Blow it up and start again

This is post number 200 for me.  I liked the idea of ending the year on a round number, so I saved it for today.  I'm just not sure how best to use it.

I don't have any regular readers - though I do have a handful of incredibly sweet intermittent ones, of course, to whom I am grateful.  But mostly I keep this as a journal - mostly I keep it for myself, I suppose.  The blog's original purpose was to flirt with someone without appearing to flirt with him, then it became a nice outlet for some frustrations of working with a specific group of people, then morphed into a way to use downtime at an office.  

But as soon as I started using this space to complain about anything I realized I could never really publicize it - I wanted to be honest about how I felt but not hurt anyone's feelings, and while I don't use anyone's real name, I think there's probably enough info that someone could work out certain details.  So I can't tell anyone it's here lest I've said something that will offend, or I could tell people it's here but then never say anything truthful again.  As for my possible offensive comments, I've just been blowing off steam - I don't have any lasting rancor for anyone, honest.  I'm capable of wishing everyone happiness and joy, no matter what.  

Anyway, I lost the desk job, and didn't post anything for a long time.  I got caught up on the fact I had so few readers, who would care if I wrote anything?  I love my 5-6 readers, but I am pretty sure I could call each and everyone one of you up on the phone if there was something I really needed to say to you.  But finally I realized: clearly, I only post things I am trying to work out for myself.  So I got busy trying to work some stuff out, and here we are at 200.

Am I working things out?  Does the effort of writing things down help me process and transmute those events?  Is it just a really really long-term flirt...as in, someday, out of curiosity, my original reader will return and be blown away by my charm, wit, and insight?  Ha!  Funny, I'm capable of wishing for that (though it's not my conscious purpose).  I've gone from thinking I'm kind of a nice person to realizing I often behave like an insufferable know-it-all driven entirely by the wish to be right and the only partly submerged desire to be gorgeous.  In other words, I'm realizing I'm vain, petty, and condescending.  

But I'm not mean-spirited.  And yes, writing things down has been helping me.  

So I'll probably rack up another hundred posts this next year.  Maybe the writing will get better.  Maybe the insights will get deeper.  Maybe the life I'm describing will get more entertaining.  

Thanks for stopping by.  Comments are welcome.  I'm not asking you for anything, but I'm very grateful for what you've given me without being asked.  

Happy New Year.  This one...this one's going to be amazing.

Enveloped

I just finished reading a novel and eating a bunch of tasty food, including lots of chocolate.  Ah, holiday.  Now I'll need to put all that slothful indolence behind me and get busy refining myself.  I'm looking forward to it, actually.

I'm looking forward to everything right now.  It's been a strange year, plenty of setbacks and trials, naturally lots and lots of mistakes.  Mine, I mean.  And some loss - people dying is no fun, even if it is a completely natural part of life that we all have to face eventually.  Doesn't mean we long for it.

I feel hopeful, though.  Like I'm closing in on something, and when I get there, it will be good.  I got a good breather in here with this awesome show I'm working on - I can keep going for a lot longer with this under my belt.

To everyone who made my life better and not worse: thanks.  I'm cheering up now enough to notice how lucky I am to know you.  Wow, I'm really lucky sometimes.  Thanks.

Gifts

Oog.  The one thing I do dislike about being relatively short on cash is that Christmas sucks because I can't afford to buy anyone gifts.  I know I sound holier-than-thou or disingenious, but I really like giving people the "perfect" gift, and though yes, the perfect gift might not be expensive, it does take a certain amount of money to get EVERYONE a perfect gift.  Or more time than I currently have.

This is why I've begun to prefer Thanksgiving.

