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.

Wednesday

People are living. People are dying. People are suffering in relationships and jobs and life situations all around me. People are falling in love. 

People are doing what they are terrified to do and people are stumbling through the monotony of a job they hate or are just merely accustomed to enough that they don't know it's killing them. People are accepting the status quo. People are getting a dollar menu baked potato from Wendy's and going back to work to clock other people's hours. People are living with people they don't like because they pay the bills. 

People are living. Dying. Suffering. Falling in love. 

(Walt Whitman did this better, I know. He heard America singing. I suggest you leave now and reference his work.) 

How we are not all in awe of the crazy power of what is happening to people all over the world, every second, next to us or thousands of miles away, is a testament to the power of our biologically-fueled function of denial, mostly, and also our hardwired need to put one foot in front of the other. To keep walking. To play our hand, to get what's ours -- to assure ourselves that June will be better than January. 

People are numbed out. 

People are pointlessly hashtagging stuff on the internet like our lives depend on it. 

People are telling you every second who they are and want to be and aren't yet and what they need from you and holy Christ they are so frustrated! 

People are settling. 

A good friend had a baby tonight. Another just stated a big truth publicly, necessarily. Yet another is receiving care from  hospice in her home. Another watched her shows and went to bed. Another is up way past her bedtime, not long before her kids get up, assembling a gift, a ministry from her hands so that a very sick friend will see tangible evidence of her contribution on earth -- the human collateral that says she has mattered in the way she absolutely has.

I just told a relatively distant relative a truth I needed to tell only her, because I know she will understand. I know she'd read a chapter of my story today or eventually and get it. I didn't feel like I had much today, but I had that, and all of a sudden that was enough. 

On other pages, people are complaining because a huge corporation did not invite them to an expensive party in an artificial princess world, and as ridiculous as that is, who can blame them, really? On others, people -- people I love, even, or at least like -- call me names because of my ideology, my purely-felt interest in humane treatment for others, for equity, for the right to live right, as I see it.  

Tell me this world is not an insane, complicated, beautiful, horrible, fever dream miracle. Go ahead. Tell me that tomorrow we'll do better and I won't believe you. Tell me that every day most of us try? I will. 

Life List 2011

Camp Mighty begins tomorrow night in Palm Springs, and I'm late with my life list. 

Oh hey! Here I am! Already here, just finishing this post now. (Actually this is last night, pre-space party, to which I went without a "costume" that met the theme. This spurred another list item. Please see below.) 

Of course I'm late. Water is wet, etc. 

And oh, here I am, again! Just now posting this, on Saturday, at 3:47 PST. 

Can you tell this exercise freaks me out a little? Well, it does, to tell the truth, and to top off my problem here, the list I drafted last week (sitting in a bar, impulsively, after Kris intelligently got in a cab to go home) is in a notebook that is way, way back in Maryland, in a purse I swapped out the other day. Change bags carefully, people. Sigh. 

Anyway, I just thought that since this is supposed to be a positive, aspirational thing most of all, I'd do it over again, stream of consciousness, here. And that also I would shut up and just start writing. So here we go. 

1. Shoot an Operation Smile surgical mission. 

2. Have Boston Terriers in my house again and work more actively with senior rescue. 

3. Have a yard. 

4. Pay off all student loan debt early. 

5. Embrace my most hated holiday: go to a Halloween-type event in a costume and not feel like a fool and also not complain about it. 

6. Hike the Grand Canyon. 

7. Finish the Ancestry.com family tree for both sides of my family. 

8. Travel the regions in Ireland and Germany where my relatives originated. 

9. Digitize as many of the White family photos as possible and share them with the whole family. 

10. Have an online presence that reflects my personality and my skills, and what I have accomplished so far in writing and photography -- a portfolio, a business site and a blog. Also, to help Draft Day Suit be the best that it can be, along with the other sites I write for. 

11. Have Washington Capitals season tickets. 

12. Have competent knife skills, and a really great set of kitchen knives. 

13. Have somewhere I can go to stay on a beach that is mine, anytime. 

14. Be self-supporting strictly through writing/photo/media work. 

15. Grow a hydrangea and a lilac bush. 

16. Print out and organize copies in books and frames of all of my images that move me or that I want to keep off of the computer. 

17. Find the courage to visit my grandmother's grave, at least once. 

18. Be able to hold crow, headstand, side crane, wheel and all other yoga poses that I currently cannot successfully hold. 

19. Visit the rest of the 50 states. 

20. Have a 41st birthday party, because I wasn't ready for 40. 

21. Have my grandmother's ring resized and made more stable so I can actually wear it. 

22. Go to a Super Bowl and a Stanley Cup championship game with Sarah. 

23. Grow a garden -- even just an herb garden or a few flowers -- without killing it. 

24. Get overall financial house in order so it is not a constant source of anxiety. 

25. Have a Christmas Eve tradition that brings me joy. 

26. See every country in Europe.

27. Go back to Vietnam, and to Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. 

28. Find a place called Dodge and get the hell out of it. 

29. Understand how to competently use Speedlite flash and studio lighting. 

30. Work in a darkroom again. 

31. Publish an article in a national magazine. 

32. Get my 200-hour yoga certification. 

33. Visit the White House, go into the Washington Monument, and other things I've never done because I live in the D.C. area. 

34. Actively support surgeries for at least five children per year through Operation Smile. 

35. Go on one silent weekend retreat per year. 

36. Drive cross-country. 

37. Find a way to give back to my parents in the significant way that they have given to me. 

38. Go to Michael's Virginia Tech graduation. 

39. Get another tattoo before I turn 41. 

40. Host a Thanksgiving dinner. 

41. Have a regular practice of having people over to my house for meals and conversation. 

42. Have a women's weekend in a pretty place by the water with some of my closest friends. 

43. Read every classic novel I feel I should read before I die. 

44. Purge all belongings that have no purpose in my life -- clothing, books, stuff -- and be at peace with the basics that remain. 

