The first time I passed Grand View Avenue when I moved to LA, I thought, "Okay, sure. Whatever, soulless boulevard." Today I actually walked down Grand View Avenue and discovered that a mere five minutes from my house is a spot where if you turn to the east you can see all the way to the skyscrapers of downtown and the San Gabriel mountains beyond. If you turn to the west, you can see the sea shining in the sun.
Fine then, sign. Don't let me be cynical.
Aside from my five-year relationship, I've been more or less single my entire life. Yes, "more or less" covers a whole lot of ground - from six month relationships to two years of yearning to the one with all the sex in all the ridiculous places. Oh, mid-twenties. I miss you. Now it's all, "Sure, the forest floor is nice. The bears aren't that close. But you know what's nicer? A BED." For all that it makes me cranky sometimes, my more-or-less perpetual singledom has been invaluable. It's helped me understand that everything that happens in my life is mine. My experience, my responsibility. When you're in a relationship with someone, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking "Well, if he didn't do this, then I wouldn't do that."
Dear Self: Unless he's chasing you with an axe and you're stealing a car to get away, THIS IS ALMOST NEVER TRUE.
So I've had to relax into the idea that it's all me. My feelings, my thoughts, my actions and reactions, my decision about the kind of love I want.
Honestly, this makes me a little crabby. Frankly, I'd prefer to be adored. Coddled. Doted upon. Maybe fanned with palm fronds.*
* Not really. Love and partnership and having someone to do found object puppetry with in the grocery store totally trump palm fronds. That said, I wouldn't mind having someone to crack my back on demand. There's only so much you can do with a chair, especially in public.
A lot of my...stuff (for lack of a better word) (hi, I'm a writer!) has come from wanting to feel loved. I mean, don't we all? We all want to be loved. We all want to be thought of as smart and successful and amazing and intensely adorable. But, in my experience, wanting to feel loved - and brilliant and hot and desired - just creates a sucking vacuum of need. A black hole of hubris.
Nobody wears Black Hole of Hubris well. Plus, it's exhausting when all the love just gets sucked in and is never seen again. Sorry, ex-boyfriends!
So, hey. Trying not to do that. Because I want people to like me.
Wait. Shit.
See? This is hard.
But I want to follow my heart, not my ego. The ego is louder, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to it. For me, the best way to step back from the obsessive cycle of affirmation craving is to be loving. Not loved. Same word, different tense,* very different effect.
*Because I'm a word geek who just thought about tense, I spent a solid minute laughing about how I want Future Perfect, feel stuck in Imperfect, when I should really just be Present. Grammar jokes for overly-contemplative hippie girls with vaguely Buddhist leanings! Haaaaa. I'm going to be snorting about this all day. No, seriously, you guys. All day.
I want to create love, rather than sitting around and letting my rabid little ego hijack my space. If I want a hug, give a hug. If I want to be told in poetic language how awesome I am, go write an ode to someone else. If I want to feel love, tell someone I love them.
If I want my back cracked, too damn bad. No surprise amateur chiropracty allowed.
Whatever you want, do it for someone else. Be loving, not loved. Muttering this wildly under my breath is the best thing I do to create a perspective shift. It picks up the brain hamsters and gently places them elsewhere. It refocuses me on others, instead of the graspy want-want-want trap that I swan dive into sometimes. It feels better. It's simpler than my ego wants to make it. Love breeds more love.
A few days ago, I broke the handle on my car door. Don't ask me how, these things just seem to happen. Snap. Now every time I want to go somewhere, I have to climb in on the passenger side and clamber over to the driver seat, which is noticeably awkward when I'm wearing a skirt or a date walks me to my car or I park next to the restaurant on Abbot Kinney with sidewalk tables and lots of blasé shiny people. Now I'm wondering if I should get the door fixed or just buy a new car. What? Buying a new car is an eminently reasonable, if fiscally irresponsible, solution. This plan didn't occur to me when my transmission busted, by the way. Or when someone smashed into me and totaled poor Suzi the Suzuki. The insurance company didn't realize that all she needed was a little love and a lot of life support. Luckily, I'm a very persuasive automotive advocate. Until my car gets the equivalent of a hangnail. Then I contemplate sending her to the slaughterhouse.
But I've had Suzi for eleven years now, so I guess I couldn't be accused of flagrant car purchasing were I to consider putting her and her busted door handle out to pasture. Not that I'm morally opposed to flagrant car purchasing, you understand. Everyone has their thing. If that's yours, you have my blessing. Purchase flagrantly away! Mazel tov!
For the past few days, my innards have felt like beef carpaccio. Raw and tender, like someone has been beating me enthusiastically with a wooden mallet. Nothing to worry about. Nothing even terribly unusual. I just have a...rich emotional landscape. This week's landscape featured lots of tears and wild arm flailing as I almost fell off the treadmill because I closed my eyes for two damn seconds to feel a feeling before the reality of the present moment reasserted itself in an abrupt but not permanently injurious* manner.
* Injurious absolutely does not seem like a real word. But it is. Don't worry, I looked it up. I often look up words because I'm convinced they're not real words, that my brain created them to fill a paragraph hole in an efficient but inaccurate way. I haven't invented nearly as much of the dictionary as I seem to think.
When Nicole and I decided to stop working early to obey our convenient moral imperative as self-employed LA-dwellers to get the hell out of the house and enjoy the February sunshine, she strode off to ravenously absorb Twilight and I drove to the beach.
If you give yourself permission to step away for an hour or two, your brain calms down. Sitting on the sand in the sun gives you space to remember that just because you feel like the emotional equivalent of an abused pink appetizer doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It may even mean that you're doing it right.
Then you get to feel warm and peaceful and happier than you have in days. As a bonus, no one flinches when you accidentally flash them because you're wearing a sundress and are required by life to do weird things to reach the steering wheel.
