My Daily Bread

Everyone has something they need to do every day. Some people need to run, some people need to pray, some people need to plot, some people need to sit in a tree. We all have daily needs beyond the obvious food, water, and sleep. My mother's cat needs to yowl beseechingly at the closed door until someone gets up to open it. My box of tea with the festive holiday lemur needs to fall from its perch every time I look at it. I need to write.

Fine, I don't need to write. I won't die if I don't write each and every day and 2012 and 2013 prove that most conclusively. But you won't die without water for a few days either. You'll just get really, really uncomfortable. If I don't write, I get itchy and anxious and can never quite understand what's wrong with me until I sit down at my laptop and learn for the 9,472nd time in my life that my brain calms down when I start putting words together.

That's why I started blogging in 2005, back when the internet was fresh and shiny and full of primary colors. It was a reason to write every day and Twitter hadn't been invented yet. But in the days of people as brands and monetization and micro-blogging, I feel like crawling back to my blogging roots. They're warm and comforting and I need some comforting that doesn't come from the bottom of a bag of potato chips. I started blogging to write daily. I kept blogging because of the stories and connection.

Sometimes I fall into the trap of feeling a grave need to go all Useful or Here's How You Can Do This Thing. But that rarely feels right to me. Who am I to tell you what you need or how to live your life? It doesn't necessarily make sense, as I tend to love those posts from other people (TELL ME HOW TO DO THINGS, PEOPLE) and I know that if something doesn't make sense or feel real, you can always make hasty use of that handy x at the top of your browser. Nevertheless, the only authority I feel I have is to share my story, my struggle, my joys and if you can parse something useful out of it, that's a bonus for everyone.

But I haven't written much here the past few years. Stuff happens. Fathers die, hurricanes blow, you move out of one apartment, you move out of the one after that. My life got fractured. But that splintering was a blessing, because it's given me a chance to look at what parts of myself I don't need any more. I'm in the process of re-learning who I am, without all the bullshit I've carried around my entire life.

I write for the same reason other people sit in trees or pray - I write to find out who I am today.

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Blogging daily until the end of November. Let's see how long I can go before resorting to pictures of cats. 

To The Rescue

When a small boy in a superhero cape stands above a city and listens to a gathered crowd chant his name, it's not about a five-year-old's battle with leukemia. It's not even about making his dream come true. It's about watching an entire city rally around hope.

Because we're all fighting our own battle. By supporting his fight and his dream, we are able to stand strong in the face of our own.

Thanks, San Francisco. Thanks, Batkid.

Time's Construct Eludes Me Yet Again

Red leaves are already hurling themselves onto the ground. Jeans roll down, boots climb up, scarves wrap around, and the holly of Christmas steamrolls the more sedate turkeys of Thanksgiving. I feel like I missed autumn entirely. The past month has been weird. Did anyone else feel that? Does anyone else feel both unmoored and stuck, overwhelmed and leisurely, progressing while also completely halted? I'm jumpy because I drink too much caffeine and I'm angry because my brain has been bashing itself against the inside of my skull like a hamster enraged at the devious confinement of its clear plastic ball. The amount of self-judgment I've applied topically could set a city block on fire. I've felt stuck in my crappy story, powerless to rewrite it, unable to edit it and annoyed because those are two things I'm supposed to be good at.

Yes, if you want joy, create it. If you want love, give it. If you want magic, kidnap a wizard. But sometimes you just can't get there. Sometimes you have to let your crappy story be your crappy story for awhile. And that's okay.

Sometimes you just have to take a breath and do what you can do. Run your miles, eat the hash browns, write the things. It's so easy to fall into the habit of requiring each part of your life to be useful and perfect. But I am messy and imperfect and I don't have an editorial calendar but I do have new running shoes and a bad attitude.

New running shoes and a bad attitude can take you far.

Training for my first marathon began last week. I wish everything in life was as straightforward as running a race. You have a training plan and you know that as long as you lace up your shoes and put in the miles, you can run the set distance at the set time. Life really is that simple. But my other plans are more susceptible to the power of my self-sabotage.

I want to be amazed. I want to be bowled over by joy. I want to be reminded that magic is a thing people can see. But for now I'll run and write and breathe and remember that life doesn't have to look perfect to be perfect.

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This is my attempt at National Blog Posting Month. Yes, the month started fourteen days ago, but I'm late for everything and the month of November is no different. I feel a deep desire for structure right now and I hope the simplicity of writing and posting everyday will shake some things loose. 

Last Call

When I feel hurt, I disconnect. My body remains in my seat but my soul jumps out and tries to crawl through the ceiling. Because I'm so removed, I go blank. I can't formulate a response or even a thought. All I can do is sit there like a banked sturgeon. It's unnerving for everyone. Especially for the person who's left with a shell instead of an Amber.

Since feeling hurt is a major part of the human condition, this is something I need to address. Because once I learn how to stop having out of body experiences every time I feel threatened, I might be able to inject some levity or empathy into the situation.

