Get your motor runnin', Day 2: Most Beneficent Outcome

Someday, I will have to write an entire essay about my first-shrink-(slash)-astrologer.

I've written about her in passing, usually when I need to back something up with particularly good wisdom in a particularly pithy way. My first-shrink-(slash)-astrologer, let's call her "Zifka," which is the name I gave her in the Young Adult novel I was supposed to write and, for various reasons, blew off, was full of both wisdom and pith. Which meant, from a practical application standpoint, that she was both able to point out why and how my head was stuck up my ass, and make excellent suggestions for the extraction of it, when (or if) I was sufficiently fed up with my condition to actually do something about it.

Which is to say, she called me on my shit in the best of all possible ways.

Anyway, Zifka and I hooked up again on my big trip to the PacNW this past fall. We'd spoken on the phone, here and there, over the years: sometimes as a "tune-up", for which I happily paid her; sometimes just to shoot the breeze. A lot of breeze accumulates when you really vibe with someone but only get the chance to do it directly every five years or so, and we did us a lot of breeze-shootin' (and fois-gras profiteroles eatin', as she's such a foodie, I'll even eat lamb hearts and other "dare food" when I'm with her). And it's cool, I don't want to be a pig, sniffing around for truffly bits of worldly wisdom when she's not on the clock. Although, you know, I hoped for them, all the same.

So she talked about being a mom, about living in the PacNW, about being an aging dyke mom to a black kid in the PacNW. We talked about heirloom beans, or somesuch, fifty bucks a pound!! (I told you: foodie.) We talked about wine and Chicago (where we're both from) and California (where she used to live, and I still do) and how it sucks that thinning hair dictates cut as you get old. We talked a lot about the then-upcoming elections.

And finally, we talked about my trip to the PacNW and what I was trying to accomplish with it. Which I had problems articulating to the rank and file, but which I knew had little to do with my bullshit cover (writing second draft of submission chapters for aforementioned Young Adult novel) and everything to do with (god help me, I'm a walking Somerset Maugham cliché, 64 years later) finding myself. Ugh.

I knew it was borderline shrink territory, but hey, she's Zifka, Zifka will tell you to GFY in a South Side minute, and make you laugh as you move on to the next subject. But she didn't: she brought up the concept of Most Beneficent Outcome, or MBO, for short. And it's so important a concept, I'm giving it its own header*, so future legions of Internet searchers can benefit from Zifka's wisdom, too, even if Oprah insists on inviting that well-meaning yawner of a self-help dude, Eckhart TOO-lah**.

The "Most Beneficent Outcome" Concept, by Zifka

Instead of focusing on getting a particular thing, put out to the universe that you would like the most beneficent outcome. Point being, the universe is infinitely wiser and more complex than you, and you're probably asking for something in PARTICULAR because you can't imagine a fraction of the infinite possible outcomes.

Taking my Seattle trip as an example, I told a lot of people I was going there to write the book, because it was easier than saying I was going to see what would happen.

But the truth was I knew I was a stuck and needed some help processing info and figuring out how to get to the next level. I hadn't a clue about what I was actually "processing" or what the next level looked like; I didn't come up there thinking "I need to meet a lot of interesting people, dammit!" Or, "Seattle! That'll be just the thing for kickstarting a series of workshops teaching people about how to market themselves and finally putting to good use all those wasted years writing ads and fucking around on Twitter!"

Instead, I did Most Beneficent Outcome (not calling it that) and lo, I got these chances to speak, met a slew of interesting new people, and came away with an Actual Clue as to what the hell I was supposed to be doing with the next few years of my life.

It's really easy to get attached to outcome. Trust me, it's how I operated the first 41 years of my life. I functioned at a pretty high level, considering, but who knows what I might have achieved had worked my ass of AND held an intention, rather than thinking I was making a downpayment on a very particular outcome.

As you move forward with your goals, you may want to think about the brilliant Zifka and the brilliant Most Beneficent Outcome.

Is it scary? Hells, yeah! At first. And always. But really, what worthwhile new thing isn't?

Speaking of new things, if there's a concept floating around out there that's the same thing as MBO, only called something different, could you please bring it to my attention, preferably in the comments? I like knowing the long and noble history of ideas.

Even if they originate with Eckhart TOO-lah...

xxx
c

Image by _neona_ via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

*Adam Kayce! Monk at Work! This is one of those things we need to fix on my blog, right? I should have an h-2  header for internal entry callouts, right? Or am I nuts?

**Okay, he's a really smart, nice guy. Great ideas. But come on, I can't be the only one who drifts off like Ralph Kramden watching the Late Late Late Show when the guy starts talking.

What are you really buying, anyway?

It's been an interesting week so far, and it's only Monday.

First of all, something seems to have been dislodged in my brain, that thing that keeps me from processing stuff I don't feel like, like paperwork and phone calls (wah wah wah, First World white girl) and from finishing things I've started, like work. Not that I've gotten everything tidied up and on its way: today saw the dispensing of my DMV registration, some queries about my post-COBRA world (universal health care cannot come soon enough) and a number of other annoying/scary if smallish items, but several others are getting rolled over (again) to tomorrow, my favorite day. (Just like my favorite week, month and year are "Next.")

I made a dent in it though, especially by my standards. And I felt so gosh-darn good about it, I decided I would spread a little of that sunshine and head over to My Country House (a.k.a. The BF's) to visit the dog (a.k.a. Arno J. McScruff) as his master (a.k.a. The BF) is living in the Land of the Stupid Day Job for the next several weeks and poor Arnie, well, he has dogly needs.

Now, this sort of thing does not occur to me usually, and when it does, to actually do it feels burdensome. Yes, I'll go see you in the hospital or water your plants or take in your mail, but only if I'm allowed to feel grumpy and put-upon, at least to start with. Do not let the cheery photo fool you, my Internet friends! I am a crab and a bee-yotch of the highest order, and I've got plenty of real-life backup on that.

