In search of JOY.

A good friend of mine challenged me to ‘uncover’ the things in life that bring me JOY (ALL CAPS emphasis his, not mine) and pursue those. Ok then…

I won’t do what my inner critic is calling for, which is to get tripped up on where and why I lost my joy along the way. The fact is I’ve lost it. What’s left is a daily exercise in responsibility, commitment and discipline and finally waking up to the fact that I have been undergoing intensive training for the Boredom Olympics for over a year. Inspiration has left the building.

Here’s what brings me joy:

1. Photos – my dad’s, my own, old ones, new ones, artistic ones, collages, Flickr, Polaroid’s…and on….and on…
2. Poetry – writing and reading it. The New Yorker poems are the first thing I read in the magazine
3. Dialectic arguments with passionate conversationalists.
4. Coffee
5. Sunday brunch
6. Fall in New York
7. Tex Mex food
8. Singing, which I never do anymore. But you know what? I love to.
9. Dogs – all types, shapes, sizes. They are bundles of love.
10. Spending time with my cousins – Michael, Kathryn, Jack, Jeffrey, and Jake.
11. Reckoner off Radiohead’s In Rainbows album – I never tire of this song. Every time I hear it, I get an overwhelming sense of rebirth, possibility and a clean slate within my grasp.
12. Anais Nin and Henry Miller’s ménage à trios love story
13. Rainer Maria Rilke’s work
14. Early Conor Oberst lyrics
15. Reminiscing on childhood road trips with my Dad and completely butchering Hank Williams’ ‘Hey, Good Looking’ lyrics to “How's about cookin' somethin' up with cheeeeese?”
16. Bob Dylan
17. The second part to Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home documentary
18. Driving upstate while listening to Kamikaze Hearts’ Weekend in Western New York (more precisely, riding and looking out the window at the pastures and horses and cows and rolling hills while someone else drives me)
19. Running with head phones and a great playlist
20. Spicy buffalo wings with lots of ranch
21. Cherry Limeades and tater tots with cheese from Sonic Drive In.
22. Finding appropriate times to say, 'right so'.
    
23. Christmas lights
24. Flea markets
    

Just the beginning—the list must grow. I’ll be chasing these and adding more. Stay tuned…

Weight and waffle machines

No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop metaphorically picking scabs – reading old letters, looking at photos, thinking about how I might’ve limited things by choosing one course over another.

No choice is ever clean and I am an idealist, so I feel burned by everything. Life is a cold day when the very breath I take burns my chest as it’s inhaled, lung-heavy. Melodrama, I know, but this is my curse: I can’t stop looking back.

The moment is forever elusive. When today passes, I will long for it, though I can’t for the life of me feel good where I stand, this minute.

And even though experience continues to persistently chip away at my edges, I still remain stubbornly angular. I am not soft, and that makes my life more difficult than it has to be quite often.

Self-abusively is not a word.

OK, per last post, self-abusively is not a word, but I liked it too much to use another and so I let it go and now, when I look back, I feel shame. What is that about?

I am in the office and debating next steps tonight. I need to grocery shop and install my AC unit, but errands hardly sound useful at the end of a 12-hour work day. I am staring down the barrel of a hellacious week at the office, all in prep for a vacation next week...

River rafting in Colorado! Private tour guide (friend of a friend), 3-day course, camping on the river bank, no FUCKING (pardon me) blackberry, best friend and boy toy (I kid) in tow--group of 16 total. This is the stuff that dreams are made of...

You better expect photos. Unfortunately, despite my premature commitment on this blog a few months back (come to think of it, premature commitment seems to be a general theme for me...), I haven't shelled out for the fancy camera yet, so these will just be those regular-type vacation shots. I'll let you know if I get anything good.

What else? I miss my family. I really, really miss my family. Like, forgetting who I am miss. I love NYC and my job and my life here, but damn if I don't feel afloat for the better part of my days. I need an anchor. The last one I found wasn't strong enough to tie me down. I need to remind myself how to be my own anchor. I used to do that so well.

What is happening out there? I feel out of touch. Way out of touch.

Housekeeping

Did some house cleaning of the online kind today and was amazed at how liberating it felt. I am a masochist, so I still had old photos waaay too handy and accounts linked to mutual friends allowing me to self-abusively peer into new lifestyles and witness new loves with mixed feelings of, “I’m glad he’s happy” and “wow, that sucks.” So, there it goes: today, I am removing the impulse to do things that are not constructive, even if you squint. I never did shy away from learning life’s lessons the hard way, but some things are just unnecessary. So! Goodbye, JB. You are special but, at least for now, you are also behind me.

And what’s in front? An afternoon poolside in Austin with my true soul mate Sara and then an evening celebrating my best friend Crystal’s birthday, complete with mini-sombrero’s and fake mustaches. You see? Boys, they come and go, but good friends are the smartest investment a girl will ever make.

Goodnight, Moon

Hello, stranger.

