Slow is the new fast

As I've reported elsewhere, I had a little run-in with the law last week, an unexpected one. Not that I'm always Dora Do-Bee: after all, my mother was the woman who explained to the Glenview Police that she was really "just making two consecutive left turns, Officer"... and let us say the bad apple didn't fall far from that particular tree. However, while this particular infraction was, in fact, made in ignorance of the law, my normally silver tongue (thank you, Mom, and years of advertising) got me nowhere. So now, fair or not, I've got potential points on my license pending, which changes things. Considerably.

Yes, I'll pay the ginormous fine and yes, I'll go to traffic school (on the web, of course) but what's really, really, REALLY irksome is the notion that for the first time in my life, I really cannot afford to speed. Anywhere.

Time and I have always been uneasy companions. I went through a Stepford-like, aggressively punctual phase (the first 35 years of my life) because dear old Dad, who had never in his 45+ years of insane business travel missed a flight like I had never, until now, gotten a mover, put the fear of G-O-D in me. After a brief rebellion where I was late a lot, I settled into a kind of a groove that went something like this: I like you/it, I'm there on time or even early; I don't, I show my ambivalence with tardiness.

Fine and dandy. Only sometimes, the old Colleen would war with the new. Rebellious, hear-me-roar Colleen, resentful of having to drive, last-minute, across town during rush hour to audition for a job she doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting because some casting director/production company/client trifecta could not be bothered to give Colleen (and legions of other casual moms who might have actual children to nanny up) a chance to PLAN said audition into her day. Old Colleen, ever-mindful of Daddy's expections (and the rent), told beeyotch Colleen where to get off...and STEP ON IT!!!!

Through some miracle of grace and timing, I was able to stay out of my car entirely for the past three days, but the winning streak ended today: a callback (you can't blow those off, folks) for a McDonald's commercial (reeeeally can't blow those off, even if you are being called in for your resemblance to a chicken) at (oh, it makes my teeth hurt!) 6:20...in Santa Monica!!! That's 10 miles away, on a road with construction, during rush hour, Los Angeles rush hour.

At about 10 on Monday morning, I started psyching myself up to leave at 5:10. I had hourly (mental) pep talks (because I am mental) right up until my run, during which I drew (mental) pictures of myself leaving in a timely fashion and driving/arriving in a sensible one.

Which I did. All of which, oddly enough, I enjoyed immensely. It was so strange to ride in the AARP lane, not worrying about zipping in and out of lanes to make up a precious minute, letting people enter the flow of traffic, yes, even the rude ones riding the gutter who didn't deserve it, just "because." I felt empowered. I felt like an old person. I felt...great.

I arrived at my audition relaxed and happy, and, while I did not exactly kick any chicken ass at my big, fat, Class-A, Network callback, neither did I feel like kicking myself before, during or after my time in The Room. So my non-chicken ass and me took the long way home, too, making a couple of pit stops, enjoying the scenery, exploring a road less-traveled (which, unlike this other, I will not share).

It seems I have been served up this lesson of patience again and again, far more times than could possibly be fair or even necessary.

Then again, a wise person once told me, "You will be given the same lesson again and again in different forms until you choose to learn it."

I choose. I choose, I choose.

And whaddya know, it ain't even all that bad...

xxx c

New! Better objects! Now with extra shininess for more distraction!

So I'm in the market for a piano these days, a portable piano, that is, with 88 fully-weighted keys and action that mimics a "real" piano. A superb (according to many customer reviews) keyboard with MIDI compatibility like this here Yamaha P60, so that I can learn to play properly and write songs for that damned musical I keep yakking about.

Or wait, I do want to write songs but I'm not really piano-proficient. Maybe I want a keyboard that offers more bells and whistles, additional tones, easier plug-n-play, a cool screen that converts what I write into notated music, so I can learn to read, and a little less verisimilitude. A keyboard-keyboard, like the Yamaha PSR3000 or the Casio Privia PX-400R.

Shit. I need to learn the right way and I need all that electronic crap that I can feed through my computer. Maybe what I really need is more room: a house, with a living room for an upright, an extra bedroom to put all my gear, and no neighbors on the other side of thin walls and floors to complain about vibrations, noise and odd practice hours.

But I can't afford to buy into the L.A. housing market, not if I want to retain my footloose and fancy-free itinerant lifestyle. I'd have to move to another city, maybe a small town somewhere, get a real job with benefits and a steady enough paycheck to qualify me for a loan.

Of course, then I'd pretty much have to write off this musical idea entirely. How many people in Norman, Oklahoma or Ames, Iowa are writing musicals? My writing partner sure as hell isn't moving there.

Then again, I can always try writing alone. It might be good for me to fly solo, develop more discipline as a writer, get to know my own voice. And there's no reason it has to be musicals or plays or screenplays that I'm writing. I can tell my truth any way I damned well please, maybe via those novels I'd always imagined myself writing back in my tortured youth.

Or hell, maybe I could give up all my lofty aspirations. They're so weighty and confusing: baggage in their own right. Maybe I should pull a John Freyer and get back to what I had when I was starting out: a car and what fit in it. Hit the road, see where it took me, get a Stupid Day Job that would let me get by and just blog in my spare time.

No, that's a halfway measure. If I'm going to go for it, I've got to go all out: simplify to the point where I need nothing; meditate through my everyday tasks and make my creative output the life I lead.

On the other hand, maybe that's just running away. My mess followed me from Chicago to Ithaca, from Ithaca to New York, from New York back to Chicago and on out to Los Angeles. It followed me from Y&R to DDB to BBV. It followed me from relationship to relationship, apartment to apartment, diversion to diversion, usually leaving a trail of expensive clutter in its wake.

Maybe it's time to just take in the mess...to accept that there will always be confusion and clutter and dozens shiny objects slightly out of reach all vying for my scattered attention.

Maybe it's time to sit down in my cramped, imperfect apartment and practice my scales on my crappy, imperfect toy keyboard with visions of my unfocused, imperfect life swirling around my cluttered, imperfect brain.

Maybe the way in is really the way out.

xxx
c

With gratitude to the messy and wonderful mind of Evelyn Rodriguez.

House image from WestLosAngelesRealty.com: read 'em & weep...

Shoulda/coulda/woulda

So many things (I wish I'd done), so little time (left). [Via Old Hag & Ed Champion.]

1. Stuck with piano, guitar, drawing, writing and acting when they were first introduced to me so I wasn't spending my big, fat, middle age catching up.
2. Campaigned for Kerry.
3. Visited Berlin pre-post-wall.
4. Gotten out of advertising and into acting while I was in a good theater town like New York.
5. Gotten out of advertising and into acting while I was in a good theater town like Chicago.
6. Flossed.
7. Gone to see Elvis Costello and the Rocky Horror Show that summer of 1977.
8. Smiled for the camera.
9. Told that motherfucker to go fuck himself.
10. Ordered the filet.