Empathy > Shell Human

But how do you shift something you've been doing your entire life? I often don't even realize I'm doing it until I'm so far out I don't know how to get back in. When I realize I'm gone, I take a breath and search for the soul that's attempting to claw a hole in the roof. Then I lasso it and reattach it to my body. But that takes a few minutes. In the mean time, the person across from me is getting more and more disconcerted.

Clearly, I have some baggage. Most people do. But I probably don't need to carry it all with me. It's heavy and all that dragging makes me testy. Especially if someone dares mention my baggage in my presence. I prefer to think it invisible and let's all just agree to support my delusion, thanks.

For the past few weeks, I've felt like the world is boxing me in, circling itself, so old conversations are recycled and something an ex said seven years ago comes at me again from a new mouth and it feels even more true this time around. But really it's just coming up again so I can finally let it go. Move forward into something that feels better, instead of being dragged down by the old stuff. 

I retreat when it feels like someone has peeled off my skin and left my organs exposed to the elements. Everything feels raw and any motion is too much, but the motion is needed to sweep it away. Sometimes all you can do is allow yourself to be swept. I don't want the truth to make me cranky. I want the truth to make me feel powerful.

But for that to happen, I need to leave my baggage at the airport. Board the plane with nothing more than my phone and a credit card, sit in a wide seat with a book and a bag of potato chips, and soar off into the sky while a bomb squad hurries into the airport to dismantle the ticking bomb carefully packed in my abandoned suitcases.

Catching a Constantly Shifting Center

Life keeps pushing me off balance, just to see if I can find my feet. I'm not sure if I'm being shoved or pulled, self-sabotaging or allowing the world to do its job. All I know is that I keep landing on my ass, confused because everything is suddenly so much higher over my head than it was a second ago. Not knowing where the epicenter sits is part of being off-balance, I guess. If you could find it, you'd be able pile it with bricks or to-do lists or some new kale habit to make everything stop shaking for awhile. Maybe defying gravity isn't the point.

Whether it's fate or my subconscious need to continually knock my life askew doesn't matter. Searching for the source is just one more avoidance tactic in my stellar arsenal of procrastination. It's a better just to get on with it.

How To Find Your Center When Life Feels Like Trying To Balance On a Basketball

Sink into this moment. Yes, the one that's happening right now. Right now I'm staring at the arch in a brick wall. I smell coffee and hear the murmurs of conversation and trumpets from a speaker above the door. Behind the arch is a roaster that hails coffee beans. I'm in Los Gatos, where my father moved after he and my mom divorced, soon after the 1989 earthquake, when the left side of Main Street was still boarded up. From the window of the coffee shop, I can see the Opera House where my senior prom was held. Half a street beyond is where I met my first boyfriend.

It's all too easy to sit at this marble table, with my laptop and long finished coffee, pondering my history in this town while also fretting about my unknown future. But all that really matters is that I'm here now, on a Tuesday in late October as red leaves and palm trees battle for dominion under a gray sky. It's a cliche that's both heartbreakingly true and astonishingly easy to forget: You only ever have this moment, the one that you're in right now. There's power in that. You can't change the past and you can't control the future, but you can always choose how you want this moment to play out.

Breathe fire. When you hold your breath, everything stops. When you take in oxygen, everything begins again. Stepping into the unknown - like moving out of your apartment without having another one lined up, shifting your work so you're doing what you want to be doing but your bank account is getting thin - tends to throw everything into upheaval. One thing has stopped, the next hasn't yet begun. It's easy to forget to breathe in the middle. But everything is better with oxygen, especially oxygen you have to think about. Like that Kundalini fire breath that I don't entirely understand, but I do know that when I pull in three short breaths from my nose and then release it slowly, my heart slows and my body softens.

Relax. I spent last Friday in Petaluma with a herd of horses, as you do. I learned that a horse will kiss me when I'm relaxed and shy away when I'm tense. If you're me, you will extend this metaphor from horses to life and realize that your usual reaction to triggers - bracing firmly, as if tension translates to armor - only makes it worse. When I unlock my knees, loosen my jaw and soften my stomach, horses like me better. Air flows through my body easier and I can move with the world rather than against it.

You don't move well when you're frozen. When you freeze, all the energy in your body freezes with you. You're solid and unmoving. You're static, in stasis, stuck in that place you don't want to be. To adapt, you need to stay loose.  It took me 35 years but I'm finally learning how to adjust, to move with what triggers me instead of jolting to a halt like a deer in headlights. Bracing doesn't keep you from getting knocked over, it only makes you go down harder.

A few weeks ago, I was driving home from Mount Tam, winding down the mountain in the dark, when I slammed my brakes so hard my car almost skidded into a mailbox before I fully understood what happened. A buck, complete with antlers and wickedly powerful haunches, skimmed around the left side of my car and darted in front of me, so close I could hear the bristles of his coat as they brushed the hood of my car. If he had frozen, he would have smashed into me. If I had frozen - or, more accurately, if my foot had frozen above the brake pedal - I would have smashed into him. He was so close to the driver's side that we both would've been badly hurt, if not worse. But he kept moving and, after a few stunned seconds, so did I.

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My experience in the world has taught me that the more you strive for balance, the more it delights in shoving you. It's not a malicious shove, just enough to knock you back a pace or two. Like a beloved boxing coach, showing you just how much you can take before you climb out into the ring.

