New passport photo, or "How to go about actually crossing stuff off your list"

I'm accommodationally bifurcated these days, dividing my time between My Country House (aka The BF's spacious and bucolic Actual House with Lawn, Patio & Dog) and my bachelorette pad (aka Rent Control Central, "Colleen's Stubborn Handhold on Freedom," or, during certain parts of summer, "The E-Z-Bake Oven"), so I can't tell you how long ago my previous passport expired.

So let me just repeat: my previous passport expired.

In my 36 years of international travel, this has never happened. Never ever ever ever never. Not. Ever. And I'm horrifically embarrassed about it having happened this time, one or possibly even two years ago, extenuating circumstances* or not. Because in my family, no matter what, you had a passport at the ready, even if you had zero intention of traveling for the foreseeable future.**

The truth is this: every time I looked in the mirror over the past two years, I recoiled a little. I may joke about being a ladygeezer or (not) going gray or fettering certain protrusions that were heretofore unfettered, but a part of me always hurt a little bit. I'm not crazy about my eyes starting to get that tired look or my hair thinning or the weight that now gently encases my middle, and so far, I've been dealing with them all by compartmentalizing and ignoring or leading with a joke: the latter in public, the former in private.

I'm not fishing for compliments (although hey, I won't reject sincere ones if you're compelled). This is not about anyone saying, "Hey, you look great!" or even "Hey, you look great for your age!" It's me, dealing with mortality (which we all must) and advancing invisibility (which most of us must, although women, even character actresses, deal with it first).

I'd think about getting my passport photo taken, the first step in crossing "Renew (expired) passport" off my list, and then I'd think, "Well, I'll just wait until..."

Until my hair was freshly colored.

Until my hair was having a good day.

Until I'd figured out an outfit, and bought some makeup, and had had enough sleep.

Until, that is, monkeys flew out of my ass. In formation. Typing Shakespeare.

I'm almost 48. My hair will never be the hair of a 28-year-old, or even a 38-year-old, again. I haven't worn makeup (well, excepting a little eyebrow powder, for definition!) since I quit acting, three years ago. I try to be interested enough about clothes to shop for them, but I'd rather write. I try to think about parting with Big Bucks for the clothes I would love, but I would rather blow the money on hardware and books. I will have fewer and fewer Good Hair Days until I am rich enough to hire a stylist and patient enough to let him do my hair everyday.

In other words, this is me now; this is who I am, inside and out. It's not just okay, it's the truth.

I promised you my big secret for actually crossing stuff off your list, and here it is:

Get down with where you are right now. Get down with the thing that needs to happen next.

I want to go to Vancouver to see my friend, Danielle, and maybe do a workshop. I want to go to Spain some summer while my friend, Jared, is doing his month abroad. I want to drink wine with Valeria in her native Italy, and visit my grammar school friend who lives in the countryside while I'm there. I don't necessarily want to be my delightful friend, Chris Guillebeau (he's filling that job rather handily), but I would find it great fun to schedule a trip sometime to coincide with one he was making. I want to stay with my high school friend, Betsy, at her palatial estate in France (oh, BOY, do I want that) and visit my friend, Michael, in Germany, and travel with my friend, Andrew, and his wife, Alex, to his native Ireland (which, if it's as full of awesome Irish folk as their dinner parties are, may be my final resting place as I expire from happiness.)

Mostly, I want to be able to say "yes" when someone invites me to come and speak or teach or otherwise share what I know when they ask. This, finally, was the truth that was more important than the silly fibs I was wasting away my days with.

Life is so short and filled with so many things to do.

And so I go, go, go about doing them...

xxx
c

Photo of Colleen Wainwright by Lily at the Mailbox Shoppe via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license. (For more silly fun, click on the picture.)

*Circumstances including, but not limited to falling ill with a major chronic intestinal disorder, starting a new business, traveling extensively continentally for tradeshows/conferences/etc., massive economic collapse and, this one is the hardest, embarrassment of being ambassador to a country whose leadership and choice of same deeply shamed me for eight years.

**Possibly a Jewish thing, possibly an aspirational-cosmopolitan-type thing. Not sure. Maybe both.

How to keep failing

Back when I was a young pup Shilling for the Man, I wrote a lot of ads for a certain mass-market sports beverage.

As in, a lot of ads.

Because while those of you who haven't had the pleasure of working in the salt mines of advertising might not know it, the ratio of ads-come-up-with to ads-actually-produced is crazy high. Or low. You get my point: creatives, as they are affectionately known, dream up and sketch out far, far more ideas that get shit-canned than make it to the airwaves.

As a result of this crazy ratio, and a particularly trying mix of difficult personalities (which was out of my control) and quarter-life crisis (which, to be fair and in retrospect, was probably largely out of my control as well), I started to experience burnout. The well ran dry of ideas (how many ways can you sell spiked water, anyway?) and I started to feel myself turn into a hack, applying what had been successful in previous go-rounds to the supposedly new challenges before us (which, come on: spiked water? there are no new challenges). I turned to a formula, such as it was, and my copy became sort of a caricature of its former self.

It scared me enough to start the wheels in motion for my escape. There were other contributing factors, egregious politics, rampant greed, physical burnout, but I could see I'd need some sort of major cranial overhaul to keep going in my chosen career, and while I don't think there's anything wrong with advertising per se, I never could get 100% down with the amount of resources it consumed for the value it produced. At least the typing monkeys were working towards a second Hamlet.

Success is terrifying. I mean, it's great for about 20 minutes out of the 2 million it took to get there, the peak experience of a big sale or shiny statuette or the equivalent is a serious head rush. But then there's that blank page the next day, and the mandate to fill it with something equally awesome or even more so. Death, death. But that's exactly what happens to creative after creative, artist after artist, blogger after blogger once they hit something like their stride. Reach a peak, or even a plateau of competence, and the pressure is enormous to stay there. Worst of all, you can even stay there for some time, convinced that you're evolving, that you're building on a solid foundation of hard-won knowledge instead of lolling about on your dusty, crackling laurels.

A while ago, I bookmarked a wonderful piece on this subject by fine artist Robert Genn (whose semi-weekly newsletter, The Painter's Keys, is one of my favorite regular reads). It's titled "Sterility," after Pablo Picasso's take on the eternally interesting (if confounding) topic. Sterility, Picasso said*, is the result of copying oneself, an infraction he considered far worse than copying others, because engenders artistic death.

The opposite of sterility is fertility, and Genn's argument (and Picasso's, by extension) is that fertility is a learned state, or at least, that learning and action can help keep one in a state of artistic productivity or fertility. This resonates deeply with my own experience, which I liken to having to throw myself off a goddamn cliff just as soon as I've caught my breath from climbing up there. It's terrifying, it's exhilarating, it's teh suxors, as some geeky kids somewhere said at some time. Flinging myself into the gaping maw of who-the-hell-knows what, again and again and again.

To you, reading this now, it may not seem so. You may see (or hear, however it works) some kind of voice or through-line. One post is enough like the other so as not to seem schizophrenic, but different enough (and either good enough or trainwreck-ish enough) that you're moved to read more than one.

That voice is more like a side effect of flinging, though. Flinging and exercising, in tandem. You write and you write (or paint and paint, or what have you) and you learn stuff: tricks, tools and such. The rules, if you like. Those are muscles, and they do get stronger. You build up a kind of tolerance for the climbing, and maybe a better sense of how and where to fling yourself. You might even learn a thing or two about how to land without blowing yourself into a Wile E. Coyote puffball of smoky smithereens.