Pass it on.

xxx
c

TECHNORATI TAGS: memes, regrets

If I only had the nerve

I have never thought of myself as a particularly courageous person. On the contrary, given the staggering number of painfully weird and/or wholly irrational fears I harbor (returning items without a receipt! making an unprotected left turn! answering the telephone!), I've always thought of myself as a big, fat scaredy cat.

But for some reason, the subject of courage, mine in particular!, has come up in a couple of times lately, which has forced me to take a look at it.

Now, I know full well how people toss around the "c" word regarding survivors. I didn't have cancer or survive a heinous car accident or crawl my way out of the rubble of 9/11 with an injured co-worker on my back. But I did have what they call an acute onset of Crohn's disease almost 3 years ago and from the looks of me just before, during and after my hospitalization (skeletal! ashen! wild-eyed!) I can see why people thought I was going to die. And don't get me wrong, I was very, very sick: my doctor will happily confirm that right before he lays into me for going off my medication again.

However..."courageous"? I don't think so. The night before my sister tricked me into going to the emergency room, I actually lowered myself into a tub of icy water to bring my 104.4ºF fever down to a manageable 102º. That, my friends, is the act of a crazy person, not a brave one.

Of course, once I'd had my epiphany and calmed down enough to assess the situation, I did take certain steps that even I marvel at in retrospect. When given the option of staying in the safe, air-conditioned arms of the Cedars Sinai IBD wing or returning to my sweaty apartment to see if I could put on the weight they'd been unable to pack onto me, I elected to go home and put myself on a diet that (a) excluded 75% of the food that had previously made up my diet and (b) required me to cook everything from scratch (remember: skeletal! ashen! wild-eyed!) Which is still slightly insane, but does show a wee bit of, you'll forgive the pun, intestinal fortitude.

Having scaled that small, 2-lb. hill (confession to Dr. Wolfe: I lined my pockets with coins and pebbles to trick the scale, and you, into giving me one more week), subsequent challenges seemed slightly less daunting. I "came out" to everyone I knew, updating them via email about my disgusting, poopy disease and, scarier yet, asking for help with everything from grocery shopping to taking my trash out. I started walking, first to the bottom of the stairs, then to the end of the driveway, eventually a full, two-mile walk. Scariest of all, I called my agent and told him I was taking three months off to recuperate, regardless of whether I felt up to pushing myself back to work sooner.

Then, when I was able to get out and about again, I actually did...with a vengeance. I went to events solo. I started checking the "40 & over" box on audition sign-in sheets in front of god (a.k.a. the casting director) and everyone. I posted a profile online (and another...and another...) and actually emailed them as much (or more) than they did me.

And here's the goddam thing of it: I did all these things, yes, but the fear was still there. Still is. Seriously. I can (usually) ask the "stupid" question or introduce myself to a stranger at a party or check the old lady box, but I'm still afraid I'll be laughed at, given the cold shoulder and never work again. I'm afraid to post blog entries, I'm afraid to bid out a job at what it's really worth, I'm afraid to reveal my deep, personal self even to loved ones. I just, to paraphrase the cheesy book title that's become an overused catchphrase, suck it up and do it anyway.

It may never get less scary to do some things and it will probably always be scary to undertake others. But I stand on the other side of years and years of useless, stultifying fear screaming this truth to you, regardless of whether or not you choose to embrace it or merely laugh at me and walk away:

It is worth it to try.

If it opens one door, if it makes one thing possible, even if it only teaches you something about yourself...

It is worth it to try.

Trust me on this.

Or don't...and do it anyway.

xxx
c

Piano hack

I am a bad, bad student. I took French for over 12 years and barely speak a word of it. I spent six weeks and 75 of my hard-earned dollars learning to sew last summer, and my curtains are still not finished. And while it's true that I've forgotten more books than many people will read, I've actually forgotten them. Still, when I took up piano/guitar lessons earlier this year, I had high hopes. It wasn't panic-inducing like when I was 7 and had to learn hateful Dvorak (I crapped out before the recital). My new music teacher is FUN and crafts FUN, easy lessons for me to keep me practicing and progressing.

But you know, there's a very real learning curve with anything new, and a month or so into the proposition, I noticed it was getting harder to get myself to practice. An hour? I don't have an hour today. I'll practice an hour tomorrow. Tomorrow is a much better day for practicing. And, well, you know how good a piano player behavior like that is gonna make you.

It doesn't help that Irene, the woman whose lesson precedes mine, is storming through these classical numbers and has only been at it a year.

Anyway, I started finding excuses for cancelling my lesson, or being grateful when real excuses, auditions, colds, torrential rains that closed down the canyon roads, cropped up. Until I didn't feel grateful, or rather, I felt more sad than grateful. Because I really do want to learn piano and guitar (music theory, really); I just hate the vast gulf I see between where I am now and where I'd like to be.

And then an email arrived from my teacher. It was so perfect, I'm reprinting it (almost) in full:

I've been thinking about your phone message the other day.

I think I understand very well how the "not practicing" thing is becoming a burden and the mental blocks are getting stacked very high. I have SOOO been there.

I remember a wonderful bit of advice one of my college French professors gave us years ago. She said we would make more progress if we studied 5-10 minutes every day rather than three hours one day a week. There is wisdom in this.

Rather than waiting for the "perfect time" to practice, or waiting until you have enough time to "make it worth it", sit and plunk for 5 minutes while waiting for a kettle to boil or as you pass the keyboard on the way to the bathroom or something.

In fact, the next time you sit at your keyboard (today perhaps?) PROMISE yourself you won't do more than 5 minutes. Set a timer even. But get your five minutes in. Eventually you can allow yourself to go "over" on days you feel like it (and some days you will feel like doing more).

Then, tomorrow (?) do five minutes of guitar. And, after 5 minutes, know that you have accomplished something, because you will have completed your assignment for the day. It's a much better feeling than guilt about not practicing, yes? This isn't supposed to be about guilt and burdens, it's supposed to be about you being able to make your own music.

Coincidentally, I ran into Irene at an audition today. It took us a second to place each other, out of context as we were, but soon we were thick as thieves. As is my wont these days, I immediately vomited up my ugly hairball of truth, which didn't faze her a bit; she'd been through her own version of it, as well. And she didn't think she was a marvelous pianist at all! (She is; I've stood outside the door unnoticed and listened when our lessons overlapped.)

