"Thank you, sir! May I have another!?"™, Day 09: Dumped

This is Day 9 of a 21-day effort to see the good in what might, at first, look like an irredeemable drag. Its name comes from a classic bit of dialogue uttered by actor Kevin Bacon in a classic film of my generation, Animal House.

It goes without saying that your primary relationships don't work out until they do. Or, until one does.

On the other hand, I really can't accept the idea that all of one's previous relationships, at least, those that didn't end because of death, are failures by dint of their ending. No, they didn't work out, if by "work out" you mean "last forever" (again, the widowed exempted); is that to say there was no good in them? Or even no good in the act of being dumped itself?

Honestly, there was not ever much good that came out of the ending of most of my relationships. Whether I clung on until the bitter end (and the shameful examples are both legion and incredibly dull) or walked away from something I had not much attachment to in the first place, there was little I gained from the experience of the break itself. For most of my life, I maintained my bizarrely binary form of primary relationship: toxic attachment or none at all. (Hello, Adult Children of Alcoholics!)

That is, until the end of my time with The Surfer.

There were some weirdnesses to our relationship from the get-go, we knew each other through mutual friends and yet met online, there was an oddly jarring three-week break about a week into the proposition due to a long-planned trip without cell access, but overall, signs were good. We'd both been shrunk. We'd both had long-term, live-in relationships. There was age-appropriateness, a new thing for me since The Youngster. We liked enough of the same things, aligned on the fundamentals, yet had a distinct areas of expertise. Significant Areas of Overlap, as I like to say. Plus, things were good in and out of the sack, and our respective friends didn't recoil in horror upon seeing us together.

So I didn't even see the detachment happening. Not until it had been in progress for a couple of weeks. I did note some moodiness and irritability, but I was used to this: I date smart dudes, and depression is the cost of admission. Besides, there he was, as attentive as ever. Just...moody.

But at what I now put at three weeks into The Shift in Winds, I got that Tug. You know the Tug: that thing in your gut that pulls upward a little bit, to let you know it's there. And that something is most likely rotten in Denmark.

It was at this juncture that I did something kind of, okay, completely new to me: I asked what was wrong. And in a way that left no doubt I expected a straight answer, no matter what that answer was.

Whatever veil or fog had been there vanished with his words: his feelings toward me lacked the depth he thought should be there. His exact words. Meaning, he did not love me, nor did he think that any loving of me by him was imminent, if in the cards at all. In the parlance of a soon-to-be-released book (which I read weeks after the breakup, cover to cover, standing up at Borders), he was just not that into me.

I sat there on the other end of the line, taking it in: the words, this scenario, our tone. It was so civilized, this question-and-answer method. Perhaps this was a new, grown-up kind of relationship. Perhaps...

We talked some more, and agreed to go out the next evening, as planned. Because I am so goddam civilized. And modern. Look at me, being modern! Playing things by ear, seeing where they go. No expectations, no demands. Communicating. Compromising. Downshifting to neutral. Brilliant.

This newfound state lasted less than 48 hours, when I found myself at my thrice-weekly session with Warren, the Forrest Gump of personal trainers. We were used to gossiping at length about his relationship predicaments; now that the tables were turned, our conversation was quite brief:

Forrest Gump: What are you going to deeeew?

the communicatrix: I don't know.

Forrest Gump: Well, what does your guuuut tell you to deeeew?

the communicatrix: (beat) Break up with him.

Forrest Gump: (shakes head, adjusts weight on quad machine) I always say, you cain't go wrong if you go with your guuut...

Hard to argue with logic like that.

I drove straight to The Surfer's, put my few belongings in a little lunch sack, and that, as we say, was that. No long, lingering death of what was a perfectly good relationship. No mutual torture sessions. My therapist, who had braced herself for a long, cold winter, was stunned speechless when I gave her the news the next week.

The mourning didn't last long, either, largely, I suspect, because I'd taken responsibility for my own happiness. A few weeks of crying, a few weeks of hostility, a few months of, um, recreation, and then bam!, in walks The BF.

You can feel bad about being dumped, or about things ending badly (because let's face it, seldom do they end delightfully.) That's mostly what I did, all those years. No harm, no foul.

And then maybe one day, you can take all the heartache from all those breakups and turn it into learning. Something useful, in other words, something to really and truly be thankful for. In my case, there was definitely an assist from many years of shrinkage that I was ready to put into action. So I would like to thank my shrinks for that.

But I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank every single one of you who dumped me. Even if I took it badly. Hell, especially if I took it badly. Not just because it made my present relationship with The BF possible, but because it made the me I am today possible.

You really do learn more from your mistakes. That is, when you're finally ready to learn from them...

xxx
c

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

"Thank you, sir! May I have another!?"™, Day 08: Baldy

This is Day 8 of a 21-day effort to see the good in what might, at first, look like an irredeemable drag. Its name comes from a classic bit of dialogue uttered by actor Kevin Bacon in a classic film of my generation, Animal House.

In my family, we were not blessed with good teeth and gums, cancer resistance genes, chemical balances predisposing us to happiness, or a low tolerance for alcohol: we got hair.

I'm not talking nice hair: I'm talking great hair. Hair of the gods. Breck-Girl hair. Movie star hair. Curly or straight or frizzy or wavy, male or female, dark brown or red or blond (and eventually, perfect snowy white), whatever our particular flavor of hair, we have shitloads of it. The kind of hair that turns heads, you'll pardon the expression. That causes overheating in summer. Hair whose drying time alone provides a for-real all-night excuse to stay in.

Sometimes I would crab about my hair's unruliness or color. I went from beautiful, stick-straight blond hair as a baby to crazy, Roseanne Rosannadanna pubes as an adolescent. And in the Chicago weather that I spent most of my life in, hardier hair than mine has a mind of its own. But most of the time, I didn't give my hair a thought.

Until, of course, it started falling out.

The first round of thinning I attributed to stress and sympathetic hair loss. Out of the blue, my mom was diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer which had metastasized to her lungs. Well, it wasn't really out of the blue: that crazy alcoholic mistress of denial hid the massive swelling in her leg from the rest of us with her hideously frumpy long skirts for a long, long time. But it was a death sentence, and for the 18 months from DX to death, I was a mass of stress.

But after some time had passed, and I got over her death (and the deaths, in rapid succession, of my beloved grandparents), the hair came back. And stayed back, even through what I now know as my own long, slow onset of Crohn's disease. (For the record, I was not in denial about said onset, but the recipient of some borderline unethical care from a particular colorectal surgeon. Live and learn.)

In fact, I looked my absolute freakiest (I thought) when my weight had dropped to its almost-nadir and my crazy-thick hair was dyed almost-black for a play in which I was cast as a Bulgarian art curator. Photographic proof of said period above, from the only headshot session I ever had where absolutely none of the photos were usable. I wept when I saw myself in them.

I even hung onto my beloved hair in the hospital during the 11-day incarceration. The steroid drip I was on didn't kick in, hair-loss-wise, until I got home. And then, on oral meds, my hair started falling out in earnest. By the handful. It would fall out when I washed it, when I dried it, when I brushed it. It would pretty much leap from my head whenever and wherever. I distinctly remember my good friend, Mark the Carpenter, over to help retrofit my apartment during my invalid phase, coming up from a brief rest on the floor with a rat's nest of long black hair woven into his fingers and a look of horror on his face. Steroids and hair do not mix. And as long as I'm on them or any immuno-suppressants, it would now appear, I will lose hair.

My GI doc doesn't believe it. He sees plenty of hair still. And he is a man, grateful for any hair at all on his head. (For the record, he has a lovely head of hair and a handsome face to match). But I know. I am baldy, and that's how it is. My crowning glory is gone, quite possibly for good.

So what, you might ask, is the good in that?