45. Spend some time with Elisa and Maria in the Bay area. 

46. Visit the Alamo. Remember it. 

47. Go back to Houston and see my remarkable group of women of the blogs who live there. 

48. Catalog and recognize all birthdays for all important people in my life. Send the damn cards. 

49. Finally -- finally! -- visit Vicky in Seattle. 

50. See Duran Duran in London. 

51. Take trips on all major Amtrak routes in the U.S. 

52. Do something hands-on and helpful in New Orleans.

53. Do the Edgar Allen Poe touristy stuff and other fun things I've never tried in Baltimore.

54. Throw a crab feast for my half-birthday.

55. Learn to pack a suitcase competently.

56.  Have Maryland basketball season tickets -- men and women. 

57. Publish a book. 

58. Understand New York  -- the subway system, visit all boroughs, know Manhattan like the back of my hand. 

59. Cultivate a competent slap shot.     

60. Learn to play the drums. 

61. Go to an Orioles-Nats game. 

61. Actually record a fun and ridiculous podcast with Sarah. 

62. Go to Ireland with my sister. 

63. See all the oceans. 

64. Buy myself a pair of diamond earrings. 

65. Have someone who knows what she is doing rewrite my resume to reflect my skills and experience. 

66. Photograph a birth. 

67. Drive on the other side of the road in England. 

68. Own a pair of ruby slippers. 

69. Pay someone's college tuition.

70. Have a photo site with Laurie.

71. Understand how to design a basic website in a variety of platforms.

72. Publish an op-ed. 

73. Visit Karen and Shannon in Ottawa. See the rest of Canada and all of my friends there, too. 

74. Throw a great 50th anniversary party for my parents. 

75. Take a food and wine trip to Italy. 

76. Spend a whole summer and a whole winter at the beach. 

77. Publish a piece in Salon, Slate, Washingtonpost.com, 

78. Understand wine, maybe at the sommelier level. 

79. Take my mom on a trip anywhere of her choosing, on me. 

80. Know how to give a basic haircut without ruining someone's life. 

81. Consistently practice receiving compliments with gratitude, not apologies or self-effacing comments. 

82. Hike a (smallish) mountain.

83. Sing backup in a band 

84. Volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. 

85. Complete my local Mental Health Association hotline training, finally, and volunteer there. 

86. Write a short story I don't hate. 

87. Become a doula. 

88. Learn American Sign Language. 

89. Own a core wardrobe of green dresses. 

90. Have a king-sized bed with really good sheets, an actual duvet, and pillows that don't drive me crazy. 

91. Create an annual tradition with my cousins. 

92. Perfect a variety of vinaigrettes. 

93. Become conversationally proficient in French again. 

94. Have a full Christmas tree of my own ornaments, and also a beachy, small tree with the ones I've bought on vacations. 

95. Go to Bonnaroo and the Virgin Festival in London (or at least see a show at Wembley Stadium.) 

96. Refinish and use an awesome antique writing desk. 

97. Outfit my whole kitchen with good small appliances and all gadgets I need to make me feel like I'm not in college anymore. 

98. See every artist live who is left on my list -- Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, and I know there are more. 

99. Drink coffee in a Parisian cafe.

100. To acknowledge the possibility of falling madly, yet sanely, in real, live adult love with an actual functional human being who feels the same way. Maybe let them live in my house. 

And most importantly: 

100. Be able to confidently say that I love what I do, that the structure of my daily life reflects what I care about, what I'm good at, and how I can best contribute in words and pictures. Oh, and that I love where and with whom I live, and that I am content in my life.  

I picked five big goals off of this list to share with my group, that I'm going to work on extra special over the next year. There are some that I know I can do more easily that I didn't put on my five-things list. I saved some tough stuff for that one. I'll share that later. 

And if you've ever thought this activity sounds lame or ridiculous or like something you shouldn't really have to do in an organized way? Well, I thought the same thing. I blew it off and shot it down as stupid for a long time. And at least in my case, I was totally and completely wrong. I just sat in a room with 20 strangers for three hours. I stood up and I said what I wanted, I acknowledged that I need help with some of it, and I listened to the rest of them do the same. It was one of the most powerful, uncomfortable, cool, inspiring, and sometimes just plain enjoyable things I've ever done. 

Thanks for hanging in there with me. I'll keep you posted. 

Additions: 

I keep thinking of new stuff. 

102. Go to the Olympics. 

103. Go to a Sox game with TwoBusy and ClumberKim. 

Credible Threat

There is a credible threat to our safety in the DC area this weekend -- as well as in New York, of course. It is specific and measurable, the news says, but no one knows what it is. 

It was weird and jarring news, as usual, but I felt more silly that I hadn't really tied the date to what was surely going to be a warning like this. 

Credible. Documented or just believable? Where is it? Don't know. Who is producing it? No idea. What to do about it? Meh. Will I die on the Metro if I take it into the city to meet my friends for brunch? Will a stadium or a museum blow up? Car bombs? More mass vehicular murder? Who knows? 

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

It's different to live here now, sure. The craziness started the day that Peter Jennings -- the person who I bizarrely came to look to over a period of years to narrate every event of note in my life, who is now, also, sadly, dead -- talked us through. We woke up early or were awoken with crazy news. We were there in that day and then it ended and nothing was ever the same.

The year after, we had weeks where we had to point out white trucks driven by killers, picking off our fellow citizens, one by one. We zig-zagged to the gas pumps and into grocery stores. 

We learned over and over what we should already know, I guess -- that life is precarious, that every minute you're alive and not dead is a miracle, really. That you never know. That you should hug your loved ones and tell them, for sure, that you love them, so much that it makes them sick.

Because what if it's them in that building or on that Metro train or walking down that street when the bomb goes off or the plane crashes or the gas asphyxiates? Did you say it enough? Can you say it enough without driving people crazy? (I say no. I say that what we know is enough, that it's part of us. That if it's shown? You don't so much need to go on and on and on. That it just is. People have told me they loved me and bailed. That's all. It isn't always what it seems, or sounds like.)  

The signs on the highway say "See something, say something." They tell me to report suspicious behavior. What in the hell am I looking for that's out of the ordinary on a suburban DC highway? A car afire? A person acting crazy? 

That's normal, here. That's normal pretty much anywhere. I'm 99.5 percent sure that I will never call that number. 

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

I wonder how many of us in this notoriously transient area have been here for more than a decade. I wonder where our roots are. I wonder what we saw on tv, who we knew, where we were, if we could see the smoke, what we did, if we learned to navigate the orange barriers then or more recently. 

I don't know what matters in this context. 

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

I knelt down in yoga after a week break last night. I let the feeling wash over me, the things that happened, my unwillingness to think about them, my sense of having no claim to grief, and yet a stark memory of blowing off a new job a decade ago after I woke up to screams that THE PENTAGON WAS ON FIRE AND SO WAS NEW YORK to sit on my parents' couch and watch planes fly into buildings over and over again, like a movie that wasn't a movie. 

I listened to commentators' voices break. I decided that the job I had signed up for wasn't for me, that if a plane flew into that building I would have definitely been in the wrong place. I went back to my bookstore. I missed the boy I loved who was gone who came back a few months later and then left again. I felt a teeny, tiny fraction of all that it was. I still know it was tiny, and yet it felt (still feels) like a lot.

