Simplicity

In high school, I was deeply enamored of theater. I obsessed over becoming an Actress (please read that word with a hint of a pretentious British accent henceforth). I was quite talented, actually, and had some good training from instructors who were passionate about their craft. Through method acting and Meisnerian techniques, I learned how to truly lose myself in another character. While on one hand this allowed me empathetic access to a range of emotions and experiences I probably wouldn't have naturally had as a teenager, it also enabled me to become an exceptionally adept liar.

I was fully capable of lying to my parents, my teachers, anyone to whom it was convenient to tell a falsehood rather than the truth. From the innocuous to the blatant, I could deceive with ease. The (retrospectively) disturbing part was that I had no qualm nor guilt over these deceptions.
Along the path of lying and the finding characters other than myself in which to be immersed, I sometimes lost track of how I REALLY felt about things going on in my daily life. Stimulus would occur, I would react as though followed at all times by a camera, react as I thought my audience would expect. Almost as if I were a reality tv star playing a role but having to maintain that role constantly.
It was confusing. It was exhausting. Keeping lies straight and keeping appearances up, various fronts to the world leaving a shell underneath, completely baffled as to who I really was and how I really felt about anything.
Interestingly the act was dropped only during the summers when I attended a residential camp, and when I went to Hawaii on trips with my family. I was just open and honest in those places, didn't put on a show and just WAS. I loved those places, and I loved being real.

When I hit a wall in the acting, I had a kind of realization. Being an Actress, to me, meant losing who I truly was in favor of becoming a malleable shell to please others.
I dropped acting entirely, and along with it I dropped the lies. I adopted complete honesty and openness. It left me raw and vulnerable a lot of the time, and yet it felt so much stronger than the shell I had been occupying for years. I still had some relapses, due in part to youthful ineptitude and in part to continued insecurity.
A pivotal moment occurred when I realized I lost a romantic relationship over a lie I'd told. The lie wasn't malicious, but was in fact told to protect my own emotions and vulnerability, but it resulted in an inaccurate perception of my personality, values, and value of the relationship. I believe that one lie altered my path dramatically, and it is a moment I can pinpoint as a deep regret.

Over years I have noticed that my (at times radical) honesty can cause problems as well, but I'd rather have problems stemming from overt honesty than living easier with any degree of deceit. Honesty has a gravity to it, drawing me closer, increasing the value I see in others who also maintain honest, up front, genuine interactions.
At the same time, my job forces me to interact with practiced habitual liars, thus my patience for liars outside my job is nonexistent. Friends who lie or withhold truth are dropped from my life without a second glance. Ulterior motivations and subterfuge have no place in my life, nor (I aspire) in the lives of those I choose as companions.
There are several people I recognize in my life who are as direct as I, and I cherish their presence whenever I am around them. There is an ease of interaction, an inherent trust and bond that seems to occur between myself and these people, and I have grown addicted to the heightened sense of understanding I enjoy when around them. It is a simple pleasure, but all-encompassing.
Likewise, the places where even as a child I was completely open to life and the world, my camp and my island are sacred to me. Return to either location always feels like coming home, and there is no comfort deeper than that simple contentment.

Fun Side Effects of Sleep Deprivation

I have been up all night working a graveyard shift. Thusly, I am not going to correct any misspellings or typos because I want it fully obvious how messed up this makes your brain.
This is your brain.
This is your brain on a graveyard shft. Any Questions?
(Pictures to be inserted when i'm not half dead.)
Um.
LIST OF FUN SIDE EFFECTS
1. You can't effing type.
2. You have very little that's interesting to say except to compaling about your state of uncomfortable existance which becomes less comfortable as each minute passes.
Did I mention I have now been up for pretty much 24 hours? This is lame.
3. Nausea sets in at about 20 hours of awakeness. This for me was sometime around 4a.m. and is increasing as the sky lightens.
4. Shift in balance, suddenly the only cojmfortable or safe position seems to be seated, and that's without being in my/any car. Woe betide any food *FOOL* who gets in my way on the freeway today.
5. Unreasonable belief that noting is amiss. (Soemtihng is amizz.)
6. Alleged "second wind" confuses body inot thinking that expending energy by tics and leg shaking is worth its effort. This is misconstrued failure of mind/body connection, and it will later result in leg soreness.
7. Rambling on about things no one cares about only to realize you never opened your mouth.
8. Eye ache and dryness. (duh)
9. Headache.
10. Full-body grease illusion, you suddenly and ALL AT ONCE ALL OVER feel as though you've been dipped in tallow and are both stinky and oily and it's GROSS and omigod it means I'm gonna have to shower before I can collapse into bed, oh this is not awesome.
11. Real or imagined carpral tunnel symptoms set in from computer overuse.
12. Now my stomach's upset too. UGH.