So I'm not going to search for balance. But I'll do my best to keep breathing as I move.

Maybe Love Just Needs a Pen

Finding love sometimes feels like an insurmountable journey - a doomed quest to roam the globe until you find that person, that job, that hobby, that place. That one thing that’s missing. That one hole that, once plugged, will make you feel loved. But what if love was waiting for you on the sidewalk outside your house? Or in the branch of a tree on your way to the grocery store? Or swirling past your feet in the wind?

What if finding love was so much easier than we ever thought?

I don’t have that answer, the equation that will help me feel loved, a sum I could share to help you feel loved too. But I do have a pen and I do have paper.

Sometimes, when love feels farther away than ever, I sit down with that pen and that paper, and I write love notes.

After folding them carefully into little squares, I leave my house and wander the neighborhood, tucking love into chain link fences, leaving it on window sills and in between the leaves on low-hanging branches. And I feel lighter. Like love is closer, more possible. Like maybe it’s been in my hand, all this time.

Sure, the notes might blow away or disintegrate in the rain. They might fall, unnoticed, into a crack in the bricks to grow dusty. But my hope is that each one is found by the right person at the right time. That whoever finds that note feels a quick shot of light in their day, a small burst of love that was needed right at that moment.

Maybe finding love is as simple as transcribing whatever love you have to give onto paper and scattering it wherever you happen to be.

The World Needs More Love (Notes)

The world needs a lot of things. But what it needs most is more love. If I could somehow pick up that love with my hands and mold it into a fireball or a dragon or a giant love-scattering hedgehog and unleash it on the world, I would. But since my super powers don't extend quite that far (YET), I'm going with love notes. Because sometimes the best way to pluck an intangible concept out of the ether is to take out a pen and put it on paper.

(Because you are.)

Years ago, I was in the depths of a couch-reclining, salted caramel-chomping, somewhat melodramatic despair. Magnificent though salted caramels are, they're not real good at stroking your hair and telling you you're pretty. So I rolled off the couch, sat down at my desk, swept the caramel wrappers onto the floor, and wrote a stack of love notes. Because maybe if I helped someone else feel better, I would feel better too.

If you happened to find yourself in San Francisco's Lower Haight in October of 2009, you might have spied a little square of paper tucked into a window sill or a tree branch. If you did, I hope you opened it and I hope you felt something.

I poured all the love I couldn't give myself into those notes - and, by doing so, felt infinitely better. Lighter, happier, and like those notes were tiny pinpricks of light that would guide me through the dark spot I was tangled in. I've been wanting to do this on a bigger scale ever since.

I want to scatter love notes through San Francisco and New York and everywhere else I go. I want you to start writing your own love notes and tucking them into chain link fences and taping them to telephone poles. I want our notes to be love made tangible and hand-delivered to the world, where they'll wait to be picked up by the right person at the right time. I want this to become bigger than me. Because putting more love in the world may be as simple as transcribing whatever love you have to give onto paper and scattering it wherever you happen to be.

I Have Questions

I'm in the between. The place where things are unsettled and confused and I've been unplugged from one thing but not yet plugged into the next thing. I left my apartment in LA last month, but I haven't yet decided where or how I want to settle again. I have space to travel but I haven't yet figured out how to go. I'm trying to be easier in the uncertainty of my life, while wondering if I'm not doing enough.

That's a lot of deciding and figuring and trying and wondering. Every time these dreaded -ings pop up in my brain space, I focus on what better -ings I should insert into my life. Trusting. Surrendering. Being. Especially being okay in the limbo. Taking a deep breath when my brain starts thrashing like a landed sturgeon at the idea of trusting and surrendering rather than struggling and striving. I don't know what Puritan strain has convinced me that laboring for every small thing is virtuous, but it's exhausting.

MY BRAIN IS EXHAUSTING. STOP IT, BRAIN. TAKE A NAP.

How do you create what you want without fretting about it? How do you take the action you need to take from a place that feels good rather than a place that feels panicked? How do you stop resisting and start flowing? How do you loosen your grip on the things you want so that they have a chance in hell of getting to you?

I hope you're not waiting for me to have the answers to these questions, because I really don't. All I have is another moment to do another thing and hope that it all takes me where I need to be.

In the mean time, I climb for three hours to look at this:

It's not a bad place to be for awhile.

The Art of Trusting Yourself

Trusting in yourself takes faith. Faith is a sticky business, one that requires allowing things to unfold without a guarantee. Faith isn't a toaster and it doesn't come with a warranty and I find that highly aggravating because I often miss the point of things. Trusting yourself is especially nuanced when you move against conventional norms. Several years ago, while trying to function under the weight of things I didn't understand - the way I absorb and haul other people's emotions around with me, the end of a ghastly relationship, being laid off, depression, and a bit of a drinking problem - I made the choice to get my shit together. I felt like Humpty Dumpty after he'd fallen off that brick wall. Completely shattered. With no King's Men riding to the rescue, I had to put myself back together again. I put that decision over everything else - career, relationships, and, yes, eventually even over drinking and those salted caramels I loved so much.

