Happy Birthday

My mom's 60th birthday party was last night, and the affair was delicious, well-attended, and punch-y. Specifically, Fish House Punch-y. My aunt discovered that this Mad Men-era drink debuted in 1951, the year my mother was born. And, lemme tell you, while I am not a punch person per say; having abandoned all want for drinking large batches of sticky-sweet libations after an ill-fated jungle juice experience in college; this drink is nothing short of delicious. None too sweet, and lacking the cloying factor of most punches, this drink lives up to its name with the punch it packs.

The party was fantastic, and it was great to see so many people turn out to celebrate my mom's milestone birthday. Lots of family and old friends. A time for remembering the past and being thankful for birthdays; in her remarks right before she cut the cake, my mom said that while she can't believe she's turning 60, she's thankful for every birthday she's ever had because, hey, it beats the alternative.

Does it ever. My dad turned 60 two years ago in the midst of Snowmageddon, my mom is now entering this new decade, and I remember that I'm about six months away from leaving my twenties behind. I've had a number of friends already cross the threshold to the dirty thirty, and the process has seemed to afford mixed reviews. Some take it in stride, figuring nothing's really changed from 29 to 30 except what you punch into the treadmill at the gym. Some feel weighed down by the passing of time, perhaps even a few regrets about how that time might have been spent. But, for the most part, I think turning 30 is vastly different from turning 60, mostly because you're not yet realizing that the alternative becomes more and more apparent as you get older.

Turning 30 is fraught with social obligations and expectations, and a time to take stock of what your adult life is really going to look like. But turning 60 has afforded years of experience, and with that experience comes loss. Turning 60 is a time of gratitude and enjoyment, even if it's coupled with a little bit of disbelief. I think there's a learning experience in that.

I've never had any problems with my age, but I'll admit that I have some trepidation about 30. It just feels big. But my mom reminds me that it doesn't have to be - and isn't - bad. Change is good. And, quite frankly, there's a lot of things I'm not too upset to leave behind with my twenties.

Instead of focusing on what I don't have, or what hasn't happened, I think there's an opportunity here to celebrate, and to wish for the vain and spectacular hope that there will be many more big milestone birthdays to celebrate. Because how fantastic would it be to be 60, surrounded by family and friends who love you, who are present, who are celebrating your life with you?

Happy Birthday, Mom. Your grace in turning 60 is something to which I aspire. And when you turn 70, and 80, and 90, I only hope that we make bigger and bigger batches of Fish House Punch to celebrate.

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

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.

Zen Dentistry

I'm pretty sure I am the only person in the world who finds the dentist's chair a calming, Zen place to be.

I attribute this fact to my refined Welsh genes which gave me a slender nose, skin that freckles charmingly in the sun, and a mouthful of peasant horse teeth. My parents, to whom I am eternally grateful, nipped what could have been a snarling orthodontic nightmare early on. In my bank of very early memories, none of them exist without some form of orthodontia. Arch expanders, rubber bands, retainers, extractions, adjustments, cranks, braces, and all manner of plastic and metal hardware existed in my mouth at one point or another for the sole purpose of completely rearranging what nature intended to be overcrowded and chockablock. Eventually, the 18-point pile-up that might have occurred in the frontal region of my jaw was straightened and refined into the fetching smile I sport today. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for putting the orthodontist's kids through college!

But a secondary result of all of this tugging and straightening is that I feel quite at home parked back in a dentist's chair with people poking around in my mouth. I was pulled out of school on a monthly-and sometimes weekly, depending on the status of the hardware- basis for afternoon appointments that involved smocked technicians scratching and rummaging around in my face.

I had a dentist's appointment this week; the first in a long, long time. (Part of the deal of returning to the 9-5 workforce is what I now recognize as the luxury of health insurance that includes dental.) I mean, a LONG time. An amount of time that might make a dentist, say, suck in a mouthful of air in a dual reaction: "OhmyGodDISGUSTING" and "Ca-CHING; JACKPOT!"

Also because there had been a serious stretch of time since anyone had stuck pointy metal objects between my teeth, I think the dentist was under the impression that I had some sort of raging phobia about general dentistry and went quite out of his way to insure my comfort.

"Now, we're just going to do X-rays right now. JUST X-RAYS! This won't hurt AT ALL!" he assured me. I somehow made it through the horrifying and life-threatening procedure of photographing my teeth and was rewarded with a toothbrush. A PURPLE toothbrush! Because I am a brave little soldier.

