Don't you wish you could be in your bathrobe at noon?

This morning, the brand new used coffee maker I bought yesterday at Goodwill kicked off at 7am. T’s alarm started going off soon after, every five minutes. At 9am, the jackhammer started. I think the universe was trying to tell me something.

Yesterday I spent all day feeling guilty that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing. I’m not good at getting things done when I don’t have that much to do and I’m working with vague deadlines. I need pressure, a deadline, fear of God or something like that to get things done.

I ended up torturing myself most of the day until the afternoon, when I said to myself. Self, if you’re not going to do it, just don’t do it. Why do you gotta be a martyr about it? Why don’t you just do whatever you want all the time?

Whatever I want all the time is my prime motivation in life. When I grow up, I want to be able to do that. Flow easily through most things, have sparkles come out of my fingertips and leave a trail of pretty flowers and magic blooming in my wake, like in Fern Gully when the forest starts healing itself or some shit.

I think the only thing that’s really blocking me is my thoughts. My thoughts tell me I have to be really awesome and amazing and smart and beautiful to do anything. It says I can’t to anything I want until I do all the things I have to do, like becoming really awesome and amazing and smart and beautiful.

But I have found a solution! Shut those thoughts down! Just stop thinking them. Just think… I’m thinking evil thoughts.. don’t think about that anymore! Think about what’s for dinner and what delicious cocktails you will make and listen to some music and dance around.

Yesterday, after I killed those thoughts, I went to the farmer’s market, got a coffee maker, found some cheese, made some delicious dinner that was lit by candlelight, made some muffins, and listened to music. It was fuckin’ bad ass. Life is more fun if you’re not berating yourself in your head and feeling guilty all the time.

And I’m starting to realize that if I just shut up those thoughts in my head pressuring me to be really cool and awesome (and successful and rich and popular), I can finally have the breathing room to be really cool and awesome, because that’s what I am naturally. COOL AND AWESOME. And hot. Yeah.

Also, I’m starting a salon (not like hair, like intellectuals and booze), because I want to feel like I’m in France all the time. ALL THE TIME. If you miss living in Europe you may know what I’m talking about: late nights, consuming things that are bad for you, long walks, and philosophical conversations over 3-6 hour drinking and eating sessions. It’s going to be fun and you wish you could be part of it.

drawing by Dylan Taylor

Sometimes I’m unreasonable. I don’t think it’s anything to apologize for, until I feel like an asshole and I didn’t mean it. I’m just existing in my universe and you in yours and they sometimes clash. Like when I buy you coffee that I’m going to drink half of and then I show up and you’re not there and I have to wait like, two whole minutes for you to get there. Don’t you know you’re ruining my whole day? And I’m so angelic I brought you coffee. And where were you? Getting coffee? Oh I see how it is. No, now you can’t have the coffee I brought you, even though it tastes more delicious and I’ll never be able to take these 4 espresso shots.

When I get like this I try to step back. Maybe it’s not as big a deal as I feel it should be.

Maybe I do this a lot and don’t even know it. Like everyday, almost every time I’m annoyed.

I hate waking up. I don’t think I was built for it. I was meant to snuggle in bed until the warm sun and a light breeze gently rouse me from consciousness and I jump out of bed singing and laughing. This hardly ever happens because I live in a basement, and so each morning I have to pry myself out of bed with the motivational fear that if I don’t get up right at this second, my world will collapse and I’ll be late and get fired and ugh I’m such a horrible lazy person and I’ll never hold down a job. Then I start making up excuses for why I was late… I was sick, it’s too much for me. How do people do this whole getting up and working thing? I’m really bad at it. Oh I’m such a lazy incompetent person, all I want to do is frolic all day and be independently wealthy (read: rich enough to not work and do whatever I want all the time).

It’s not a good way to start the morning.

When I was in high school I had to get up at 6:45am every day to go to school. Did I like it? Of course not. Would I have rather slept in? Hell yes. But I had to go to school, and I didn’t blame it on society or the way the world worked or the country I was unfortunate enough to live in; it was just the way it was and I had to get my ass out of bed, no matter how late I stayed up.

But now it turns into a mental tirade about how I’m just not cut out for this life and there must be another way, but oh I’m a lazy piece of shit and I’ll never amount to anything. Back and forth between self-righteousness and self-hatred. That’s where I seem to live.