For Later

Things my future self should know, or might need to be reminded of:

• It might be a while before you get cast in something as awesome as the awesome project again.  Don't despair.  Don't stop trying.  You love it, you love it more than all of the other things people tell you to love - it's the closest you get to storytelling, it's the closest you get to God, it's the closest you get to some sense of purpose.  You inhabit yourself those rehearsal rooms, on those stages.  Don't give that up because you get tired of waiting.  It's yourself you are waiting for, not the next job, because you truly live in the plays.  Feel free to find a better way to amuse yourself in between times, but don't stop trying.  You love it in a way that means it should be your job - because you'll care about it.
• Try to relax.  You're only going to get older from here.  Try for dignity and grace.  You've spent a large part of your life sad and disappointed about all the things you're not.  LET IT GO. There are a lot of things you are not.  But inherent in that is that you are something.  Concentrate on that, meditate on that.  You are something.  Distill it if you can.  Transcend it if you can.  But start stepping on the stones that are there instead of mourning the ones that are absent.
• Honestly? You're bad at giving things up.  At letting them go.  Think of it as habitual lateness - you need to set the clock ahead a bit to accommodate your natural inclinations.  It will take extra time to let some things go.  Go ahead and accept that.  
• You're still going to be a complete fool.  No matter how hard you try, how much you mask it, you heart is bigger than your brain.  You pretend it isn't, you spend a lot of time hiding one behind the other.  Good luck with that.  I'm not sure how that's going to work out.  I'd say let's blow it wide open, future self, let's just love as hard as we can, but there's a lot of pitfalls there and if I knew how to avoid them we'd be somewhere totally different by now.  I guess you should just get more comfortable with the idea of being foolish.  Settle in.  
• You're going to need some more luck for everything to work out the way you want it to.  But if you stick with doing the things that bring you joy, things will work out.  It's like wanting to be at the table where everyone is laughing - spend your time with the joy, and you can't regret it.  

When in doubt, look for some joy.  If you find it, that's where you should be.  All right, future self.  I hope you're reading this and thinking, oh, yes, that was the day I figured out how to get here, and you look around at your sunny kitchen that always has good music, good friends, and good food, pets and maybe children hanging around the kitchen table (the one you've had sex on), and you think, yes, I got here, finally.  Now smile and go make a cup of tea.  Here's to being something, finally.

Rethink

I'm getting the feeling that I have a consistent amount of idiocy no matter what I try to stop myself from doing - if I decide I'm going to quit doing one stupid thing, I inevitably end up doing something else stupid. As if instead of losing weight I'm just using a corset to shove the extra stupid around.

Well.  Hmm.  I'm working hard to be a grown up here, and it's worrying to see regression instead of growth.

But (hang on, my metaphor isn't dead yet), doing stupid things is a lot like eating junk food - empty calories, of course, but so tasty and irresistible.

Side note - if every unhealthy choice had a healthy choice sitting right next to it, for instance, the counter of Little Debbie Snack Cakes had a container of celery sticks right next to it, could you/I/one go ahead and do the "right" thing more consistently?

It may be that when I was younger I tried to avoid doing stupid things, and for the most part I did ok - of course I did some stupid things but overall I basically wasted the part of my life where people expect you to do stupid things.  I spent it trying to get things right.

Now I have certain things right and it's...it's...   Well.  Being right isn't always very interesting.

It's as if I worked so hard to color inside the lines, and look, I did!  And what I have to show for it is a really neat, uninspired set of drawings that anyone could have produced.

Oh, sorry, in case I haven't mentioned it, I am also still deliriously happy to be going to rehearsal every night.  It's awesome.  It's terrific.  It is NOT in any way stupid or drawing inside the lines or...in fact, it's the one thing everyone probably thought I was stupid to pursue and it's the very best thing there is, which may be why I'm questioning everything else.

Ok, I'm going to try to pretend to be a grownup.  For a while.

Notes from Nirvana

It was like I'd died and gone to an actor heaven.

Last night, first rehearsal for the big awesome project.  It was...blissful.  Terrific. Inspiring. Enriching.

It was like sitting down to a meal after wandering in the desert for weeks.

It was like finally sleeping after a forced march.

It was like curling up under the covers with a great book and nowhere to be, when you can't imagine a single place better.

It was such a relief.  To be in a room with maybe 40, 50 people, and all of them want one single thing: to tell this story as well as humanly possible.  Everyone's excited, everyone's looking forward to it, and some of the best brains in the Chicago theatre were in that room.  It was fantastic.

It felt like home.  Home.  Home.