It's the flinging, though, that gives you the voice. Flinging and flinging and flinging. And getting up, either on the next cliff or from that faraway ground, and prepping yourself to fling again. And 48 years into the game I'm here to tell you: the flinging? It does not get easier. It just gets so that you become reasonably sure you will not die (or go broke, or whatever your doomsday scenario is) as a result of the flinging.

Before I scare anyone off of making any kind of art ever again, please remember that little phrase a few hundred words ago about fertility being a learned state. There is stuff you can do to change it up, to challenge yourself and to generally keep up the "private search for 'new'" necessary for fertility. Genn includes a short list for artists of tricks, change your media; mix your media; change your working environment; etc, to be used singly or in combination that is pretty easily adaptable to other fields of artistic endeavor. And once you get the in mindset, you do get better of keeping yourself in the state of flux/growth, or at least, you learn where to look for help.

And then? Back to flinging...

xxx
c

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

• Robert Genn's terrific essay on Sterility (and beating it)
• My newsletter archives are filled with ideas I've road-tested (you can subscribe here)

*The actual quote, which I liberated from this very spicy bit on Picasso, is this: "One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility."

Poetry Thursday: Moving mountains

There are mountains
to be moved
everywhere I look

On the days
I feel good
I tackle them with glee:
my loads of laundry
my piles of paper
my endless lists
of ways to improve
my health
and happiness
and those of the world
around me,
creating order
from chaos
and glory
from challenge.

On the days
I do not
they close in on me,
these mountains,
while storms gather above
and the ground turns swampy
below
and the loads
and the piles
and the endless lists
transform themselves
into fat, hulking beasts
ogres
trolls
taunting me
with their bad breath
and b.o.
and their fat, hulking mass
of impenetrability.

In my finer moments
I remember
that each mountain
is made of many small bits
and unmade
by removing them
one at a time

I don't remember
when I don't need to
but when I do
grace is usually there
to remind me
with a tap on the shoulder
a whisper in the ear
to do one thing now,

Just one, small thing

And lo,
I am moving mountains
again.

xxx
c

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

What I do when I'm not inspired to do anything

Those of you with a touch of mania understand the glorious thrill of getting gobs of stuff done.

And I'm not talking about stuff you can cross off of a list (although that's nice, too): I'm talking about the wildly productive times in your week, month, year when it feels like you're surfing wave after wave of ideas, gently (but gloriously, and thrillingly) supported by the powerful, shifting, magical waters of inspiration beneath you. Good times, a.k.a. cowabunga.

I get that because I've got a touch of the mania, myself. And a healthy (or not) streak of Calvinism, and a predisposition towards "-aholism", so far, the "work-" kind, but I know enough to stay on the alert for the others, as well. My most comfortable setting is "full-bore"; unfortunately, up until recently, the only other setting I could find was "off," and "off" is a bitch for maniacs. I realize now, after years and years (and, um, years) of therapy that because I love operating in "full-bore" mode so much, I got used to operating in it under all conditions, with and without inspiration, or sleep, or oil, or what have you, until I'd lost the sense of what it felt to really surf the waves.

Fellow surfers and maniacs, this may surprise you as much as it did me, but not every day is a wave day. (Or week, or month, or year, even, but more on that in another post.) There are days (and weeks and months and yes, goddammit, years) when it seems like everyone else around you is up on their boards, inspired as a mofo, surfing the hell out of those ideas, while you are left to softly weep and/or curse what feels like incessant paddling for piddling surf-action, or a complete disinterest in the whole thing entirely. Entirely! As in, "Why am I even at this stupid beach in a stupid spring suit when I really want to be watching Cops at the Surf Shack over a tallboy?"

The answer, sometimes, is as simple as "because you're supposed to be at the Surf Shack drinking a tallboy over Cops, dumbass." Other times, it's something not as simple, like a physiological something-or-other that needs sorting, more sleep or less sugar or fewer tallboys, even. It is beyond the scope of a silly, silly blog (or even this most excellent one) to address the exact underlying cause of your misery.

However, because I am me, I will lob a few things over the net for you to think about. This is a list of stuff that's worked for me in the short term (when I can remember to do one of them, anyway), so your mileage will almost assuredly vary, but it may spark something.

1. Switch that shit up. If you're in front of the computer, walk away. Far away, to the closest bit of nature and/or living manifestation of the animal kingdom that you can find. Lately, I've taken to enjoying two (short) meals per day on the backyard patio with a book and Arno J., who I'm pretty sure is only there in the hopes that I will either drop some of the food (fat chance, dog) or cave and let him lick the plate when I'm done.

On the other hand, if you're not at a computer, if you're painting or tinkering or what-have-you in a real-world fashion and it's not coming together, switch that shit up, anyway. Or, if you're tired, rest. Rest is switching, too, maniacs.

2. Take a walk. When you're stuck, and every day, even when you're not. Some people swear by swimming or running; I've always loathed both, so I'm not qualified to speak to their efficacy. A walk, sans iPod, will almost always do it, though. And (BONUS EXTRA) a walk done regularly seems to stave off some of the fallow time.

3. Clean something small. Your sink. A not-too-challenging shelf or drawer. A tabletop. A computer file folder, if you haven't been spending too much time in front of the computer already. Something that will either prime the pump (your small thing is a test to see if that's what's needed) or act as a mental palate cleanser. (BONUS EXTRA: sense of accomplishment, which is great for maniacs.)

If you look at these three sample things, you can see that they all have to do with reflection, rejuvenation or high-level procrastination. They're all components of staying motivated and inspired, and you can plug any one of them into Google and it will likely return all sorts of other ideas, if you haven't thought of them already. But that last, high-level procrastination, I have found to be most useful for me as a true maniac. I'm not good at sitting still and I'm really bad at napping, but boy, do I like to putter. And for me, the puttering is often a way out of the doldrums.

As I hinted at, above, these are sometime-solutions for short-term lack of inspiration and motivation. Long-term wandering in the desert is another story for another day (and one I've got a fair amount of experience with, as well, so perhaps there will be another post on another day).

Also, a little kindness and a little perspective go a long, long way. Self-flagellation might have been good for martyrs, but it rarely works for producing great works*.

And finally (for now, anyway), please do yourself this small favor and remind yourself that it was not ever thus. You will be inspired again, and motivated, and manic, and surf-y. Until you're not.

There's just a way these things work. And don't...

xxx
c

ADDITIONAL ARTICLES THAT MAY BE OF USE:

• Make 10 minutes make a difference (from the Get Your Motor Runnin' 21-Day Saluteâ„¢ at the start of 2009, which may also be of use)
• Communicator, teach thyself! (from the September 2008 issue of communicatrix | focuses)
• McGyver-ing your way out of creative blocks (from the September 2007 issue of communicatrix | focuses)
  

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

*See my friend, the great Jeffrey Zeldman, for more on this. That man has surfed more waves and, I'm sure, been beached on more shores already than I will in my hopefully-long lifetime.

Leaps of faith and the pushes that make them

I spent some quality time with my EstroFest ladies this weekend, something that seems gets harder to do the more I need it.

There was wine and food (and food, and food) and laughter and even a little homegrown Ouija-board action*. Mainly, though, the central theme of this particular EstroFest was growth as a result of being pushed into it.

Our hostess, you see, was hosting her first Estro in her new home, which is a house, which is quite a bit larger and nicer than her old home. It is also almost twice as costly, since it is a house, and the old place was a rent-controlled apartment in a sketchy part of town, and as such, is a place she literally could not imagine living in a year ago. This new place has beautiful hardwood floors and major appliances and crown molding. It has two bedrooms and a separate dining room off the kitchen. It has a substantial backyard with both tomato plants and a grapefruit tree. (And her landlord, who lives in the guest house out back, but still: tomatoes and grapefruit!)