I neglect. Outside of the office walls, it’s what I do. Don’t take it personally. I’m no more attentive to myself these days than anyone else. But. Shall I indulgently profess this time will be different? The words will now come with regularity? Why don’t we just ‘wait and see.’

The good news is I’ve been thinking more. Road to recovery? Perhaps. Let’s hope.

Just spent an amazing weekend in Newport, where I learned to sail and steered the 12-footer for a good half-hour all on my own! I felt triumphant and a little tense at first, but I let the water’s rhythm ease my nerves (enter cradle metaphor) and enjoyed the frosty breeze. Dare I say I felt purged, somehow?

Thoughts from the road:
[Subtitle: Changes must follow]

* Hello, stranger (sound familiar?). Enter New York, lose self. If you knew this black hole was what you’d meet, would you do it all over again? Yes. Why? Lessons. I was never as close as I thought I was anyway. I was only comfortable.

* Lately, I’ve been wishing to turn back clocks and learn more from the ones I’ve left or lost.

* Let go. Stop trying to write your story and learn something unexpected from life.

Goodnight, moon.

Up, up, up!

It’s Friday and, for that, I am supremely happy. I am also hungry, but spending my precious lunch minutes on this blog instead. Why? Because sometimes words are all you need.

This weekend will be fun. Tonight is a farewell party on the LES for one of my favorite reporters. Thankfully, she’s sticking with the paper, but is moving to hold down the fort as our Peru Correspondent. Tear.

Saturday, I’m seeing Jens Lekman at Webster Hall and am really looking forward to it. Silliness should be dripping from the chandeliers. I need more of that kind of levity in my life.

Baby steps

Caught a branch hanging over my current of circumstance. Holding tight. Standing still. Things are looking up.

You know you're in a funk when...

You know you're in a funk when getting a gift reminds you of the life you're not living and causes you to feel depressed.

Gift = depressed?! Only in my own little fucked up mind.

Explanation: my favorite aunt (Beth to the friends in the know) sent me a very belated Christmas gift. (My family tends to get around to things at their own speed. I somehow missed that gene and grew up a sycophantic people pleaser. OK, not really, but punctuality is key. However, it must be said that my Aunt Beth is above the law. Always)

Anyway, she gave me a Barnes & Noble gift card and my train of thought went something like this...

"Aw, how sweet. There's a ton I've been wanting to read. That'll be something to look forward to. But I don't know when I'll have time. Hmmm....you know, if I don't have time to buy the books, how the hell am I going to find the time to read them? They'll just collect dust on the shelf and my ever-expanding but never shrinking 'to read' list." Which led me to the obvious, "No time for books (or as I like to think of them: life)--what have I become??"

Did I mention a flair for the dramatic also runs in the gene pool?

In the end, my conclusion must be: I'm buying those books, damnit.

I am shamelessly a morning person.

The only tragedy there is that my mornings mostly belong to the job these days. I am resolving to take back my time on the fresh end.

I am also resolving to buy the camera I’ve been eyeing since November (Nikon D80). I need a creative outlet and this is more realistic than expecting to write a timeless novel on the Blocked Writer’s clock.

On another note, I am craving some new music. Any ideas?

* P.S. The soundtrack to this post is Peter Bjorn & John's Paris 2004. I still haven't figured out how to embed songs in these blogs. I admittedly haven't tried very hard. Anyone, anyone?

Today's lesson

Never wait for another to put you back together
Again.
They’ll do it all wrong.

Today is Friday and I'm a negligent blogger.

Every week, I grow more attached to the weekend. It's my time to become unleashed from all of the weighty professional obligations I've recently found myself entangled in. Work is not as bad as it sounds, it's just demanding. Lots of time, lots of energy.

If on Friday I am happy, Sunday I feel guilty. Guilty for not making more of my weekend. I wonder if I'll ever be satisfied? A friend told me recently that I'm one of those people for whom nothing is ever good enough. He meant it to be insulting and it was. But is he right? It crushed me. I've known people like that and I don't want to slip into that trap.

This weekend, I am embracing activity. Activity is my "jam."

So, tomorrow, I'm off to a photography exhibit in Chelsea. A San Francisco artist named John Chiara whose hazy, "drunken" landscapes I read about in the New Yorker.

Alone but not lonely

OK, enough is enough. The guy who carried my heart away and then left it on the bench seat of a bumper car is chugging along with his own hyper activities and so shall I.

I lost a friend to drugs on Saturday night. I owed him a letter and I think I’ll have to write it to him anyway. Then I’ll send it off into the sunset where he’ll read it in the happier place I know he is.