I almost wonder if he was slightly disappointed that I was cavity-free. A perusal of my X-rays revealed a mouthful of strong, sturdy European choppers with five-foot long roots. (Which only furthered my somewhat pervasive fear that my teeth are, in fact, abnormally large and horsey.) No cavities! Good for you! You've been brushing your teeth sometimes! And maybe flossing on that one night a week you force yourself to go to bed at 10pm so you can get something close to 8 hours of sleep! Hooray, aces!

"I'm going to clean your teeth now," he said. Good. It was early in the AM and I had only had time for half a cup of coffee, so this meant I could settle back in the chair, open my mouth, close my eyes, and embark on a nice little snooze. No more questions to answer about my previous dental history. Have at it, good doctor, and wake me when you're done.

Except he seemed to be under the misapprehension that I was bordering on a giant freak-out.

"I'm just going to use the Water Pik," he explained. "This is NOT A DRILL! I promise!"

Ok, fine, use a fire hose for all I care. I'm closing my eyes now, mmmmkay? Night niiiiiiigghhht.........

"This won't hurt AT ALL," he went on. "It will make a sort of loud noise, but it's NOT GOING TO HURT!"

OK. I HEARD YOU. GO FOR IT.

"Are you ok?" he asked.

"Yep, just fine."

"You sure? This won't hurt," he said, again. At this point, I was starting to wonder if, perhaps, whatever he was planning to do was, in fact, going to hurt and this was his disclaimer ahead of time. Or something to convince me, mentally, that it WASN'T hurting, I only THOUGHT it was hurting. It couldn't possibly hurt because he told me so many times that it wouldn't! I was starting to doubt this, a tiny bit.

"I'm going to get started here in a second," he said. Awesome. Settle back. Eyes closey. Hands foldy. Sleepy sleepy time. I figured I could get in a good twenty minutes while he was scraping a few years' worth of artsy-I'm-only-waiting-tables-and-freelancing-until-my-book-deal-comes-through crud off of my newly-insured teeth before I had to get up and go to work.

It didn't hurt. At all. I was just dozing off when he stopped. "You still doing ok?"

Yes. I'm fine. My eyes are closed because I am sleeping. Not because I am trying to shut you-and, by proxy, this nightmarish situation in which you are squirting water onto my delicate, sensitive teeth- out of my mind. I am actually trying to doze off. Don't worry- I sleep with my mouth open all the time; this is no problem for me. Unattractive, perhaps, but utterly convenient for you.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.............

"Where did you say you went to school?"

I didn't. Say anything. Because I am TRYING TO TAKE A NAP! Now. Sleepy time.....

"All done!"

Wait, what? I barely closed my eyes!

"Now, that wasn't too bad, was it?"

Yes! Yes it was! I don't even think I actually fell asleep, I just got my eyes barely closed and you woke me up and now I'm awake again! I DID NOT GET A NAP. WHAT IS THE POINT OF THE DENTIST IF I AM NOT LEAVING WELL-RESTED?

"That's a difference now, huh?!"

Huh? What? I am cranky! You woke me from my nap! Actually, you did not wake me because I did not actually fall anything close to asleep, I barely even shut my---oh. Oh. OOoooooooohhhhhhhh.

My teeth are so..........slick. And my mouth is so.......minty fresh. It's actually quite...well, it's quite refreshing!

I left the dentist, swiping my tongue across my newly sparkling choppers, feeling the squeaky clean of a plaque-free mouth. And, to make up for my lack of nap, I rewarded myself with a triple shot skim latte.

So my mouth was clean for approximately seven minutes before I had coffee breath again.

Oh, well. Maybe if I'd gotten a nap....

OK, Ani DiFranco...

I swear to God there are days when I wake up, spill everything, can't decide what to wear, feel mad at everyone for making my life difficult and then wonder why no one ever hugs me, trip over everything and nothing, and why is that girl's hair so perfect and is that person talking about me and I just want to go home and write about everything in my journal and eat graham crackers and then watch "My So-Called Life" and....

.....I realize that I am stuck in a time warp and I am actually 16 again and maybe I should re-read "Reviving Ophelia" and blame all of my insecurities and temper tantrums on society....