So...permission to hack. Permission to outright suck. Permission to NOT play by the rules, but just to play. And maybe if I do, I won't just get better, but I'll actually have fun doing it?

Now there's a rule I can abide by.

xxx c

I'm not dead; I'm just resting

While I definitely spent most of last week supine on various surfaces along the Central Coast of California, rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated.

It had been I-Don't-Know-How-Long since I took a resting vacation. Christmas didn't count; for as much (frozen) fun as I had in Chicago, I had things I had to do as well. Resting vacation, to me, means no agenda other than no agenda; the point is not only to shift from the usual to the unusual, but to downshift significantly, which in my case usually means no to-do list, lots of rest and no electronics, save the recreational kind (and I'm talking video and audio playback devices, kids, so get your minds out of the gutter).

Of course, I dragged along enough Relaxation Aids for year-long sabbatical: three books and a clutch of articles torn from old Vanity Fair (visions of me catching up on my reading); guitar and mandolin (visions of me & The Boyfriend having a hootenanny on the motel balcony); my sketchbook; a notebook; and, between me & The B.F., a stack of DVDs that would make the check-in clerk at Blockbuster break into a cold sweat.

This, of course, is the grown-up equivalent of lugging home all your textbooks for spring break: if you don't have them, you'll feel their absence keenly; if you do, you can leave them to molder away in the corner, untouched, with blithe disregard.

We slept...a lot. We ate...a lot less than we do at home, actually, and far better. We met up with some friends I made on my last trip up the coast. In short, gentle reader, we did for five days what I've learned I must do more of all the time: not much of anything, and only when we felt like it.

Some rest easily and often. Cats are notoriously good at this, I've noticed; small babies, too, before they start to suspect that perhaps they're missing out on some madcap adult hilarity when they hit the hay (note to kids: you are, but don't worry: there's more where that came from, and the cultural references will be funnier when it's your at-bat).

I had always hoped that when I left my 9-to-5, I'd leave my workaholic tendencies along with it, but no such luck. While I've gotten a mite better at carving out rest time since my epiphany, I'm a long, long way from being zenmistress of anything. Besides, I actually like to work; it's no hardship for me to spend hours/days/weeks plugging away at the thing I love. One of the things The BF (who shares my love of work, among other things) and I discussed was whether there were ways to thread rest through work, or work through rest, more efficiently than we have done to date. Going offsite seems to offer a greater opportunity to work well, but not non-stop. A stripped-down laptop and rental condo provide the necessary tools without the customary distractions, which, in turn (theoretically, anyway), are replaced by new attractions that might prove restorative: a beach to walk between three-hour work jags; a grocery store you can't shop on autopilot; a restaurant to repair to after a workday that actually ends rather than bleeding into the next calendar day.

Because if resting vacation is no agenda whatsoever, vacation itself is a shift from the ordinary, a modified agenda, or one's usual agenda, relocated. And that can mean anything from a hedonistic sun-and-fun junket to working at a coffee shop on the other side of town (with your cell phone turned off, if you usually leave it on). I've returned from an afternoon of the latter better rested than I have from a week of the former, and not just because I burn easily. I think I probably require more rest than I'm willing to admit to myself, and (for those on modest budgets, anyway) it's easier stolen in small chunks here and there, 90 minutes at the movies, a couple of hours at a museum, a work-week's time in a nearby cheap motel, than it is in expensive two-week increments.

It's also easier to justify when cost is low and/or tax-deductible, and if there's one thing that has no place on a vacation, it's guilt.

Still, every so often in the off-season, when the crowds are thin and the rates are low, it's nice to nothing much at all. Next (rest) stop: Palm Springs.

In August, of course. And maybe on assignment...

xxx c

Do do that voodoo that you do so well

I always thought auditions were horseshit. Let me clarify: I knew they were (a) necessary (evil), but I found it maddening the way people on both sides of the camera looked at them as a one-way proposition, with the power flowing from the producer end to the (ahem) "talent" end. Because frankly, that was horseshit. Too often, and I know this because I was guilty of it myself as a copywriter, auditions are used to figure out how a commercial works...or doesn't. What is or isn't funny about the script/premise/action. And sometimes, horror upon horrors, auditions are actually used as a means for old ad chums to get back in touch with me.*

And then there's the whole pathetic actor-y side of auditions, the Just tell me what you're looking for/I can play that, gambit, which is a bigger, steamier and infinitely more treacherous pile of horseshit. I am fairly certain there are street people wandering around Los Angeles right now who were driven over the edge trying to discern that elusive whatsis that the producer/director/whoever wanted. Which was usually just to be anywhere but in a room that smelled like feet, stuffed full of M&Ms and bad deli.

At some point in my checkered career as an actor, I began hearing people, teachers, casting directors, random passersby, pay lip service to the notion of using the audition to show what you could do rather than what they'd asked for. As someone who grew up being handsomely rewarded for coloring within the lines**, I immediately recognized this as yet another manifestation of horse pokey, and happily freed up precious gray cells for important things like remembering my own phone number and what I'd paid for a particular shirt back in 1977.

Fast forward to...this weekend. I was working on a design job for an actress putting up a one-person show. They'd delivered a full-on, finished photo for me to work with, which is usually nice, all I have to do is figure out the font thing and bing-bam-boom, we're off to the races.

But every time I sat down to apply type, I got this funny feeling that something wasn't right. That even though I'd been given a complete image, the show, with its suggestive title and goofy provenance (the actress is an Ivy-educated woman who's done time on MAD TV), needed something else. Which is, of course, craaaaaazy thinking. And yet...

I messed around. I shredded the image, blew it up so the client's (very pretty) head was out of frame, stripped it of color and instead saturated the card with garish printer's inks. And I sent it off, knowing full well it was nuts, I mean, the client's HEAD was cut out of the frame...and she's a BEAUTIFUL ACTRESS, but also that, nuts or not, it was what I had to offer the show.

There was a little, um, back & forth. Wanting to see the head. (Visionless ingrates!) Wanting her name to be legible. (Bourgeois killjoys!) I could have succumbed or I could have pitched a fit. Actually, I did both, quietly, in succession, at my desk, before making what changes I could. I sent off several of the very-next-best things that really weren't nearly as cool, but hell, if I want to be an artist, I should get out of the postcard game.

And then, a miracle. The actress wrote back saying that I was right, that my original vision was the way to go. And thanking me for all the work.

If I could, I'd comp the job. It was gratifying having someone respect my ideas, yes, but more than that, it was such a great, simple lesson of the essential rightness in doing what it is that you do, regardless of what conventional wisdom says. I might not have gotten "my" way with the card. I definitely am not always going to book an individual job, even if I knock it out of the park doing what it is that I do. Sometimes, you're just a cruller living in an onion bagel's world. But I keep my integrity, my compass and my identity (hey, next time maybe they'll want a small, sullen bitch...er...pastry).