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

The only comfort I ever found in George W. Bush came in the days after 9/11. The only sense I had of him as a leader was at that time, and the phrase I crazily clung to was to "go about my business." I did it. I spent my paltry dollars and walked the streets. But then again, what was the alternative? My city, in spite of the damage done to a critical spot where people gave their lives for all of us, essentially, was intact. Roads weren't closed. We weren't, probably thanks to Todd Beamer and the Let's Roll Crew, bless their souls, gutted on our edge or in our center, like New York. Thousands weren't lost, their papers and limbs and auras floating over the landscape. 

Not directly, anyway. It's not like we didn't feel them from a distance. 

The percentages and numbers suck. Incalculable, all of it. 

Everyone went about his or her business. There was no new normal. There was just new, and recycled, and the best anybody could do.

The people who died and who have died since deserved better. They deserve the best we can do. 

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

Tomorrow I have good things, in a previously attacked city. I have many friends to see, some of my favorite people in the world, and a drink or two waiting. I hear I'll see the sun shine. 

I hope that nothing bad happens to anyone in New York or D.C. or in any place around our country. I hope it's a day of reverence for everyone -- EVERYONE -- who has lost his or her life  for absolutely no reason. 

And although this is probably selfish, I really hope that no one condescends to tell me never to forget, because how could I? 

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

I think of our troops, dead and alive, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in New York, and at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, every day. I also think of every innocent civilian caught in the crossfire of these wars, thousands of miles away. None of it makes any sense to me, still, or at all. 

Story so far

When I told Karen a few years ago that I believed in creating my own story, I had no idea that I'd end up sitting weeping in the front row of an auditorium a few years later while she spoke, those words of mine projected on the screen. 

I knew I'd meant it when I said it, the morning I originally told her some fragments I could remember of what had brought me from all the places I'd been to that Chicago lobby. I thought it was true then. So maybe that made it even more upsetting when I saw it so big in front of me and knew that if this was the story I'd put myself in charge of creating, I wasn't sure I'd done that great of a job. 

That didn't feel very good. 

#######

Some of it I can't tell you. Some of it I'm not even that good at telling myself yet. I know whatever this is this time that it's big and impossible and existential, that it has to do with the roads I drive and the places I go every day, a life that doesn't feel like it fits that well at all, even though I've done the human dance of adaptability and forced myself into a barely functional mold to make it look like it does enough hours of the week to get by.

I know that it's hard to see families and compare them to my life of fractured time with lots of people, on the fringes of everywhere, never going home to anyone or waiting for them to come to me. That's sad, I know, but it's just true. I was telling a friend last week that I look around at other women my age and I feel like there was a point where something happened for everyone else (gross generalization, yes, and "everyone" is hyperbole) and that it did not for me, even though I tried.

And I know that even worse than that, even beyond the preemptive grief for babies I'll never have and maybe even any kind of family life, who knows, that I could tolerate this chasm of a feeling so much better if I felt a stronger drive to do anything, really. It would be nice to have some sense of mission or purpose beyond the grind of groceries and gym and social activity. 

I would like it if I liked what I did, for the most part. I would enjoy feeling competent again. It would be nice to be in a place where people actually came over, maybe. Community, that would be good. 

It would be useful if within the world of opportunities and possibilities I know exist, that I would have the capacity to choose one, a few maybe. That I would not constantly look even through my third eye and see nothing but a swirl of too much, and have no idea which way to go. This kind of confusion shorts out a brain quickly, it turns out. 

#######

I don't know what I ever dreamed, if I dreamed, because a lot of times I wasn't about big dreams in the way that I usually hear people talk about them. I more trusted that something good would happen, something basic and cool and maybe even worthy of comment. I never wanted too much, just enough, to be it, to have it, to exist within it. And whatever that was, I know it wasn't this, and I can't explain to you the chaotic, horrible, silent nature of that feeling. I know that I wasn't meant to spend so much time alone, or to live my life in its current structure. I wonder what I'm paying for, sometimes -- what gift I've wasted or god I've shamed. I wonder what wrong corner I turned, what debt I left unpaid besides all of the ones I know about. 

And yeah, I do think, shamefully, a lot of the time, that it's no fair. I think of good intentions and hours of brain-splitting work, of parking lots and pizza trays and faith and love and trust. I think of pointless hours on the elliptical and karma and time spent invested in other people's well-being, of people invested in me.

And then I know that's wrong, immediately. You can't count beans or dreams or people. It was all just what it was. 

I don't know how you put so many broken pieces back together. 

#######

I'm two weeks in to getting better, again. I'm two weeks in to taking the pills and walking the walk back from this place, because a month or so ago I crashed again and it's always ugly when it happens but it takes some time and trauma to wake up. 

I went to the doctor. I sat half-naked on the paper on the table and told a stranger who was looking at a laptop instead of me -- new computer system, damned thing, have to input everything as we go -- the bare minimum of what was wrong, and got bored advice about what to take, and none about who else to see. She didn't know. No leads. So I called a person I thought might be able to help me, using my own bush league clinician's brain to scan through lists of MDs and LPwhatevers on a website. And when I called, my office door shut, my mantras shut down, a bored receptionist told me that I might be able to get in in July. I repeated July back to her as a question, told her that wouldn't help me and hung up. 

I wondered, if I gave up after one call, what people did who didn't speak the language well? Who were even more fucked up than I was? Who were old or truly alone or permanently terrified, beyond my ability to snap into functional for the three minutes such a loathsome phone call takes. 

July. 

I went to my yoga studio again, instead, where the oms flow and so does a fountain, where I contort myself silly in 90-degree rooms and feel peace like I don't have anywhere else. I went to work. I shot a big job. I took the little pink pills, willing them to work faster, apologizing to myself again for quitting the last time, when I felt better, when I got my cyclical attitude about medication, my stubborn aversion to things that work, that seem just the slightest bit easy. And as I felt the chemistry start to right itself again inside my head I was able to do some other stuff, the things I find impossible when I'm in the bad place. 

It's mostly nothing big. I cleaned my refrigerator. I did laundry. I picked up most of the clothes off of the floor of my closet and hung them up, categorized by the part of the body they cover. It's still a wreck in here, mind you. Vegetables keep rotting faster than I can eat them. Blouses fall down wispy from the hangers. But I try to stay a step ahead. I even shut the computer down sometimes. 

I envy you, you know, the people who are able to do this without assistance, who can just...do this, all of the time. 

I haven't been writing though, because when I do I ramble. And I'm afraid of what it means to talk about this, and for me lately, this is all there is, pretty much. I'm afraid of what it means to talk about anything these days, honestly, but I'm not sure it matters so much if I do. I'm pretty sure it matters if I don't. 