Tolerance. Acceptance. Understanding. In the same way that my newfound muffin top has made me more tender-hearted towards people who might be carrying a few (or a lot of) extra pounds, my hair loss and the corresponding reduction in feminine beauty status has made me far, far more generous and accepting of the less-obviously beautiful. Don't get me wrong: I was never a raving beauty like my mother or grandmothers; but with makeup and effort, I could "pass." And even without effort, I'm rather ashamed now to count off the many blessings I took for granted.

No more. I both care less about things that mattered so much so long ago, and am more appreciative of what's left. I'm guessing that some of this is the gift of wisdom that time brings, but I also know myself. And I am about as stubborn and slow-learning a fella as ever was born to woman.

So thank you, my crazy, kamikaze hairs. Eventually I may have to shave you off entirely like the mens do. Let's hope that my ginormous head isn't as weird and lumpy as I'm afraid it might be.

Or let's hope it is. My, what an adventure in learning that would be...

xxx
c

Photo of me, circa July 2002, by Tom Lascher. Dreadful, large size gives you a better idea of how sick I really looked at the time.

"Thank you, sir! May I have another!?"™, Day 07: The effect of divorce on BFFs

This is Day 7 of a 21-day effort to see the good in what might, at first, look like an irredeemable drag. Its name comes from a classic bit of dialogue uttered by actor Kevin Bacon in a classic film of my generation, Animal House.

One of the most profound and difficult changes I went through in my adult life was the return to single-hood from married-land. And while that change alone (no pun intended) was weird and discomfiting from time to time, the big shock came with the loss of our friends, most of whom, as it turned out, were not "ours," but his.

I guess it shouldn't have been entirely unexpected. Long before he was Chief Atheist of the West Coast he was That Guy Everyone Wants to Hang Out With. Jim was, is, I'm sure, not only a natural extrovert, but exceptionally good at cultivating relationships. He had a great high/low thing going, so he was liked by all but the kind of snobs sane people want nothing to do with in the first place. He also placed a premium on friendship, carving out huge amounts of time for connecting, supporting and just hanging with friends and relatives. And he had a lot of both.

I, on the other hand, naturally gravitated towards being alone. I've always had a few very close friends, a varying number of acquaintances I'd see or hear from infrequently, and almost no interest in my own family, save a very few exceptions. I loved having the relationships, or the fruit of them, the wild & woolly "orphans" Thanksgivings, the bowling meetups, the penny-ante poker games and parties and such; I just hated the getting. And the upkeep. And...

Anyway, the division of labor in our household worked well: he created the friendships and led; I played hostess and followed. The result was that we were always surrounded by terrific people and our gatherings kicked some Martha Stewart-ass.

No one was exactly mean to me after the split, something I now know was at least partly due to my ex-husband's refusal to let people speak ill of the dead. (A policy that I did not share, I'm ashamed to say.) I got a little flak of the "you're crazy" variety, but I understand that from the outside, you never have quite the view you do from the inside, and I accept that. But not a lot of haranguing. Mostly, people just...disappeared.

It was a tough adjustment, realizing that not only were my beloved in-laws gone (something I absolutely expected) but so was my entire support network. Since my best friends were 2,000 miles away in Chicago, I turned to the people I knew...but didn't know. It felt strange and false, this "insta-friends" thing. Most bonding does in the beginning.

My new boyfriend had a circle of friends, too. Most of them embraced me, which was nice, but I wanted more for myself after going through the turmoil of losing everything. ("Everything" being friends, I was dying to offload the possessions of my past). I worked at making friends of my own, of building my own circle on my own terms. And I did a fair job of it. When that relationship crashed and burned, I found myself with a good web of support, some of whom actually included friends I'd made through The Youngster.

I wouldn't wish the emotional turmoil I went through in those three-odd years on anyone. At the same time, like so much of the crap I've been through, it made the excellence I enjoy today possible. I am more open, more appreciative, more aware, and yes, more outgoing than I was when my emotional needs were being met in the one-stop-shopping scenario I created for myself via marriage.

Being friendless taught me how to be a friend. Funny how that works.

xxx c

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

"Thank you, sir! May I have another!?"™, Day 06: And you are...?

This is Day 6 of a 21-day effort to see the good in what might, at first, look like an irredeemable drag. Its name comes from a classic bit of dialogue uttered by actor Kevin Bacon in a classic film of my generation, Animal House.

I'd never actually been to a Learning Annex class. I'd only laughed at the course catalogs and the sad pipe dreams they seemed to represent: Making Big Money; Meeting Your Perfect Mate; Mastering Photoshop.

But something about the course description forwarded to me by a friend caught my eye, "Turn your writing into a column?" Hell, I have enough writing out there and in me for a thousand columns. And it was time to monetize with the help of the experts!

When I walked up to the room, I was sure I was in the wrong place. There was some mistake. Not only did the class seem to be underway, it just didn't look like the place where I was going to learn to monetize anything. It looked small and brightly lit and vaguely sad, like most for-rent offices in most office parks at 6:45 at night.

The instructor was great, though. Very welcoming, very passionate and fun and full of life. So I thought, Hey, I'll play. And so, when the time came 'round for me to summarize who I was (the communicatrix!) and what I did (translate truth into various media since 1961!) I did it with passion and vigor. And was met with the stares of 50 uncomprehending eyes.

I suck at summing myself up. Me, the great translator. Me, the creator of designs and logos, the teller of tales, the relatrix of stories that keep 'em coming back for more. I suck suck suck on the subject of me and what I do.

So I sat there for the rest of the class, egg on my face, smoldering with the shame of it all. Of being smacked down. Of listening to person after person describe, SUCCESSFULLY and SUCCINCTLY, who they were and what their column was and how it would change the world. Hell, I would read their columns; I sure as shit wouldn't read mine. Translating truth into various media since 1961? Who the fuck gives a flying fucking rat's fuck in hell about that, I ask you?!?

It hit me hard in that class: yes, I have some native talent and skill. Yes, I have passion and an urge to change the world. Yes, I even have (god help me) credentials of some kind. But if I don't hunker down and get specific about it, if I can't serve up what it is in a way that is immediately clear and compelling to people, I will struggle along with my small audience of intrepid souls and lost Googlers. (Really lost, most of them.)

Thank you, Learning Annex. Thank you, my teachers. Thank you, humiliation, for the lesson in...well, humility.

Onward.

And hey, I'm not proud: if any of you have any idea of how to sum up what it is I do, or even better, what it is you get out of these words I put out there, please.

I am all ears. (And one big head...)

xxx
c

Image by thomas_s1w via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

"Thank you, sir! May I have another!?"™, Day 05: Fathead

This is Day 5 of a 21-day effort to see the good in what might, at first, look like an irredeemable drag. Its name comes from a classic bit of dialogue uttered by actor Kevin Bacon in a classic film of my generation, Animal House.

When I was little, I thought I was Audrey Hepburn.

I thought we were dead ringers, in fact, and that when I grew up, I would probably be mistaken for her at the Stop & Shop ("Hey! What's Audrey Hepburn doing at the Stop & Shop?"), wear fabulous clothes and live a life of glamor and excitement (I did sort of mix up Audrey and her characters.) Here's what was similar:

• Audrey Hepburn and I were both painfully thin
• Audrey Hepburn and I both had proportionally large eyes for our heads
• Audrey Hepburn and I both had proportionally large heads for our bodies

Unfortunately, that's where the similarities ended. I had imagined that because I had these things, I also possessed Hepburn-esque grace, charm, beauty and lovely, swan-like neck.

I still remember the heartbreaking day my illusions were shattered. Apropos of nothing notable, my exceptionally beautiful mother made a wistful and admiring comment about Audrey Hepburn's swan-like neck. I smiled to myself, preening a bit, waiting for the inevitable followup: "Like yours, honey, oh, I wish I had the same lovely, swan-like neck you and Audrey have!"

