How to get to happy: think fast!

I have learned, through trial and error (mostly error), through reading and shrinkage (mostly shrinkage), to pay attention to what is happening when something notable is happening. "Notable" means notable to you, of course: for me, right now, I'm concerned with getting a handle on my triggers and stopping myself, if only a moment, before I pull them, to suss out what's going down. Said triggers include, but are not limited to:

• wanting an alcoholic beverage
• wanting an Americano
• wanting an SCD off-limits item (chiefly bread and Rolos, lately)
• blowing up over discourteous driving
• going to The Dark Place

I'm making some headway with all of them, to varying degrees, in terms of understanding. Note that I did not say I am necessarily making headway with the habit itself; in the eyes of the world, I'm just one more bourbon-swilling, espresso-huffing, carbo-scarfing loudmouth with a sad-ass predilection for moodiness and misanthropy.

Today, I changed it up a bit. Driving from The BF's to my K-town pad this morning, I felt exceptionally happy. Happy as in I feel content where I am, with where I've been, and with where I'm headed. So I asked myself why. What's going on now that makes me feel good-good as opposed to the booze-numbed, chocolate-caramel-endorphined, caffeine-rush, ersatz feeling of good? And I did it fast, like they make you respond to those which pair of lines match up, male-female brain tests do.

And the answers?

1. I felt well-rested
2. I had several hours to myself today to catch up on things
3. I'd worked hard this week
4. I'd helped people this week
5. I had the chance to do items 4 & 5 again next week

That's it.

I'm no richer, thinner, more attractive or better loved than I was yesterday (that I know of, anyway). My to-do list is no shorter and my patience no longer than it was 24 hours ago.

But I'm better rested, I have some breathing room, and I've applied myself (successfully or not). I've found work I love and that enables me to be useful to other people. And, because of a combination of luck and hard work, I'm still here drawing breath, able to lather, rinse and repeat.

Yes, you could say I'm also grateful for all of this stuff and that gratitude is the key to feeling good. I won't lie, it's a big component. And I'm also beginning to be aware, o ye who are well and further down the road, that happiness isn't even the ultimate goal, the letting go of it is.

But before letting go comes happiness, before happiness comes gratitude, and before gratitude comes awareness. It's the first thing, and god bless it, you can do it anytime, anywhere, no matter what part of the path you're on or what the terrain is like under your feet...

xxx c

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

The things you learn from nerds, Craigslist and shock radio

I'm crazy about my beloved Toastmasters club, but that doesn't mean I don't retain a healthy sense of self-awareness about what we truly are: nerds nerds nerds.

People ask me why I go. Some people smirk a lot and look superior when they ask it, they're asking not to ask, but to let me know they know something. These are the people with a preconceived notion not only of Toastmasters, but of the world in general. The kind of people who also make immediate assumptions about someone who listens to Dr. Laura Schlessinger or is a fan of The Tom Leykis Show or sleeps with a married man or believes in reincarnation or only drives sensible cars.

What I'd ask someone who makes those kind of assumptions is, "What do you think of a person who does all of the above?"

This is the crux of it: if you make too many assumptions, you miss out on vast quantities of cool things, of huge swathes of life, of startling epiphanies, joyous surprises and yes, great sex. I know: first I missed out, now I watch (and watch, and watch) as other people do.

They miss out by trying to be cool (hint: really cool people are usually way down with the nerds).

They miss out by being cynical: sometimes that thing that's too good to be true is actually both good and true.

They miss out by playing it safe, opportunity does many things, but knocking twice at your door is rarely one of them.

Tonight, I drove 15 miles to be one of 10 people to hear two of the most amazing speeches I've heard in my life. One was about an actress who drove a taxi as her day job...from age 62 - 70; the other was a perfectly crafted story about the perils of judging a book by its cover, delivered with startling wit, grace and clarity by one who knows.

If you do not do the things that seem weird or strange or hopelessly nerdy because of fear or fatigue, you lose.

And the saddest thing of all is, you will never know how much.

Answer the ad. Pause to ask the question. Engage in conversation. Reward does not always follow risk, but it cannot exist without it.

xxx c

Want more? I also wrote about Toastmasters and impromptu speaking exercises here.

