Hi there! Welcome to my blog! I love, love, love talking about all things metaphysics, writing, and blogging. My hope is that you leave here feeling much better than when you came. It's great to see you!
I’D LOVE TO…
I’m writing a short story about boobs. I didn’t intend for it to be about boobs when I started out, but that’s just what my character started talking about and who was I to put a muzzle on her? Boobs are the most celebrated part of a woman’s body. There are marathons run in their honor, whole armies of men willing to barter their souls for a peek at the right pair and without them, many a plastic surgeon would go hungry. Why not balance all of the phallic symbols in literature with a little tit?
Here’s my pickle: I find that my writing is sloppy and under-cooked. No longer am I paying attention to making the story sound good with colorful words and gall stone nuggets of wisdom. I’m just writing in black and white and it’s boring me. My problem is I’m not reading enough literature. I’ve been dwelling too long in the subzero icebox that is non-fiction that I’ve forgotten how to describe a scene so it is lukewarm and felt. Furthermore, I’m impatient. I can’t for the life of me dedicate myself to something longer than two pages. Takes too long to cook. I get tired of standing around.
Tonight I stuck it out though, and I think I’m making progress. Sometimes you have to stick it out when the awesome doesn’t bloom because eventually it does and I promise, you won’t be too tired to see it. I reached down deep into the corazon, because that’s where the heat lies, and that’s what makes my stories and poems come alive. It’s where the good is. I pull out things I didn’t know existed until I see them on the screen and when I do I am satisfied, shocked, and a little bit cured.
The story is called Poorly Drawn Circles. It’s two pages deep, and I may or may not add more to it. I’m a flash fiction kind of gal because I am aware that attention span is the scarcest thing on the planet. Or because I get tired of standing around. Either way, since I’ve mentioned it here, I’m more motivated to finish it and get some feedback. Stand by.
I sat in traffic for an hour to get on the “List ‘O’ Awesome” at the open mic poetry reading last Thursday, and even after I signed up I was 100% sure I’d back out. Watching the video of me that night, I realized I could never be a public speaker because I really do sort of cringe at the sound of my own voice. In other news, I had a beautiful experience.
Something marvelous happened, and when something marvelous happens it only happens when you’re not expecting it, which I certainly was not. I was on my third glass of wine because I needed liquid encouragement. I was giggling and whispering with Melody because we were nervous school girls. A woman went up because it was her turn to speak her piece, and the room got silent. I was only half paying attention at first because Melody and I were giving each other queasy looks–it was almost our time to shine. The woman at the microphone then mentioned that she had been scouring the invite for the open mic poetry night on Facebook, perusing the list of names that were attending. Somehow, by the power of God or one of his fallen, she found this blog–this one here. The one your reading now. Mine. Not only did she find it however, she printed out a passage from my last post and read it to the entire audience. It was the first time I had ever heard anyone read my writing aloud. I felt like a proud mother watching her child win a spelling bee.
I teared up, but the wine could have had a hand in that. I had never been so moved in my life. I felt like cherry pie. When I went up to recite my midget-sized poems, I told the audience that I was the blogger this wonderful woman had spoken about, and how appreciative I was that my midnight rambles had moved her to share them with the crowd. Then I said my bit, and I wasn’t the least bit nervous. Thank you lady chardonnay.
Afterwards, Melody and I hung out for a drink and I actually got to meet the woman who read my writing aloud. I think I was more a fan of her than she was of my writing. I wanted to kneel at her feet and tell her that all I want out of life is for people to feel uplifted, the way I do after I write. It was the first time I ever felt like I could exhale and say…there. I did it.
I don’t ever want that feeling to go away.
My room is a mess. The entire week I have not let it get to me, because I am baby steppin’ it to cleanliness like a mad pro. That’s what Leo Babauta taught me today, and what I’m going to share with you in this post.
Reflecting on 2011, I have experienced loss and heartbreak so close to each other, they could have gotten each other sick if say, loss had the measles and heartbreak was perfectly healthy. What I’ve learned over the last few weeks however, is to go slowly. Since roughly mid 2009 when I graduated from college I’ve felt aimless, stagnant, and like I was running out of time. I wanted to write books, learn instruments and languages, travel, sing, be someone, do something with my life, but I didn’t know where to begin. I felt like all the little steps I had to take to get wherever it was I was going were going to take too long, and I wasn’t going to have enough time to do what I wanted to do. I was going to be 30 in a few short years, and I was wasting my twenties on alcohol, Chipotle, and men.