To have expectations is to have disappointment. I always all into this trap. Can I be ambitious if my ambition is to be ambitionless? Am I the problem with kids these days? I can’t do anything but I could do anything, given the perfect circumstances. Are my constant existential crises a sign of my overwhelming intelligence and superiority over 90% of the normals, or just the stubborn spoiled sensibility of an over educated wannabe artist who isn’t ready do give up her dream of a perfect life where she can do whatever she wants all the time?

Why do we have to do stuff we don’t want to all the time? Why is it so hard to just survive?

Why do I argue myself out of every plan I make? Everything is impossible or not good enough. Am I alone in this thinking? Or are there others like me too? If you are like this, don’t tell me. I probably wouldn’t like you, and if we had a conversation I’d try to get you to see the error of your ways, convince you to be more optimistic and less whiny, work harder and stop being so wishy-washy, and then avoid your calls and emails because I don’t want to talk to you.

Life may be a whole lot better if I just sucked it all up and didn’t complain or turn everything into a basic question of existence. But then what kind of person would I be?

I’ve been watching a lot of trash TV this week. We are house sitting at a place in a super residential district with no internet, a big flat sceen, and Direct TV. I never watch broadcast TV, but every so often it’s nice to experience. I like to think of it as a sociological study about American Society and Pop Culture. Mostly, my conclusion is that it’s really fucked up. There are some quality shows, but I would say 99% of television tells you how to be, who to be, how to fix all that is wrong with you, and be as beautiful as the skinny bitches strolling happily along Caribbean beaches in bikinis with hot guys. THIS IS LASTING FULFILLMENT.

So last night I flipped on the Boob Tube and my boo, T, and I started watching Phat Girlz on Oxygen. Intrigued, and yet, also slightly put off by the movie’s title, I thought it would be a hot minute before I turned the channel, but something stopped me. I got sucked in.

For all of you in the dark, Phat Girlz is about three ladies who go on vacation, two of whom are lovely thick women, and one of whom is a tight assed aerobic instructor. They are all surprised when a group of Nigerian doctors at the hotel for a conference introduce them to a different point of view. In Nigeria, they say, the thicker the woman, the richer and more attractive she is thought to be. The aerobic instructor, thong and all, starts getting treated like the ugly chick while the other two are swept off their feet, at which point one of them can’t believe that this hot guy actually likes her and freaks out, sure that his affections are dishonest, and bails.

I related to this movie in two ways:

1. I once had a Nigerian boyfriend too!

And when I told him that usually thick girls are treated like lepers, he didn’t know what I was talking about. He could hardly conceptualize the idea that people would prefer skin and bones to hips and boobs and butts. He thought I was hecka sexy and it felt really good.

2. I still ask my boo, T, if he thinks I’m attractive.

I think he’s super hot, and I often wonder how I get to be with such a beautiful guy. I have never, in my whole life, been skinny. Add to that bad skin when I was a teenager, a few stupid boys treating me awful,  many years being single, jerky comments from jerky jerks every so often, and you know, 24 hour media messages telling me that I am ugly, unhealthy, unattractive, not sexy, and not rich enough, dirty, slobby, unfashionable and pathetic, and you have my crippled self-image. For the longest time I thought I’d never have a date, that no one would ever in a million years want to sleep with me, and I would just be alone and live with my best friend and his lover and whoever else and we’d be like Full House only queer and without any widows. And I was okay with that.

The point I’m dancing around is this. ISN’T THIS FUCKED UP?

It’s fucked that I have spent so many years feeling all these inadequate feelings about myself because this society is so obsessed with LIES! Just looking at the other channels, most of them are dedicated to making yourself feel shitty about yourself, and then trying to sell you something that will make you better. Or trying to make you jealous of a lifestyle you will never have. Or making you buy crap you don’t need because it will lead you to a more fulfilled and happy life.

Lies!

We are all insecure humans, and lots of business feeds off our insecurities. From now on, I’m going to make a dedicated effort to not give a shit how ugly I might seem to some people. I’m going to look in the mirror, say “Hot.” and call it good. I’m also going to tell everyone beautiful I see that they are beautiful, and why. I mean, doesn’t it feel good when someone gives you props? Sometimes it can change my whole mood for a whole day or longer. Why don’t we do this all the time? Why do we have to be jealous and compete and try to bring each other down when we can drive around the city yelling “Hot Stuff!” to people on the street? I think the latter would definitely be more fun. And it would be time spent having fun, instead of just sitting around thinking about all the things that are so wrong about you.