The beach tells me I'm doing it right.
Thanks, beach.
My parents almost named me Sunshine. Hippies the way only East Coasters who moved to San Francisco in the early '70s could be, my parents meditated on roofs, toured the country in a renovated bread truck, ate tofu pudding, grew a lot of hair, did things with crystals that I still don't understand, adopted a stray mutt and named it Freedom, and eventually pondered naming their first child after the stuff that comes off the star around which our entire solar system revolves.
Which, come to think of it, might have worked for me. HI, I AM THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE. THANKS FOR NOTICING.
As you may have cleverly surmised from my header, they didn't. Because what if I...wasn't? As cheerful as the name implies, that is. I know they worried about this. Few other names come with such specific expectations of good nature. What if I was ornery? Angry? Tinged with ennui? Draped in a blanket of deep melancholy? What if I asked for smelling salts and a fainting couch for my fourteenth birthday? There's a lot of misfire potential in christening a child Sunshine.
As it happens, calling me Sunshine wouldn't have been as much of a lie as, say, Grace or Chastity. But this is not something a parent can know until long after the birth certificate needs signing.
I consider myself a happy person. Except when I'm not. Because I've been all those things: angry, ornery, marinated in ennui and melancholy. It wouldn't be a huge exaggeration to say that I've lost years of my life to depression. To save my mother the worried phone call, it may or may not have been true depression, but I certainly didn't do what I was capable of for years, simply because I was trying to get through them. To untangle myself from that blanket of melancholy. (They sell them at Ikea. Don't buy one.) But I decided I wanted to get through those years in my own way and so I did. And that was exactly what I needed to get where I am - a place that, on most days, I'm pretty darn happy with.
You get to choose who you are. Your parents name you something, your family develops a certain expectation of you, your friends know you as one thing or another - but none of that matters. You get to choose. You choose who you are and who you become. By choosing what you pay attention to and where you put your focus. By focusing on your life and no one else's. Focusing on what you want that life to be. On what makes you happy.
I have a lot of joy in me. In large part because that's what I've chosen to cultivate. I was born with a lot of potential for happiness, but I was also born with a lot of potential for the other thing. I choose what I want to lean into. I have to keep choosing it every day. We all do.
By living on juice for three days and then diving headfirst into a bucket of coffee and a plate of eggs after being a sugarless, caffeineless, joyless vegan for a month. (I wasn't joyless. But I am melodramatic. For melodrama brings me joy. My dates have a lot to put up with.) Followed the next day by the best damn butterscotch pudding you've ever had, recommended by a woman sitting at the next table, eating her breakfast with the woman we think was Joan Rivers, although I remain unconvinced.
But I promised that my official version of the story would feature a conclusive Joan Rivers and since I always keep my promises.... Guess what! We ate brunch next to Joan Rivers! And chatted long enough to net a butterscotch pudding recommendation, something I'm certain wouldn't have happened if it was actually Joan Rivers or if I had suspected it was Joan Rivers. Not because Joan Rivers and her friend wouldn't kindly recommend amazing butterscotch pudding but because I would have been weirdly and obviously enthralled by her bone structure and general Joan Rivers-ness. I'm not good at playing it cool.
Why isn't there an iPhone app that answers questions like, "Did I just have brunch with Joan Rivers?" There really should be.
Venice Beach
Over the next few weeks, I'll be figuring out how I want my real life to look when it comes to food. So far I'm leaning toward injecting myself with deer DNA so I can grow a few extra stomachs in which to store the pancakes. One stomach for the every day green juice, tofu, and all those other strange things that don't make sense in any context my past self recognizes. And another stomach for weekends and brunches with friends and beach walks and butterscotch pudding recommended by Joan Rivers.
This advice is probably not for you. Because you're a peerless specimen of well-mannered manhood and also I'm pretty sure only women read my blog. That said.
Relentless sociopaths aside, I think everyone wants to be nice to the woman they're seeing, screwing (sorry, mom) or marrying - especially if they want to see her again, sleep with her again, or not end up at the office with couch cushions imprints on their cheek.
But we're all fragile human creatures. Sometimes our heads are stuffed with other things, sometimes we don't think, sometimes it just didn't occur to us how someone might take something. Therefore.
1. If you get yourself some water - you know when - offer her some too. Don't just suck it down and leave her to fend for herself. Especially if she's in your house. She's not a camel. Unless she is. Then you have a whole different set of problems, problems I am not equipped to advise you on.
2. If she cares about Valentine's Day or birthdays or Martin Luther King Jr. Day, you get to care about them too. Not because Valentine's Day isn't a corporate shill dressed as an armed toddler, but because it will make her happy.
3. Condoms. I mean, obviously.
4. Talk to her. Let her talk to you if she needs it. Women like talking. Everyone likes to feel heard.
5. But don't talk about your ex. That never goes well. No one likes ghosts. Especially ghosts who are still very much alive and possibly hotter and/or less crazy than she is. (No, I don't speak from experience. Why do you ask?)
6. Make her bacon in the morning. Just saying. (Unless she's vegetarian. Then maybe don't do the bacon thing.)
All this goes for the women too, obviously. Maybe substitute football for Valentine's Day. You don't necessarily have to watch it with him, but you get to be cool about it when he wants to spend six months of the year bowing to the god of intramural testosterone. Because he likes it. Enough said.
1. Asking her to text you when she gets home so you're sure she's safe.
Yes, we can all take care of ourselves and yes, she managed just fine for 20 or 30 odd years without you, but it's a nice gesture. It tells us that you would care if we got mugged or hit by a bus. We like that in a guy.
2. Driving her home or paying for her cab.
Again, we can get ourselves home and we can pay for our own cabs, but when people do that for me, it just feels really nice. I tend to retain fond memories of that person, that person who cared for my safety and well-being even if he was a little disconcerted when I fell asleep standing up at the bar at eleven p.m. (What? Eleven p.m. is late.)