But today, I'm driving the five miles from my place to Arnie's and practically whistling. At 3:30, no less, pretty much guaranteed that I'll hit traffic going at least one way. In fact, I think I probably was in traffic; it just didn't bother me, so it didn't feel like traffic. And as I'm cruising through this traffic-that-is-not, I pass a place I've passed 1,000 times before. No, really: this is the route I take between my place and The BF's; I could probably drive it blindfolded. Once, anyway.

It's a shitty little storefront restaurant, nominally Chinese, but selling all manner of crap from gyros to boba tea like every other shitty little storefront restaurant I've seen like it. Might not, probably isn't even run by Chinese people. Could be Koreans, could be Salvadorans, could be Armenians: it's that kind of neighborhood.

But whoever owned it had hung one of those bright paper lanterns with the fringe on it that you see in Chinatown stores. It was kitschy and alive and pretty, and one thought flitted through my head:

I want.

Now let me assure you that while my taste in furnishings is somewhat eclectic, it's not so boho-funky that a Chinese paper lantern would fit right in. In fact, it would look dreadful. I know this because I'm a designer, and I make my living knowing what will look right and what will look like ass. This would be the latter, trust me. There's not one place in my place it would look right, including outside my front door, bapping about in the breeze just like it was in front of the not-Chinese restaurant.

Instead of feeling disappointed, though, I had this amazing flash of insight into why, for most of my life, I've been a hopeless accumulator of crap: I want that feeling.

That feeling that a particular shirt or dish or gadget gives me. The promise that's inside that book, I want to retain that rush of inspiration I felt when I pulled it from the shelf. Or to be the person who has absorbed and processed its contents. Or to have a piece of that author (or artist, or musician) in my hands.

Or I want to be the person who can cook a perfect omelet with that pan. Who has pictures filling frames hanging on walls that burst with life, a host of beautiful craft projects made from these bolts of fabric, a lady who has the carefree life requiring, as my old art director, Sherry Scharschmidt used to call them, "Running-on-the-Beach Dresses."

Maybe that's why Peter Walsh and his ilk are making so much money these days: because we all have needs we're shortchanging ourselves on; we're all spending money instead of time, which becomes starting instead of finishing, which becomes a heap of never-worn, never-used crap we eventually haul off to Goodwill. And, since I've trained myself to understand that I never will have the time, that I will rush and rush, on and on, never stopping to take a breath and do the thing or even feel the feeling, I buy the souvenir instead.

It's scarcity thinking in the middle of unprecedented abundance. And it's a bitch of a habit to break.

I stopped myself today, though, in the middle of a thought of buying such a lantern. Because for ONCE, I realized I wanted the feeling of serendipitously stumbling upon a beautiful thing like that, blapping around in the clean, post-rain breeze. And I can't own that any more than I can bottle happiness and save it for later. The wet jewels you find along the shore on holiday are just dull bits of rock when you get them home; a fleeting whatever is beautiful, in part, because it's fleeting.

I'm not quite ready to do a spend-out yet, although I'm starting to see how it might help people like me who are used to going too fast and treating themselves too roughly. For now, though, I think I'll try something else: going slower and treating myself more kindly.

Better. Cheaper.

And takes up a lot less room in a tiny apartment...

xxx c

Image by Geopelia via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

"Thank you, sir! May I have another!?"™, Day 05: Fathead

This is Day 5 of a 21-day effort to see the good in what might, at first, look like an irredeemable drag. Its name comes from a classic bit of dialogue uttered by actor Kevin Bacon in a classic film of my generation, Animal House.

When I was little, I thought I was Audrey Hepburn.

I thought we were dead ringers, in fact, and that when I grew up, I would probably be mistaken for her at the Stop & Shop ("Hey! What's Audrey Hepburn doing at the Stop & Shop?"), wear fabulous clothes and live a life of glamor and excitement (I did sort of mix up Audrey and her characters.) Here's what was similar:

• Audrey Hepburn and I were both painfully thin
• Audrey Hepburn and I both had proportionally large eyes for our heads
• Audrey Hepburn and I both had proportionally large heads for our bodies

Unfortunately, that's where the similarities ended. I had imagined that because I had these things, I also possessed Hepburn-esque grace, charm, beauty and lovely, swan-like neck.

I still remember the heartbreaking day my illusions were shattered. Apropos of nothing notable, my exceptionally beautiful mother made a wistful and admiring comment about Audrey Hepburn's swan-like neck. I smiled to myself, preening a bit, waiting for the inevitable followup: "Like yours, honey, oh, I wish I had the same lovely, swan-like neck you and Audrey have!"

Instead she just looked at me, the What? look. Then, probably (reasonably, really) thinking an eight-year-old couldn't possibly understand the significance of a swan-like neck, she elaborated, demonstrating by pantomiming against her own neck: "You know, long and thin, not stubby and thick...like ours."

I had to reassess. And when I did, the news was not good. I did not, in fact, look like Audrey Hepburn. I was short and bowlegged and lantern-jawed. Worse, if you looked at us side-by-side, you could clearly see that Audrey's head was perfectly proportioned to her perfect frame; it was my head that was the gargantuan freakshow.

So really, I was just painfully thin with unusually big eyes for my head and an unusually big head for my body, like...Nancy Reagan. Or Sneezy.

Sigh.

For years, I publicly mocked and privately bemoaned my big, freakin' freak head. The way I figured it, it was a smarter move to preempt any mockery, to own my stubby, big-headed, funny-looking-ness. But really, I wanted to be pretty. To be elegant. To be graceful.

To be Audrey Hepburn.

Two things finally cured me of this. First, reading about Audrey Hepburn's third act, the one where she became a tireless advocate for UNICEF, traveling around the world on behalf of the children. She was no-muss, no-fuss about the whole thing, including the clothes. In one article, the provenance of which I no longer remember (but knowing me, it was People, not The New York Times) she specifically mentioned one fact that shocked me: she traveled the globe with just one "fancy" outfit, all black and all, knowing her, Givenchy, but still. One small satchel of stuff to go to all those events, meet all those people, do all those things. She wasn't disdainful of her beauty, but it was, at this point, beside the point. She had used it while it was useful, and now she applied her additional usefulness to causes and interests which obviously truly moved her.