It's not like this story hasn't been told ad nauseum, both explicitly and in millions of desperate, flailing words that dance around it, so many things said instead. The truth of this is tricky. And the thing is, if you run into me tomorrow, after I've forced myself to get out of my bed that I love and want to live in, made myself get dressed to go to somewhere that works for me on no level to do something I don't like, I'll be okay when we talk. It'll be the usual non sequiturs and wisecracks. I might even offend you, probably accidentally. 

I probably won't tell you then that this chemistry is a low-grade kind of hell, and that two weeks ago, again, I couldn't see my way out of it. And now, today, I can, just a little, the slightest bit of enough to think my way around the hypothetical failure of my story so far. 

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. 

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

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.) 

This is stupid long and no one has to read it

How is everyone? 

I appear to be writing here again, an event I blame solely on last week's super moon, because I've been overrun with thoughts and the desire to type them out ever since.

I've launched back in with the usual love letters to my people and random other things, but I feel like I should say something more specific about what's going on with me lately.

"But I don't give a damn what you've been up to," you say. 

Fair enough, but bringing things into chronological order is just another of my compulsions. I'm on Twitter so much the virtual world is choking on my words, but that's different.

Let's see. Let's take this back to last fall, shall we? That's where I want to go. 

I went to Ojai for Creative Alliance, courtesy of Lee Vandeman and a team of awesome women who led me to a California canyon, one of the most truly beautiful places I've ever been.

We were filled up with good food and laughter and talk of creativity and business and late night readings of McSweeney's comedy that still make me cry. I got to stay in the coolest m/hotel, I got to see a part of California I hope that I can go back to so soon, and I made some friends I know that I never would have met otherwise. Everyone is listed here, so I don't forget anyone. (I love you, Ann, Jess and Kristen. You're everything good.) Plus I got to spend time with Deb and Sue and that is always so good for me. We spent a fun day at the end wandering Ojai then up Ventura Highway (in the suuuuuun-shiiiiiiiine) to see Sue's town and then on to visit Erin and her family before I went home. It was such a great trip, and I'm so glad I went. Ask me about the yurt sometime.

Hey, remember when I got that big ass sandwich last summer?

 Oh my God. I already told you about that a long time ago, but I was just going back through Sarah's pictures to try to find a shot or two of us in Asheville in September because I LOST MY MEMORY CARD ON THE WAY HOME from that trip, and I count on her to back me up in these tragic situations. And of course this is what I come across. 

I just realized I have some horn action going on there. The rock never stops, stupid sandwich or no. You want to get with this. Anyway, moving on.

This is the Biltmore, in Asheville. Sarah took this too. I loved my shots of that staircase so much that I can't really think about them or I get sad. Oh well. Also it's a good thing that I trust her not to push me down stairs. 

The Biltmore people were very nice and took us on a tour of which I have no photographs and let us sample sparkling wine that I tried to con the man into giving me more of but he wasn't down and there were gargoyles and that was that. Let's pretend that every shot I took on that whole trip sucked, because they're gone, okay? Thanks! 

Asheville is a great town with good restaurants and lots to see, so we had fun. I got to drink habanero margaritas (reminding myself to try to make them at home) with Laurie and Deb and Penny and other various blog friends. We drove by a huge guitar and a NASCAR track in Tennessee, and through relatively terrifying foggy mountain passes very early in the morning, and got to do the talky thing we do so terrifyingly well, which is always nice. A friend you can be trapped in a car for hours with and not get sick of...at all, ever? Dude. I strongly recommend acquiring this. We spent an excellent afternoon at the end of the trip in a brew pub with good beer and approximately 17 televisions with football games visible from every angle, something I know ranked as a highlight for at least one person in my party. 

The holidays were...eh. I deal worse with winter coming on every year. I hate hate hate cold weather, and last year's ridiculous snow totals in our underprepared area left me with some kind of strange winter PTSD and I apparently mentally resisted it coming back again as hard as I possibly could. I was supposed to move in November and then that fell apart due to sad circumstances beyond my control, and for the rest of 2010 I thought too much about how I was going to turn 40 in December.

I'm listening to this right now, by the way. You don't wish you were me at all, but just know that I rock exceedingly hard. 

We went to Pittsburgh on New Year's Day to watch the Caps play the Penguins in the Winter Classic. It was a quick, awesome trip and we had fun just being there, although I have to admit that the Caps win was a huge bonus. I love my hockey, oh do I love my hockey, and someone may have to wheel me into wherever they're playing when I'm old to see them finally win a Cup, but this was a nice second to that. We stayed with Kim, who is one of the greatest people I know, and was the reason we were able to get into the game in the first place. She is also very gracious when her team loses, and such a good friend in all ways having nothing to do with sports. She is also writing more, and you should read her blog. She's been saying since I met her that she's not a writer. I always knew it was bs, because anyone with that many stories and her prodigious brain has the ability, and I'm proud of her for committing to the practice. It sucks a lot of the time but when it brings joy it's among the realest out there, and...yeah. I can go on about that for a long time. 

We were also able to get in a little bit of time with Kelly and Andrea, which was so nice, in a pub with a bunch of soccer games on Sunday morning television. I like Pittsburgh. I could get used to it. 

We were kind of happy about the whole thing. 

We are so silly but whatever. Oh! We also went to a women's hockey event at the Capitals' practice facility in November, and I met Peter Bondra and he guided me through shooting a goal. Bondra is such a highlight of Caps hockey and this was truly a fun life highlight for me. Plus he's genuinely nice. And cute. This is our Christmas card. 

As you can tell from the relative absence of my eyes in that photo, I'd gained a lot of weight. By the time I turned 40 on December 27, I was at the highest weight I'd hit since college. I spent the week of Christmas and my birthday pouring Bailey's in my coffee and eating food I don't allow myself to have most of the time. I spent a wonderful actual birthday with my family and friends, and my sister gave me the sweetest book  full of words and photos from my friends from all over. It made me cry two pages in and was such a highlight of my year and my life. She and Sarah both got me hockey jerseys, and in general I felt very loved and that was nice.

But I felt like hell and I knew I looked it. Right after I got back from Pittsburgh, I started a 40-day yoga challenge, a process that included daily yoga practice of some sort, meditation, and more attention to clean eating. "Clean eating" is one of those phrases that makes me want to punch myself in the face, but it's the best description I've got of what I'm trying to do. I limit processed stuff and I do not keep junk in my house, for the most part. If I ever stop drinking beer and wine that would probably help, but I'm not interested in that now.

The 40-Day program was intense and I really felt I should write about it while it was happening, but it was such a heavy thing I just couldn't. I went to the yoga studio near my house and office almost every day between the second week in January and the third week in February. I've tried yoga before, even keeping it up for months in other times of my life, but this particular process was life-altering.