It's not always going to work out. But you can leave someone with good memories. Knowing that you behaved the best you could gives you a peace of mind that actually does make a difference in your life. I've acted poorly in situations and have the alarming ability to feel bad about it for years. Seventeen years, to be precise. That's my personal best. High school was rough, man. I'm not wracked with remorse or anything, but if I didn't treat someone the way they deserved to be treated, it eats at me a bit.
So be nice. How else will you get her to turn to you for sex when she breaks up with the next guy?
I'M KIDDING. SORT OF. NOPE, DEFINITELY KIDDING. DON'T WORRY, MOM.
If you're dating her, sleeping with her, or marrying her - just respect her. Show her that you care. That you like her. Even love her. Everyone wants to feel safe and loved. And if she does the same for you? Well, you just might have something there.
How muddy the dog is, because it's been raining. Sir Calzador of the Muddy Paws is not welcome in the bed. He doesn't understand, his paws feel the way they always do. Yet he is banished from the big warm bed with the human. It's cruel. How I got really excited tonight and bit my finger. What? It happens. I was eating a dried apricot that looked alarmingly like a wizened ear from a miniature orange person when I got an email and lost all sense of time, place, and where my fingers were. Chomp.
Boom she clack clack. Boom she clack clack.
A big thing is launching tomorrow. The press is already starting to come in, and part of me wants to stay up and see what happens, but the rest of me knows that I've been working for over twelve hours already and my frantically clicking media fingers need to be fresh - if slightly bitten - tomorrow morning.
Why on god's green earth would I choose to do a three-day juice cleanse on the week a big thing was launching and I will also - apparently - be rife with delightful coursing female hormones.
Since I did decide to do my first juice cleanse, why on earth would I choose the one that promises to "unearth the crayons you ate when you were seven" instead of, you know, the friendly one. The easy one. The one that isn't all perfectionist and Type A about juice. Not to mention DIGGING TWENTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD COLORED WAX FROM THE DEEP, DARK DEPTHS OF MY INSIDES.
Boom she clack clack. Boom she clack clack.
My finger is still throbbing.
This week will be fun. I like being busy. I like making things. I like writing things and writing things fast. I like pushing my body to weird limits, even if those weird limits come with a liquid cookie every night. I like that it's raining. I like that I'm totally going to cave and let the dog sleep with me, muddy paws and freshly washed duvet notwithstanding. I like that there are so many options, spread out before me like a buffet of everything I ever wanted. I just have to choose.
I'm back on my meditation kick. It tends to sound a little suspect, especially if you're not from California, but meditation is just the hemp-wearing cousin of your standard Baptist-approved prayer: quiet your brain and connect with something larger than yourself. It all comes from the same place, really - the basic human desire to live a good life, not piss off the gods, and maybe get a pony. It's also good for politely requesting custom-fit muzzles for the hamsters in your brain, the ones that think they know all the answers but really just don't.
Brain Hamsters: You're not very good at this thing you do. Yes, that one. Also, you're almost 33. Shouldn't you have a kid by now?
Me: Not listening.
Brain Hamsters: You know who is good at that thing you do? This other person. The one who's not you.
Me: Still not listening. Ommm.
Brain Hamsters: You should cut your hair. You'll never meet someone when your hair looks like that. At least buy some hair spray. Don't you want to meet a nice man? I mean, you'll need him to support you because you still aren't very good at that thing you do. Yes, that one.
Me: OM THIS, FUCKERS.
Brain Hamsters: You're not very good at meditating, are you?
Brain Hamsters are like your cranky Aunt Mildred, the one who shows up to Thanksgiving and leaves bright orange lip prints on your cheek before asking why you're drinking whisky - it kills eggs you know, and yours aren't getting any younger. Brain Hamsters and Aunt Mildred really do want what's best for you - but sadly for everyone involved, neither Brain Hamsters nor Aunt Mildred have any bloody idea what that is.
So you have to figure it out. Hooray for personal responsibility! Also, for getting to decide what's true for you.
I treat my brain as a separate, anthropomorphized entity - it keeps me from getting all enmeshed in its drama. But everyone kicks the ass of the Brain Hamster differently - jogging, knitting cat hammocks and putting them on Etsy, reading novels, sending so many texts that AT&T threatens to repossess your car. Whatever works. It's a different combination for everyone. I happen to like meditation.*
* And exercise and reading and sending so many texts AT&T threatens to repossess my car. Actually, they just send me dire warnings about changing my plan unless I want to pay through the nose because obviously I don't have a firm grip on my phone habits.
Backyard where I grew up. I mean, I didn't grow up in the backyard. They let me in the house occasionally, for meals and such. Anyway, peaceful, yes? At least until the squirrels launch another carefully plotted bird-feeder strike.
Here's Why I Like Meditation, If You Want To Know
Sometimes it plucks some important thing I had to do out of the recesses of my lapsed memory. So I pop up to do it, completely forgetting the whole point of meditation, where my only task is STAY IN YOUR DAMN SEAT. Sometimes it really does make me feel like a better version of myself. Sometimes it just annoys me. But that's good too, because then I have to question why I'm annoyed. Sometimes it's so relaxing I feel like tossed back some illegally-obtained South American pharmaceutical and put the Brain Hamsters into a medicinally-induced coma.
When the Brain Hamsters are napping, sometimes I get answers, answers I can't hear otherwise.
Yesterday, I was supposed to work a lot during the day and drive downtown in the evening to learn the steps for a tap dance flash mob. Neither of these things happened. Because the cleanse broke me. Instead, I fell to dramatic, sobbing pieces during the day and then had to miss the flash mob to make sure the dog didn't die. * * The dog is not dead. The dog is not to be trusted within a paw's distance of a bottle of pills ever again, but the dog is not dead.