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

100 Things I Learned in 2006, Part II

For all you OCD types who felt out of whack with a lopsided list, here's the back 50:

1. Back up your files.
2. Getting to Empty is more of a process than an event.
3. An ongoing process.
4. That goes on and on.
5. I should not even bother trying on a garment which is not charcoal, burgundy, pumpkin or that one shade of blue that works with my eyes.
6. Antibiotics wreak at least as much havoc as they prevent.
7. Indiana south of Indianapolis is startlingly beautiful.
8. And frequently, hilarious.
9. Furniture is more excellent on wheels.
10. I was high on crack thinking I could write a 750 word column in one hour.
11. After 45, even skinny people put on weight.
12. "More fun" is a great prescription for personal happiness.
13. It sounds obvious, but it isn't.
14. The Secret is another good place to start.
15. I really missed gyros.
16. My favorite couplet in any song ever is one I wrote myself.
17. This makes me either more talented or more vain than I'm prepared to deal with just yet.
18. I should quit worrying about when Sean will can my slacker ass and just blog, already.
19. The second-most important thing after bringing the tape recorder is remembering to turn it on.
20. There's almost no funk that can withstand the O-magazine/epsom-salt bath/Play Misty for Me trifecta
21. Life is more fun with a label maker.
22. I can be hot when I'm 50.
23. And 60.
24. And 70.
25. Kindred spirits show up in places you'd least expect them to.
26. Doing Best Year Yet is hard.
27. People reveal more than they think by the things they complain about.
28. Disneyland is more fun when you bring kids.
29. Even if you don't get to go on the coolest rides.
30. And you lose one of the kids.
31. Never take Santa Monica or Melrose back to Silver Lake when you are trying to prove a point about shortcuts.
32. More than any kind of theater, I love a really good musical.
33. This is a really good musical.
34. When it comes to books, my eyes will always be bigger than my stomach.
35. Burning incense makes me feel rich.
36. My drinking days are probably numbered.
37. You don't know how depressed you are until you suddenly aren't.
38. The best DVDs to own are Saturday Afternoon Hangover movies.
39. The next-best are TV shows.
40. The greatest luxury no one realizes is time spent alone.
41. I just don't like almond butter.
42. Or The Big Lebowski.
43. Or San Diego.
44. When it comes to taking care of my own health, I have been the world's greatest asshole.
45. People like stories.
46. It's never going to be easy.
47. It's always going to be interesting.
48. Those Entertainment coupon books are a ripoff.
49. If I can do it, anyone can.
50. This means you...

May your 2007 bring you your heart's desire, and may your heart's desire bring the world greater peace and happiness.

xxx c

New around these parts? Blow off my other lists? Here's your chance to catch up:

2006

• 100 things, Part I

2005

• 100 things, Part I
• 100 things, Part II

2004

• 100 things, Part I
• 100 things, Part II

100 Things I Learned in 2006, Part I

In what has become sort of a tradition here at communicatrix, we bring you the year in reverse...or perverse...or something like that. Because after all, what is the point of having a whole, entire year if you can't heave it up at the end and enjoy it again from the beginning?

1. I could live happily elsewhere.
2. I probably won't anytime soon.
3. Deadwood is the best cocksucking sonofabitch show ever.
4. Coaching works.
5. Lawns are overrated.
6. The bargain matinée at the Century City 15 rules.
7. If you want people to become really alarmed on your behalf, tell them you're planning to shave your head.
8. I love the acorn squash at Houston's with a fervor that borders on the unnatural.
9. Good coffee mugs are as hard to find as good handbags and unicorns.
10. I enjoy looking anyway.
11. All of those people who said I would outgrow my lust for high heeled footwear were right.
12. Damn them.
13. Rolos will be the television of 2007.
14. If forced to come up with an earthly description of heaven, I'd pick flashlights, a slow shutter and good company on a starlit deck.
15. A well-cooked pot roast runs a close second.
16. Especially when it is cooked for you, with love, on a chilly Sunday evening.
17. Toastmasters is the shit.
18. UPS is apparently an acronym for Unflaggingly Poor Shipping.
19. There may be something to this whole networking thing.
20. Ditto conferences.
21. I have a little problem recognizing the obvious.
22. When playing games with children under 12, you have to let them win occasionally.
23. Even if you don't want to.
24. Which I never do.
25. Noise is to me as dust was to Julianne Moore in that Todd Haynes movie.
26. It is worth it to pay the extra freight for heavy card stock.
27. Those cherry Larabars are really, really good.
28. Eventually, if you eat enough of them, they taste like soylent green.
29. I absolutely, positively love getting up in front of a bunch of people and talking.
30. Acting, not so much.
31. Just because you paid a crapload of money for a couch is no reason to keep it around.
32. Alison Bechdel is a genius.
33. My jealous streak, while lying dormant for years at a time, is capable of erupting at a moment's notice.
34. Fortunately, it now scares the bejeezus out of me.
35. My parking luck will never catch up to my used leather jacket luck.
36. I like the idea of being a gardener better than the actual gardening.
37. My significant others will always be somewhat horrified by the rest of the club.
38. Being disorganized is my spiritual governor the way Crohn's is my physical one.
39. Starbucks sucks.
40. Its suckage increases in direct proportion to the distance between it and other coffee alternatives.
41. This makes it suckier beyond suckiest suckiness.
42. Forget the hounds, release the fleas.
43. With the right partner, sex actually gets better after the 18-month mark.
44. This gives me hitherto unimaginable hope for the future.
45. If things continue in the current direction, I may drive less than 6,000 miles next year.
46. The Wall Street Journal is a surprisingly engaging read.
47. You can still recycle VHS tapes.
48. I don't look quite as butch with short hair as I thought I would.
49. The BF looks even better with long hair than I thought he would.
50. Fucker.

