LaurieWrites

Bring on your wrecking ball

 

I drove to the restaurant on Saturday, for the second first time, where I worked my way through college.  

It's a small, sweet story, how I ended up logging any hours there again. Suffice to say that I walked in the door for a meal last week, and this is how it turned out, for a couple of reasons. I'm not in a position to turn down much financial opportunity, for one, the way things are going. Things are strange around here. I wouldn't call them wildly stable, but I am working, thanks to several years of writing and editing work that I did on the side of my teaching job, to the community I built up from blogging and Twitter and conferences, to the endless conversations I've had since I started talking on the internet.

And I like it. I like working, essentially, for me, although at the same time I work for, and with, lots of people, at a distance. I like being mostly in charge of my day, even though it's weird not having much of a schedule. I like working with smart, insightful, engaging, people on exciting projects. I like finally confirming, after years of knowing but not having any real, workable proof, that this non-routine routine is where my brain thrives, that I can get results (for me and for you) as a result, that I don't get sick of it, that it makes me more energized and productive and creative, every single day. 

I like being my own resume. I like telling you I'll do something at midnight and having it settled by 11 a.m. I like the people in my inbox. I can't tell you what a gift this is. 

But, economically speaking, I also like watching Rachel Maddow and Top Chef. I like having access to cable, and I'm not willing quite yet to turn it off. First of all, I live alone, do not Skype a lot or watch web video, and I hate the telephone, plus no one ever calls me except my mother and Sallie Mae (I love you, Mom.) My cable bill divided by the number of days in a month is probably worth its weight in sensory exposure that is not internet-based. Plus a certain level of the way I exist in the world is tied to pop culture, like it or not. I'd call it shallow, but I can't, because it's just part of who I am, how I think, how I connect, and how I process the world.

I also really like watching Rachel Maddow. I would have been an even uglier mess on election night without her. A daily hour of her plus, oh, one and a half minutes of Ellen dancing, is like therapy tax, whatever. 

I also like paying my rent, and buying the very occasional pair of shoes, it's true, and not eating garbanzo beans for every meal (although I would, if pressed, eat them every day. I like them that much. I'm into legumes.) And not having a regular paycheck every two weeks, even though random ones come in now and again, is an unnerving and, yes, scary situation for me. I don't know when it will happen again, or if it will happen again, but I know that I will never again in my adult life take it for granted. It not happening has made my brain different. It's changed my social life. It's changed my plans, on a daily basis and in the long-term. 

I think about everything carefully now, from the number of months ahead that I can estimate that I can watch Rachel Maddow without major stress, to the choice of whether to eat what I have in this sad little refrigerator and pantry, or go snag the steak and cheese I really, really want, for some reason. (Friday night I opted for the steak and cheese. Tomorrow I may choose differently. This is all actually really good for me, although I don't like it at all. Out of the comfort zone and all.) 

Anyway, last night I got dressed up in decent clothes and got in my car. I got on the Beltway and I started driving in a really familiar direction, to work a host shift at a place I haven't clocked in at since 1996. Since I said I'd do it, I'd been thinking about it with a mix of amusement and nostalgia, and a little bit of dopey excitement. I'd be out of the house to do something useful, maybe. I'd be working a different side of my brain. I'd make a quarter of my cable bill. 

It came clear as I drove that it was a gorgeous, mid-fall Maryland pre-sunset evening. Everything glowed. Fewer leaves on the trees meant that the light got through more obviously. I was in what I'd identify as a good mood. So I turned up the radio in my car for the first time (I'm not kidding you. I know. Come on, lucky 2013!) since I got home from my road trip in September. Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball cd was in the slot, not surprisingly. 

The song of the same name was on. 

"When your game has been decided 

and you're burning up the clock

and all our victories and glories have turned into parking lots

When your best hopes and desires have scattered to the wind

and hard times come and hard time go and hard times come and hard times go and hard times come and hard timesgoandhardtimescomeandhardtimesgo just to COME AGAIN."

I started crying and I just cried like a fool, I cried all my way to that restaurant. I cried for roads I was on again and roads I'd been on and stuff that was messed up. Around the exit where I really needed to worry about my eyes looking crazy at my destination I said out loud "What in the WORLD LAURIE?" which typically makes me stop crying but it didn't. 

I cried because it was all hitting me, that there were times on that road to and from California when I thought my pain and confusion and the fallout from my choices would literally kill me. I listened to the entire Wrecking Ball cd on repeat for a good part of that trip, including one memorable moment when "This Train" took me around Dallas and on my way to Austin, triumphant, sun blazing, one of the most beautiful moments of the whole trip. 

I had been scared, that whole time, scared of the entirety of my life and of my feelings, of leaving my job and of broken trust and the everything that was unknown and the bitch of my own fragility. I thought my game had been decided, that victory and glory were foreign concepts, that everything was what I was seeing: parking lots. 