When you do a cleanse, the books warn you about emotional detox. It's normal, don't be alarmed, the world isn't ending. Basically, they're saying that your reward for eating like a healthy person is to cry a lot. Really? I feel betrayed by this system. And unless the authors of these books are prepared to come to my house at 3 a.m. to give me a hug, they just shouldn't be so perky about the world not ending. **
** The world didn't end. The Mayan Calendar didn't kick in because I bought this off Amazon.
But the cleanse did steal all my caps and exclamation points. I just didn't have the heart to move my pinky to the shift key and that was oddly disconcerting.
It also kept me awake until four in the morning. It's really dark at four in the morning. That's not even meant to be all deep and symbolic. It's just...really black.
4 a.m.
See? Dark.
The first couple of weeks on this cleanse, I felt amazing. Energetic and creative. Like I'd pulled my ass kicking boots out of storage and they still fit. Then something set me off yesterday and suddenly I was drowning in grief. A lot of grief. Waves and waves of grief. That didn't let up for hours.
I realized yesterday that I've been actively avoiding grief for years. I don't let myself properly mourn - not deaths or breakups or passing phases of life.
Oops.
All I can say about yesterday's unexpected Grief 101 is "Man, this suuuuucks." No wonder I avoided feeling that way for years.
Emotional detox is kind of like cleaning the drain in an apartment shared by three girls with long hair. The top looks all pristine and sparkly until one day everything clogs up. So you pull up the drain and realize the whole thing is packed with wads of slimy hair and encrusted with soap scum until you have to stop inspecting the gunk and just mutter a heartfelt ewwwww as you drop it in the trash and wonder how you ever let it get so bad. It got so bad because you couldn't see it. You were just trying to shower and get on with your day, and you never gave the drain a second thought. But once you yank out all the gunk, everything starts flowing properly again.
Apparently, my soul was slimy and full of hairballs. Hairballs I metaphorically coughed up all over the carpet yesterday.
I got through it. I cried and sobbed and felt like my heart was literally cracking open, but I stuck to that @#$% cleanse. To the letter of the law, if not the spirit. I didn't dive face first into a bucket of fried chicken, but I sure as hell wasn't eating 80 percent vegetables either. More like 100 percent fried polenta and vegan cheese and episodes of Modern Family.
Then it was bad again for hours. More grief stricken will-this-ever-end-who-knew-pain-could-feel-like-this, until I found a video at 3:30 in the morning. Watching it on my phone in the deep dark quiet reminded me that there are good things, things beyond 33 years of pent up grief. Even when I'm in a hole I don't yet see the way out of, there's creativity and people who can move their bodies in astounding ways.
That's what art is for, I think. YANKING YOU OUT OF THE LITERAL DARK NIGHT OF YOUR SOUL.
Hey, look. My caps are back. And I feel like me again. That's a relief.
All those tasty, tasty comforts I put in my mouth - gone. Alcohol, caffeine, sugar, anything white and floury, anything ever produced by an animal. Unless a monkey really did pick my tea. What does this leave? Salad. Water. Whole bell peppers. An avocado, if I'm feeling frisky. What does this exclude? EVERYTHING DELICIOUS. Like large glasses of wine and delicious chocolate frosted morsels, morsels delivered to a table as I stare with such avid heat that when I finally rip my gaze away from its luscious brown curves, everyone's looking at me strangely and Lanny says, "I think that cake needs a cigarette."
Drea, me, Lanny, Raihanna, and the dessert I violated with my eyes.
The TV is gone too. This was hard for me, because my friends are in the TV. The TV was what I did after I was done working, what I did to relax, what I did to escape some of the realities of my life and...yeah. That's why I gave it up.
I'm on a take-everything-I-think-I-need-away-and-see-what's-left kick.
What's left is wrestling the brain hamsters into submission. Green juice instead of cookies. Unidentifiable grains instead of pasta. Baths instead of TV. Lots of yoga.
WHO HAVE I BECOME?
I've become super focused. I have a ton of energy. My creativity feels tangible again, rather than a haze squatting in the back of my cerebellum. I'm working steadily on projects that I'd avoided for months. I'm so busy that the only time I really miss what I don't have is when I'm watching my friends eat it.
Everything has gotten drastically better in the past few weeks, simply because I'm treating myself better. I think that's pretty much the only thing that could beat Friday Night Lights.
Congratulations, weird-ass hippy cleanse. You officially beat Tim Riggins on the score chart of Things I Find Desirable. Now sit still and try not to squirm while I stare at you lustfully.
There are a lot of things I want to do with my life. There are a lot of things I want to do this year. Shit, there are a lot of things I want to do this month. WHERE ARE MY LISTS? WHERE IS MY SHERPA TO CARRY ALL MY LISTS? WHY AM I YELLING ABOUT LISTS? I want to write a book. I want to write a series of essays about being a recovering perfectionist for my fellow perfectionists. I want to be a better blogger and learn how to tango and how to saute vegetables without sending half of them arcing across the kitchen in a soy sauce splatter ballet. I want to build a body of work that helps make the world better.
But I'm both keenly ambitious and brutally lazy. So in order to write that book, I have to choose which side I'm going to let win. If I'm being honest, I've definitely been a gold medalist in couch slothing the past few weeks.
I WIN AT SLOTH.
So starting tonight, I'm going to take a picture at 7:37 p.m. Every day for a month. If I'm supposed to be working but am actually on Twitter, I have to digitally fess up. If I'm on a date, I have to explain my bizarre little project and hope he doesn't mind that I'm pulling out my phone and taking a picture of the ketchup bottle. If I'm exercising, if I'm watching TV or watching soy sauce fly across the kitchen. Whatever I'm doing at 7:37 in the evening gets documented.