HG, grad school has nothing on this.  This was like bringing the Titanic up from the ocean floor and restoring her to all her glory.  This was like finally getting every single strand of Christmas lights to work.

This was great.  I am sooooo lucky.  Buckle up, all four of you.  It'll be five months of this much excitement and more.

And maybe, just maybe, if some star is positioned just right for me, this is the beginning of the life I always wanted to have.

Deep Breath

So, tomorrow is a big day.  I start rehearsing for a project I can actually believe in, with people I highly respect.  I get to be one of the people I'm always jealous of.  I get to play with people whose careers I want to model, I get to work on a play I am excited to be a part of, with people who blow me away.

I'm scared, of course, and grateful, and thrilled, and god I hope I have whatever it takes to play on this level.  Because I'm not a gamer kind of gal, but this is most definitely a level up.  Level. Up.

Naturally, I want to spin some kind of imaginative direct bee line from tomorrow to me accepting some sort of Tony or Emmy or some nonsense - and I say nonsense not out of false modesty, but with the acceptance that the trajectory I'm currently on just doesn't logically follow to those points.  But that doesn't even matter.  I was thrilled to audition for this play, and I tried very hard to prepare myself for not being cast, since numerically and historically, my acting career (and to some degree, my life) has been about trying to withstand disappointment.

But, and I'm not even embarrassed to say this, I'm nearly teary-eyed with this, TOMORROW IS A DAY ABOUT GETTING WHAT I WANTED.  About being the person they chose.  About finally catapulting over the endless judging and auditioning and rejection and instead being able to focus on the WORK.  Because I got work, folks.  I got work at a theatre I adore with people I revere and I couldn't be luckier or happier.

I got the work I wanted and I cannot wait to give this theatre my entire life for the next five months.

I know I whine a lot here.  I bitch and moan and cry, and when I read the things I wrote, I feel petty and small and weak.  I wanted to write this post to remind me and anyone who ever drops by that I know how to be happy, wickedly happy, joyously happy.  I'm even pleased tonight to realize and remember that I've felt like this before, because I've been lucky enough to get cast in plays I cared about before, even if it has been a while since that happened.

I'm still worried about my Dad and anxious about money and I yearn for the people who made me smile that are missing from my life.  But at the same time, starting tomorrow, I am the luckiest girl in the world for a time.

Now, let's see if the next five months of posts can reflect that.  Heh.

When You Can't Justify It

When someone else gets something you want (or has something you want), does it make it better or worse that they deserve it?  When you can look at them objectively and see that the object of your jealousy may be smarter, more talented, heck, younger and prettier (or simply more attractive), more creative, nicer or all around a better person...does this make it easier or harder?

If, for instance, someone gets cast in something I wish I could have done...if that person isn't good in the role, then I can comfort myself that a mistake was made.  But if they are not only great, but better than I can imagine ever being, I might feel worse, but at least I know justice was done.

There's someone I feel vaguely jealous of, and as I clicked through to find out more about them I could hear my own voice saying, "Why are you doing this, this is a wretched, stupid thing to do..."  And by then I'd done it, and couldn't undo it, and was trapped.  It wasn't even painful, just eye-opening, sort of like the sensation I imagine people who cut themselves have as the blood wells up from a slice but the synapses haven't communicated any kind of hurt yet.  The way people describe being shot, and looking at the hole where the bullet went but shock blocks the comprehending of any pain.

Smarter?  Check.
More attractive?  Double check.
More talented?  Obviously.
In every way a better choice?  Yes.

And I don't even mean this as a self-pitying rant - I have good qualities, I have talents, I have a modicum of intelligence and I'm attractive in my own way.  I'm not saying woe-is-me.  I'm just wavering between whether it's easier or harder to let an idea go when you know you didn't ever deserve it in the first place.

I think I'm leaning towards harder.  Because it's one thing to lose.  It's another to realize you don't have the talent to win.

As Iris Murdoch wrote: "One must perform the lower act which one can manage and sustain: not the higher act which one bungles."  I too have failed accurately to estimate my own resources.