I cried because when I came home I walked back into an unmanageable vortex that landed me in an unpleasant room with my head buried in my mother's arms, weeping, terrified of my physical fragility. I was embarrassed and afraid and yet, and yet, I gave myself over to her and to my sister, to my whole family, really, finally. And that is when it started to get better, when I said I'd been carrying all of this stuff for too long and I couldn't do it anymore, and they said, to a person, that I would be okay, and I believed them. 

It's been a slow road back, it really has, but it started moving a lot faster when I said words out loud, when I trusted in that which and who has been there for me the whole time, even and especially when I told it to go away. It's still hard, but every day, it's gotten a little better. I'm still nervous and worried and I still toss what are probably not the smartest things around in my head on a daily basis, but I'm better. I'm so much better. 

I love Bruce Springsteen for unwittingly giving me context for all of this craziness. I'm just a drop in the bucket of people who appreciate him, but nonetheless, I am so grateful, because music is in many ways my most essential filter, and when I don't use it at my worst times, I suffer. My year and my path would have been lacking without this record, and when I look back over my life, this is really only true of a select few artists and their work.

This train
Carries saints and sinners
This train
Carries losers and winners
This Train
Carries whores and gamblers
This Train
Carries lost souls
This Train
Dreams will not be thwarted
This Train
Faith will be rewarded...
 

I finally added seeing him live in New Jersey to my life list. I've never seen him in concert, and that seems like the place to do it, if I'm going to.

After August

What if you break everything? What if you upend it? What if you disappoint all of the people who are sitting around (in your mind, not really) rapt waiting to see what you do? 

What if you ruin things? What if the ultimate was that job, partner, space in time, apartment? 

What were you supposed to be by now? 

I know I have no idea. I used to think I did, except I know that I never really thought I did. I have never really known what to do, not any day, except the thing that was in front of me. Except the thing that is in front of me. The plate that needs a cleaning. A (small) pot of coffee to be made. A call that I can't make because I'm scared. An email, endless email, hurts unattended, deadlines not met. 

I can't fix it, I don't know it. I am caught, as perhaps you are, in endless wtf? In why didn't I have children? Why did that person go where he went? Why did she say that? Why were you so hell-bent on destroying me within a broken system that it became an agenda item for you that would never appear on your evaluation so why? 

Why was that so bad? 

I don't know. Because there are also rainbows and waves and conversations in cars with people who know your soul and doctors who sit back in their chairs and say "When are you going to take care of yourself?" There are babies who are related to you somehow even if they are not yours, and puppies who will be yours someday and editors who are smart and kind and people who do what they say they will. There are true friends, there really are. 

Everything is not broken. 

And even when it feels like it is, it never really is, except it can so feel like it is. But through that muck there is the ability to scrounge up some kind of weird promise, the shattering discomfort of new people who will quickly become essential, a mother who still lays down her life in the face of your undeserving, a free washing machine, a knife when all you need is a knife. 

It just keeps going, until it doesn't, is what it does. And these hard times when you have thrown all of your breakables against unforgiving walls and they have shattered, they are just a part of it. If you can survive them -- which you probably can, because people have been burned at the stake and survived wars and you are in threat of neither -- they remind you of what can be, if you let it. They are reminders of what you ought not to let them be, if you don't have to. 

Birth

I've been following along with the story of a new person born last week. I know his grandmas, and I've been privileged to follow his story online, as he was born and lived his first days, and it touched me so much. He was so loved even before he got here, it was a nice touchstone amid some upheaval for me, and honestly, I'm not touched frequently with that kind of circle-of-life energy. All of mine in recent years has been watching elders pass, with no replacement of babies and new life to take their place, and as much as I loved those people (even my poor little old dog, because I did love him, so much) it's hard to have that kind of energy without a counterpoint. I also don't live among children now, or pregnant women, or that many people, honestly, so it was nice to even see it from a distance.

Tonight I saw a picture of this tiny person meeting one of his grandmas for the first time, and I broke down in a way that I'm glad no one saw besides me. I cried and cried and cried. I took a bath and then a shower to wash my hair, and then I cried again. It came up from somewhere deep inside of me when I saw an image of him meeting someone who I knew at first glance would catch a grenade for him, but more likely would just sit there holding him, providing for him, showing him what love was in eyes and song and hands. It ignited a conscious longing for deep connection, appreciation for the pure love I saw in what I was looking at, fear of never finding it, gratitude that a tiny human could experience that kind of devotion in a world where it's so needed.

It was a lot tonight. I have had several days of internal work and struggle, of letting go and rationalization, and it was a difficult, clearing, healing cry. I never turned the tv on again tonight. I sat here instead and wanted to talk about all of this to my little blank blog box, because it is in the face of the most fearful times in life that I know for sure that the good and deep things I'm seeing is the stuff that matters.

Photo by Schmutzie. Used with permission.