At least I know, at the core, I could very well someday be a successful teen writer. I am a little too mentally connected to the target market at times.

Get Over Yourself.

(This is not an octopus.)

It pains me to admit it, but I've been wrong about some stuff lately.

For one thing, octopus have three hearts. Two hearts exist for the pumping of blood through each set of gills, and the third is for the rest of the octopus body. They work in concert with one another to get blood pumping through what is actually a fairly complex, and frighteningly intelligent animal. That appears to be a sack of Jell-O with snake arms.

I was convinced that the octopus is the only animal in the kingdom with triple hearts.

Convinced.

As it turns out.......I was wrong.

It was a crushing defeat; one I handled with neither grace nor dignity. I stomped my foot. I pounded my fist. I downed another beer. I stated my point, over and over again.

I'm pretty sure Apple should market a series of commercials about the fact that, in the digital age, most people are less than 15 seconds away from proving you wrong. A few buttons pushed (most of them mine,) a link up to some distant satellite, and BOOM--I'm wrong. Dead wrong.

Octopii do have 3 hearts. So do squid, cuttlefish, and nautiluses. All of which are counted as separate- but equally triple hearted- creatures.

I was wrong.

Swallowing your pride is not something that has ever come easily to me. Admitting wrong and accepting blame are so incredibly hard. It took me years upon years upon years just to say that maybe, perhaps, quite possibly, I am not a victim. Maybe sometimes I make decisions that are....less than wise.

The fact is that I usually assume that most decisions I make are stupid and fraught with failure. I am my harshest critic, as I'm sure most people are for themselves. I just don't always publicly admit this. I'll sling a whole lot of blame around before I'll realize that pointing a finger means at least three are pointed back at you. I had a high school teacher fond of that expression. I found that it also applies to more rude hand gestures as well.

The thing is- sometimes you have to take a huge step back when a situation is feeling fraught and you're feeling cornered. You have to take a step back, breathe, and before you begin listing faults and blame-gaming all over the place, you should probably first stake out what the caliber of ground is you're standing on. Because, 9 times out of 10, there's a good chance that ground is shifting depending on who's defining it.

That's not to say that I'm wrong all of the time. It's just that I somehow developed some sort of indefatigable self-righteousness somewhere along the line, believing I had it all figured out and that I had somehow risen to some enlightenment that perhaps other people hadn't quite reached yet. And the universe has a way of knocking you down a few pegs when this happens.

I think one of the hardest lessons to "embrace with grace" is how to accept responsibility, to figure out what you did wrong, and how, and why, and then figure out how to salvage the pieces and move on from there. It's not a pretty process. In fact, it can be downright humiliating, upsetting, and earth shattering.

But it's important. Because when you find yourself making the same mistakes again and again, sooner or later you have to come to terms with the idea that perhaps you should change up your game plan a little bit.

I was wrong about the octopus. Thankfully I hadn't staked any money on that one. But there are certain things in my life that I do put a lot of stake in, and I don't want to come up short. Stepping back, admitting blame, and uttering a well-timed mea culpa is possibly the only antidote to ultimate failure.

So...you know. I'm sorry. For the whole octopus thing. I was wrong. I should have fact-checked before I went spewing my inconclusive knowledge of the phyla Cephalopod. Only I don't think Cephalopods are a phyla. They're a class. And the difference between a class and a phyla is....I have no freaking clue. I was a dual Mass Comm/Theater major who squeaked through Bio 101.

Not that I'm making excuses.

GET OUT!

I'm calmly sipping my morning coffee, browsing the Internet and thinking about heading upstairs to put on my face and clothes for the day before heading to work, when I hear Al Roker screaming.

"Do you have a 20-something at home? Tell them to GET OUT!"

Images of weddings and homes are flashing on the screen, and Roker is still apoplectic.

"WHAT is taking these TWENTY-somethings SO LONG to GROW UP?" If his shirt wasn't choking him to death already, I'm sure the veins in his neck would be standing next to Meredith Veira. His head is extra shiny today.

Why is Roker so passionate about twenty-somethings "growing up?" Does he have a twenty-something at home?

Well, Roker, let's see. All those jobs promised to my generation after college? Gone. Our future? Contingent on how much money we can personally sock away since our social security will be all but gone. Our college education? Much more expensive than our parents anticipated, riddling us with student loan debt. Oh, and that Bachelors degree? Equivalent to a GED these days. Jobs are scarce, insurance policies are daunting, and the price of housing when we first graduated was obscene.