xxx c

Can't wait for more communicatrix listy goodness? Come late to the party? Never fear! Memory lane be here:

2005

• 100 things, Part I
• 100 things, Part II

2004

• 100 things, Part I
• 100 things, Part II

Resolved for 2007

Jenny has said she's not one for resolutions, and I'm with her: pulling "gonnas" out of your ass, as in "I'm gonna quit smoking" or "I'm gonna get in shape" or "I'm gonna quit pulling things out of my ass", is a recipe for feelings of personal failure and severe depression in the cold, holiday-free months of the new year. She prefers a "theme", such as "revival" or "more love" or "less putting of things in quotation marks." (Oh, wait, that's mine.)

I do like and believe in making plans, it appeals to the listmaker in me, and will probably take another, more serious crack at the Best Year Yet, "values-based" goal-setting system, for 2007. But before I even get to BYY, which I have actually SCHEDULED on the CALENDAR (December 23rd, you're on yer own that night, The BF), I came up with a theme for next year: Expand and Focus.

While I realize this seems like a contradiction in terms, I like it for precisely that reason: it's like a zen koan, and it's custom-made for overachieving type-As like me. Why? Because it will slow me the fuck down, that's why. You try being an overachieving type-A for 45 years. Hell, try it for a week. If you're unused to it, I can almost guarantee you'll suffer adrenal burnout in 72 hours.

Of course, I may still pick "Slow Down" or even "Slow the Fuck Down" as my 2007 mantra, but it has such negative connotations for me now, I feel glum just typing it. In contrast, I feel good about the sort of limitless possibility attached to "Expand and Focus". Also, I can monkey with this sort of stuff indefinitely, until things reach such a disastrous state of disarray, it becomes like deck chair rearranging on the Titanic. And believe you me, I'll keep shuffling those things till there's no deck left to shuffle on.

Still, some of you out there know me pretty well by now. Perhaps you have an even better deck chair arrangement to suggest...

xxx c

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

Farewell, Miss Anita

About five or six years ago, I found myself in severely reduced circumstances. The SAG commercial strike and ensuing fallout had eviscerated my bank account; for the first time in a long time, I found myself unable to scrape up the considerable cash required to get my usual cut and color (single-process, nothing fancy) at the high-falutin' salon. (Well, it was that or booze, and you can pick the horse that's gonna win that race.)

My boyfriend at the time, The Youngster, had found an unusual hair stylist in Hollywood. Tony's initial allure was the 24-hour service he promised in his yellow pages ad, and The Youngster needed a 6am haircut or somesuch to make an 8am appointment.

It turned out that one needed to give Tony a bit of advance notice to book 16 of the 24, but not much. It also turned out that Tony, who had been Stylist to the Stars back in the day, charged a mere $20 for a ladies' cut, $40 if you threw in a color and brought your own. Which I did, happily.

One day, The Youngster came back from a cut (no color) all a-fluffle. Tony had let slip the name of one of his more famous clients, hell, maybe his sole famous client: Anita O'Day.

If you are not a jazz fan, the name might not mean anything to you. Anita O'Day never got big-big like Ella or Billie or Dinah or Sarah or any of the one-name songstresses. No matter. A complete iconoclast in her phrasing, her dress, her very life, she was she-bop itself, jazz-cool from her head to her toes. As one of the talking heads in the docu of her life points out (trailer on YouTube), she was the first vocalist on the Verve label, the first, and what she lacked in vibrato she made up for in every other way. She had a way of bending a song to her will so that it was almost unrecognizable...and yet, once you heard it, you had a hard time imagining it sung any other way.

My personal favorite was her rendition of "Johnny One-Note," an old showtune she grabbed hold of and forever blew the hokum from. The most famous example (caught on film, anyway) is probably her dazzling take on "Tea for Two." (You can catch a clip of her famous performance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival here on YouTube, and how exactly did we obsess over people before YouTube, anyway?)