I haven't even gotten into the effects later, like when I try to sleep but I can't sleep so I'm mad and I can't sleep and for some reason the shades don't keep out the sun and the rays of sun desperately seek my pupils for pupil assasination attempts and it's personal and it's NOT NICE and I don't WANT to wear that eye-mask becasue it smells like my fiance's face oil and that's not nice either even though he's very nice to offer to let me borrow it, and I wish I weren't wasting my sunlight by sleeping andk nowing that if I don't sleep soon later I won't be able to sleep tonight at all and I'm gonna be up and NOT BE PAID FOR IT but still suffering the effects of working right now. . .
I really, really am not meant for graveyard shifts. I didn't even go INTO the increased assault of the supernatural that goes on when i'm mentally exhausted and it's night time out.

New Year Resolutions

Please note the date on which I'm posting about New Years Resolutions. I made several this year, one of which was to write more often. No, that's a lie, it was to blog at least twice a week.

On New Years Eve with one too many glasses of champagne in my stomach I blunder somehow to a pen and paper and scribble out my best of intentions for the upcoming year. I picture myself as Lara Croft (looking like Angelina Jolie, of course) adventuring across impossible cliffs, fit and impossibly limber and strong from my increased working out and hiking and running I will do in the new year. I know this amazing appearance will make everything in my life easier, like flitting effortlessly over a solid six foot wall that in the past year has become my nemesis. (Story to follow at later date.) I will also become the next Shakespeare, in the blogging world! People will fall in love with my written brilliance and I will no longer have to work scrambling for shifts and overtime to make ends meet, money will instead be thrown at me as millions of fans shuffle forward at my book signings and meet and greets. This resolution also takes care of the Fix My Career resolution.
I can barely read my resolution paper the next morning, when I make a new one, "I will only drink on weekends or special occasions."

So it is now February, and I do not look like Angelina, my fiance informs me. I'm no more limber than I was after half a bottle of champagne, and I'm considerably LESS funny at this particular point and time, so maybe I'm backsliding on resolutions I didn't even make. (Be more funny!)

I'm suffering blogger's block. I can't for the life of me think of anything pertinent that people are going to want to read about at 5:30 a.m. after being awake all night on a graveyard shift at my job. Do you want to know what low calorie energy drink tastes best? How about what movie previews look intriguing? Probably not. I am terribly uninteresting at 5:30a.m. I'm learning that 5:30 a.m. smells different than almost any other time of the day. Could be that it's frigid cold outside and the scent of the world is dampened by dew, or it could be the wandering souls that are soon to be forced back to their respite come the breaking of dawn, maybe yeah, it's ghost-farts.
I cannot believe I just typed "ghost farts". Maybe my resolution should have been NOT to blog anymore. I'm not funny, I'm not witty, I'm just exhausted. This is what resolutions are really about; setting oneself up for failure. Now at that I am an expert.

Let it be known: I quit.

Friends, Family, strangers who may see me over the next 6 months and wonder at my choices, I need to make an announcement for all your benefit.
In the interest of not having to explain, and re-explain myself and my choices until the end of oh, probably December, I am now giving you advanced notice of my reasoning for my upcoming changes.