Second, someone, and I wish I could remember who, because I owe them a Coke, pointed out to me that a preponderance of successful TV and film actors have big heads. It was early on in my life, way before I'd thought such a career might be possible for myself, but somewhere in my own head, it stuck (hey, it's not like I was short the space for it.) And when I finally did start acting, I knew that the combination of all those years as a copywriter + my gigantic noggin' meant that whatever else, I could probably count on commercial acting as a source of income to get me through.

Which, as many of my readers know, I did.

So thank you, Sextons and Weinrotts, for the dominant big cranium genes. So what if I'm 7 1/4"? So what if I have to grow out my hair an extra six inches to get it into a ponytail?

So what if I am not Audrey Hepburn? Do we need another one? Hadn't the original done a bang-up job of it already?

My big head = my big career: eight years of decent wages and great health care and tremendous life experience to get me to the next thing. To my second act.

To my third act.

Which, if I'm very, very lucky, will be half as good as Audrey's.

xxx
c

Sketch by me for Illustration Friday. This week's theme: Hats.

The Stone Soup House

For you busy types, here's the topline: the communicatrix is well rested, the happy couple is well (and legally) married and (surprise, surprise) I did not get half as much done as I thought I would on my merry jaunt up the coast.

For the rest of you, settle in. Because that last bit was the source of a lot of deep thinking over the past several days.

I thought about it as I gazed out the window at the view of all views, not doing the Important Writing I was sure the solitude would facilitate. I thought about it as I walked the six happy, hilly miles to get my cup of espresso from the village every day. And I thought about it quite a bit on the long and tedious drive home this afternoon.

One of the excellent civic truisms I learned from my ex-husband, Chief Atheist of the West Coast and World-Class Urban Driver from way back was "If you're passed on the right, you're wrong." Clearly, 95% of the people on the 101 S never had the Chief for their traffic school instructor. Between the uptick in asshats and the population boom overall, what used to be a beautiful drive is now little more than a colossal pain in the ass, at least for sadly long stretches.

Get mad at the people for being in the way. Get mad at me for not being perfect. Expect things to be different without really changing. How ridiculous I can be! How amazing it is that anyone at all listens to a thing I say! How fortunate it is that I have my monthly shrink appointment in two days to sort out some of this mess!

Of course, the heavy lifting of shrinkage is done outside of the 50-minute hour. You get assignments and perspective for those 50 minutes, but you do the work on your own. Or you'd better, unless you like wasting time and annoying the pig. And I have done a bunch of mine this week, even if it wasn't the Important Writing kind.

• I spent a day positively convinced I had back-of-the-leg cancer, when really I just had a case of too much exercise for too-atrophied muscles. Because I worry about everything.
• I spent two nights watching Law & Order marathons. Because I am an addict.
• I spent five nights freezing my ass off before I finally broke down and turned on the gas furnace. Because a part of me will always be 12, forced to live in my grandparents' drafty barn of a house and afraid afraid afraid to ask for anything.
• I ate cookies and burritos, beans and bread, chips and corn and god-knows-what in the delicious sauce of the meal my friends Terry and Gus bought me, and paid for it all in many square yards of methane output. Because I am the spawn of the King and Queen of Denial.

That's a lot of thinking for one week, huh? I wish I could give credit to my wonderful brain and ferocious will to change. The truth is, though, it was the house: I was staying in a magical house.

Its location is magical, certainly, poised as it is a mere 10 yards up from and 20 yards away from the mighty Pacific. Few things are as restorative as viewing a fine sunset over sea water and a cold beer.

But I think the house itself must be magic. Compared to the outsized homes of the neighboring "Yankee fuckers"--swathed in decks, crapped up with all manner of aggressively country decor, my house is a pint-sized throwback to another time--a kinder, funkier time, when four swingin' cats might just bake a doob in the glassed-in turret (accessed via the bathtub!) or while away a rainy day playing strip Yahtzee. My house all crazy angles and dark, moldy wood--including the countertops! It's practically decomposing before your eyes, with its long-busted pocket doors, its non-functioning locks, its stop-gap newspaper insulation held in place with brittle masking tape. So what? There was a broken recliner and high-speed internet and a view: I was ready to move in, brother.

And I'm not the only one. My fellow outcasts--the ones without yellow magnet ribbons on our SUVs, the ones who like things a little sexy-grubby-rundown, had all left pieces of themselves there. Books with loving inscriptions to future guests. A closet full of puzzles, games, and 8-track tapes. A pantry full of foods, fancy and plain, with a little extra stock in the fridge.

People leaving stuff instead of stealing the toiletries. I was ashamed of my fleeting thought to abscond with a jar of barely used peanut butter--which I'd bought myself.

Never fear--it was fleeting, and just the lack talking. The weeks and months of people not letting you merge, not saying "please" or "thank you", avoiding "hello" or even eye contact. And I can't blame them: I am them, on my not-so-great days. I left my own contributions to the pot: Mrs. Meyer's Dish Soap, the aforementioned jar of Laura Scudders, a lone Sierra Nevada beer.

I suppose the real topline for this week's adventures is Wherever You Go, There You Are. I had my Dorothy Gale experience and it was all marvelous and trippy and very, very Technicolor in nature, but now I am back in my own backyard, ready (I hope) to deal with the accumulation of rusted out cars and old refrigerators that have been piling up there.

Because I would like to have fewer not-so-great days and more dancing-around-the-house days. More laughing days. More reading, walking, thinking, skipping, lounging days. I got an infusion of good mojo from the residual juju of a thousand happy Stone Soup House inhabitants before me; now it's up to me to get some of that good witches' brew going down here.

xxx c

Photo of paradise courtesy of The BF.

What money really means

One of my dirty little secrets has to do with money: I'm afraid of it.

Between role models who lived it up with cavalier disregard for cash, dying either in debt or indebted to loved ones (myself included) for covering them towards the end, and others who destroyed their health and emotional life in the pursuit of money, it's a miracle I'm neither pushing a shopping cart nor wedged between walls of newspaper, tying used paper bags together with twine against some future disaster, like a Depression-era baby gone whack job.

