punch envy in the face

We've all heard the phrase the grass is greener on the other side, right?

Yeah. That's what this post is about.

For as long as I can remember, I've lacked that competitive edge. I was placed into sports at a pretty young age, because my energy and enthusiasm were through the roof and I'm sure my parents literally wept in joy to have an instructor or coach try to tackle that unbridled energy for a couple hours each day so that they could lie face down on the floor and sleep for eight minutes. But even as I "competed" in gymnastics, soccer, and martial arts, I was never competitive. I simply didn't care about beating anyone else. Trophies were boring, and I was always more concerned about the feelings of the kids on the losing team when we did win. I could not have been less interested in measuring my progress against how the other kids my age were doing, or looking at anyone else to figure out my place in the world.

When I did push myself (and I do, quite often), I measured myself up against me. Was I better today than I was yesterday? Did I hike further, punch harder, stretch longer, do even more push-ups than the day before? I measured me against me, and it worked out fairly well, because the most important thing I gained from that was happiness. I was happy to just be me. I didn't need to be anyone else, even if some kids were going further or faster. What other people accomplished simply didn't affect me, not because I didn't care about them, but because it never felt like the accomplishments of other people took something away from ME.

School and acting were the same way for me. I received high grades in school but didn't care what other people were earning (I remember getting cornered by the Smart Kid in my AP English class one year when he discovered that I had the highest grade in the class. But you don't even care, he kept saying, as if my lack of competitiveness meant that I shouldn't be able to write an essay well.) When I moved up to LA to pursue acting, I was genuinely glad when someone I knew booked a great part in a tv show or movie. It still never felt like something was being taken away from me. I was happy to just be traveling on my own journey, at my own speed.

Years passed. My Happiness Set Point remained solid and steady, and I was content to take things at my own speed. But little by little, other people worried about me, and they told me so. They were concerned that I was missing out on great opportunities, because I wasn't pushy or aggressive enough. They assumed that because I was content, it meant that I didn't care about taking my career further. They pointed out that other people had more auditions or jobs than I did, and what was I going to do about it?

It's hard to stay happy when people tell you that you shouldn't be. And of my own accord, a few years ago, I opened the door to Dissatisfaction, and along with it came Insecurity, Unhappiness, and yes - Envy. Suddenly, as if I were trying to make up for all those years lost, I couldn't stop obsessing about other people and what they had. Why didn't I have what they did in their careers? Every job my friends booked, I was still happy for them - but it hurt. It was a subtraction from my own happiness. Their happiness took away part of mine (something I hate to admit here on a public blog, but don't worry - this story has a happy ending.) And every actual expert on happiness can tell you what I had completely forgotten, as I went over and over every night what mistakes I must have possibly made, as I looked back at the past and bathed in regret each evening wondering what I should have done differently so that I'd be a successful working actress by now. They'd say that TRUE happiness does not concern itself with what other people are doing, that real happiness only multiplies and adds, never subtracts, never divides. And I know all that. Intellectually. But it's hard to fight back against the demons once you opened the door and let them come in and trash your house.

So I had to start from scratch. Just like taking a break from working out, it was hard and discouraging and time-consuming and frustrating and there was a lot of  I already learned this lesson, why am I here again. I put one foot in front of the other and tried to remember what it felt like to not compare myself to others. To not take things personally. To feel genuine joy for the success of other people.

It was not easy, and it took a while. But I read a quote one day that helped move that journey along a little faster. It said, "The grass is greener on the other side because it's getting watered."

BAM. That was it. That was the perspective I needed. The grass is greener on the other side...because on the other side is someone who is working their ass off, focusing on their own journey, taking care of what needs to get taken care of, and not spending so much time looking over at their neighbor's lawn. And I had NO CLUE. I had no clue what other people were going through, that some people were looking at ME and being envious of me and thinking I was the one who had it easy. We are all looking over at each's other lawns and having zero clue about the hard work that goes in to maintaining it, all of us needlessly comparing and competing and making ourselves miserable.

And then I started to remember. Like muscle memory, I started to remember my natural happiness set point, where I never felt lack in my own life just because someone else had abundance in theirs. I remembered what it meant to be grateful, to be present and grounded and focused on my own life (in a non-selfish way), to take deep breaths and start focusing on my own grass rather than worrying about what someone else was doing on their grass.

I am still driven, I am still pushing, especially in a challenging career choice that encourages competitiveness and back-stabbing. But I'm back on track. And I've been trying to write this post for several months now, and I finally got it out of my system and into the world and if only one of you who reads it is changed by it, I will have done my job.

Go out into the world and know that nothing is against you. Go out and punch envy in the face.

You are loved. Act like it.

You know those things you don't do, because you're afraid they won't work out? 

