LaurieWrites

n. lacking courage; very fearful or timid

He told me last week that I was a coward. I said get it straight: I was a scarecrow, not a lion -- a fool, sure, but not a coward. Except I guess in some ways I am pathetically afraid, the person I am with him, anyway.

I still didn't like it. It still wasn't nice to hear.

People, through some fault of their own or none at all, mostly make you what you are to them, and also who you are in their orbit. The way they talk to you, you to them, how they hold or discard your heart, how they smell (this is important), what they ask of you and how they respond -- it makes you this being that you weren't the minute before you met them, the minute-before person who you will never be again, although if it's not right that's who you'll always be after going back to. It's freaky and uncomfortable. It's science. It's something else, isn't it?

We scrapped out this long, heartfelt, baffling road, he and I. A coward could never have survived it, would have dropped dead eleven months in, the first time she was made to feel unnecessary, inconsequential, distracting from the truly important stuff. And more than a decade later, it's never over, sometimes it feels like, except I think that calling me a coward ends the game, even if he's even partially right. It's not something I ever want anyone to say. It's not something I want someone to have even a partial hand in making me be. It's not something I want to be capable of on my own.

It is not who I am.

This is me a little while ago, in the summer time, my favorite. Flawed, absolutely. I have so much work to do, always, always, keep on moving, doing the work. Figure it out. Make the calls. Be so much better. Do the hard stuff because if you don't, who will? Try to achieve some semblance of what you're capable of before you die.

I still, after careful consideration of this assessment, don't think she is a coward, at least not in the ways that count the most around here.

 

It's better that we don't talk that much anymore. I don't think we bring out the best in each other.

Some of my best friends are mom bloggers

I met Laura Mayes a few years ago. It was probably because of Laurie Smithwick, who plucked me drunken from a curb (me, not her, obviously) in front of a Chicago hotel at BlogHer and said hey, we oughta know each others' phone numbers, because she is a take-charge kind of woman who has been nominated for a Grammy award and I am a name-dropping ass who likes to tell you how cool my much-cooler friends are like twice a year. 

 And then I ended up in a limo with the Kirtsy girls talking smack about mythical cameras and that was that. 

[This is the actual night of the curb and the number, etc. Photo unapologetically ripped from Sarah Goon Squad Sarah's Flickr. That's Sarah between two Lauries. There are worse fates, honestly. I love this picture so much. It makes me happy just looking at it. That was a kickass BlogHer and these are two of my favorite people in the world.] 

So that was how I met Laura Mayes. I think. But for all of the specifics that I don't know, what I can say from the first time I met her was that when Laura entered a room, any time, I felt better about things in general. She has this smile and all-around vibe and approach to things that makes me feel like "Hey world, check this out. This is all going to be okay." 

Or, as she herself is often prone to saying, "This is rad." Or, more to the point, it could be. It could be pretty fucking rad, if we let it. WHY ARE WE NOT LETTING IT BE RAD, EXCUSE ME? Except I say the eff word and maybe she doesn't. Bygones. 

So last year I pitched a panel to Laura for Mom 2.0 that I thought was weird but would totally work and she liked it. I remember talking to her about it while I drove from Virginia into North Carolina and the conversation meandered into good places and I probably cut her off about three times because AT&T on 95 is a nightmare plus there were state troopers everywhere and I couldn't remember the phone laws in the states I was in, but she'd just keep calling back. And so I went to Mom 2.0 in Houston and had a better time than I'd had in memory and that was that.

Weiner Mobiles. Taco trucks. Social media/writing learnin'. Pictures. Galleries. And then I got to go back this year and talk about cameras. 

Look, I am not a mom. I am not a mom at all awash in a beautiful sea of women who write on the internet who are moms, and I can't rightly explain how that happened either, except that I write on the internet and I'm a woman and the group of people I've found who do the same have generally produced or acquired a child, as women (especially) just shy of or at or past 40 are prone to doing. 

And that is a vague way of explaining why I go to to Mom 2.0. 

I think Mom 2.0 is one of the best events in the blogging world. I don't care where it is. It could be in a church basement in {insert name of city I don't want to offend} and it would kick all manner of ass, because you know what? French Quarter (I love you New Orleans) or downtown Houston or {HELL YEAH} Miami resort? Mom 2.0 attracts women and a few dudes who do some of the coolest things that are happening on the world wide internet web who also happen to be your girls who will walk back alleys with you and crack up laughing and drink and dance but are also determined to stay with you to make sure you find your damn phone that you drop on the floor of a bar and you're sure is gone but holy hell if the dj doesn't have it when you crawl back in shame to ask. (Thanks Amie. You really are one of the best there is.) 

We need to find these people.

We needed to find them when we were little girls and (god help us) when we were in high school and college and certainly now when we are supposed to be grown-ups with ideas and plans and certainties. We need friends and colleagues and mentors and associates, especially in a media/communications/writing world that is changing at lightning speed every minute.