I put myself back together slowly and painfully and with a few side excursions into black-out booze consumption and smashing picture frames against the wall and watching the glass shatter around me. There was a reasonable swathe of 2010 where I was depressed enough to have friends tell me I needed medication - and maybe I did. I'm a big fan of medication when it helps. I've seen the magic proper pharmaceuticals can inspire. Four days a month, Midol is my best friend. But I had the very strong feeling that medication wouldn't fix what was wrong with me. And I trusted that. It wasn't a popular choice, but it felt like the right one.

Four years later, I've realized that the unpopular choice was the right one. Even though I wasn't always sure I should be trusting in myself, the me who was pretty darn broken. But I did and I'm glad. Because what I've learned since is that most of what was dragging me down wasn't even mine. I'm very sensitive to other people's energy and emotions. If you're sad or uncomfortable or in pain and we're in the same room together, I will take that on as if it were my own. Often without even realizing it. I sucked up people's negative energy and added it to my daily routine. I walked through life toting everyone else's stuff with me, like I was Ebenezer Scrooge's orphan-punting business partner, doomed to drag chains of his misdeeds for an eternity. It's hard to know what's yours when you're carrying around pieces of everyone you've ever spent time with or even passed on the street. It's hard to get shit done when you're being pressed under the weight of everyone else's emotions.

You'd think that would be useful, that I'd be more loving and caring if I understood what people around me were going through. But it wasn't. I was just socked in. A less adorable version of Eeyore, walking around under a gray cloud that had a habit of turning black and stormy before it consumed me. I was so buried, I couldn't love anyone, especially myself.

Learning how to separate myself and my emotions from those of everyone around me meant I could operate in the world on something resembling a normal level. Without the crush of everyone else's feelings, I was able to find my own emotions and deal with them. Without the dark weight, I was able to find sweetness I hadn't been able to access in years. Crawling through that gave me compassion for people who are in the midst of their own darkness, whatever it looks like.

Sometimes I wonder if medication would have helped, shortened the process or made it smoother. But then I look at my life now and I'm happy with where I am. I worked hard to get here. So I can't regret trusting what felt true. Because that was the one thing I had to cling to in the darkness - the small light of that tiny voice that said it would get better if I just kept moving.

Strange New World

Last week, I did a scary thing. By doing a scary thing, I learned that scary things don't stay scary if you keep doing them. Please note: Life tenet not guaranteed when diving out of airplanes, hopscotching through gunfire, or reading bodice rippers aloud to geriatrics.

But talking into a little camera on my laptop about things that are important to me - without a script, without editing, without deleting, without mercy for my perfection-seeking little soul - wasn't nearly as bad as I feared. So I did it again. And again. Soon, I'd done it eight times without dying. Proving to myself once and for all that doing scary things is 100% death-free.

Instead, I learned how to not sit in the dark. How to not give you an intimate tour of the inside of my cavernous nostrils. How to not care if I forget to finish a thought or the screenshot youtube chose makes me look like Nurse Ratched forgot one of my pills. I learned that I can get comfortable with something that previously made the inside of my stomach roil and my brain cells threaten to cannibalize each other. I learned that sometimes what you think matters doesn't. Because your intention can matter more than your execution and your attention can matter more than your hair.

What I Hope This Will Become

A way to connect with you in a different way. A way to explore how to let emotions help rather than hinder. A way to make this year amazing for good reasons rather than tragic ones. A way to use fear as the gateway to love. A way to crack myself open to the world. A way to step into what I truly want - and hopefully spark you to do the same.

If I can do crazy, scary, adventure-y things, so can you. If I can learn to harness my feelings and make them work for me instead of against me, so can anyone. It just takes a leap. Or a push.

I hope you join me. I hope this inspires you to go on your own adventures, to do something that scares you, to spend time crying on the floor when needed, confident that it will only make things better.

The videos are here. More is coming.

My Next Adventure

Things I've Let Stop Me In the Past

Not having a catchy title.

Not having a plan.

Not having enough time.

Not having enough money.

A giant stress zit on my chin.

Sweat.

Unwashed hair.

Not knowing how it's going to end.

Not knowing how it's going to be received.

Caring about how it's going to be received so much that it's easier not to start.

Cure

Doing it anyway.

Doing the thing as soon as you think of the thing.

Letting the momentum carry me from idea to execution, stopping only for crackers with almond butter because my blood sugar was veering me toward werewolf.

Trusting that everything I need will come.

Realizing no one cares about a zit on my chin or unwashed hair.

Deciding that the thing I want to say and the thing I want to do is important enough that I don't care how it's received.

Totally caring, but deciding not to let that stop me.

I don't know what this is going to turn into. But if I waited until I knew, I would never find out.