I'm not talking about wandering into traffic, but the Big Stuff - asking the Big questions, making the Big move, taking the Big leap of faith, running towards the Big life - the things we'd like to do to make our lives Bigger and more full of grace and breathing room, but we hesitate because it's damn hard work that requires an extraordinary amount of courage and inertia. And you know how there's no guarantees, and you might just face-plant in front of everyone and it might require that you face-plant a hundred or a thousand ways before you figure out how to stick the landing?

Do it anyway.

Paint that painting or open that art gallery or be the one who says "I love you" first to the person who makes your heart go thump thump thump or choose to have a baby or choose to not have a baby or decide to make the first move or decide to quit that job that makes you miserable or decide to pack up the kids and spouse and travel the world. Do it.

Do it because you're loved, by whatever name you choose to call it, God, gods, Allah, Buddha, the Universe, the Great Nothingness, the Colors of the Wind, whatever. You are loved. You were loved into existence by something Pretty Damn Big.

Act like it.

wholeheartedness

I won't lie in that there aren't some times that I'd like to punch my heart in the face. My whole heart - my wholeheartedness.

 

*************************

I am sitting in therapy like a good person does, because depression is like acne, in that when you follow the right routine and everything clears up you are tempted to go, "Look! I'm fine! I don't need to do this anymore!" and you are tempted to think you are no longer a person who has acne and/or depression, and then you stop following your routine and everything goes to hell, including but not limited to your face. And your heart.

I am telling my therapist about the astonishingly selfish someone who has popped back up into my life, the one that I would love to cut off from my life and never see again but unfortunately, sometimes life just doesn't work that way. Astonishingly Selfish Someone (A.S.S., see what I did there?) is yanking my emotional chain, and man, all I want to do is unhook and then wrap that chain right back around that person's neck. Not very loving of me, but I'm tired and I don't like being manipulated and I'm allergic to Passive Aggressive and I came to the theory a few days back that no one, besides your children, should take up as much energy as the person you're sleeping with. If you have people in your life that take up more emotional energy than your significant other, then you should ditch them.

Unfortunately, this theory doesn't work, because Benni is possibly the most low-key, chill man on the planet. I think a stick is actually more high-maintenance than Benni.

I hate my heart sometimes, I say. And my therapist gets it. She does. She knows that the life I live, where I lead with my heart, where I stay awake at night and try to think of ways to save yet another shelter animal that I saw about to get put to sleep on Facebook, where I get angry at injustice and devastated at death and loss and the way I wear my heart on my sleeve for the whole world to see, that it doesn't exactly make me feel like a winner a lot of the time. In fact, most days I think I got the losing end of the deal.  I tell her so. She nods.

Let me ask you this, though - she asks - who would you rather be? Would you rather be an ASS, an astonishingly selfish someone, or would you rather be you?

I'd rather be me.

So this post is for you. If you came here on purpose, if you're a regular follower and commenter, and you needed this today - it's for you. If you came here on accident, if you stumbled upon this because you were looking for steampunk pictures (that post still gets like 34 hits a day, which blows my mind, but also makes me want to hug the entire internet that much more), and then you read this post - it's for you.

It's for every single one of you who worries that you care too much, too deeply, about the stupid things in life, those of you who wish you could check out and not want to make things better or try to fix people. It's for the people who know they are being taken advantage of but keep caring anyway because what's the alternative? Turn into someone you're not?

It's for those of you who know what it feels like to love people and know that they don't quite know how yet to return that amount of love, so they just keep taking and you just keep giving because you are you and you will never stop being you.

We are told everyday that the cool kids are the ones who don't care about others, who don't look up from their own lives to make one iota of effort to make someone else's life ever so slightly easier, that the best way to get ahead is to step on others and eat each other alive.

I wasn't ever a cool kid. Never will be. Give me my heart, my whole heart, my wholeheartedness. I will wear it proudly, and I will be vulnerable with joy.

I'd rather be me.

bright and wild ideas: part two

Coming off from a fairly crappy last week, I had a lot of time before writing this second post to ponder what, if any, of these ten influential ideas could help me cope with the events of last week and the ensuring discouragement that lingered. Having a sense of humor certainly helped, but it certainly didn't alleviate much. Energy conservation sounded great in theory, but was hard to apply it to what could be chalked up to bad luck and me feeling overwhelmed. But then I remembered something I learned while reading The Happiness Hypothesis, (such a fantastic book, I recommend it for everyone) and that's the idea that's gonna start my blog.

6. Not Feeling Cursed

In The Happiness Hypothesis, author Jonathan Haidt points out that happiness can initially be separated into two schools of thought: those who, when something bad happens, turn it inward and believe they are tainted, cursed, and that the bad things that happen to them are a reflection of their value and "what they deserve;" and then there's the other happy-go-lucky people, who are well aware that life occasionally chucks lemons at their heads and realize it's not a deeper reflection of their life choices. So. Which one do you think I fell into last week?