Instead she just looked at me, the What? look. Then, probably (reasonably, really) thinking an eight-year-old couldn't possibly understand the significance of a swan-like neck, she elaborated, demonstrating by pantomiming against her own neck: "You know, long and thin, not stubby and thick...like ours."

I had to reassess. And when I did, the news was not good. I did not, in fact, look like Audrey Hepburn. I was short and bowlegged and lantern-jawed. Worse, if you looked at us side-by-side, you could clearly see that Audrey's head was perfectly proportioned to her perfect frame; it was my head that was the gargantuan freakshow.

So really, I was just painfully thin with unusually big eyes for my head and an unusually big head for my body, like...Nancy Reagan. Or Sneezy.

Sigh.

For years, I publicly mocked and privately bemoaned my big, freakin' freak head. The way I figured it, it was a smarter move to preempt any mockery, to own my stubby, big-headed, funny-looking-ness. But really, I wanted to be pretty. To be elegant. To be graceful.

To be Audrey Hepburn.

Two things finally cured me of this. First, reading about Audrey Hepburn's third act, the one where she became a tireless advocate for UNICEF, traveling around the world on behalf of the children. She was no-muss, no-fuss about the whole thing, including the clothes. In one article, the provenance of which I no longer remember (but knowing me, it was People, not The New York Times) she specifically mentioned one fact that shocked me: she traveled the globe with just one "fancy" outfit, all black and all, knowing her, Givenchy, but still. One small satchel of stuff to go to all those events, meet all those people, do all those things. She wasn't disdainful of her beauty, but it was, at this point, beside the point. She had used it while it was useful, and now she applied her additional usefulness to causes and interests which obviously truly moved her.

Second, someone, and I wish I could remember who, because I owe them a Coke, pointed out to me that a preponderance of successful TV and film actors have big heads. It was early on in my life, way before I'd thought such a career might be possible for myself, but somewhere in my own head, it stuck (hey, it's not like I was short the space for it.) And when I finally did start acting, I knew that the combination of all those years as a copywriter + my gigantic noggin' meant that whatever else, I could probably count on commercial acting as a source of income to get me through.

Which, as many of my readers know, I did.

So thank you, Sextons and Weinrotts, for the dominant big cranium genes. So what if I'm 7 1/4"? So what if I have to grow out my hair an extra six inches to get it into a ponytail?

So what if I am not Audrey Hepburn? Do we need another one? Hadn't the original done a bang-up job of it already?

My big head = my big career: eight years of decent wages and great health care and tremendous life experience to get me to the next thing. To my second act.

To my third act.

Which, if I'm very, very lucky, will be half as good as Audrey's.

xxx
c

Sketch by me for Illustration Friday. This week's theme: Hats.

"Thank you, sir! May I have another!?"™, Day 04: The Doormat of the Ivy League

This is Day 4 of a 21-day effort to see the good in what might, at first, look like an irredeemable drag. Its name comes from a classic bit of dialogue uttered by actor Kevin Bacon in a classic film of my generation, Animal House.

I like to describe my pre-college academic trajectory as an eight-year rocket to the moon...followed by four years of slumming with a bong in my hand and a thumb up my ass.

Well, okay, the bong was sometimes a bottle of Boone's Farm's finest (Tickle Pink, natch) and maybe my thumb was only lodged up there for a total of two and a half years.

No matter the vehicle: the damage to my GPA was done, and with it, my admissions prospects. One does not write one's own ticket with a B+ average, no matter how many forensics awards one has tucked away next to the bong.

It shouldn't have mattered; my grades were more than good enough to get me into any number of fine schools, but somehow, I'd got it in my head that I was supposed to go to Yale. Where, I've no idea: I do have a vague recollection of one of the child characters in Suzuki Beane, one of my favorite books as a five-year-old, sporting a Yale sweatshirt well before I knew the meaning of irony or the existence of the Ivy League, so perhaps that did it. It wasn't my family, though, that much I know. Mom basically got an M-r-s at a small, Catholic women's college, and from all reports, Dad's biggest contribution to his alma mater was firmly establishing it as one of the country's premier party schools.

So I applied to Yale. And to Colorado, as my safety school (hey! I'd be a party legacy!). And, for no reason other than it popped out at me while I was paging through the ginormous college directory Mom had foisted on me, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Since I'd done it backwards, the applying before the visits, there was really no reason to check out any of my putative "choices." I'd get in or I wouldn't, and really, when it came to Yale, what were my chances? But Dad and I made an East coast trip that spring, swinging through New Haven and Ithaca to check out the scene and interview with some administrative types.

May I say straight out that Yale was awful? Or perhaps, beyond awful? Not as an institution, we all know it's good like that. But the setting it's stuck in is hideous, and the venerable stone halls (at least, of the dorms I checked out) reeked of hundred-year-old (and fresher) piss. I knew I'd have to suck it up to make it four years there without falling into a severe depression. And yet, I was willing. Beyond willing, I was dying to go. To prove myself, although to what or whom I don't know. That's me, all right: always willing to forgo comfort and personal happiness in the vain hope of impressing some imaginary, future other.

I did not, as you doubtless figured out, get the opportunity. Yale didn't want me, and even if down deep I didn't want it either, if I knew that my stay there was destined to suck with the force of a thousand sucking things, I wanted it to want me anyway. I would have gone. I am that much of a jerk.

Instead, I went to Cornell, which did want me, or at least, didn't not want me enough to override a word from one of Dad's friends, a cherished alum. (Come on, even the doormat of the Ivy League can score far better than the likes of moi.) And went on to experience four of the greatest, weirdest, hardest, most productive learning years of my life.

So here's the dirty little truth to the whole story: from the moment I set eyes on those hills far above Cayuga's waters that spring of 1979, I wanted to go. Even with the freak foot-and-a-half of snow that greeted us on April Fool's Day, that kept all but the ugliest and most intrepid nerds inside, even with no more reason than that it had randomly popped up in a book of hundreds of schools. I fell madly in love with Cornell at first sight. It felt like everything I'd been waiting for; it felt like home.

And I was ready for forgo home for some pee-smelling, fancy-pants place that was completely wrong for me. I didn't know what my innermost voice was, much less have the sense to follow it. (It would be another 20-odd years before I'd start learning that.)

Thank you, Yale, for my Dear Jane letter. Thank you for doing what I was literally too stupid to do: the right thing.

For both of us...

xxx
c

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

"Thank you, sir! May I have another!?"™, Day 03: Getting the boot

This is Day 3 of a 21-day effort to see the good in what might, at first, look like an irredeemable drag. Its name comes from a classic bit of dialogue uttered by actor Kevin Bacon in the comedy classic of my generation, Animal House.

They say everyone gets fired from some job at some point in her life. Me? Hasn't happened yet from a paying gig, but I feel like I got my at-bat (or "yer OUT!") some 10 years ago, when I got the boot from the Groundlings Sunday Company.

For the uninitiated, those outside of that small, Hollywood/Chi-town/NYC sketch comedy triangle, let me explain: the Groundlings comedy improv troupe is basically a farm team for the majors. Today, with the proliferation of sketch and improv-based shows, there are lots of outlets, but back in my day, the Big Time meant SNL (for writers and actors) and network sitcoms (for writers.)

I didn't know this going in. I was what you might call a rube, or a hayseed, I definitely fell off a turnip truck, and it was definitely five minutes ago. I found myself at the Groundlings by accident, and found myself whooshing my way up the ladder there even more by accident. Really. Yes, I was, am, funny. And a good (and prolific) writer. But the Sunday Company I found myself in was populated by the likes of the fastest and funniest, people who'd been at this acting/sketch/writing thing for 10 years, many with school training, to boot. Fully half of our graduating "class" found itself in the employ of NBC at SNL a mere six months after I got the boot. I remember; I signed over the rights to two of my sketches to my co-writer/performer who had gone on to the Majors from my sad little day job. I cried a lot those couple of lunch hours.