Of course, I wasted no time blabbing my love for "Miss Anita" (Tony's name for her), and Tony, ever cool, mentioned he might be able to arrange things so I could meet her. Sure enough, a month or so later, I got a call from him suggesting I hightail it over.

I tried to be cool when we were introduced and failed miserably; for her part, Miss Anita was as down to earth as you could want musical idol to be. Plus which she looked twenty times better than I did. Thirty. It was pouring rain, and she was getting ready to call a cab when Tony flashed me a look. I immediately offered myself up as chauffeur, and moments later, we were tooling over to her apartment in my Corolla, me and Miss Anita O'Day.

Me!!! Inches away from an 80-something star who had sung with Benny Goodman, who had beat heroin and hooch, who had gone from from the heights to the pits and back and was just as nice and normal as the day is long...except for that glow. Star wattage.

I have no idea what we talked about during that ten-minute ride; I only know it ended too soon and cheered me for months afterward.

Despite Tony's assurance that we'd someday take in a show, that day never materialized. She was ill or I was ill, it was a time of illness, I guess. But it's almost better that the last real-life memory I have of Miss Anita is of her climbing out of my old car in the rain. I like my stars up close and in person, and sometimes, even a little damp...

xxx c

Anita O'Day, 1919–2006 (official website | wikipedia) Image of Anita O'Day at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival from the York University website.

I am caffeine's bitch

In the pantheon of Not Getting Things Done, this weekend was King-Daddy Slackoff. Part of the problem was a profound and unanticipated Need For Rest; another part was Family In Town (which is to say, not a problem at all, these are fun relatives.)

The biggest culprit was a return of my old pal, the urinary tract infection. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of experiencing a UTI, imagine a white-hot poker being shoved up your urethra while your bladder is full of pee, and someone squeezing on your belly to keep you from releasing either. And that's the part you can discuss in mixed company.

I was raised to fear medicine, and so will put up with eight other kinds of pain, post-surgical, pre-colonoscopic, etc, but I am a baby when it comes to white-hot pokers up my urethra. When it became clear that two glasses of cranberry juice and an extra trip to the can was not going to right matters, I phoned my OB/GYN doc's answering service and, after a brief but tense exchange ("I'm sorry, we don't have 24-hour emergency contact for yeast infections"), got her to call the doc on call, who immediately called back with a prescription for my new best friend, nitrofurantoin. Sweet relief, right?

Well, sort of. The white-hot poker has been exchanged for mind-bending headache that threatens to blind me, a side effect of severe caffeine withdrawal for which there is no cure...save caffeine.

I thought I would make it. Really, I did. I AM TOUGH!!!! And I was tough until about 4pm, when it was either stab my own eyes out or give in to a cup of Barry's. Weak Barry's, for a weak communicatrix.

So it's clear that I need to add this to the list of things to grapple with in the not-too-distant future. Caffeine isn't exactly nature's RX for Crohn's disease, I know; I just hadn't realized how off the diet I'd actually gotten.

Crap on a cracker. Coffee, tea, reality television, what am I not addicted to...?

xxx c

Photo by kana* via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

The downside of getting your shit together

You start with the easy stuff: cleaning. Sorting. Trips to Goodwill. More trips to Goodwill.

Then maybe you drop a pursuit or two, say, your previous livelihood, for example. And then maybe you add another, one that you know will prove useful to your down-the-road self, but that you're not too facile with now so it takes a lot of time. A lot of non-paying, stress-raising time.

And as you prune and cull and pitch and clean, you start to notice what's left, say, your heart's desire, for example. Which should be a series of shiny, happy moments for you and that organ in the top left quadrant of your chest cavity, only it feels more like someone took all your clothes away and hid them in a closet and then ripped off a wall of your house and replaced it with glass.

So instead of feeling happy and graceful and proud and clean, you feel like a lumpy, pigeon-toed spaz who's been thrust into Swan Lake against your will and everyone else's better judgment.

I've never said it before, but I'll say it now: the only change that's easy to make is four quarters for a dollar.

And only that when you've just come from the bank...

xxx c

Most excellent photo by Javier Bravo via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

How to avoid writing (almost) entirely but get your curtains (almost) finished

1. Start a new project.

2. Start another new project.

3. What the hell, start a third, while you're at it.

(IMPORTANT: Do not drop any previous projects.)

4. Ignore obligations and accompany friend to see great new show.

5. Become obsessed with getting known universe to see #4.

6. Spend hours on phone attempting to accomplish #5.

7. Watch nonstop television in anticipation of #1.

8. Bust out sewing machine in disgust over procrastination/vain attempt to multitask and justify #7.

9. Break sewing machine.

10. Post to blog about 1–9.

xxx c

Photo by svanes via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

How I pulled my head out of my ass

I was never much for church.