{If you want to subscribe on youtube to see where this goes, go here and click the red button.}

You Can Take Your Roots With You

I moved to my beach-side apartment in Santa Monica earlier this year in hopes of finding stability. To find my feet in the sun and have a place to put my coffee grinder after one of the most tumultuous years of my life. Seven months later, I'm unexpectedly moving out. I could've stayed, thrown down, dug in, put my stubbornness to good use. But sometimes, even if it seems goddamn idyllic, a beautiful apartment near a ferris wheel that glows neon in the twilight isn't the right place for you to be. Security - at least what I've always thought of as security - continues to dance just out of my reach. So I've decided to stop grabbing for it. To sink in instead. To find security where it really lives - which, as it happens, is not on my red couch or in my triangular dresser or stuffed into my yellow comforter. It's not hiding in another person, a person I have to find before I can feel safe. Being grounded doesn't need to come from having my name on the lease of a sunny apartment. Security can come from putting my bare feet in a patch of grass or filling my lungs with oxygen and letting it out slowly.

It can come from putting my clothes and toothbrush in the trunk of my car and driving six hours to run my first half-marathon. It can come from knowing that whatever shifts in my world, I can handle it. Even if "handling it" sometimes looks like "crying on a kitchen floor on a Sunday morning."

As any toddler will tell you, crying is a totally legit way of dealing with the world.

Security can come from always having a home to go to, whether it's a friend's home or the home I grew up in, where my mom still lives and my dad's ashes are waiting in the dining room where we unceremoniously dumped them after they arrived courtesy of the US Postal service last December. He's finally getting out of that cardboard box. Next week we're going to scatter him on his favorite beach, because I inherited my love of sand and water from him.

Four blocks to the west. At least until Friday.

Security only ever comes from inside you. As we've all learned, what's outside is constantly and sometimes unexpectedly shifting. If you place your security in a relationship or a living room or an accomplishment, life will find a way to tilt your axis so everything that was on the left is suddenly jumbled up on the right or sliding over the edge. Life just wants you to recognize that you already have everything you'll ever need. But the lesson can be a painful jolt.

Being a creature of whimsy, I've always moved toward what felt right rather than what made sense. Logic has no place in my life. Thinking about staying, in this enviable spot with the security I longed for, didn't feel good any more. Thinking about moving forward into whatever is next felt open and expansive and crackling with energy.

Last time I put my books and furniture in a storage unit, I traveled the world, hunkered down in the middle of a literal and metaphorical hurricane, and watched my father die. In more tremulous moments, I worry. Because the beginnings of that year look very much like the beginnings that are coming for me in a few days. But I also know that whatever is coming will come whether I'm in LA or San Francisco or riding a llama through South Carolina. So I may as well live my life. I've handled disaster before and with that disaster wrangling came the roots of something deep in me that I can always call on, no matter where in the world I am. Strength and sense of self is the reward for moving through death and grief and natural disaster and a constantly shifting life.

So what's next? I can't even begin to imagine. But I'm looking forward to finding out.

Don't Waste Your Time

On people who don't love you. On dreams that don't send jolts of electricity coiling down your spine.

On relationships when what you really crave is creation.

On creation when what you really crave is relation.

On t-shirts that don't thrill you.

On love affairs that suck your life force.

On books that don't make you laugh or feel or know.

On Twitter, when it's not making you marvel at the depth of the world.

On Facebook, when the life of someone else makes yours feel less.

On apartments that don't feel like home.

On projects that don't feel like your true work in the world.

On whatever doesn't feel real to you.

Instead....

Plant your feet in the grass and tilt your face to the sky.

Lock anything with a signal in the closet for an hour, a day, a week.

Find someone who adores all that infuses you.

Run until you find something new.

Walk until you find something you once loved.

Read until tears dampen your neck.

Jump on the bounciest surface available to celebrate the invention of the sports bra.

Explore your town like a tourist.

Learn a foreign place like a native.

Eat something you crave and savor every bite.

Hug someone who makes your chest cavity feel like it's going to explode.

Hug someone who needs it.

Give the kid with the sign outside the Starbucks her favorite drink and 20 bucks.

Write love notes and scatter them on your way to work.

Most of all, don't forget that every last bit of love and magic in the world grew from the tenderest hidden places of someone just like you.

Choosing the Fire

People talk about low self-esteem like it's something shameful. Like it's a dirty blanket used to hide every cracked place that really just needs to be accepted and healed and loved. The idea of low self-esteem implies we need fixing. But we don't need fixing. We don't need to be hammered or spackled or hoisted into underwear that will make us a different shape. We need gentleness. We need to reframe our story and shift our perspective toward something that soothes us and allows us to move forward, rather than cuts us when we make a mistake.

There are no mistakes. There is no one with low self-esteem or no self-confidence. There are just people who need love and understanding and forgiveness and gentleness. From others maybe, but mostly from themselves.

I'm not trying to fix myself any more. I'm pretty bright and spectacular, just as I am. In the way that everyone is bright and spectacular - you just notice it more with some people. Probably because they've already recognized that truth about themselves. Some people aren't ready to dig themselves out from under whatever comfort the weight of feeling broken holds. Not ready to accept what's burning like an Olympic torch under that grimy blanket. But it's just a choice. And every passing second is a chance to make a new choice.