You guessed it! Because in one afternoon I was notified that my credit card info was stolen (someone had made a few large purchases with my credit card info, making it difficult for me to find the money to pay rent while the bank attempted to clear the charges) AND I was caught by a red light camera scooting out of an intersection after the car in front of me abruptly came to a halt to make a right turn. I really felt by the end of that day that it was all.about.me. These were clearly signs that I was tainted, I was a bad luck charm, and that there's something deeply, innately wrong with me. Somehow I had sinned, and now I was being punished for it.

Which, of course, is ridiculous. But how often do we forget that? How often, when something bad happens to us, do we wrack our brains, trying to figure out what we could have possibly done to deserve it?

But we don't make our own bad luck. And it's not personal, so don't make it. Let it go and move along.

7. Critics vs Allies

Sometimes it's tough to see who's really on our side in this topsy-turvy world. And with a myriad of personal opinions flying at us from our friends, family, and strangers, it's difficult to decipher who's genuinely interested in helping us become better people, parents, and artists versus the people who just love to hate. On everything.

So how do I tell the difference between my critics and my allies and extinguish the trolls from my life? I ask myself a question: is this person genuinely trying to push me to become better by offering solutions and ideas, or do they just dump all over my work and seem to revel in my failure? Are they more interested in being correct than in communicating to me what I need to do to change?

Because here's the thing about critics: why should we be interested in what they have to say about our work (or our lives) if they're not willing to help make it better? Them making themselves feel better by dumping on us doesn't make US any better (and I doubt it makes them feel any better.) So if I get the sense that someone means well but just doesn't seem interested in anything more specific than "you suck," I fire them from my life and never look back. As an actor, I put myself out there all the freakin' time. And I've had haters. People who called me ugly, untalented, and informed me very bluntly that I was wasting their time. So instead of weeping helplessly into my pillow that total strangers didn't adore me, I tried starting dialogue with them. What don't you like? What would YOU do to fix it?

Radio silence. That's when I understood. They don't care about making it better. They just like to sit on their couches, doing nothing, and crapping on the rest of the world that IS trying.

So now, in my mind, I tell them to get bent.


8. Radical Self-Acceptance

I first learned this term when someone recommended the teachings of Tara Brach to me. Brach works specifically with survivors of trauma, introducing the concept of radical acceptance into their lives in order to help them heal emotionally, using Buddhist teachings. I could get all info-y and use a lot of terms to explain what radical acceptance is, but it would be easier if I just post a poem that illustrates it perfectly:

The Guest House

by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

Radical acceptance means exactly what it sounds like: accepting everything. Everything. Every bad mood, every childish thought lashed out in anger, every mistake, every crappy moment. Accepting it all. Not judging it - putting out a welcome mat for it. And when it's ready, it will leave. But instead of denying or trying to repress what I'm feeling or going through, I sit in it. I try to love my way out of it. I try to be kind to myself.

When I first learned about this concept, it seemed too easy. TOO kind. I wanted to be mean to myself, to punish myself when I wasn't as good as I wanted to be. And I was turning into a neurotic, judgmental, self-hating mess. I was afraid that if I radically accepted myself, just as I was, that I would settle. That I would be less than what I could be. Because we all know how motivating self-loathing is, right? That awesome cycle of feeling like a failure before we even start, then failing, then beating ourselves up about it, then starting all over again?

Riiiiiiight. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. And I'm glad I got out when I did. It saved my life.


9. Transcend Fear-Based Rituals

I once read an interview in Rolling Stone with Robert Downey Jr (whom I have a mad crush on, totally beside the point) and when he mentioned that he was in the "continual process of transcending fear-based rituals", the hair on the back of my neck just sort of stood up on end. What the...how? What? What does that mean? And can I just... live there?

So let's think about this, shall we? Most people would agree that living your life in fear isn't that healthy. It certainly isn't satisfying, nor is it easy. And it's rarely simple, as fear is one of those sneaky bastards that's never quite happy with all the space you've ALREADY given it in your head. So. Fear-based rituals? Does that sound familiar at all? It certainly did to me. There were certainly quite a few things at the time that I was doing ritualistically (without thought, energy, or mindfulness) that were fear-based, and not unlike the Dementors from Harry Potter (nerd alert), they were quietly sucking all the joy out of my life.

How could I fix repeating those same fear-based rituals over and over again? Well...I could look at them, straight in the face. See, rituals are things we do without thinking. Just automatically, like the way I reach for the conditioner in my shower first or the way I brush my teeth. And if I wanted to change my life, I had to start examining it, putting my decisions and actions under the spotlight, and asking myself: why do I do that? And if I didn't want to do it... now I had the opportunity to change that and fight back.

