From The Archives

Lovely, lovely birthday. Bike ride in the morning, beach during the day, beautiful weather, good food and drinks, lots of kind wishes and love, flowers delivered.
I went for the run in the evening last night before showering off the beach and found myself going past the house I rented with a bunch of friends for Beach Week ten years ago after graduating high school. I spent my eighteenth and now twenty eighth birthday here, at the beach, and I see this decade as parenthetical.
It was ten years' of experimentation, travel, good and bad choices, adventure, learning, growth, and a host of experiences that have left me with great anecdotes and what I see to be a very well-rounded outlook of the world. I fell in and out of infatuations, had my heart broken, did some very stupid and very cool things, lived all over, met great people, had ten thousand jobs.
And now I see myself closing that chapter and beginning to take the greater values and desires - the heavier elements that stick when everything else falls away - and beginning this next decade which I feel will set the course for the rest of my life.
-May, 2010

A Thanksgiving Toast

Wow.

How did we get here?

I feel like I was just at the beach, riding bikes down the Boardwalk. I'm not even sure where the fall went. There was running...there were a lot of Girl's Nights Out....some Book Club in there...I think I wrote a short story or two and about a thousand emails...

And now we're trying to plan New Year's Eve. The past year has been, well, full for lack of a better word. A little more pithy, I think then any of the years before it. And so, coming up on Thanksgiving Eve (truly on of the best nights of the year: like the ultimate Thursday Night as it combines all the fun and anticipation not only of the first official 4-day weekend of the entire year but of the holiday season in aggregate) I have a hell of a lot to be thankful for.

The foundational stuff- my family, my health, my general well-being. All of that, never to be taken for granted.

But this year, I owe a great deal of thanktitude to my friends. While they have always been everything to me, in the past year they have become even more than that. They have become second family, they have started to chart the course of my future, and there are some that have been woven in my fabric for so many years that their presence is just a part of who I am at this point.

So...cheers, friends. This year, I raise my glass(es; let's be forthcoming, here) to (and with) you. For all you are, all you do, and how many times I come dangerously close to leaking bodily fluids because of how hard you make me laugh.

I saw this toast written as part of a Grey Goose ad in my New Yorker last week, and found it very apt:

A Toast

to nearest

to dearest

to the crew

to cahoots

to the ones who've been there

to the ones who'll be there

to dropping everything

to saying anything

to no judgements

to no doubts

to loyalty

to trust

to favors

to lifelongs

to been too long

to nothing's changed

to having history

to having your back

to moving away

to never too far

to growing up

to settling down

to your second family

to friends.


Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Eat, drink, and be oh-so-thankfully merry.

Can't Go Back Now

I can't really say why everybody wishes they were somewhere else
In the end, the only steps that matter are the ones you take all by yourself.

Can't Go Back Now, The Weepies

Why Lee Is The Best Ever

This is an example of the kinds of emails I send to Lee:

Subj: Are we still friends?
I had a dream/panic attack last night that I lost my job, got really, really fat and that all my friends and family decided to break up with me at once on the terms of me being a silly, impractical, and terrible person. This is what I think about sometimes. No wonder I am crazy.

PS: are you going to the dinner thingy on Sat?

The best part? He responded in a most reassuring manner that being silly and impractical are things he considers to be excellent qualities in a person and therefore part of the reason we are friends. Lee is still one of my most favorite people, despite the fact that he apparently loves his girlfriend more than he loves me- something I have come to terms with because sometimes I love his girlfriend more than I love him too. And he is one of my most favorite people not even because he calmly engages in my attention-seeking behavior by responding as though I were making some logical, reasonable argument.

AND I have already purchased his Christmas present, and I am so excited by it because I believe I have topped what I got him last year (an xkcd tie to outwardly display his inner geekitude), and I even believe it might be more geeky. I figure, I am a rather emotionally high-maintenance friend, so I might as well buy affection with awesome Christmas presents.

The "Thursday Night" Of Your Life

"The path to enlightenment is not a path at all- it's actually a metaphor for the time it takes for you to allow yourself to be happy with who you already are, where you're already at, and what you already have-no matter what."

I was on my undergraduate campus this past weekend, in town to see a play in the theater where I spent four years of my life rehearsing, building sets, sewing costumes, arguing, auditioning, defending, creating, acting, stretching, feeling, and engaging in one epic game of hide-and-go-seek. I walked past the dorms where I'd lived, the buildings where I'd attended classes each day, the Commons where I'd eaten all of my meals. This place, now populated by strangers and changing all the time, was home to me at one point.