Holiday

I love my family, and they are great.  I just wish I could handle them better.  There was one really great line in "Winter's Bone" which I watched the other day, something about the dad being an informant: "he didn't and he didn't and he didn't, and then one day, he did..."  That's not an accurate quote but I feel like that about snapping at my family.  I can handle it, I can handle it, I don't mind the backseat driving and constant correction...and then I do, and I lose it, and I regret it.

Because all I want them to know is that I love them, not that they also make me want to tear my hair out.

Un-fraught

I was going to bend your ear about sadness and elation and worry all fusing into some electric dance step today, with a score of kick-ass music behind it.  I was going to steal outright an idea from someone's tumblr about the fact that you can be wandering around in a store and some schmatzy, old-school song comes on (for me the other night it was "On the Dark Side" by Eddie and the Cruisers), and without preamble you are teary-eyed with longing for a past you barely remember.

I was going to try to break your heart.

But instead I've realized I am hungry, and I'm going to just put everything I wish I could have and don't on hold and go make some dinner.

Because despite what I tend to give off, underneath the wild aura of fervent drama lurks a pragmatist.  A girl's gotta eat.

Old

Tonight I was asked if the 23-year-old with me was my daughter.  I have recently been feeling (and vocally complaining) that I look and feel old.  Now it is absolutely confirmed that apparently any youth I had is behind me and never coming back.

I wish I could tell you I'm ready to be homely and wrinkled and not care about age, but instead I'm about to hole up in my bed and weep.

What makes me really sad is that I bet there are times in my life I've been really attractive, and times I've actually felt that I looked attractive, but any time I feel I look pretty the photographs prove me wrong, and any time the photo of me makes me think, hey, I look kinda nice here!  I know at the time I felt ugly and unattractive.  Why can I not synch these up better than that?

And why do I have to care at all?  Why can't I just embrace getting old and having lines on my face?

Why must I be so very vain?  It's annoying.

Wish

If I could have one wish, tonight it would be this:  to live free of superlatives.  Better than, worse than, best, last, these words ricochet in my head endlessly, and I would love to be free of them.  Even when I don't want to be thinking about it, some part of my brain is always feeding comparisons back to me, like a personal ticker tape:  that girl is younger than me, that one is prettier, that one is fatter, that guy writes better and that one is cooler.  That one is much much nicer.

And these comparisons nearly always stop me from doing whatever I'm doing.  Because there is ALWAYS someone better.  No matter who you are, what you do, there's better out there somewhere.

I imagine what it would be like to be wholly freed of superlatives, not to think that you were better than anyone else but just not to think about where you are in the scheme and strata of experience - not to be so very aware of what percentile of knowledge or beauty or wit you inhabit.  I think it would feel wonderful.  I think I would listen more.

Every so often I find a little space where no one else is, or at least where no one invokes this sort of petty classification of myself, and I just get to be.  It's not the same as just being alone.  I can be alone and still unable to halt my mind from its endless rifling through who's-better-who's-best.  Like tonight, when every clever thing I read just strikes the gong in my head saying, "Yep, you'll never be as clever as that."

It's true, I won't.  But maybe someday I'll pick my way past caring and just be me and that will feel like enough.

I suspect it will still take a while.  Maybe you should check back in a few decades or so.

Wow.

So late.  Must sleep.  Here's what I find out when I stay up late at home alone: I am an idiot.

Why, oh why have I put on the most appealing nightclothes I have had on in weeks, when I am in my house alone??  And the best I could hope for would be a phone call?

Makes no sense.  I am an idiot.  Or I want to give my neighbors something to look at.

I suppose one could argue that if I do wear sultry clothes to bed on nights I wasn't alone, I don't end up wearing them very long.  In that sense, I see why the night I'm alone is when I'm wearing them long enough to notice I'm wearing them.

Further proof I'm an idiot:  pretty much everything else on this blog.

I finally accepted something very obvious: the people who arrive at my blog by accident when searching for the terms "torture time" do not stick around to be charmed by my oddball voice.  Nor does anyone stumbling across it when looking for a blueberry pie recipe.