I still haven’t exactly accepted the fact that he’s gone. I expect another note to fill my inbox tomorrow with his piles of smiles and his <3 hearts <3 We were pen pals. He was too good to be gone. Aside from that, I am working too much. Seeing a shrink who tells me I am setting myself up to be a victim by doing things everyone else’s way but my own. That insight kind of amazes me, really, because I have always felt quite independent….but I can’t deny she’s right on the last one. This weekend, I had the best night I’ve had in a long time. Girls night out with Lainey, Emmy V and Jenny Diamond (with a name born for porn, there’s no need for nicking it). We ate bad thai food and drank good Italian red and talked about men in the South vs. the North, blind dates – worst and worser (yes, I know that’s not a word…..and, yes, I am too anal to let it go unsaid). We made a pact to experience speed dating together soon. I think I even convinced Grubby Nikki to join our campaign in the wee hours of Sunday morning, After dinner, we crashed an apartment party and joined their impromptu dance party. Drinks were had, business cards exchanged and promptly lost, photos of rainbow hair (Jenny was entertained by our blonde--dirty blonde—brown--black entourage). Keeping with the spirit of variety, we moved on to vodka and then whisky shots before I had pity on my liver and called it a night. I went home alone and played with my camera (really) and Lainey met a Checkoslovakian Banker. Her story’s more interesting than mine, but I’ll let her tell it. Went to bed at 4 am with hope in my belly. I’m finally looking forward to tomorrow. I’m going to be alright.

Home New Home

I have a new home. It’s a small shoebox, but it’s mine.

I expect that’ll come to feel good, but at the moment I find my place too quiet and foreign and empty. It’s lonely.

Solitude

In two days, I will cement the changes I’ve recently set in motion. If ‘like a bull in a china shop’ doesn’t apply to my utter lack of grace in navigating the matters of my heart in recent months, I don’t know what does.

It’s been rough, on others and on me.

Since that fateful day, “the decider,” I’ve been dangling off a ledge unsure of whether to hold on or to let go. No one likes the idea of a free fall, but I am also shamefully aware of the fact that I am too weak to pull myself back above ground right now, back to where I stood in early fall. And no longer is he atop the hill standing with a hand outstretched.

The wind has cleared our course.

Saturday, I move and say my final goodbye.

My heart sinks as I consider what it will feel like to pack my things away and remove them from a home that’s no longer mine. In just a month and a half, I’ll have been out for as long as I was in it. That’s a pretty bitter dose of perspective.

“It is the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living." - Simone de Beauvoir

Now, I have to look into that which causes me great discomfort. Reasons why.

I owe someone answers about why I ran. I owe myself answers about what I needed that I wasn’t getting and why I felt it so pressing that I couldn’t wait for a level head and lucidity. Perspective. Time.

When I needed him most, I locked myself in a closet and the floor fell from beneath me as I finally found and made what I had all along feared—that I would be left alone.

You're looking at a ghost.

I am having trouble writing anything. I’m convinced it’s because I don’t like myself very much right now. I don’t like what I’ve done recently. I don’t like the state in which I’ve left my life and that I have no one to blame but myself. I don’t like that I don’t understand the whys surrounding all of this. And I don’t like that I don’t have the guts to explore that disorientation more.

I am too afraid I’ll find more I fear and more I hate.

This, along with my recent actions, is uncharacteristic, which only inspires more confusion and disgust. It’s amazing how quickly you can turn yourself into a stranger.

You know that age-old advice to find a way to be “whole” only comes when you feel half-empty? When “full” is a marathon you can’t begin to comprehend because you’re burning out on the 100-yard dash.

I am empty. I am broken. I am not. Whole.
Not even close.

This, I realize of course, is the glaring reason I am alone right now. Ironically, when you’re empty—precisely at the moment that you need another to lean on—is when you’re most injured by reaching out. You’re like a cat that’s getting bathed—you hurt everything that gets in your way, including yourself.

I’m a wet cat. Ha. At least I can still steal a laugh.

And now, let me put words in my mouth:

Hold my arms back when they reach for you—because they will. Because I’m not strong enough to pin them down myself. Hope blows the boughs a little upon your entry. I may not know “whole,” but I know I love you.

I used to understand what I had to offer, but I’ve since forgotten exactly what that is.

Now, I see a clichéd glimpse of a shell of a self that’s been worn down to its unpleasant looking nub through a lethal combination of too much and then not enough compromise.

I question why I left you. I cry with longing for your safe arms, but I can’t quite stifle the quiet thought that your return is my personal death. I don’t mean that—not how you must surely read it. I’m a better person with you, but maybe a better person is not who I am. Maybe this small person is who I need to be—for now. Until discomfort breeds growth and a better person to greet you at the pass months later, not years, is my hope.

In our greatest hour, I was always bracing for the fall. In the presence of others, I wondered if they bought what they saw. I tried to read on their faces whether I should trust what they appeared to: that our love was real, that we would last. I never did.

And so I preemptively jumped ship, without thinking, because it seemed inevitable that one of us would leave eventually. You or I, it didn’t really matter. We were too “rational” to hermetically seal things up after 25 years. You would go. It was a matter of time.

Of course now, when it’s too late, I realize I was self-fulfilling my fear of loss and discarding an irreplaceable love. I needed to know I didn’t need you. And as human beings often find the wrong end of the rifle in those dark hours, I learned through the irreversible pain that I couldn’t run from you. You are in me.

But no longer can I run to you either. I burned our home with us inside of it. Neither one of us lives there anymore.