To get a literal snapshot of how I spend my time. That's information I can use to make changes or just be all smug about how productive I am. It's also a good daily marker. What's different, what stays the same, what might change as I do this.
If you want to follow along, I'm amberadrian on Instagram. I make no promises as to how interesting my life will be at 7:37 in the evening, but you'll at least get some pictures of dog wrestling and toenail painting.
Is there something you really deeply, madly, truly want to do with your life? Are you doing it?
If not, why? If not now, when? I vote you make it now. Because the world needs whatever you've got.
What have you got? I really want to know. What do you want to do, make, build, be? If you aren't comfortable putting it in the comments, send me an email. (The email button's on there somewhere. I just realized I don't have one on the blog. Internet fail.)
Whatever it is, I think you should do it.
I'm not necessarily recommending that everyone take a picture of their 7:37 p.m. for a month - but if you want to, please feel free. And let me know so I can follow you. But if there's something you can do to make more space in your life to be creative or study for the GREs or write that epic poem, DO THAT SHIT. Unless you already are. In which case, TELL US HOW. WHY ARE YOU SO AMAZING AND HOW CAN WE SIPHON THAT ACTION FROM YOUR PORES?
Also, ew. No siphoning of anything from any bodily organs. Sorry.
I'm going to write more about making space in your life on Thursday - also known as why I gave up my friends in the TV and why I spent all day yesterday with a big, fat headache. But for now, I need to go write some essays and set my alarm for 7:37 and hope I'm doing something vaguely entertaining so I don't have to take a picture of soy sauce.
Happy new year! Hope the evening was just as you wanted, whether that's kids in bed by 8 and butt on couch by 9 or a tequila-slamming, tiara-bedecked mosh pit of shirtless men. Mine was somewhere in the middle, and it was lovely. Especially the part where I woke up to bacon frying and sun streaming in a window by the sea. I'm not usually one to reflect on the past year, which is weird because god knows I reflect on every other damn thing. But I had a big year. Not so much with flying through the sky to Zimbabwe or purchasing real estate, but big. Mostly internal in its bigness, but when you can honestly say you're 93 percent less raving lunatic mess than you were this time last year, you get to call it a big year.
2011: Year of Less Raving Lunacy
This was the year I learned to set boundaries. To ask for what I want. Then to ask for what I really want, not just what I think I'm going to get.
This was the year I learned not to stuff my feelings so far down my spleen that it takes them three years to fight their way to the surface and then only because my iPod decided to shuffle to that one song, the one that was playing when I first felt that feeling, and suddenly I'm bawling for no good reason as I try to merge with oncoming traffic. This rampant repression is a sneaky brand of emotional epilepsy and I don't recommend it.
So I catch myself sooner. Sit still and let that feeling course through me. Even as my brain whispers "Tamp it down, just for a little while. You'll feel better. Come on, you have work to do. You don't have time for this. Repress. Just a little. You know you want it."
And I do. I absolutely want the sweet blankness of not feeling that feeling because I have an excuse to lose myself in work or bury myself alive in buttered mashed potatoes and Grey's Anatomy. But every time I tell my hamster brain to sit in a corner as I let myself feel, my life gets a little better. Sure, I still repress. The brain hamsters aren't vanquished because they're sly and patient, waiting for exhaustion or an unguarded moment to pounce. But it's better. So much better.
Yay, progress.
And all of this has made me bigger. That means I get to love bigger, do bigger things, take bigger risks, start wondering if bigger is really a word because it just looks funny when you keep typing it out like that.
In less overtly internal news, 2011 was the year I performed my first marriage ceremony. Got my first lap dance. Skiied my first black run without finding myself snuggled in the welcoming embrace of a stoic pine tree. The year I learned the joy of roof jumping and came nowhere close to winning that pool-side limbo contest in Vegas. Was thrown my first ever surprise party. It was also the year I left my favorite neighborhood in my favorite city and moved to Los Angeles. The year I started settling into working for myself and began learning how to make the most of it. The year everyone bought me pandas for Christmas instead of moose.
It was also the first time I figured out my life purpose. Isn't that the most pompous, self-congratulatory thing you've ever heard? MY LIFE, IT NOW HAS MEANING. But yanking this one deceptively simple thing out of the depths of my soul - and, yes, that is how far I had to go - has grounded everything else in my life. Any time I get anxious or scared or feel like I'm not doing it right, I can remember there is one thing I'm here to do and it doesn't much matter how I do it.
To love the world through my writing and my life. Share my experience, because we all need stories and maybe my stories will help someone else. Live my screwball, whimsy-ridden life as best I can.
Fine, three things. Hush.
Also, did I just say that blogging is my life purpose? PRETTY SURE I DID. Well, someone else already discovered penicillin and winning the Nobel Peace Prize probably requires staying off Twitter for months at a time, so we all know I'm not doing either of those. Blogging seems a reasonable alternative.
As for 2012, it holds... who knows what. Sure, I have Insane Person Spreadsheets stuffed with goals and plans and numbers. But the only meaning all that holds is how it applies to my keen and ever-growing desire to love as best I can.
I would like to learn how to let the world love me back. I'd like to stop holding it at arm's length because I'm convinced that hurts less. I want more electric possibility. More adventures of the small and big kind. More love. For myself, for my work, for my people.
Whatever's coming this year, I'm looking forward to it.
Press shuffle in iTunes and something you haven't listened to in ages pops up and suddenly you lose seven years and approximately ninety-three personal growth lessons and you feel the way you did when you were listening to this song alone in your room after your first major breakup. Wow. That was weird.
They (the great and mysterious they) say smell is the sense most evocative of past memories, but I don't think I believe them. These also tend to be the people who tell me I need a job and a wardrobe that doesn't consist mainly of jeans and unicorn t-shirts. If I smell snickerdoodles baking, I think "Gee, I like cookies." But if I hear a certain song, I get sucked into a time warp that could dump me down in any point in my sentient life - any place, year, or emotional state. Music is the great chronological equalizer.