Hell, I cried a lot, period. No one, my husband, our friends, even fellow Sunday Co. members, could believe how upset I was over being fired from something that wasn't a job, that didn't pay a dime. But you see, this was more than a shot for me: this is where I was when I decided I really did want to be an actor, and my being there, a part of this august group of almost-professionals, was the proof that I'd have a chance at it. The person who made that fateful call telling me I didn't make the cut might as well have told me I had pancreatic cancer: I spent the next six months alternating between crying and stoically awaiting my imminent death.

I'm still here, of course. And the reason I'm still here, that I ended up flourishing, that I learned how to really act and not just flail around on a stage for cheap laughs like the clueless wonder I was, is because I got the boot. I don't give up, you see; I hang in there and hang in there and hang in there even after Them What Knows have fled for higher ground. If they hadn't have booted me, I'd have stayed. Hell, I'd still be in grammar school if they'd have let it go on indefinitely. Not a fan of change, am I.

Being forced out also forced me to take a look at a few things: what was missing, what I wanted. What I felt. Funny, how long you can go without really asking yourself what you're feeling.

Forced to consider that perhaps wig-and-glasses monkeyshines was not the be-all, end-all, I began to explore other aspects of performance. Slowly, painfully, I learned how to act. And then, ultimately, I learned that acting wasn't particularly what I wanted. No matter, I needed to learn the acting part first, in order to grok it. No skipping steps.

I wish I could say I felt nothing but gratitude both for the opportunity and the result, but that would be a lie. It hurt. I hurt. I'm stubborn and pig-headed, qualities that trip me up as much as they get me through. So bad feelings die hard with me. I've been back to the theater to see lots of friends in other shows; I feel strange and ill at ease every time I cross the threshold.

It is not necessarily a bad thing. It is just a true thing.

And after all these years, the thing I know for sure above all is that if it is not the truth, it will not do for me.

So I thank you, anonymous Groundlings, for kicking me to the curb. That I have ultimately found so much happiness as a result makes me question who was responsible for the original feelings of unhappiness.

Well, not really. But you get the idea...

xxx
c

"Thank you, sir! May I have another!?"™ (A 21-Day Salute™)

This is Day 1 of a 21-day effort to see the good in what might, at first, look like an irredeemable drag. Its name comes from a classic bit of dialogue uttered by actor Kevin Bacon in the comedy classic of my generation, Animal House.

It's easy to be grateful when a pride of angels swoop down from the heavens and spoon-feed you chocolate pudding to the sound of winning lottery numbers sung in four-part harmony.

It is somewhat less easy when they do a fly by and take a collective crap on your head after an all-night angel pizza party.

But this is when we should try the hardest to cultivate a sense of gratitude, in mid-curse, reaching for the baby wipes. Not thanks for the poop, but for everything else around it: the two legs that hold us up as we walk down the street, putting us in the line of fire. Or the wheelchair, or the cart, or just the air in your lungs that's making you+day possible.

Plus, let's face it, it's those really nasty times that, in hindsight, bring with them the greatest lessons, and often, the greatest attendant gifts.

So for the next 21 days, as we ramp up for that holiest of holidays (non-U.S. readers, please play along), I'm going to be grateful for the crap: some that I know of; some whose magical beneficence remains to be seen.

Feel free to play along in the comments, or consider yourselves tagged to take it elsewhere. Or not. Maybe just read and think. Think about what good came out of the bad. Think about what crumbs, or nuggets...or, hell, vast washes of excellence still surround you.

Yes, there is much suckage. Yes, we must continue to fight the good fight. But how much better armed will we be with some fortifying gratitude?

A lot, I hope...

xxx c

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

Making things

I was going to sit down and talk about how hard the past week was...how draining.

And it was, in its way. For whatever reason, there was an abundance of drama over the past eight days, the missed deadlines, botched communication and general farkakte-ness that seems to accompany Mercury going retrograde. (I wonder, could things have been this messed up before I knew about such silly nonsense?)

There was also a paucity of rest. Social engagements out the wazoo, back-to-back, every day but one. Not light-hearted ones: thinking ones. Emotionally draining ones. Ones that required attention, a lot of driving, or both.

Like my ex-husband's wedding reception, where I was the surprise guest to a raft of folk who hadn't seen me since I lost them in the divorce eight years ago (let it never be said that my ex doesn't have a wicked sense of humor...or his new bride, for that matter). Like dinner with the one friend of my dad's who stood by my sister and me in the ugly, ugly aftermath of his death. Most devastatingly, like the memorial service for a brilliant 26-year-old artist who was stolen from the world too soon. It took three beers, The BF and a Harold Lloyd flick to talk me down from that last night.

I want to run and hide when it gets like this. I want to live in a place where it rains a lot and gets dark early, where I can bundle myself up in a scruffy, fluffy sweater and read books on the sofa with a bottomless mug of peppermint tea. Instead, I live in an overbuilt parking lot with fires breaking out at each end, wearing boxers against the heat and earplugs against the noise. And I have no upholstered furniture. Still.

Fret not, however, for in the midst of all this mishigoss, I am, bizarrely enough, happier than ever. There is work work work and feeling like you do not make a difference, and there is the other kind; right now, and for some time, I feel like I've been living the other kind. It's exhausting, but wonderful. Not particularly lucrative, even, but wonderful. I never felt this way after a day of wrangling copy. Never. Not once. And I did that for 10 years and a lot of money.

Still, this schedule is a brutal one to maintain, and something has to give. It's kind of been my health, which has to stop, and it's definitely been my "optional" writing, which also has to stop.

It's the optional-type writing, you see, that's made all this possible. I'm starting to get it now. So it really isn't optional at all for the life I want to live.

People: create. Make things. Think things and write them down, or tell them, or draw them. Note things and mull them over (or not) and pass them along (for sure.) When I get bone-tired like this, I can feel the pull to buy. It's odd; I feel it. Possibly other people feel the pull to watch TV (I used to feel that, although I'd never give it my full attention) or to play games. Consuming isn't inherently evil, but it leaves you more empty than full.

Tonight I made a (SCD-legal) pizza and this post. It was all I could muster after a long day of pushing pixels. But that pizza tasted better than anything I could get delivered.

And this post? Even better than that...

xxx c

Image by Sidereal--who is rapidly becoming a communicatrix staple, it seems--via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

"I quit!" or, the fallacy of sudden change

As a big ham from way back, I confess to being a fan of the dramatic gesture: the defiant, definitive, triumphant human equivalent of the exclamation point.

But the dramatic gestures that are so fabulous in, well...drama, usually fall flat, ring false or, worst of all, boomerang on you in real life. You piss people off unnecessarily and/or leave a mess to be dealt with later, either by others (various and sundry fallout) or yourself (egg on face).

(Just so we're clear, I'm talking more of the you-can't-fire-me-I-quit type of gesture rather than the symbolic (or actual) saving-the-puppy-from-the-burning-building gesture. Although sometimes the latter can backfire on you, too.)

What I'm ramping up here for is a little apologia. Long-time readers are familiar with my battle to stay on the SCD; long-time readers with good memories might even recall I specific instance where I declared that I was Done. My god, what fun that post was to post! I even got off on searching for the exact perfect depiction of the enemy to illustrate my hubris.

From my vantage point of 10 months down the road (and 10 lbs around the middle), it's easy to see the folly in pronouncements like that. I absolutely meant it at the time, though, and the feeling was so much like other times I had quit quit quit, how was I to know this would be the time I would not not not? Even the circumstances were the same, I pointed them out in the post:

Back in September of 1987, I met my friend, Karen Engler, for dinner in Lincoln Park. I asked her what was new and she entertained me with amusing anecdotes of her crazy job du jour.