10. Stop Throwing Stones

This one's kinda self-explanatory, no? But I'll go through it anyway. There used to be a time (I'm ashamed to say) when I was a little judgmental. I'd always considered myself open-minded, but I still found that occasionally, when people were making decisions about their lives that didn't have anything to do with me, I could still find reasons to be offended. I found ways to be opinionated about what other people were doing in ways that had zero impact on my life. What.the.hell.

Well, that obviously wasn't working out very well for me. I wasn't exactly happy, especially as I self-righteously tracked a list of other people's faults. And here's the kicker: do you know what bugged me the most? When people were judgmental toward others. (Are you laughing yet? I am.)

Then I heard a twist on a familiar Bible story that I love. (to my Atheist blog followers: I promise I won't get preachy.) It's the story of when everyone's all set to stone to death the adulterous woman in the Bible (John 8: 1-11) and Jesus points out that the first person without sin should step forward and cast the first stone. He stoops to write something in the sand (I like to think he was finishing an intense game of tic-tac-toe with Paul) and when he looks up, the crowd has dispersed, leaving only the woman and Jesus.

Now, the twist is that someone once asked what I thought all the followers did with the stones that they decided not to throw. Well... hopefully they tossed them away, I said. Right, said the other person. But what if instead... they carried them home? That's a heavy load, I said. And then I got it.

I had a bucket full of stones that I was hauling around. And while I was hurling them at others (which hurts, and that sucks, and there's no excuse), I was also letting them weigh heavy on my own chest every single day that I carried them around. I had to get over it. I had to let it go. I had to let people live their lives and support them, and if I did not support them I at least did not have to carry around a heavy heart judging other people for doing the best they could.

This was during college for me. And I haven't looked back on who I used to be, nor wished I could go back, since. And I've made friends of all kinds, people who are genuinely kind, and good, and doing the best they can with the circumstances they are in, and they make my life richer for being in it. You shall love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart.

- Tracy

bright and wild ideas: part one

Late last year, I came up with an idea for a two-part post that I really wanted to share with you guys. I'd examine the ten most life-changing concepts I've come across in my long (cough cough) life, going into detail about how that idea has affected me. While it's fun to post about my day-to-day activities, I'm also trying to focus more on ideas that encourage dialogue, growth, and development in myself and (hopefully) in others. So in the spirit of that, today's post will be about five ideas I've encountered in my life that have absolutely, irrevocably, changed me for the better. Next week's post will be the remaining five (and then some.)

Here we go!

1. Travel

I know travel isn't really a concept or idea - it's more of a verb - but bear with me on this. When I was twelve years old, my family took me to Japan. We stayed in Kyoto and Tokyo for ten days, and we visited Buddhist temples, rode the bullet train, and ate unfamiliar foods (raw tuna, green tea everything, sticky rice, and sushi, to name a few). When I was sixteen years old my mother, my aunt, my cousin, and I went on a two week tour of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Lichtenstein. And when I was eighteen, my high school graduation gift to myself was a 20 day trip to England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales with my best friend, using money I'd saved up for three years.

The point is - traveling does you wonders. You become more street smart, more confident, more aware of your surroundings; and when you become aware that your country is not the center of the world, you are willing to try new foods, stumble around using an unfamiliar language, ask strangers for help and directions, and your entire perspective of life is revealed to be a tiny sliver of what reality really is. Because I started traveling at a young age, I am more willing to try different food, attempt to talk to other people in different languages, visit new places, have adventures, and rely on my own intuition in unfamiliar situations. To date, I've been to more than fifteen foreign countries. And each time I travel, I understand that I'm a citizen of the world, not just the United States, a little bit more.

2. Yes And

Yes And is actually an improv game for actors. It starts with a ridiculous premise - someone marches on stage and declares to the other actor, "When did you turn into a duck?!" and the actor has to literally say, "Yes, I turned into a duck last Tuesday, and...." and think up something fairly clever, fairly quickly, to reply back so that their partner can now build upon the next idea with Yes And. It's the art of listening to others, accepting what people give you as gifts and only gifts, and embracing those gifts to the point where you expand on them to further engage both your partner and the audience. There is no rejection of ideas in Yes And. Period.

It's also a wonderful way to live life. Now, for those who are stressed, tired, and overwhelmed, there is a great amount of satisfaction in saying NO to those who want your time and energy. (I'll cover this later.) This idea is not so you can get suckered into doing more for other people - this idea is a way to, when you feel up to it, engage with the rest of the planet in a delightful, fun way. Someone passing by tells you they like your scarf. The barista at Starbucks tells you her day is going great. Your kid tells you a funny story. All of these are gifts. Each one is a person reaching out to you, however small, however ritualistic, and instead of shutting them down and going about your day, you can not only reach back out to them but also proverbially high five them while doing so. Try it. It might have messy results; who cares? That's life. But it helps to realize that the other 7 billion people on this planet are not, as you originally suspected, here to annoy you, but to engage and play with. We're all still kids underneath, I guarantee you that.