*Not actual tilt-a-whirls, but like, brain spinning media messages and stuff. And it rhymes.

I think I might have an issue with social anxiety.

On really good days, I am a fun, funny, outgoing, open-hearted person. I think up projects for meeting strangers, like putting up a tea party booth in the park. My dream is to run a multipurpose space for shows, classes, art, happenings, secret cafes, and dance parties. I love throwing elaborate parties, making friends, and seeing how other people live. At night I like to walk around the neighborhood and look into people’s windows and see what other people are doing. My favorite song is “The Sky Opened Wide like the Tide” by The Blow, which is all about driving around looking for your friends. “and what I want to know is where all the people are, and where they go. And what I wouldn’t give to know where everybody gets together where it is that they really live.” Oftentimes I feel isolated, like I don’t have any connection to the world around me. Sometimes I feel like everyone is a stranger to me, and I long to have some kind of community to be a part of more.

It’s been hard, over the last year, with all my best friends scattered around the globe. I’ve heard from so many of my friends how hard it is to move to a new city and find friends to hang out with. Unlike school, where there’s a built in community and constant activities to share with the hundreds of people you are living with, it’s a lot harder to make friends naturally in a city. People are busy working, living with partners, and often have an established group of friends already and aren’t looking for new people. You can go to bars, but most of the time when you approach someone, they expect you want to have sex with them, not hang out in the park and drink beer.

And while on good days, I’m open and confident, funny and outgoing, and able to make people feel comfortable around me, on bad days I’m scared of everyone. I want to hide somewhere and turn off my phone and be invisible in my gmail so people won’t try to talk to me. I’m terrified of running into anyone I know, or having to interact in any situation. I’m not really sure why that is. I have this fear that I will do something wrong, that people will judge me, or be mad at me for some reason. I’m scared of being asked to do things because I’m afraid of failing. I also afraid that if I see someone I haven’t seen in a long time, they will think I’ve made a turn for the worse, that I’m not as good or cool as I used to be. I’d hate to disappoint them.

I know these fears are irrational. I know they are not justified. I know deep down that I’m bad ass and can do pretty much everything I try pretty well. But after a year of being unemployed, continuously rejected from jobs I apply for, depressed, feeling unwanted and like a failure, those little hater voices in my head have undermined my confidence.

I’m working to get it back. Shut those voices up in my head. Feel the physical signs of anxiety and calm myself down, remind myself that what I think is not who I am, and I don’t have to believe my thoughts. That my head sometimes plays tricks on me, likes to overanalyze and worry, and that those things are unnecessary and what I think isn’t always true. That no one hates me.

I am definitely getting better at this, and I have big plans for some new fun social sculpture projects this spring. There will be potlucks and parties and tea and strangers and cake(!). It will be a blast, so stay tuned.

New Years has come and gone, people have made their resolutions, but today is the real beginning of the year. Today is the first day back from the holidays. The day when everything returns back to normal, you get your ass back in gear, and really put your nose to the grindstone.

I’ve been thinking about resolutions lately. Not really making any myself, but thinking of the ones I’d make if I were to do that sort of thing. There are too many. I want to be healthier, smarter, more beautiful, richer, more productive. I want more friends and more traveling and carousing and more making art and music and movies. But when I start thinking about all the things I’d have to do to make that happen, I feel like I have to change into a totally different person. Then I get self-righteous and tell myself I’m just fine the way I am and there’s no reason I should change, even though I know it might help me somehow. It’s not easy to convince myself to do stuff I don’t want to do. Practically impossible. So I’m trying to think of a way to have resolutions without having resolutions. If there was some way to trick myself into changing, without me knowing, I’d definitely be more successful at it.

Then I started thinking, why do we have to have all these resolutions go into effect at the same time anyway? What if we just chose alternate weeks for the resolutions that we really want to do but are too hard? This week I’ll work out a bunch. Next week I’ll eat healthier, the week after that, no TV! But then that starts to seem like I’m punishing myself for not finishing my homework or something.

I think the real problem lies in blaming oneself for the things that are undone, or the ways in which we are lacking. I am not perfect, but I’m tired of thinking about all the ways in which I’m not perfect. I’m tired of the anxiety that makes me feel like people are judging me, and makes me give up to quickly. I’m tired of never believing that I’m moving forward. I’m tired of feeling ho-hum.

So. I think my New Years Resolution has to be to be really lovely to myself. To treat myself like a hot broad on a first date. To pamper and care for and love and treasure myself so I feel like I’m worth something, and can do whatever I want, no guilt, no judgments.