So thank you, Kathryn Fiore, my newest teacher***. And long may you run...

xxx c

*Note to old ad chums: if you want to say "hi", contact me via my agent, invite me out for a drink at Shutters on your expense account or send me a goddamn e-mail. Do not drag my hide all the way across town on a call I'm clearly not right for so you can say, "Remember me!?! We used to work together at [former agency long since swallowed up by Publicis, Saatchi or other media megacorp]!!! Because I will be remembering your sorry ass all the way home in traffic on the 10 and then I will remember it for posterity on this blog. You have been warned...

**I worked in creative, yes, but mostly packaged goods, not the sexy stuff. You do not work your way up the ladder by writing breakthrough advertising for BirdsEye and Jell-O Gelatin.

***And I do mean newest, girlfriend was born the month before I started college. Oy, am I old...

Link to large size of the graphic here.

Link to more of my theatrical flyers here.

Trajectory

I sat in on a class at my old acting studio last week to watch L.A. Jan do a scene (from Frances, and she tore the roof off the sucker, thanks). Having studied at Carter Thor for almost four years, I pretty much knew what to expect from an evening in Cameron's class: some good acting; some not-so-good acting; some insightful comments; some not-so-insightful comments.

Only as it turns out, I didn't.

The class was as I expected, the usual mix of acting styles and skills, with interstitial commentary on Life and Art by Cam. (He gives good sermon, does Cameron.) What was totally different was my reaction to it.

Back when I was enrolled at the studio I rode crazy waves of emotion, cycling through periods of enthusiasm, impatience, and rage from month to month and even class to class. In the moment, I was absolutely certain that this had everything to do with how sucky the scenes were or weren't and how compelling (and cogent) Cam's topic of the day was.

Watching the proceedings last week with a mix of interest and detachment, I finally realized that the x factor was me. No-brainer, you say? Easy for you to say, I say. How, when you're sitting in the prison of your own devising, wanting to be something extraordinary, wanting to be worshipped for being so, do you really just "be," really just take it all in? The answer is, you don't. If you're like most human beings, you need distance; you need perspective. Sometimes, in matters of the heart, for example, it takes time and a replacement to do the trick. But what is the replacement for an acting class, another acting class?

In this case, no. Despite the efforts of friends, prospective teachers and my nagging conscience, I've managed to steer clear of acting class since last July. At first, I chalked it up to physical and emotional exhaustion: in the space of six months, I'd buried my father, produced a show and been dragged into a lawsuit; really, I thought, I just wanted to whoop it up for awhile.

But nine months of gestation later, I realize I also needed space from class to figure out what I was doing in class, what I was trying to get from class. Ironically, that was the topic of Cameron's sermon last Wednesday night: learning to separate your artistic life from your professional life. I'm condensing (and paraphrasing) wildly, but basically, he maintained that as an artist, you need to figure your shit out before you bring it in the room. Because if you don't take care of your artistic life on your own, honing your skills, doing your daily maintenance, feeding your artistic soul, not only will you flail about most unattractively when you are up for a job: you run the risk of attaching all kinds of inappropriate, personal meaning to what is really a cut-and-dried business proposition.

My aha! moment came via the acting portal, but the Inappropriate Expectation Paradigm works in many other apps: work, love, a trip to Office Depot. (No, seriously, if you think shopping as sport isn't sublimated something-or-other, you're more delusional than I've been at my most dense.)

Alas, there's no magic formula for achieving consciousness and no standard measure for how long it takes to get past yourself. That "half as long as the relationship" saw is a sweet notion (or not, in the case of, say, a 60-year marriage that ends with the death of one's partner), but utterly untrue in my experience: I've recovered from some instantaneously; I'm wondering if I'll ever recover from my ignominious booting from The Groundlings Sunday Company. (You see? I still have to tell you I made it, however briefly, to that rarified level. Q.E.D., baby, Q.E.D....)

But while the time frame may vary, the trajectory itself never does, a tyrannically Hegelian dialectic. And it repeats itself over and over, each trajectory only a subset of that meta-trajectory I like to call Life.

Of course, there is a little bubble of joy, even accomplishment, to be floated on post-synthesis that I don't recall Hegel getting into. That brief glory bask. That glowing feeling of "I kick ass and throw it across the room when I'm done" that no drug can match for highs. That self-assuredness that will blossom into blinding, deafening hubris as surely as I'm still reeling from the gift-that-keeps-on-giving of my miserable Groundlings experience.

And with that, we return you to your regularly scheduled trajectory...

xxx
c

Rest. Eat. Run. Repeat.

I've been feeling a bit blue lately, which I attributed to my recent wrassle with a big, honkin' pile of receipts and the sleeping fears it woke the hell up. It made sense to me, and still does, that small and pesky unattended woes become bigger with time and without examination and correction. Like, no duh.

What I'd completely forgotten, AGAIN, was the role that daily maintenance plays in good mental health. Physical activity. Diet. Rest. (And yes, "rest" is different than "sleep"; I know, because my body overrides my will to not sleep but I always win the battle of work over rest.)

And "play" falls somewhere in there, too. At least, I'm pretty sure it does; traditionally, I've been a little shaky when it comes to the work/play pas de deux.

So this weekend, after working my ass off, I ran it around a little. Twice. And ate halfway decently...well, a few times. And while I worked a little, I also played a little bit more. With my b.la crew. With The Boyfriend. And, oh, bliss, with a good chunk of sunny Saturday afternoon, my bed and a New Yorker.

And whaddya know, two days later I feel at least three times better (well, these things aren't precisely quantifiable, but you get the idea).

It's still work to make myself play and it's still a pain hauling my carcass around a mile or so of neighborhood. But I have a feeling without the run, the rest, the food, the play, the work starts to suffer at some point. Hell, everything starts to suffer. (Certainly the people in spitting range start to suffer.)

So tomorrow, I work. And run. And maybe, if there's a little time somewhere in the day, crack open another old New Yorker...

xxx
c

That shitty, shaky feeling

I know all about "what goes up" and "to every season" and all of the other old saws. I also know that a body in motion prefers to stay that way and a body at rest would just as soon you leave it the fuck alone, thank you very much.

While there are many wonderful things in my life right now (relationship, friendship, health, etc.) when I am forced to address the things that are less wonderful (taxes, cash flow, roaches for the first time in my L.A. life) it is all too easy to go to the dark place, forget what I do have going for me and embrace my loser-dom.

