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.

The story I tell everyone about being in tune with the universe goes like this:

In college, there was this great table in the dining hall. It was a booth, the only booth in the whole hall, in this little recessed area with stained glass windows on three sides extending up to the something like 40ft tall ceilings. It was the best. You could fit 8 people at it, and it was my favorite place to sit.

Senior year, fall came around and for a good 2 months, every time I came to a meal the booth was open. It was a lucky streak, and it made me feel like someone had sprinkled me with fairy dust or something… Maybe the booth was tapped and it was always open because they were investigating me and my friends, but I felt like I was at one with the universe. I was doing something right, like when you bowl a bunch of strikes in a row, and I didn’t question it because I didn’t want to ruin it somehow.

Sometimes this happens. You are in the right place at the right time and all the pieces just fall into place and you feel like you must be cautious about everything because if you breathe too hard it might disrupt the flow.

My job is ending soon and lately I’ve been on the brink of worrying about what will happen next. Not really worrying for more than a minute or two, but very aware that there is room for catastrophe if things don’t go my way. But today I’m feeling good, because it seems like the universe has my back.

Exhibit A: When I got to the bus stop, it told me the bus was coming in 8 minutes, which gave me some time to go get lunch to take with me!

Exhibit B: After I got my sandwich, I noticed a valid transfer sticking out from the frame of the poster in the bus shelter, almost like someone had left it just for me. Saved $2!

Exhibit C: After reading my book all the way there are not wanting to put it down, my workday got reconfigured and I didn’t have to be where I was and turned back to go home!

Exhibit D: When I got to the bus stop to go home, someone passed by and gave me ANOTHER valid transfer for my return trip.

Exhibit E: After reading my really good book on the bus for 2 hours, I got home and had an email from a friend offering me free tix for me and a guest to the entire Andy Warhol Retrospective this weekend at the Frameline Film Festival.

Exhibit F: Got notified about a meeting Friday for an additional assistantship for one day a week, ongoing. My temp job with the Census will be ending soon, and I was wondering about work in combination with my upcoming move.

Exhibit G + H: I needed some new clothes and kitchen stuff for our future place.. and one of my BFFs is moving and offered me all the kitchen stuff she doesn’t need!

Now all I need is an awesome new place to live, and a little more work. Need an assistant? Some graphic design? Some advice on bringing your business online? Social Media? Networking? Want to buy a painting?

T always says the universe provides, you just got to decide on something and ask for it. Now that we’re staying in San Francisco for a while, I can feel the universe tuning into what I’m asking for and trying to get it to me.

It’s nice to be in a place of less struggle, more flow. Hustle and Flow, people! Hustle and flow.

dream house

Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a big city that was full of houses that looked like this? There would be little secret cafes hidden behind giant ferns and big swimming holes with waterfalls. Tree house venues with shows and secret passageways. Like the Ewok village, or Pandora in Avatar, but more urban. I would like to live there. Have dance parties every night, make fruit salad for breakfast and add wine for sangria in the evening. And it would be a totally normal place to live, not some paradise you run away to because you can’t stand the real world, where everyone is cultish or lost or both, and there are only the sharks and the vulnerable. The kind of utopian communal lifestyle appeals to me, but often turn into this and I wish it wasn’t so. Why can’t utopia be normative?

Ahem. I’m feeling unusually chipper today after some iced coffee and the first good night’s sleep of the week. I get my best dreams when I sleep in. I usually have very vivid dreams, involving a bunch of different people and traveling around different imaginary cities. Last night I was walking around a neighborhood where the streets were very narrow and there were one story houses all places very close together. It kind of reminded me of Seattle, the Mission and LA melded together. I went to this old movie theater.. one of those tiny ones that show weird movies at weird times and have tons of colorful paint all over the walls and outside. They played independent/experimental/artsy films and I just happened to show up right when a good one was going to play.

The thing I like best about dreams like this is exploring all these new places. There is a whole nother world out there. Sometimes I like to think that my dreams are partially seeing the future. Sometime they’re like an alternate reality I can access through a sleep portal through spacetime. I always go to new places in my dreams, but when I wake up I’m still here, doing the same thing I did yesterday. The change is much more gradual.

Dream City by Jay Gazley

I wish my dreams were real. Not the ones where I’m being chased or something bad is happening, but even the ones that don’t make a ton of sense take place in really awesome places. Once I couldn’t find my passport trying to get back home from some major city. The airport was a big mall with carnival games that looked like the Guggenheim Museum, and I was already late to meet the group I was with. I guess it was some class trip. I met these guys who I made friends with and they took me to their really cool apartment with tall ceilings, white walls, and pink lights, and we hung out and smoked and I was having a really good time until I remembered I woudn’t be able to get home and had to run and catch a bus back to the airport.

