The Life-Changing Magic of Good Hair

Stop wanting, stop expecting, let it look entirely different ... and you end up eating free fried chicken in the fancy seats.

Since all that kicking and screaming I did earlier this week, I've managed a new level of surrender. Surrender is one of my big lessons in life - meaning, I'm absolutely terrible at it and despise the very thought.

Sure enough, the second I give up and offer up a big fat FUCK IT, life decides to reward me.

When Lan and I met up in San Francisco on Wednesday, it turned into one of those magical days that only ever happen in movie montages.

Cinematic hair! (Mainly because someone spent forty-five minutes aiming a blow-dryer at my head which, I can assure you, has never before happened in my life.) Stunning scenery! Amazing sushi! Random invitation to a ballgame in, get this, the fanciest seats they have!

You know what they have in the fancy seats? Free beer! And fried chicken and chocolate chip cookies! Our seats had cushions! No wait in the bathroom line! There simply aren’t enough exclamation points to properly convey the experience.

This, apparently, is the true power of surrender - and great hair.

Thanks, Lanny. Thanks, hair. Thanks, magical day. Two thumbs up, would surrender again.

Trading Dreams For Joy

Turns out, telling your truth in the moment clears out so much space.

Truth really does go moment by moment. Just because something feels like the truth today doesn’t mean it will feel like the truth tomorrow. This is really important for me to remember. 

While I was embarrassed about sharing all those Disenfranchised Dreams last night, I’m so glad I did - and not just because people are so dang kind. I feel so much more hopeful today.

Being an empath who’s still learning good boundaries is like having to vacuum up after the world, because half of it just tramped muddy footprints through your kitchen as it tossed used sandwich wrappers on the floor.

I spend a lot of my time clearing space.

(“Clearing space” is my vaguely obnoxious term for shuffling through all the emotions and feelings and thoughts that I pick up from other people and finding room in my head for me.)

Anyway, saying "HI I’M SO SAD THAT NONE OF THIS HAS HAPPENED, ALSO A BIT HUMILIATED, LIKE IT SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT HOW UNWORTHY I AM (it doesn’t) AND LIKE PEOPLE WILL JUDGE ME (you won’t) FOR IT"… is actually a huge goddamn relief.

Because saying the sticky painful things without staying in the painful sticky things is so crucial for me. Me, the relentless queen of cantankerous melodrama. 

Here was my Blab All Over The Internet process for feeling better about disenchanted dreams, if you're curious:

• Think a thing about hopeless dreams, start writing the thing, keep writing the thing because it helps me understand my feelings about the thing.
• Feel vaguely queasy but share the thing anyway.
• Read kind things and let them soothe me to sleep, hand clutching the phone precisely the way you're not supposed to do.
• Get out of bed the next morning, pretend to exercise (hand up if this is a thing you do), and realize “Hey, that doesn’t feel so much like my truth anymore.”
• Sure, I’m almost forty and that baby thing feels a little pressing (which means the relationship and the money thing definitely feels pressing), but all that could shift tomorrow.
• Or not. It doesn't matter.
• Realize that stating my truth in the moment cleared space in my head, heart, and feels. Enough to realize that it was just that moment. I'm not even 40 yet. My life is not over.
• Maybe I just need to do my thing and enjoy all the many things there are to enjoy in the everyday.

Being careful to distinguish my own feelings and energy and thoughts from whatever I just picked up at the grocery store from random strangers or when on the phone with a friend is an ongoing process - and crucial to dreams.

More than that, clearing out my own space has the unintended but welcome effect of making some goddamn room for joy. I feel joy so much more powerfully than I did a few years ago.

Joy is a pretty good trade for dreams. So maybe I should just surrender to that and let my dreams do whatever the fuck they want to do. They can tag along, they can fall into the abyss, they can tap me on the shoulder. Whatever.

You do you, dreams. I’ll do me. Maybe we’ll meet again sometime.

In the meantime, there are so many things that make me happy. Make my wizened little soul feel joy.

Giraffes. Cartwheels on beaches. Road trips with Sally. Toasted rice tea. Dance class. Wearing my unicorn horn. My little cottage. My hippie weird. Giraffes.

If you want to share some of the things that make you happy, I would love that. 

Or Maybe I'll Just Delete This Whole Thing Because I'm a 39-Year-Old Woman Whose Primary Relationship is With a Stuffed Otter and That's Embarrassing Enough, Thanks

At what point to you relinquish the desiccated ghost of your hopes and say, “Okay, this dream is dead”?

I’m not super good at giving up. If I want something, I will fight for it until the undertaker has to pry the dream from my cold, lifeless fingers.

But at what point is it just too exhausting to keep clinging?

One of my great lessons in this life is surrender. Going with the flow.

I am fucking terrible at going with the flow. I’m even worse at surrendering. I will grip the steering wheel and attempt to control the direction until all hope is lost, along with its extended family and pet hamster.  