She then asked me what was new; I said, “I quit smoking.”

“Really!?! When??!”

I checked my watch. “6:30,” I said.

Allowing for a few minor tweaks and edits for storytelling's sake, this is almost a verbatim exchange. And it stuck! I threw away a pack of cigarettees, told my friend about it at dinner that evening, and never smoked again! Well, there were a couple of drags off of friends' smokes some 15 years later, and a weird sometime-cigar during the height of my marriage (which coincided with the late-80s cigar-smoking fad), but okay, let's say one puff per year over spread out over those 15, and I only inhaled once.

So what happened with the SCD? For that matter, what happened with the GTD, the YBYY, the great decluttering project? I used to be a person who made up her mind and then got things done; where the hell did that person go?

The truth is, that person was a big, fucking pain in the ass. She was all about the black (or the white). She was ruthless in her pursuit of everything, to the exclusion of everything else. She was a girl out of balance. She succeeded, yes, but usually at the expense of something else. That girl could dot "i"s and cross "t"s and make pronouncements and be sure she was right, even if she wasn't.

That person stayed too late at work and too long in relationships (sometimes quitting is not quitting--there's a zen koan for you to suck on.)

That person put this person in the hospital. This person, on the other hand, with all her foibles and bobbles and missteps, with all her questioning and doubts and fears, with all of her warts and wrinkles and inconsistencies, got both of them out. Got them healthy. Got them happy. Got them writing and creating and yes, failing, too--sometimes gloriously, even.

There is no quit button; there might be a start, and maybe even a restart (or hell, you can learn the key combination pretty easily.) If I look back on the oh-so-clear examples of quitting, even that wasn't quitting: it was a point in the process of stopping one habit and picking up another, a slow process of change that began with a (failed) attempt at quitting some 12 years earlier (funny how I didn't blog about that part.)

I'm changing now; I guess you are, too. I guess everything is. And there are little things that end up being big things, and big things that end up being nothing to speak of.

The bad news is there's no guarantee. The 12-steppers got that right: one day at a time.

The good news is that the dramatic gestures you see other people make, the bad ones, like asshat traffic moves, temper tantrums, and other boorish behavior, don't mean we're all doomed. They just mean you caught the pimples on the ass of change. (Like that? I got a million of them.)

I can be forgiving. I can be tolerant.

I can start again right now.

Right now...

xxx c

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

The creeping, creeping bar

It is Sunday.

Late in the week, late in the day. For lady-reasons I won't get into, I've dramatically reduced my caffeine intake of late so it seems even later. And then there was that falafel for lunch, that pizza and beer for dinner. They didn't do much to perk me up and put me in a writin' mood.

There was also that vacation last week. Holy crap, that vacation. Which was great and wonderful and inspiring and realigning and all that good stuff, but did nothing for my work ethic. If anything, it drop-kicked it into the toilet and flushed twice (the cafeteria's a long way away, as the saying goes.)

But let's put food and rest and chemical imbalance out of the way, shall we? Because we know, or I do, and you will shortly, that none of these things are to blame for my reduced output of late, either here or elsewhere.

It's success, pure and simple.

For whatever reason, I've had a good run lately here on el bloggito. Not that anything's felt particularly good while I'm writing it, to the contrary, I've trembled the last few times I hit the "publish" button because I've wondered whether it was too: too angsty, too revealing, too showy, too plain, too revealing, too remote. And yet I've been getting some of the best feedback I've ever gotten, or gotten in a row. So what do you do for an encore when the medium demands one every...day? Two days? Week? Two weeks?

It's this damned competitive streak in me, is what it is. Even when there's no one to compete against, I compete against myself. A good speech or meeting or job can't just be enjoyed for what it is, not when it's really and truly good. Instead, it becomes the new yardstick by which all subsequent things will be judged. Especially the next one. A few times this past month, I have literally said a little prayer of thanksgiving that I did not meet with huge success in my youth, in Hollywood, in wherever. Few people have the head for it, and I'm not one of them. My head is so damned big naturally, it threatens to take over all the screen real estate available, at least vertically (moon-faced, I'm not.)

Of course, the flip side of big ego is no ego. All good or no good. There is precious little enjoyment of the "all" when you are intimate with the "no". "No" always lurks quietly in the background, ready to take you out with one swift, silent swoop of the baseball bat. And the higher the bar gets, the better you do, the worse the fear.

Some people, as I understand it, do not live with this. Good for you! Seriously, I would wish this on no one. It's mine to deal with, and the dealing with has gotten easier overall as time has worn on.

Still, there's that next job. That next speech. That next blog post. It shouldn't matter, it doesn't matter, really, not a whit, but there it is.

So it was with a heavy heart that Guilt and I made our usual way to the library on Friday. Another week, another seven days without those three chapters written. (That speech. That @#&* blog post.) We wandered to the new arrivals section and there were a few slim volumes of interest: that book Nora Ephron wrote about her neck, another from Walter Mosley about writing, period. We grabbed the first for schadenfreude and the second for instructions.

And the very first instruction?

The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day, every morning or every night, whatever time it is that you have.

Nothing new here, folks. The man is right. "There's no time to wait for inspiration." This sitting around fretting is as much a waste of good time as watching television. And we know how I feel about that.

This post may not be my best. Nor the next. Nor, sadly, the next 50. I may never, ever write a story as compelling as those I've already written. It's a risk I will have to take, every time I sit down to write again. I may suck, you may disappear, the best may all be behind us.

That does not relieve me, or you, for that matter, of putting pen to paper, metaphoric or otherwise, every morning of every day, just the same.

It is the doing. It is the trying. It is the showing up.

If we stop creating, we cease to exist. Or we just exist. And what's the fun of that? I'd much rather be here than have been here, no matter what levels of perfection are involved.

Well, okay. That's pretty much a total lie. But I'm going to keep showing up, all the same.

Hope you will, too...

xxx c

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

The Stone Soup House

For you busy types, here's the topline: the communicatrix is well rested, the happy couple is well (and legally) married and (surprise, surprise) I did not get half as much done as I thought I would on my merry jaunt up the coast.

For the rest of you, settle in. Because that last bit was the source of a lot of deep thinking over the past several days.

I thought about it as I gazed out the window at the view of all views, not doing the Important Writing I was sure the solitude would facilitate. I thought about it as I walked the six happy, hilly miles to get my cup of espresso from the village every day. And I thought about it quite a bit on the long and tedious drive home this afternoon.

One of the excellent civic truisms I learned from my ex-husband, Chief Atheist of the West Coast and World-Class Urban Driver from way back was "If you're passed on the right, you're wrong." Clearly, 95% of the people on the 101 S never had the Chief for their traffic school instructor. Between the uptick in asshats and the population boom overall, what used to be a beautiful drive is now little more than a colossal pain in the ass, at least for sadly long stretches.

Get mad at the people for being in the way. Get mad at me for not being perfect. Expect things to be different without really changing. How ridiculous I can be! How amazing it is that anyone at all listens to a thing I say! How fortunate it is that I have my monthly shrink appointment in two days to sort out some of this mess!

Of course, the heavy lifting of shrinkage is done outside of the 50-minute hour. You get assignments and perspective for those 50 minutes, but you do the work on your own. Or you'd better, unless you like wasting time and annoying the pig. And I have done a bunch of mine this week, even if it wasn't the Important Writing kind.

• I spent a day positively convinced I had back-of-the-leg cancer, when really I just had a case of too much exercise for too-atrophied muscles. Because I worry about everything.
• I spent two nights watching Law & Order marathons. Because I am an addict.
• I spent five nights freezing my ass off before I finally broke down and turned on the gas furnace. Because a part of me will always be 12, forced to live in my grandparents' drafty barn of a house and afraid afraid afraid to ask for anything.
• I ate cookies and burritos, beans and bread, chips and corn and god-knows-what in the delicious sauce of the meal my friends Terry and Gus bought me, and paid for it all in many square yards of methane output. Because I am the spawn of the King and Queen of Denial.