The Thrive studio is owned by people who have good attitudes about people in general and what they can get out of practicing yoga. I was also ready to physically challenge myself even when I feel stupid or weak, which is often. But all I know is that after 30 years of consciously hating my body, this experience has allowed me to step off of my usual track of measuring exercise value strictly in minutes of hell on this machine or that at the gym. My body and mind came together in a way that seems to make me a better and also healthier person, I think. I can also do Wheel pose now, for like 30 seconds. 

I don't look like that when I do it, but you can pretend I do if it makes you feel better. I just did it fully for the first time on Saturday, in a class that also had me bracing my feet halfway up a wall while I stood on my hands. No really. I did that. I lifted this weight on my hands, with my legs up the wall BEHIND ME in an "L" shape. For real. Multiple times. And as much as I'm horrified at the thought of people who know me seeing me in this configuration, a part of me still wishes they could look at a picture of it long enough to know that it's definitely me, so they can be all WHAT THE HELL? 

And no, it isn't very yogi-like to stroll around saying I CAN DO WHEEL I DO WHEEL NOW AND STAND ON MY HANDS WITH MY LEGS BEHIND ME UP THE WALL, pretty much because as soon as you do that successfully you'll bust your ass in a simple down dog, karma being what it is. But I admit that it feels pretty good to be in my body in this powerful way. I also really like my studio. I can have a terrible day and without fail, by the time I get there and do a class and leave, my head is fixed for a little while. I wish it were practical to spend three hours there a day, every day.  

I also started running, with the plan to run the Broad Street Run in Philadelphia on May 1. This is a huge deal for me. I've never run anywhere except after a plane or from pain and scandal in my 40 years. I was terrified to try it, especially at the size I was in January, but I did it. I'm up to a max of four miles at a time now, and I'm hoping I can be in good enough shape to at least finish out the race without dying. I visited my friend Greg, who sells running shoes, and got new ones Saturday, which I understand will imbue me with the powers of flight, or my money back. My next step is to actually run outside now that Maryland is deciding it really doesn't want to be winter anymore, a process that always takes its adolescent self about three weeks. He claims he is going to come and run with me, and I'm hoping he's not lying. 

Running is hard, man. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to physically do, but somehow I keep doing it. I really need some new playlists, though. I'm so sick of mine. Please send me new music, but know that mine jump from Cinderella to Kid Rock to Pink, Kenny Chesney and Christopher Cross.

No, I'm not kidding.  No I, will never be the same without you here. 

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I moved into a condo that I love. I really, really do. I have so much to do to get it fixed to the point where I'm really comfortable and it feels like home, but it's a good place for me to be, in an excellent location near a metro and the Beltway. I've had a little bit of trouble adjusting to the silence, but I'm relaxing into it and seeing where it takes me. 

What else did I miss? Elisa, who makes my world infinitely better, bought me a ticket to see Billie Joe Armstrong appear in American Idiot on Broadway, so I went to New York in a snowstorm to make that happen. This coincided with Renate, one of my best friends, moving there, so I drove up with her on that adventure. 

I could explain to you how I feel about Green Day, Elisa, New York and Renate, but that's its own post that should be written. It was amazing. Billie Joe is my boyfriend, we had an amazing time at the show, and on the moments when I realize that I'm a lucky girl, this is one of the experiences that makes that happen. 

Sarah and I went to Bon Jovi in February and had so much fun, I think.

This is what I'll remember forever from that night, and if they come back here, I'll make sure we go, because it was entirely fucking worth it for this.

I'll have us do this until we're old ladies. It's just how it should be. 

(I love my Sarah. You've got that, right? If you were me, with the experiences I've had and the way I came up through my life into now, you would too, I swear. You'd get it.)

I'm looking forward to spring so much. I'm going to New Orleans to do a photo workshop at the Mom2.0 conference in April, and I'll be so happy to see some of my good friends who live in the computer. The internet has been very good to me. Sometimes I can't even believe it. These people send me housewarming presents and look for me when I'm not around, so I like to go and visit them in person when I can. I can't wait to be back in the Quarter and show Sarah my favorite parts of Magazine and Rocky's house in the Garden District and and and...New Orleans is just, it's everything. It's my soul city. New York is my heart. New Orleans is my soul. New York is my soul. New Orleans is my heart. Interchangeable. 

My sister's wedding shower is in Philadelphia next weekend, and she gets married in June. I'm headed to BlogHer Food in Atlanta in May, and have a few other trips planned, some to places I've never been before. I think I see beaches in my future, too. Have I mentioned lately how much I like it when life warms up and we can all get outside again? 

I haven't been shooting enough, at all, and I hate that. I also have to get a website done for the photography and writing. There are lots of things I need to do. My only sources of sadness and upset are some things in my daily life and routine that only I can remedy, and I feel pretty sure that I can handle those too, this year. It's more difficult to figure that out than I was expecting, but I'm trying. 

It still makes me a little bit sad that I was in such a strange place on my birthday, and really didn't mark that time consciously in the way that I hoped to do. I'm not sure if it's a bullshit move to extend the celebration and do that now, or if that's something I have the license to do for the entire year. What do you think? If I throw myself a belated party, would people come? 

 

Bites

I don't really know what to write here anymore. I don't know where to start. I have all kinds of threads of ideas that unfortunately don't translate very well to this little white box. I started this the other night and it went nowhere:

 I don't  know if, born scarred, that's how you stay and forever after everything's a little bit broken or if that's some more melodramatic garbage I made up in my head because the words fit.

Probably. That's probably the case, I don't know. What I do know is that there's very little beauty now. It's a hard slog, February, even at the end of a mostly-neutral winter. I do ridiculous shit to handle seasons, like recite Ecclesiastes to myself in the car on the way to work, although I rejected the Bible long ago as anything other than a three-star "way to go" on Goodreads.

"All streams flow into the sea,
   yet the sea is never full." Ecc. 1:7

That's not the seasons part at all, but I just looked it up and I liked it.

The world is too much with me, yeah. The shards of sun in my rear view, the man wanting money on the median, Libya. Freaking Egypt and Libya. Do not get me started on Wisconsin, or the guy who walks into my classroom with a Phillie Blunt in his mouth, unlit, chewing on the end until I'm like, "Hey, what's up?" standing there in my sensible shoes, pointing at his mouth before my palms go up. He considers all of this for a second before he takes it out.

"I don't know, y'all," he says.

The cigar situation and Libya are not remotely the same. It's just it all piles up and then I sit in my chair with a finger on the Twitter and one on my coffee cup and I am crushed with the knowledge that nowhere I'm sitting and nothing I'm reading has anything remotely to do with my soul or skill or whatever the hell this is supposed to be or do or evidence.