It is, for her (and to me), a palace.

More importantly, though, it is safe. And peaceful. A place where she feels safe and peaceful for the first time in more than a year, when a neighbor situation went from tolerably icky to borderline dangerous. The details are hers to relate, and she's pretty much put them behind her; the salient point here is that for over a year, as things got worse and worse for her in that old place, she was unable to pull the trigger on moving to a new one. Because of the rent control, housing in L.A. is expensive even with the high vacancy rate, but mostly, because of a story she told herself. After all, she is earning the same amount of money that she was 12 months ago, and, because she's cut back on her hours, less than she was 18 months ago. The difference is her perspective, which shifted at some point, and which, because of it, has now shifted forever. Literally, she can't go back (well, not for the same price, they've jacked up the rent) but metaphorically, she cannot be the same person she was who could not make the decision to leave an untenable situation. Bell's been rung, and there's no unringing it.

And yet she'd be the first person to tell you that she's just a regular Joe (so to speak). She boldly went where she had never gone before not because she's an adventuress, but because things had Gotten to a Point, and then, as she put it, a triggering event did the rest. Of course, she's too modest to talk about all the work she did while the external forces were doing their hoodoo on her: I was there; her other ladies were there. She's done the work. A lot of it, and specifically, and not without the pain that attends growth and change.

Now, though, she is in a palace with an actual washer and dryer and an actual washing machine and, best of all, actual peace and quiet. Safety. A sweet, sweet plateau where she can rest and relish and redecorate. (Why do plateaus get such a bad rap, anyway? Resting, relishing and redecorating are all great things we don't get to do nearly enough of, I say, and they're all but impossible to accomplish while you're pushing c*cksucking boulders up motherf*cking hills.) Where we can visit her, and there is enough room (and tomatoes!) for sleepovers if we get a little too jiggy with the old Ouija board. So what if a push got her there? So what if a thousand pushes did?

Well, okay. It is nice to move along on your own steam. But it doesn't always work that way, and when it doesn't, it shouldn't take away from your accomplishment. You did the work. You made the move. The rest was assistance you asked for that maybe showed up in a form you weren't expecting. (What? You thought that all help was sunshine, roses and a well-muscled friend with a pickup truck?)

Make no mistake: a huge part of what motivates me to make changes now is the hope of making more leaps with less "help" from the universe. No more severe onsets of chronic illnesses, please, or illnesses of any kind. I'm sure there are enough in my basket awaiting future unearthing anyway.

However you get there, though, on your own steam or via a big, fat push off the side of the cliff, take time on the other side to sit in the change. Download, unpack, debrief: what have you. But also yes, have your ladies over. Yes, bust out a nice bottle of vino and toss a few steaks on the grill. Hang your pictures on the wall and admire for a moment how lovely they look up there. Relish the small but significant pleasures your vast quantity of work and your gargantuan leap have won you.

In the words of my dear friend, newly established on the other side of a gaping void, now fully cognizant that there will, soon enough, be other c*cksucking boulders on different motherf*cking hills, "Emptied my dishwasher this morning and just did a load of laundry, it doesn't get any better than this!"

xxx
c

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

*This is another, way more woo-woo post for another day, but if my ladies are to believed (and they've never given me reason to not believe them, but still, this shit is weird, baby), nobody but my dear old Gram spelled out "No" and then "N-O" for me in answer to my query. Also, even if you lean toward the skeptical side, promise me that if you pull out the board just for yuks, you'll do a little invocation first inviting only the nice ghosts to drop by and deliver their two cents. Just in case. For me, okay? Also, I had no idea you could roll your own Ouija board, but I'm here to tell you, you need nothing more than an unfolded Trader Joe's bag and a Sharpie. Plus an upturned rocks glass or somesuch. So you know.

You, amplified (a poem about marketing)

Marketing
is not yelling.

It is not even selling.

It is not bears
dancing around a cereal box
or yellow highlighter pixels
on top of BUY ME NOW pixels
or naked juggling smash-cut ladies on fiery unicycles.

It is not taglines or jingles,
one-sheets or tri-folds,
slide decks
special offers
or branding branding branding.

Marketing
is offering.

It is talking to people
with words
and sounds
and gestures
and pictures
specially chosen
so that the people who need to hear
what you have to share
can
and clearly.

Marketing
is the truth of you,
translated
into the language of them:
in the room
on the page
over the air.

It is you
giving of yourself
to the people
who are ready to receive.

And that thing you say
that hand you shake
that ad
that tag
that special bonus extra
is really you, amplified.

Loud enough so they can hear
soft enough so they can hear themselves think
and feel themselves feeling
and find themselves connecting
with you.

It is a thing
of poetry
not a practice
to abuse.

Express yourself
with love
and no fear
and you will find yourself
surrounded by the best
the world has to offer:
"them."

Your "them."

Drawn to you
for what they need
and not what you are trying to make them want.

You, amplified,
do this.

At just the right level
in just the right time
with truth
and honor
and love
and fun
and heat
and light
and fart jokes,
depending.

xxx
c

Image by Jared Goralnick (@technotheory) via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Referral Friday is on hiatus this week, being replaced by Poetry Thursday, which is a little late, but which I'm still thinking of as "Poetry Thursday." Feel free to browse, shop or otherwise support any of the fine people and businesses mentioned here on other Referral Fridays, or just go out and buy a book at your local bookstore or a cuppa from your locally-owned, neighborhood coffee shop. Or hey! Support me by signing up for my newsletter or tweeting/Facebook-ing/whatever-ing this. Or double-hey! Just leave a swell comment below. I love comments!

Judging and contracting and my old friend, Shame

Heart-marketer supreme and pal-o'-mine, Mark Silver, tells a story about how, the very month after his business passed a huge financial milestone, it did one of its worst months ever.

You don't need to look to business for sad, weird tales of woe, either.

Lottery winners and freshly-minted celebrities routinely blow through their respective piles of currency until they're back where, perhaps, they feel deep down that they belong, if not even lower. People on the fast track to real love will, all of a sudden and seemingly out of nowhere, do something colossally stupid and often uncharacteristic to push someone away: I'm recalling a particularly egregious incident where, en route to my own bed one late night with my brand new, kinda-sorta-I-hope-I-hope boyfriend, I tiptoed past some sleeping guests sacked out on my Brooklyn apartment floor and said, pointing, "I slept with him...and I slept with him." It was lucky for me my new swain had the courage and openness to share his hurt and befuddlement, albeit a bit later, after he'd already gotten laid. (And, frankly, it's also lucky that my roommate and I only had two guests visiting from college that weekend. Another slutty story for another day.)

What is it about getting a bit of what you want that sends you running screaming from it? Why, oh, why are we so quick with the self-sabotage?

I'm not sure, but I have some theories. Change is painful because we don't know what's on the other side of it, the devil you know, and all that. There's also the starkly terrifying feeling of making oneself vulnerable: to love, to need, to want. You have these great, toughening experiences growing up that inoculate you against stupid, life-squelching hazards like walking off a cliff or setting yourself on fire, but a side effect is toughening up. That excellent scar tissue that builds up to protect you from the bad stuff can keep you from accessing so much of the good stuff.

