The 7:37 Project and Why I've Decided Taking Pictures at a Random Time Every Day Is a Good Idea

There are a lot of things I want to do with my life. There are a lot of things I want to do this year. Shit, there are a lot of things I want to do this month. WHERE ARE MY LISTS? WHERE IS MY SHERPA TO CARRY ALL MY LISTS? WHY AM I YELLING ABOUT LISTS? I want to write a book. I want to write a series of essays about being a recovering perfectionist for my fellow perfectionists. I want to be a better blogger and learn how to tango and how to saute vegetables without sending half of them arcing across the kitchen in a soy sauce splatter ballet. I want to build a body of work that helps make the world better.

But I'm both keenly ambitious and brutally lazy. So in order to write that book, I have to choose which side I'm going to let win. If I'm being honest, I've definitely been a gold medalist in couch slothing the past few weeks.

I WIN AT SLOTH.

So starting tonight, I'm going to take a picture at 7:37 p.m. Every day for a month. If I'm supposed to be working but am actually on Twitter, I have to digitally fess up. If I'm on a date, I have to explain my bizarre little project and hope he doesn't mind that I'm pulling out my phone and taking a picture of the ketchup bottle. If I'm exercising, if I'm watching TV or watching soy sauce fly across the kitchen. Whatever I'm doing at 7:37 in the evening gets documented.

Goal

To get a literal snapshot of how I spend my time. That's information I can use to make changes or just be all smug about how productive I am. It's also a good daily marker. What's different, what stays the same, what might change as I do this.

If you want to follow along, I'm amberadrian on Instagram. I make no promises as to how interesting my life will be at 7:37 in the evening, but you'll at least get some pictures of dog wrestling and toenail painting.

Here's My Question For You, If You're In The Mood For Answering Random Questions From a Girl Who Plays a Panda on the Internet

Is there something you really deeply, madly, truly want to do with your life? Are you doing it?

If not, why? If not now, when? I vote you make it now. Because the world needs whatever you've got.

Fine, One More Question

What have you got? I really want to know. What do you want to do, make, build, be? If you aren't comfortable putting it in the comments, send me an email. (The email button's on there somewhere. I just realized I don't have one on the blog. Internet fail.)

Whatever it is, I think you should do it.

I'm not necessarily recommending that everyone take a picture of their 7:37 p.m. for a month - but if you want to, please feel free. And let me know so I can follow you. But if there's something you can do to make more space in your life to be creative or study for the GREs or write that epic poem, DO THAT SHIT. Unless you already are. In which case, TELL US HOW. WHY ARE YOU SO AMAZING AND HOW CAN WE SIPHON THAT ACTION FROM YOUR PORES?

Also, ew. No siphoning of anything from any bodily organs. Sorry.

I'm going to write more about making space in your life on Thursday - also known as why I gave up my friends in the TV and why I spent all day yesterday with a big, fat headache. But for now, I need to go write some essays and set my alarm for 7:37 and hope I'm doing something vaguely entertaining so I don't have to take a picture of soy sauce.

To New Years and Purpose and Less Raving Lunacy

Happy new year! Hope the evening was just as you wanted, whether that's kids in bed by 8 and butt on couch by 9 or a tequila-slamming, tiara-bedecked mosh pit of shirtless men. Mine was somewhere in the middle, and it was lovely. Especially the part where I woke up to bacon frying and sun streaming in a window by the sea. I'm not usually one to reflect on the past year, which is weird because god knows I reflect on every other damn thing. But I had a big year. Not so much with flying through the sky to Zimbabwe or purchasing real estate, but big. Mostly internal in its bigness, but when you can honestly say you're 93 percent less raving lunatic mess than you were this time last year, you get to call it a big year.

2011: Year of Less Raving Lunacy

This was the year I learned to set boundaries. To ask for what I want. Then to ask for what I really want, not just what I think I'm going to get.

This was the year I learned not to stuff my feelings so far down my spleen that it takes them three years to fight their way to the surface and then only because my iPod decided to shuffle to that one song, the one that was playing when I first felt that feeling, and suddenly I'm bawling for no good reason as I try to merge with oncoming traffic. This rampant repression is a sneaky brand of emotional epilepsy and I don't recommend it.

So I catch myself sooner. Sit still and let that feeling course through me. Even as my brain whispers "Tamp it down, just for a little while. You'll feel better. Come on, you have work to do. You don't have time for this. Repress. Just a little. You know you want it."

And I do. I absolutely want the sweet blankness of not feeling that feeling because I have an excuse to lose myself in work or bury myself alive in buttered mashed potatoes and Grey's Anatomy. But every time I tell my hamster brain to sit in a corner as I let myself feel, my life gets a little better. Sure, I still repress. The brain hamsters aren't vanquished because they're sly and patient, waiting for exhaustion or an unguarded moment to pounce. But it's better. So much better.