We need people who give us benchmarks and opinions and places for our ideas to sit at tables and take shape. We need people to help us figure out our businesses and our relationships and where we are to meet for dinner. We need people who will tell us we are good at what we do when we are, and maybe (especially) when we're missing the mark so we can fix it. 

This event is still small enough for this to happen, I promise you. It's relaxed enough for it to  seem possible, and it's cool enough to give us the  venues in which to accomplish this while still feeling happily removed from our workaday circumstances. 

It's rad.  You should go next year. 

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This year, the following people and experiences made my Mom2.0 experience especially rad: 

Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah, who makes everything more fun, who babysits me on planes when I honestly think I'm going to die every time, but especially this time if I don't get to sit with her because that has to be some kind of sign of impending death (flying anxiety is no joke, y'all), and without whom, well, you know I really just don't know. 

The Dads, particularly BetaDad, Whit Honea and the Muskrat, plus Yvonne and Miss Britt, with whom I tagged along on Thursday night in the Quarter, one of the most fun nights I've had in a very, very long time. 

(Extra special thanks to Whit, Sarah and BetaDad for the beauty of "I'm going to pull the fire alarm... DO IT NOW" plus beer at the keynote, because that was one of the best things of all conference time.) 

Janet. I love Janet. And the rest of those miscreants named above plus Faiqa who went on the awesome PBS Kids Jazz tour, which ended at Preservation Hall where I geeked out hard, and got a little crush on the bandleader who knew pretty much everything about jazz off the top of his head and managed to impart it in a manner in no way as annoying or pedantic as my ex-boyfriend. 

Maile, who is one of the kindest, most talented people I know, and with whom it was a privilege to lead our photo workshop. 

Deb, proprietress of Deb on the Rocks, who laughs at the stupid shit I say like she's not seven million times funnier. It spoils me to have her a hotel floor away, and to get to sit with her at lunch and soak up her words and ideas. 

Shannon, who is one of the best friends I've got who I've seen in person thrice, and with whom I finally got to watch a hockey game, at least on tv. 

Our blog reader and friend Marissa, who met Sarah and me uptown on Sunday and who is just lovely and kind. I'm so glad we got a chance to connect with you because that was a real highlight. 

Three Community Coffee travel mugs to bring home for me and my parents -- best trip gift ever that I didn't have to buy, and my parents are frequent New Orleans visitors who are in their coffee club, so I was ethical and everything! Thanks, Community Coffee. I will continue to drink you all of the time. 

Meeting people whose work I admire and who I've gotten to know on Twitter but never in person -- Marinka, Wendi Aarons, Stacy Morrison, Doug from Laid Off Dad (who will be bringing you Dad2.0 next year.) Seeing Kyran for just a few minutes and hearing her read from a book I first saw in very raw form and it was wonderful then, so I know it will be amazing when I finally get my hands on it now. The conversations with these people were very helpful to me this time out -- hearing what people are working on, what they're writing, how they're hoping to shape it. That was good for me. 

As far as programming, this may sound crazy, but the Oprah video at the end made me cry and think and question what the hell it is I'm doing in general and online -- what it's been and could be and what I need to do to make that happen. I'm not a wholesale fan of hers, really, and I'm not saying I co-sign everything she said, even in that clip. But as a woman without kids at a conference designed for moms, her statement about being a woman without her own children who nonetheless felt called to teach and lead carried a lot of weight with me. I did not make the conscious choice that she did to remain childless. My life has moved in different ways that have made that my reality, and in a lot of ways it's my central struggle, what my legacy can be besides that. What my purpose is, if it's not to be a mom and in a family structure, and it's my job to figure out how to manage that without going insane, to determine what to say, how, and for what purpose. 

And for some reason that video of Oprah talking about similar things put me in the right space to contemplate that. 

I love New Orleans. For all its crazy I love my blogging life and the people who are in it with me. So it was lovely to be in that place with some of my best friends and favorite new people, trying to figure all of this out for the next phase. I carried that away with me, flying out over Lake Ponchartrain into a life where I don't know at all what is going to happen next, except I did know for sure that I had a hell of a good time at Mom 2.0.

(It was, indeed, rad. Thanks, Laura. You're the best queso who ever queso'd.) 

Insane and Rising

When you wake up sort of agitated in a spot like this, among people and places that you love almost the most, that is when it becomes most clear that there is something wrong. 

It's not wrong in a way I even really want to blurt out to the internet, even in this space that still after all these years feels oddly personal, where comments remain a minor shock. I'm sure someone doing their Ph.D in the communal nature of online journaling can explain to me why this is so, but I don't want to talk about it on that level right now. It's not wrong in a foot-stomping, door-slamming sort of way either, because no one listens to that shit anymore anyway. 

It's just inherently not-right in a way that I seem to suddenly feel compelled to document in order to listen more closely to the call of how to fix it, maybe? I don't know. I don't know how to move forward if I don't do something different in this space or anywhere else. My writing muscles are as tight as my shoulders. I'm not currently using them to serve my own needs at all, not my real ones anyway, and I don't know that I'm using them for anyone else either. 