But, oh my god, I’m so tired. It takes a lot of energy to want something for years and years and years and not get it - and I don’t have a whole lot of energy to spare. One of the reasons I cobbled together this weird unicorn career is that I literally can’t have a full-time job. Or any kind of situation that would regularly require me to be in a room with other humans and get things done.

(I adore humans but I find them so exhausting. Humans have so many thoughts and worries and feelings and I take them all on until I have no idea where your thoughts and feelings end and mine begin. Navigating life in a swirling vortex of ceaseless emotion will certainly tire a person out.)

Obviously, nobody but me can decide when to surrender my dreams, so I’m not really asking for advice here. It feels more like I'm taking the first step of admitting that most of my dreams have gone direly unfulfilled, and that’s pretty embarrassing. I literally had every advantage in the box and somehow managed to squander all of them. Whoops?

Now that we’re here and I’ve typed for long enough that this is happening, I’m trying to think of one dream I’ve let myself accomplish.

(Sally's making the crickets noise. I don't mind telling you that I find it quite obnoxious. Someone won't be getting any sardines this week.)

No long-term relationship / husband-type person, no babies, no dog, no books published, no comfortable nest egg accrued. I did some traveling but it was always sort of accidental. My big travel dreams - Kenya to go to the giraffe hotel, Iceland to see the Northern lights - those haven’t happened. I haven’t even done that road trip through the south I keep talking about.

Now that I look at it, it sounds rather pathological. Like, come on, you couldn’t even get a dog? You’d think a dog would be do-able.

Unless you live in the Bay Area and every place that you could both avoid people and have a dog requires quadrupling your income.

But I could offer up an excuse for every single one of those dreams, and I’m not really sure I want my legacy in this world to be excuses.

(Yes, I have this bizarre channeling business and I love doing it. But it was never a dream. If it were up to me, I would’ve aimed for some fancy Silicon Valley job with really good health insurance. But I haven’t been employable since 2009. And if you asked my last boss how many times I cried at my desk, she'd say "an awful lot.")

I’ve never been very good at finding the balance between “Hi, I want to be vulnerable about this thing that's kinda humiliating” and relentless complaining.

I honestly don't mean to complain. My life is pretty damn good.  I live in one of the most beautiful places on earth, I work with incredible people, and I have a very supportive (except for the cricket chirping thing) stuffed otter named Sally. I have my health, a good brain, limbs in working order, and I always manage to feed myself, even if “feed myself” mostly means “existing entirely on string cheese because I'm an adult.”

I’m finding myself panicking a little bit. Perilously close to sticking my head out the window and shrieking “ONE OF THESE DREAMS HAS TO HAPPEN THIS YEAR OR I HAVE TO GIVE UP ON ALL OF THEM BEFORE I TORTURE MYSELF FOR ANOTHER DECADE” into the Mill Valley void.

Now, I could just go to the pound and get a dog and trust that the universe will provide another home when my landlord kicks me out of mine. I could just climb in my car and start driving toward Tennessee and trust that everything works out and that Kristin and Scott will be willing to feed me when I get there, because I’ll have been eating string cheese for 2300 miles.

But the thought of surrendering to that extent, when I'm clinging to the edge in a few crucial ways, feels a bit hard to swallow.

I don't know. Obviously, I have zero answers. But I'm sick of beating myself up over the things that haven't happened for me, that maybe would have happened if I'd done things differently. But maybe there was no differently. Maybe I genuinely did the best I could in every moment and I ended up exactly where I'm supposed to be, even if it doesn't look anything like I hoped.

Maybe on my fortieth birthday this year, I’ll have a bonfire for my dreams. I’ll write them all on little pieces of paper, hike out to the beach, and set them all alight and watch the ashes drift toward the sky.

Or maybe I'll just get in my car and start driving. 

We Are All Cosmic Travelers Wearing Human Suits

It's so weird being a channeler. Not for the obvious reasons - like talking to Jesus and unicorn visitations at three in the morning (though that's plenty weird, thanks) - but because, when I'm in the zone, I know all this stuff I say on the internet to be true. I feel calm, at peace, loved, and all is right with the world. 

But after I'm done with the channeling and back to the human stuff of making breakfast and paying bills and driving through rush hour with every other lunatic on the road (yes, I'm one of the lunatics), my brain cranks up the volume and is all THAT COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE RIGHT, LOVE AND LIGHT MY ASS, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING, HERE HAVE A CHOCOLATE CROISSANT. 

Sometimes I can take a big enough step away from the chatter to remember that my brain doesn't have all the answers. It says a lot of things, it makes a lot of noise, but just because my brain says it doesn't mean it's true. 

Last week, I decided to release a meditation album on the spur of the moment. That's the fun part about this job - being blasted with inspiration while you're hanging upside down and all the blood is rushing to your head, and being able to just do it and see what happens. 

Because there's so much forking construction in my neighborhood (and it makes me want to throttle the world), I had to record the meditations after six at night or before eight in the morning. A few days ago, I woke up at six, turned on the microphone while wearing my flannel moose pajamas, and started receiving a whole bunch of meditations about tuning into your intuition, following your soul's path, balancing your energy (I put one of the meditations up for free - if your energy feels wonky, check it out!) and it all felt awesome. 