While I'm not rich, I'm also not in debt, and there's no wolf at the door. For my age and considering my nutty career trajectory, I'm actually doing well, living proof of the magic of compound interest. I socked away whatever I could as a Young Corporate Tool, living in rat-traps (okay, mouse-traps) in Brooklyn on overtime meals and happy hour appetizers while maxing out my 401k contributions. And this was back in the golden '80s, with dollar-for-dollar matching employer funds. Yes, you heard me: dollar for dollar.

And I've never exactly been a slacker. I was fortunate enough to have my college paid for, received gifts of cash here and there from my generous relatives and yes, I was subsidized to the tune of $50/week for the first six months I lived and worked in New York. Still, I've always worked, and never lived off the largesse of a partner or spouse. There were fat times and lean, but I managed to stay afloat, buy and sell a condo, keep clothes on my back and food in my gut, have health insurance (the good kind) and, while I've never been one to live high on the hog, even enjoy some luxuries like nice dinners out, nice food in, travel, cars (every one of which, of course, I've owned outright).

So this is not the story of someone who suffered the financial equivalent of being raised in a locked closet and never knowing light or human touch until age 16. I was good, I was fine, I looked completely normal, even together, compared to some people I know.

And yet, I am so conflicted about money, so filled with anxiety and conflict and trepidation, I cannot balance my checkbook. I mean, I have, at times, but I won't do it consistently. I've let money languish in low-interest accounts rather than make the simple step of moving it to a higher-interest vehicle because somehow, keeping it vague is more comfortable to me that keeping it real. I stubbornly resist getting a handle on my money which, believe you me, is not the best modus operandi for anyone, much less a sole proprietor.

But I've never really understood why until today, when I read something Suze "Yes, I'm Gay!" Orman wrote in her column for the March issue of Oprah's magazine. Orman was counseling a woman who's in a relationship with a guy who sounds kind of creepy about money, and she suggests that maybe this chick should bolt, because...

When a person can't share his financial life, I question his ability to share his heart. The way we handle money is a manifestation of who we are inside, and how he approaches the subject signifies his love and respect for you.

I tell you, I almost burst into tears reading this. Because it suddenly struck me how much of my life I have lived in fear, how worthless I have often felt about myself and my abilities, how much better it felt to look somewhere, anywhere, else, to tap dance a little faster, instead of sitting in the feeling I was really having until I owned it and could move on.

I have a lot of work to do yet, but I feel like the worst of it is over. Because at least for this last stretch of uncovering myself, thanks to a freshly-out financial guru to the masses, I have some direction and a little more light to find my way...

xxx c

Image by Simon Pais via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Nerd Love, Day 16: Obsession, a.k.a. Nerd Koan

To you, it is a collection of keys (and affinity tags) on a key ring. (Okay, carabiner.)

To me, it represents dozens of man-hours of thought:

One ring or two? Or three? And what diameter? Fob choice? Fob size? What is too heavy? What is too light? What feels good in my hands? What feels so good I'll forget about it? Is that too good? Is that bad? What would be useful? What would be more useful? Is yesterday's 'useful' no longer so? Where to forgo elegance for functionality? What is the nature of elegance, anyway?

The difference between being a baby nerd and a grownup one is that grownup nerds know to enjoy the process or abandon it altogether, because the "goal", perfection, will continue to recede in the distance as you move toward it.

The key ring of my 20's is not the key ring of my 30's is not the key ring of my 40's.

In my 50's? There may not be a key ring at all.

And maybe that is what I am working towards.

If, indeed, any of this is a working towards anything...

xxx c

the communicatrix elsewhere: How to make resolutions that actually work

I've spoken before about how resolutions blow big, stinky chunks, but only hinted at how goal-setting can really work.

If you are over 40 or a realist (I am in the former camp, but hardly the latter), you doubtless understand too well that there is no one book or system or piece of software that will change you life for you, only tools and hacks that help facilitate the growth you are ready to embrace.

I know: I spent 40+ years accumulating tools, and while I made incremental progress on my own, I didn't get Big Mama Change until the universe saw fit to sit me down and teach me a hard lesson. Fortunately, I was ready for it. Because really, the universe's next move was, like, non-operative cancer or some shit, and while the morphine and pot-smoking part of hellish pain sounds good, I question how well I would do with the rest of it.

So if you are change-ready (or change-curious) and want a new tool to play with, I humbly suggest you check out my latest column for LAcasting.com on effecting real change. Included are three steps I've found work well for me, as well as one really excellent book/system which I've hinted at here called Your Best Year Yet, by Ginny Ditzler. I did write the column for actors, but it's not totally acting-centric, and besides, it's always fun to read stuff about actors: ask the publishers of US and People and every other fucking consumer magazine aimed at women 18 - 54 in the U.S.

Also, I'm trying to add to my own body of knowledge on this stuff, so if you've found tactics or tools that work for you, please let me know either in the comments or via email (communicatrix at gmail dotterooski com). I first heard of Best Year Yet via Heidi Miller's excellent small biz marketing podcast, and I totally stole that theme thing from Jenny, for example (she was very gracious about it) and would be happy to steal equally good ideas from you, too.

With attribution, of course...

xxx
c

HELPFUL LINKS:

• Your Best Year Yet, by Ginny Ditzler, on Amazon
  One of the top five books I recommend for turning your life around. Its practices are simple and transformational, if you work them.
• The Best Year Yet website
  The cult around BYY isn't as geek-centric as GTD, so there's less online documentation. Hopefully, that will change at some point. In the meantime, my suggestion is to scan the BYY site, get the book, and see for yourself if it floats your boat.
• Heidi Miller's podcast about Best Year Yet on Diary of a Shameless Self-Promoter
  If you're the listening type, download this episode of Heidi's podcast. She outlines the 10 questions that form the backbone of the BYY system.
• "What to do with that Big, Shiny New Year of Yours" (one of my columns for The Networker)

Image by carf via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

A Song of Thanksgiving, Part 5: evidEnce room

Bart. Alicia. Jason. Ames. I remember what I thought after seeing my first evidEnce room show back in 1995, a production of Harry Kondeleon's The Houseguests: how do they do it?