3. I Hope This is Funny Five Minutes From Now

These are the actual words that came out of my mother's mouth once when, in a lame attempt to get our stubborn cat Fluffy (yes, real name, sadly) to come inside one night, I dangled her arch-nemesis, Spooky (also the cat's real name. Also sad), in front of the door where Fluffy waited outside, just beyond the porch. Fluffy was not amused, nor was Spooky, but there was no blood shed that fateful night and most importantly, I'd learned that my mother had a sense of humor like a razor - sharp and quick. I learned that some awful things are gonna happen - and they have - but if it's funny five minutes from then, well, then everything is gonna be okay. And sooner or later, even if it takes years, those five minutes come up, even in the worst, most tragic of events. Because you can either laugh or cry, and laughing is a lot more fun. So when things hit the fan, when they don't go as expected, or maybe there's been a little bloodshed, ask yourself: is there ever a moment when this will be funny? If so, can it be in five minutes? And if it's in five minutes... why not now? Every bit of the dark and wicked sense of humor I have is due to my mother, I guarantee you that. And I couldn't be happier about that.

4. The Dialectical Method

Wikipedia defines The Dialectical Method as: "a method of argument for resolving disagreement... [through] dialogue between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject, who wish to establish the truth of the matter by dialogue, with reasoned arguments."

What this basically means is: dialectics do not argue to prove themselves correct. They argue for the sake of dialogue, for the sake of learning from each other, and for the sake of establishing a clearer sense of the truth of a situation by taking all viewpoints into consideration. They emphasize reason, logic, and rationality above all else, and never make personal attacks. And if you've looked around this country lately- we used to be able to debate heatedly and then buy each other the first round of drinks afterward, and now our words against each others' religious and political views are hyperbolic, inflammatory, or violent in nature - we could use some more dialectics.

I have very, very strong personal opinions, on a myriad of subjects. Before I was introduced to the concept of being a dialectic, my feelings would get hurt, I'd argue with a complete stranger on the internet for hours just to prove I was correct, and everything felt really, really personal.

Fast forward to when I learned this particular concept, about a year ago. I dropped my ego from my arguments. If I felt like I was proved wrong, I didn't feel like I "lost." I wasn't hurt if someone disagreed with me. Nothing felt personal anymore, either. If my idea was rejected, it was my idea, not me. I didn't lose anything personal from being disagreed with. And I didn't need to "attack" anyone, or "defend" myself. Emotionally charged terms of warfare were dropped from my discussions with other people, and I found myself nodding and saying, "I don't always agree, but I certainly see where you're coming from." And it has made my life profoundly more peaceful, and I'm able to get along with others more, and I'm more open-minded. Which I have to admit, feels a lot more amazing than getting a five second ego boost from proving a complete stranger wrong on the internet.

5. Energy Conservation

Way back in May 2010 (whoa), I wrote a post about emotional energy, and how I'd had to learn the hard way how to conserve it (I'd had a rough month. cough cough). I'd realized there was only so much emotional energy I could carry around with me on a daily basis, and once it was used up, it was gone. Now, some people are worth that energy and that time. They are our loved ones (our family and friends) and the people that exist in the communities we want the most out of (church, Home Owners Associations, school PTA, whatever.) The people that we need to conserve energy around can also be our loved ones ( a family member or close friend that drains us emotionally and mentally, for example), and if so, I'd advocate boundaries, emotional space, and a lot of self-care around that person. Because feeling walked all over, emotionally yanked around like a puppet, and sucked dry really, truly blows. So the concept of energy conservation is walking away - from a person, from a fight, from investing emotional energy that you know isn't going to be returned - and instead putting it back into yourself. It's shaking your head no, very gently, and backing off from that conversation or situation. And you have the right to say no to every single thing that insults your soul or tries to drain you of life. That's your right as a living, breathing, human being.

I'll be back next week with the remaining five. Have a wonderful week until then.

Hugs,
Tracy

2012...

Earlier this year I read this great, hilarious, insightful article about raising kids, and while it scared the ever-living crap out of me (I have found that if I ever get dreamy-eyed about having a child, all I need to do is read articles about raising said child, and it's pretty much the best birth control ever), I also came across a concept in the article where I was like, YES. I am going to use that as my manifesto for 2012! And it wasn't about doing more crunches (which I totally don't need to do for like, another three weeks! Thanks Stomach Flu diet! You're the BEST!) or getting up earlier (which I actually DO need to do) but it was about elevating thought, and therefore moments, in my life.