Hurl the Crystal Ball Off a Cliff

I keep trying to plan my future, like I have a crystal ball and purple turban and a misguided faith in my ability to wield both. If I've learned anything, it's that I know nothing. I have no idea what's going to happen next year or next month or even next week. That's okay, I like it. It keeps me moving and motivated and energized. I just have to stop trying to plan more than a month or two out. I keep saying I'll do x until y happens. I may start with x but suddenly I've left the alphabet entirely and I'm on Pluto with a glass of orange juice wondering whatever happened to that crafty y. So I should really stop postulating and assuming and thinking I have any real say in the direction my life will take. The only thing I can decide is what happens now. All this to say, my landlords have caused me some serious angst this week. One phone call on Monday and suddenly my whole life has been tossed up like confetti. I have to decide if I'm going to leave by September 1st or if I'm going to wage epic battle with the landlord. I made a video - because video messages are the best way to be weird with friends who live in other countries - and my face was pink because I'd burst into hysterical tears three times that day.

I was all set to fight the righteous fight, but after leaving messages all over the city and going to office hours and still not having any answers beyond an appointment on Tuesday (which is already halfway through the month, for anyone else who doesn't understand how time works), I'm starting to wonder if this is life's way of telling me I'm moving in the wrong direction. When things have been right, they've flowed smoothly. Getting this apartment was laughably easy. I decided I wanted to live by the beach in LA or San Francisco and something like thirty seconds later I had an apartment. Doing things only if they're easy seems anti-American. But working hard isn't the same as smashing your head into the same brick wall time and time again.

My hackles are raised. I want to give them hell. But maybe I need to get over it and realize that this is simply the world nudging me toward something better. Whenever I've left one thing, even something I've loved or was right for the time, I've always landed an upgrade. Sometimes it behooves you to rise above the anger and the injustice so that you can do what's right for you. I'm not saying I know what's right for me yet, but in all the grand leaps I've made, the net has always swooshed under me with admirable speed and fluffiness. Just because my last leap resulted in mayhem doesn't mean that this one will. And just because it was mayhem doesn't mean it wasn't the right thing.

Right now, it doesn't excite me to try to stay in this beautiful apartment, in this beautiful place. I'm more energized by the thought of spending a few weeks with my friends and family in San Francisco and then maybe going on that road trip through the South that I've talked about for years. Then maybe finding another place in LA. Or going to London for the fall. Or...see what I'm doing? Trying to plan months in advance, like I have any idea what's happening. How quickly we forget the lessons of four paragraphs ago.

My apartment by the beach has always felt a bit impermanent, like I was only here until whatever my future held. But maybe my future is now.

Humming "I Am The Warrior" and Reading the Fine Print

I'm in a feisty mood this week. I'm not often feisty. I'm nice. I'm obliging. I'm sweet. I don't want to put anyone out. But if you want to make my eyes narrow and my cunning bash my obliging over its milksop skull, tell me that my landlord wants to kick me out. Or tell me that a dog may not fall in love with me on sight. Yesterday, I met a friend's new pup, a tiny chihuahua mix named Peaches. Watching a 6'3" dude nuzzle a miniature hound who could get lost in his beard is an experience everyone should have, even if he claims that she doesn't like people and warned me not to be offended if she didn't take to me. Given that this is Amber's Week o' Feist, I thought, "WE'LL SEE."

As for the landlords, I live a ten minute walk from this:

My genius is getting things I want for a price I can afford, a genius it's good to cultivate if you decide you want to write things all day instead of going to business school. But now the landlords want me out. I want to stay. At least until I'm ready to leave. Which may be in three months, it may be in six. I am courting the idea of going nomadic again, putting my stuff in storage and taking that road trip through the south in September, hitting New York, and maybe dusting off my passport again. But last time I went nomadic, my life went up in a ball of flame. Not sure I'm ready for that again and I'm certainly not going to dive back in simply because my landlord decides he wants to muscle me out of my lease.

Usually, my need to oblige everyone and everything wins. But sometimes two rarely seen Amber traits get activated: Stubborn and Pissed Off. It's a fun ride for everyone. But once the stubborn and angry burns off, what's left is a solid sense of power, power backed by my image of myself standing feet planted on a cliff and hands fisted on hips, purple superhero cape fluttering in the wind. And my name in black ink on a lease agreement.

I'm the scrappy American in homespun breeks and a rusty flintlock rifle going up against rows of British soldiers in perfectly-pressed red coats and heavy artillery - and I'll win because I'm defending my home and they just want a paycheck. It's a melodramatic metaphor, but you take my point.

Often when I take a hit like this, I go down. Because what happens when something rocks my foundation - a blow to my security, a blow to my ego - it stirs up all the other feelings that have been congealing, sad and ignored, in my spleen for days and months and years until everything explodes in a shower of horrible.

Here is the benefit of spending a lot of time and energy learning how to dredge my feelings out of my spleen and give them some attention: Suddenly I can handle real life. Real life where sometimes people ignore the number one human tenet of Don't Be a Dick and sometimes dogs don't immediately take to you. Sure, I made a few venting phone calls and sent a few WARNING: LANDLORD BITCHING IS IMMINENT AND HUGS ARE REQUIRED texts, but it hasn't sent me into a spiral that ended on a fainting couch with smelling salts rather than at the Legal Aid office. This is progress.

As for the dog? She totally caved. There were a few setbacks - denying a dog a slice of pepperoni pizza will never endear you, no matter how many rides down the coast with the top down you offer -  but I won in the end. Consider yourself warned, landlords.