And that is where I stopped. I couldn't go any more and I went to sleep because I was tired.

**********

The woman I was supposed to rent a condo from back in November killed herself just before Christmas. I only know this because someone in her family contacted me a couple of weeks ago, a week after I moved into my new condo the same complex -- a situation that came together out of the blue in January. This person told me that she died and asked me if I still wanted to rent the place.

No, no I didn't at all, besides that I didn't need it anymore. And by the way, I was sorry, I wrote, sitting at my desk crying for a tiny person I'd met exactly once, in addition to exchanging several e-mails and one brutal phone conversation three days before I was supposed to move in, when she told me that I couldn't because her marriage was breaking up and she had to take the place herself. She was ripping up my lease.

She sat on the other end of the line, a little more than a month away from dying who knows how, crying into the phone, apologizing. I was pissed off that that my plan was wrecked and I wasn't very nice about it. I knew her for a blip, long enough to know that she was a month younger than I was, that she practiced yoga, that her aunt owned the place before she died, that she was very pleased with the new cabinet handles in the kitchen. I was actually proud of myself for being so hardcore annoyed at this disruption in my life, for displaying an anger that I'm bad at cultivating for a 90-pound woman in Keds, for holding someone accountable. This time I would not be understanding and say everything was fine. This time I would advocate for myself, not like all of the other times.

It bothered her so much that she made your life more complicated, her person said in the e-mail from hell. She was very sorry. I'm so glad things worked out for you.

It's a temporary freelance job, thinking of the one nice thing I didn't say, of all that this did not have to do with me, that I turned 40 and she never did. The day I got the e-mail was the last day of a 40-day yoga program I'd been doing since the first of the year, a commitment I made for absolutely no reason that took me to some places I still didn't really understand. The parallels were a lot to take, the godforsaken message that even spiritual immersion cannot save you.

It's not like I didn't know that anyway.

Every once in awhile, which is to say every other night now, my subconscious insists on seeing her in the corner when I walk into my dark apartment. She lived in the building on the other side of the parking lot. I can see her place from my balcony.

Location, location, location.

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

I used to rest in a Rainer Rilke quote, the one about living your questions now, so you could live your way into the answers.

It turns out that it's kind of a pain in the ass. It's not at all that anyone told me it would be easier, I just stupidly really did think it wouldn't always be this hard.

And that really probably is all I needed to say here, right now.

2010

So my friend Kelly did this year-end survey and it reminded me tht I used to do it too. The last time I have it in my archives was 2007. This is my favorite answer to that one, I think, which was written during my first ass-kicking semester in journalism school:

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007. "Just because it hurts like hell to let it go doesn't mean you should keep it." Also, third party attribution will not save you from libel charges, so own your words...cause they's your words for better or worse, sweetheart.

So true. Anyway, I need to write something more serious tonight and I have nothing resembling coherent thoughts about that in my brain yet so I'm hoping this will help make it work.

1. Where did you begin 2010?

At Kristen's house with her family and friends in Virginia, drinking home brew and watching her try to singe creme brulee with a fucked up blowtorch. She talks about the aftermath here. It wasn't pretty.

This made me realize that 2011 makes two years in a row I've been in Virginia on New Year's Eve. It's a conspiracy, Tampa.

2. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?

Watched and began to comprehend and have opinions about football. Went to Houston. Spent days on end in Virginia. Lost my mind at the Carnegie Deli.

(That wins for my sentimental favorite post of the year. Oates!)

Saw Fountains of Wayne (that was big for me), KT Tunstall and Tom Petty live. Accompanied a friend in Red Sox gear to a Yankees-Sox game at Yankee Stadium. Fed a calf a bottle of milk (fun -- I could totally be a farmer if someone else set everything up and I could just go in and ride their farming coattails.)

Turned 40. (Holy crap, oh my God.)

3. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Absolutely not and yes, I'm trying. Right after January I pretty much sank into my usual seasonally affected depression and then I messed up terribly at something at which I consistently kick ass, so I'd say any resolutions went out the window posthaste. I've got some in mind for this year. I have some writing to do this weekend and I may share them. We'll see.

Oh, and I also fully intended to get another tattoo on my 40th birthday. Failed that -- and not just because some lady on Twitter who didn't bother to ask whether I had experience in this genre or not told me I was a middle-aged cliche.  I just hadn't figured out what I wanted yet. That's kind of key.

4. Were you in school (anytime this year)?

No. I graduated from journalism grad school in 2008 and because I don't think I'll ever take leave of my senses and go for a  Ph.d I'm pretty sure I'm done. (Please let me not take leave of my senses.) I wanted to take some web design classes so I can build my own website and photo portfolio but I was very busy drinking beer and watching hockey games and worrying needlessly about a million things that I did not. Hopefully this year.

5. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No, and I am sad about that. Babies!

6. Did anyone close to you die?

No. Crosses self, throws salt over shoulder, sings the Ave Maria, etc.

7. What places did you visit?

I still just want to answer this with Funkytown, you know. HOWEVER.

Houston (twice, once for Mom 2.0 and once for Karen's book release -- both great times.)

(I have pretty friends. Don't hate.)

New Orleans. Ocean City and Rehoboth. Myrtle Beach. New York for kicks and then for BlogHer. Asheville. The amazing Ojai and Ventura after for Creative Alliance.

Plus I went to Virginia a lot to see Sarah and to occasionally bring her beer.

8. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?

A sunny place to live where I can have friends over for game days and other such festive occasions. An iMac. A new website. Dependable sanity. A waist.

9. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

March 3, going to the Maryland game with my father and watching them beat Duke at home. I'll never forget this as long as I live. It surpassed my graduation for the best moment I've ever had on campus, and I thought they'd never let me out of that joint what with my remarkably mediocre gpa and knack for changing my major.

June 19, the M3 Festival -- stupidly fun, including the spitting beer on people and getting ejected from The Scorpions portion of the program parts. If anyone knows a metal band who needs a traveling promoter who is not a groupie in any way, shape or form except for the love of trashy awesome music, I may be reached at this website at any time.

BlogHer kicked ass this year, especially -- what was that, August 5-6? I loved it. July 2, Marcus and Tyra's wedding. I was proud to be a part of it and to take some of the photos.

My mom's 60th birthday party.

10. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Having a photo in an exhibit for the first time. That was a big deal for me.

Almost but not completely losing my shit during a very stressful occupational situation that promised to make me do that for awhile there. Scrounging enough freelance money to make it through the summer in spite of the lack of a paycheck with two weeks notice. Writing a lot more than I did in 2009. Helping one of my longest-languishing students graduate and transfer. Making choices in my closest relationships such that I separated a lot more wheat from some fairly glaring chaff.