It's taking us so long to "grow up," Roker (according to your standards, which means getting married and buying a home, APPARENTLY) because our opportunities are limited. This wasn't the world we were promised. However bratty that might sound.

And I continue to argue with this point of what "growing up" actually is. I know many people, myself included, who don't own a home or are married, but who are financially independent and working up a career ladder. I'm sure Roker means the twenty-somethings that are living at home with Mom and Dad, but everyone is neglecting to point out the middle-ground of twenty-somethings. Yeah, we might wait until the 30s for marriage and home-buying, but that doesn't mean we're not grown up in some ways. I take issue with this gross generalization that if you're unmarried and unburdened with a mortgage, you're somehow "not grown up."

Of course, I agree that there is a degree of settling down that takes place when these things happen. And there is just as surely a sense of the temporary when you're working your way through your twenties and making decisions and figuring out your path. But to claim that we're all at home, sponging off of Mom and Dad, is ludicrous and unfair.

You annoy me, Roker.

What Is It About 20-Somethings?

A friend sent me this NYT article. Upon reading it, I felt equal parts comfort and despair. "Taking so long to grow up" is synonymous with "finding oneself" and "experiencing growing pains." I chalk this up to our educational foundations, which built on the 70's hippie-ideal of "you can be whatever you want to be!" This is as limiting as it is freeing. Well, ok then, so who is it I want to be?

But it's also not fair. I know some adults in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond who change careers, find confusion and unease with where they are, and who eschew traditionalism. Perhaps in their twenties it wasn't as commonly acceptable to "take so long to grow up," but where did early decision-making leave them if not, ultimately, just as confused as we are? Sure, they might have chosen the things that Henig deems "milestones" (the long-term commitments to love, career, and home) but I don't find that this in any way guarantees future happiness.

While it might be labelled a social phenomenon and one that certainly questions our ideas of adulthood and growing up, I don't think it's fair to claim that this means 20-somethings are "taking so long to grow up." With life expectancies longer, in a society of relative wealth and opportunity (take a look around- despite what the stock market claims, we still have a great deal of freedom that gets taken for granted) the focus on the individual has bred this mindset of "finding oneself" in order to become a productive member of society. But, to my knowledge, this is nothing new. It just means that we've recognized that in the course of "finding onself," perhaps it's not the best idea to get overly tied down to these "milestone" commitments. The jury is out on what the long-term implications will be, sure, but I'm not convinced that any of this is anything new. It's just more socially-recognized.

Interesting article, either way.

The Things That Make You Happy

Graffiti found written on bathroom stall, Charles Theater, Mt. Vernon.

Over the last six or so months as my life has been rolling through a series of changes, so too has this space experienced some growing pains.

The New Glitterati started out as a Kvetching Ground. It was a fertile space I could fill with creative comparisons, expletives, exploits, comical happenings, and, let's face it, there was a time in my life where it served as a dumping ground. For those of you who have been reading since Day One (and I love you for that), you've borne witness to those late nights and bad decisions, bad dates and serious musings.

But, as things began to change for me, the center couldn't hold. My perspectives of life, and subsequently my views of the world and my place in it, have changed and it no longer felt right to me to have this space continue to exist as it was before. The result was six months of staggered postings, some only photos with quotes, some vague hints, some deeper musings. It's taken me awhile to figure out what my vision for The New Glitterati ultimately is, and how it could fit with the Me that has somehow, in these awkward, beautiful, graceful, and sometimes broken and faulty processes, emerged.

Unfortunately, in this process, I've lost the bulk of my readership, who no longer tuned in once the gossipy melodrama dried up and The New Glitterati lost its voice for a little while. My apologies for that, but in retrospect I simply don't know how I could have handled it any better. I kept the domain name and the space with the hope that, eventually, I would find some way of orchestrating it better and moving forward.

After a great deal of thinking, brainstorming, musing, and researching I've finally decided how I could continue to make this space work FOR us both (me as The New Glitterati, you as The New Glitterati Die-Hard Fan still reading!)