The author called it the difference between chronos time (time that moves forward in a sequential, linear way) and kairos time. Kairos time is what we experience in heightened, measured moments, moments when we fully take in all the gorgeousness that surrounds us, when perspective shifts and we see the long stretch of how damn lucky we are to be alive smeared over days and days of beauty, it's when time stops and we see things in slow motion and we are able to fill it like a balloon with gratitude, and it's when we take the full, deep breaths, step outside the box of chronos time, and gaze at all we have to offer.

That's Kairos time.

And this year? 2012? I'm working on filling my life with as many kairos moments as I can. That's all. It's simple. It's not advanced science, it's not pushing myself harder to DO MORE BE MORE, it's the allowing of grace, in all its forms, to inform me in as many daily moments as I can that life is so, so, so incredibly good.

Come to think of it... this blogger already does that (and she has two beautiful children) quite brilliantly. Go have a read and treat yourself.

It's gonna be a good year. I can feel it.

2010...

All I can say about 2010 was that it was, in fact, NOT 2009. (That's a compliment.) I had spent most of 2009 wanting to punch it in the face, and when 2010 came I greeted the new year much like the Parisians probably greeted their Allied liberators from the Nazi invasion. As in, Oh thank God you're here, can we kick this scum out now? So a lot of 2010 was me thinking, Well. At least it's not 2009. At least Nazi's aren't still running around the damn place.

And 2010, for the most part, was not bad. Oh, sure, it was challenging, but every year is. But as I settled into my new relationship with Benni, as I took more and more steps towards personal self growth and getting things accomplished, as my confidence grew... it slowly and steadily became a good year. Looking back, I wish I'd put less pressure on it and less expectations of how much better it was going to be than 2009, and just let it stand for itself. But at the end of the day, as I reflect how much I grew in 2010 and how many new things I tried... I wouldn't change it for the world.

To sum up 2010:

1) I rang in the new year with an incredible Flogging Molly concert on New Year's Eve. Amazing. One of the best New Year's celebrations of my life.

2) I got to visit Seattle for Valentine's Day, as my Christmas gift from Benni - and had a wonderful time exploring the city!

3) I threw a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies engagement party for my friends Eric and Stacy, complete with cucumber tea sandwiches, scones, and dismembered body parts.

4) I got my first tattoo!

5) I got to be a steampunk bridesmaid in a steampunk wedding.

6) I came out on my blog as a survivor (and took back my power).

7) I kicked some serious ass at San Diego's Comic-Con as Harley Quinn.

8) I took a leap of faith and love and moved in with Benni (and had one of the most terrifying conversations in my life).

9) I took a deep breath and made some important changes.

10) I went camping in Yosemite and then got some nifty new headshots taken.

11) I told my entire American Sign Language class that... well, just read the post.

12) I forced my family members to build gingerbread houses and take Awkward Family Photos for Thanksgiving.

And that was my year! Some of it was fun, some of it was hard, ALL of it contributed to making me even stronger and more kick ass than ever. I don't regret a single moment of 2010 :)

CAN I GET A FIST BUMP?

Thanks.

(photo credit: I got it from here)

I know this much is true.

Sometimes during the holidays I feel like the Ghost of Christmas Present. You know the one - when Scrooge first meets him, the Ghost of Christmas Present is buoyant, energetic, like a sixteen year old kid totally high on life, and by the time they depart, the Ghost of the Present has aged into an old man and is ready to pass the torch onto the much more terrifying Ghost of Christmas Future, who freaked me out when I watched Scrooged as a kid. (I have a low threshold for absolutely terrifying things.)

I feel like I spend the entire month of December as the Ghost of Christmas Present, starting off the month giddy, young, charged with fire and ready to tackle on the world, loudly. But by the time December 31st comes along, I am a wizened, tired, slightly cranky senior citizen who kind of just wishes those damn kids would get off my lawn already.

So here we are, in my olden days. I am feeling aged, slightly cynical, more relaxed and less neurotic after having celebrated another beautiful Christmas with my family, a bit saddened to once again have spent it apart from That Boy I Adore, (who heads home to the East Coast for Christmas) and just kind of wishing 2011 would pop its head in already so that I could be done with it and go take a nap.

But as I am in my Wise(r) and Old(er) state right now, I thought I would use this post to impart some of the wisdom I have learned through the year, and invite all of you to do the same. So I ask each and every one of you: what's something you learned this year, about yourself, life, the universe, the mechanics of gravity versus coffee... whatever it is, I'd love to hear it. And, for what it's worth, here are my tidbits:

Get your tires rotated every time you get your oil changed. Two birds, one stone.