I received my "Fall Fashion Preview" from Victoria's Secret today. (I shop primarily at this online retailer, as one of my fashion mainstays.) In the catalogue were features loud garish prints, bootie-sandals, and a dismaying plethora of clothing that Jem and the Holograms would have been proud to sport in their heyday nearly 30 years ago. Yes; while the 80's have been trickling back in via the neon-clad Twihard teenybopper types and the lackadaisical-but-ever-so-orchestrated fashion toadies (read HIPSTERS) in their oversized hoodies and leggings; the trickle has become a flood and as I flipped through the glossy garish pages, I heard an eerie child's voice in the back of my head saying, "They're heeeeeeeeeeeeeere."

It needs to be known: I'm officially abstaining from being "fashionable" until this disturbing trend is over. I wear leggings, yes, but they're often bootcut and I only wear them when en route to or from the GYM. Same goes for spandex.
Tapered or GOD FORBID PEGGED JEANS will never touch my body. I have hips. I have an ass. I do not intend to make these otherwise fine features into a pear-shaped mommy-butt in the name of being "fashionable". Sorry.
They're called "mom jeans" for a reason, and I won't kowtow to the fashion gods who assume we've all finally thrown out the grossness we wore in the 80's, hoping in the same light that we'll now rush back out to replace them with their modern reincarnations. The term "vintage" can now be applied to bedazzled jean jackets and neon leggings? REALLY? I think that makes the items I recall as "vintage" feel bad about themselves on their 2nd hand clothing racks. I think it makes them cry.

So: All those who see and judge and wonder why, please note: I will continue to wear my hip-balancing bootcut jeans. They suit my body and I like how I look in them. I will not be wearing gold lame or bedazzled ANYTHING. Neon may make an appearance but only on my nails or pedicure. Leggings are for working out. Oversized square-shouldered jackets were stupid in the 80s, and they're stupid now. Know this. Women are women, we don't need to pretend we want to look like linebackers. Wear boots with heels, or wear sandals. Don't try to breed the two into a hybrid of ugly. Neon + animal print = trashy. Maybe if I were dancing around it for cash, but as I am I won't touch that trend w/a ten foot pole.
And finally: Jeans that are so "distressed" they have the holes premade for you. . .just buy yourself a bedazzler and use it to keep 'em from falling apart, k? Because that's something the fashion industry apparently hasn't thought of yet. Kill me. Just kill me. I am going to do my damndest not to look at people until this trend is over, because it really reinforces that people will buy ANYTHING and wear ANYTHING the media tells them is "good". (Pssst, it's not. It wasn't then, it ain't now. . .and there's never, ever, EVER been anything wrong with staying with the Classics. Classics=Classy.)

So know this. I am now an official conscientious objector the the fashion trends of the fall. I observe them, I am aware of them, and I wholeheartedly reject them. I have spoken.

Abhorrent Beasts - Drunken Diva

We've probably all had the delight of experiencing them. They come often as a surprise, without warning, without reason. They're indefatigable and tenacious. I am speaking of the alcohol-freed Attention Starved Drama Monger, henceforth referred to as the Drunken Diva.

Drunken Diva- do you remember her? The one who would have "one too many" and proceed to dominate the rest of the event, evening, bar, or party with her increasingly dramatic speeches and confessions.

Some more festive Drunken Divas get jovial, jesting and joking like a slurry Ozzie Osborne type stand up comedian gone horribly wrong. Some entertain by upping their Diva performance with some nudity or promiscuous behavior.

Most, though? Most are just purely self-indulgent and obnoxious, and have an uncanny gravity to any otherwise not-them-centered event. I'll be honest, I thought I had seen the last of these pathetic performances when I left college, as I tend to understand that as we mature, we cast aside what makes us look like a dumbf*ck, like drinking so much we embarrass ourselves. Unfortunately, I am reminded many of us have THAT uncle, or THAT buddy, or god forbid THAT female friend who we occasionally forget their Drunken Diva alter ego long enough to invite them to an alcohol-inclusive event, only to be summarily punished by awkward moments and flat out shocking confessions you never wanted to know in the first place.

Is an illustration of this phenomenon in order? I believe it is.