I started to think of this site less as a barstool upon which I perch myself to bitch about life, and more like a squashy beanbag chair in a sunny corner. Next to a plant. And a small, round cafe table with a large, steaming cup of coffee and an oversized cookie. A blanket if you get chilly. A book waiting to be read, lying open and welcome on the chair. I've started to view this place, again, as escape; only not a place where I can unload. Rather, a place where I can find myself again.

The New Glitterati is shifting, and my goal is to make it a place of warmth, inspiration and, above all, happiness. I've learned that much of the reality of this world is heavily subjective to viewpoint. TNG can be that hope, that optimism. It's a place for quotes, for pictures of things that make me happy, for moments of joy in my day. And a place that I hope, on some level, you will find that inspiration and happiness too.

My goal is to be more diligent about posting, yes, but also to start to shift the focus of this blog away from Kvetch and more solidly into the realm of....ugh, how can I put this without sounding oh-so-very-Oprah--I can't, ok, FINE...into the realm of the best life. The life where happiness is still a glass of wine that's probably a bit too heavily poured, an ice cream cone eaten on the couch while watching a rom com, where quotes and meditations and long runs and yoga bring as much satisfaction as a good old vodka session used to.

My attempt isn't to make this some New Age-ey Love-In. It might feel that way sometimes, though. Bear with me, Glitteratis.

The snark is still there, but I intend to wield it more carefully as a tool as opposed to a weapon. ("Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right," -Ani DiFranco.) We can still have our laughs, readers, just perhaps not always at my expense.

To begin: an article from Alternet.org that lists ten things that Science (Facts! Statistics! Control Groups!) says will make us Happy. Read article for further details and examples, but here they are:

1. Savor everyday moments.
2. Avoid comparisons.
3. Put money low on the list.
4. Have meaningful goals.
5. Take initiative at work.
6. Make friends, treasure family.
7. Smile, even when you don't feel like it.
8. Say 'thank you' like you mean it.
9. Get out and exercise.
10. Give it away! (Altruism.)

It's true. All of it. It won't change the way you look, the amount of money you have, whether or not people actually like you, or make your car run better or your whites whiter and brights brighter. But it will make this world an easier place in which to live. It will offer you a focal point in moments of stress. These things offer perspective, and perspective (I've found) is the key to more fully understanding situations and making the best of things.

So, let's start here. Let's start with #1. Savor everyday moments. And let's work our way down the list, Glitteratis. Let's build some happiness. My goal is to address each of these 10 items as a weekly theme, so to speak. There will be other posts, of course, but one big one each week corresponding to these items. This gives us a starting point from which we can move forward and see how this space adapts in the process. Your feedback is welcome and appreciated.

Not Zen.

Snap and I used to keep a running list of all things "Not Fashion." Like- all-white sneakers. Acid-wash jeans (although Urban Outfitters seems intent on bringing those back.) Scrunchies. "Not Fashion."

Recently, having made leaps and bounds in my personal goals, I have been desperately trying to cultivate the sense of inner peace that's grown in all of these accomplishments. Part of my outlook for 2010 was to treat everyone as worthy, to be as sincere as possible, and to step outside of my own little box of self-contained trouble and attempt to not sweat the small stuff. Focusing on kindness towards others is an excellent way to not freak out internally about stupid crap.

But then Life creeps up on me, and I backslide, and I have these moments that I am now calling "Not Zen."

As in: the sheer opposite of Zen.

As in: everything else shrinks and my personal problem becomes larger than the universe and has to be dealt with RIGHT NOW.

This happens in a number of places: traffic, the grocery store, waiting tables. My patience gets stretched to thin threads threatening to snap.

A few weeks ago, I made a mistake at work. I forgot to ring in an order. It happens. I apologized, I did everything I could to make the situation right, and the ornery guest whose order had been forgotten (rather than accepting my blunder and genuine apology) rolled her eyes at me and slammed her silverware around on the table. Her decidedly "Not Zen" reaction created in me an equally "Not Zen" disdain and a frighteningly strong "Not Even Close To Being Peaceful" urge to inflict bodily harm. I had visions of flipping the table, plates and glasses going everywhere, while I instructed the guest precisely what physical action she could take with herself.

I did not do this.

Instead, I gave myself a time out. I walked away and went upstairs and cleaned glasses or something until I could breathe normally again.

I am reminded I am human when things like this happen. That I am not nearly the calm, peaceful person I aspire to be at times. Yes, I have gotten better. What makes me flip my shit at 28 is certainly light years beyond what could set me off at 19, 22, 25. But it still happens. And it becomes frightening to me how quickly I can enrage over the slightest thing.

