Stop!

Don't get in the way of your own life. Stop the self-sabotage. Stop the fear, the lack of confidence, the hatred, the anxiety, the laziness, the apathy, the weariness, the sense of entitlement, the ignorance, the procrastination, the excuses.

Stop.

My Playground

There are certain movies that are difficult for me to watch as an adult, despite my immense love for them, because they remind me too much of the childhood dreams that have fallen to the wayside. A League of Their Own is one of those films.

Jimmy Dugan: Taking a little day trip?
Dottie Hinson: No, Bob and I are driving home. To Oregon.
Jimmy Dugan: [long pause] You know, I really thought you were a ballplayer.
Dottie Hinson: Well, you were wrong.
Jimmy Dugan: Was I?
Dottie Hinson: Yeah. It is only a game, Jimmy. It's only a game, and, and, I don't need this. I have Bob; I don't need this. At all.
Jimmy Dugan: I, I gave away five years at the end my career to drink. Five years. And now there isn't anything I wouldn't give to get back any one day of it.
Dottie Hinson: Well, we're different.
Jimmy Dugan: Shit, Dottie, if you want to go back to Oregon and make a hundred babies, great, I'm in no position to tell anyone how to live. But sneaking out like this, quitting, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It's what lights you up, you can't deny that.
Dottie Hinson: It just got too hard.
Jimmy Dugan: It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great.

Blah

At the moment, I'm that person...the one who's completely apathetic about politics...who doesn't watch the conventions or get into debates about the candidates. I just can't care anymore because it's true: you can't trust anyone. Why? No matter how awesome a politician may seem, he or she is still a person, subject to all of the failures and weaknesses of any other person, and well, I've met a good number of people in my life and every single person I've ever met is a fuck up in some way. I don't want my government to be run by people; I want it to be run by gods and goddesses, heroes and paladins. But it's never going to happen. Tomorrow, next week, next month, I'll return to my normal sense of realism...my devotion to selecting the lesser of however many evils, my hope in humanity, my drive to champion the democratic process and the importance of the involvement of every single citizen. But right now? Right now I'm that person who just says do whatever the fuck you want with my country because no matter what, life is going to be hard.

On Loneliness

We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.
-Orson Welles

Because of man's sin, he is separated from God and separated from other men, created a remarkable sense of loneliness and isolation within each individual. My thought on loneliness:

Loneliness is unbearable because it is the most unoriginal sentiment. Every other human being to walk the earth has felt a complete disconnect from the rest of mankind. This is frustrating, not only because we are incapable of bonding over our shared feelings of solitude, but also because we can find no uniqueness or special quality about ourselves within this feeling of seclusion.

Cheers, Darling

As I wrote my 8th grade graduation speech, this is the song that resonated in my head.

So I want to dedicate this to Matt Trotter, who died today. I want to dedicate this to all of my friends I've left behind, to all of the people who've left me behind. This is to forgotten memories, stupid jokes, adolescence and hormones and impending senses of loss. This is to diving in blindly and hurtling along, eyes wide-open. I dedicate this to neediness and fear of change and longing and boldness and willingness to change and the fact that none of these things is mutually exclusive.

I dedicate this to road trips and betrayals and regret and imagined-kisses and true life hugs and tears not ignored. Here's to the boys and girls who held my hand when it didn't seem to matter and who've helped me be who I am today. Here's to the people who have taken the wrong path and made the wrong decisions and to those who made the grayest choices when black and white didn't make sense. To war and arguments and sex and marriage and ceremonial robes and certificates and paychecks and airplanes and blindness.

Sometimes you can sense the storm coming, but you can never sense whether or not you're going to come out of that storm okay.

Bombs Over Baghdad

Five years ago, on this day, I had dinner with the family of my boyfriend at the time. When dinner was over, I found myself standing behind his father - an intimidating man: doctor, quiet, serious, as Southern as you get - who was quietly watching the news. We watched the coverage in silence as the bombings began. My boyfriend entered. "They've started bombing Iraq," I replied to his questioning. It was my spring break.

After 9/11, I knew the government (even many of the American people) would be out for blood. I even mentioned as much in an angry editorial I wrote in the school paper, which was written in response to the indifference and the joking of many of my peers. "When your family and your friends start going off to war, you'll start to care," I warned. I didn't think that this would be that war.

As I listened to the news commentary that night and looked at President Bush's face, I honestly believed it would be over in just a few months, a blip in our history like the bombings sanctioned by Clinton or our little tussle with Kosovo. But here we are in 2008...thousands of lives later, billions (trillions?) of dollars later...wondering when it's going to end.