And even when I'm so afraid that feelings like I saw in images tonight won't touch me, personally, again or maybe ever, it was good to know today that they -- and my reaction -- existed. It was good to know I could take it all in, even partially, at a distance, when normally I am so busy talking myself out of needs and feelings and the right -- yes, the right, it appears -- to human connection.When so often I feel on the outside looking in, not really a part of any system or community, but an observer. A child and a sister and a friend, for sure, but on some primal level lacking, no one's mom, no one's partner, no one's provider, no one's end of the day.

These are the voids that frighten me, for whatever reason. These are the spaces of deepest longing for me now.

We function regardless, I know, because I do. I understand my value. I don't feel worthless, I'm not sorry I passed over options that could have led me to that and left me holding the tragically wrong cards, either. I'm just being honest about what hits me in the hardest places. Because I think it is that desire for better, that acknowledgement of where the wounds are inside of us, of what we desire and what keeps us from it, especially, that helps us be better, that helps me be better, anyway. And on days like today even more, I appreciate the people who have shared their stories with me online, even when I didn't like them, even when they have been uncomfortable for me, because it is this kind of access that so often instructs me, that gives me a view I'd never have otherwise. I see a brand new baby in the embrace of a grandmother in an airport and I say yes, this is it. This is one of the things that truly matter.

I hope I am a little bit different tomorrow. I hope I am a little bit better. I hope I can hold on with less denial and shame, with more courage and intention, to what I might want from this life I am not only crafting for myself, but that I am allowing others to participate in, too. Because I'm at a place where I am still so flawed and afraid and road-worn, but also ready, by necessity and desire, to be better at that part.

Organizing

I'm home tonight, by choice. I spent the day focused, for me, cleaning, clearing out, doing laundry, putting some organizational thingamajigs in place. 

The fall and winter were pretty much a wreck around here. I was home and then I was not, day to day, week to week, spinning whether I was here or away, and nothing got done. The infrastructure fell apart. And then I read an article in O magazine, of all places, last week about clutter, and how the external reflects the internal, and how there's a reason we let it pile up and don't tend to the structures of our lives, and I knew I was sick of myself and of this and that with all of what I've got going on and coming up that I had better decide to make getting my act together a priority. I also decided that just because I'd always been told I wasn't any good at organizing and cleaning didn't mean I couldn't learn and that this messy rubber had hit the road bigtime.

So I went to Target and bought these bins, many bins, in my favorite comforting shade of green, because Oprah's organizer told me to get them. I have no idea what I'm going to put in them exactly yet, except he did say that one shoe-boxed size one should be reserved for cords and chargers, all the electronic stuff that my life eats, so I have dutifully put those cords and chargers in there. I was supposed to buy four, though, and I have three left. I need to check the article and see what he said to put in the other three. because I kind of keep looking at them suspiciously and moving them around while I do all of my other stuff, and that's just not very healthy or productive.

Tonight, because it is Friday and damned if I do not know how to rock the shit out of a Friday night, I refused an offer to go to a St. Patrick's Day bar thing, and took myself instead to Bed, Bath and Beyond with coupons (twenty percent off one item AND five dollars off the whole shebang, BOOYAH.) And after I obsessed over the shoe racks and rejected them all, because yeah, I can do that for 20 minutes, I grabbed 48 green fake suede slimline hangers off the racks and decided that they were what I needed to get my closet in shape. 

I am super excited about these hangers, y'all. They are SPIF-FY. So tomorrow is hang-up clothes day. (And everyone is jealous. Whatever.) 

I'm likely seeking an organizational center because, as I've told a few people this week, I have no sense of a comfort zone right now. Sure, there is always my bathtub (I don't know how I am not a Pisces), but that's about it, and there are only so many hours I can spend in there before it just gets weird and cold and wrinkly. I think that bailing on my job was the last bastion of fragile structure I had, which is bizarre because it's not like I've felt any kind of comfort zone there for a long time. 

And it's okay. It really is. I've been having some serious anxiety waves the past couple of weeks, yes. They are really hard to deal with, a combination of physically and emotionally challenging that leaves me feeling raw and strung out with nowhere to put myself and no sense of relief in sight until they pass. And whereas I'm trying to handle them with exercise and my own brand of therapy I can do for myself pretty well (which mostly amounts to yelling "Oh just fucking QUIT IT! Just CUT IT OUT RIGHT THE HELL NOW." at myself in my head,) mostly I'm just riding them out, because, well, I don't have a choice. I have got to learn to do this. So I'm learning to sit better with discomfort, to decide what it's rooted in and what I have to do about it. 

Because I know that this decision was right, that everything that is happening now is correct and in the proper order. I do have many moments where I panic and think, quite specifically, "What am I going to do? Who was I to do this now? What will become of me?" But I know. I know every time I tell someone, because I've had to tell a lot of someones. I know that while this is a place of risk and what may appear to many from the outside as utter lunacy, that what I've been living is not life, that what I've got in front of me, as nebulous and weird and scary as it may seem, is where I will carve out what is. That whereas I've had good and wonderful times, amazing experiences, beautiful connections in my span of years, that this is the most open I've ever been to ambiguity, to change, to a sense of myself that fits, inside and out. 