The longer I live this vida loca, the more it seems to me that if the job of youth is learning, the job of maturity is unlearning while preserving the learning. I've said it so many times my friends are sick of hearing it, but I really feel like my work from roughly 40 years old until now (almost 48 as of this writing) has been about getting back to the me I was at 10, playful, curious, reasonably carefree, openly loving, and decidedly non-post-ironic, only somehow while retaining the juice and the life and the lessons of the experiences I picked up along the way. Carrying pain on your back while opening your arms to more of the same? Or, like a fairy tale dragon, painfully peeling away layer after layer of protective, scaly coating to reveal the handsome prince within? (Calling Joseph Campbell!)

I suppose you can choose the metaphor or myth that works for you. I suppose you can write your own. It seems to me that the more important thing here (assuming we want to move past the rolling backward into the slop) is learning your defense mechanisms and the feelings associated with them and probably some of the tools that work best for putting the brakes on (or winching yourself out of the slop) so that you spend less time in the slop and more time moving forward.

Me? My high sign is judging. Maybe that's a Virgo thing, maybe it's an ACOA thing, maybe it's just Colleen's Special Thing. But if the thing that's moving me forward the fastest these days is the ability to remain open and connected with love and kindness and The Force, the thing that shuts that shit down lightning-quick is judging. Creates a delightfully safe distance between myself and anything meaningful, while pushing away all but the most stalwart of loved ones. 99% of the time, judging is like telling happiness to go fuck itself. And the other 1% of the time, it's like telling it to go fuck itself at a slightly later date. Because a heart that lets in even a little bit of judging is like the Sorcerer's Apprentice* creating a little bit of help. It's the help that's ultimately so not helpful, you need to call in the big guns to help clear it out.

That's a breakthrough I had today, courtesy of my good friend, Patty, and my secret obsession, Yehuda Berg's Daily Kabbalah Minute, or whatever the hell they call it. (I'm jokey-judging because I'm embarrassed, which is the shame thing from the title kicking in, which I'm getting to in a minute. Be patient. This stuff is H-A-R-D, okay?) I did a little public judging, all in the name of a good cause, of course! of course!, which Patty saved me from, which made the shame bloom up my back over my shoulders and to my ears. Heat. Lots of heat. I copped to it, but in kind of a cold, uppity way. You know, the whole "not by way of excuse, just by way of explanation, tone-lost-via-the-internet, iciness-born-of-lack-of-context kinda way. And then that goddamn Yehuda Berg dropped this bomb in my inbox, and dammit if I didn't laugh and, after my even milder prickle of shame had subsided, email Patty copping to my status as Temporary Asshole of the Universe.

Lesson learned; move on, nothing to see here.

Well, wait, maybe there are a few things to note first.

1. Daily, or at least regular, maintenance is important. This learning is, as anyone on the path knows, hard-won and easily lost. I'm still new at this "being able to stop it thing," and it is coinciding with what might, at almost-48, be called critical mass in terms of lessons, but some kind of regular practice of reflection has got to be a help...right? I think it's no coincidence that some of this fine understanding coincides (ha!) with my doing a semi-regular practice of Remembrance.
2. Emotions are awesome, if annoying, indicators. Shame, fear, guilt, whaddevah! There's no getting around it. Crappy stuff lets you know you're off-plumb in some way. If the judging is the thing, the shame I feel getting called out on it is like semaphore by oiled, buff, Mr. Olympia contestants wearing sequined hot pants and neon nipple rings. In other words, hard to look at and even harder to look away from.
3. Be nice! It's becoming my cure-all for everything, or at least, the balm I apply to these newly-opened wounds. Works, though, and is available in infinite supply, believe it or not.

I will likely grapple with this issue on and off for the rest of my life. Somehow, it's the hand I drew, one of the things in my basket, just like Crohn's, on the downside (or not) and my scary-fast healing powers and capacity for withstanding pain on the upside (again, or not).

The more I remember that 1-2-3 above though, the shorter the lag time between the hammer coming down and recognition that I have, once again, been bonked on the head.

And who knows? Give me another 40-some-odd years and I may be able to step around the sucker entirely...

xxx
c

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

*Again with the Joseph Campbell!

Delaying Gratification Works, and other annoying truisms of the universe

There is so much great wisdom out there absolutely free for the taking, it astounds me sometimes what a colossal assface I can be.

Take flossing, for example. Sure, I grew up in the Stone Age when we clambered around freely from the back to the front seat of the car, unencumbered by restraint devices, and via the courtesy of Fred's two feet. But by the time I got to college, I had definitely owned at least one thingy of dental floss. For, like, 10 years. And I'd even heard that if you used it (beyond the obvious times, like impacted bits of popcorn), there might be some beneficial action for you down the road, like keeping your teeth.

Did I listen? HA. (That's "no." No, I did not listen. And I will have the recurring slasher-movie-esque episode at my dentist's next week to prove it.)

Smoking was another one. Sure, people did it with impunity around the time of my birth. It was only via the grace of God and a really forward-thinking OB/GYN that Mom didn't do nicotine (or caffeine, or Thalidomide) during her pregancy with me.

But definitely by the time I was not quite old enough to smoke but started doing it anyway, we knew better. And I got to watch several aunts and uncles go through the torture of quitting, too, over and over and over. Good times!

Yet who was the big asshole who had to smoke anyway because it was sooooooo cool or something idiotic like that? I was. Me. Little Miss No-Floss, a.k.a. The Future Farting Machine of the Merchandise Mart, that's who.

So you'd think that by now, staring down 48 and surely, my imminent demise (Shirley, she's gonna be the first one to take a whack at me if Father Time doesn't bring me down before her), I would know about first things first. I learned it at the feet of my loser-cum-uber-success father, he of the lists and the failed agency and the final payday. I read it in a damned book. I read about the item in the damned book over and over again on a million blogs during the GTD/productivity-blog boom of the mid-aughts.

Still, here's me, avoiding the big rocks and playing with the sand. Whee! Lookit all the sand running through my fingers! Lookit my beautifully styled file folder labels and color-coded calendar entries! I haven't done any of the stuff they're attached to, but fuck it, these deck chairs look so much better arranged this way, don't you think?

Something happened recently to shift all that. I'm not sure if it's this new accountability group I joined or the alignment of the stars or just an accumulation of painful lessons that's hit the critical mass watermark, but I am actually, finally Getting Shit Done, and not because I have it carved up into agenda lists and action items. (Well, partly because of it. Let's be fair.) Somehow, some way, I just sat my ass down in the chair and started plugging away at some big, fat, long overdue projects. And they're getting done, slowly but surely.

More miraculously, I'm getting a little better at not taking on more big, fat projects of the variety that, with my already overloaded schedule, run the clear risk of becoming long overdue at some point. A little better. Sometimes I say "yes" and then turn around and say "no," which is not great. Occasionally, I say "maybe, let me think about it" and then I come back and say "no," which is better. Whatever. It's a step in the right direction, I think. And while I still can't quite see the light at the end of the tunnel, I'm feeling a bit more room in general, which is good. No, which is GREAT. This, I wish for you: that you feel lots and lots of this little bit of room that I'm feeling.

So.

This is me telling you nothing you don't already know, but that maybe you, like me, need constant reminding of: do it. You know what, that thing. That really, really big thing. That one big thing you really, really don't want to do but that you know if you do, will feel like you've just passed a kidney stone in the good way. Do one thing toward getting it done, like putting it on your Actual Calendar, and then not putting anything else on your Actual Calendar for that day. Call and make the appointment, plunk down your cash for the class, park your ass in the seat and pull up the Illustrator file.

Do it do it do it.

Because as fun as it is to change the world by talking about it, it's even more fun and inspiring to have some room to actually do it. Or to be it. To be the change.

I'm two logos and a presentation design away from putting design behind me completely. This weekend got me one giant step closer to doing it.