You started rewrites on your show how long ago and you're still not done? Loser. You made how much last year and have what to show for it? Loser. You want to help other people change their lives and yours looks like this? Loser, loser, loser.

Right now, I finally think I get what Evelyn is talking about with her dwelve into the unknown. Like knights of yore on a quest for a big urn and The Zenmistress of Business herself, apparently, I'm standing at the edge of a big, tangled forest full of scary stuff and I'm really not thrilled about the prospect of heading in with nothing but a keyfob Maglite and a light jacket in case it gets cold. I mean, I know it's gonna get cold. And I know this weekend's tasks, taxes, billing, roach control, merely comprise leg one of a loooong journey. One I've successfully avoided embarking on for almost 44 years. It's hard to shake that shaky feeling that I (loser) am going to be doing a lot of stumbling and bumbling about (loser! loser!) as I trip over unknowns in the forest (ignorant loser!).

On the other hand, I know that this, too, shall pass, both my big journey and this mini, weekend one. By Monday, my taxes will be done, I'll have adjusted to the new balance in my savings account and my kitchen cabinets will be ringed with a Maginot Line of boric acid and Raid. (Well, two outta three ain't bad.) And at some later and probably less-defined point, I'll uncover that piece of paper on which I wrote my current Three Things and think, "Hunh...wish I had that problem instead of this one."

But hopefully, not before I realize I'm not a loser any more than I'm not ever a winner. I'm just a person, muddling through, who knows some stuff and doesn't know a whole lot of other stuff and who, like most people, is happier living in the former than doing much about the latter.

Which reminds me: time to get cracking...

xxx
c

Pho(ne)bia

Recently, I started returning my phone calls. Not that I'd ever subscribed to the local shitiquette of blowing people off by not returning their phone calls; I'm far too Midwestern for that.

But for several months, oh, hell...a couple of years, really, I got into the highly antisocial habit of turning my calls around via email. All of them. (Or damned close to it, my now-deceased father did not have email.)

Initially, my eminently forgivable excuse was a life-threatening lack of energy. I was spending the few calories I could afford making high-fat tubs of yogurt and low-carb hunks of protein in an almost Sisyphean attempt to stay out of the hospital. I neither talked to nor saw much of anyone for a good four months, except when they were trotting by to drop off supplies or help with chores.

But even as my health improved, my aversion to phone contact continued. And I realized that for whatever reason, the phone meant too much contact for me, or too little control, or both. And, since I had bigger fish to fry, I let it go at that (a miracle of sorts right there, not worrying something to death) and figured the answer would come to me or it wouldn't and either way, I'd learn to live with it.

Which I did. L.A. Jan and I even made jokes about it, the bizarre incongruity of someone who kept an Excel spreadsheet to track her online dating activity yet was often loathe to answer calls from her best friend.

Somewhere in those two years, though, things shifted. I think the shift had something to do with my readiness to connect in general, because it was right around the time I got into my first real relationship since DumpFest 2002 that I found myself occasionally brightening when a particular clutch of numbers popped up on the Caller ID screen. And today, about a year later, I'm not only pouncing on the phone when The Boyfriend's name pops up, but marveling upon hanging up with him, with L.A. Jan, with my sister, that 20...30...45 minutes have ticked by while we've been yakking away. Again. Sometimes after I've just seen them. I'm even occasionally (gasp) picking up the phone when clients call. Okay, not every time. But it's a start.

The thing of it is, letting my borders shrink for a bit and letting myself not sweat it was probably instrumental in those same borders expanding again, to maybe beyond their original circumference, later on. And as I continue to wrassle with my mighty, mighty infernal motherfucking lesson of P - A - T - I - E - N - C - E, it might behoove me to remember that sometimes, the quickest way towards two steps forward is one step back, from the phone, or whatever consarned annoyance is bedeviling one at the moment. Like a name one can't remember. Or a riddle that's driving one crazy.

Or a blog one hasn't posted to in four days.

What can I say? It comes. It doesn't come. It comes back.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a few calls to turn around...

xxx c

In case Vanity Fair never gets around to asking me about this, either

The Proust Questionnaire.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Being plugged into the source.

Which living person do you most admire?

Jimmy Carter.

What is your greatest fear?

Catastrophic injury stopping just short of the release of death.

What is your favorite journey?

A long car ride with little traffic, excellent conversation and great music.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Chastity.

On what occasion do you lie?

When it really, really, really doesn't make a difference and would hurt someone if I did. Or when I'm too weak to tell the truth.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

"Super-(descriptor here)"; all swears (but especially "fuck").

What is your greatest extravagance?

Digital cable TV, the second box.

What do you dislike about your appearance?

My bandy legs.

What is your greatest regret?

Having stayed in a situation past its usefulness to me.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?

So far, writing.

When and where were you happiest?

Anytime I'm plugged into the source.

Which talent would you most like to have?

To write brilliant songs.

What is your current state of mind?

Restless contentedness.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?

That they had been more courageous.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you suppose it would be?

I think I'm due for a masculine lifetime. Or maybe I'm coming off of one. That'd explain a lot.

What is your most treasured possession?

My paternal grandmother's watch.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

To feel or be unloved.

What is the quality you most like in a man?

Sensitivity.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Strength.

What do you most value in your friends?

Their courageous pursuit of Truth.

Who are your favorite writers?

Charles Bukowski, Jane Austen, Louise Fitzhugh, Richard Yates, Evelyn Waugh.

Who are your heroes in real life?

Oprah Winfrey, Eleanor Roosevelt and anyone who overcomes adversity to achieve his or her dreams.

What are your favorite names?

Lucy, Betty, Franklin, Homer, Arno.

How would you like to die?

Surrounded by loved ones, having led a good and useful life.

What is your motto?

"Tell the truth!"

xxx c

Me being me being me

While Immense Personal Change rarely happens overnight, and while my own Immense Personal Change was afoot well in advance of my dramatic, blood-and-sweat-soaked Crohn's onset, it is convenient (not to mention pithy) to divvy things up in terms of pre- and post-Crohn's.Before Crohn's, when I was not only dancing as fast as I could but had become really, really proficient at it, I lived to please. Because if I knew one thing, it was that I was Not Enough. So naturally, I compensated by being (or at least aiming to be) the smartest, the fastest, the funniest. Or, in those areas where I was less naturally gifted (e.g. math, science, anything involving hand-eye coordination) the worst. There is, after all, a pride to be taken in staking out that territory as well. One strange side effect of my psychic orientation B.C. was an unsettling anxiety that would overtake me at the prospect of worlds colliding. When you are very busy making yourself be (or seem) all things to all people, the thought of those disparate parties coming together is very nervous-making. How to be the advertising wunderkind and the Lower East Side hipster and the aw-shucks, down-home Midwestern gal all at once? I'm deft, but not that deft.