My parents were good Catholics, at least, as good as divorced parents can be, and I was sent to Catholic school. But it was staffed by a teaching order of nuns, so there was no real accountability outside of class, and Divorced Dad either took us to the guitar mass at the rich parish or the high Latin mass at the poor parish, so there wasn't much chance of my 9-year-old self being moved by the Spirit on Sundays, either.

Still, every week, I did the drill: kneel, cross, sit, stand, cross, sit, cross, stand, sit, stand, walk, cross, walk, kneel, sit, stand, eat pancakes. And honestly, outside of the pancakes (which were exceptional those rare weekends we went to the super-boring mass with my grandparents in Wilmette and were rewarded with Dutch Babies at Walker's), only two instances stand out.

The first was sometime after my First Holy Communion, putting me at around nine years old. This was circa 1970, post-Vatican II but pre-whenever it was that they let you take the communion wafer in your hands and stick it in your mouth yourself. Being a normal nine year old, I was dying to know what this Body of Christ actually looked like. I mean, come on: someone sticks actual Jesus on your tongue, you don't want to know what it looks like?

So I hatched a plot.

I would bring a plastic box with me to mass, clear, and with an EZ-open hinge. Since I'd already determined that the Savior had an extremely fast melting point, I developed an advanced mouth-breathing technique that would effectively keep my tongue dry from placement until I was back at my pew and could safely stick Him in the box. I practiced the maneuver from tongue grab to pocket in the privacy of my room until I was certain I could execute it with the necessary stealth. For once, I couldn't wait to go to church.

The day rolled around and I was stoked. It was cool enough that I could wear a coat with big pockets, not so Chicago-cold yet that I'd have to wear mittens in the drafty Cathedral. At the designated time, I walked to the front of the church, proffered my dry, sticky tongue to the priest and then, in a single, fluid move, ducked down my head, glided to my seat like Martha-Goddam-Graham and secured the Son of God in my emptied travel sewing kit with a click.

I was glowing with anticipation, Jesus throbbing away in my pocket like a hunk of infidel kryptonite when I felt The Claw, my mother's hand, surprisingly strong, biting into my tiny, stick-like arm. The Voice of Death followed swiftly: Put. That thing. In. Your mouth. NOW!

When people harumph about the abysmal math and science scores of American girlhood, blaming the patriarchy or gender favoritism in the classroom or Malibu Barbie in her overaccessorized beach house, I feel like waving a plastic sewing kit in the air and crying out No! It's ignorance! It's fear! It's the smothering of the exploratory impulse by the frightened executors of the status quo! I especially feel like doing this on those rare occasions where death (or death by sacred union) finds me in a church. Also, I itch like a sonofabitch, and in places I cannot safely scratch in a House of God.

The Church and me, you see, we are not so much for each other. Which brings me to the second incident, far briefer (thank GOD) and more to the point.

One day, while sitting in church, bored out of my skull, it occurred to me that these people around me, standing and sitting and kneeling, actually believed. They believed that Jesus was the Son of God, born of man. They believed that he was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead. They believed he was coming back at some point, and that anyone who wasn't in this room was in for it when that came down.

I would like to say that from that moment on, I was free. That on a cool, gray Sunday morning at Holy Name Cathedral on Chicago Avenue in 1970, I pulled my head out of my ass, saw the light, and was free.

Alas, it was not so. I was weak; I was nine. Divorce, its attendant difficulties and one particularly scary nun had already stripped me of whatever fragile self-esteem I'd managed to build up thus far. I saw the light, alright. And then I quickly stuck my head back where it couldn't get me in any trouble. It would take another 32 years, worlds of pain and a cosmic whomp in the gut for me to extricate it once and for all. 32 years. Oy, what a waste.

I'm not sure if talking about what I went through and what I learned from it will help anyone, but I feel like it's wasteful to not try. I started my blog two years ago with the vague notion of getting some of what was inside of me out there for other people to see. It seems to have worked, here and there, but it's time to make a larger effort. These words are one small part of that effort.

One small, pompous, but incredibly earnest effort.

Be well. Be strong. But mostly, don't be like me...

xxx c

NOTE: I'm doing this elsewhere, and this entry will probably be the only cross-post to the blog. I hesitated even putting it up here, but I figured if I'm going to be true to my word, I not only have to be transparent, but tell people where they can see (through) me. We now return you to your regularly scheduled communicatrix...