If I hear Black-Eyed Dog by Nick Drake, suddenly I'm sitting on a Manhattan bus in 1999.
If I hear Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, I'm standing in the marble lobby of the Flood Building in 2005. I called the boy I was seeing because I'd just run into an ex and I was shaken. He showed up with a hug and the Flaming Lips CD he burned for me.
Blue-eyed Devil by Soul Coughing and I'm sitting in that ex's car with the dog in my lap as we drive up the coast to Stinson Beach.
Digital Love by Daft Punk and I'm watching Italian MTV with my friends in our apartment in Florence in 2001. The washing machine is whirling with the laundry from our trip to Venice and we're eating eggplant parmigiana and trying to decipher the commercials with our rudimentary Italian.
Footloose by Kenny Loggins and I'm in a neighbor's kitchen in 1988, dancing across the mustard linoleum as three boys argue over the right shape for chocolate chip cookie dough on baking sheets.
This shit's specific, yo.
It's like an electric portal to long-forgotten feelings that hit you out of absolutely nowhere because the shuffle algorithm in iTunes sent a random selection up through your headphones and into your brain.
I think most people have a deep visceral response to music. When I was a kid, I would watch TV with my little tape recorder poised, so that when the commercial with my favorite song would come on, I could press record and play it back in my bedroom. I couldn't make music - the piano never fired me up, five years of lessons notwithstanding - so I learned to dance to it instead. My yen to move started early, apparently. Kindergarten teachers told tales of how I would dance around the classroom, probably knocking into other students and generally making a nuisance of myself. My favorite evening activity is still sticking my iPod in my pocket and dancing in the house by myself as the dog watches, confused.
And those memories, man. Three bars into a song and it's like visiting myself five, ten, twenty years in the past. Strange as it is to find myself briefly in those long-lost feelings and that long-lost self, I kind of like it. Because I can tell that girl, "Hey. It's okay. You'll get through this. Hard things will happen to you, but amazing things will happen too. Just keep listening."
I am so tired. So physically exhausted that writing a blog post is one of the last things I should be doing, ahead of operating large machinery or performing a root canal on an unsuspecting cat.* * I'm staying in an apartment with a resident feline and said feline is currently hiding under the bed. She's usually rather fond of me, so she must have sensed that I was typing phrases like "root canal" in conjunction with "unsuspecting cat."
Driving from LA to San Francisco in the middle of a busy work week would make anyone tired. Even if their brother took the wheel after 20 minutes and wouldn't relinquish it for the next six hours because the original driver maaaay have gotten us lost in the middle of LA after getting yelled at by a cop.**
** We both tried to occupy the same space at the same time. I had the green light. He did not. There were no sirens or flashing red and blue. So unless I've completely rewritten this event in the depths of my admittedly imaginative subconscious, I'm pretty sure I had the right of way.
So, yeah. Tired. But that good kind of tired, the one where climbing between clean sheets and relaxing bonelessly into a nice mattress is the most delicious feeling you could ever have.
But I told myself I was going to write blog posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays and by gum, that's what I'm going to do. 2011: The year of doing the things I say I'll do. Because doing the things you say you'll do keeps your soul from perishing, piece by melodramatic piece. Emerging from 2011 with your soul intact = win.
I'm spending Christmas in San Jose with my family, but bookending Family Time with Friend Time in San Francisco. Lots of friends, lots of cheese, lots of parties, lots of all the things I love and have been missing in LA. I get lonely there, which is not surprising, given that I had ten years to build friends here and have had three months to build friendships in LA, with most of those months spent working and then sleeping in preparation to do more work.
Therefore. Loneliness = understandable and expected and even desired (see: all the working). But it's nice not to be lonely for a week and a half.
Good grief, this was supposed to be a cheery Christmas post. HERE, LET ME DOUSE YOUR YULE LOG WITH MY SALTY TEARS. While I work up to saying "Hey, I'm happy!" in the most depressing way possible. Hi, bourbon. You make me maudlin. I knew there was a reason I've been avoiding your calls and texts and slightly desperate emails. Even when those emails are sent from the depths of homemade eggnog as you spike it in quantities generous enough to fell a mid-size rhinoceros.
Anyway.
I am tired but happy. All my presents are purchased, if not wrapped. My work is not yet done, but it will be. Three friends today (plus one wary cat), three friends tomorrow, all the family, all of the evergreen. None of the bourbon.
In conclusion, here is a big ass picture of my little ass tree. It wishes you a merry Christmas. Or whatever holiday you happen to celebrate. (Hi, Jewish people! Hi, Muslims! Hi, pagans! The tree loves you too!)
May your weekend be merry and bright and full of all the things you love.
Me: "What did you do today?" My mother: "Oh, I read for Books Aloud and then I sat with a cancer patient. What did you do today?"
Me: "..."
Her: "..."
Me: "I drank three lattes and wrote a blog post."
Oh, how I wish I could tell you this was exaggerated for dramatic effect. No. Actual conversation. Only one example of many such conversations. My mother doesn't mean to guilt me into being a better person, it just sort of happens.
This is one of the reasons I don't want to have kids until I'm living a life I really believe in - doing work I love, making enough money to send them to the good schools, and living up to my purported values by doing a lot of that "help other people" thing.
Hi, I just acted like I'm not allowed to procreate until I'm a paragon of humanity. RAMPANT PERFECTIONISM COMPLEX FOR ONE, PLEASE.
Last weekend, I volunteered with one of those paragons of humanity and a whole bunch of kids. I was supposed to go to some amazing-sounding food thing with Nicole and Drea, but I don't understand calendars.
Drea: "Why aren't you coming?"