11. What was your biggest failure?

I dropped the ball on a big project. I know exactly what I did and why and I've come to terms, but if I could go back and do it over in a better and more solid frame of mind I surely would. The spring was very difficult. I also dropped my iPhone into a plastic cup of wine on the Amtrak on the way to BlogHer. That was a shit show -- one with a happy ending, but a shit show nonetheless.

12. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nothing major.

13. What was the best thing you bought?

M3 and Winter Classic tickets. Wine. Plane tickets to Houston, New Orleans and L.A..

14. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My non-blogging friend Jen is a superhero who has given herself heart and soul to caring for her mother. She is the finest person I know. Several of my internet friends reached out from the computer and made me proud to know them and grateful to have them in my life in 3-d, even.

My sister worked so hard in her Ph.d program. I am very proud of and more importantly impressed by her. 

I always say this, but pretty much anyone who is fighting the good fight and living with integrity in spite of the usual barriers and problems deserves a round of applause. I am currently clapping. 

And freaking leave Dick Clark alone -- it's his house. If he wants to keep getting up and doing it every year on New Year's Eve until he dies, shut up and let him. Did you host American Bandstand, wiseguy? Didn't think so.

15. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Students who skip finals and fail classes therefore. Brett Favre. Pretty much anyone I wrote about on MamaPop. I unfollowed a lot of negativity and narcissism on Twitter. People who tailgate my EFFING CAR ON MY WAY TO WORK and their sisters and brothers in oblivion who scream into their cellphones in enclosed spaces where strangers have to listen to them. (OMG I'LL SEE YOU IN AN HOUR I'LL BRING THE PAPER BAGS WTF?) Anyone, as usual, who committed my worst peevish sins and lied or littered.

16. Where did most of your money go?

Bills, food, travel and hockey and concert tickets.

17. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

M3 Festival and Winter Classic (take the needle off the record.) The Maryland-Duke game. Caps games. BlogHer. Glee (pathetic, yes. True, yes.)

18. What song will always remind you of 2010?

Lady Gaga, Speechless; Avett Brothers, I & Love & You; Kix's Midnite Dynamite album; Biggie, Party & Bullshit; 21 Guns, GreenDay

19. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? I feel pretty stable right now so happier I guess?
b) thinner or fatter? I am ENORMOUS right now. I am not even kidding. I haven't weighed this much since that one year in college.
c) richer or poorer? Poorer.

20. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Reading. Exercising. Lying on beaches. Kicking ass and taking names. Traveling, always traveling. Taking pictures. 2010 was not a good consistent shooting year.

21. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Being trapped in my house by blizzards. Panicking. Feeling guilty. Procrastinating. Sitting in my office. Playing Angry Birds.

22. How did you spend Christmas?

Christmas Eve I failed at baking lemon bars and fudge but the cookies turned out okay, so I spent most of the night in the kitchen listening to It's a Wonderful Life from the living room and crying. Christmas Day I was home with my family, plus my father's brothers and their wives and most of the kids came over at night. It was a good holiday.

23. Did you fall in love in 2010?

No. Sad! I had a few little crushes though so that was fun. It's good to know I'm still alive. Maybe this year I'll actually talk to a REAL BOY. (Who doesn't want me to set him up with my friend.) (Who is interesting and financially solvent and can talk about lots of things without my eyes glazing over.) ( And who has season tickets to the Washington Capitals or at least will go to games and doesn't care that I scream a lot at them.)

24. What was your favorite TV program?

Glee. Top Chef. Parenthood. Great Food Truck Race. Not Mad Men. Not True Blood. I know!

25. What did you do for your birthday in 2010?

I went to the MVA to renew my license because I am a procrastinating asshole. However the nice MVA lady was all, "It's YO BIRTHDAY!" and said "Happy birthday!" and she seemed very pleased to be able to do that so maybe that paying it forward was just what the doctor ordered. Then I drank a bottle of Prosecco and ate a dozen oysters for lunch with my mom at Clyde's. Then I ended up at a new restaurant near my house that I've really been wanting to try with my family and a few friends, and Sarah and Marcus and Dolores and Nancy were there and it was rather perfect, considering my aversion to doing any kind of celebrating at all. And those jerks gave me a lovely book that made me cry from joy because it brought home that in spite of how much I think I suck on a daily basis and my stubborn focus on what I lack, that I am very lucky to have so many wonderful people in my life and that is gold, baby. Gold. Suck it, haters.

26. What was the best book you read?

This is pathetic because I think I only finished one and I used to read a couple of books a month. Damned internet. I finished Anne Lamott's "Imperfect Birds" and that was okay. I had every intention of finishing "Freedom" but I didn't like it and all I could think all the way til whatever page I made it to was how is it that Jonathan Franzen ranks not having an editor at all? Because dude could have been edited down by about a hundred self-indulgent pages. So mark 2010 down as the Year of the Illiterate Horse or Pig or whatever it is this time around. I have big reading plans for this year, though. I even started reading a book already!

27. What did you want and get?

The summer off (totally unexpectedly and not without trauma, but anyway, it happened.) A Caps jersey. My own room at BlogHer.

28. What did you want and not get?

A houseboy. Also a house. Small detail. A dog.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

I saw "The King's Speech" right before the year ended and because I really loved it and can't remember anything else I'm going with that.

30. Did you make some new friends this year?

I did! This was a great year for friends. I write for a few websites and from those places especially did emerge some of the finest writers and beyond that human beings I've ever had in my life.

31.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Again, a houseboy. Unlimited funding. Someone to shovel me out of Snowmageddon.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?

Does it accentuate my third chin? Sold!

33. What kept you sane?

My friends. My sister. Twitter (counterintuitive, I know, but it's always there for me. Can't deny it.) Red wine after work.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

(Kelly said this and it made me laugh. I fancy her! Her behavior merits celebration!:"Celebrities can eat a fat one. Seriously. I don’t give a flying frack.")

But I'll say it -- Jack White can come over anytime.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?

Midterm elections. I got a little riled on the Twitter that day. Also, relatedly, any signs or exhortations that even remotely aligned Barack Obama's race or country of origin with his performance as president.

36. Who did you miss?

I'll miss my grandmother every day of my life. I'm learning to live with it better, but we were tight so it's hard. 

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.

Fun is underrated and should be actively pursued, courage is essential more often than not, and finally and most importantly, don't drop your iPhone facedown on a rock and then days later into a glass of wine because it'll make you sad.