What are you NOT working on right now that you know you should? Spill it, sister, let's work through this shit together...

xxx
c

Image by got plaid? via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Poetry Thursday: Time off for good behavior

This post is for me, Colleen of the Future. But feel free to read along, if you like.

I'm guessing
you don't care anymore
that the desk was a mess
and the dishes piled up
and the eight million billion things
I heaped
on top of the laundry
never got done.

I'm guessing
that most of my time
spent worrying
could have been better spent
on almost anything,
and I hope I get points
for at least seeing that
from time to time.

I'm guessing
that the moments of glory
mean less right now
than the moments of Arnie
and that the reaching out
was at least as important
as the looking in.

I'm guessing
you still have arms
that can lift stuff
and legs
that can take you
from here to there
and a liver
in pretty good shape
but if not
I hope you know
how much fun I had
wearing them out.

I'm guessing
you are working still
and hoping
it is because
that's what we wanted
but if not
I trust
you have the grace
I've not yet found
to handle the curve balls
that life seems to throw.

I'm guessing
you have a loved one
or two
to share what joy
is yours to channel
but if not
I trust you will share
with whom you can
however you can.

I'm guessing
the things I did
outweigh the things I didn't
or the other way around,
depending,
but if not
I hope you know
that mostly,
I did the best I could
and when I didn't
I learned at least to note it.

I'm guessing
you forgive me
and that you love me
and that you wouldn't have it
any other way
but if not
please know
that I love you
and that it is okay
to rest
in peace.

xxx
c

Image by Sister72 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

The Joke Pump vs. the Umbrage Mallet

The Youngster and I had a credo regarding humor and delicacy during time spent in our shared household of 2 1/2 years: "The joke is king; all hail the joke."

We made it a credo (or do I mean "maxim," before that crap magazine shanghai'd its meaning?) for a couple of reasons:

First, we both like to laugh, and as a way of showing appreciation for the effort that goes into making a proper tee-up for laughter, you really cannot do better than a neatly symmetrical, deliciously recursive joke itself. (Am I right, or am I right?)

Second, we are both, for a variety of reasons both happy and sad, prone to reflexively reaching for the Joke Pumpâ„¢ in our respective toolboxes. And odds are, when you do something often enough, at some point you're going to make a boo-boo. There will be a tinge of nasty fueling the use of the Joke Pumpâ„¢, or you will just be a little off your game while using the Joke Pumpâ„¢ and will handle it with less than your usual deftatiousness. (And may I jump in here to profess my shock that spell check didn't jump on that word like a red snake afire.)

You will, if you make enough jokes, hurt someone at some point. And like that stupid mini-fire extinguisher you bought at Target after reading some alarmist article in a ladies' magazine, or that box of Arm & Hammer you keep reasonably close to the stove just in case the flambé gets out of hand one day, it's good to have some policies and safety procedures and the like in place beforehand so you don't crispy critter a delicate bystander or blow up a perfectly good friendship by assiness, intended or no.

Recently, for the first time in a long time (that I know of, anyway) I managed to really, really offend someone. And I was shocked and horrified and embarrassed but, and this is a but the size of a lady with a really, really big butt, the very worst thing is that I was ashamed. Because when I am ashamed, I do not reach for the Joke Pumpâ„¢: I reach for the Umbrage Malletâ„¢, and start swinging, hard.

Again, this is a reflexive action, baked in of necessity from earlier, scarier times, but no one on the receiving end of it knows or much cares, consumed as they are with the ducking and/or the seeing of stars and/or the reaching for bludgeons, maces and other devices of an escalatory nature. You may be right and they may be absolutely wrong, but that is only (or usually only, no, it's only) from the context you're lucky or unlucky enough to be stitched into. From their perspective, there can have been no good intention or, 99 times out of 100, they would shoot (or swing, or launch) first and ask questions later.

I've talked before about how therapy doesn't really do much to change anything, but how, in tandem with some excruciating and numbingly repetitive, rehabilitative exercise it can be gangbusters at helping to change reactions to things. It can give you just that little bit of room you might not otherwise perceive in which to absorb fully (i.e., with the non-monkey-brain part of you) and respond differently (e.g., by offering a humble heart rather than flinging a handful of monkey poop). In this case, even as the waves of humiliated, righteous anger washed over me, I had the wherewithal to strap on my goggles and oxygen mask and respond, I hope...I think, with tenderness and lucidity (and mostly tenderness, because that's the role of lucidity).

The offense took place a few nights ago and the relay of hurt later, via email, from someone whom I don't know that well and had not the luxury of calling immediately. Still, I'm pretty sure that my reply expressed my remorse, providing both explanation and apology in the appropriate dosages. We'll see soon enough, but I'm at peace with my actions and payment of any karmic debt.

I bring this up both because it just happened and because this morning, in one of those delightful bits of synchronicity we're treated to now and again, I found this wonderful take from Mark Silver on hurt and how to handle it in my inbox. He talks about it in the context of business, how to handle an angry client, but the Sufism-suffused wisdom within is a balm to any kind of conflagration. My favorite part is this, which I'd had some dim sense of last night but which Mark put so clearly and beautifully:

For someone to complain, they need to already have a sense of safety and trust with you. When that angry or upset person complains, it means they think you care. It means they think they can tell you and not get hurt in return.

I have learned many tricks to keep myself from reaching for the Umbrage Malletâ„¢, but the best one may turn out not to be a trick at all: understand that the person in front of you is inciting this fear and rage and hurt and shame by wielding a big, open heart full of love...

xxx
c

UPDATE (7/30/09): Via email, I got this bit of awesomeness from my friend, Kate, a regular reader and regular provider of great wisdom:

Something my spiritual teacher taught me:

"Anything that is not an expression of love is a cry for help."

How about them apples? Talk about a beautifully constructed single line that can pull you from the precipice of Umbrage Mallet use and back onto the solid ground of love and peace. Anyway, Kate's on dial-up up in the Great White North, so rather than have her jump through 28 baud modem hoops or what have you, I thought I'd post it here for her. Especially since when I asked (pretty please) would she post it in a comment so everyone could see, I sent her to the wrong damned post. Sigh. I'll get this social media stuff down someday. Meanwhile, you should go read her excellent blog. Thanks!

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

Different strokes for the same old folks

Back in my "I Dress Like a Slut but Am Really a Virginal Rube" teens, I had inch-long nails on every finger.

Natural. Home-grown. Because this was 1977, and your options were Lee Press-On Nails or some marginally less vile version they'd apply at the salon. And I was a teenager, and broke (Mom forbade me to work until my senior year of high school), and I wanted long nails, so I did it the old-fashioned way.

Inch long. Every finger. Natural.

How, you may ask, did I manage to do anything? Honestly, I've no idea. My life wasn't a hellish hamster wheel of manual labor by any means, and I was never a big one for making the bed, but I did have the regular household chores to attend to, dishes, laundry, ironing, light dusting, and I did all the usual high school things, including the smoking of a great number of mentholated cigarettes, most of which I remember lighting myself. Me and the brothers, we liked the menthol. I recall an elaborate set-up-and-palm-heel-bump method of inserting change into vending machines (this is back before machines took paper money and credit cards, children); I was probably unduly proud of my ingenuity. I mean, wasting brain juice on vending machine workarounds? It's a miracle I graduated, much less squeaked by into a good college.*

At some point between the end high school and my first year at college, I cut them all off. I'm not sure exactly why, but I'm sure that in part it had to do with the vastly different workload college demanded.