That's a lot of thinking for one week, huh? I wish I could give credit to my wonderful brain and ferocious will to change. The truth is, though, it was the house: I was staying in a magical house.

Its location is magical, certainly, poised as it is a mere 10 yards up from and 20 yards away from the mighty Pacific. Few things are as restorative as viewing a fine sunset over sea water and a cold beer.

But I think the house itself must be magic. Compared to the outsized homes of the neighboring "Yankee fuckers"--swathed in decks, crapped up with all manner of aggressively country decor, my house is a pint-sized throwback to another time--a kinder, funkier time, when four swingin' cats might just bake a doob in the glassed-in turret (accessed via the bathtub!) or while away a rainy day playing strip Yahtzee. My house all crazy angles and dark, moldy wood--including the countertops! It's practically decomposing before your eyes, with its long-busted pocket doors, its non-functioning locks, its stop-gap newspaper insulation held in place with brittle masking tape. So what? There was a broken recliner and high-speed internet and a view: I was ready to move in, brother.

And I'm not the only one. My fellow outcasts--the ones without yellow magnet ribbons on our SUVs, the ones who like things a little sexy-grubby-rundown, had all left pieces of themselves there. Books with loving inscriptions to future guests. A closet full of puzzles, games, and 8-track tapes. A pantry full of foods, fancy and plain, with a little extra stock in the fridge.

People leaving stuff instead of stealing the toiletries. I was ashamed of my fleeting thought to abscond with a jar of barely used peanut butter--which I'd bought myself.

Never fear--it was fleeting, and just the lack talking. The weeks and months of people not letting you merge, not saying "please" or "thank you", avoiding "hello" or even eye contact. And I can't blame them: I am them, on my not-so-great days. I left my own contributions to the pot: Mrs. Meyer's Dish Soap, the aforementioned jar of Laura Scudders, a lone Sierra Nevada beer.

I suppose the real topline for this week's adventures is Wherever You Go, There You Are. I had my Dorothy Gale experience and it was all marvelous and trippy and very, very Technicolor in nature, but now I am back in my own backyard, ready (I hope) to deal with the accumulation of rusted out cars and old refrigerators that have been piling up there.

Because I would like to have fewer not-so-great days and more dancing-around-the-house days. More laughing days. More reading, walking, thinking, skipping, lounging days. I got an infusion of good mojo from the residual juju of a thousand happy Stone Soup House inhabitants before me; now it's up to me to get some of that good witches' brew going down here.

xxx c

Photo of paradise courtesy of The BF.

On sunsets, cerebral overload and the restorative qualities of a steady Law & Order drip

Skip vacations at your own peril.

On my way up to mine, I cried no less than five times. I think. Frankly, I was so disgusted with myself, I kind of lost count.

I also spent a good portion of the trip doing 75 - 80mph, having to pee but refusing to stop because I was in a hurry to get to vacation, and worrying about the kettle I was sure I'd left on to burn down my entire apartment complex.

Oh, and there was a lovely phone fight with The BF. Because nothing says "relax and kick back" like some hating on the one you care about most.

When you are a workaholic, meaning, when you "love" your work so much you become addicted to it, it is as hard to let go of the feelings you wrap around yourself to keep it together as it is for some people to knuckle down and get to it, period. Neither is better than the other; like the man said, everything in moderation, moderation inclusive. (Of course, workaholics and our dopplegangers, would they be slackaholics?, latch onto that last bit as our saving grace/"out" clause.)

Fortunately, even assholes like me can have their rough bits worn off by long walks on the rocky coastline and a fine quality sunset cheered on with beer and a burrito. The sweet-funky, '70s love shack I rented comes complete with everything I need to readjust my attitude: wraparound view, high-speed internet and yes, cable TV. PLUS a hideous old recliner from which to watch it.

I have work to do these next few days, work I truly love, elective work I've been itching to get at. And get at it I will, tomorrow morning, with a strong cup of black tea to inspire me (and a killer view of surf crashing on the rocks if that doesn't work.)

But for now, it is me, my Archie Bunker chair and an evening of Sam Waterston et al stretched out before me.

I am so happy in my little self-love shack by the sea I could cry.

Tears of joy, of course...

xxx c

Fat pants, booze and the boy from New Jersey

The BF and I must be happy, because we are fat. Fat and happy, fat and happy, go together like a pee and nappy.

Only like most things, it's not as simple as that.

He is fat because he has been working 16 - 20 hour days on a hamster wheel of stress, pushing pixels for the Man, eating whatever carb-y thing he can grab in between worsening his carpel tunnel. He is fat because the writers and the actors and the directors are going to do big battle with the producers next spring, and there are too many dependents in his trust for whom the words "strike" mean nothing, but who require food, clothing and health insurance, nonetheless.

I, on the other hand, am fat because I quit acting. I am fat because where I once ran my thespianic ass all over the 25-square-mile playing field that is Actors' Los Angeles, I, too, now park it in front of a keyboard for the bulk of the day.

But he is also fat because of the Lexapro, or whichever of those SSRI dolls he's on to officially correct what he used to self-medicate. Whereas I am fat because, here it comes, I have been self-medicating. One, two, sometimes three glasses of hooch per evening. The creep has been slow but steady, a match reverse of my dip into the Valley of Monotony. And it's time to stop before I have to Stop.

Last night, I dreamed I went to an AA meeting. Because it was a dream, it was probably unlike any AA meeting in existence (I've never actually been to one): there were a lot of forms to fill out for newcomers, and once I made it into the meeting (already in session), it looked more like I imagine a Cuban refugee camp might, with little clusters of people building shacks, playing card games, cooking over open fire.

It was an interesting dream to have last night, because of the day I'd had before it: work, rain, reading...and abstinence. Apparently, the perfect storm for creating self-awareness. A day just as long, filled with just as much work and solitude, but devoid of alcohol or the desire for it. Here's what I'd sussed out as of this morning:

• The work was engaging. I got my hands a little grubby with code, but went slowly and broke nothing. Knocked a big item off my to-do list, and felt pride of accomplishment on a lot of levels.
• The rain gave me permission to stay inside and do it. One of the dastardly things about this relentlessly "perfect" place is the tyranny of perpetual sunshine. I've never liked the outside so all-fired much, but there it is, 24/7, postcard-perfect and in my face. No wonder Bukowski drank. L.A. should go fuck itself, sometimes.
• As much of a powerhouse as I think I am, the truth is, I amn't. I need rest and reading and quiet and solitude. I need space for puttering and play. The BF was two hours late to a rendezvous, we had promised to help celebrate a very important birthday, and as I'd passed them with a spectacularly engrossing read, I was sanguine. Well, for me, anyway. So QED.

And then, because I can't possibly be expected to get it all myself, I was visited this morning by the Archangel Ira Glass, who sang a song of a 19-year-old saint from Elizabethtown, New Jersey. Since I gave up TV about a year ago, there are some gaps in my cultural knowledge. Everyone and his brother has seen the Nike basketball commercials starring freestyle sensation Luis Da Silva and heard his amazing story. (If you haven't, here's an extended version on YouTube. And here's Luis all by his fantastic self.)

Just like that, the other piece of the puzzle turned up under the sofa: find that passion. Find it find it find it, and then keep a holy shrine to it in my heart, and on a screen saver and a bright-yellow rubber bracelet and any other talisman-reminders I need. When I'm plugged in, the rest falls into place. Good days, bad days revert back to plain old time, which I'm spending doing the thing I'm Here to Do (plus some attendant side tasks and the daily chores that keep me from being a callous monster.)