Photo by toxickaty via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Big Yellow Taxi

I'll be honest: I prefer those periods characterized by boundless energy and the fruitful activity that accompanies it to the doldrums. But I learn more from the latter.

Yes, once again, my colon has decided to show me who's boss. It's a benevolent dictator, really: provided I toe the party line, I get to keep my fine job, spacious apartment and weekend dacha by the lake. But when I decide to be a spoiled brat and assert my right to individual expression in the form of forbidden carbohydrates and intensely caffeinated beverages, I get my ass kicked. Literally.

The good news is I'll finally get a semi-scientific read on how well these toxic immunosuppressants work to keep the bugs at bay vs. the diet. I have The Good Insurance through the end of the year, so tomorrow, I'm scheduling what will be the last of my free-ride colonoscopies for some time. And since this is the first time I'm getting one when (a) I'm on meds for reals and (b) I'm mad cheating on the SCD, I'll finally have actual, visual proof of what my gut has been telling me (literally) for a long time: I do better off carbs AND meds.

Not that my beloved-if-blinded-by-Big-Medicine GI docmeister will agree with me. But since I will pretty much be my own health insurance for the foreseeable future, his vote doesn't count for much anymore...

xxx c

Photo by esselNYC via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

visiting my furniture

I caught up with my past today. More specifically, I caught up with my ex-husband, whom I have dubbed for some time (with affection, usually...sometimes) the Chief Atheist of the West Coast.

I was but a girl of 28 when I met him, which is to say, I was a complete moron with my head so far up my ass, I could have given myself a colonoscopy had the lighting been a bit better. Long ago, I figured out his half of the responsibility for things tanking; it has only been in the last three or four years that I've not only accepted my own, but fully understood it.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable visit, which was not entirely surprising, since we were and are both very funny people. (Humble, too!) What was surprising, and pleasantly so, was the utter and complete feeling of relaxation about the event. For the first time in...oh, 15 or so years, nobody had an agenda and everyone was there to listen. Myself included. I was not always the paragon of communication I am today; in fact, much as Tom Leykis often says he understands the sh*t people do to each other because he has done it all, en route to becoming the communicatrix, I erred in pretty much every way one can when it comes to knowing yourself, hipping the rest of the world to it and sticking to your guns.

The only weirdish part of today's field trip was an unscheduled stop at The Chief Atheist's crib. He'd become a homeowner since we split up and was rightly proud of it, this ain't an easy market for non-millionaires to break into.

The place itself was perfectly nice and not weird at all (the restroom was a particularly welcome sight), but it was mighty strange to visit furniture and mementos I'd spent so much time around in previous lives. The Chief Atheist was a great fan of my paternal grandparents and inherited quite a few pieces when they passed on; seeing the tables and chairs I'd eaten Jell-O on as a five-year-old was more than I was prepared to deal with on a random Tuesday morning.

I am not friends with all of my ex-es. I'm not even sure I would like to be. The Chief Atheist and I agreed that the meeting was nice and that in a perfect world, other such meetings would happen maybe 2 or 3 times a year.

And that was that. I came, I caffeinated, I drove to Trader Joe's, where my conversation with the checker about the ongoing lack of Gerolsteiner (they're mid-repackaging, apparently) was just as drama-laden as the one I'd just come from with the man I was married to for 8 1/2 years.

It was a nice place to visit. Now that neither one of us wants to live there anymore...

xxx c

Photo © Linda Plaisted via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

What's your mantra?

If I were Carly, surely the title of this post would have been, "I forgot my mantra" (and the subhead, "And stop calling me 'Shirley'").

If I were Neil, it might have been, "Mantra, schmantra."

If I were Brandon...hell, I dunno. He's got about 40 IQ points on me. Maybe "/mantra"?

But I am me, and my mantra is this:

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

Now I know it's not a mantra in the traditional, Buddhic sense: a set of words used during meditation to provide a point of focus. I mean it in the more Westernized sense of a credo or motto, something I feel sums up who I am, what I'm working on and what I believe in.

But it is a half-assed mantra of sorts, in that I tend to use it, to actually say it aloud, or 'aloud' in my head, when I get into a tight place. And yeah, to complete the circle of craziness, 9 times out of 10 I find myself in that tight place because of my adherence to the credo/motto/mantra.

It's also more like a mantra in that it was cosmically gifted to me, not because I was hunting it down in Bartlett's. In fact, it came up so organically, I was pretty sure I thought it up myself, and was mighty proud of myself for being such a smarty.

Of course, I didn't. Via the magic of Google, I discovered that opera singer Beverly Sills had coined the phrase, which means I probably stumbled upon it first sometime in the '70s or '80s, when my mantra would have been something exactly the opposite, if my head were far enough out of my ass at that point to even have a mantra.