Another change kinda-sorta came over me, though: save for a few notable exceptions like dances and the like, I began adopting a more comfortable, mannish style for my new, collegiate life. Eschewing girlier stuff felt like the right thing to do in this new environment, both for practical and social reasons. It also felt more like me. The further I got from this strange and mystical land of High School where, if not to fit in, at least to not stand out quite so egregiously, I had to follow the code, and the code said "girly." There were girly-girls a-plenty in college, but there were also all sorts of other flavors of girl, with no one way much better than another to be.

Since then, I've done stints in corporate or just regular Nice Lady drag, but mostly, this style (or lack thereof) has been mine. Comfortable, boyish-to-mannish clothes, notable spectacles, short-short (sometimes bitten that way) nails. I'd occasionally play with hair or makeup (1980s, I'm lookin' at you), but the nails stayed short. I'd learned by then that I had "bad" nailbeds: short and wide, spatulate, in the parlance of Dorothy Parker's "Horsey." Not nails for polish, but hands for doing things. Okay. I could roll with that.

And I did, for some thirty-odd years. Oh, every once in a while I'd push my ragged cuticles way, way back, trying to simulate a regular-length nail bed, and give the red a whirl. But it never looked right. It looked...embarrassing, like I didn't know the score.

More than anything, I hate looking like I don't know the score.

So now it's 2009, and I'm heading to Chicago to do a little work and spend a little time with some old friends. One of these, Chicago Jan, or "Jannicups," as my family has known her since forever, had come out of a Difficult Time; we decided we'd have us a ladies' day with luncheon and pedicures, using the gift certificate she gave me to a fancy spa years and years ago when I was coming out of my own Difficult Time. (See? I don't do spas. Too girly.)

Only when I get there, I learn that instead of making an appointment for two pedicures (I'm down with my long & groovy toes), Jannicups made the appointment for two manicures. And this fancy-schmancy salon, they're booked solid weeks in advance, even in a nasty downturn like this one. (The rich really are different than you and me, I guess. They have very well-oiled cuticles, for one.)

I was horrified at the thought of the poor manicurist who drew me even looking at my raggedy, gnawed-on nails, much less having her work on them. Nubs! And ugly nubs, at the end of not especially attractive hands!

But I really wanted it to be a special, just-us day, so off we went: me and my witchy hands, Jannicups and her delicate, well-cared for digits, to the salon. I justified the outrageousness of me, manicured, by suggesting that perhaps the expense and raucous color would jar me into not biting for a bit. I cracked so many self-deprecating jokes about ironies heaped upon ironies that even I grew sick of it. So finally, I let go, and let that nice young lady do her thing. I sat back and accepted it, which was, for the moment, my thing. I even picked a girly coral over the logo lime green I'd wanted initially; Jannicups was not going to let that particular irony pass unchecked.

The strange thing was, for the rest of the week, I rather enjoyed my tiny orange fingernails. I'd find myself pointing at things a bit more...pointedly, and gesticulating more wildly, and even sneaking embarrassed, admiring glances at them splayed against the dark brown of my pants, or wrapped around the stem of a glass of Riesling. At some point, I even stopped apologizing for them, gave up the endless explaining ("...and I thought we were getting pedicures"), let go of the fear I had attached to being viewed as a clueless wonder and just let my hands be my hands, to hell with it all.

They're almost back to normal now. Polish doesn't last long under the best of conditions, and travel with lots of typing is not the best of conditions. Plus my short and funny fingernails grow quickly no matter what their starting length, and the growout was looking unseemly. I'll bust out the remover in the morning and get rid of what hasn't been chipped off or picked away already.

I would like to think I may not nibble at them for a while, though. That maybe my good habits of the past week will carry on a little longer. Bringing just a little attention to one's less lovely but deeply entrenched habits might just have the effect of dislodging them. Just a bit.

Mostly, I hope that the feeling of being just a little bit embarrassed, a little bit exposed, a little bit off-kilter, and living to tell the tale, mostly, I hope that is what stays with me. I cannot undo my habits until I know them to be habits; sometimes, to know, they must be spelled out for me in bright coral enamel.

Wake up, wake up, wake up. And if I fall asleep again, wake me up.

We must keep each other awake, you and I...

xxx
c

*I definitely didn't do much writing, I remember that. What I had to, I did, and on the typewriter, and with cussing. You can learn to type with the pads of your fingers, but the nails, they will stick now and again. I believe I did a small bit of tortured writing in journals, although sadly (or maybe not), there are none extant.

Poetry Thursday: The bu-u-u-u-us

I sat on a busbehind a beautiful man and his beautiful woman on a balmy night more beautiful even than all of us together (And this was a beautiful man.)

I sat with my head and my heart and my belly filled with the various wonders of the day, random and planned, buttered and plain, lovely and odd.

And I sat in my seat (with my book in my lap for camouflage) beside one young man speaking French to another

And I sat across the aisle from a girl who sang like a bird

And I sat a few rows up from a baby who cried like a baby

And we all sat like that, me and my book and these people and their music for a good twenty blocks

A very good twenty blocks

And I thought that my heart and my head and my belly were as full as could be with love and joy and music

Until I got off of the bus and I thought about how I would share it with you.

xxx c

Image by Bill Ward's Brickpile via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Be your own guru

If you are doing things right and you have a certain amount of luck, you'll live past the elders who were once your principal sources of wisdom and unconditional love.

Mom. Dad. That really cool uncle (I had one!). That pivotal grandparent (I had a couple of those, too!).

And, if you had a certain amount of luck and you decide to do things right, you'll also graduate from your various mental health care providers, friends, colleagues, agents, editors and other tutors in Stuff You Need to Know at Various Points in Your Life and Career. Because really, how horrid and dull would it be if you had the same 25 people in your life forever? Especially, usually, if they were the first 25, there by virtue of chronology.

The trick to getting the most from the people you meet as you move through life is a two-parter: paying enough attention in the moment to absorb the material in your first time of need, and developing the skill of recalling them when the second (and third, and fortieth) time arises.

My beloved paternal grandmother who showered me with the truest love I've known is long gone, but opening my heart just a little brings her rushing back to me, and with her, that feeling of support.

My father, who was probably the best-organized self-made business person I'll ever meet, and also the person who liked talking about it and his systems and processes the least, has oceans of wisdom to bestow upon me in my time of need, if only I can see my way to invoke him. And them.

Those people who wear the initial bracelets have one thing right absolutely, no matter who or what it is they are invoking: to stop and ask the question is the main thing, the most important thing. I'm a bit lost; what would this older, wiser, calmer, more together soul have to say about the situation I face right now?

When I have absorbed the principal bits of wisdom I am supposed to from the people who have them to disburse, I can (usually) answer these questions for myself. And if not, and if they are not present (or no longer there, period) to consult, I can triangulate: I can ask the me who has been through similar things before and invoke the spirit of those who have advised me in the past and turn to those wise souls I've been fortunate enough to collect around me. I can ask, "What now, please?"

And if all else fails, I can be the guru to myself I would try to be to someone who begged it of me. Would I advise a friend to walk down this dark alley unaccompanied, to answer this email in this way, to make this decision in this moment?

Thinking I'm all alone is as much of an illusion as pretending I'm not. All I really have to do is ask the question in the bright lightness of the truth, and pause, and answer it the same way...

xxx
c

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

Anxiety, my old friend

I worry about quite a bit.

The end of the world, for starters, and its corollary, the not-end of the world and the worry that we will not be able to adequately care for its inhabitants, which will, of course, bring about the end of the world.

I worry about whether I will make it to the airport in time for the plane, this, no matter how early we leave to arrive there. (Which, as a point of reference, is always so that I will arrive at the airport a good two hours before the plane's scheduled departure.)