I was walking up to the town center to meet Lauren the other night, and I found to my true delight that this tree was in bloom again. 

And it struck me that it had been a year, a whole year since I'd seen it this way before, and as I instagrammed it, all I kept thinking was what I wrote in the caption: "Time flies while your life happens."

And I knew I'd been through a foggy period and now, when things should rightly be more confusing, that they were actually, concurrently, more clear. Things were happening, finally, consciously.

(Knowledge of the rightness of the current situation does not mean I am not terrified. It just means that I know it's necessary, and that's at its core fairly comforting, no matter what.) 

I'm also talking, a lot, in between long stretches of alone time. I'm talking to my friends and my family. I had this week off,  and I've quite on purpose not done a whole lot beyond hang out here, make some stronger professional contacts, and make it a strong point to see my friends. I have had very much-needed dinners with people who get me and who care, spent a gorgeous sunny happy hour with my sister, spent some time on the phone in conversation that made things that needed to be better, better. 

Connecting takes time. Sharing meals and life stories and huge and tiny things, hearts and plans and intentions, it all takes time. As alone as I feel these days, often, I know that that's more an existential state that really reflects my  need for connection more than anything. In reality I am surrounded by people who care, close by and at a distance, and it's really up to me to foster those connections better. And it's all too easy when I'm caught up in the day to day not to take it, to trudge along, to be satisfied with texts and Facebook and whatever ephemera I fling out into the ether. 

This week, it helped. I also slept, a lot. I spent a lot of indulgent morning time in my bed, way past when I ought to have gotten up and started working towards bettering the world or at least doing my dishes. The incessant improvements to my complex meant the guys with the sanders and drills were out there doing something new to the courtyard at ungodly hours every day, which meant falling in and out of restless sleep in the morning, but I would not get up. I let myself be. 

Because I don't know when I'll be able to do this again, and I know I'm storing up for a period of time where I am going to need my energy and my wits and my everything else. I'm okay with it. I just gave myself this week.

 I know this is boring. I know this isn't a creative piece, with a punchline or a thesis or a pithy conclusion that tells any great truth of life. But what it is and what I am is down in it, in a place of work and progress, in a place of reflection and building up, and sometimes when I write it down, that's the only time it seems real. I need that right now. 

To sing my song.

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

"The Laughing Heart" by Charles Bukowski

************************************************

I drove the old roads yesterday, as I rarely do anymore unless someone died, as someone had. Turning instinctively on numbered streets -- that party there, that unfortunate conversation on that street corner, I knew the sounds and the smells of the neighborhoods, felt the grit of the pavement and the echoes of so many voices up through the undercarriage of a car I never could have afforded then, can barely afford now. 

Road miles, they carry us, somehow.

Monday was PG County and a dead body in a Hawaiian shirt, unbearable grief and chicken joints and that school I went to once. I forgot about D's corner lot house, the irritation of the left turn. The shortcut through the 7-11 that I made still-instinctively after 20 years away made me want to smoke more than usual, an urge staved off mostly by the almost seven dollar price for a pack that made me smile big.

It's all so much the same, it's crazy how it stays that way when it seems like it ought not to, when you've been away and looking at so much other stuff. It's just so much more expensive in all ways now.

 ************************************************

you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.

 ***********************************************

I am afraid, I admit it. I said some horrible things a few days ago, things that came from the worst place, the most unpleasant, the most fearful and preemptively abandoned. I felt as worthless and pointless as I have in months, as incapable of...I don't know? Anything. It was bad, and it was at the same time, regardless of immediate outcome, immediately productive. Watersheds are few and far between in a life, really.

I had needed it for years and never saw it coming really. Idealism is a certain circle of hell, I'm here to tell. 

Yesterday on the highway Ramble On came up in the mix and I cried and smiled, Page and Plant's mix of hubris and brilliance (the darkest depths of Mordor. MORDOR.) what it needed to be as it always is bumped up against the simple, crucial declarative that defines the song. So much, so much, so much. I looked up at the roof upholstery at a red light, wiping my stupid weeping eyes, grateful for the familiarity, for the music, for the construct. I knew anew what I had to do, as I had when my feet hit the floor behind a heavy curtain in Tennessee two days prior. 

Now's the time. The time is now. 

 ************************************************

I will never be easy. I will always be difficult, sometimes the most in the times that I'm trying the hardest not to be. This is genetic, some of this, a design that I fight with every bit of good that I know I possess from competing genes and nurture and the sheer instruction of living kindly. I don't count on the same companions for the long haul so much anymore, because it's almost too much to ask in larger than small doses. I'm conversely coming upon the truth, however, that some greater consistency in this regard may be some of what I need for the longer run, and whether I think it's really possible or not, I will keep wrecking the prospect of ever having it if I don't fix me for real. 

I have been broken for a long time, in a variety of small and large ways, despite my progress, despite longstanding white-knuckled efforts to the contrary. I have the softest, brightest comprehension now though that I don't think I'm going to be for very long anymore, and regardless, I will no longer break you, not even a little if I can help it, no matter who you are. Unacceptable harsh words finished that story. The main answer -- surrender, no knuckles -- was long overdue. The time for so many (good and gentle, fun and interesting) things, the time for the real second half, is now. 