If you've not experienced this Abhorrent Beast, I envy you. They should all be rounded up and left at Circus Circus in Vegas, so the rest of us can be happy and cheery in appropriate social situations.

I Feel SPECIAL Today!

It has come to my attention (illustrated at home a week or so ago with a loud SQUEEEEEEEEEAL from yours truly) that people I. Don't. KNOW. are reading my blog!!! And I know this because some of them (you!) are commenting.

This is awesome.

I am a vain creature, and like all vain creatures, I fluff my tail, ruffle my feathers and preen thinking that someone (else) thinks my words/opinions/vignettes are interesting enough to read and perchance even comment on. So my thanks go out to you, strangers, for making me feel special. Does this feeling need an illustration? I think it does. I incidentally created the following picture last night, when The Fiance was letting me doodle around with his ipad.


Before I post it though, I should warn you I'm a sucky artist. No really. Some people are creating amazing things with this $8 ipad ap, I'm not. I'm basically a glorified stick-artist. Please don't expect much from me. Here it goes:

See that? That's a representation of one of The Fiance's cats, farting a rainbow. THAT'S HOW SPECIAL you made me feel. Like I am a fluffy, fluffy cat who can fart rainbows. THAT special. On that note, I feel like I want to help you feel special. Do you want me to respond to what you say? I'd love to know. I may just write back anyway, in fact I think I will.
I'll try to write back as often as I can, I'm accessible, I am, I swear, even though I tend towards busy in my outside-internetty life.

Have I warned you I'm a dork? Consider this your warning, if I have not. I have more to say, but it wouldn't be in keeping with this random-style post. And thank you again, seriously, for reading what I have to say. I'm all validated in my internet existence now.

Apparently I'm having a quarterlife crisis.

Old folks get a bum wrap.
Their bodies shut down, their minds start to betray them, and the youthful masses by and large give them nary a thought. I fell recently into thinking how AWFUL it would be to be old. This may or may not have stemmed from finding my first grey hair a week after my 27th birthday.

Walking through the grocery store, I repeatedly found myself cart-blocked by the same pair of toddling old folks. They were clearly longly married, and leaned on each other as much as their cart as they shuffled along, shopping and blocking younger shoppers in their hurried way.At first I was frustrated that they were delaying me. They even somehow tootled right into the lane I wanted to zip through to escape with my groceries, and took their sweet, sweet time fishing for their checkbook to pay. I exited through another lane.

When I watched them on their way out to their car, which was interestingly enough parked right next to mine, I stopped. I watched how the man gently ascertained that his wife was physically okay as he opened their trunk. I watched as they loaded in their 2 bags of groceries, thinking all the while, "Wow, good for them that they didn't let the bagboy help them to their car. I admire their independence."
However, since my cart was similarly unloaded next to their car, I got the timely but unaccustomed urge to ask,
"Pardon me, I mean no offense, but since I'm going to return my cart anyway, may I take yours as well?"
I never, ever do shit like that. EVER.

The expression on the elderly lady's face was heartbreaking.
"Thank you," she said, with a touching quaver to her tone, "thank you, yes, you have no idea how much that would help us out."Abashed, mildly uncomfortable at such gratitude, and frankly embarrassment I'd ever felt an ounce of annoyance at this adorable couple, I replied,
"Er, no worries, it's my pleasure. You two have a wonderful afternoon."

But while it was a little thing, and I only did it because it was easy and on my way and I was inspired by the love and care they showed each other after what was clearly a long time in their relationship, the moment has stuck with me for almost a week now.

I've long railed against alleged "Random acts of kindness, (RAOK)" posts, because for all intents and purposes, sharing RAOKs serves only to buoy the self esteem of those sharing their little stories, which negates any aspect of altruism intrinsic in the deeds themselves. However. HOWEVER, it made me feel good. And it brightened that little couple's day, if only for a minute. And now maybe I'm wondering, ina way unlike my usual my grinchy stoicism, if maybe just a little spread of happiness is what it's all about. Maybe that's the person we SHOULD be.