With the New Year coming fast, and my honey away working all day, I thought today would be the perfect day to get all my laying around and lolling about out of the way. When those New Years Resolutions kick in, there will at least a two week period where procrastinating will feel extra guilty, so I gotta party while it’s still 2009.

Procrastination is a serious art form. It is different from just being lazy. It is distracting yourself from all the things you feel you should be doing by doing other things completely unrelated. The trick is to make yourself productive enough to self-righteously goof off when you’re getting dangerously close to running out of distraction activities that keep you from doing anything you’re procrastinating. I have been mastering the art of procrastination for years, and I think today is a shining example of my skill.

8:00am – Kick T out of bed, pick out an outfit for him and make him a lavish breakfast (cereal with banana!). Put in first load of laundry. (Doing laundry is an excellent distraction activity. You have something productive to do every hour or so that makes you feel okay about spending the hour in between watching Bewitched re-runs and finding things to eat or draw.) Poke around on the internets. Think about sending New Years cards to anyone who responds to a tweet saying “Send me your address, I’m makin’ New Years Cards.” Look for best friend’s address in Tokyo. Realize he’s moved. Give up.

10:30am – Think about working out. Paint.

11:30am – Make noodles. Think about how much time you should wait after eating noodles before you can work out.

11:45am – Feel guilty about not working out and eating noodles instead and decide to clean. Time to turn over the laundry again!

12:30pm – Send love texts to T while you clean. Feel like a 50s housewife because you’ve been watching Bewitched all morning. Fantasize about zapping yourself to Paris on a whim, or being an ad exec. Wonder how they used to make billboards without all the fancy printing and graphics software of today. Switch to Househusbands of Hollywood.

1pm – Decide your going to make awesome collages in your sketchbook. Make really terrible ones. Search for something sweet to eat. Wonder how long you should wait before you can work out after eating sweet things.

1:30pm – Think about productive things you can be doing and how you really don’t want to. Imagine a cat being put into a bath. Look on craigslist and think about how most of the ads are a scam. Get depressed about never having a job ever. Relate to the Househusbands of Hollywood.

2pm – Get really cold and crawl under deliciously clean and fluffy covers in bed. Just for a minute

4pm – Wake up and decide it’s too late to do anything productive. Change laundry. Contemplate dinner options. Feel happy and free of guilt and obligation. Open bottle wine.

bed

Song of the Day: Harry Nilsson – Gotta Get Up

In fact, last night I purposely did nothing and gave my tired body a rest after the long weekend. Since I work for myself, there are a couple obstacles I need to work out. I am a horrible procrastinator. I get things done, but I get them done when they have to be done and not a moment too soon. It causes stress in my life, which I think is the root of the problem. The fact of the matter is, stress is my biggest motivator. I only get up early when I know I absolutely have to; when there is a big enough penalty for not getting up early.

Now that I work for myself, I have to be my own motivation. I either have to learn how to work without threatening myself, or I have to get rid of this need for stress. I’m not sure what to do. What I do know, however, is how much better I feel when I get up early, do yoga, and start my day in a better manner.

The other problem is my boyfriend. Not that he’s actually a problem at all, just that I make him a problem. I use him to rationalize. If he isn’t getting up, it must be okay for me to stay in bed!

What I would love is if I could have some big scary authoritative person get my out of bed and make me do all the things I wish I did all the time. That way I can be helpless to resist, and I’d have someone to hate for getting me out of bed. I’d do everything I wanted myself to do, and eventually I’d get used to this new routine.

Maybe I need an imaginary friend. But this is the thing, I don’t think my brain would let me imagine someone like that vividly enough for me to not remember they’re imaginary while I blew them off.

The other problem is that I really want to do all these things for myself, and in doing so, learn how to take care of myself, and having someone else tell me everything to do and when totally defeats the purpose.

I suppose the only solution is this: I’ve got to “man up”, as it were. Grow some “bigger balls” and become that person who can kick my own ass. I need to kick my own ass!

Sometimes, taking care of yourself is hard. You don’t always know what’s best for you, and even if you figure that out, there’s no guarantee that you can convince yourself to actually do it. Sometimes it feels easier to be lazy than to do things that will make you feel good, and do good things. My friend Sam and I sometimes remind each other that it helps, sometimes, to treat ourselves like little kids. For little kids, it’s totally normal to not want to do anything that is remotely good for you. You go to bed late, drink too many milkshakes, and make strange contraptions out of rope and send your friends to try them out for safety.