It seems pretty simple in the cold, clear light of day: find the thing I love, work hard, take breaks, get a refreshing night's sleep, wake up happy, do it again. Abstinence takes care of itself when I take care of me. Fat pants and booze are the symptoms, not the root issue.

Thank you, Ira and Luis, for reminding me.

Thank you, Sofka, Leslie, Pema, Jack, Julia and Jiddu, for telling me in the first, and second, and third, and-and-and, place.

Thank you, dear reader, for keeping me honest...

xxx c

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

Can you lead an authentic life with fake hair?

I make no secret of my age. (46, and if you haven't wished me a "happy" yet, feel free to!)

I'm up front about my struggles to get organized, to get happy, to get my bowels in working order.

So why, oh, why am I having such a problem letting my hair go gray?

A little backstory: unlike many of the women on my mother's side, while I had a few stray grays pop up as early as my 20s, I didn't need to start actively coloring to cover them until my late 30s. And I was earning a nice living via acting at that point (with good health insurance...sigh...), so it made sense to make sure my hair matched my face, which for some reason insisted on looking 5 - 10 years younger than the rat's nest on top of it.

But if I'm honest, and dammit, if I'm not, there's little point to anything anymore, I wanted to look chronologically younger for me, too. In the late 90s, I'd just left my marriage of 8 1/2 years for a man 12 years younger than I, who looked 5 - 7 years younger than he really was. And who was also, shall we say, empirically good looking. It was frustrating enough for me and my fragile self-esteem to flit about with The Youngster in public; add to that the subtle and ongoing pressure from him to "look my best" (what is it with these empirically good looking people?) and you have a perfect storm for public deceit.

Well, I'm not acting anymore. And dye, in addition to being not inexpensive, is toxic and time-consuming. What could I do with those extra two hours per month? Those extra 1000 or so cancer-free years days of my life? Or, while we're at it, the extra 750 bucks a year? (A steal in L.A., but still.)

I find myself obsessing over gray hair. It seems to be a trend, or a meme, the ladies lettin' it go, perhaps kicked off by Meryl Streep in the otherwise forgettable Devil Wears Prada. Someone wrote a book about it. There's a Yahoo! group devoted to it, a graying Botticelli's Venus as their icon. (I joined.) There's that idiotic Dove campaign.

I think it comes down to this: vanity.

Not vanity about looking my age, but about looking good for my age. Or maybe just looking good, period. I quit wearing makeup long ago, and I've let myself get woefully squishy around the middle; strictly from a design/style perspective, hair dye saves my beauty bacon. It's the lazy gal's way to look good (at least, until your face and skin tone stop coordinating well with dark hair. I am going to look like a raggedy-ass schlub growing out my gray if I don't work a little harder to look good in other departments, like clothes and fitness.

Maybe that's the thing: put "Pilates body" on the to-do list. Make it a big goal for...say...2010, and get crackin'. Then, once I'm leading the yoga class, shave my damned globey-head bald and wear all black or something.

It's an option I've discussed with my patient, generous colorist. He's amazing, really, basically helping me figure out how and when to fire him.

There are no easy answers to this. I would like to think I'm "there", but clearly, it ain't so. Whether I like it or not, going gray is a political statement in a patriarchal society where a woman's currency is tied to her looks and reproductive status. As is toeing the party line with a box of dye.

I do not like the lies I am telling, and yet, here I am.

Now, where's the way out, I wonder...

xxx c

UPDATE 9/19: I wrote another blog post about aging (and lying about aging) here that may help illuminate some of this thinking.

Image by s.o.f.t. via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Happy birthday to me

Birthdays are as good a time as any for starting a fresh page. And this year, mine came in with a full moon and a Jewish new year.

If that's not a message from the Universe to do a little soul-searching, I don't know what is.

Well, my appraisal goes thusly:

Over the past 12 months, I've written 5 posts on design, 12 columns about acting, 82 posts on marketing and god knows how much crap on this blog.

I've launched a monthly newsletter, been VP of Membership and President of my Toastmasters club, written 10 speeches and traveled to Portland to drink tequila with my fellow bloggers.

I'm actually too frightened to add up how many hours I've worked for money, but I've sent out 68 invoices. And some of them were for (gulp) multiple jobs.

I was hypnotized 30 days in a row and wrote about it. I've been to Disneyland twice and the ocean once. I watched my friend Mark's business take off. I watched my friend, Uma, make magic happen from the depths of coma. And then I saw magic happen to her when she awoke.

I consulted with my ex-husband on how to be a good wedding officiant and accompanied my ex-boyfriend and his girlfriend to their bible study class.

I said goodbye to some people I will miss, and reconnected with some others I thought I'd lost forever.

I got really sick. I got a muffin top. I quit acting (not necessarily in that order).

I watched time speed up. Again.

From my vantage point of 46 years (hey! I'm an Elder!), I'm pretty sure there will always be more stuff to do than hours in which to do it. There will always be promises made that aren't kept, roads not taken and wondered about, other roads taken and rued. With luck and paying attention, there will be less and less of all this as the years pass. At least, that's how it seems to be trending.

Love the minute you are in right now. Love that pimple on your face (or your butt), love the horrible meal you just made yourself, love the crappy air and the noisy traffic and the terrible drivers. Love your boyfriend and your mail carrier and your crabby uncle and your impossible friend from high school. Love your p.o.s. car. Love your too-small house and your too-big bills. Love your love handles.

Love the piece of shit blog post you wrote just now. Just...love it all.

Because it goes fast.

Super-dee-duper fast.

xxx c

Photo of my sister, Liz, my sister, Cathy, and me taken by our Aunt Patti last Thanksgiving.

9/13/06 9/13/05

When I snap my fingers, you will feel no fear

This is a follow-up post about the Hypnotherapy Project, which I collaborated on in July and August of 2007 with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hoped to accomplish here; you can read all of the entries in chronological order here.

I have had a couple of follow-up meetings with Greg, debriefings of a sort. We did some tweaking, he tried out a few new tools he picked up at a recent convention (topline: they're way cool, and Greg is slowly but surely turning into an unstoppable force.) Both times, he tiptoed around the issue of me following up, mainly, what was happening with me and why I wasn't.

I could blame it on the heat, you can blame a lot on 96ºF weather, especially when it's happening in your apartment*.

I could blame it on a busy work schedule, or the necessity of attending to various items that were somewhat neglected as I devoted up to four hours per day, 30 days in a row, to plumbing the depths of my psyche.

I could even blame it on mental exhaustion and it would be true: you plumb the depths of your psyche and expose it to the world 30 days in a row and see how sprightly you feel.

But the truth is, another big reason I haven't written any follow-up analysis of my 30-day hypnosis experiment because I was afraid.

Afraid that my analysis would be wrong, how can I know what really happened to me, and how it's affecting me now?

Afraid that my writing would be inadequate, how could analysis of something after the fact be as compelling as writing made raw and present by exposed nerves and immersion?

Afraid: isn't that why I agreed to try the experiment in the first place, to deal with my fear?

Well, no. No, it wasn't. I got into it to see what would happen. What I found out was, big surprise, there was a lot of fear under there, gumming up the works. We put names and faces and events to the fear, but hoo boy, was it startling to run up against so much of it.

Did I think that it was all going to evaporate once the 30 days were up? Once I could put names and faces and events to it? Apparently, a part of me did just that, and was astonished when, oh! there it is, it popped up again here, when the phone rang, or there, when I opened my checkbook register.

The bad news: the fear does not just evaporate when you turn the lights on.

The good news: it is easier to look at it in the light than imagine it in the dark.