So I kept my worlds apart. And if I lucked into a partner who had a wonderful network of loved ones already in place I just used his, and kept my own on maintenance contact only. Breakups were hellish, but really, when are they not?

But after the last big breakup, when, as usual (and let's face it, appropriate) he got the friends and family, I took stock of the situation and decided I'd had enough of it. Of all of it: losing the friends, yes, but really, of contorting myself to fit someone else's idea of ideal. The ROI on self-contortion had been pretty lousy, anyway, and I was older and more tired than I used to be.

Once I got sick, contorting myself was out of the question. I had no energy to spare, especially for such tomfoolery. And then, of course, my worlds started colliding with alarming frequency in my very own living room; unable to lift the laundry basket, much less carry it down two flights of stairs to the basement, I found myself happy to have them there, especially if they came bearing groceries or DVDs.

But the biggest shock came when I realized that the me that everyone was seeing, hapless, helpless, housebound and really, really unattractive, not only was enough, but was someone they treasured enough to go out of their way to do things for...without hope of anything in return save my return to health. And if all these good people thought I was enough, maybe I didn't have to be anything else. Maybe I could just be me.

An acting teacher once suggested that the things we think are super-fab about ourselves are the things our loved ones tolerate and that the quirks and missteps and imperfections we try to hide are what make us lovable. In large part, I now believe that to be true; "perfection" (or our simulacrum of it) is about as appealing as trying too hard.

I may never be the shining orb of perfection that I once longed to be. But I am pretty confident that from now until the end of my time on the planet, I will be me, all me, all of the time.

Only, hopefully, with age and experience, more so.

xxx c

The governor cold

Wonderful blogger/artist Michael Nobbs posted a nice entry yesterday about swapping in his old, "manual" teapot for his busted electric one. Apparently, when it comes to boiling water (many of us on the other side of the pond are less familiar with the finer points of tea-prep), electric is better, or at least, it's faster (which most of us on this side of the pond are raised from birth to believe is better).

The additional heating time required by putting actual fire to metal is serving the unintended purpose of getting Michael himself to slow down. He talks about using the protracted boiling time to draw and think, thereby setting a leisurely pace for the day.

While the story mainly makes me want to go online and research the purchase of one of these super-speedy kettles, the beauty of the outside force stepping in to gently (or not so gently) remind us of summut or another is not lost on me. I've got my own governor right now, a smallish but nevertheless very real bug I woke up with a couple of days ago.

Ordinarily, my response to the governors in my life is to figure out a workaround: more coffee, usually, and a whole lot of pretending it isn't there. But the thing about a governor is that it's there for a reason: in the case of rental trucks, to keep a sedan-driving yahoo from trashing the goods; in the case of the human body...well, it's pretty much the same thing.

So instead of cursing my governor, I'm going to submit to it: move a little more slowly, go to bed a little bit earlier, drink a little less coffee and a lot more water.

Maybe I'll even crack open the sketchbook. I've heard it has magical healing powers.

Or maybe I'll just pull a pre-made JPEG to augment this entry. Shortcuts have magical healing powers, too.

xxx
c

Ray of light

I was in L.A. on a commercial shoot, living the high life at a Westside hotel.

Every morning I'd lace up my running shoes and hit the UCLA track; on shoot days, I'd run in the dark. For a city that often stinks to high heaven by midday (as early as 10am in the summer), Los Angeles has a remarkably fresh smell in the early morning that's dewy and invigorating and full of promise and at that point in my life, promise was something I needed a whole lot of. On paper, I looked unbeatable: good salary, high-profile copywriting gig, nice condo in a happening section of town. But walking around, I was miserable. I hated my job, I hated my spinelessness in refusing to jettison it and most of all, I hated myself for what I saw as every misstep I'd taken to bring myself to this pretty pass.

But on this particular trip to L.A., I got lucky. It was an easy shoot, as shoots go, happy clients, cushy schedule, no other huge projects to work on long-distance. So I got two things I never really got back at home in my miserable, high-flying life: time and distance. On those early-morning runs, breathing that air and watching all those students chug around the track (how young I thought they were, me, in my aged mid-20's) things started to seem possible. What things, I didn't know; I just knew I wanted some of them. Freedom. Warm weather. A life that afforded me the time to sit and write in coffee shops in the middle of the day.

And then one night, begging off yet another pricey production company dinner, I snuck off to a Westwood theater with a falafel sandwich in my backpack. And as I sat in the dark, watching the trailers roll, it hit me: I was happy. Really and truly happy for the first time in I-didn't-know-how long a time. Because not only did I feel that sense of promise as I had on the run, but I realized I felt at home in that almost empty theater, eating my greasy dinner by myself. I knew I didn't even know what it was I wanted, some kind of job in the movies, some kind of life in L.A., some kind of living situation that got me out to the movies and eating more falafel, but I knew that there was something other than the life I was leading that I did want, and that if I held that thought long and hard (or loosely) enough, it would come to me.

Almost twenty years and many, many steps (and missteps...and backsteps) later, I have that life. For dietary reasons, it does not, alas, include falafel. For that matter, while I certainly could, I rarely get to the movies or that coffee shop for mid-afternoon java and writing. But I am no longer filled with that painful, inchoate longing of old: it's been replaced by a quiet, abiding sort of happiness.

I still dream of change in big chunks but I've also accepted that real change seldom comes that way. The old Hollywood line about the overnight success that was ten years in the making is absolutely true. The good news is that the other old saw, the one about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step, is also true. Only sometimes, the step is stopping to smell a morning breeze off the ocean or to glance at a book that falls off the shelf into one's lap or to risk smiling at a stranger. Because the ray of light can come from anywhere.

Even the back of a dark theater, with the scent of falafel wafting up from a greasy paper bag.

xxx c

Photo by ValterJacinto via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

The joy of the Stupid Day Job

Despite the calculated gloss of fabulousness that's got you all dazzled, for most of her life, the communicatrix has been better counted as one among the sheeple than the bright and blazing solo artist she has always longed to be. As I said when I (gladly) moved from my Park-Slope-adjacent (but really "shitty Brooklyn") life to a cramped but safe bunker in midtown Manhattan, I yam not a pioneer. Especially when living on the edge includes such delights as resident rodents, draughts that bring on the consumption and having to pee in a jar because you can't pass through your roommate's bedroom while she's shtupping her boyfriend. In other words, given the choice (and really, isn't there almost always a choice?) I have generally elected to go the tried-and-true Good Girl route, college, "career", marriage, rather than risk parental upset or the scorn of the material world by striking out on my own.