Today it was the air conditioner.

I am frantically attempting to balance multiple things in my life right now: starting a new job next week, tying up loose ends, packing for this weekend's trip to the beach (which was supposed to be a relaxing, fun weekend away but is starting to feel frantic, hectic, and stressful.)

I was in the midst of said packing, after a day of running errands and getting ready to leave tomorrow, when Whack came upstairs to inform me that the air conditioner was leaking.

You would have thought she told me that someone had murdered my cats.

I just completely lost it. Thinking about calling an AC repair person (because between Whack and I we have this extensive knowledge of AC units: they turn on and off) on a holiday weekend, waiting for him/her (you never know) to come out, living in a row house in July with no AC, worrying about the pets, possibly having to postpone my beach trip to wait for said repair person, worrying about fronting the cost, worrying that wires would short and the house would explode, and then not being able to call a "Time Out" for myself because I was in a hurry and this needed to be addressed Immediately.

I did the two things I always do when something breaks down, blows up, or (in this case) begins emitting mysterious water: called male friends who know things about machines, and Googled.

Meanwhile, I bitched to Whack about the situation. OF COURSE this happens at 5pm on a Friday on a holiday weekend. OF COURSE this needs to be addressed, and OF COURSE it happens when I'm trying to get my act together to get out of town.

Because, you know, I am the victim here. The underlying thought was: OF COURSE this is happening...to me. Like my air conditioning unit and the universe conspired to push me over the edge. Because, you know, everything revolves around me.

This is what happens in these "Not Zen" moments. I become so utterly self-absorbed that I am actually convinced that this is not something stupid or awful that is happening because of a series of random coincidences, it is happening TO ME. Losing your Zen is losing your perspective.

After a lot of freaking out, a lot of confused advice from patient male friends trying to get a grasp on the situation while I am commencing said freak-out, and a lot of Googling it appeared that there is a magic equation for sweating AC ducts in your laundry room.

When you do four loads of laundry, as Whack and I did today, it causes humidity. When you close the door to the laundry room, the chilly cool air ducts coming out of the air conditioner sweat in the humidity like a whore in church.

Solution: turn off the dryer and the AC. Open the windows. Let things dry off.

Such a simple answer to what, moments ago, spelled disaster in my mind.

These things trip me up. I get frazzled and stressed and caught up in MY world that when the real world interrupts, it's viewed as this incredibly violating thing. "Not Zen" moments are still things I just have no idea how to circumvent or deal with, and although my tendency to fly off the handle has gotten somewhat under control the past few years, it still happens.

At least I didn't throw anything this time, like the epic "Not Zen" episode of 2005 when I spilled a bottle of champagne on my laptop while I was finishing a final paper for the first year of my Masters. My ex tells me he still cites this "Not Zen" moment in his stand-up comedy shows. Rightfully so. It was beyond "Not Zen." It bordered on "Psychotic Freak-Out."

Those are fewer and further between, thankfully.

But still. "Not Zen." Not good.

Change Them Yourself

They say time changes things, but you actually have to change them for yourself.
-Andy Warhol

Two Months Later

I've not written a whole lot about New Orleans lately, mostly because I had so many things percolating in my mind that I needed to give the entire thing some space and time before extrapolating anything of value.

The question that has been repeated to me, by others and myself, is "What did you get out of the situation?" And, at first, the answers were fast and many, disorganized and scattered thoughts and rage about social injustice, and feelings of inspiration and hope.

Two months later, I feel I've come up with some sort of generalized, definitive answer which also addresses the question: "Why did you go in the first place?"

The past few years have been quite scattered ones for me, as evidenced by this blog, and a period of a lot of questioning and "figuring things out." Seeking to do something like volunteer for a week in New Orleans sort of didn't make sense at the time; rather it was something that called out to me during a period of time when I was seeking direction, and I jumped on the opportunity. It wasn't what I had in mind for a transformative experience, and it certainly was never something I c\would have dreamed up on my own.

I couldn't even have articulated what it was I was seeking at the time, or to what gain, only that my heart was open and inquisitive.