Lady Gaga was the first to inspire me to get my act together. Her song “Marry the Night” is about how she made a decision to marry her work in order to make her dreams come alive. That’s when I became more active on this blog, and realized my quest to write a novel soon turned into a life quest to pursue my passions and let my dreams eat me alive. That’s when I realized getting a business degree was the path I was meant to be on. That’s when I realized the answer to my very own happiness was within myself. That’s when I also discovered the Zen Habits blog, which taught me today, as it does every day, to go slowly. Baby steps matter just as much as any other, no matter how small. I can write 100 words a day, minuscule, but there’s not a single person that can say 100 words a day won’t get me there.
That’s a snippet from one of Babauta’s posts that got me through the day, and will get me through the rest of my life. Love the step, not the destination. Enjoy the quest! He said how a few years ago he couldn’t even fathom exercising but one day he made a baby step and ran for 10 minutes a day. That’s it. No pressure, just 10 simple minutes, every day, until that one day came when he was running 20 minutes, then 40, then marathons!
I suppose you could say from the looks of my living quarters, that my room is that marathon. I got a parcel of excellent Christmas gifts this year and it has inspired me to organize everything and start fresh. On Monday I scrubbed my bathroom and organized the area under my sink, dividing up hair products, nail products, lotions, perfumes, make-up, etc. into their own separate bins.
That was my baby step for the week and I am damn proud of myself. I didn’t get to my room that day, but that’s okay. My shower is spotless. And later I got to drink Fat Tire on a roof in Hollywood with a friend while the sun was setting. Rewards all around.
So tonight I am blogging. That is my baby step. And tonight I am reading. Another baby step. And I just might put a few clothes away. Probably maybe. Putting a few clothes away sounds much less stressful than cleaning the entire room. I find that pressuring yourself into a really big task just makes you more stressed out, and tackling them in small pieces takes the pressure off a ton. Doing things at your own pace always does, and why not? It’s your marathon, go as slow as you want. Even the walkers make it to the finish line.
If you take away one thing from today’s post, take away this: there is some one, or some thing, looking out for you, making things opportune. Whatever your denomination, you have to know this. I simple can’t even begin to list the events that have happened to me in the past 48 hours, that have given me exactly what I needed at exactly the right time.
But here’s one of them.
I’ve been talking a lot about my MBA lately, and Thursday, while perusing The Twitter, UCLA Anderson tweeted there would be a free webinar from 12pm PST to 1pm. This was a basic run-down of the MBA program, a brief glimpse into Anderson’s community, and their expectations. I found out as much while reading Your MBA Gameplan, but an important distinction here from the book to UCLA, is that the book won’t tell me what UCLA expects of its applicants. Only UCLA can do that, and that’s exactly the kind of information this webinar espoused.
Basically, the universe was like ‘so ya wanna get your MBA, do ya? Fine, here’s this.’ Mind you, the universe already stepped in once by delivering that MBA book to me in the first place. Of all the books for me to review!
So I listened to the webinar, and I loved it. I did it on my lunch break at work (the timing was damn near impeccable) and I took notes. One thing I didn’t realize was that not every applicant would get an interview. I always thought the interview was an optional part of the application, but the host of the webinar informed me that you are interviewed only if you’re considered. I know, heavy stuff.
(CONSIDER ME!)
I wasn’t able to blog on Thursday or Friday, so that was the first order of business I wanted to share with you. The second is that I love you. Have a wonderful weekend.
Today I am not only excited to have received a signed copy of Armen Melikian’s novel Journey to Virginland, a book I reviewed, but I am also anxious to tear to pieces the neat and not so tidy short story I wrapped last night, after many, many sips of hot chocolate.
So I’m not working on my novel right this second, but I’m a product of the twentieth century, my attention span is anything but stable, and while I’ll admit that any second of the day, I will also be the first to attest to the fact that I do not have attention deficit disorder. That to me, my friends, is one of the most commonly misdiagnosed disorders of our century.
A few weeks ago I started a short story after a short camping trip and a series of successive horns blaring outside my apartment window upon my return. I got a page and a half into it before I forgot about it, and returned to it a few nights ago, only to forget about it some more a few nights later. So last night, I picked it up and gave it a go. I told my self to sally forth into the gallows of writer despair, and to keep going until I could truthfully say I had written enough to call it a job done, if not very well. And you know what? I finished the damn thing. It’s only 750 words or so, but you know that feeling when you just know a short story is done? When you just know your character has finished saying what it wanted to say, doing what it needed to do?
