not exactly intended, but it’s kind of poeticamal.)

And then slowly, gently, firmly, fold in more structure. It doesn’t have to be the hateful, rigid structure of Hateful Day Job. It just has to be…structure.

One day at a time. Starting first thing in the morning.

The early part of the morning…

xxx
c

Image by 0range County Girl via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

ADDITIONAL BONUS ITEM: For those of you who don’t subscribe to my every move and may have missed postings elsewhere, I was up to something last week…and I documented most of it with my brand new Flip video cam. Here’s a taste of instructive pleasures yet to come.

TOPICS: change.

Some things are simple. Some things are easy. (And, it should go without saying to anyone living in the early part of the 21st Century, some things are neither.)

There are even rare times—those Kojak-parking, traffic-lights-synchronized, buy-a-lotto-ticket days when you’re really, really cooking with gas—that things are both simple and easy.

But the quickest route to heartache is confusing simple with easy. Because in the context of goals, they couldn’t be more different.

A (good) goal can be expressed in terms that are fairly simple: get married; lose 10 pounds; balance checkbook. Rarely, however, is that simple goal an easy one to accomplish. How do you go about finding someone you’d even want to marry, much less create a relationship that leads to marriage? If 10 pounds is so easy to lose, why are people constantly having to lose the same 10?

And don’t get me starting on the #%@^ checkbook.

I’ve found myself running up against this simple-is-not-easy maxim repeatedly lately, and to an extent that is pretty deeply humiliating. In fact, the sheer act of writing this piece is pretty deeply humiliating: what ordinarily flows easily is resisting with a stubbornness and tenacity the likes of which I’ve not experienced since I had to create bullshit “science” copy for a P.O.S. hand lotion. “Micro-particles absorbed quickly and easily, leaving no smooth, hydrated skin with no greasy film” my ass.

What’s triply frustrating (because it’s hot as a troll’s nasal cavity today, and that’s two) is that this is the first time in my life where not-easy is proving really…well, hard.

Working my way up the adhole chain in my 20s? Not particularly easy—there were long hours and mountains of shit to shovel—but nothing like this.

Becoming a working actor? Or dumping that to hang out my own shingle?

Leaving my marriage? Getting over the Crohn’s?

Hard, hard, hard & hard, to be sure.

At least, that’s what I thought, until I ran up against this.

And what, pray tell, is this “this” of which I speak?

Exactly.

It gets exponentially more difficult when you know what the goal is philosophically (”To be a joyful conduit of truth, beauty and love”) and even particularly (to help people find their Truth by sharing my own journey through writing and speaking) but there are no paths laid out. Or the paths take the shape of sweeping, Yoda-esque maxims (”the change, be”). This is a fucking poet’s life, for chrissakes; who signed me up for this?!

I did, of course, with each choice I made along the way. Start choosing truth and there’s no going back to the other. Take the red pill, and taking the blue pill is no longer an option. Some days I’m fine with it; most of the days, however, are really, really not-easy lately.

Friends help. Tribe members, especially a good mix of old and new. Those who’ve known you a while help show you that the excruciatingly incremental growth you’ve been experiencing is actually mildly impressive; those who are new to you accept the You you’ve grown into, and make Future You seem achievable.

Routines help. I’ve instituted a daily walk in the morning for a week now. For a non-morning person, this not only constitutes a huge achievement, but creates some (healthy) shape to my day.

Speaking of achievements, I can’t overstate the importance of folding relatively easy, short-term projects into the mix. Getting a sinkful of dishes or the kitchen floor washed . Burning through a to-do list or a time-delimited assignment. Saving up for something. Planning even a small party.

Writing a blog post.

I’m profoundly grateful for the small, hardy group of fellow travelers that have assembled here at communicatrix. The feedback I get in the comments and via email helps keep me going, both because it feeds me and keeps me on my toes. There is always something new to think about or puzzle out or grapple with.

I am glad we’re walking the goddamned path together. Even—or especially—when things get a little hard…

xxx
c

Image by emdot via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: change, life.