Kirk. Dorie. Lauren. Rand, Colleen, Nick, Megan.

It was the same question I felt after seeing the next few shows: how do they do it? Find these great plays? Produce them like off-Broadway shows on no money? Get to work in this unbelievably cool space? Soon enough, it was replaced by another question: how can I do it with them?

John, Ann, Leo. Ignacia, Lori, Don, Katie, Burr, Sissy.

My friend, Tom, a longtime company member, called one day and said they were looking for an understudy to cover performances for the formidable Pamela Gordon, who had just been cast in a recurring role on Buddy Faro. The part, half of a wealthy couple quarantined in their London home duing the last great plague, was enormous and way beyond my capabilities at the time, but the dress was teeny-tiny and already rented for the run.

I was in...sort of. It took years of scrabbling along in tiny parts before I felt like I got any kind of a foothold. Even then, I would alternately burst with pride over being part of such a prestigious company and fester with fury over my lowly status within it. Why was I not front and center? Why were my career and stature not improving, clusters of awards not accumulating, sonnets not being written in my name?

Dylan, O-Lan, Tad. Ken. Johnny Z. Liz, Alex, Alain, Uma, Ryan.

But a funny thing happened somewhere along the way: these people who had started out as, let's be honest, the means to an end became the end, in and of themselves. I found myself caring less about being in the shows and more about being with the wonderful people who made them, both at the theater and outside of it. As a delightful and wholly unexpected bonus, the flyers I'd initially created semi-grudgingly as my contribution to the company somehow turned me into a graphic designer. A good one. A happy one. Jessica. Michael. Lisa.

The adage has it that you shouldn't be an actor unless you have to be. It seems like I don't need it like I used to, and, accordingly, am letting it go, bit by bit: the search for a theatrical agent; the hustling for TV and film work; the constant cycle of rehearsal/perform/repeat.

Toby. Barbara. Beth. Wendy, Justin, Travis, Tommy.

I know that the hardest thing to let go of is going to be the Evidence Room; I also know it's as inevitable as change itself that someday, I will.

With great sorrow. With a wee bit of wondering if I might have done things better.

But mostly, with a gratitude I never knew possible.

xxx c

Wherein our heroine learns to avoid the damned street entirely

My friend, Mary Ellen, and I go way back to my advertising days; she was one of the first people I met when I moved back to Chicago from New York, and I still make fun of how relentlessly and Midwesternly cheerful she was when she poked her head into my office for the first time to invite me to lunch.

She is still way too nice to remind me of what a dark and twisted troll I was, but 20 or so years later, she's simmered down, I've cheered up and we've met in a new middle ground. Our semi-/annual conversations have become important to both of us because we serve as touchstones for one another, showing how we've changed and where we might still need to. And, since Mary Ellen forsook advertising for psychotherapy instead of something idiotic like acting, it's basically like I get a 90-minute session free, or for the price of a phone call, which, since I switched to Vonage, is almost free. Ha, ha, Mary Ellen, I win!

Anyway, after the brief-but-requisite foray into the piteous state of national affairs, we launched into the more important topic of boys boys boys. Specifically, what we were doing with ours and how it all was going. (Mary Ellen and her husband have been together 15* years, during which timeI've divorced one guy and slagged around with a bunch of others, so there's always lots of touchstoning action there.)

I'm happy to report that things are tip-top back in Illinois; I'm guessing that by the way I natter on like a schoolgirl about The BF, everyone reading this knows things are hunky-dory here in sunny California. But it was not ever thus. Which got us to talking about two things: whether mileage logged**, solo or in tandem, is responsible for things going more smoothly or whether there really is a more-right-for-you type than those hilariously inappropriate jackasses you couldn't get enough of as a girl of 30 winters.

Here we sharply diverged, with Mary Ellen taking the highly uncharacteristic "life is short, life is shit/soon it will be over" viewpoint (i.e., there is no one type of person more right for us and relationships are, at their best, "a crucible, or cauldron, depending on the day" for personal development) and me staking out the cute boy – debilitating mental illness = reasonable shot at happiness position.

However, we both agreed on one thing: time do make the difference, both in knowing what is and is not tenable and speeding up the loosening of one's monkey-like grip on the latter. This is why I'm happy to be a craggy old crone of 44 rather than the juicy scoop of 20-something I once was. Also, I have excellent genes.

Mary Ellen even supplied the poem of the day: a lovely offering by one Portia Nelson, whom you may know better as Sister Berthe in the film version of The Sound of Music (or, for you 70's hipsters, the Law Office Receptionist in the only version Can't Stop the Music). I'm being glib, but I'm actually rather moved by Portia's story, having read up on her via her lovingly crafted website and read her poem, "Autobiography in Five (Short) Chapters" on the INS (yes, the INS) website. I guess self-actualization is a hot topic of discussion among potential immigrants to the U.S.

The poem is contained in There's A Hole In My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery, and is, apparently, quite as famous as any Von Trapp in its own right. The book (and contents) are copyrighted, so I can't but excerpt a bit here, but it resonated deeply with me, and I must needs share a stanza here, the one I got stuck in for a good 15 years:

2. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the same place.

But it isn't my fault.

Yeah, right.

On the one hand, where else could you be from ages 18 - 40?

On the other hand, let's hear it for 44.

xxx c

*Mary Ellen says it's actually closer to 11, but my position is if you make it past 10 years together in this farkakte world, you might as well call it 20.

**Intelligent, aware and awake mileage, that is. Just making it to age 170 is no guarantee that you will be any smarter than the average 12-year-old, and probably less smart if that 12-year-old has learned things like "don't stick your hand in there unless you're sure that thing is unplugged".

Photo by novon, used under a Creative Commons License

I'm not dead; I'm just resting

While I definitely spent most of last week supine on various surfaces along the Central Coast of California, rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated.

It had been I-Don't-Know-How-Long since I took a resting vacation. Christmas didn't count; for as much (frozen) fun as I had in Chicago, I had things I had to do as well. Resting vacation, to me, means no agenda other than no agenda; the point is not only to shift from the usual to the unusual, but to downshift significantly, which in my case usually means no to-do list, lots of rest and no electronics, save the recreational kind (and I'm talking video and audio playback devices, kids, so get your minds out of the gutter).

Of course, I dragged along enough Relaxation Aids for year-long sabbatical: three books and a clutch of articles torn from old Vanity Fair (visions of me catching up on my reading); guitar and mandolin (visions of me & The Boyfriend having a hootenanny on the motel balcony); my sketchbook; a notebook; and, between me & The B.F., a stack of DVDs that would make the check-in clerk at Blockbuster break into a cold sweat.

This, of course, is the grown-up equivalent of lugging home all your textbooks for spring break: if you don't have them, you'll feel their absence keenly; if you do, you can leave them to molder away in the corner, untouched, with blithe disregard.

We slept...a lot. We ate...a lot less than we do at home, actually, and far better. We met up with some friends I made on my last trip up the coast. In short, gentle reader, we did for five days what I've learned I must do more of all the time: not much of anything, and only when we felt like it.

Some rest easily and often. Cats are notoriously good at this, I've noticed; small babies, too, before they start to suspect that perhaps they're missing out on some madcap adult hilarity when they hit the hay (note to kids: you are, but don't worry: there's more where that came from, and the cultural references will be funnier when it's your at-bat).

I had always hoped that when I left my 9-to-5, I'd leave my workaholic tendencies along with it, but no such luck. While I've gotten a mite better at carving out rest time since my epiphany, I'm a long, long way from being zenmistress of anything. Besides, I actually like to work; it's no hardship for me to spend hours/days/weeks plugging away at the thing I love. One of the things The BF (who shares my love of work, among other things) and I discussed was whether there were ways to thread rest through work, or work through rest, more efficiently than we have done to date. Going offsite seems to offer a greater opportunity to work well, but not non-stop. A stripped-down laptop and rental condo provide the necessary tools without the customary distractions, which, in turn (theoretically, anyway), are replaced by new attractions that might prove restorative: a beach to walk between three-hour work jags; a grocery store you can't shop on autopilot; a restaurant to repair to after a workday that actually ends rather than bleeding into the next calendar day.

Because if resting vacation is no agenda whatsoever, vacation itself is a shift from the ordinary, a modified agenda, or one's usual agenda, relocated. And that can mean anything from a hedonistic sun-and-fun junket to working at a coffee shop on the other side of town (with your cell phone turned off, if you usually leave it on). I've returned from an afternoon of the latter better rested than I have from a week of the former, and not just because I burn easily. I think I probably require more rest than I'm willing to admit to myself, and (for those on modest budgets, anyway) it's easier stolen in small chunks here and there, 90 minutes at the movies, a couple of hours at a museum, a work-week's time in a nearby cheap motel, than it is in expensive two-week increments.

It's also easier to justify when cost is low and/or tax-deductible, and if there's one thing that has no place on a vacation, it's guilt.

Still, every so often in the off-season, when the crowds are thin and the rates are low, it's nice to nothing much at all. Next (rest) stop: Palm Springs.

In August, of course. And maybe on assignment...

xxx c

Pho(ne)bia

Recently, I started returning my phone calls. Not that I'd ever subscribed to the local shitiquette of blowing people off by not returning their phone calls; I'm far too Midwestern for that.

But for several months, oh, hell...a couple of years, really, I got into the highly antisocial habit of turning my calls around via email. All of them. (Or damned close to it, my now-deceased father did not have email.)

Initially, my eminently forgivable excuse was a life-threatening lack of energy. I was spending the few calories I could afford making high-fat tubs of yogurt and low-carb hunks of protein in an almost Sisyphean attempt to stay out of the hospital. I neither talked to nor saw much of anyone for a good four months, except when they were trotting by to drop off supplies or help with chores.

But even as my health improved, my aversion to phone contact continued. And I realized that for whatever reason, the phone meant too much contact for me, or too little control, or both. And, since I had bigger fish to fry, I let it go at that (a miracle of sorts right there, not worrying something to death) and figured the answer would come to me or it wouldn't and either way, I'd learn to live with it.

Which I did. L.A. Jan and I even made jokes about it, the bizarre incongruity of someone who kept an Excel spreadsheet to track her online dating activity yet was often loathe to answer calls from her best friend.

Somewhere in those two years, though, things shifted. I think the shift had something to do with my readiness to connect in general, because it was right around the time I got into my first real relationship since DumpFest 2002 that I found myself occasionally brightening when a particular clutch of numbers popped up on the Caller ID screen. And today, about a year later, I'm not only pouncing on the phone when The Boyfriend's name pops up, but marveling upon hanging up with him, with L.A. Jan, with my sister, that 20...30...45 minutes have ticked by while we've been yakking away. Again. Sometimes after I've just seen them. I'm even occasionally (gasp) picking up the phone when clients call. Okay, not every time. But it's a start.

The thing of it is, letting my borders shrink for a bit and letting myself not sweat it was probably instrumental in those same borders expanding again, to maybe beyond their original circumference, later on. And as I continue to wrassle with my mighty, mighty infernal motherfucking lesson of P - A - T - I - E - N - C - E, it might behoove me to remember that sometimes, the quickest way towards two steps forward is one step back, from the phone, or whatever consarned annoyance is bedeviling one at the moment. Like a name one can't remember. Or a riddle that's driving one crazy.

Or a blog one hasn't posted to in four days.