The thing I like most about my dreams, besides exploring the worlds within them, is that all these places get created in my head. And damn, if my brain could project my dreams onto a screen, I’d make millions. Maybe in a past life I was a bad ass architect and urban planner, or maybe I just watch a lot of movies, but the world in my dreams is so cool.

Last night in a different dream I went to this neighborhood that had this long street where every house was a big artist studio with awesome artists living there, and some big warehouse spaces for parties and shows and things. It was a very open community and you could apply to get one of the studios, and I was trying to convince the organizers that I belonged there. I kept running into artists I knew.

Dream City by Paul Klee

It’s especially nice to have dreams like this after spending all week working on paperwork well into the night and watching bad movies. Sometimes when I’m awake it feels like my little room is the whole world. The only part of my real life that resembles those dreams is the part that I can only imagine, the future. I don’t think that’s what people mean when they say “follow your dreams” but I hope someday my life gets closer to looking like what my dreams look like. New and dark and mysterious and dramatic where there’s something different just around the corner and I can still get lost and meet new people. If nothing else, it would be exciting.

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 am sitting in bed and eating ice cream that makes me teeth hurt. Last night I saw Charlene Yi perform. She’s a young comic/musician/performer who wrote Paper Heart, a sweet fictional documentary about whether love exists. She dropped out of school and lived in her car to get to LA and follow her dream. Her work is funny and honest and seems to come from her gooey chocolatey center.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what it is I want to do. A lot of the time I think about what I don’t want to do, or what’s stopping me from doing what I want, or how I can’t do anything and have no talent or passion, or how the whole world is fucked up and I just want to run away and live in a cave and eat berries like the guy in the book Hatchet I read when I was 10.

Some people make Bucket Lists of things they want to do before they die. Some people have lofty goals and ambitions that motivates them to do things like go to Law School, or climb a ladder of business hierarchy, or work 12 hours a day making food for people for very little money.

I don’t know what it is I want to do. When I was a kid I had these vague ideas of travel and adventure, being a poor hobo and relying on the kindness of strangers to get me where I need to be, and letting life carry me through good times in bad.

I haven’t gone for this lifestyle because it’s full of worried relatives and sketchy situations and being homeless and not getting what I need to eat, poop, and sleep safely. It’s not ambitious enough in the “I’m gonna be somebody” kind of sense, and there is no end goal except for exploring and seeing what is out there for me to see. I don’t know when a trip like this will end, or what I should do when I’m done. I always thought something would just happen.

The other thing, is money. I don’t want to have to rely on people for money, but I don’t want to work 40 hours a week for a paycheck, either. I wish I didn’t have to have money to live. Right now I’ve been working a lot at a temporary job where I get paid $23.50 an hour, but I’m always disappointed. I calculate pay during work and then am horrified when $200 gets deducted each week for taxes. When I didn’t have a job a month ago, I was always worried, but it seemed like I went out to eat a lot more, made more art, read more books, and wasn’t so angry. I seem to have a very short fuse and money lights it all the time.

The thing about this vague traveling trip I keep/kept thinking about what this: I don’t have any other plans. I seriously don’t think I ever imagined myself as old as I am now, and my plans were never definite enough to seem like something I should actually make a plan to do.

So I’m trying to make a list of things that I would like to do. People always say we never make time to just do the things that mean so much to us because we’re too busy with jobs and kids and things. Well, my job is temporary, and I’m not very fond of money and I don’t want kids until I’m done fooling around, so I thought I might as well make a list of things that I want to have happen at some point in my life and then just go from there. I hope I can think of something. I hope they aren’t impossible.

1. Have a studio that is all mine.

I want a place to go with big windows and tall ceilings that is my place. I want to be able to go there and be alone and work or dance or sing or record things or draw or paint of make prints. I want a big counter with a sink and an electric kettle and a hot plate and a refrigerator and I want to be the only one with a key. I like company, but this is a place I can go if I want to be completely alone. I work best when I’m completely alone and I never quite feel like that. Sometimes I would like a whole week of just being alone so I could get into it and get the voices out of my head. I want time to do whatever I want and I want to take all the pressure off of myself so that I don’t have to worry about how what I will do will impress people or how it will effect my future. And I don’t want this to be in a place where I am scared of getting shot walking out of my building, but I don’t want this place to be in the middle of nowhere either.

2. I want to work part time at a mindless job.

When I was in Seattle I worked at this frame shop/gift shop. I worked from 11-5pm four days a week, I got foodstamps, my work was two blocks away, and mostly I put price tags on things, made stuff pretty, and kept it all dust-free. It left me a lot of brain space to thing about things like what I was going to do or make outside of it. Sometimes I wish I had never left Seattle. The weather was bad, but that’s all I can think of that was bad. My best friend and I had our own radio show, I lived in an awesome house, I met really cool people who were doing amazing things, and I got to go see live music and eat for practically nothing all the time. I couldn’t afford cheese or meat or wine, but I was really healthy and cooked all my meals from scratch and spent like $100 on groceries for two people every month. I want to live somewhere where that’s possible. I’m tired of being cramped into one room. But I can’t think of anywhere I want to move either, not even Seattle. I like the sun too much.

3. I want summer in the country.

Freshwater creeks to live in, gardening to do, bonfires, learning to play an instrument. I want to do all these things. I was thinking about the ukulele or maybe making stuff electronically. But I want to make songs and sing them at night on the back porch after a day of baking chocolate cake and swimming and drinking minted lemonade.

So those are three things for now. Maybe I’ll think of some other things later. I wonder if the place in my head that I want to exist is real or if it’s just the amalgam of everything I like about all the places I’ve been so far. Either way, I feel compelled to travel until I find it.

The mind is a funny thing. Truth is perception. What you see and hear and experience becomes your reality. The people you talk to, the books you read, the art you look at, the schools you go to all contribute to what you experience as your reality. When you decide to believe something, it becomes true. Sometimes we don’t know that we have made that decision. Putting yourself in new situations often challenges what you have accepted as your reality, and makes you reconsider your ideas and beliefs.

So I think if it’s so easy to chance your perspective, why not just do it yourself? Sometimes there are thought patterns you keep going after, and they can shape who you are and who you become. I’m looking to make some new thought patterns today.

My name is Ari and I am a 25 year old emerging artist. I am very creative, curious, and open minded. I love to meet new people and find out who they are inside. I can make pretty much everyone feel comfortable. I love feeding people and hosting them and making them feel all warm and gooshy inside. I like things that are old and worn, like buildings or books or furniture or metal. I like to cook and bake and I am very good at it.

I have amazing taste. I have the uncanny ability to find good, cheap restaurants and find really good music. I often find that something I was into a year or two ago has become amazingly popular. I am a good writer. I am versatile and creative and can write something for any occasion. I could be an amazing DJ. I always look effortlessly beautiful, whether I’m in ratty clothes full of holes or expensive fancy stuff. People want to know me when they see me.

I’m about to make an amazing body of work. I’m going to go to all the places I like to go to find things and I’m going to collect them all together and use them to make paintings and sculptures that are beautiful. You will like them.

I like creating new ways of interacting with the world. I try to treat everyone as if they are already my friend. Secretly, I am an incredible gardener with no experience. I am pretty good at almost everything I try. I am really smart and my memory is amazing. I have really good ideas and I’m on the verge of an amazing career being creative.

I am a traveler. I wander all over and I have good karma and amazing luck. I am open to new ideas and I love everyone. I am very generous. I see the good in people when even they can’t see it. I am well read and can see all sides of any argument that isn’t close to me. I am loyal and true and will fight for you. I have great ideas and I love to brainstorm.

I work hard and have a high standard for everything I do. I know how to have fun and I know how to dance. I am a great singer with a beautiful voice. I can make a mean martini. I am passionate and emotional and I cry easily. I am sensitive and maybe even a little psychic. I can feel your energy. I can feel your pain. I am hotblooded.

I have the most incredible life. It is full of love and twists and turns and adventure and new things and old things and change and challenges. One day I will live in NYC. One day I will live in the middle of the country. One day I may show up on your doorstep and I will tell you all the tales and show you what I have found in my journey.

Someday I will make a cake for you and put it in my bike basket and ride it to your house and you will be surprised, because you don’t know me yet. And we will sit and eat it and talk and laugh and it will be amazing.

I love you.

Last week was my birthday, and all throughout the week awesome things kept happening. My dad had this awesome barbecue for me and my grandma, whose birthday is the day after mine. He made tons of delicious steak and ribs and swordfish and my new step-mother made me a pineapple upside down cake with cherries in it. My boo, T, spoiled me all week, taking me to movies and out to eat, and even to the Body Shop where I got creams and potions and lotions and things to make me feel pretty.

On Thursday we went to the California Academy of Sciences. You get in free if it’s within 7 days of your birthday, and let me tell you there are a lot of birthdays in February. Tons of people were getting in free. It was a steal too, since regular admission is $25. Since it was my birthday, and we went during nightlife, which is only $12, we made out. Also, they enter you into a birthday raffle that gets you two free drinks and tickets to the planetarium.

When we got there, I went directly to the planetarium because I knew the tickets went quickly. We caught the first show of the night, which was fraught with technical difficulties and had to end early, but it was still awesome to see. Just being in the planetarium made me dizzy. The huge curved ceiling made you feel like you were no where. It felt like what I’d imagine being in the middle of the ocean on a cloudless day feels like. You don’t know where anything ends or begins.