Yay, progress.

And all of this has made me bigger. That means I get to love bigger, do bigger things, take bigger risks, start wondering if bigger is really a word because it just looks funny when you keep typing it out like that.

In less overtly internal news, 2011 was the year I performed my first marriage ceremony. Got my first lap dance. Skiied my first black run without finding myself snuggled in the welcoming embrace of a stoic pine tree. The year I learned the joy of roof jumping and came nowhere close to winning that pool-side limbo contest in Vegas. Was thrown my first ever surprise party. It was also the year I left my favorite neighborhood in my favorite city and moved to Los Angeles. The year I started settling into working for myself and began learning how to make the most of it. The year everyone bought me pandas for Christmas instead of moose.

It was also the first time I figured out my life purpose. Isn't that the most pompous, self-congratulatory thing you've ever heard? MY LIFE, IT NOW HAS MEANING. But yanking this one deceptively simple thing out of the depths of my soul - and, yes, that is how far I had to go - has grounded everything else in my life. Any time I get anxious or scared or feel like I'm not doing it right, I can remember there is one thing I'm here to do and it doesn't much matter how I do it.

That Life Meaning Thing, In Case You Care

To love the world through my writing and my life. Share my experience, because we all need stories and maybe my stories will help someone else. Live my screwball, whimsy-ridden life as best I can.

Fine, three things. Hush.

Also, did I just say that blogging is my life purpose? PRETTY SURE I DID. Well, someone else already discovered penicillin and winning the Nobel Peace Prize probably requires staying off Twitter for months at a time, so we all know I'm not doing either of those. Blogging seems a reasonable alternative.

As for 2012, it holds... who knows what. Sure, I have Insane Person Spreadsheets stuffed with goals and plans and numbers. But the only meaning all that holds is how it applies to my keen and ever-growing desire to love as best I can.

I would like to learn how to let the world love me back. I'd like to stop holding it at arm's length because I'm convinced that hurts less. I want more electric possibility. More adventures of the small and big kind. More love. For myself, for my work, for my people.

Whatever's coming this year, I'm looking forward to it.

The Dangerous Beauty of iTunes

Press shuffle in iTunes and something you haven't listened to in ages pops up and suddenly you lose seven years and approximately ninety-three personal growth lessons and you feel the way you did when you were listening to this song alone in your room after your first major breakup. Wow. That was weird.

They (the great and mysterious they) say smell is the sense most evocative of past memories, but I don't think I believe them. These also tend to be the people who tell me I need a job and a wardrobe that doesn't consist mainly of jeans and unicorn t-shirts. If I smell snickerdoodles baking, I think "Gee, I like cookies." But if I hear a certain song, I get sucked into a time warp that could dump me down in any point in my sentient life - any place, year, or emotional state. Music is the great chronological equalizer.

If I hear Black-Eyed Dog by Nick Drake, suddenly I'm sitting on a Manhattan bus in 1999.

If I hear Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, I'm standing in the marble lobby of the Flood Building in 2005. I called the boy I was seeing because I'd just run into an ex and I was shaken. He showed up with a hug and the Flaming Lips CD he burned for me.

Blue-eyed Devil by Soul Coughing and I'm sitting in that ex's car with the dog in my lap as we drive up the coast to Stinson Beach.

Digital Love by Daft Punk and I'm watching Italian MTV with my friends in our apartment in Florence in 2001. The washing machine is whirling with the laundry from our trip to Venice and we're eating eggplant parmigiana and trying to decipher the commercials with our rudimentary Italian.

Footloose by Kenny Loggins and I'm in a neighbor's kitchen in 1988, dancing across the mustard linoleum as three boys argue over the right shape for chocolate chip cookie dough on baking sheets.

This shit's specific, yo.

It's like an electric portal to long-forgotten feelings that hit you out of absolutely nowhere because the shuffle algorithm in iTunes sent a random selection up through your headphones and into your brain.

I think most people have a deep visceral response to music. When I was a kid, I would watch TV with my little tape recorder poised, so that when the commercial with my favorite song would come on, I could press record and play it back in my bedroom. I couldn't make music - the piano never fired me up, five years of lessons notwithstanding - so I learned to dance to it instead. My yen to move started early, apparently. Kindergarten teachers told tales of how I would dance around the classroom, probably knocking into other students and generally making a nuisance of myself. My favorite evening activity is still sticking my iPod in my pocket and dancing in the house by myself as the dog watches, confused.