What can I say? It comes. It doesn't come. It comes back.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a few calls to turn around...

xxx c

The joy of the Stupid Day Job

Despite the calculated gloss of fabulousness that's got you all dazzled, for most of her life, the communicatrix has been better counted as one among the sheeple than the bright and blazing solo artist she has always longed to be. As I said when I (gladly) moved from my Park-Slope-adjacent (but really "shitty Brooklyn") life to a cramped but safe bunker in midtown Manhattan, I yam not a pioneer. Especially when living on the edge includes such delights as resident rodents, draughts that bring on the consumption and having to pee in a jar because you can't pass through your roommate's bedroom while she's shtupping her boyfriend. In other words, given the choice (and really, isn't there almost always a choice?) I have generally elected to go the tried-and-true Good Girl route, college, "career", marriage, rather than risk parental upset or the scorn of the material world by striking out on my own.

Oddly enough, the tide started to turn when I met my ex-husband, to whom I forever owe a debt of gratitude for showing me that I would not, in fact, die if I was no longer able to give a seven-word summation of my life's work (i.e., self-worth) at a cocktail party. In hindsight, of course, the choice seems obvious, I never much cared for cocktail parties nor the people in attendance who subscribed to the seven-word summation theory of self-worth. But I'd successfully passed for someone who gave a damn for so long that it felt natural to move in that world.

Now, even as a Corporate Tool I was open in my admiration for the more intrepid wanderers. However, the thought of actually being one, or, rather, an "unsuccessful" one, was anathema. Or rather, the day job that came along with "unsuccess" was anathema. Me, make copies? Cold call? Sling hash? I was a highly-paid creative profeshunal; how could step down and take a Stupid Day Job?

But there came a time in pursuit of the muse when I did, and gratefully. L.A. nest egg gone, I'd been flying back and forth to Chicago for two years to make bank and tend to my dying mother; when Mom finally died and my so-called acting career demanded I actually be here for little things like auditions and gigs, I went to one of my father's friends, hat in hand, and asked for employment, any kind of employment, he could give me.

The job I got, unglorified minion in the research department of a large media-buying company, offered little in the way of mental stimulation (or compensation, for that matter). But there was insurance and a steady paycheck and an odd sort of relief. All day long, I made copies, filed, ran out for coffee, ran to the mail room with packages, basically, anything that anyone asked me to do. It was humbling, certainly, to fetch and carry for people ten and fifteen years my junior, but it was also wildly freeing, once I got over the embarrassment. People who liked me liked me for me, not because I might be their boss next month. And believe me, brother, I never took that job home. Not once. Ever.

I rarely worked through lunch, either. Instead, I'd either eat with a friend or browse the local bookstore or take myself on walks that were insanely long and arduous by L.A. standards. All that time I didn't have to have my brain fully engaged in solving "creative" problems meant a lot of time for...well, stewing. Ruminating. But also, for the first time in my life, for real creative thinking.

Don't get me wrong, when the time came that I could make rent with a combo platter of acting and low-end graphic design (the unwitting genius in my learning PowerPoint is a post unto itself), I walked away and never looked back. I like calling my own shots and am willing to put up with a certain amount of stress in exchange for that freedom.

But if my circumstances ever mandate another day job, I don't think I'd look at it as the hellish punishment I once did. Instead, I'd see it more for what it is: opportunity clad in a different guise.

With benefits, of course.

xxx c

Alive vs. living

Let me state right up front that I am not anti-television. The fact that I was cable-free for five years post-divorce had more to do with my crack-like addition to television than any moral stance against or disdain for the medium. I just assumed that if more than two and a half channels were viewable on my TV set, I'd do little else save watch it. The good news? I know myself really, really well. The bad news? I know myself really, really well. Of course, I am now justifying my increased television viewing with my newfound desire to transform #1 & #2, the stage play (with music!) that I wrote with my partner, L.A. Jan, into a television series, a desire born out of a dream to tell our truth to the widest possible audience with the greatest possible efficiency. (When you're perpetually zonked by chronic illness, you quickly attune yourself to the fine art of maximizing efficiency.)

Given that dream, logic would dictate that, in addition to re-familiarizing myself with the medium as a consumer, I'd also be angling to learn the business from the inside out: i.e., getting a staff job on an existing television show. Any television show.

Only I'm not. And neither is Jan. And if we were on the fence about it before, which maybe I was, since, let's face it, TV is a really well-paying gig and I really understand the freedom that money provides, all it took was one day in the Quaalude of a sitcom spec-writing class we're taking to convince me that writing on someone else's show is not something I can pursue with the laser-like focus one needs to in order to obtain such a cush gig.

Again, please understand: I am no TV snob. I both love my TV, free, basic and premium, and I fully recognize and honor the very real skills required to write for a pre-existing show. I can even understand how it might be fun...sometimes. After all, in addition to fat residual checks, you're surrounded by smart, funny people all day and usually, there's really good lunch. It's a lot like advertising used to be back in the 1980's, only you're writing the stuff in between the commercials instead of the commercials themselves.

But it's just not me; I was in advertising (which I fell into and then fell asleep in) and that wasn't me, either. Writing copy and shooting commercials, even great copy and terrific commercials, felt like a simulacrum of the life I was supposed to lead, like being alive, versus really living.

If I fell into it, if I was plucked from amongst millions, if the smoked glass window of the limo rolled down and a long, well-manicured finger pointed at me me me to be lifted from obscurity to the high-profile, well-heeled life of a sitcom writer, well, hell, yeah, I'd do it. For a while, anyway. I may be crazy, but I'm not nuts.

But as for what I'll hurl myself into? What I'll go out on a limb for, contort myself for, put away childish things for? I'm afraid that for me, I'm looking at the big, nasty enchilada: my Truth. And it's all, in this case, the creation of my own work, saleable or not, or nothing. You're in or you're out. Live free or die.

Because that soporific sitcom spec-writing class? It now follows hard on the heels of a pilot-writing class, the most kick-ass, off-the-charts-caffeinated class it's been my pleasure to take for a long, long time. Same teacher, same room, totally different vibe. We're a ragtag crew, this small mess of us with dreams of disseminating our dreams, but we are plugged into the juice and we will not take "no" for an answer. And man, oh, man, is that ever exciting to be around.

Will we all make it? Doubtful. Will any of us make it? Hard to say. The odds are certainly against us; each of us, I'm sure, has had no end of helpful advisors telling us that our time would be better spent traversing the traditional routes. But that's not for us: the few...the proud...the insane. Keep your overhead low and your sights sky-high.