The Wheels On The Bus

The problem with not listening to yourself is that if you don't listen to yourself for long enough, your self will eventually force you to listen and you may not much like the way this happens. Because you may find yourself staring at the back of your car in the parking lot of a Starbucks wondering how the hell you managed to lock your keys in the trunk. Especially when one of your unchecked to-do list items is to renew your Triple A membership. Here's a fun fact about LA: You may be a mere five miles from home, but driving that five miles could take you half an hour. Taking a bus that same five miles? An hour. Probably more like an hour and a half. Okay, fine. Two hours and fifteen minutes, once you factor in waiting at the wrong bus stop, watching the bus you want pull away as you fume on the wrong side of a light and six lanes of traffic, getting on the right bus going the wrong direction, realizing transfers only work once and you wasted yours going the wrong direction and now you have to find more cash before you can get on the second/third bus you need to actually get home so you can get your spare car key and do the whole damn thing all over again.

As I was stomping down the street after bus number two, still fuming, I started to wonder how my peaceful evening turned into an epic urban adventure across five miles of rage-encrusted concrete. As I was scrunching up my face to glare at whatever happened to be in front of me - trees, liquor stores, old ladies with shopping bags - it occurred to me that this much disaster couldn't possibly be fruitless. It had all the hallmarks of the Smarter Me rapping Dumber Me on the side of my stubborn skull. So I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and said, "FINE. WHAT DO YOU WANT."

The answer? "It's not what I want, it's what you want. You want dinner. Because fuming burns a lot of calories and you're about two seconds away from passing out on the sidewalk. See? Your hands are shaking. Luckily, you stopped right in front of an El Pollo Loco and they have chicken burritos. Stop bitching and buy something with protein."

So I did.

After replacing the brain cells my rage devoured with avocado and grilled chicken, I realized life wasn't actually out to get me. Life happens for you not to you. You just have to let your brain see it. So I let my brain see that the bus I needed was right across the street. I could sit in the sun and digest my burrito while I waited. I could climb onto a deserted bus and have my own row and peace and quiet to realize that I needed to slow the hell down and take a break.

I tend to fall into the trap of thinking I need to be productive all the time. This doesn't mean I'm productive all the time. No. That would make sense. What this really means is that when I'm not productive I'm feeling guilty about not being productive. This makes me a slave to my to-do list and also kind of annoying. The more I'm ruled by my to-do list, the more I bow to what's urgent rather than to what's important. Sitting on that lumbering bus with absolutely nothing to do for hours but rearrange my priorities helped me realize that I need to be better about doing what's quiet and important rather than what's scream-y and trying to set things on fire for attention. I need to write instead of fret. I need to plan my big projects instead of micromanaging small ones. (I need to renew my stupid Triple A membership.)

If I'd given myself the space to figure this out sooner, I probably wouldn't have locked my keys in my car. But Smarter Me realized that giving Dumber Me just enough rope to hang myself was the best thing that could happen to me on a Wednesday night. Because I would have nothing to do but sit on an endless succession of buses until I remembered what was important.

Spending three hours zigzagging across LA on a bus was my soul's way of telling my brain to shut the fuck up and listen. Because sometimes all you need to hear is the swish of tires on asphalt.

Desert of Improbable Things

If you need further evidence that life is strange, allow me to suggest a trip to the California desert. An ocean in the middle of the desert? Weird. Magically appearing chicken sandwiches? Weirder. Building a hot air balloon to fly your message of god through the skies and then spending decades building a Dr. Seuss-like monument in 100 degree heat after your balloon strands you in the desert? Weirdest.

Visiting the Salton Sea and Salvation Mountain is like a fairytale in day trip form. In the space of only a few hours, we faced love, death, decay, joy, tangled hair, and many improbable things. We got rained on, baked in the sun, handed inexplicable chicken sandwiches, and waved at passing trains while playing music at obnoxious decibels.

But what I really came away with was the somewhat disquieting fact that I identify with this dude more than I care to admit.

I'm not huge on the god terminology - everything I've heard about god from mainstream religion makes him sound like a melodramatic Santa Claus - but a guy spending his life doing odd things in the desert to promote love? Sure. I'm down. If he was still alive, I'd give him one hell of an enthusiastic fist bump.

After walking the yellow brick road up a mountain made of cement and straw, we stood in the shade of a cartoon forest and talked about the idea of dedicating your entire life to one idea, one belief. If any of us could relate to the compulsion to spend your entire life in the heat of the desert building a tacky yet somehow lovely mountain dedicated to what you hold most sacred.

I didn't say anything at the time because I was about thirty seconds away from passing out (bringing extra water to the desert apparently doesn't occur to me), but I felt like I could relate. Not to building a gaudy mountain in the sand - I'm a delicate peony who only uses her hands to type things. But I do believe you can devote your life to one idea and one method of sharing that idea. You just have to really believe in both.

Writing is the only thing I've ever considered doing with my life. There was never a plan B. Someone once told me, "You have your medium, but not your message." Turns out the medium was the path to the message. Through my writing, I found the idea I would happily dedicate my entire life to. Figures that it would closely resemble an idea propagated by someone who looks flat-out insane in the right light.