I worry that I do not love The BF enough, and sometimes (more often, I'm ashamed to say), that he does not love me enough and always that I will outlive him (and everyone else I love, last one on the planet, don't forget to turn out the lights). I worry about that one mole on my arm, and that it's been overly long since I've been to the dermatologist, and that when I do finally go I'll hear that because I've waited so long my entire arm will have to be amputated.

I worry that I don't read enough anymore, and that my critical thinking skills are deteriorating. I worry that I read too much of the same sorts of stuff, marketing and creativity and happiness-related materials, and that I am turning into a cheesehead denizen of the Idiocracy who knows only made-up and strung together half-bits of history.

I worry that I am writing too much, and that it affects the quality of my output. (Note: this replaces my previous worry, that I was writing too little to make any sort of gain in skill, much less impact on the world.) I worry that I left the door unlocked, the candle burning and the iron on, this, despite the hard reality that I have not pressed a thing since at least 2007.

And last week, I worried that I was a sham and a fraud, that I would do a horrible job presenting my little segment during what I was sure would be a stellar workshop by the brilliant Pam Slim (note: it was and she is), and that everyone would hate me.

According to Pam, or to her coach, Martha Beck, whom she was quoting, anxiety is totally normal. It is a normal thing to experience some level of HOLY CHRIST when undertaking a new endeavor. I suppose in this way it is like the little bit of butterfly action one can get in one's tummy before even the 347th time one heads out onto the stage to play one's part for the evening: if we are really and truly in the moment, everything is always at least a little bit new and certainly live, and with that set of circumstances, shit can happen.

It's okay. I'm okay, and the workshop was great. We all had fun, far more than many of us suspected (especially those of us who have developed the neat trick of showing up to the party expecting to have a bad time, that we might be pleasantly surprised).

I think that I will become really nervous when I stop being nervous at all. It is those moments where I have felt nothing or even dread because I am all too familiar with something that scare me now.

Keep reaching, just a little bit, until you feel the anxiety. Even if it is just a frisson of thrill. Reach reach reach.

The world, she is in your hands...

xxx
c

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

Poetry Thursday: All the room in the world

If it helps

we're only renting

The car you drive

The house you bought

Those shoes

That ring

This muffin

It all passes through

like it was never yours

to begin with

(Especially the muffin)

I'm the caretaker

for now

of this hat

that fridge

these cells

and once my term is up

they will move on

to the next caretaker

in some shape

or another entirely

Be the container

that is clean and good

to hold these things

for the time they are yours:

these babies

those thoughts

this poem

And be prepared

to let go

at a moment's notice

(or not)

when the moment comes

And if you feel sad

or heavy

or small

let go

let go

let go

All the stuff in the world

is not half as wonderful

as the room left behind

once it's gone.

xxx

c

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

Before you fall-down-go-boom, make room

A lot of good stuff has been happening lately.

Stuff that's coming out of my involvement with a weekly accountability group, and a few interesting classes, and a lot of work. Oh, yes, a LOT of work.

For those of us with two settings ("full bore" and "off"), even with the best of intentions and calendaring and firewalling time off, a lot of work can creep up on you. Mostly, like the boiling frog, you don't even realize how close you are to a fine fricassee until someone or something flips the lever into the "off" position. And if you're going fast when it happens (which, given the two speeds, is pretty much a given), momentum is suddenly and very much not your friend.

This weekend, the lever was flipped in the car, which is very much where I do NOT like things to happen suddenly. And yet, there we were, The BF and me, both tired, me cranky (how does he never get cranky?), circling for parking. I was already irritated that we were circling for parking because it was hot (not my fault) and I was tired (totally my fault) and I don't especially like driving, so any extra of it I have to do when I'm already tired and hot makes me even crankier.

Still, I'm not a complete dumbass; I know that when it's like that, I need to move slowly. So I swallowed the irritation and chugged along, finally espying a spot near our destination. A spot not quite big enough to pull into, so I slowed down even further, put my right turn signal on, and moved ahead of the spot, as we were taught to do in Driver's Ed lo, so many years ago, and which they have apparently stopped teaching, along with PAYING ATTENTION, because the car behind me, instead of slowing down and/or moving to the passing lane, pulled up hard on my ass. Which meant that I had to wait it out or give it up, and guess what Miss Crankypants was not going to do?

I could go on and tell you about the near pile-up because of even more people who hadn't taken Driver's Ed, or the honking, or the yelling at me to move, but the salient issue (beyond my being overly tired, with no room left in which to act like a compassionate human being, just enough to scream "MINE! MINE!") is that when The BF made a gentle suggestion that, right or wrong, we abandon this course of inaction, I screamed, screamed, like a crazed, frothy-mouthed caricature of Anger Management personified, "Do you wanna drive?!"

To which, after a pause, he replied, "Yes. Yes, I do, actually."

To my credit, just about the only credit I'm going to give myself as far as grace points in this particular situation, I didn't fire back: I paused, took it in, and pulled over to let him drive. Because even in my crazed, frothy-mouthed condition, I could tell (thank JEEBUS and my 20 million years of talk therapy) that I was toast.

It is painful to recall the mix of anger and shame I felt in that moment, and for the rest of the day, but both were mightily and handily eclipsed by the feeling of terror. Because I finally had a crystal-clear, if very ugly picture of the way things might go if I didn't change course right now and forevermore. This was an epiphany of a much different and more dreadful sort than the blissful, Elizabeth Gilbert-esque, dancing angels and white light one I had in my hospital bed many years ago, but it was no less of a peek behind the curtain and to this one, I gratefully say, "No, thank you."

No, thank you, I do not want to hurt the people closest to me. Or anyone, if I can help it. Kind of runs counter to the mission statement around these parts.

No, thank you, I do not want to hurt myself. Better that I do that, I think, if it's a choice, but when I go down, it's a burden on even more people. I've seen it; I know. So no. No, thank you.

I'm still a little shaky from the whole affair, which I think is good. I think that's the point, if there's one to be drawn from this. This way is not sustainable. So. There will probably be some more changes to the changes I was already planning to make.

Also? I will fuck up. Oh, I will most surely fuck up. It's a given. So I'm asking for help and grace both to make the changes I need to and to see me through the almost inevitable fuckups. I'm not asking you, in particular; you've got your own row to hoe, farmer.

But I will toss out there, ever so gently, that if you are at all like me, if you see any of yourself in this, please slow down. Please make some room. Wiggle your toes to remind yourself you have a real, physical body that can get hurt and can, even inadvertently, hurt others. Take a breath to maybe stop yourself from getting to the place where you might.

Sit. Close your eyes. Hug the dog. Go look at a sneezing baby panda or a laughing baby. Eff the coffee or the booze or the impulse to work even harder or whatever your check-out drug of choice is.

I will. I am, right now.

No foolin'...

xxx
c

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

Poetry Thursday: What you love, in what you hate

My best friend in college
locked horns with me
the day we met

I grew up eating Dover sole
they told me
was tuna fish
in a different shape
because I loved tuna fish
and hated that stuff on my plate.

Or thought I did.

I hated many things
I didn't know I loved
before I learned to love them:
dogs and Los Angeles,
acting and marketing,
books without pictures,
cheese with irregularities

Even poetry.

Sometimes
it's a matter of ramping up
with trickery
or adulteration,
like cream in your coffee
or jazz in MGM musicals.

Other times
you have to walk through what you hate
to find the thing you love.

The stuff that comes easy
is like popcorn:
neither here nor there

The stuff that is challenging
is like sushi:
weird and chewy,
foreign and opaque,
off-putting
scary
indifferent
or, in the case of wasabi,
openly hostile.