Over all we've left undone

(This is a writing exercise for me for the last day of 2010 and the week of my birthday and of a decade...and yes, I'm calling this the end. It's every Reverb10 post I missed and all the truth I can handle right now rolled into one. I'm so glad it's over. I'm so grateful for the chance to mark this time I can't see straight. Happy new year to anyone whose eyes reach this page.)

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"Starless night, come fall around me
Over all we've left undone
I know a light that shines forever
Howsoever we may run."

~ "Reservoir", Hem

When I finally realized I had no interest in forgiving you it freed me up to consider why I should.

I  haven't been able to do it for a long time, it turns out, even though now I have to really work to see your face in my mind. I think that everything was just too much when it hit and kept hitting, the list of grievances too long, the memories too persistent and sad. I'm also as oddly ambivalent about forgiveness as I am any apology that is less than spontaneous and independently given, which may or may not be a result of being raised to believe I needed to talk to God about it, channeling my redemption through another human being who would close the screen and send me to an altar, assign me a certain number of prayers and call it even.

I don't know. I'm still oddly, ritually Catholic  in that part of my mind, as distant from any practice as I am. And anyway, what I can say I believe for sure is that I don't know if I can believe someone's really let go of anything, even if they say they have. I don't know who should. I think some things are, actually, unforgiveable in a way.

And for a long time, I didn't know I was going to have to. We couldn't or just didn't stop talking long enough for me to figure out that you were gone. And when we finally did stop -- when my grandmother died and I learned what real, bottomless loss and grief were -- I had nowhere to put the rage it turned out I'd been hiding under instant messages and inane e-mails since the day in January when you walked away from me and invalidated everything I'd imagined we were.

This was, of course, the problem. Suppositions in matters of the heart are a tragedy in waiting, a sad fact for situations so prone to them, unfortunately. They don't work in the worst, most consequential part, which is to say the longest run.

You have to ask the questions with potentially dreadful spirit-shattering answers early, just in case those answers make you turn this car around eventually. That's what I learned from this. You have to split hairs and clarify semantics. Because if you don't you'll end up on the phone with a grown man's mother, a week before he's going to leave your ass and your city and all your stupid, fragile dreams, and she'll ask you about what kind of socks you think will be best because it gets really cold where he's going and isn't this so exciting for him? Or maybe you just end up sitting in a Dairy Queen parking lot with your head on the steering wheel, mumbling it's fine that you're checking the classifieds in another city, honey. It's fine, really. BUT WHEN WERE YOU GOING TO TELL ME?

Now. Oh.

When I took my head out of my ass and  finally let the anger out, I'd carried it around for several years, and not like a baby, as a therapist suggested once. It was more like a hand grenade, honestly -- a live hand grenade baby in my purse, I guess. For God's sake no one jostle that thing.

Honestly it was partially my fault, or the involuntary fault of my deluded little brain anyway. I had one thing (one thing only) in mind when you walked down those stairs and away, theatrically crying like it wasn't your idea. One sinister subconscious plan all the times we talked in the just-friends zone for years after. One thing when I went to your adopted city and stared at statues of men on bronze horses and walked in other peoples' footsteps painted on the concrete, anything but free myself. All along I really believed and claimed that I was there to close a door when really, no. That wasn't why I was there at all. I was holding that door open with my shoulder and my knee, juggling grocery bags of delusion and crazy and not-so-shatterproof hope.

I had a brain full of incantations and silent pleas.

I had given you that red-string Chinese bracelet, so naturally that connected us, even though neither of us knew the Kabbalah from a hole in the ground and neither were we Chinese.

I was a complete and well-rounded, hyper-educated idiot of a disaster area.

Because the truth is that I was waiting for you to come home. I was believing stupidly against all clear evidence that you would finish this part of your dream and come back, because you had to, because the construct and all that was right with the world (my world) demanded it. And what I was doing that whole sad time was spread-eagling on the train tracks while whistles blew and hobos scattered and, deaf and blind fool I was, I got run over time and time again. And then like the crazy clown punching doll my grandmother had for us to kick around when we were little, I'd pop up again to hope another day.

At least I'm resilient. Stupid, maybe, but the resilient kind of stupid that people make reality shows about sometimes and pat on the head. I may have survived on the Mayflower, not to insult the pilgrims.

And even though I don't want to, because I honestly don't like you, and I hate everything you did and have reached a calm, bizarre ambivalence about your existence on this planet wherever you may be, I need to forgive you for letting me do all of that.

I need to forgive you for asking me to help you long after you should have, for pinging me with links  and words of the day and stupid jokes, resumes to edit and songs to listen to and scary questions in the middle of the night.

I need to forgive you for not respecting the power you had to break my heart, over and over again, for not ending all communication as soon as you knew that with me was not where you wanted to be for the long haul.

I need to forgive you for continuing to look into pitiful eyes like mine looked at you and keeping that poor dumb soul hoping. I still don't know how you could do it, honestly, but I need to forgive you for it.

I need to forgive you for telling me that I was the one who was broken, the one with the problem, who loved too hard and gave too much, that it was always my choice to come back so it must have been okay by me and the consequences? They were what they were. Because you had told me. You had told me.

I need to forgive you because even though it's long since gone and my life is pretty good, I know for a fact that I carry the garbage you dumped on my heart with me daily, and with it I've crafted a plastic bag eggshell shrine to my own failure to love, to connect, to be enough.

Because if I couldn't make it with you? I couldn't do that with anyone. But really it's that I just never wanted to. 

And even now that I can mildly envision opening up again, sadly I still believe that. I have not turned that corner, in spite of hope and work and positive self-talk, in spite of the good words of my friends and the deaths of people who meant more to me than you ever possibly could have.

I need to forgive you, most of all, for going on about what great friend we were and trashing me like no true friend ever could. For the part you played in wasting my very limited and entirely precious time, for being my one truest, saddest regret, and for taking advantage of my love given with a clear and well-intentioned heart until it got twisted by fear and rejection, because no one, I have since learned, should do that to anyone, for any reason.

They should walk away immediately, is what they should do. They should have the courage to set the other person free.

And while this might seem strange and untimely, it is entirely punctual and necessary for the person I am being and becoming. And it's essential for these words to live in a space where I spent two years anonymously talking to you, until you stopped reading and went on with things, finally allowing me to do so too. Two years later, I'm finally ready, on my own schedule, on my own dime. And I believe somehow that if I send this wish on the wind on the last day of what was in some ways the most disappointing year of a decade consumed by loving, losing and recovering from you, I'll have done the part that I needed to do a long time ago.

I honestly, finally believe that I can finally offer it up, that I can finally -- in my heart, where it matters, whether I should have done it years ago or never -- forgive. For me.

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This accidentally turned into Day Three.

Following are the writing prompts for 30 Days of Truth, should you be interested in doing so yourself.

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself