“The Stranger Dinners” is a series of chance events. Twice a month, six strangers will come together to create a collaborative meal (potluck), producing the potential for serendipitous meetings and unexpected happenings. The series will start with an invitation sent to my own list of contacts, who are encouraged to spread the invitation through word of mouth, creating a FOAF (Friend of a Friend) network. Anyone in this network can RSVP to one of these dinners, with a maximum of 5 new guests per dinner. This event engages individuals in a unique situation of spending one night at an intimate gathering with people they may have never met, and may never see again.

Guests will each bring something of their choosing to share for dinner. They are also encouraged to bring any other items they would like to use as entertainment, conversation starters, favors, or show and tells.

This project explores the idea of individual expression and temporal intimacy, and allows guests to explore the freedom of interacting with new people outside of expectation, commitment, prior knowledge, or self segregation. The intention of this project is to create new opportunities and possibilities by changing the way people view, respond, and interact with strangers.

To sign up for The Stranger Dinner email list, visit: http://strangerdinner.eventbrite.com/

____________________

Dear Stranger,

I think we need to talk.

My mom always told me never to talk to you, even if you offered me candy. The news tells me not to trust you–that you will kidnap, rape, rob, or kill me given half the chance.

But I never believed those lies. I know you’re just like me, trying to make your world turn as best as you can. I know you have dreams, ideas, and favorite recipes just like me. You might even have some insight to share that will make my life better. Maybe you know my future partner. Maybe you know the solution to something I’ve been trying to figure out for a long while.

Sometimes I run into you at parties, bars and parks. All over, really. I know we just never get a chance to really sit down together. Get intimate. You just always look so busy, and I don’t want to intrude. You might think I’m crazy, or hitting on you or something. But I’m not.

Because the thing is, you’re really easy to talk to. I can really be myself around you. I can tell you anything… things even my closest friends don’t know. I can be really honest.

Technology is changing so fast now. There are so many new ways we can communicate. We can trade books, furniture, stories, sexual partners, and ideologies. But it still feels so impersonal. I find myself staring at my computer, isolated, as you walk by my window.

I’m tired of the silent treatment. I hate pretending to ignore you, not knowing when and if to smile when you pass. I don’t want to feel afraid when I hear your footsteps behind me at night.

Well, it’s time for a change. Come over for dinner. Let’s sit down, eat, and finally have a chance to really talk. I think this will be a great opportunity for us. In fact, it might save the world, or at least help us work better together. Next week let’s do it at your house.

All my love,

Ari

My friend F came over last night, totally bummed. His boyfriend was in a funk. He had recently lost his job, and with summer coming to an end, he found himself without friends, without anything to do, binging out on television and feeling sorry for himself.

Since the fall of the economy, this scenario has gotten more and more prevalent. People become unemployed and have a hard time getting a job, which leads to feelings of helplessness and worthlessness. Without any money, it’s hard to go out, and many find themselves unmotivated, watching bad reality TV shows which just make them feel more resentful of their directionless, broke-ass lives.

Being in this cycle of helpless self-pity really sucks. It begins to make you angry with the world. Why do I have to live like this? Why do we cultivate a society that focuses so much on money? Why does it seem like we have to kill ourselves trying to get a job just so we can spend 60 hours a week doing something for someone else?

It got me thinking about the world I wanted to live in. Usually my utopian visions land me in a big meadow in the country near great swimming holes. It would always be summer, and I’d live in a giant house with a very large kitchen, a very large garden, and tons of friends living with me, as neighbors, and constantly passing through. I would spend my days gardening and planning activities like skillshares, storytelling nights, potlucks, band practice, dances, etc.

I don’t have room for work in my utopia, nor do I have room for money. I have plenty of room for community, creativity, sharing, collaboration, and mutual aid.

Now that I’m done being depressed that the utopia I have imagined for myself isn’t showing up on it’s own, and I’ve watched all the Rachel Zoe I can handle, I’ve been trying to think of ways to move my current reality closer to my imagined one.

Here are a couple strategies I have in mind:

1. Cultivate a community that helps each other get what we need without money.

Plan skillshares so we can educate each other. Start bartering. Sign up for those collaborative consumption websites like Neighborgoods. Trade books instead of buying them with BookMooch.

2. Entertain Yourself.

There’s no need to pay a $15 cover and spend $8 on a cocktail. Plan potlucks. Share food. Invite your musician friends over to play for you and your neighbors. Have a tea party in the park and invite everyone to come. Organize recurring events. Some days you might have more than someone else. Share, and let them help you out when you’re low. Some of the best times in my life have been at home with my favorite people around me.

3. Share information.

I read a lot, but I get tons of my information from other people. Whether it’s sharing an article online, forwarding a groupon email to someone you know would like it, or just sitting around and talking about stuff, talking with people face to face is a great way to cultivate relationships, come up with new ideas, get feedback, and inspire each other. If your bored, get a few other bored people together and see what you come up with.

Remember: Even though you’re being a revolutionary with these kinds of activities, you don’t need to tattoo “Anarchy” on your bicep or become vegan or stop shaving your armpits. Keep it intimate, keep it your own, and keep it casual. This is a way of living, not a way to join a subculture. This of these activities as a way of meeting people, improving in your quality of life, and living life the way you want.

There are a lot of things that bother me about money, but I think one of the biggest things is the fact that no one talks about it. To me, it’s a mystery. I’m not always sure how to get it and I think it would be easier if I could ask other people about their strategies. But it’s like a math test in high school: everyone has their arm covering it up so you can’t see their answers.

Life is hard enough, but it seems to me we are all competing with each other for the same thing. We all need food, clothes, and shelter, but instead of trying to help each other get what we need, we have to hide all our tips and tricks so that we can do better than the others.

I have come a long way since we first moved to our little place. Before, we never had any money, and I would worry about how we’d pay our phone bill, or the ridiculously cheap rent our fairy god-landlady for our place. Now, I know we can pay the rent this month, but with my temporary job and imminent move I’m worried about three months from now.

Money makes you worry, no matter how much you have. We worry about getting it, keeping it, having enough, and being about to do what we want. I’m worried not only about feeding and housing myself, but also being able to have the life I always wanted to live.

I am a very lucky person to have the things I have.. I know that. I’m very lucky to have been brought up to believe that I could be an artist, that I could travel, and learn new things constantly. I want the grand experiences. I want to feel success in the things that matter most to me. I want to have space and time and the freedom to do all the things I want to do in life.

But I need money to make all this happen. And it leads to difficult decisions. I can’t have everything I want, not even close. So what do I choose. A few months of fun and then back to square one? Throwing caution to the wild and letting things unfold? Or do I plan and miss out on the adventure that could be? Or will the adventure just come?

I wish I had people to ask who could tell me what to do. I wish I was still in school, or on a career path, or surrounded by successful people who would support any venture I wanted to start. But this is not the case, and I know even if I could find every detail about everyone’s financial history, I still wouldn’t have the answer to my future. But I want to be all in this together, instead of every man for himself. It would make me feel a lot less lame.

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.

On Saturday T and I went to check out the SF Fine Art Fair, that was apparently a big deal because we don’t really have international art fairs in San Francisco. It was lame. It’s like when someone buys you an art magazine and you’re really excited until you find out it’s Art News, which is basically “Couch Art in America.” 99% of everything are paintings that people buy to go with their furniture.

My favorite piece, the one that showed the most creativity and inventiveness and awesome use of materials was “Milky Way” by local artist Renee Gertler. Here’s a picture of it:

(photo credit: Eleanor Harwood Gallery)

It’s hard to see, but the insides of the paper bags are painted midnight blue, and there are mirrors inside the bags on the bottom. The top of the bags are little pinpricks, and the mirrors reflect the light that comes in through the top of the bag from the room. The effect is an entire “Milky Way” on view inside the bags.

It’s really awesome, like these bags are a portal into this amazing other place.

The fair made me inspired to paint more, but only because I felt I could do as well or even better than most of the things I saw. T felt the same way, and now he’s super into painting.

On Saturday we went to Dolores Park and we ripped open a paper bag and lolled about on the grass fingerpainting. Then he continued as I pretended to read my book and really listened to the people around us gossip and complain as they got progressively more stoned and drunk. T started painting with blades of grass.

Our ladylady/friend-whose-basement-we-live-in is going to Paris for a year and we are looking for a new place.

It is very frustrating because we really want to live in all the big converted warehouses with tall ceilings and cool windows and open floor plans that are so big you could do double dutch jumprope in them, but they are either too expensive or in East Oakland. And while I don’t mind living in semi-bad neighborhoods, I don’t know if East Oakland would be fun to live in. I don’t necessarily want to be nervous walking around my neighborhood, or worrying that T will never come back if he goes out to buy cigarettes. I wish I had an expert person who knew all the okay places to live and the icky places to live so I could just ask him.

Also, I keep thinking that maybe if I move there and lock in my cheap rent, the whole place will gentrify really quickly and then I’ll live in a bad ass neighborhood where I won’t get shot. Then I think that is such an elitist privileged thing to say and gentrification is bad!! And then I try and think if East Oakland is like moving to the Mission before all the hipsters and yuppies and maybe I’m missing out on being really cool and tough and avant-garde. But then I think I’d rather be alive than avant-garde and start looking for something in Emeryville, which has an IKEA so it must be safe, right? Also, swedish meatballs.

Even when I do find good places on craigslist, I can’t bring myself to call them because it’s scary and I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to pay rent once my temporary job is over. But I have an optimistic feeling that it will work out somehow.

I also wish I could combine the cheap rent and space of East Oakland with San Francisco location and make it all hot like LA so that I live in this awesome place that is spacious and has a garden, but also cheap and in an old dairy or firehouse but I don’t need a car. Also, I wish all my friends would move there. I would be so happy in this imaginary place. Also, I’d have the best job ever. I’m not sure what it would be, but it would probably involve me hanging out and throwing events for my friends and becoming brilliant and then famous and being the coolest person in the world, which I am already, I just have to find the right place.

I am going to ask Renee Gertler how she became so cool and creative to have shows and think of things like the “Milky Way” and maybe I will become cool too. And then maybe she will agree to be interviewed and then I’ll post it and you can be cool too.

See? I am contributing so much to society already!

Yoko Ono is following me on twitter. Along with 200k+ others, but who cares?

The other night I went to this big bakery/co-op/employment meeting and ate scones and talked about being stranded on a desert island for a while before meeting T to go to this party/video shoot. I had met this awesome lady through my lame temporary job. She did video production on the side and was shooting a music video for a grammy nominated musician. She was having a party to serve as ambiance for the shoot and needed bodies to come and have a good time.

We trampled through a brisk night in the mission to this building with a ton of artist studios. We were running late, but I figured we’d blend into the crowd. When we got there, I remembered what it’s like to organize something where you actually need people to come and be cooperative. The room had just a few people, sitting on the floor or milling around.

“We’re not gonna start until there are more bodies,” says my awesome lady friend. “Oh shit, did I buy any tape?”

T and I stood around awkwardly, talking to each other about business cards on the table by the entrance. The studio belonged to a woman who provided a kind of life coaching services for musicians. When you are blocked, and your energy isn’t flowing, when the song in your heart won’t come out of your face, this is who you call. She’s a specialist on everything from chord progressions to emotional problems.

Her studio was amazing. 12 foot ceilings, windows along one side of the space, exposed brick, painted wood floors. By the time the shooting was ready to get under way, we had redesigned the entire interior as if it was our house. We still needed a kitchen, though.

A few more people had accumulated at this point, but in this bright, alcohol-free environment, few looked like they were ready to boogie down. After a few awkward false starts, the star of the show proclaimed “Hello San Francisco!” to the ten or so people trying to crowd around as best as possible and cheer like a group of many more.

Then we were supposed to dance. Since I was the shortest, and only lady of the bunch, I was moved to the front. The music started, and the rest of the crowd, a bunch of tall guys dressed in black, stood around staring from their feet to each other to the musician. For the next 25 minutes three of us at the front tried to carry the rest of them, twirling and swaying and trying really hard to look like we were having a good time, which we finally began to, once we forgot the extremely awkward nature of the situation. About 15 minutes in, we were tired, sweating, out of dance moves. But the song went on, and I swayed back and forth as T tried frantically to make up for less dancing.

I have to say it was kind of impressive. The spins and twists he came up with reminded me of Skeeter in Doug, the cartoon. Do you remember watching that?

All in all, it wasn’t too bad. We got to dance like no one was watching (though a lot of people were), and afterwards we went out for margaritas at Puerto Alegre. Margaritas make everything fun.  We’re not afraid to dance, no matter how awkward the situation.

And somehow, it got me thinking.. maybe here is not such a bad place to be after all. I mean, they need us.

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.

My boo and I went out last night. We drove through dark residential neighborhoods, looking into the lit windows of people’s houses. We drank tall boys on the sidewalk, listening to hipsters name drop and out-cool each other. We drank coffee at our favorite cafe, listening to a lady sing and a man strum his guitar. We listened to Journey in the car and when we got home we watched a movie about an epidemic wiping out 90% of the population of Earth.

I love my boo and I love the apocalypse.

A few months before I met him I was writing a column for  Sustainable Style. I had been watching all these documentaries about peak oil and energy and 2012 Mayan Calendar end of times junk. Sometimes I like to fantasize about the apocalypse. Usually I skip the bad stuff and end up somewhere safe with everyone I love. We build shanties and cabins and grow gardens and live this amazing communal-hippie anarchist-back-to-the-land existence where it’s always spring and everything is wonderful. When I think about all this I look forward to is as a time where I will be released from the confines of having to actually work for money and instead I can just build and grow things and do that whole mutual aid thing, which I’m totally into.

Then I met my boo, T. When he asked me out I invited him to this potluck series I was doing. Every month I would find 6 strangers and invite them to a potluck at my house. I’d sit in the kitchen, serve their courses one by one, and record the conversation they had. So our first date was really me listening to him relate to 5 other complete strangers about life, existence, humanity, philosophy, and experience. At this point, T was a stranger to me. He worked across the street from my shop, and whenever I saw him I got totally drunk by his charisma. Not that he really did anything special, but to me being in his presence was like being next to a pop star I was really into. Like Billy Corgan when I was 13.

In the kitchen, I heard him talk about jumping out of planes, traveling the world, talking to shamans. He whistled the sound of a hawk. He spoke of seeing visions while sick with ameobic dysentary. He talked about the philosophy of the Tao and traded lessons he’s learned about society and human nature with those around the table. It wasn’t just him, everyone at the table had their own piece to add to this night. At the end of the evening a pipe was brought out, all the wine was drunk, and people sat on the stoop smoking and literally singing with each other. It was the best potluck of the summer.

He stood out. We moved in together after a month. It was magic. He would bring me wild flowers and we would sit on the porch for hours looking at the stars and talking about the dragon that appeared every night in the bush across the street, under the streetlamp. He told me about all the different lives he has had, all the things he’s learned and seen and suffered. He even helped me build a shanty in the backyard one Sunday, and we spent the summer living in the backyard, watching movies, eating, sleeping, listening to music. When we didn’t have a barbecue, he made one using a pitchfork, a few bricks, and the rack from the oven. When we got locked into a park all night, he built a big fire and we spent the night talking and watching the trains go by. And when it came time to move, he spent the day cleaning the gutters, washing all the windows, and loaded the truck down the windy staircase all by himself.

And in the back of my mind, I knew. He was the person I wanted with me when the shit hit the fan.

Right now, we live in the city, struggling to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths. We spend days in front of our computers, learning, stressing, dealing with clients, and reading. But I dream of the day when the population is wiped out and we are stuck on our own, surviving on what we can do with our two hands.We will be the ones to build a safe haven for those we love. We’ll be really buff from chopping wood and gathering wildflowers and swimming in creeks. We will have an amazing hand built house, delicious hand-grown and gathered food, and all our friends will finally be in bucolic harmony.

But even if that day never comes when the apocalypse strikes, there is still the catastrophe of everyday to manage. And it’s so nice to know that no matter how little or big it is, he is always there, making it a little easier.

Since moving to the city, I’ve been working on cultivating possibilities. I feel like the more seeds I plant, the more chances stuff will happen. In the last couple weeks I have joined a ton of event mailing lists, found tons of calendars with things to do, researched the cheapest happy hours in the city, and thought of a ton of ways (read: art projects) to make new friends in this place. I might get a job with the census, I’m working on buttering up this bakery I really want to work at, I’ve applied to volunteer at the botanical gardens, and figured out when the collective bookstore has their monthly meetings to introduce new volunteers. I’ve even figured out what permits to get to become a street artist and started experimenting with making things to sell out of my supply stash. I also found a baking and pastry program at the community college that’s free. Though my next few months are still veiled in mystery, it’s nice to think about all the things that could happen as a result of all the seeds I’m planting. I hope something sprouts.

In addition to the now future, I’ve also been thinking about the future down the road. I try to remember what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a talent agent, a torch singer, an artist. I wanted to travel around the country, sit in the sun, find swimming holes, make forts, and live like an indian. Nothing has changed much. I envision myself learning to play the ukelele and sing on the street corner for passersby. Sometimes when things get tough I imagine just running away, walking out of town and just trying to keep going and see what happens. I went to a show for the first time in a long while on Friday, and listening to the music reminded me of how much pleasure music-making gives me. I thought about being at house shows in Seattle, and letting visions of art and sculpture float through my head inspired by the sounds going on around me. I want to sing loud, without fear, my own words with a strong voice.

Sometimes I dream of moving to the country, into a big wooden house in a meadow not far from the forest. I’d plant a garden, learn how to keep goats, make cheese, bake bread, build a greenhouse, and find somewhere good to go swimming in fresh water. At night we’d light a fire outside and sing and play music and look at the stars and hear the crickets. I would cook, make art, read and write. I’d invite people over to make things, eat, drink, dance, and make music. I’d take long walks and bring home wild flowers. I’d have special places to go for picnics, make forts, and hang birdhouses in the forest.

I am trying to get there. Guide my life in the direction that will lead me to this place, this time. Sometime the path seems invisible, blocked by lack of money and obstacles in my way. Sometimes I feel like I have to be able to trick society in some way to get this. Sometimes I just want to run away because that’s the only way I will get to where I want to be. Sometimes I feel like I need to sacrifice something to get to this place, but I’m not sure what it is.

Sometimes I wish there was a set, known path I was on. Where I could just follow the directions and go along the conveyor belt, not having to thing about how I spend each day, each hour. Just doing what they tell me and not having to think about it outside the hours of 9-5pm, and be able to have money to pay my bills and buy my groceries and go out and have a good time.

So I’m figuring out how to ignore the obstacles. How to think of what I want to do and just do it. How to stop waiting around for the right time or the right resources and just go for it. Get some failures under my belt. Learn. Be active. Stop feeling anxious or scared. Dance, sing, be good to those people around me. And maybe one day I’ll look up and realize that I’m already on the right path.

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.