To seal the deal, my ersatz mantra was a natural progression from something I laid full claim to. For as long as I can remember anyone asking, which probably was sometime around the beginning of my sophomore year in college (a.k.a. that time in your life when you officially begin Pompous Ass-hood), my ready answer to the question "what is your pet peeve?" was "wasted potential".

(I think this is where Brandon and his 40 extra IQ points would type "/barfs".)

I have no idea if this will remain my mantra to my dying day, unless of course, that day comes way earlier than I'm planning on. But it's a good enough one to hold me: short, strong and sensible. Easy to follow, too. Except, of course, when it isn't.

Then again, that's the whole point of a mantra...

xxx c

More great pearls from Beverly, here.

Photo by Dave Gorman via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

The dreaded dread, redux

Just when I thought it had been forever vanquished, I felt a bout of the Dreaded Dread coming on again. You know the drill:

• I can't open this bill.
• I can't bring up how I want to change the blog: I'll get fired.
• I know I'm going to get screwed by this online vendor.
• Sweet baby Jeebus, not a rollerskating party.
• I'll never get rid of this damned cold.

Whatever the reason, age, experience, a super-clean apartment, I felt the dread and did it anyway. And lo, a series of amazing results:

• The bill was high...but not as bad as the dread.
• I brought it up...and was thanked for doing so.
• I emailed (politely) anyway...and got a full credit.
• It was horrible; it was magical.
• I'm still sick.

Well, four out of five ain't bad.

Hell, the fifth ain't that bad, either.

Hell's-bells-Little-Nell! Maybe it was the cold that brought on this can-do, Calvinist/Pollyanna attitude.

Nah. It's the clean apartment...

xxx c

If anyone knows who took the awesome photo above and (I think) posted it to Flickr, please let me know so I can give credit. I somehow forgot to the first time, too. Groan...dread...groan...

Cleaning My Damned Apartment, Day 21: The sprint that winded me

You would think it would be easier to clean your damned apartment than to adjust your mood. Yet this second of my 21-day salutes was way, way harder, and not just because I'm a slob.

Making the first meditation about something as obvious as focusing on the happy made the process of writing about it much more straightforward. I either had an obvious blessing conk me on the head or I was tasked with taking something, anything, and finding the good in it. Either way, a relatively easy writing process.

To write about cleaning? Harder. Much, much harder. I know that there are people who make a nice living writing about cleaning (more so, probably, than the people who actually clean), but I wasn't interested in "just" writing about cleaning. (Although I was happy to give people a few pointers...Neil.)

This whole here blog thing is about process. Specifically, about taking the parts of my process that I can share and doing so, in the hope that some lucky soul will either enjoy the telling of it or learn from my foibles and foible not themselves. Both, if we're lucky.

It's my process, too, of course. But what I was doing wasn't so easy to clarify until yesterday, on Day 20 of this maddening cleaning thing, when I was on the phone with Lily and she casually brought up how she was enjoying the blog lately because I seemed to have found a way "to externalize my process."

Which just goes to show you: wisdom is like the perfect stiletto heel, you'll never find it when you're out there looking. You just have to sit back, relax and trust that eventually, when the time is right, it'll find its way to you...

xxx c

Photo by Esther17 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Cleaning My Damned Apartment, Day 20: I can see and hear clearly now

After being out of town and just plain out of commission, today found me both home and feeling over my cold enough to catch up with my beloved Lily.

I made a decision awhile ago to stop multitasking during real phone conversations, since it's not possible for me to have a quality talk with split focus. But I find I get mad spilkes when I have to sit and focus with no visual stimulus or physical activity. I'm okay if I'm hanging out with a friend and we're 'just' talking, I'm okay driving a car and listening to the radio, but I cannot JUST sit and talk on the phone or JUST sit and listen to music. (Oddly, I can just sit and watch a movie or even TV, but I feel sick if I JUST watch TV. That might be JUST conditioning, though, Ole Golly and my mom felt pretty much the same way about the idiot box.)

Anyway, I'd been Getting To Empty in preparation for my trip tomorrow, but that required mental energy, which I wanted to have fully focused on Lily. I stopped as soon as I got on the phone, but sitting still was starting to make me panicky. Not good.

Then, while I was up getting a drink of water, I absentmindedly picked up a sponge and started cleaning the window screen in the kitchen. Instantly, I felt my focus return, laser-like, to our conversation. So I got out the all-purpose cleaner and wiped down the vertical blinds. And then the glass cleaner and cleaned all the slats so they could go back into the jalousie windows for fall.