And so I stopped and tweeted about it, like most tweeters do, and then I went back and read it over. It was rotten orange peels on a pile of yesterday’s feces. Simply revolting. I read it aloud three times and made all these tweaks. When I was satisfied with the night’s revisions, I read a little in bed and Nyquil’d out for the night. Someone I know gave me the snifflies. I intend to revise it until I’m more sniffly tonight, then give it one more day. Then, after one more day’s revisions, I’ll send it to a couple of friends, pretend I’ve integrated their feedback, and submit it somewhere.
Okay, I might integrate a little feedback. Depends on whether or not I’ve had my morning coff.
I went ahead and lost my driver’s license this weekend, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop driving myself crazy about how much I want to be passionate about something. I’m passionate about writing, sure, but maybe not passionate enough. The more I get wrapped up in my novel the more I realize I just want to go out and meet the people. What that means is, I want to invent a product or website that helps people, brings them together, in much same way social networking sites do.
Don’t get me wrong, writing is really all I have going for me right now, and when you’re good at something, it’s important that you stick with it. Not to mention, I like it. But I’m having doubts about it, because if I truly were in love with it, I think I would be treating it more like a boyfriend than a chore, which is sort of what it’s been feeling like lately. That’s why I decided to marry it, after all. But I’m worried I may have made a mistake.
The ironic part is, I like writing about writing. I like this blog, and I like fooling around with it. I like connecting with other writers and gauging where they’re at in their work. Lately I almost like blogging than I do spending time with my own writing, which is making me question myself on an almost hourly basis.
Maybe it’s just Sunday, and I’m tired, but I’m feeling unmotivated in every respect to work on my novel. I’m getting the itch to do something else.
Not all who wander are lost, especially not writers. In fact, I’d like to think most of our ideas come to us while we’re wandering, physically, mentally, spiritually, whatever. Either way, I’m convinced that having no direction isn’t a very big problem.
I’m not a published novelist or anything, but the process of writing a book in my experience, telling a tale, is a hell of a lot more aimless than I thought. As I sat down to write last night, I felt like a lonely wanderer. It had been so long (my novel and I were honeymooning for a day or two after I married him) that I nearly forgot where I was going with it. I did, in fact. I had a few vague ideas of what I wanted it to be about and what I wanted to happen. You know, the big things that gave me the idea to write it in the first place. But I’m still beginning, so when I sat down to continue, I was completely lost on what was going to happen next. How in the hell was I going to make the big things I wanted to happen, happen?
It’s a slow process, and details need to be fleshed out. The story needs to build, gain momentum, and skyrocket into space during those big moments. Characters need to be introduced, their faces, their quirks. How that’s going to happen I have no idea. But I’ll tell you what I do have, and that’s faith. I have faith that the more time I spend with the story I want to tell, the more it will tell itself. I’ve seen it happen in my short stories, even in my poems. Even in book reviews I’ve written. I never know quite what I want to say until I really get going, and then it just goes off like a bomb in my head and I’m writing it all down, flayed body parts and everything. I ache to detonate.
Marriages and novel writing have exactly 534,021 things in common, but for brevity’s sake, I’ll stick to my favorite: dedication. This relationship I have no problem dedicating to, because my novel will give me one thing in the end, as far as I’m concerned, and that is relief.
I’ve said more than a few ti`mes on this blog that writing is therapeutic for me. If I were writing to sell, I’d be up to my ears in rejection letters because it’d all be crap. That’s not to say that I’m not already up to my nose hairs in rejection letters of course, but you get the idea. When you think of it as a job, it comes out forced and smelling like month old milk. Sometimes though, when you’re writing for yourself, there are a few lines that might come out like a beautiful newborn, and you’re satisfied with them because they hit home. At least for you. Therein lies my own relief, because for that small measure of time when I wrote those few lines, I healed a bit.
Back to the matter at hand. Dedication. That is what novels require, and until now I have been spitting out excuse after excuse as to why I’m not dedicating myself to this relationship. Where real life relationships are concerned, I’ve got bruises and scars all over those hard to reach places, and I’m tired of wanting to be wanted. Real life people are never where you want them to be, when you want them to be. So maybe this move is selfish, but maybe it’s time to be. Sometimes the cure for loneliness is substituting whatever’s making you lonely with something that fills you up.
So I’m marrying my work.
I’ve decided to step into a new relationship with a man who I can spend as much time as I want with, who I can talk to at all hours of the night, who I can wake up with and dote upon. Essentially, someone who will always be there when I want him. Someone who will never let me down. Okay some of that is balderdash. I’ve been let down plenty by this novel fellow because sometimes he gets real quiet and it’s hard to get him to sing.
But he’s cute and on time, and I’m willing to make this work.