After the show we went to the Rainforest, which is awesome and full of little creatures and butterflies. Halfway through it, there was an announcement that I’d won the birthday raffle! It was so wild, and we were having such a good time, it felt like the gods were spoiling me or something. We went to claim our prize and then spent the evening sipping martinis in the atrium before getting to go to the planetarium again and seeing the whole magnificent show in completion, no interruptions.

This feeling comes every so often, though I haven’t had it in a while. When I was in college there was one booth in the dining hall. It was in a little alcove made of stained class. It was my favorite place to sit. One fall semester I’d come to a meal and every time it was free. For weeks, every time I entered the dining hall I could sit at my favorite place. This might not sound like a big deal to you, but it made me feel like I was magic. Like I had this amazing streak of something that wasn’t even luck. It was like the sun was shining on me while it rained all around. T calls it “universal flow”. If you can learn to flowwith the universe, the universe will provide you with everything you seek and everything you need.

As it starts to become spring, I’m trying to get into the flow more and more. I am telling the Little Haters in my head to shut up their chattering. I’m replacing the negative voices with little encouragements. I’m trying to will myself into being strong, capable, confident, and outgoing, instead of giving into the part of me that wants to hide in my bed and never talk to anyone.

I’m trying to take care of myself. Stop doubting or being impatient or injuring myself and start being organized and getting on track. I have a long way to go, but every time I feel that I’m in the flow, it gets easier. It makes me feel like good things will happen, and that all I have to do is float along and recognize it.

It’s a good way to start a new year of being me. I don’t know what I thought I’d be like at 25, but now that I’m here, I’m doing my best to make it better every day.

When I was in school, I was always excited for what I would do when I got out. Free from all the restrictions and requirements of education, I would be finally free to do what I wanted, and become the person I was meant to be. Then I got out and figured out that I have to pay rent and feed myself, which can be a little dream-crushy at times. Sometimes it’s hard to get back aspirations when you still have to get the everyday stuff handled. For a little while now, I’ve been trying to remember what or who I was striving for all those years I dreamed of graduation.

When I was really little, I wanted to be a talent agent. My mom was a producer and media trainer, and my sister was an actress, so it felt like a good fit. Little but fierce, I’d be able to haggle the most money and the best jobs with my quick wit, charm, and manipulative tactics. I’d take care of people who couldn’t do it by themselves.

Then there was the torch singer idea. I wanted to lie around on pianos and be treated like a princess and admired by all for my sweet, smokey, sultry voice. I’d hypnotize everyone with my satin dresses draping over the piano. My world would be slick, rainy cityscapes lit by streetlights, walking home on the arm of a tall man in a big coat. I’d drink manhattans and smoke with a long cigarette holder and basically live in the 1930s. I’d break hearts.

I thought it would be fun to be a diplomat’s wife. I wouldn’t have to deal with the boring aspects of being a real diplomat. I’d just get to travel a lot and wear fancy clothes and speak tons of languages and be super classy. I’d throw the best dinner parties and bring the best out of everyone and have an amazing place for entertaining. Everyone would adore me and I’d be like a slightly lower level, less famous, but more interesting and artsy Jackie O.

When I got to high school, I did this awesome after school arts program where I met a bunch of practicing artists. I’d visit their studios and go to their shows and that was when I first realize that there were people who actually made art for a living. I remember this moment, because I always loved to make art. It was my favorite thing to do, but I thought it was too fun to be something you could make a career out of. After that, I was hooked. My mantra was “Do what you love, and things will happen.” It led me to major in art in college, where I learned not only about making art, but I also learned how cut-throat and shmoozy the art world supposedly was. It was a big turn-off, one that I haven’t worked through fully yet. Plus, I became more interested in making events and parties than static sculptures or paintings.

When I really think about what I want to do, and who I want to be, I keep coming back to the same thing: anyone/anything I want all the time. I used to think that I could just do whatever I thought was really cool, but lately I’ve been a little blocked on the coolness front. My vision is a little blurred. But the fact remains that I just want to be amazing. I want to be that person whose presence changes a room when I enter. I want to be confident without being cocky, effortlessly beautiful, truly authentic, trusting, and candid. I want to make everyone I meet feel comfortable, like they are already my friend, and like they don’t have to pose or posture at all. I want to have so many good ideas that I give most of them away and inspire art and culture and projects and good deeds. I want to make magic happen, and glide through life, crushing obstacles and worry and troubles underneath me, as though they were nothing. I want to make art, make events, make dinner, make lemonade stands, and get people to stop and think about how lovely and beautiful thing moment is right here. I want to turn reality into a place that people think must be a a dream from which they never want to wake.

Yes, I want to be a faith healer. An artist. An organizer, a planner, a carouser. I want to sing in the street and give everything I am to everyone around me and get it right back. I want to dream and break the rules. I want to do everything, because I can. And I want to give people this perspective, that they can do anything too. And then maybe together, we will.

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.