So the four of you, sometimes five, I think all of you can be trusted with the info that I'm home alone, attractively clad.

Now I'm going to bed.

No way that person on tv uses that product...

I'm tired of being constantly sold to on television - sold to with young, pretty people.  I'm finally realizing that I can't even pretend to be young and pretty anymore - that ship sailed, and I missed it.  I'm starting to resent the very sight of the young and pretty.

Instead, can you sell to me with...hmmm....I don't know...

Tigers?  I like tigers.

How about graciousness?  

Or some good old fashioned whimsy - I'd buy things sold with whimsy.

Of course, there's the problem that I'm not the target for any of this advertising, because not only am I not young or pretty anymore, I have no money to buy things.

Just a little disappointment

Every time I ever go up for a SAG ad, I mentally spend the money I would make doing it.  Fortunately, it's only mental - and technically spending is the wrong word, as I mentally assign the money to my various savings accounts.

Hey, what's a SAG ad?  I hear some of you say.  SAG is the Screen Actors Guild, and it's one of the unions that controls television advertisements.  Like any union, it sets certain minimum payments a company has to give you for certain kinds of work.  So if I were to book a SAG ad, I might not be a member of the union yet (it's complicated), but the company would pay me based on a certain scale.

I confess, I find that scale wildly confusing to follow in written form, so I really have no idea how much money I would make for any of these ads.  But I know a friend made $20,000 for a SAG ad once.  I don't know how often it ran and in what markets and for how long (all of these effect what you get out of it), but she had enough to make a down payment on a condo.  So secretly, ignorantly (and presumably incorrectly), in my mind every time I go audition for one of these ads, I think of myself making $10,000, and mentally change my entire life.

Because I would go on exactly as I do now if I made an extra $10,000, but a lot of the stress in my life would be magically lifted.  Firstly, just the very fact of making that kind of money doing the thing I love to do would be a personal victory.  I would have justified a LOT of the time I have devoted to this profession.  Second, I would immediately fund my entire Health Savings Account (and my husband's).  Hey - for someone who basically pays for all medical expenses that would be an exciting event.  (Yes, we have health insurance, but since we have it as individuals, the plan we can afford forces us to pay for nearly everything.  In my world, there is no such thing as a co-pay.  But if something catastrophic happened, we'd be covered.)

Third, and this may sound funny, but I'd pump up my savings accounts.  I have been making ends meet in a time of economic disaster, but my savings have suffered.  I want them beefy, not lean.  I haven't cannibalized them, but I'm tired of having them erode a tiny bit every year.

I'd pay off some debt.  Duh.  (But honestly, I'd still fund the HSA before anything else.)

I'd throw some money in my car account so that I could pay next year's insurance without even wondering how.

Finally, if I could spread some money around all those places and feel like there was any left over, I would do as many of these things as I could afford:

1.  Go to Macy's, give a personal shopper a chunk of money, and have her bring me scads and scads of beautiful clothes.  I would then buy:  three beautiful skirts, two tailored shirts, three tops of some lovely description, two sweaters or jackets that I adored, three pairs of really amazing trousers (one black, one pinstripe, one whatever I like best), three pairs of shoes and one pair of boots, and a dress that I felt drop dead fantastic wearing.  Maybe some belts and necklaces.  If there was enough money.

2. Buy a plane ticket to somewhere I have a friend I haven't seen in years.  Spend some time there.

3.  Get my engagement ring fixed.

4. Buy something terrific for my husband and my best friend.  (That's two separate people, sorry, all you romantics.)

5.  Get back to eeking out the rent a couple of paychecks at a time, but with a great deal of satisfaction.

If you've read this far, you can probably see this coming.  I was up for a SAG ad this week - and I even got called back for said ad, which means there was an actual possibility I would get it.  The callback was a blast - I had so much fun, and the woman I was auditioning alongside was phenomenal (I really really hope she got cast in at least one of these spots).

But I didn't get this one.

*sigh*

Last nice weather day

I think I would give up all the things I owned if I could go hang out with all the people I love instead.  This sounds easy to accomplish - it is not, as many of the people I love live far away, in other countries, perhaps.  And seeing them would involve some other costs.