Nothing wrong with popcorn
but the lesson
and the love
and the growth
and the magic
and the poetry
is in the sushi.

xxx
c

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

Why I wasn't Colleen Wainwright (and why I am now)

As with money, we have a long and complicated relationship with names in my family.

Many people are shocked, shocked, I tell you!, to find out I'm half-Jewish; apparently, even though, as a former agent said, I have a face like a map of old Russia, I'm not immediately physically recognizable as a Jew (whatever that means).

Neither was my father. The son of two full-fledged (albeit non-practicing) Members of the Tribe, he somehow looked like them in only the most Gentile of ways. He could, and did, pass, in his Brooks Brothers suits and horn-rimmed ad-guy glasses. He even looked goyishe standing next to my mother, a beauty of Irish-Swedish descent who had shiksa written all over her retroussé nose. Who knows? Maybe it was a gentile-by-association thing.

And in mid-century America, in the circles Charles Anthony Weinrott wanted to travel in, if it wasn't better to be non-Jewish, it was definitely better to be non-different. So he Anglicized the name, converted to Catholicism, et voila! All traces of the Jew in him, save a lingering penchant for chopped liver, were eliminated. (And hey, who doesn't like a nice pâté?)

But that's not where the name issue stopped, or rather, where it started. Oh, no. Way, way back when he was a wee lad with very little means of power or authority, Dad found a way to wiggle a bit from under the loving but dominating shadow of his father, my beloved Gramps. Quite forcefully (or so the family lore would have it) and pretty much out of the blue one day, young Master Weinrott announced that he would no longer answer to "Charlie," and must henceforth be addressed as "Tony." 20-some-odd years later, he scrubbed the first name down to an initial, and was known formally as "C. Anthony Wainwright," thereby eradicating 90% of the name he was born with. Take that, old man.

On the other hand, my mother had an entirely different experience with names. She was born "Ann Sexton," most decidedly not named after the poetess. Like the rest of the female children in her family, she was not burdened with a middle name, as such a thing would be rendered superfluous upon marrying, which she would most certainly do (unless she became a nun, in which case, well, you know.) No one could have foreseen just how much Mom would take to marrying; by the time of her death, she was either "Ann Sexton Wainwright Noel" or "Ann Wainwright Noel" or "Ann Sexton Noel" or even, because hands will cramp up, plain, old "Ann Noel," depending on what piece of paper you were looking at or whom you were talking to.

I am sure that Mom and Dad, like most parents, meant well when they named me, although I think Mom's claim about why each of her three girls were gifted with "Ann" for a middle name, "Because it goes with everything!", is a bit disingenuous, given her personal circumstances. Thing is, I was and forever would be a girl who: (a) looked like her father; (b) wrote, like her father; and (c), shared initials and (almost) a birthday with her father. I even wound up going into advertising like my father, where my entire 10-year experience was one long object lesson in what it must be like to be the younger sibling trailing the exceptional, older one through every grade for a lifetime of schooling. In one way, it was nice; in every other way, it pretty much sucked ass.

When I came online, I heartily embraced the fashion of the day, referring to oneself by a handle, or blog name. It was great being the communicatrix, for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which was a lot less typing: "Colleen Wainwright" is one long-ass name.

But as the convention slowly fell out of favor, a victim of the shift from the goofy web to the business-minded web, I felt more and more like a clueless, hamfisted n00b with my retro-chic moniker. Worse, I was occasionally accused of a lack of transparency, me, the blabbity-blabbingest blabber on the web! The handle was starting to chafe; it felt less like me and more like me trying too hard. Ugh.

So over the past couple of weeks, I've been playing with my real name. Which is to say, when I go out to the web to play, I leave my actual name, not my handle, in the appropriate field of the comments box. And it feels...appropriate. Like I've grown up, like I don't need to thumb my nose at anyone or act weird and different. I am weird and different, and I'm down with it, as some kids somewhere said at one time or another. I'm weird and I'm different and I have a lot of damned letters in my name. That's what TextExpander is for.

I will still register for things with "communicatrix" and, I'm sure, I'll still comment occasionally as "the communicatrix." It's fun, and it's also me. But from now on, here, with you, I'm Colleen Wainwright. It's my name, and I'm (most likely) sticking to it...

xxx
c

Yup, that's my first passport. No, neither I nor my signature look anything like that anymore.

Serving suggestions

Here's what I find maddening about life: it never looks like what you think it will.

The most obvious example of this is traveling, where your idea of what a destination will look (and possibly feel) like is influenced by hundreds if not thousands of visual impressions captured by those who have been there before you. A gorgeous, brilliantly composed shot fueled by years of photographic know-how and the sweat of a thousand flunkies doing anything and everything from holding up bounce cards to shagging unwanted passersby away from the frame is setting you up for a huge disconnect when you bring your own self to the Eiffel Tower or Times Square or that place where Mary Tyler Moore threw her hat up in the air. Heck, even Flickr can mess you up.

Lest you think I'm slamming the advance team for their collusion in some kind of cheap, bait-and-switch, oversell, I'm not. The disconnect can work the other way, too, where you think something is going to be mundane and it ends up blowing your mind in the good way.

All I'm saying is that all the description in the world cannot prepare you for what a thing really is when you get there: love; New York; risotto; adulthood. Because all of the description in the world is leaving something out, is leaving a lot of things out, both of necessity (you can't record every impression you're having, ergo you can't share your exact experience with the world) and design, which is where (we hope) stuff like art and music and all their expressive cousins come in. The more I think about it, and I try not to, because this sort of stuff makes my head hurt, the more I believe that my recent stabs at "poetry" are attempts at delivering serving suggestions for various things I'm going through. Translation can be tough stuff, and relieving myself of the explicit i-dotting and t-crossing that's built into a regular essay frees me up to express the heart of the experience.

Or hey, maybe it's just me being lazy!

Either way, because I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately, and because it's a Monday after a two-day period of relative non-work where I did a whole lot more reflecting, I felt the need to express this. The destination may surprise you. It will probably surprise you. When you get to what it is you've been working toward, a primary relationship, a VP title, your own business, a gold statuette, it will not feel like or seem like or look like what you thought it might on the way there. I've been struggling to find clarity for nigh on two years now, and even as it's starting to come to me (albeit in SHORT bursts), it doesn't feel at all like I thought it might. It feels good, but it doesn't feel like done. I thought it would feel more like done.

Amazingly, I'm okay with that in a way I most certainly was not the first time I saw Trafalgar Square or high school or Sea Monkeysâ„¢. Chalk it up to experience, I guess. If you pay attention, experiences can be additive, not random.

And you start to see serving suggestions for what they are: one possible thing among many, one fellow traveler's stab at expression, one little taste of what's maybe/possibly, kinda/sorta yet to come...

xxx
c

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

Poetry Thursday: Finish lines

Most of what I do
goes on and on
and on
and
on

The search for right work
the path to self-knowledge
the cultivation of compassion

On and on
into motherfucking
infinity
and will do so
until the clock is stopped
on my heart
or my brain,
whichever comes first.

So some of what I do
must be carved
into finite bits:
the dishes
the dinner
the laundry
the bills

I will do them again,
of course.
Nothing is finite
from far enough back
but more an illusion
I conjure
to keep from going mad
with the bigness of it all

But for now
I will pretend
that it is just this sink full of dishes
this pot of soup
these two loads
this one bill
and cross them off my list,
one
by
one
in mental red pen.

Maybe a thing done well
mostly, a thing done, period.

One needs the closure
when one trucks in ellipses...

xxx
c

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