Everything is comedy. If the memory still hurts and it's not funny yet, give it more time.

Don't hang out with anyone who revels in your failures and don't hang out with anyone who doesn't get high off your successes.

There are two types of critics. The first are critical because they think you can do better, and they're willing to point out how and help you reach your full potential. The second are critical because they're threatened by how well you're doing without them. Keep the first. Ditch the second.

The amount you are offended at something is directly proportional to how much you need to work on coming to peace with it in your own life.

People who can't respectfully disagree about politics or religion are just children in adult's clothing. You grow up the day that you are able to look people in the eye, people who completely disagree with you on every political or religious matter to which you hold dear, shake their hands, and wish them well. Children demonize those who look at things differently. Adults learn that there is always more than one perspective and learn from it.

The only difference between a leader and a follower is that leaders are able to get people to work together, and followers are too busy trying to be leaders to bother.

Criticism is the first form of violence. Humiliation is the second.

Have at least one friend who would be willing to pick you up from the airport at 2 am. Or willing to help you stay awake until 2 am if you're the one picking someone up.

Nobody likes a martyr. They say they do, but they're lying.

and finally, one of my new favorite quotes:

"The truth is that things don't really get solved, they come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy."

-PEMA CHÖDRÖN

(photo credit: I got it here)

Happy New Year, everyone! And don't forget to share your own sage advice when you comment :) I need all the help I can get...

(oh, and PS - I'm over at Tay's blog today telling people what other things I believe in. Go check it out! Thanks Tay!!!!)

"this time baby, I'll be / bulletproof..."

Have you ever felt like you wanted to be bulletproof? Like your sensitivity and the fact that you care only makes you weaker, makes your skin thinner, makes it easier for people to get in and hurt you?

Yeah, me too. It's one of my least favorite qualities about myself, my sensitivity. Because sometimes it doesn't seem very useful.

A couple weeks ago I was going through a really hard time with someone I used to be very close to. I'll spare you the boring details but it came down to the fact that this person, who is smart, funny, kind, and just my kind of geek, doesn't really have much interest in being my friend anymore. And besides the obvious Ego Flail of my inner Fourth Grader, this person is in my immediate group of friends. So it is hard to see this person and make polite chit-chat, knowing full well that this person doesn't have much interest at all in what I have to say or what's going on in my life.

It hurts. Like, a lot.

What hurts even more is that I just can't freakin' get over it. But emotions are cyclical like that: we get angry because we're still angry. We are afraid of being afraid. We can't get over... the fact that we're not over it. Like a tiny drill, the more we freak out over freaking out, the deeper it burrows itself in.

There's this great ten second essay from the poet James Richardson that says, "The part of myself I like is the part that works, like a good tool. The part of myself I love is the part that loves you."

Isn't that how we all feel? We love the parts of ourselves that are useful, functional. It's easy enough to be patient and loving with ourselves when we remember to floss, pay our bills, wash the dog, and give our partners the appropriate amount of attention.

What is hard is to love the parts of ourselves that are not as useful. The parts of ourselves that are over-sensitive, impatient, insecure, jealous, easily frightened. It is easy to look at these parts of ourselves, the parts that remind us of how young we once were and how young we still are at heart, and call them unusable, broken. It is easy to be embarrassed that we never really break out of being in high school sometimes. It is easy to try to lock these things away or pretend we never, ever feel them. Because they are not useful, and therefore are not to be loved.

Or is it that every single part of us is useful?

Because it is us. The good, the bad, the ugly... all of it is us. And all of it is useful in that it constantly gives us information about ourselves and how we act on this information is a choice, not a pattern we are destined to repeat and certainly not out of our control. The jealousy, the over-sensitivity, the small, insecure parts of ourselves... it is so easy to not love what we claim to have no control over. Someone says something, a button is pushed, and we react.

But to love is to accept, and to accept is to take control back again. When we are acting childish, we do not fix it by having childish reactions to our childishness (everyone got that?) We nurture the childish parts of ourselves by parenting them with unconditional love. And so then these feelings, even though they might be crappy, have a place in our hearts. And so then they become useful.

We are all so useful in our lack of bulletproof armor. Don't ever let the world tell you any different.

gravity sucks

Just a thought here, guys -

After I decided to turn my life upside down and change the way I was doing everything and how I was conducting my relationships, I floated for a good ten days on a pure, exhilarated air of confidence and joy. Then it ended, as it always does, and I was left shaking the dust off my boots and trying to get back to where I once belonged, upset and confused. Did the fact that I was no longer cruising in fifth gear mean that the changes weren't real? Or that they weren't big enough?