Sometimes genius looks like insanity. Sometimes a hot road looks like water. Sometimes you find a sea in the desert. Sometimes you don't know what to think about something you see, you just know you feel a kinship with it.

What I do know is that the more love there is in the world, the more the world will heal. I believe that whatever you do with your life, whatever the details are, you should devote it to love, whatever that means to you. Loving yourself, loving your people, loving what you do. The more we all do that, the more it fans out around us and the more the world changes.

We're all building something in our own personal desert. We just have to find it. Maybe it's where you're going. Maybe it's where you've fallen and can't get up. Or maybe it's just exactly where you are now.

Choosing Flight

When I was a kid, I was immortal. I could barrel down snowy hills with sticks strapped to my feet and feel no fear. I could go streaking down grassy hills slippery with dew, without even recognizing the possibility of a broken femur. Even when I broke my left arm in third grade, it didn't slow me down because I didn't feel a thing.

Remember that? Diving head first into whatever caught your whim because you didn't know what a broken femur felt like? Or a shattered heart? It's easy to barrel down a snowy hill when you don't understand the cost of failure. But everyone eventually learns what it feels like to fall.

September 11, 2001 was the first day I truly felt my own mortality. It's become an epic cliche, but I think we all gained a fresh sense of fragility the day the towers fell. I was 22 that year, after graduating from college the year before and leaving Manhattan for San Francisco. But I knew people who worked in the buildings or near them. When I managed to catch one of those friends on the phone that night, she told me how she had to walk home across the Brooklyn Bridge, limping in her high heels as thousands of people crossed the water in shattered silence.

That was the first time it occurred to me that one day I would die. That I - and my friends and family - can be broken. I was lucky to make it to my twenties before truly feeling that. So many kids aren't that lucky. Being sheltered can be good - all children deserve the opportunity to spread their tiny wings without fear.

But eventually we all learn that we're breakable. We can and will shatter and we'll have to put ourselves back together again. But wrapping yourself in cotton batting and protecting yourself from the world is more dangerous. Too much joy and too many opportunities missed. As a champion cocooner, I know I've lost out. So I'm learning to be fearless because hiding is no longer a viable option.

I went to the Salton Sea this weekend, to visit the ocean that lives in the middle of the desert. It's beautiful, but the salt in the water is death to anything that lives there. But if you brave the stench and the flies and a shore littered with fish corpses, you can stand and gaze out at something beautiful that shouldn't exist but does.

Last year, I went zip-lining over the jungles of Costa Rica. I went with a friend and, as I was strapping on my harness, he called me fearless. Something I'd never really considered myself. But after the first terrifying line where plummeting to my death seemed a not so much a probability as an inevitability, I learned to enjoy soaring over the jungle. Soon, I was twisting and turning and flipping upside down to zoom toward the horizon with my stomach to the sky.

You can teach yourself to fear less. Especially when doing so means you get to fly.

Cosmic Kick in the Ass

Sitting on your couch and trying to determine what you have to offer the world is one hell of an exercise in fear. Fear that you've got nothing. Fear that what you have isn't enough. Fear that you once had something but you misplaced it. Fear that you missed your shot. Fear that you'll decide this question is too taxing and click over to Hulu. Fear that you made the wrong turn your sophomore year in college and missed your fate, Sliding Doors-style. Luckily, we all have something to offer, what we have is always enough, if you misplaced something you'll find it the next time you drop the remote down the couch cushions, there are always more shots, a little Hulu never hurt anyone, and you can fix any Sliding Doors mishaps by getting a hair cut.

What I'm saying is, I'm rethinking the entire direction of my writing career.

I always wanted to write what I deeply believe to be true. I always wanted to go on random adventures and document what I learned and where in them I felt sad, scared, vulnerable, loved. I always wanted to write what's stuck deep down in my spleen, so deep I didn't even realize it was hiding there.

Instead, I wrote for other people. Because that's how you make money and money is something that pays the rent and the bills and paying the rent and bills is what responsible humans do. I always wrote about things I was interested in, and told myself that I loved translating other people's passions into words. And I did. But it was never what I really wanted. Telling myself I did was my brain's cunning way of keeping me safe. But we can only ever tell our own story, and planting my boots in that brand of fear-driven safety eventually proved to be inherently unstable.

Even when I recognized the gap, I was hesitant to make the leap. It seemed insurmountable and there was always more pressing work to be done. But in the past two weeks, a landslide of events have pushed me firmly toward that leap, so firmly that it's less a leap and more a cosmic boot in the ass that pitches me over the cliff.

If last year taught me anything, it's how to stay calm in free fall. To trust the timing. To know that everything will work out, even if I don't yet know how.

In the past, I've always hustled and scrambled and found more client work. But I've never stepped back, taken a breath, and centered in my own voice and my own creativity. This time, I've chosen to trust that what I've learned and can share will be enough to see me through. That what I'm good at and bring to the table will be useful and valuable, so that I can do the work I feel I'm meant to do and live the life I want to live. For the first time in my working life, I'm trusting myself.

What do I have to offer? We'll see.