I may never again know what it's like to stay in a great hotel or sign a mortgage stub or even order off a menu with impunity. I may be forever relegated to a boho lifestyle of purloined treats consumed off the premises with fellow losers.

But it's okay. Because I've been alive and done those things.

And believe me, living is better...

xxx c

A home of one's own, Part I.

For someone who grew up in the Bicycling Fish days of feminism, I have pedaled a surprising number of miles. Don't get me wrong: as any of my friends from as far back as Montessori will tell you, I've always been an independent cuss, happier playing on my own than with others, refusing assistance to a fault (you don't end up in the hospital for 11 days with 104ºF fever and bloody intestines because you're smart about asking for help). But independence is a funny thing. It's not just about things like making your own way (which I do) or buying your own place (which I have); it's about doing them in the right way, in the right time and with the right spirit. Too often in my past I did great things for lousy reasons. I threw myself into series of jobs I only sort of liked, turning them into a career I definitely didn't like, all to prove...what? That I was capable? That I was extraordinary? And to whom? A nameless, faceless crowd of People who, let's face it, couldn't really give a rat's patootie about my next big advertising move.

Likewise, while it shames me deeply, I've spent far too much time and energy looking for relationships, being in relationships, contorting myself to fit in outdated relationships than I have on my relationship with myself. Not just primary relationships, either, it was just as important to win the approval of a parent or a friend or the mail carrier as it was that of a lover. Even while I recognized this was not perhaps the most salubrious way to waltz through life, I couldn't stop myself: I had to exhaust myself. After 41 years of running, I collapsed. Fortunately, that time I not only let go and let God (or whomever, as I like to say), I let go of everything and I let everybody.

So many wonderful things have come out of the great good fortune of getting sick. I slowed down, for one; really, I had no other choice. I gained an acute appreciation for everything, and I do mean everything, in my life. Fundamentally, I learned to see and experience things in a different way, from the inside out rather than the backasswards way I'd been doing it for so many years.

And remarkably, things began to shift. I was more grateful for less money. My burning desire to Make It As An Actress turned into a profound respect for the ground I had already gained, and then to a respect for the person (um, me) who'd gained it, and then to a total falling away of all the (wrong) reasons I'd lusted after success, money, fame, validation, and yes, love, leaving just this pure but fiercely burning desire to speak my Truth. And my yearning to be in a primary relationship sort of faded away, bit by bit, until I realized that what I really wanted was authentic connection, period, with myself, with my friends, with the mail carrier. My real longing was for home; the "whom" was almost beside the point. (Sex was not, but that's another post for another day.)

Which brings me back around to the title of this rather long-winded rant (with apologies to Virginia Woolf). For too long, I shunned the idea of home as just so much attachment, a waste of time, money and energy. I lived in a series of shitholes I was only too happy to turn the key on in the morning. When I finally bought a place, I did it for Investment Purposes and for the partner who would surely materialize to join me there (he did). When I lived with S.O.s, I furnished (or not) to please them; when they moved out or I moved on, I kept only what was necessary to get by.

This past year, as part of my odyssey of self-discovery, I finally explored the last frontier. I bought a real couch. I took a weekend and painted my (rental) apartment. I took a sewing class and made curtains. I bought a piece of art, my first in over 15 years. I made my place the way I wanted to make it, for no one else but me. For the first time in my life, it's truly an expression of myself: it's my truth, writ in red and yellow and odd eclectic furnishings. I feel as at home in my home as I do in my own skin, and it all feels wonderful.

The funniest part? Everyone else likes it better, too.

xxx c

The Communicatrix...Listens?

Like most of you, the communicatrix has an agenda. Don't know what yours are, but mine is to share certain hard-won truths. Well, really, a bunch of petty, not-so-hard-won truths, best thinking-man's hoochie site, kick-ass theater, worst phone ever, and one Big Fat Mama Truth, the Truth, if you will.

I have some tools in my communicatrix arsenal already, relentless enthusiasm, reasonable facility with language, considerable experience shilling...er...communicating my message to others, but I'm still not really conversant. I still can't talk to anyone and have it land.

No, really, that's huge. That's everything, really. Imagine the possibilities: speak to a n y o n e...and have it land. I guess it would be easy if you had a really, really good weapon in your arsenal, like a burning bush or thunderbolts or some other groovy, god-like accessory, but I don't. I don't even have Vocal Amplitude. (Seriously. Tiny ribcage = no vocal amplitude.)

The secret for mere mortals, I think, is listening. Simple, right? Easy? Um...no.

Really listening requires a detachment from ego I'm generally reluctant to muster. I don't think I'm alone, here, either, based on the number of conversations I've had where I actually catch overtalking happening in mid-sentence. Not the end-of-sentence, I-had-that-idea-too overtalking: full-on, hands-over-ears, I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALALALA!!! overtalking.

And this sometimes happens with really good friends who really care about me, not just garden-variety buggers in sales calls and ad agency pitch meetings (ad agencies are notorious hotbeds of overtalking, trust me).

I won't even get into the red vs. blue histrionics that have been flying fast & furious from both sides of late except to say that they're largely a catalyst for me getting off my bony ass and fixing my own nasty little listening problem.

My new-favorite pundit, Evelyn Rodriguez, who's all about the critical importance (and true power) of real communication, has written a couple of great posts recently about what happens when we stop listening and the magic that can happen when we start. She posits a really wise theory on the root of it all:

Being unheard, unappreciated and unlistened to is intimately linked with unwantedness. The isolation is overpowering. We can move away from the separation by remaining open-ended rather than closed meme-attractors ourselves.

Every relationship advice source worth its salt says that if you're looking for something in others, first find that thing in yourself. (Hell, even Dorothy figured out that if you're looking for happiness, check the backyard before you go running off on some poppy-induced, yellow-brick road to nowhere.)

More than anything in the world right now, I want to be heard. So I'm gonna start listening.

Anyone with me?

xxx c