Mostly what I felt, underneath all of the nostalgia and remembrance, was a pretty solid happiness that I am not twenty years old anymore.

We all did a lot of growing up in college, and some of us faced further growing up outside of it. Some of us are still in the thick of it. Some are never out of it. The things that I know now...well, there's no use postulating how anything could have been different were you to have been gifted with knowledge and foresight at the time. It was fun, awkward, hilarious, and often painful. It was everything it needed to be.

Standing in a place where one has stood countless times before and coming to it with fresh perspective and advanced knowledge always brings about the hovering question of what sorts of wisdom and understanding you'll someday bring to the table if you should chance to visit the places you frequent now. Imagining myself as a college freshman, ten years ago, and then imagining viewing my life as it currently is, ten years from now, does offer some pretty stultifying perspective in terms of what's important and what isn't.

And mostly what I wish I could have leaned over and whispered to myself all those years was this: It. Gets. Better. In every way. The challenges are new, the pain is deeper, the losses bigger, but monumentally life just gets better as it goes on. Especially when you're comparing the late teens/early twenties to the onset of thirty. My God. How I would never want to be 19 again. Honestly.

Which made me think, randomly, in this fashion: what is the best night of the week?

Normally, everyone says "Friday" or "Saturday." Some really energetic person might throw a "Sunday" out there, just to throw everyone off the game.

But the answer, at least in my mind, is Thursday. All of the really good stuff, Friday night, the weekend, an end in sight, etc. is still yet to come. There's still work ahead of you, for sure. But it's work you don't mind doing - this Friday work - because the end is so close you can taste it. Thursday nights have all of the relaxation of a weekend night, but on more dialed-down terms. It has anticipation. It's when you know the best is still yet to come, and you've come so far already.

Which got me thinking...I'm in the Thursday night of my life.

(This is all a truly meandering train of thought, I know, but this is where my mind goes when I'm doing things like writing all the time and running. Your brain just starts clicking in weird ways. Bear with it. Or...enjoy it. Who knows? I like to think it's some logical stretch but sometimes I say these things out loud and once they hit air, I find myself being gaped at with blank stares. Perhaps some things should just reside in my head.)

But, really. Thursday night. Work still yet to be done, but really good stuff ahead. Starting to put all of these lessons learned and experience gained into some kind of real-world context. I see my friends going through this, when all of the bullshit of their first terrible jobs, and their many terrible failed romantic encounters, and the cheap shoes and bad dates and sketchy decisions; all of that just sorts to fall away, and what takes its place is the fulfilling career, the hard work that feels more fruitful in the doing, the real relationships, the more solid decisions.

This is not, in any way, to say that mistakes don't still happen or things don't still fall apart. It's not to say that life becomes perfect after a certain age. I just see how the anxieties and uncertainties and things that fall through tend to fade away in time. And what takes its place is a calmer, more genuinely stable outlook and feeling. Confidence, perhaps, might be a way of looking at it. A belief that things will turn out the way that they should, eventually, and a faith and trust that everything that is happening is unfolding just as it should. A genuine belief that answers reveal themselves in time. Not a constant, panicked worry that because things aren't working out according to plan, total devastation is the only terrain left.

I guess that's the sweetest part of the whole deal. You get older and start to understand that what feels like complete and utter failure at the time, in retrospect turns out to be some bullet dodged or lesson learned that came in sweet handy at another juncture. You start to see how what feels like a missed opportunity maybe wasn't the best option, that wrong turns sometimes lead to the opening of very right doors, and that all of the twisting and turning was configuring you into something better and more satisfying. Perhaps that's an idealistic, optimistic way of looking at things. And, to be fair, there are some things that have happened in my life purely, I believe, to be fodder for some memoir later on down the road when I have twenty five years of distance from it. But, for the most part, I've seen more and more that things almost universally turn out the way they are supposed to, no matter how wrong or right it's felt at the time.

Maybe Thursday night is the anticipation that, regardless of what happens, this is the magic moment when you believe the best. When the experiences are still phantoms and hopeful ghosts and not yet concrete things that could be weighted with disappointment. There is no disappointment in anticipation.

Mostly, it's just a general appreciation for all that's happened and an excited anticipation of all that is yet to be. That's the Thursday night. That's the "Thursday Night" of your life.

Or maybe I just need to start keeping my thoughts confined to notebooks that don't see the light of day. It is possible I am simply becoming eccentric and slightly insane in my old age.

Writer's (Un)block

As part of "The Artist's Way," Julia Cameron suggests writing three pages a day- EVERY DAY- to get oneself "unblocked."