All I can do is look at a list of the casualties from the war, read their names, look at their ages, see where they come from...and wonder how many people are crying harder than I am, because this war is more real to them than it can ever be for me.

Sometimes, I'm Unwell

Rob Thomas wears a t-shirt, with "Love Me" haphazardly written across the chest, while singing about temporary insanity.

I once stood in the middle of a road screaming to a newly-ex-boyfriend. "I hate you so much right now!" (I can think of maybe 3 other instances in my life when I've raised my voice in anger at someone...and no other instance in my life when I've used the "h" word in any non-playful way towards a person.)

"Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane." -Henry Miller

A certain pleasure can be found from moments of madness. Liberating oneself from one's own sense of normality can be enlightening and refreshing. It breaks up the monotony of life and awakens emotions that might otherwise have been ignored or eternally repressed. It can boost creativity and create a new appreciation for life's intricacies. Most importantly, it helps exercise all of the mental and spiritual muscles one needs in order to feel.

An Experiment in Unavailability: Day 4

This previous Friday, I was using the restroom in a lovely Jamaican restaurant/bar, when I decided to place my cell phone on top of the toilet tank in an effort to prevent it from falling out of my pocket and onto the floor. Unfortunately, my chosen surface was slightly slanted and not flat as I had previously assumed, and as soon as the toilet was done flushing, my cell phone went sliding into the white, water-filled bowl.

I immediately fished it out (and then immediately washed my hands). While my cell phone remained lit momentarily, the screen soon turned off, followed by the key pad. Despite my efforts over the next couple of days, I was unable to generate any sort of response from it after that.

Seeing as how cell phones are expensive and I am, for all intensive purposes, broke, it became clear that I would have to do without a cell phone until my next paycheck, which arrives in 2 days. I have gone ahead and ordered a cell phone which will hopefully arrive by the end of the week, but before then, I will include some anecdotes from my adventures in unavailability.

No Day But Today

Procrastination is a lot like masturbation: it's a lot of fun until you realize that you just screwed yourself.

I am notorious for my tendency to procrastinate. It has been a lifelong disorder, that when I was younger, had minimal consequences. I managed to do my work well enough to get by okay and often, as many do, found that the urgency of a fast approaching deadline caused me to create work of a relatively high quality. But one often wonders, "What if you approached that work with urgency from day one?"

Part of the problem is that it is easy to get burned out on a project...to quickly lose all affection for it: whether it be a writing project, a cleaning project, a science project, etc. But work, even artistic work, is called work for a reason. It is not easy and it should not necessarily be easy.

What do you want to accomplish in life? Start working on it now! The thing about life is that you don't know when your deadline is. You don't know when it is too late. I am not making a New Year's Resolution. That seems like a guarantee of future failure. No...but I am working daily to begin to live life with a new sense of urgency. I must assume that opportunities will no longer fall into my lap. I must not let those opportunities that do appear, pass me by.

This is an emergency. This need to live the life I want to live is a present need and should not be a dream or a wish. And I will proceed day by day with this knowledge in my heart.

Go boldly in the directions of your dreams; live the life you have imagined. -Henry David Thoreau

Once Upon a December

I like to measure my life in Decembers. It's a hard month. It's cold in a way that the other winter months aren't. By February, the cold is purely physical, it's annoyance, it's scarves and coats held tight, a distaste with hot chocolate after months of imbibing warm drinks to counteract the low temperatures.

But December feels fresh. The outside cold is still sort of new and can invigorate. The hot chocolate tastes like happy memories. The chai tastes like family and friends and the sudden steaming up of your glasses when you walk into a warm coffee shop after walking for blocks in the cold.

But the December cold goes deeper than the temperature outside. The coldest part of December is the remembrance of another year gone by. It's facing all of the things you've fucked up, acknowledged that you've changed in a lot of ways that you shouldn't have, and haven't changed in a lot of ways that you should have. December is the month of introspection, self-reflection - internal combustion.

My best love stories begin in the chill of December - under blankets, beside ice covered cars, in front of fire places, inside of crowded movie theatres; memories of window sills and hookah bars and road trips and love letters and lame bars. My worst love stories begin in December.

So, here it is: December 2007. A year ago, writing out 2007 felt so amazing. The number seemed to teem with positive energy and hope and promises of fantasticness. It of course turned into just another year and this is yet another December, full of emotional tidal waves catalyzed by memories, twinges of regret, moments of fear...hope for the upcoming year...anxiety over what the remainder of this year has in store for me.

And there's nothing more to say. I have a case of the Decembers. It is neither good nor bad. I'm not depressed or overly excited. I am pensive. And by the time I get anywhere with my thoughts, draw any conclusions about my past or future, the new year arrives and I realize once again that there are no conclusions...