Nicole: "Amber's being a good human. She's feeding homeless people."
Me: "Well, I wouldn't have agreed to go if I thought I had anything better to do."
Does hell reserve a special corner for people who only volunteer when they don't have anything better to do? If so, I will be there, warming my feet over toasty coals of hubris.
So instead of eating all the food, I went to Santa Monica and handed out all the food. By standing awkwardly amongst the kids and parents of TKO as they zipped around handing out armfuls of plastic ziploc bags stuffed with sandwiches and fruit and chips. Some of the kids hauled coolers of water and sodas to pass out. The most popular kids were the ones with the plates of homemade chocolate chip cookies. They were practically still warm. I really wanted one of those cookies.
My hunger led me down a path I'm not proud of. I seriously thought about confiscating a bag of chips from one of the ziploc bags, but eventually reason prevailed. Where reason = not wanting to give any demonic minions the excuse to turn up the thermostat in my eventual resting place.*
* For the record, I don't believe in hell. Except the one we make for ourselves, one that happens a lot more often when I'm not appreciating what I've got. It's impossible not to appreciate what you've got when you're handing sandwiches to people for whom a nice sandwich is a major luxury.
We walked along the waterfront, and the kids handed out more food to the people camped under trees and perched on benches. Everyone the kids and their parents interacted with looked happier about the conversation than the food.
I have enough trouble striking up conversation with random people in coffee shops or on the street as a reasonably well-dressed girl with all the trappings of first world prosperity. (What up, cute sneakers and brand new iPhone.) It must be seventy billion times harder if you're careworn and don't have easy access to a shower and have been wearing that threadbare sweatshirt for days or weeks. In other words, obviously homeless. People often don't want to give them the time of day, and that's heartbreaking.
To be honest, I'm one of those people. I rarely engage. There are a lot of reasons for that and you probably know them all, especially if you live in a relatively urban area. But that's not really an excuse. I often don't talk to people because I don't want to take the time or I don't want to deal with whatever feelings I might have - guilt, pain, annoyance, not-precisely-sure-how-to-get-out-of-this-one-and-yes-this-is-the-last-time-I-talk-to-the-obviously-crazy-dude-on-the-bus.
As we walked along Ocean Boulevard, it was heartwrenching to watch them light up over that brief connection with someone who was asking - genuinely - how their day was going or complimenting - sincerely - on their spontaneous burst of Christmas caroling as we passed.
That someone was not me. This time. Maybe some day it will be.
So you do what you can. I could be there. Present, if not fully engaged. And I do know that I've never been so god blessed in my life as I was last Sunday.
If we're going to be obsessive with this whole honesty thing, I have to admit that it's because volunteering makes me feel better. It also furthers that whole Be Good Human thing. And means I might be able to have something other than lattes and blogging to report when I talk to my mother.
The past four weeks have held a specific glow. The glow of "This month is magic, damn it, so if things don't go the way I want, THEN THERE MUST BE SOMETHING GREATER THAN MY TIGHTLY GRIPPED NOTIONS OF 'HOW LIFE SHOULD BE' AT WORK HERE. Pretty sure there is, come to think of it.
A lot has shifted this month. I was seeing someone, now I'm not. My income jumped and then plummeted. Then it started climbing again. New friends, new work, new colleagues, new mentors, lots of candy cane green tea, and honing in on what I want next year to look like. Magic happened, even if it was of the small kind.
At least it felt small at the time. Looking back, it feels like bigger things are in motion now than a month ago. We'll see.
Boasting about my pentameter prowess only to have a date call me on it by making me answer a question via on-the-spot haiku. I FUCKING OWNED THAT HAIKU, Y'ALL. Yeah, I had to count on my fingers as I went, so I might be passed over for Poet Laureate next year, but I'm feeling pretty proud.
My brain hamsters have a perfection complex. It's a wily combination of ego and stubbornness that gleefully sabotages a whole lot of plans and dreams and makes eating fried chicken in bed sound like the best idea ever. *
* Let's not kid ourselves, sometimes eating fried chicken in bed is the best idea ever. Just not as often as you might want to believe.
Every time you want to do something and your brain jumps in with a "yeah, but...." Every time you stop, not because stopping is the right choice but because it's not turning out exactly the way you hoped. Every time you quit before you even started. All perfectionism at work, man. So I'm going to write a series of essays that takes the exasperating brain hamsters off their wheel and sticks them on the electric chair.* I'm super excited about this, because my entire life has been fodder for this project. I'll keep you posted.
* Too violent? Nah. SAY GOODNIGHT, BRAIN HAMSTERS.
One of my first Web Crush Sundays was devoted to Killing My Lobster, a sketch comedy group for whom I've nursed a doting fondness since 2004.
Earlier this week, I did an interview with Victoria about my nightstand. I posted the link on Twitter and soon Killing My Lobster's nightstand was flirting with my nightstand and I don't even know how to explain what happened next.
https://twitter.com/#!/killingmylobstr/status/146679696304775168 https://twitter.com/#!/amberadrian/status/146680143153332224 https://twitter.com/#!/amberadrian/status/146680381838598144 https://twitter.com/#!/killingmylobstr/status/146684143407865856 https://twitter.com/#!/amberadrian/status/146692594078982144 https://twitter.com/#!/killingmylobstr/status/146696047144599553 https://twitter.com/#!/amberadrian/status/146708017503682561
I think it's safe to assume that Timmy and Betty are busy making beautiful ottoman babies.
And above all watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
Sometimes I get really concerned when I notice the dog's not on the bed with me any more. I jump up to look for him, even though there's nowhere for him to go. Unless he learned how to vaporize through walls, he's just sprawled out on the other bed. Yup, there he is. Sometimes I think everybody hates me. I'm fairly certain this isn't true, but in darker moments, it becomes the answer to a lot of questions.