February

I came home tonight, ended up in conversation with a friend, and told her that I felt like a loser because in spite of a fine invitation to go somewhere that would probably be spirit-lifting, I wanted to stay home and so I did. I told her that I felt more socially awkward than I had in years, that I felt like everything I said was odd. What I didn't say but what I meant was that if I'm looking for anything, which I'm pretty sure socially I'm not right now, I especially wasn't finding it when I pushed myself to do something that I felt I ought to do and wasn't, especially on Friday nights. Friday nights when I'm working traditional forty hour work weeks have always been rough, and these days they're next to impossible. 

And she said in her typical essential way that it was okay if I needed some time to myself, and, more powerfully, by way of explaining why it was okay that I couldn't always tolerate groups of people and social scenes, "I feel like you're birthing yourself out of some very old hurts." I had to concede that she was correct, and what more do you need to deal with than that, I guess? And more importantly, what more do you need than friends with hearts and insight like that, whether they live mostly in your computer or not? Not much, I'm saying. 

It's so strange to look around at my life right now and not recognize it so much, but to be pretty comfortable with it regardless. I should want to scream more, I guess, to elucidate and make clear, but whether through an understanding that that would be pointless or wasted on the unhearing or a basic disinterest in doing so, I don't. The same feelings are the same as they have always been in my physical life -- the essential feel of water on my skin in a hot tub, the soft sheets I've washed a hundred times, the need to commentate the day and hope someone will occasionally find it funny, the irritation of looking in the refrigerator and realizing one person with an erratic appetite can't keep up with vegetables that looked too pretty not to buy. 

I know who I fundamentally am, still, even as I change outside. I have unfortunately had to major in me for more than forty years. And although I think that I will have to eventually look to my beloved, beleagured sister to best help me reflect upon the timeline, in many ways, I can say that I'm more comfortable inside this spot than I've been in ever, even with the parts I can't explain. I see more clearly, more painfully, more resolutely. I am intimately acquainted anew with the bullshit, with the past twenty years, with the excuses and the necessary lies, with the fear-based life choices and the dream procrastination. I'm not even mad, at it or at anything. I feel like I'm looking at a rock collection or some old photo albums that I'm not even sure belong to me. I feel suspended, and aware. I see quite distinctly what we do to ourselves, and each other. I see my place in the constellation.

I am admittedly deeply, deeply tired, in body and in mind. I can't seem to sleep enough, I want to talk all of the time although I stop myself about how tired I am, and conversely, many nights, I don't sleep very much at all in terror of not getting enough hours in to  meet the construct of my employer, which is really crazy. I've stopped fighting, mostly, with anyone or anything, because I quite simply don't have the energy. I'm on no drugs besides the hypertension medicine. Whatever anyone sees any day now is genuine me, with apologies for hormone rise and fall. It is, as they say, kind of, what she is, what I am. 

I'm happy with this because I'm a fan of the baseline, as well as the bass line. I am naturally drawn to rhythm, and teamwork, be it of people or notes or neurons.  I like balance, always did, and before the adolescent insanity and descent into mood management began, I was basically a happy, much-loved child. That is who I was from birth and that is who I seek to be again for this remaining span of physical years, because I think that was a better bet. I'm still a bit partially obscured from her, yes, but mostly free, where it matters a lot.

 I have no idea what's going to happen in either the short or the longterm right now and you'd think I'd be scared to death, because for a long time that's kind of been my jam. But interestingly enough, I feel like I'm slipping into the right role, like someone finally got the casting right. And there is for sure that sense of normal and right anxiety as you make friends with the lines and the other people in the leading roles, but that never lasts for very long because eventually you have to put the damned show on the road. 

I knew and I said in the fall that this would happen and it's happening. I don't believe in that The Secret nonsense entirely but I do believe, in some ways, in premonition, and I've always supported a solid foreshadowing when the talent is there to back it up. 

I am going to be okay, I finally know for sure.

I am very interested in the spring. 

Head Like a Hole

It's my third week off and I am restless. I am also keyed up and ready to do something except I'm not sure what it is. There are too many loose ends and options right now and it is imperative that I remain calm. I am compulsively looking for freelance jobs which is taking up a great deal of my mental space and not helping me make the most of any kind of relaxation/down/woohoo I don't really have to go anywhere today time.

It's not going so poorly, actually, the making contacts part. I am just out of practice at quantifying my skills and experience because I've just been dawdling along doing a whole bunch of things with no pressure for the past five years and now here we are. Well, except for that whole journalism school thing where I had to justify every fact of my existence every single day for almost two years. Hey, yeah, come to think of it that was pretty stressful. And also I've been on deadline for something real or imaginary in my brain pretty much every minute of every day since 2002. I am not so much about the mental vacations.

So, okay. Scratch the no pressure. But, really, what can I say when people ask me what I can do? I can write things, a lot of things, effectively. I can speak coherently. I can help you figure things out, tell you what looks good where on your website or where all of your typos are, really quickly. I can take pretty pictures.

That is not specific enough, I'm afraid. And so I re-learn how to package this package that is me, and that makes me nervous because I'm constantly red-penning everything, especially myself, and I'm out of practice with resumes. I have watched some really terrible television. I go for the occasional walk. I try really  hard not to spend money, which, in the summer? Ugh. So I've been staying home a lot, in a house in a city that decided to skip May and head straight for August and our air conditioner is broken.

I did go to New York for a few days, on the Bolt Bus. That was really fun. I saw a really good, old friend who let me stay with her at her conference hotel and some newer blog friends and spent time kicking around the city. It felt good. I have pictures for months backed up or I'd show you some of the better ones, but here's my  new favorite bar near Union Square from my phone.

The bartender was standard issue no-nonsense New York pub but he talked about the oil spill and made me cry.

I can't really look at many of the pictures of that, speaking of which. I feel like I'm not witnessing but I have to really limit myself. I found myself calling up some of the images in my head while I was driving yesterday and it is hard to drive when I'm crying. I am unsettled by the state of the world in general. I don't know how you can't be. I want to write something for the Love the Gulf project (via DebontheRocks) but I'm having trouble finding the words. 

I want a new blog. I need to carve out a few days to understand SquareSpace.

Speaking of walking, which I believe I did up there somewhere, the exercise is going so-so and that has been the big come-to-Jesus this week. When my routine changes things tend to fall apart in that department. I had been going to kickboxing at L.A. Boxing three times a week for over a month. The scale wasn't really moving, although in either direction so that was almost okay, because I was loving it. It wasn't boring and I felt like I was getting back in some kind of shape, then I stopped working and one excuse led to another and there I was on Thursday night, blocked and afraid to go back because I knew it would be so difficult. I cursed myself because for the thousand-millionth time in my life I'd done it, I'd fallen off of an exercise schedule that was really working, that was making at least one part of my life feel in good, stable shape, and I'd blown it.

Stupid schedules. Stupid brain. Stupid stuff that I can't break through sometimes no matter how hard I try when the inertia takes over.

So I went back to the gym, doing the thing I know I need to do in this mind over matter situation and got in the car in spite of the fact that I didn't want to and didn't feel like it. It was hotter than it is in my house in there but I got my favorite bag in the corner and kicked out a lot of the stress and frustration and anxiety of the week. And I didn't die. I felt a little less stressed, even.

Look, face all sunshiny like the hand of HEAVEN blesses exercise.

Not really. Just flare.

I felt a lot weaker during and after class than I had felt even two weeks ago. I need to go back regularly. I need to recommit. The instructor looked at me quizzically but didn't ask me where I'd been and I still felt compelled to babble an excuse at the end, anyway, like he was my platoon leader or something. I take things too damned seriously. But how many times have I said that I can't stop because then it's so hard to start again, unlike other things that I can't stop if I tried forever? How many times has this happened? I know I'm strong. I know I have endurance. I know this isn't even entirely about my body, that my mind is so much better off when I'm burning off all of the nervous energy and feeling good about meeting physical challenges.

And yes, it is a kick to see my arms have some definition.

I am mad, I am so MAD that I've gained back 23 pounds, even though I know how hard it is for me to lose, I know how much harder it is, even, for me to maintain, no matter what the motivational police say. This is a difficult, difficult process for me. I know it. I know it. I know I can't get all negative and crazy about it or I'll stay on the downward spiral. The shame diet, as some idiot broadcaster said on the news the other night, does not work for me in any way. But still? Mad mad mad.

And then my sister and my mother reminded me of a race we'd been planning to do for awhile. It's tomorrow in Annapolis, with a bunch of our friends. It is a 10k that my mother and I -- at least -- will mostly walk, but it's a 10k anyway. My nurse practitioner (who is way better than any doctor I've ever had besides the one who fixed my face, by the way) said a few weeks ago that I should walk every day for 15 minutes just to remind myself that I was moving forward, or maybe just so I could say that I was. I haven't been following that direction either and I'm not sure I can make it all up in one day, though.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ten kilometers. Tomorrow. I don't even know how many miles that is.

But you're reading some ramblings of a sucker who's about to get into her car and drive to Annapolis, yeah you are.

2009, right?

This year was really great. It really was. 

I mean it. 

It was hard and it kind of kicked my ass as I believe I have stated here before but among the mess of growing pains and things I complained about and stupid, difficult lessons I had to learn (all of them in some way because of things I screwed up or didn't care to prioritize or procrastinated about, really) so many great things happened to me. So many wonderful people literally entered my life as some of my dearest friends, and others stayed, they stayed like they always stay regardless for some reason beyond my comprehension and for this reason alone I should not be allowed to complain. 

I don't know what has happened to me to deserve it, but there is one thing I can say for sure about my life. And that is that although I may joke about being a freak magnet and how strangers come up to me out of the blue in places like public restrooms and malls and tell me personal information including their most disturbing problems, that I also concurrently have attracted some of the best people I know exist in this world to be my friends. 

(I'm an unequivocal fan of my family so I should note that they are never excluded and never far from my heart or mind. And this year was mostly great and especially meaningful with them, too.) 

I started off my year losing my grandma and I wrap up this year heavy with that knowledge still although it's processing better these days. And I am learning to use her as a catalyst and a guide as I believe she would appreciate, although I still think mortality sucks and we all got a raw deal but there is nothing I can do about that. No wonder everyone loves this Twilight train wreck. It's like global death anxiety permeated the pop culture. 

I also went back to work full-time after finishing my graduate degree and that was a really difficult transition, I admit. I was tired, really, fundamentally, after 15 months of such crazy concentrated newsgathering work and a crushingly disappointing news bureau experience that was so stupid it almost defied description. I was bummed out about my weight and nervous that I couldn't do anything about it due to some bizarre combination of my body's stubborness where that is concerned, my relative dislike of exercise and my infinite love for wine and cheese and things that make you go mmmmmmmm in general. 

I began to deal with that and in some stroke of luck won an insane Biggest Loser contest at my workplace. The mood police were on duty and along with the effort to exercise almost daily and eat better I lost 20 pounds and actually felt really great by the time May rolled around. 

Summer rocked. Summer was fantastic. I was in a naturally fabulous mood for the first time, I shit you not, since my ex-boyfriend left in the winter of 2005. 

Four years. Four years of maintaining, of tolerating my daily life, punctuated with occasional minor happiness. Suck. 

Anyway, I was so grateful that I remembered how to be happy this summer without effort. I couldn't really believe it was happening but it did and I feel very, very grateful that although since then I've hit upon some darker times again that it happened. I know it's in there. I am inspired to keep working and striving towards it, even though that just means living my daily life in the best way I know how. I know I have the capacity for joy. 

(If you don't understand this part it's okay. Just know it's in no way as self-indulgent as it can sound. It's really, really tricky.)

BlogHer in lots of ways made my summer and my year, and not just because Chicago is one of my favorite places in the country and it was invigorating to get a tattoo there. It was a profound experience for me this year. It's difficult to explain it, and that may be why I never wrote a recap post, but it's like a three-day festival of everything good about my corner of the Internet. So maybe it's my Blog Woodstock, or three-day Lollapalooza (I am incapable of speaking in terms other than outdated music festivals, apparently.) 

It is this community that has built up around me in the past five years live and in person. It is wine and words and pictures. It is a ridiculously good time and I'm sure that for a lot of people who have not embraced the particular world of blogging that I do it would make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but that's okay. I wouldn't get what those people do either, maybe. I don't care about skeet shooting or Bunco or any number of other things that are probably pretty cool if you yourself do them, this just happens to be what I do. You know, over there, in that hotel lobby with some fucking awesome women who happen to think it's totally fine to take pictures of ourselves reflected in salt shakers. 

Anyway, I've more or less integrated the people and experiences that mattered to me from this summer's experience into my daily life so it's not such a shocker.I could easily call them out. Karen makes me feel beautiful. Laurie put me in her phone in the lobby and brought me down a barrette the next day because I said I wanted to learn how to fix them in my hair and beyond that is a genius who became someone I could visit at the beach the very next week and at her house months later. Sarah reflects me back to myself in the most peculiar way and makes me believe in best friends like when I was 15 but without the crazy, and also may have to bring me beer in the nursing home. Suebob and Maria make me wish I lived in California. Melissa is illuminated and makes me want to be a better writer. Suzanne and Heather astound me with how much I am inspired when I'm near them. It is infinite, really, and I think we are all so lucky we have it. I believe so much in the ultimate goals of that Web site and this community. I will always be so glad I've had the opportunity to be a part of it. 

By the way? Genie is the best (and also MY) BlogHer roommate who also became a mom this year and I am so happy for her and her little family. This post made me cry, because it is one of the nicest things anyone has ever written about me, ever. It is also one of the most scarily accurate summations of my personality - the darker side of it with the light of understanding and compassion shed upon it, mind you - that I have ever read and this is another freaking example of why I'm so lucky. SO LUCKY.

(This is my year-end recap and is therefore by its very nature allowed to be narcissistic. I'm calling it. ;))

There is such power in relationships. I may not have gotten the boy in 2009 that I really think I want, I may never get him, and in some ways, eh. Maybe I'm the reconstituted Virgin of Guadalupe or some shit like that. But dammit, I have FRIENDS. Offline ones, too. They are not written about so much, they are not often seen here, but they are real and they are so loved and appreciated. They tolerate my iPhone addiction and tell me they love me and know my story as writ on walls in hieroglyphics back when we used those, you see. 

I spiraled out in the fall and the bad times hit again. The living situation was a little weird and work was hard. I struggled with what my next step should be and creative inspiration was limited. 

But I kept writing. I kept shooting. I kept at it, although I didn't know why, and that's probably what should be my epitaph. 

She kept at it although she didn't know why. 

This year I took a long trip to California to watch my sister celebrate her master's degree. We had a really meaningful family vacation in August, and reconvened on the same beach in November to celebrate Thanksgiving and my uncle's birthday. 

I spent some time late in the year with one of my oldest and dearest friends, someone who in spite of miles and distance and such different lives will always be one of my touchstones, who taught me in the weeks after that visit that we never, ever know what effect we're having in the moment. We just have to do and say the best things we can. We have to be honest to the best of our ability with the people who mean the most to us, the people we'd save from fire and flood if we could. We have to trust them to make the best decisions and to be able to hear what we're saying when it is based in deep love and concern. 

I had some great meals this year and some disasters. The best in restaurants were a Cioppino at Sogno DiVino in San Diego's Little Italy that I would have shipped to me frozen without question and a shrimp burger and beer at Fannie's on Tybee Island, Georgia, that combined with an ocean view made my trip and made me believe once again in the restorative power of coastal American food. I ate more sushi and edamama this year than I have consumed in my entire life thus far. I still didn't have my own kitchen yet, so I didn't cook a whole lot myself. That's on my list. 

I drank a lot of wine (mostly Spanish and South American, red) and some reasonably good beer. I hated the Pittsburgh Penguins and lost my mind when they knocked the Caps out of the playoffs, but this season I had a fantastic seat at a game because Sarah and her father-in-law are nice. I still believed in Terrapin basketball and the Washington Mystics. I saw Green Day live and it changed my life. 

I wore MAC #3 perfume and green eyeliner almost every day. Green and orange are still my favorite colors. I still miss having a dog, also daily. I spent ridiculous amounts of money on my paid-off car. I got an iPhone in March in Austin and it is perhaps my most favorite material possession ever, second only to the pink Sony boombox that saw me through the late 80s and many, many dubbed tapes from the radio. 

Michael Jackson's death knocked me sideways. 

I stood in freezing Washington, D.C. at the Inauguration concert and felt an energy that I have never felt before in a city I've lived I've lived beside my whole life. I watched on my television the next morning as the first African-American president, a person I still believe to be a true agent of change, took the oath of office. 

I went to Charlotte twice and Austin for SXSWi and the aforementioned Chicago and San Diego and Pittsburgh and to New Orleans for my most awesome first Mardi Gras. I finally sat on and broke my beautiful green glasses so I have to get another set of frames. I spent a stupid amount of time searching for my chargers for my seemingly endless array of electronic devices. I made three apple pies. I finished NaBloPoMo.

I didn't welcome Christmas. I wasn't ready and to be honest I didn't really care. It came anyway. 

It is January now. The last month of 2009 was punctuated with me entering this photography contest and being so blown away by the nice things people were saying about my entry that I felt that whether I won or lost I had already accomplished something. And then another friend called and asked me to enter this other cool contest for people of the blog sort and these two things combined have served to make me ready to make a life change that has been simmering for a long time. Like a decade. 

I think it involves Virginia and I am seriously freaking out. 

Speaking of the aughts, I think I might do some sort of wrap-up posts this weekend because this was a DECADE here, people, and for me it was the most profound one yet. I'm coming up on an anniversary next week that started out a very happy one and ended up sending me into my own personal bell jar for most of the aughts. It is fundamentally why this blog exists and why I am currently inarticulately telling you about my year. I'm going to write the shit out of something about it because you know what, I can. 

Happy new year. 

And I'll tell you one thing - and you can write this down, as we are wont to say in my family: 

Next January 1, 2011? If I'm not dead, I'll have just turned 40. I'll be writing some crazy wrap-up from Pittsburgh if the Caps play up there in the Winter Classic because Kim and I have a tenuous date for it already. 

And also? Next January? I think I'll have some kickass things to share. Really. Because I'm finally allowing myself to expect a lot from a year, whether I'm ultimately disappointed or not. I'm not staying home so I have to go big. 

39

I have three minutes to post on my birthday and I'm going to do it, no matter how short it's going to be and how inadequate I might feel like it is. 

It was a great day. It was spent with people who matter the most to me, really - who get it and support me and for whom in return I'd pretty much do whatever they need. That's the way it works for me. 

I have high hopes for this year. 

38 was amazing and beautiful in some ways (I am so rich in friends and family it's ridiculous) but mostly it was really fucking hard. It was the worst phase, I hope, of the scab healing over, the caterpillar working extra hard to turn into the butterfly, pick your metaphor. I boxed with the universe for a lot of it. 

I ended it just kind of asking for guidance, from somewhere, for what I need to do next. 

I'm lucky in a lot of ways. This is the year I need to get brave. 

Wish me luck. 

Sorrow is a Dan

Professor: For this assignment you'll produce three images that really reflect your college experience

Dan (to me): So for you that's Def Leppard!

Me: Shut up, Dan.