But after I stopped and made myself an egg sandwich, all the doubts and anxieties and oh GODs started flooding back in. 

My challenge at the moment is hooking back in with that calm, loving, here's-the-handy-guidance space more often. Hour by hour, minute by minute. Keep honoring the feels and the crazy humanness while reminding myself of the truth and course-correcting my brain. 

Living this way is like eating salad or being in AA. You can't do it once and then be done for the rest of your life. You have to work the program. Over and over and over and over again. Every day.

It does seem to get easier. Eventually new pathways are created and it becomes easier to dwell in the land of ahhhh... rather than the land of FUCKING HELL EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS PLANET IS THE WORST I WOULD RATHER DIE.

Smug statue says "I'm cool, no problems here."

Being a cosmic being of infinite light in a human body - as we all are - is a daily flow. I wanted to say challenge, but I think it's just a practice. Like, practicing the piano can be a challenge but whatever you just show up again tomorrow and the next day and eventually you get so much better you can't even remember the time you got stymied by the dumb flamingo song. (Pianos just don't sound like flamingos and there's nothing anyone can do about that.) (Yes, I had to learn a dumb flamingo song in elementary school and apparently it angers me to this day.) 

Honoring the feels without getting bowled over by them, feeling the pain without drowning in it, observing the worries without getting stuck in them, noticing the negative thoughts and remembering the truth and putting the train of thought on a new track. Being human. Being cosmic. Same thing really. 

This feels like a good place to leave my favorite quote of pretty much all time: 

You are a ghost driving a meat coated skeleton made from stardust riding a rock floating through space. Fear nothing. 

Blogging Like it's 2005 and I Haven't Aged Twelve Years

Shasta is one bossy mountain. My boyfriend and I went up last weekend and we caught the first snow fall, which was pure frozen joy - even before the golden retriever in a bright orange jacket started bounding ecstatically through legit winter wonderland.

Legit winter wonderland. Well-suited to ecstatic bounding.

In addition to the snow and donuts - not to mention the snow donuts that my race car driving companion took it upon himself to pull at the top of the deserted mountain, scaring the absolute shit out of me, because he didn't share his plan before starting to spin out - the mountain also gave me an assignment. (See: bossy mountain top.) 

Stop everything and write for 21 days straight. 

Also some stuff about silencing my brain and drinking green juice and exercising and, let me just say, I have not been as diligent as the bossy mountain probably intended. 

Mostly because all of this is terrifying. Doing nothing but writing when you're self-employed and "doing things" is where your money comes from is terrifying. Moving after months of sloth is terrifying. Writing after being in a creative funk for years is terrifying. Silencing my brain is terrifying. (My brain does not enjoy being silenced and becomes exponentially more obnoxious whenever I try.) 

Drinking green juice is actually pretty easy so that's fine. 

At this juncture, I should probably note that I am a super sensitive human and as diligently as I try to unhook myself from the collective emotional energy, sometimes I still end up in fear and, ya know, faintly hysterical terror. 

That said, getting back into this writing game is not going smoothly. 

Pushing myself doesn't seem to be working. Starting yet another novel and getting four pages in before abandoning it doesn't seem to be working. Journaling mostly just turns into all-caps yelling as I let my brain throw a tantrum to unleash all the feeling I've carefully hoarded thanks to that aforementioned sensitivity - so that doesn't seem to be working either.

Maybe the solution of my bright-eyed twenty-something self will work for me now. Back in 2005, at the virtual dawn of personal internet musings, I started a blog as a way to write daily. It worked and I loved it. But that was when we were just talking about our lives without much expectation and our friends were doing it too. It was a big ol internet party in those sweetly naive pre-social media years. 

I mean, the technology still exists. Where did we all go? What happened? It feels like it wants to come back. Some of the bloggers of yore are at it again - and some never stopped. (Who's still doing this? If you are or know of people who are, please share.) So here I am too, doing my utmost to silence the plague o' self-doubt and use my voice. 

Going back to conversational writing and less curation sounds like a goddamn breath of peppermint-flavored arctic air. Overthinking is choking the life out of me and my poor beleaguered words. 

Who would want to read this? - my brain 

You've lost your special spark and I refuse to subscribe to this claptrap. - person who unsubscribed to my newsletter and felt it necessary to tell me why

Should I be talking about this? Am I complaining too much? How is this adding to the world? - my brain

HEREBY BANISHING THE BRAIN HAMSTERS. AND NEVER READING PEOPLE'S REASONS FOR UNSUBSCRIBING EVER AGAIN. There. Problem solved. 

We'll see what happens. Whatever it is, I will do my utmost to squash the brain hamsters, unhook sticky emotion, and speak what is true and loving. And possibly annoyed and cynical. But that's the beauty of not over-thinking. You get to just be. 

So here's to just being. Like it's 2005 and we're in the first flush of internet sharing and I don't yet have that alarming trench between my brows.