I’m trying to do the best I can, but not everyone in my head is quite on board yet. Hopefully I can coax or bribe everyone soon. I’ve been meaning to do that.

asleep

This morning, in those achy hours between asleep and awake, I had a dream. I dreamt that a band of religion enthusiasts were visiting my family and my house. I was taking a nap in my bed, and awoke to find them coming in without a word to me, and rifling through all my stuff. I got angry. Not only were they very religious, faraway illogical missionary crazies, but they were rude. They did not say hello, or introduce themselves, and what made them think they could touch those things that were rightfully mine. I could have got out my shotgun, I was so mad. And to make matters worse, their leader and father figure came in wearing a sport coat and put his boot-clad feet up on my bed. I was angry. I started cursing them out. One of their brood was a young woman, presumably around my age, centered in a calm assurance of her beliefs that made me crazy. No matter how wrong I thought she was, she would not shed the air of superiority.

And to make matters worse, she was successful in making me feel shitty about my anger. To her, everything was fine.She insisted on accompanying me through the environment of my dream. We were in a kind of Mexican tourist town, were old ladies spent all day in the open air margarita factory, rimming margarita glasses with salt. There were stalls full of blow up palm trees and midway games, empty dance floors and hot sunshine making the shade dark.

As I spent more time with this religious invader-woman, I felt my anger slip away from me. I started to accept her for her as a person, and see past her religious perspective. But as I felt this anger slip away, a new anger came. This was anger with myself, for letting my shields down around her, and for accepting someone like her. I felt like I was betraying myself, befriending the enemy, and in doing so weakening my stance on the side of good, true, uncompromised, independent logic.But I couldn’t help it. The more time I spent, the less I wanted to hate her.

I woke up feeling as though my dream was trying to tell me something. That anger towards someone who seems to stand for something is less powerful than acceptance of the other. Acceptance and openness  turns any animosity aimed at that subject against its originator. This internal process is more powerful than anything that could come from someone who is an enemy. Anger is owned by the angry, and doesn’t have to be poison to anyone but the angry. I suppose somehow I will need to know this in the coming days.

when we used to kick it

Song of the Day: Back in the Day – Missy Elliot feat. Jay-Z

My grandmother used to say “You’re only as old as you look.” When I was a teenager, I was always being mistaken for someone much older than myself. Even my current partner, who is ancient, thought I was much older than I am when we started going out. I’m hoping this trend will reverse as I actually get older and form a kind of bell curve so that one year I’ll actually look my age, and then keep getting younger.

Aside from appearances, though, I’m feeling older. I keep remembering all the late nights and packed days in college. I’d stay up until 4am every night, watching music videos. My best friend and I had a rule freshman year that we couldn’t go to bed without seeing Toxic by Britney Spears on late night MTV. We’d go get philly cheesesteaks at 2am. Then we’d run around to class all day and I’d draw for 6 hours and cut tiny shapes out of colored paper and glue it all back together.

Now, it seems like I never get half as much done in a day that I used to. Is that true? I can’t tell if school is just so compartmentalized that it seems like you’re doing a shit ton of stuff everyday. But seriously, with all the time I spend cooking, eating, washing things, dressing myself, sleeping and snuggling, it’s a wonder I ever do anything else.

It’s not only time that seems to have gotten away from me. I’ve undergone this weird transformation in the last year. Maybe I’m just out of practice, but I remember being able to drink a bottle of wine by myself over dinner in Paris. This was after happy hour and before pre-gaming to go out dancing. Man, when I think of all the substances I was able to tolerate at that time.. and I was always testing my limits. I’d wake up in a hotel room in Spain covered in sand and sore all over and think, “Oh god, what happened?”
Now I am lame. I can’t drink anymore, though I often try, especially when I have PMS and I’m all fiery inside. But man, that two and a half glasses of wine at my mom’s house last night made my head light up and zonked me out. I can’t get really drunk anymore without spending the next day puking my guts out. Ginger ale and saltines are my new favorite foods.

Even coffee gets my delicate little constitution all riled up. I can’t drink half a cup before I have a belly ache and my head is as twirly as a sparkly baton. And my herbal remedies just put me right to sleep! What’s a lady to do? All my fun vices no longer fulfill my brain’s love for free-thinking escapism. My body is practically forcing me to be healthy. The hell?

With all my recreational activities down the hole, I must find something to fill the void.