It strikes me that in a way I want to visit all the other people I've been, and that may be true, but I genuinely  want to find out how everyone else is doing.  I want to sit and drink red wine out of my friend's heavy goblet wine glasses - they're odd, as if they are props and not meant to drunk out of - and I want to ask her how she finds her life these days and hear her call me "Lizzie."  I want to go see another friend's brand new adorable baby.  I want to go and harass yet another friend until his deadpan face cracks and he actually laughs at something I say.  That could take days, but if I could manage it, I'd be gleeful.  I hope he still has the dreadful piano scarf, though I doubt it.

I want to see my best friend, and do something ridiculous with her that no one else would ever bother doing - put on costumes and go on an adventure, go prom dress shopping (no intention of prom dress buying, just shopping), camp, sit at the Waffle House, consult the I Ching or make up fake potions to help us through our lives.

I want to take HG back to London and find Fran!!!  We'd jump back in time and clean house together and then have jacket potatoes for lunch, gossiping all the while.  Hmmm.  Come to think of it, just to move into the present, I want to visit HG in Italy next year and force her to have some adventure she'd never have thought of...possibly involving wine, but perhaps not.

I'd like to have dinner with a friend I never get to see and see them.  Ask questions, argue, persuade, laugh, remember, and plan.  No, not plan, plot.  I need me some new horizons, and I'd like to have old friends on them with me.

I can't think of a single object I own than I wouldn't give up if it meant I could do this.

Some thanks

So, if you haven't ever met me or noticed from the inevitable return to this subject, I have trouble believing that anything I write here could remotely interest anyone else.  Yet I'm still driven to try to communicate, I still find I want to say something, and I want to believe I can do so effectively, even if some worm within me always convinces me otherwise.

The worm has been winning recently.

I'd like to thank those of you who have stopped by and made a supportive comment, and I'd like to thank those of you who stopped by and didn't make a negative comment.  I'm really grateful.

I keep hoping I can leapfrog over this impenetrable insecurity and get beyond it to something magical, and yet it never seems to happen.  I believe I can lose 15 pounds, too, and that keeps getting put off as well.  The me I think I really am always seems just out of reach.

A friend once told me about some tree that grows something like 15 feet every 5 years.  But it grows maybe 1 inch for 4 years, and then shoots up 14 feet 11 inches in the last year.

I keep hoping to reach my 5th year.  I think it could be coming.  I think there's something in me unexpressed, something ferocious and necessary.  I don't know what it is, or if I can ever find it.  Maybe I'm too old and off center, too plain and easily dismayed, too vain and too analytical.

But thank you for checking up on me, because inherent in that is the idea that I might have something to say that will be useful.  I hope some days I come through for you, and me.

I believe, help my disbelief.

Today it is sunny outside and I drank two cups of cappuccino, and I'm going to go running.  Maybe I should stop talking and try listening.  Call me if you want to take advantage of that intention.

As others see us

I had someone critique me recently as an actor and a human being, and I can't shake how uneasy and uncertain it has made me feel.  First, a caveat:  the comments were absolutely true - I recognized myself without fail in what this person was saying, and I recognized that the advice I was getting about changing my behavior was sound.

But what I was forced to acknowledge about myself made me feel...I'm not sure how to put it...sick to my stomach.  I never like making mistakes, even though I realize intellectually that making mistakes is the only way we can possibly learn anything.  So part of this dread is realizing I've been making mistakes.

The other part is that while this person didn't speak for anyone but themselves, I'm sure to have exhibited this behavior elsewhere.  Which leads me to this possibility - do I fail to get work as an actor because I am a nightmare to work with??

That's a terrifying thought.  Horrifying.  Debilitating.  It can't be universally true, because my actor/director friends would treat me differently if it were.  But it is doubtless absolutely true in certain situations.  Which is keeping me awake at nights now.

More and more I feel my vanity is in my own way.  And I'm bored by it!!  Aren't you?  Wow, I wish I didn't waste any time at all worrying about being good or pretty or right.  Someone will always be prettier and better and more right - probably more often as I age!  But I don't know how to do without it, or how to circumvent it, or how to retrain it.