Some examples:

• While I still feel a bit of resistance come Thursday, when Toastmasters rolls around, it is nothing like the paralyzing fear I had (even if I was good at hiding it) when I first took over as President back in June.
• I've had the money my father left me sitting in a low-interest holding account since he died three years ago this fall. I mean crap interest, personal savings account-level interest. It's my last tie to him and I guess I was afraid to let it go, a not-uncommon thing after a loved one dies, apparently. This week, I wrote a check for the whole shebang and closed it out. The writing was a little shaky on the check, and I felt a little sick and nervous walking to the bank, but I did it.
• I've started keeping a daily calendar where I actually slot out everything that must be done that day so I can see how much I've committed, and over-committed to.
• As a result of the above, I am actually taking on less. At least, I think so.
• Heaps of books, clothes and other goods have been making their way out of my life, I've made considerable inroads on the mountains of paper to be entered into various accounting programs.
• For those of you into the woo, I had a pretty amazing thumbs-up from the Universe about 10 days ago. I'm not quite ready to talk about it now, but it went a long way towards validating the public writing work I've been doing over the past three years.

How much of the change is directly attributable to the hypnotherapy, vs. the regular therapy or even the super-regular process of living with my eyes and ears open? It's impossible to quantify, of course. There's no double-blind protocol when you are working on you, no matter how many of your sub-personalities have signed on for the test. But I assure you that great change has been set in motion.

And I will do my best to document it as it happens. Maybe not fearlessly, but openly, honestly and with the great hope in my heart that any step one of us takes moves us all forward a little bit.

xxx c

*As documented by a thermometer purchased 10 days ago to prove to myself I was neither exaggerating nor going mad. And that's with shades drawn, and windows blacked out with foam core and beach towels, and three fans blowing the sad stream of cool air generated by the portable A/C directly on my mainly-naked person. But hey, it's a dry heat.

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

Hypn07, Day 30: With a whisper, not a bang

This covers day 30 of 30 for the Hypnotherapy Project, which I'm collaborating on with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hope to accomplish here; you can read all of the entries in chronological order here.

like butterfly wings

that create the breeze that releases the wheel the statue the equation the story or the love inside hearts that really moves mountains

sometimes the ending comes quietly

but it is no less extraordinary for coming without fanfare or parades or exclamation points or punctuation of any kind except maybe ellipses

if the end is really the beginning then maybe ellipses are the only way to go...

xxx c

Image by darrin170 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Hypn07, Day 29: A place where everybody knows your name

This covers day 29 of 30 for the Hypnotherapy Project, which I'm collaborating on with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hope to accomplish here; you can read all of the entries in chronological order here.

As I've mentioned before, most people wouldn't know it to look at me, but my self-esteem usually hovers between weak and non-existent. I've made up for my shortfall in this area the way I suspect most people like me do, with a combination of bluster, good face and lotsa hustle.

But I'm finally realizing the need to address this core issue of lack head on. I mean, I can continue with the tap dancing, but Jesus God, it's exhausting, and I suspect that energy could be put to more productive use. Besides, using the team or "hive mind" theories of advancement (the latter of which is maybe more appropriate to a discussion about sub-personalities), isn't it just way more efficient to utilize all of your resources? If I'm really interested in moving things forward, wouldn't a few extra bodies help?

So, how to get there? Well, first you get that 98-lb. weakling, self-esteem, in my case, into training. There's no end to methods for tackling this, but they seem to boil down to two: (1) do what you can with what you've got; and (2) act as-if about the rest (I can't find it right now, but Steve Pavlina has a terrific podcast about using as-if to get you from where you are to where you want to go).

One critical component of moving forward is support. I've got a few things already in place, a file of You Go, Grrrl! emails and suchlike to sift through when I get down, and a short list of people to call on when I just plain need comforting. But these are relics of places I've been, and chroniclers of events I've been through; how does one get to the next step? How do you stay "up" as you turn your attention to the big places you want to get to when all you have is this poor, 98-lb. weakling to escort you?

Apparently, you solicit the support of the people who are already there: your heroes and idols, the people you admire who are farther (waaaaay farther) down the path you'd like to travel.

For the record, I had no idea what Greg was going to do on this last day together. And, like many of our experiments (including, if I'm honest, this whole Hypnotherapy Project itself), I might not have agreed to it had I known what the getting-there would be like. A lot of this is really hard emotional work, even if it does leave you feeling great afterwards.

On Friday, he put me under and brought me to a large room. And one by one, all of my heroes and idols came to me and said a few words: some, of encouragement; some, of advice; some, just a "hello". Meryl Streep, Vanessa Redgrave, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Martin Luther King. I met old teachers and bosses, leaders whose skills I admire even more now that I'm learning how to lead. I met Oprah and Barack Obama. And at the very end, my core of support, my parents and my paternal grandparents, whose approval and admiration meant more than anyone's to me, came out to greet me. I'm weeping now as I write about it, but believe me, I was weeping more then, and from the start. Wave upon wave of love and support and the power of the ages swept over me; it's a good thing Greg picked a Friday, is all I have to say.

Well, of course, that's not all I have to say. I have to say this: we are not alone in our quest. We are supported, all of us, by some invisible (but no less real for it) web of energy that flows between us now, and through us to all people of all time. It's right there, right there, all the time, ready to tap into whenever we need it.

The trick, of course, is letting ourselves do it. It's so easy to get closed off as we navigate through our super-sped up world. It's easy to be a grownup and hard to be an adult who accepts that a part of herself is eternally childlike. But I am, and you are. You are still that child inside who, hopefully, had a time of wonder and wide-open imagination. And if you did, you can go there anytime and experience the greatness of the All-That-Is.

I don't live there all the time; I'm not sure if it's a good thing to do that. But to know it's there, to understand that at the core, we are love and love is all that matters, and to live with that knowledge all the time, well, I'm not there yet, either, but I can start to see what it will be like.

And it is the most beautiful, beautiful thing of all.

xxx c

Photomosaic by MontanaRaven, from 36 Flickr photos by other contributors, via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. For the record, I couldn't link directly to the Flickr page with that image, so I created a workaround URL; it says http://xrl.us/wonderful, but it redirects to her Flickr page.

Hypn07, Day 28: No one wants the party to be over

This covers day 28 of 30 for the Hypnotherapy Project, which I'm collaborating on with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hope to accomplish here; you can read all of the entries in chronological order here.

A funny thing happened at the end of my last week: I started flipping out about the whole thing ending.

Don't get me wrong, I knew I'd find plenty of use for all of that extra time I'd be getting back come Monday. (The project was due to end on Saturday, a "tape day" for me, so much less of a time commitment.) But I'd come to rely on and look forward to this everyday therapy, this daily confab with a good friend who was also on the path but whose job at this juncture was taking care of me.

I am not used to being the one taken care of, or cared for, you see. This became abundantly clear during my five-month incarceration in Cedars Sinai and my own apartment while recovering from my Crohn's onset. As I've discussed before, when you're unable to walk up a flight of stairs sans assistance, you learn pretty fast what it's like having people help you out. (Topline: hard, at least for some of us.)

Add to that what my actual shrink calls my (lack-of-)entitlement issues, and you can see where this time with Greg was some heady stuff. Talking when I wanted to talk, about myself and some high-level, non-immediate issues, it was like being a sophomore in college again, only with someone way smarter and more experienced, who mainly wanted to talk about you.

I got a little lax in that last week. My notes are sketchy in those last few days, and I was busy enough to feel okay with putting off my updates until I wasn't so busy. Greg's notes are sketchy, too, but he has down that we did a live recap of the doorways trip, which makes sense since Thursdays are big days for me and Day 28 was a Thursday.

Four weeks of intensive growth is splendid, but a bit overwhelming. And writing from four days after the whole shebang is over, I can see that while things have begun to shift in this heady time, the real growth will happen much as it always does, slowly and over the long term.

At which point, of course, it will seem to have happened all at once. The 10-year overnight success, personal growth edition.

xxx c Image by tobym via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.