It only occurred to me a few days ago that what I experienced is what I like to refer to as a runner's high. If you're a runner, which I am not, (and never will be unless I'm being chased by zombies, or a Tyrannosaurus Rex, or I have a bucket of chili cheese fries being dangled in front of me), you know what I'm talking about. It's this burst of energy that hits at some point in the middle or two thirds of the way through your run and it propels you forward and gives you additional momentum. What it does NOT do is finish the race for you. And it doesn't make the fact that you're running much easier either.

It took me a while to be okay with the fact that I was no longer soaring above and beyond my problems but was instead back down on earth where there was still a crap-load of work to do. I tend to get inspired easily, and, like most artists and Gemini's, feel the weight of what uninspires me pulling me down just as easily. Maintaining that runner's high is difficult because it requires me to keep running in the first place - whereas whenever I have a success I convince myself that the race is over and now I can go home and sleep.

Um, it doesn't work that way.

So if you're going through some hard stuff right now, and honestly, who isn't, and you've just hit a milestone or had a major breakthrough and thought, whew, now the hard work is over, and found yourself slightly crushed when you looked up and noticed that there are still 14 more miles to go...

Well, this post is for you. Because we are all running a hard race and doing the best we can, and the times when we are floating on air because we just did something awesome are definitely worth celebrating. But when you find yourself back on the ground and a little tired and wishing you could be above it all like you used to be...

Just remember that you're doing exactly what you need to do. The only way out is through, and no matter how rad we are (yes, I just used the word rad) we don't get to cruise through life. It takes hard work and guts and showing up and discipline and consistency and patience to get back up from a fall, or come back down from a cloud, and just keep going. You don't need to hang on to those victories and successes because I promise you, there will be more of them.

The only way out is through. And you're exactly where you need to be.

patience is a virtue...

...which I usually don't have, so I suppose I don't really have a right to ask anyone else to have any either. Nonetheless, I haven't had a chance to get my tattoo pics uploaded from my camera and I have a ton more pictures of what I was up to during my blogging break that I want to share with you, so bear with me for a couple more posts while I get these pictures out of my system.

Also, to clear up a couple things: 1) a couple of you asked how on earth I got my idea for the Pride and Prejudice and Zombie engagement party, more specifically how the hell I came up with the idea to combine the two. Well, it's not my idea! There was a best-selling book that came out last year:

In which a contemporary author took the original Pride and Prejudice story and then added in a zombie story in the background. He's also publishing this book later this year, which I am pretty damn excited about:

Now if only Abraham Lincoln could take out that emo little vampire punk Edward Cullen...hmmm... :)

So that's where I got the idea from, given that the bride Stacy loves Pride and Prejudice and the groom, Eric... loves zombies. So it was kind of a match made in...purgatory?

Other things you need to know: 2) Yes, the tattoo hurt. Tattoos hurt. It's what happens when someone puts a needle full of ink to your skin and then goes back and forth, back and forth, along the same lines, over.and over.and over again. Was it totally worth it? You betcha. I love the look, it only took about 40 minutes, the pain, for what it was, was completely tolerable because it was on my lower back, and it's healing nicely as I'm pampering it and putting lotion on it every hour.

Also, before I leave you with a bunch of photos of what I've been up to over the past couple weeks: 3) don't give your cat catnip five minutes before you go to bed. This doesn't really have anything to do with my post or my pictures, I just felt it was an important life-lesson to share with everyone. Tell your friends. It could save lives. Or, you know, valuable hours of sleep.

And finally: one of my favorite girls in the entire world wrote this post about how the two of us met and her thoughts on my tattoo. It made me cry. Lira, I love you so much.

Now behold: pictures.

This is what happens when you loan your roommate three rolls of toilet paper over the past few weeks and then he decides to pay you back all at once, video-game style. I walked into my bathroom and found this EXACT set-up. Lovely, eh?

Desperate times call for desperate measures... in a stress-induced freak out attack I decided that getting a pedicure would make me feel better. This is the second pedicure I've ever had in my entire life. It totally worked.

These are some pictures I took at The Huntington Library and Gardens. I know, you're thinking, Where are the freakin' gardens? but I'm posting those later this week with a fun little tool that makes nature pictures look AWESOME. Yes, that required all caps.

Falcon!

Very Secret Garden-esque!

Benni, STAY ON THE PATH!!

We be real cool.

Ellesmere's illustrated Canterbury Tales!! I'm such a fan-girl of Chaucer.

I love this curmudgeon. He's one of my favorite poets of ever.

Buddhist temple in Whittier! Did you know it was there? I didn't!

The more levels there are, the harder it is for evil spirits to get in.

View from the top.

Happy Buddha is....happy.

View over-looking downtown Whittier.

K, so them's my first batch of pics. I will do another post of nature pictures in the next day or so, and then it's all about the tattoo, I promise!

Happy Monday!