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

I went out in the water yesterday, the most gorgeous day of this trip by far which is usually how it is on the last one, and I looked southward praying the tar balls would never make it here and then I felt guilty. We're as connected to Louisiana and Florida and Mississippi waters here as we are to all of the rest of them. This isn't my ocean any more than it is that guy's, and in that sense it's everyone's who cares to love the water. 

Except it is my ocean, or at least that's how I feel, as I feel as myself in it as I feel anywhere, even though who that is is somehow maddeningly no more clear than it's ever been. It's fuzzy in general. There are motions to be gone through and racing thoughts to think, daily shifting priorities and never more of a sense of instability. 

I don't give a crap about SEO in this context. I think that's clear. 

Anyway, I was bobbing around and singing "Santa Monica" to myself like I tend to in the ocean, the best song ever recorded by a band named after grain alcohol. 

We can live beside the ocean

Leave the fire behind

Swim out past the breakers 

Watch the world die.

Yes, you could. 

There were some beautiful moments this week and there were some tense ones. It's tough to watch human fragility and the passage of time when it's right in your face, especially when it involves people by whom you've set your watch for decades. 

It's difficult to sit next to a young person you love and want to make the way smoother even though that's not at all what he's asking for and you have no direct responsibility for him anyway. And more to the point, you can still barely take care of yourself. So you just turn up the music and derive some satisfaction when he says that he thinks it's cool that you have the same taste and can you go watch a band sometime? 

And how to tell him that you would move heaven and earth to do that because he asked, without sounding weird? So I don't, I just nod. 

It is still really hard, the missing of people who aren't here anymore, by choice or death. 

I just want to feel some sunshine. 

I just want to find some place to be alone. 

Right? It shouldn't be that difficult. If it doesn't happen here I don't think that it can happen anywhere. 

There is something to be said for swimming past the breakers metaphorically speaking although taking it to that level on this sunny Carolina morning kind of makes me want to punch myself in the face, especially since I'm looking at the ocean from a 12th floor balcony as I type. 

When my uncle -- a man diametrically opposed to me, ideologically speaking, in so many ways but who nonetheless shares the passion for life and people that is in my DNA -- walked out the door the other night to drive back to North Carolina he stubbed out his cigarette. He looked at me sitting there at the table, thinking the jumbled thoughts that he couldn't identify specifically but nonetheless knows full well that I think.

"Take it easy, Laurie," he said. "No matter what happens, take it easy. Because you can't change a goddamned thing." 

You don't choose your true south, as I take the liberty of calling it --  not your people or your places. At least I didn't. And of all the things I know that I can't change I know that I can't change those the most, not when it's beautiful or when it breaks my heart. 

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.

Sunshine

I found this picture when I was going through my Ohio pictures to find the ones of Cindy. This has all made me quite nostalgic in a good way, I think.

I loved and I miss this silly little dog so much...Look at her with the big bug eyes and the kisses...That was the summer before we left and we did step aerobics and kickboxing every day, which tired her out and actually gave me some arm definition.

And I've never found a better hairdresser either. Damn.

Merry Christmas...mmmkay

A surefire way to get yourself noticed in the Liz Claiborne Outlet Store in Lancaster, PA:

When the version of "Carol of the Bells", sung by what sounds like Point of Grace or SheDaisy or some such girl band of infidels, creeps into your head straight from the in-store music, find yourself, er, ENHANCING the tune by blurting out "All seem to say, DING DONG MMMKAY" just like Mr. Mackey from South Park. And do it over and over, and don't really consciously realize this until the song is just about over. And find yourself in a fit of giggles, repeating "Hark hear the bells, 'mmmkay" all by yourself, all the way to the car, garnering several more funny outlet-mall stares (and not making that whole having-to-pee-really-bad thing any easier.)

Happy freaking holidays, Mr. Hat.

(Oh, and I realized I never disclosed the number of "Feliz Navidads" in the song of the same name, as I've fallen down terribly on the yuletide song blogging. It's 21...21 times he wants to wish you a merry Spanglish Christmas. But doesn't it feel like more? Doesn't it?) 

Midwestern Notes

Indianapolis, whereas it is an ideal place environmentally for one to occur, is a terrible location for the boiling over of an existential crisis.

Have you ever had a moment when you had an idea of who you were supposed to be, and what you possibly were supposed to be doing, but it was all swirling around your head like the birds in the cartoons when people get knocked out? Or like Pigpen's dust. Yes, like Pigpen's dust. That's a much more appropriate comparison in my life. Another comparison, if you've seen the original (and only, but that's another post) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is the chocolate bar that was supposed to be transmitted via the television airwaves. It started out on one side of the room and was broken down into little pieces, and sent over to the other. And then that little prick Mike Teevee got in the machine and it shrunk him, but that's not relevant to my point. Those ideas of being and doing, they've been broken down into little pieces and are hovering over me. See? There's one now!

Take me away from this, good people of the Internet. I don't really have any ideas at the moment, so now I'm going to go out to dinner, which seems to be the next right step. Rocking weekends to all y'all.