And what it found was this: seeing how big, complex, and unpredictable the world is showed me what things I can and cannot control in my own life. Far from feeling stultified and helpless, it led me to feel proactive. Releasing my worries about what's out of my hands and staking a claim on what I CAN manipulate and alter (primarily my attitude towards life in general) opened up a new world for me.

For the first time in my life, I realized that happiness is not something that falls out of the sky or is waiting behind the right door. It's a choice. It's an active choice, it's a constant choice, and it's mine.

For the first time, I choose happiness and while it's constantly threatened (by things like complicated job issues, money worries, and tense interpersonal relationships, to name a few), I find that consistently choosing happiness over time leads to more happiness. The choice becomes more instinctual. I choose it over defensiveness, self-centeredness, pessimism, fear, doubt, and a host of things that kept me in the dark for so long.

So many things are out of my control. But this one thing I can have power over. And it's life-changing. Cancer patients choose it and it can improve their chances of remission. Athletes choose it and performance improves. And victims of disasters, both natural and man-made, choose it and find new means of coping.

Happiness, in my mind, is synonymous with hope, with humor, and with the genuine and concrete belief that things happen for reasons, and that those reasons are ultimately good.

I don't know why this never occurred to me before. I suppose, like anything else, it was a lesson to be learned. A hard lesson, to be sure, but with sweet, sweet results.

How did this come about? Because for every story of devastation and destruction, every horrible tale of dead bodies and loss and damage, there were gleaming little stories of hope, humor, and happiness.

I see how cataclysmic events lead to life-altering things like artistic reactions, volunteers, hope, hard work, and a call for re-structure. I see the cause-and-effect of negative occurrences and how the best reaction is its opposite- positivity. Because then you can't separate the negative and positive because one couldn't have happened without the other. So, ultimately, the negative becomes in itself a positive thing. Propelling you forward. Moving on.

Please do not misunderstand and think for a moment that I am selfishly capitalizing on the suffering and misfortune of others. I cannot, for an instant, downplay or trivialize the horrible, horrible things that happen in this world. I am simply pointing out that my experiences led me to a new way of viewing the world.

Happiness is a choice. It's a lens through which you view the world. It's not a job, or a car, or a relationship, or money, or any of the trappings of our lives. It's an attitude. It's how you receive all of these things. And if you're waiting for any one of those to bring you the clarity or buoyancy you crave, you will undoubtedly be disappointed.

I'm letting all of these things marinate and watching as fantastic little moments unfold in my life. The world is such an easier place in which to live when I'm not being defensive, "Why me," or shouldering the negativity I was carrying around for so long. That's not to say I don't have bad days or misfortune like everyone else, just that I know that these things are transitory, and their long-lasting effects depend primarily on how I choose to let them effect me. I am in control here, for the first time, of what I CAN control. And the things that I can't? I let them go.

I couldn't have asked for a better life-changing experience, and my gratitude is immeasurable.

Not Content

for Spano

I'm not content to believe that this is all there is.

I'm not comfortable in the reality that my brain has stretched as far as it can go, that I have discovered all of the things I need to discover, or that the perspective of the world I currently hold is one I could sit peacefully with for a lifetime.

I'm not copacetic enough to believe that I've found anything even remotely like faith, except to say I have faith that someday I will have faith, in something. An idea, maybe, or a way of living. Most likely not a doctrine or any antiquated idea. But then, who knows?

I don't believe that I have yet found my calling, or my place in this world. I also don't believe that it will fit neatly into any predetermined square. I believe I will have to carve out a life for myself amongst the far stretches of what other people deem to be "normal" or "anticipated," and that I'll carry pieces of this life from far corners of reality to assemble my own reality.

I don't believe I have made peace with any of these things, so anxious am I to have all of the answers right now.

I don't believe that the best of me has yet surfaced. I don't know if it's hidden somewhere within, waiting to bubble up sometime around my thirty first birthday to surprise me just when I'd come to grips with the idea that all hope was lost. Or maybe it's out there, somewhere, and it will become my mission to find it, to coax it inside.

"What if all of our dreams had come true by 28? What, then, would we do to fill the next fifty years?"

I'm not content to believe this is all there is, but I am content to believe it isn't.

Crash Course

I imagine that, someday, I'll look back on all of this as some intense, accelerated crash course on life. That the answers will come and I will finally find a way to be at peace with myself.
But, for now, I struggle through blindly, ignoring intuition and hoping for miracles the way I'm sure everyone does at one point or another.