Hmmm.  This is where I desperately need to reinvent myself because I've become an utter bore even to myself.
Maybe that leather miniskirt/taking up smoking thing needs to happen right away.

Maybe I just need habermasgal and tee to move to town and have weekly dinners with me.

I'll cook....we don't even have to spend money...

Always take the weather with you

I spent yesterday lunch with a friend who recently got engaged, and yesterday dinner with another who is currently getting a divorce.  Whew!  Talk about running the gamut.

What struck me in both conversations is how hard most relationships are.  I'm thinking more and more about why we make any attempt at all to have a permanent bond with just one other human being.  It's such a tricky endeavor, and takes so much work, why do so many of us sign on?  (And if you haven't signed on, you most likely have felt the pressure to do so, even if you haven't buckled under to it.)  I am beginning to feel the same way about having children - not one single parent has ever told me having kids is a complete romp.

It seems like it doesn't matter who you are or who you pick, a relationship gets hard at some point. (Although clearly it's possible to pick someone wholly inappropriate and have the relationship always be a complete nightmare...we've all done that.)  Someone shifts in an unexpected way, or doesn't shift when you do, and a balance is thrown off.  People behave in unpredictable ways.  One may find oneself behaving unexpectedly.  No one knows everything about oneself at the beginning of things, or even at the middle of things.

Because the problem/beauty of it all is, things change.  We work so hard to find a place of safety, a place of continuity, but in the end, that's an arbitrary decision - "this place is safe and will not alter" - you can say that, but you can't make it true.

I think about a couple I know who have been married nearly 50 years.  They bring each other equal parts comfort and irritation.  Is the irritation as comforting in its constancy as the comfort?

I also listened to a radio program recently about quitting, and that's having an effect on my musing.  As a society, we're bad at quitting, though sometimes quitting is the best thing we can do.

Except when it isn't.

Wanting to be right all the time is another form of vanity, and boy, is vanity turning out to be my stumbling block.

I'm going to think about this more and get back to you.

Coming soon...a new look

Yesterday, I'm roaming the farmer's market in my neighborhood when I see someone standing at the door of Starbucks waving energetically to me.  "Yo!"  It's R, with whom I was in a sometimes questionable show earlier this year.  He just broke up with his girlfriend, moved to the neighborhood and is meeting our friend J in a minute.  We chat.  It's wicked fun.  He tells me during his move his car got stolen - while full of stuff.  The cops found it that very night, stripped of parts, but most of the stuff was still there.  The thieves left credit cards and checks he had in there, but took all the cleaning supplies he had just bought at Target.  Naturally, we thought of terrible puns - "Dudes, we cleaned up on this robbery!"  (etc.)

J showed up (late, of course) and I started telling them about my new plan to change my image.  "I'm thinking of taking up smoking," I told them, "I just feel like I need to be more of a bad ass."  

"Shit, who you kidding?" R flatters me, "Girl, you're already bad ass - why you think I was calling to you from the door?  I was thinking, who is that hot chick...oh, man, I know her...and damn, she's already married."  

"Whatever, kiss ass.  I'm really looking fine, rocking this socks-with-shoes look.  I need a hair cut, and maybe a miniskirt..." 

R interrupts - "A leather miniskirt..."

"Please, you know I don't have a miniskirt, leather or not."  

"Just go home and grab any skirt, we'll cut it off for you, no problem."

"Or what about a face piercing?" J chimes in, helpfully.  "Tongue?  Nose?"

We continue being ridiculous until we decide that I will find a leather jacket, a leather miniskirt, get my haircut, buy some cigarettes, and somehow get a facial scar in a knife fight.  Then the two of them will come over and we'll do a photo shoot with me leaning out of the window of my new (not cool) car, smoking.  And post it on facebook.

This morning, J emails me that she walked outside to go to work and discovered her car had been stolen.   

I have two responses:

A)  I WISH I could go check to make sure my new car is still there, but I'm already downtown at work, and

B)  I better make this photo shoot happen stat before the car disappears.