This is a dual-edged sword of the most excellent advice I have ever received and the worst.

Excellent because, she's right- you can't show up at a page every single day and write consistently and not start to feel things pouring out of you. Things you didn't know you felt, things you weren't aware existed in your psyche, old problems or funny stories or general bits of flotsam and jetsam floating around in your soul that would never otherwise see the light of day. It's kind of like this blog: some days, I show up here with absolutely no idea of what I'm going to write about. But the cursor is blinking, and there is some connection between some hidden corner of my brain and my fingers on the keys and things just come out. It is truly magic in a way only doing something you love to do can be magic. The creativity exists in you all of the time, as Cameron suggests. Sometimes it's just difficult to access it and learning to do this as a discipline takes finesse and dedication and a deep respect for otherwordly aspects that control your universe without you ever even knowing it. It's frightening, sometimes, what winds up surfacing. Frightening and freeing and ultimately gratifying.

This is the light, beautiful part of it.

Then there's the ugly side.

I AM SITTING DOWN TO WRITE MY THREE PAGES. I'M TIRED. I DON'T WANT TO WRITE. I HATE WRITING. WRITING IS STUPID. I HATE THIS PEN. I ALSO HATE THIS PAPER. I'M COLD. WRITING SUCKS. WRITING IS AWFUL. WHY WOULD ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT (write?) MIND EVER WANT TO BE A WRITER? THIS IS STUPID. I'M BORED. I WANT TO GO WATCH DVR EPISODES OF 'HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER.' I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE. I'VE ONLY FILLED UP A QUARTER OF A PAGE. I HATE THIS. JULIA CAMERON CAN SHOVE THREE PAGES UP HER ASS. I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE WRITING. IF I ADD MORE VOWELS IT TAKES UP MORE SPAAAAAAAAAACE AND THEN I DON'T HAVE TO WRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITE AS MUCH. THIS IS AWFUL. I WILL NEVER BE A GOOD WRITER IF I KEEP WRITING ABOUT HOW MUCH I HATE WRITING. I AM A TOTAL FAILURE. I'LL HAVE TO JUST GIVE UP WRITING AND NEVER WRITE ANYTHING AGAIN AND THEN I'LL BE MISERABLE AND ALONE AND HATE EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING BECAUSE I WILL HAVE NO CREATIVE OUTLET. I'LL BE ALONE WITH MY CATS AND MY NON-WRITING AND EVERYONE WILL HATE ME AND THE WHOLE WORLD WILL FALL APART ALL BECAUSE I HATE WRITING AND I SUCK AT IT. THIS IS NOT HELPING! THIS EXERCISE IS RENDERING ME HIGHLY DEPRESSED! I AM NOW AN ALONE FAILURE WHO CAN'T WRITE AND ALL I WAS AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS EXERCISE WAS COLD AND TIRED! THIS IS AWFUL! I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE! OH MY GOD I'VE ONLY FILLED A PAGE???????????????? MAYBE IF I WRITE BIGGER. I COULD WRITE A WHOLE BOOK IN 200 WORDS IF THE PRINT IS REALLY BIG. IT'LL BE GENIUS. THEY'LL CALL ME THE WUNDERKIND OF THE POST-MODERN LITERARY WORLD. THEY WILL REFER TO ME AS A 'BRIGHT YOUNG THING.' MY BOOK RELEASE PARTY IS GONG TO BE SWEET. I'LL DEFINITELY INVITE DAVID SEDARIS AND LAURIE NOTARO. STEPHEN KING WILL BEG FOR AN INVITE BUT I'LL TELL HIM ONLY IF THERE'S A LAST-MINUTE VACANCY AND ONLY IF HE REDACTS HALF OF HIS BOOK 'ON WRITING.' CHELSEA HANDLER WILL SHOW UP WITH KANYE WEST AND FLASH EVERYONE. IT WILL BE THE PARTY OF THE CENTURY. I WONDER IF I CAN GET SAMANTHA RONSON TO DJ. I HOPE THAT MEANS LINDSAY LOHAN WILL SHOW UP LOOKING LIKE A TRAIN WRECK. MY SECOND BOOK WILL BE ONE WORD PER PAGE AND I WILL WIN THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE FOR MY CHALLENGING OF STRUCTURE AND STYLE AND UPHOLDING OF CREATIVITY AND OWNERSHIP OF ONE'S ART. JONATHAN FRANZEN WILL WRING HIS HANDS WONDERING WHY HE WASTED SO MANY THOUSANDS OF WORDS AND PAGES WHEN HE COULD HAVE WRITTEN A 200-WORD BOOK AND SPENT THE REST OF THE YEAR ON VACATION. THE NEW YORK TIMES WILL FIRST HATE IT THEN ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. THE HUFFINGTON POST WILL ASK ME TO WRITE 20-WORD COLUMNS EVERY WEEK ON THE TOPIC OF MY CHOICE. I'LL HAVE AN APARTMENT IN THE VILLAGE, A BEACH HOUSE IN THE HAMPDENS, A STUDIO IN BALTIMORE, AND A SMALL FLAT IN LONDON. THE CATS WILL TRAVEL WITH ME AT ALL TIMES. THE WEEPIES WILL WRITE A SONG ABOUT ME. ME AND MY 200-WORD NOVEL. AMAZING. WOW- THE CREATIVE PROCESS REALLY WORKS! THIS IS ALMOST AS GOOD AS AN OUTLINE!