And lo, an hour and a half later, not only were Lily and I massively caught up on events large and small over the past month, my whole apartment looked amazing.

Everybody wins.

Despite my highly competitive nature, that really is my favorite thing...

xxx c

Photo by webschepper via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Cleaning My Damned Apartment, Day 18: Staying Afloat

If you've been keeping up (and if you haven't, why not?!), you know that I timed this particular 21-day 'salute' a little poorly, forgetting that I had a three-day conference that would fall squarely in the middle.

The point of these 'salutes', for me, anyway, because I can't speak for you, dear reader, is to replace an old habit with a new one: in this case, letting things get wildly out of control rather than taking care of things day by day, bit by bit, and tackling the bigger things as time allows.

So far, I'm pleased to say, it's been working. Especially given the presence of an additional, trash-generating human being on the premises for the last week, things stayed remarkably under control. Committing to a few daily tasks helped enormously; knowing the bed was made, the dishes done each night, the trash emptied went a long way towards both peace of mind and general crap level.

I picked up some bug in the desert, so I doubt I'll get much major cleaning done in the home stretch. But the habit seems to be in place, so I also doubt I'll be left with a trash heap to sort through when I'm finally feeling 100% again. I'm not pushing too hard; I'm doing what I feel up to, mainly the dishes, the bed and some minor clutter-clearing.

And I'm asking for help when I need it. The BF was working on some pretty tight deadlines yesterday, but was still gracious to step up and use one of his 10-minute breaks to do the dishes when I asked. He even took the trash downstairs completely unprompted, thereby making himself even smoking-hotter in my eyes than he was before.

So that's my takeaway thus far from this little experiment: (a), slow and steady wins the race.

And (b), you will get laid better and more often if you learn to take out the trash on your own steam...

xxx c

Image by chrysophylax via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Cleaning My Damned Apartment, Day 17: Poetry Thursday edition

That stack of papers.

You know, that stack.

The one you've been stumbling over
on the way to the bed
for four months,
since you dropped them there...

The one that went from white
to dusty gray
to black with hair,
both yours
and the dust bunnies'...

The one
you put down
for just
one
second...

Today
I moved that stack of papers
to a permanent home
in a covered, plastic bin
in its own semi-private sector
of the closet.

Of course
by "permanent"
I mean
"until next time"

If there's one thing I've learned
since I started this thing,
it's that nothing
lasts forever

Especially dusting...
xxx
c

Photo by Douglas - westbound via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Cleaning My Damned Apartment, Day 13: Time to make the doughnuts

There wasn't a lot of time to tackle new cleaning projects yesterday: it was mostly about clearing project-projects off of my desk. Which I did, to the tune of three.

I even unloaded a couple of fresh packs of address labels I'd never gotten around to using on one of my more beloved clients, the fabulous Miz Jones, after we played cut-and-paste with the mock-up of our latest magnum opus: a presentation leave-behind for potential backers of her latest opera, Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands.

No, yesterday was not about me tackling Mr. Skanky Fridge or me scrubbing out the bathtub (which desperately needs it, I mean, ew!) But as I blasted through my to-do list before heading out to a friend's wedding with The BF, I did note how, just over halfway through this experiment, things are subtly starting to shift for me. Because the one thing I have been adamant about through this process is keeping up with the little things.

Like making my bed, every day.

Like emptying the clean dishes from the drainer, every morning.

Like clearing my desktop, both computer and real world, of detritus, every night.

It's keeping me calmer. It's giving me breathing room and space to create. It's, I swear to you, making me more productive.

I used to hate routine chores. To me, they felt like just another iteration of the hobgoblin of little minds. But I had the quotation wrong: it's foolish consistency that's the hobgoblin. Some habits, kindness, thoughtfulness, mindfulness, are excellent habits that provide a foundation for great things in life.

Now I see these annoying little tasks as kindnesses I lavish upon myself: small gifts of time and attention to make me feel good. And maybe, just maybe, by making my tiny world a little better and myself feel a little more tended to, I send a happier me out to interact with the world. And then (ohboyohboyohboy) maybe I'm actually making the world a little better of a place for everyone else to live in.

So today, I will wash my morning dishes. Brush my teeth. Empty the trash. (I've made the bed already.) And not with a heavy heart, but by choice, because having these things done makes every part of life better.

And then, I'll get back to work, also by choice. On Labor Day.

Because then, on some random Tuesday afternoon or Thursday morning, I can play.

Consistent wisdom sprinkled with inconsistent foolishness, that's the ticket...

xxx c

Photo by X-travaluemeal#2 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.