Sometimes I eat a week's worth of groceries in three days. I'm not sure how this happens, but it must be some biological instinct left over from the days when a slight chill in temperature meant an ice age was nigh so better eat all those hash browns now.
Sometimes you just have to be a fucking adult and feel your fucking feelings. For the record, I don't like to do this. I prefer to send melodramatic emails.
Sometimes I would give just about anything to have someone crack my back. Anyone? "Just about anything" includes 12 dollars in cash, the two hash browns I have left, and/or a cute but needy German Pointer.
Sometimes the smallest things can make my day, like drinking hot apple cider while wearing a turquoise fleece jacket and listening to the rain on the window.
Unicorns, rainbow bullets, James Van Der Beek, Ke$ha as the president of Uzbekistan, and cheese. Weird and delightful and possibly a controversial choice, but I stand by my adoration of this video.
When most of your romantic stories are entitled The Sex Worker In The Basement or That Time I Dragged Becca All Over The City So I Could Make Out With a Hot Guy In a Bar, people have a lot of questions. Like, "Hold on. Are we talking Russian sex slave?" and "Any hot guy or did you have a specific one in mind?" (No, no, and yes.)
When most of your romantic stories start out that way, you have to admit that you probably aren't marrying another human any time soon.
You shouldn't ever marry someone unless you're sure. I've never been sure. Plus, the thought of walking down a church aisle in a white dress while everyone stares makes me faintly nauseous. Spending a year of my life trying to decide who gets invited and what gets eaten and where to put garlands of things makes me want to change my name and move to Omaha.
So why I decided to throw an amazing, obnoxious, sparkly Willy Wonka-themed wedding by and for myself remains a complete mystery. Also, it doesn't. Can you imagine the insane shit such an event would allow? Golden tickets as invitations and men in top hats and bubble wars and banquet tables full of chocolate. There would be fairy lights and dancing and sparklers and all of my favorite people in one place at the same time.
If you never get married, you never have an excuse to have all your people in one room. Because when are all your favorite people in one place at one time? Your wedding and your funeral. That's it. That's what you get. And at only one of those things can you guzzle champagne and do a conga line with your brother, your third grade teacher, and the friends who let you sleep on their couch after breakups.
I don't get to have that because I might never get married? I CALL BULLSHIT.
So I put Willy Wonka-Themed Self Wedding on my list for next year.
I've started a pinterest board. I opened a savings account account to pay for it. Attire will be Formal Ridiculous. People have started volunteering to help. Leah became my first bridesmaid when she said she'd never been one before and hinted heavily that I was her last shot. Nicole will bake an enormous rainbow layer cake. Drea will be my official photographer. (To be fair, she didn't volunteer so much as she was informed.) Holly will be my Chief Help-Make-This-Thing-Amazing consultant.
Plans didn't really go off the rails until I decided I wanted camels.
"Did Charlie and the Chocolate Factory even have camels?"
"Does it matter? IT'S MY SPECIAL DAY AND I'LL HAVE CAMELS IF I WANT THEM."
"...."
"Also, I want the camels to be sparkly. Where can you get glitter camels?"
What if no one comes because it's not a "real thing"? Do I go all out and treat it like a real wedding, and invite Midwestern relatives who would then have to decide if they're going to fly out to something that's not really a real wedding? Is this a real wedding or isn't it? What if I feel like an absolute fool? Do I have it in LA or in San Francisco? If I have it in San Francisco, will the LA people come? Vice versa? I've never hosted a big party like this before, what if I forget the food? (I won't forget the food. But I might forget pants.) Am I just committing to being alone forever?
I have some feelings about this.
But then I remember why I wanted to do it in the first place. I want to have all my favorite people around me for an afternoon. I want to watch the pieces of my world mix and I want us all to eat chocolate and dance and have fun and celebrate the fact that this is a world where a 33-year-old woman can decide to have a Willy Wonka wedding all by herself and hey, that kind of world is pretty damn awesome.
Especially when so many fun people are racing through a park trailing ribbons and sparklers, followed by camels on a sugar high.
Wise people tend to say obnoxious things like, "There is nothing you need that you don't already have." When my lizard brain stops yammering long enough to allow my own wiser self through, I know this is true. Then my lizard brain calls my wiser self a pretentious twat, my wiser self calls my lizard brain a reptilian xenophobe, and the inside of my head turns into a philosophical bar brawl until I have to go sit in the corner and stare at a tree or something until they're done.
My month o' magic experiment has been mostly about noticing. Uncovering what's already there. Prompting myself to hook into what's good right now - and think about how I can make more of that good, for myself and for others.
I've never done a life list. I believe in the power of words and I believe in the power of writing them down and I also believe that if I make such a list, I'll forget something crucial. Like...wearing pants. I'll merrily commit my life list to paper, forget to mention pants, and then I'll find myself exploring the salt flats of Bolivia and suddenly realize that I'm not wearing any pants and then the heavens will open up and a deep booming voice will say, "Hey, you got what you wanted. You. Salt flats. Bolivia. Awesome people. Paella. Now you want pants? YOU NEVER MENTIONED PANTS."
You say, don't be silly. I say, REAL FEAR.
Part of me is scared to commit what I want my life to be to paper. WHAT IF I FORGET SOMETHING AND THEN I NEVER GET TO HAVE IT?
Both my lizard brain and wise philosopher brain think I'm being stupid. Noted.
But as I think about what I want this next year to be, a few things keep circling back - things that feel right and compelling and a little scary in that "Hey, look, I think I might be growing" kind of way.
So I'll be writing about a few of them. Probably at great length, because why use four words when you can use four thousand? What they are, why I want them, how they'll smell, taste, and feel. Because writing things down and putting them on the budget and in the calendar means they're that much closer to reality.
Boom. Magic.