Really? REALLY??

Oh, GWB.

I caught some snippets of your interview with Matt Lauer (insert weird, inexplicable celebrity crush sigh here) this morning on NPR. And, along with the rest of most of society, I damn near stabbed myself in the sinus cavity with my toothbrush when you said that Kanye West's comment ("George Bush doesn't care about black people") was one of the worst days of your Presidency.

I feel for you, man; I really do.

No, actually, I don't. I'm totally lying.

You stood by and watched while thousands of people lost their homes, their sense of safety and security, and every shred of a right to the pursuit of happiness in a domestic national disaster that was one of the worst in documented history. You shrugged your shoulders and "Boy, is my face red!"-ed your way all over the press when it was revealed that not only were there no WMD's in existence in Iraq, but perhaps further documentation that perhaps this information was readily available to you much earlier then you let on. You sat there, shell-shocked and most likely leaking some sort of bodily fluid in front of a classroom of kindergartners when someone whispered in your ear the the US had just been the victim of a series of heinous, shocking, and axiom-shattering terrorist attacks. And these are only the big-ticket news items.

But yet you, strutting around claiming that the Lord has saved you and that you will do good in His name for the rest of your life, called someone's attack on your personal character "one of the worst days" of your Presidency. You can crush much of the middle class under your cowbooted heel with the power of policy, grind out entire lower-income neighborhoods after a hurricane with one sweeping gesture of highly inappropriate ennui, and you can point your finger and declare war and chase after imaginary WMD while families of 9-11 victims wring their hands and wonder how everything got suddenly so very frighteningly out of control. You can do all of these things and take criticism and deflect accusations, but GOD FORBID someone point out an aspect of your personal character in a way you find offensive. That, GWB, is apparently where your line of reason gets crossed.

Oh, really? Is it now? THAT was one of the worst days of your Presidency?

How DO you keep the inside of that bell jar in which you reside free of your skunk-smell?

This Time, Baby, I'll Be Bulletproof

Oh, La Roux. You are so amazingly androgynous and fantastic. I love your music. I love your shiny coat. I love your pouf. Your pouf tells Snookie to go home, eat an entire package of Double-Stuf Oreos and cry herself to sleep for being the epitome of lame. Your pouf is like one giant, raging, exclamatory finger telling the world precisely what it can do with itself should it not immediately recognize and bow down to your greatness. Your humility and polite British accent then make us suspect that, deep down, you truly enjoy a cup of tea and a good crossword puzzle. Possibly you have a cat. Most likely you call your grandmother on a regular basis, just to catch up.
And then there's Far East Movement. Highly energetic, highly engaging, highly entertaining and....100% odd. Oh well, it works for them.

WEEKEND!

The first weekend in.................................... (insert ? here).........that I don't have plans, and already I have maxed out on plans.

Girls' Night Out tonight (which is slightly redundant, given that pretty much every weekend is Girls' Night Out, especially when Catalano's fiance is out of town), and then tomorrow I am locking myself up somewhere to churn out some writing. I have been terrible about this- and Stupid took me to task for it. I should have the next great American novel manuscript to her by Monday. I kid. I might draft a short story, or at the very least sit and stare at the screen for six hours like any normal tortured writer. And attempting to start The Artist's Way. It's completely intimidating (Write? For an HOUR? A DAY? EVERYDAY?) but I have no more excuses not to be flexing any creative muscle now that the marathon relay is well behind me.

However- if I do manage to make some creative headway, I am to be rewarded by going to see Due Date on Saturday night with Catalano.