Oddly enough, the tide started to turn when I met my ex-husband, to whom I forever owe a debt of gratitude for showing me that I would not, in fact, die if I was no longer able to give a seven-word summation of my life's work (i.e., self-worth) at a cocktail party. In hindsight, of course, the choice seems obvious, I never much cared for cocktail parties nor the people in attendance who subscribed to the seven-word summation theory of self-worth. But I'd successfully passed for someone who gave a damn for so long that it felt natural to move in that world.

Now, even as a Corporate Tool I was open in my admiration for the more intrepid wanderers. However, the thought of actually being one, or, rather, an "unsuccessful" one, was anathema. Or rather, the day job that came along with "unsuccess" was anathema. Me, make copies? Cold call? Sling hash? I was a highly-paid creative profeshunal; how could step down and take a Stupid Day Job?

But there came a time in pursuit of the muse when I did, and gratefully. L.A. nest egg gone, I'd been flying back and forth to Chicago for two years to make bank and tend to my dying mother; when Mom finally died and my so-called acting career demanded I actually be here for little things like auditions and gigs, I went to one of my father's friends, hat in hand, and asked for employment, any kind of employment, he could give me.

The job I got, unglorified minion in the research department of a large media-buying company, offered little in the way of mental stimulation (or compensation, for that matter). But there was insurance and a steady paycheck and an odd sort of relief. All day long, I made copies, filed, ran out for coffee, ran to the mail room with packages, basically, anything that anyone asked me to do. It was humbling, certainly, to fetch and carry for people ten and fifteen years my junior, but it was also wildly freeing, once I got over the embarrassment. People who liked me liked me for me, not because I might be their boss next month. And believe me, brother, I never took that job home. Not once. Ever.

I rarely worked through lunch, either. Instead, I'd either eat with a friend or browse the local bookstore or take myself on walks that were insanely long and arduous by L.A. standards. All that time I didn't have to have my brain fully engaged in solving "creative" problems meant a lot of time for...well, stewing. Ruminating. But also, for the first time in my life, for real creative thinking.

Don't get me wrong, when the time came that I could make rent with a combo platter of acting and low-end graphic design (the unwitting genius in my learning PowerPoint is a post unto itself), I walked away and never looked back. I like calling my own shots and am willing to put up with a certain amount of stress in exchange for that freedom.

But if my circumstances ever mandate another day job, I don't think I'd look at it as the hellish punishment I once did. Instead, I'd see it more for what it is: opportunity clad in a different guise.

With benefits, of course.

xxx c

It's not you, it's meme

I want to grow up to be Old Hag. She is funny, smart, reads a ton and writes way better headlines than the communicatrix ever did in her previous, high-paying life as an ad whore.

She also passes along the best memes. This, via Terry at ArtsJournal.com, via Eve (where, oh, where will I find the time?) is a little doohickeroo called:

Ten Things I've Done That You Probably Haven't

1. Had tea with Madeline Kahn in the Palm Court of the Plaza.
2. Sang a song about my twat in front of 350 people with a six-piece orchestra backing me up.
3. Kept a diary about my diarrhea.
4. Gotten MY ONE LINE dubbed on a primetime television show because my delivery apparently sucked such monumental ass that the producers could not bear to hear my voice on the soundtrack.
5. Saw my total cholesterol go from 125 to 450 in one year.
6. Sang a nonsense patter song clad in car sunshades and garbage bags...on stilts!
7. Gotten loaded on vodka and Sprite at This Is Elvis.
8. Wept on my L.A. balcony with the female half of a Helsinki couple my ex and I met in Prague.
9. Had Shirley Jones hold the door open for me at the old Chasen's.
10. Had Nancy Reagan's mother advise my 10-year-old self that a man "won't buy the cow if he can get the milk for free."

And you thought you were a freak. Ha!

xxx
c

TECHNORATI TAGS: memes

Who wants what?

Several years ago, in the middle of a heated conversation about direction and need and how ours weren't exactly aligning, my then-boyfriend asked me a very simple question: "What do you want?" Not "What do you want right now?" or "What do you want from me?", either of which I could have answered easily, since I was pretty in touch with my gimme needs and a fast enough dancer to tap my way out of most corners. No, what he was inquiring after, in that infuriatingly precocious, three-steps-ahead, trick-question way of his, was my motivating force, that goal that all other actions were steps toward, my über-want, if you will.

It's an eminently reasonable question for someone to ask of his or her beloved. The only problem was, while I had done a great deal of cogitating (and squawking) about what I didn't want in my life, I had devoted virtually no time to figuring out what it was I really did want. And this despite shrinkage, bailing on two careers and a marriage.

Let me say this right now: you have not experienced true humiliation until you have had someone 12 years younger and 50 IQ points higher point out that you, the empress, are buck-fucking-naked.

Let me also say this: sometimes a little humiliation is just the ticket. Because with my wits temporarily AWOL, Big Colleen (my name for the chick who should be running the show but who is too smart to try to shout my sorry ass down) stepped up and said, very simply, "to be happy."

It was, surprise, surprise, the truth. And it was out now, never to be hidden away again. And it was most definitely the wrong answer as far as that relationship went. But damned if I didn't know then and there that for as disruptive as it was surely going to be, it was also going to set me free.

You don't even have to wait for a smart ex-boyfriend to put the paddles to your chest; you can do the whole thing yourself. There's a wonderful story a long-ago acting teacher used to tell about Ellen Burstyn getting ready to go onstage in Three Sisters. As the story goes, she was utterly bereft of inspiration and utterly out of her mind because of it. Despondent. Lost. With an audience of hundreds waiting to see her bring Masha to life and no life to speak of inside of her. What we in the trade call an oh-FUCK moment. And in that moment, as the story goes, she let herself sit fully in her despair...then burst into laughter at her predicament and entered laughing. Alive. Masha.

As that acting teacher used to reiterate, "Ask yourself: where am I right now?" Because that is your first truth. And because, as he also used to say, before you can get to the Beverly Center, you need to know where you're starting from.

Once you've identified where you are, of course, you may decide that the Beverly Center is not your ultimate preferred destination. (Frankly, I'd look for something with less congestion and better parking, like an ashram or Disneyland.) But after many years in the field and much experience with excavating truth, I can tell you this: your heart cannot and will not shout its deepest desire over the incessant nattering of your monkey mind.

So distract yourself. Dangle a shiny object to make monkey-mind look the other way. Take a long walk. Every day. For a month. Do whatever you need to do to get out of your head. Your heart will lead the way. It knows what it wants.