Random note: Lee and I had an extensive conversation last weekend about the discouraging growth of one's thighs when training. You lose all this weight, it all becomes muscle, and then in the blink of an eye- you've got thighs like Lance Armstrong or, in my case- one of my biggest fears-a Williams sister. So you're uber healthy and can run crazy mileage and your resting heart rate is at a delightful low, but you've got killer thighs and your pants don't fit properly anymore. The non-fitting of pants ranks up there with Things That Can Utterly Ruin Your Day. Don't believe me? Dig out a pair of pants a size or two too small and see if you don't border on apoplectic throughout the day.

I digress.

Sunday- La Roux at Ram's Head with Nickle. I am so excited I can hardly contain myself, but slightly disparaged at the lack of wearable 80's threads in my closet.

Busy, happy little life of mine.

Urrrrrrrrr?

When someone texts you a simple question.......


("What kind of wine should I get- red or white?")



.....and you find yourself not only completely blanking on the answer but actually unable to understand the concept not only of the content (red vs. white- which do you prefer?) but the actual delivery and real-time action (someone is asking me a question- I should answer this question) to the point that all communication breaks down and you are literally staring, slack-jawed and blurry-eyed at your phone like primitive man with no idea how to respond. Should I hit the phone against my head? Light it on fire? Open it up like a Magic 8-ball to see if the answer is floating somewhere inside?................

...........you probably aren't getting enough R+R.

'Sall I'm sayin'.

Election Night Coverage Commentary

Politics. Only the important stuff:

"O'Malley's daughter is hot."

"His wife looks concerned. No- now she's happy. No, wait, concerned?"

"Where is this taking place in Federal Hill? I think I would notice a large crowd in the neighborhood. They have lighting rigged up. Where is this? The park? I didn't see anybody over there."

"She's got to be, what- 19? At least. She's really hot."

"Look at Elijah Cummings...what a happy man. He is totally wearing a shiny suit. He brought that out special."

"Or maybe I just think she's hot because her dad is powerful."

"Seriously- there are a LOT of people there. Where IS this?"

"That guy in the back comes into Metro. He's intense. He even looks intense."

"HOW SHORT IS BARBARA MIKULSKI?!"

"Maybe she looks that short because she's standing next to O'Malley? How tall is he, like 6 feet?"

"No way, O'Malley is like 5'10". Mikulski is like 4'8". She is a tiny, tiny woman."

"I often get attracted to girls who have power. Maybe she's not really that hot."

"Is this at the 8x10? Or AVAM? WHERE IS THIS TAKING PLACE? The news crew says 'Federal Hill,' but I'm IN Federal Hill and I do not see this giant crowd!"

"Stephanie Rawlings-Blake looks tired."

"Really? I think SRB is looking good."

"She's gorgeous. Too much make-up, though."

"Wake up, SRB! O'Malley is going to win!"

"Ehrlich is going down."

"WHERE IS THIS TAKING PLACE?"

"I mean, she looks pretty hot right now. If I didn't know her dad was O'Malley I'd probably still think that she's hot. I think."

"SRB might be coming down with the flu."

"HOW SHORT IS BARBARA MIKULSKI??"

"Wouldn't it be funny if this was taking place at Ropewalk? And ironic?"

"I love Elijah Cummings. He just looks so joyful. In his shiny suit."

"Do you think O'Malley's daughter is hot?"

"She's NINETEEN."

"So?"

"You're like....way older."

"So?"

"Is this at Ropewalk? No way they could fit that many people in there."

"I think it's a the Museum of Industry."

"That's not in Federal Hill. It's like...downtown."

"It is not, it's on Key Highway."

"SRB is so tired of standing there."

"Where is that phantom arm coming from?"

"I think O'Malley won."

"Oh, good."

"Awesome."

"SRB looks happier."

"Elijah Cummings looks shiny. And happy."

"O'Malley's daughter looks hot."

"Barbara Mikulski looks short."

"WHERE IS THIS BEING FILMED?"

Fin.

November Sets In

Sticky cider hands, smeared makeup, safety pins holding everything in place. Halloween comes every year, just as sure as it always has. Catalano posed the question; the question, the thing in the back of our minds constantly as we watch change happen around us and begin to understand that it's a tricky thing, time, in how it's just going, going, gone; "How old do you think we'll be when we stop going all out for Halloween?"

Never, I hope. The theater geek in me clings to this holiday as reason and purpose for keeping wigs, capes, stage makeup, and props in my possessions.

But still. There is something monumentally depressing about the detritus strewn about after Halloween.

Although, this does ultimately mean one thing:

HOLIDAY SEASON 2011 IS NEARLY HERE!