And when it wants help, it'll ask...

xxx c

Alive vs. living

Let me state right up front that I am not anti-television. The fact that I was cable-free for five years post-divorce had more to do with my crack-like addition to television than any moral stance against or disdain for the medium. I just assumed that if more than two and a half channels were viewable on my TV set, I'd do little else save watch it. The good news? I know myself really, really well. The bad news? I know myself really, really well. Of course, I am now justifying my increased television viewing with my newfound desire to transform #1 & #2, the stage play (with music!) that I wrote with my partner, L.A. Jan, into a television series, a desire born out of a dream to tell our truth to the widest possible audience with the greatest possible efficiency. (When you're perpetually zonked by chronic illness, you quickly attune yourself to the fine art of maximizing efficiency.)

Given that dream, logic would dictate that, in addition to re-familiarizing myself with the medium as a consumer, I'd also be angling to learn the business from the inside out: i.e., getting a staff job on an existing television show. Any television show.

Only I'm not. And neither is Jan. And if we were on the fence about it before, which maybe I was, since, let's face it, TV is a really well-paying gig and I really understand the freedom that money provides, all it took was one day in the Quaalude of a sitcom spec-writing class we're taking to convince me that writing on someone else's show is not something I can pursue with the laser-like focus one needs to in order to obtain such a cush gig.

Again, please understand: I am no TV snob. I both love my TV, free, basic and premium, and I fully recognize and honor the very real skills required to write for a pre-existing show. I can even understand how it might be fun...sometimes. After all, in addition to fat residual checks, you're surrounded by smart, funny people all day and usually, there's really good lunch. It's a lot like advertising used to be back in the 1980's, only you're writing the stuff in between the commercials instead of the commercials themselves.

But it's just not me; I was in advertising (which I fell into and then fell asleep in) and that wasn't me, either. Writing copy and shooting commercials, even great copy and terrific commercials, felt like a simulacrum of the life I was supposed to lead, like being alive, versus really living.

If I fell into it, if I was plucked from amongst millions, if the smoked glass window of the limo rolled down and a long, well-manicured finger pointed at me me me to be lifted from obscurity to the high-profile, well-heeled life of a sitcom writer, well, hell, yeah, I'd do it. For a while, anyway. I may be crazy, but I'm not nuts.

But as for what I'll hurl myself into? What I'll go out on a limb for, contort myself for, put away childish things for? I'm afraid that for me, I'm looking at the big, nasty enchilada: my Truth. And it's all, in this case, the creation of my own work, saleable or not, or nothing. You're in or you're out. Live free or die.

Because that soporific sitcom spec-writing class? It now follows hard on the heels of a pilot-writing class, the most kick-ass, off-the-charts-caffeinated class it's been my pleasure to take for a long, long time. Same teacher, same room, totally different vibe. We're a ragtag crew, this small mess of us with dreams of disseminating our dreams, but we are plugged into the juice and we will not take "no" for an answer. And man, oh, man, is that ever exciting to be around.

Will we all make it? Doubtful. Will any of us make it? Hard to say. The odds are certainly against us; each of us, I'm sure, has had no end of helpful advisors telling us that our time would be better spent traversing the traditional routes. But that's not for us: the few...the proud...the insane. Keep your overhead low and your sights sky-high.

I may never again know what it's like to stay in a great hotel or sign a mortgage stub or even order off a menu with impunity. I may be forever relegated to a boho lifestyle of purloined treats consumed off the premises with fellow losers.

But it's okay. Because I've been alive and done those things.

And believe me, living is better...

xxx c

On the other side of fear, there's a small ink drawing

A year, no, probably closer to two years ago, I was at The Art Store (no, seriously, it's called "The Art Store") buying sumpin' or other, when I saw the sign on the locked glass case: "Koh-i-noor, 50% off." Now, if art stores (like computer stores and office supply stores) are to me as hardware stores are to most guys and jewelry stores are to most girls, the Rapidograph case is like where they keep the specialty-use Mikita saws or the anything if you're at Tiffany & Co. I could buy one of everything at the art store (or The Art Store) whether I needed one or not, but Rapidographs...well, shit, son, you need y'self at least five of those. For your different liiiine widths and whatnot...

To my credit, I did not slap down the Visa then and there; I actually left the store and thought about it for a week. (After making sure the sale would still be on, of course.) Then I came back, paid the man, and trotted off with my shiny new box of SEVEN, count 'em, SEVEN Rapidographs like the panting dog that I am. Upon reaching home, I immediately propped them up on a shelf to admire them in their pretty new case...and never touched them again.

Until yesterday, that is. I did under duress what I would not let myself do out of mere desire. Because while discussing a particular design job I'm working on right now, I threw out an idea that required drawing. By me. Now. (Idiot...idiot...)

For someone who grew up with a pen in her hand, I'm not a very good draw-er. I guess the problem was that I was using it to write at least as much as to draw. Because for every time I'd long to be Hilary Knight, I'd want just as fervently, or more so, to be Kay Thompson. R. Crumb, Edward Gorey, Aubrey Beardsley; Dorothy Parker, Charles Bukowski, Joan Didion. So many twisted, miserable lifestyles; so little time.

Ultimately, I decided I was a better writer than I was an artist. And since I couldn't be a great artist, I would go with my strong suit and let the drawing go entirely.

It's a shame, this idea I've held so long: that we can only do One Thing. That creativity can't express itself through multiple, if imperfect, outlets. That I must be truly great at something to earn the right to spend time working, or even playing, at it. I've probably missed out on a lot over the years because of it. But lately I've been finding that I enjoy dabbling, a little cooking, a little sewing, a little guitar-pickin', a little blogging. I'm finally loosening my iron grip on perfectionism as a way of life, and wouldn't you know, life's getting to be more fun. Messier, scarier, and even dirtier (all this fun leaves little time for scrubbing grout with a toothbrush), but a lot more fun.

So I must pause, briefly, to thank those brave, multitalented souls who came before me for putting themselves out there, for exploring their truths via their eclectic, complex selves, so fearlessly and inspiringly. Evelyn Rodriguez, a.k.a. The Zen Mistress of Business, who is a constant reminder that binary thinking is not not nearly as activating (not too mention fun) as a crazy cocktail of influences. Hugh MacLeod, who's crackerjack marketing-smart AND a draw-er of some of the funniest, filthiest cartoons ever AND doesn't see a disconnect with being both. My new bud, Michael Nobbs, who introduced me to peops like Trevor Romain and Danny Gregory, all of whom made it possible for me to believe that great art and great writing weren't mutually exclusive, that they could reside happily within the same sentient being, that one might actually inform and enrich the other.

You guys make it a little less scary to post this picture. And the idea of picking up a sketchbook at The Art Store positively thrilling.

xxx c