And those memories, man. Three bars into a song and it's like visiting myself five, ten, twenty years in the past. Strange as it is to find myself briefly in those long-lost feelings and that long-lost self, I kind of like it. Because I can tell that girl, "Hey. It's okay. You'll get through this. Hard things will happen to you, but amazing things will happen too. Just keep listening."

'Tis The Season To Scare Cats and Get Yelled At By Cops

I am so tired. So physically exhausted that writing a blog post is one of the last things I should be doing, ahead of operating large machinery or performing a root canal on an unsuspecting cat.* * I'm staying in an apartment with a resident feline and said feline is currently hiding under the bed. She's usually rather fond of me, so she must have sensed that I was typing phrases like "root canal" in conjunction with "unsuspecting cat."

Driving from LA to San Francisco in the middle of a busy work week would make anyone tired. Even if their brother took the wheel after 20 minutes and wouldn't relinquish it for the next six hours because the original driver maaaay have gotten us lost in the middle of LA after getting yelled at by a cop.**

** We both tried to occupy the same space at the same time. I had the green light. He did not. There were no sirens or flashing red and blue. So unless I've completely rewritten this event in the depths of my admittedly imaginative subconscious, I'm pretty sure I had the right of way.

So, yeah. Tired. But that good kind of tired, the one where climbing between clean sheets and relaxing bonelessly into a nice mattress is the most delicious feeling you could ever have.

But I told myself I was going to write blog posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays and by gum, that's what I'm going to do. 2011: The year of doing the things I say I'll do. Because doing the things you say you'll do keeps your soul from perishing, piece by melodramatic piece. Emerging from 2011 with your soul intact = win.

I'm spending Christmas in San Jose with my family, but bookending Family Time with Friend Time in San Francisco. Lots of friends, lots of cheese, lots of parties, lots of all the things I love and have been missing in LA. I get lonely there, which is not surprising, given that I had ten years to build friends here and have had three months to build friendships in LA, with most of those months spent working and then sleeping in preparation to do more work.

Therefore. Loneliness = understandable and expected and even desired (see: all the working). But it's nice not to be lonely for a week and a half.

Good grief, this was supposed to be a cheery Christmas post. HERE, LET ME DOUSE YOUR YULE LOG WITH MY SALTY TEARS. While I work up to saying "Hey, I'm happy!" in the most depressing way possible. Hi, bourbon. You make me maudlin.  I knew there was a reason I've been avoiding your calls and texts and slightly desperate emails. Even when those emails are sent from the depths of homemade eggnog as you spike it in quantities generous enough to fell a mid-size rhinoceros.

Anyway.

I am tired but happy. All my presents are purchased, if not wrapped. My work is not yet done, but it will be. Three friends today (plus one wary cat), three friends tomorrow, all the family, all of the evergreen. None of the bourbon.

In conclusion, here is a big ass picture of my little ass tree. It wishes you a merry Christmas. Or whatever holiday you happen to celebrate. (Hi, Jewish people! Hi, Muslims! Hi, pagans! The tree loves you too!)

May your weekend be merry and bright and full of all the things you love.

Learning To Be a Good Human. You Know, Eventually.

Me: "What did you do today?" My mother: "Oh, I read for Books Aloud and then I sat with a cancer patient. What did you do today?"

Me: "..."

Her: "..."

Me: "I drank three lattes and wrote a blog post."

Oh, how I wish I could tell you this was exaggerated for dramatic effect. No. Actual conversation. Only one example of many such conversations. My mother doesn't mean to guilt me into being a better person, it just sort of happens.

This is one of the reasons I don't want to have kids until I'm living a life I really believe in - doing work I love, making enough money to send them to the good schools, and living up to my purported values by doing a lot of that "help other people" thing.

Hi, I just acted like I'm not allowed to procreate until I'm a paragon of humanity. RAMPANT PERFECTIONISM COMPLEX FOR ONE, PLEASE.

Last weekend, I volunteered with one of those paragons of humanity and a whole bunch of kids. I was supposed to go to some amazing-sounding food thing with Nicole and Drea, but I don't understand calendars.

Drea: "Why aren't you coming?"

Nicole: "Amber's being a good human. She's feeding homeless people."

Me: "Well, I wouldn't have agreed to go if I thought I had anything better to do."

Does hell reserve a special corner for people who only volunteer when they don't have anything better to do? If so, I will be there, warming my feet over toasty coals of hubris.

So instead of eating all the food, I went to Santa Monica and handed out all the food. By standing awkwardly amongst the kids and parents of TKO as they zipped around handing out armfuls of plastic ziploc bags stuffed with sandwiches and fruit and chips. Some of the kids hauled coolers of water and sodas to pass out. The most popular kids were the ones with the plates of homemade chocolate chip cookies. They were practically still warm. I really wanted one of those cookies.

My hunger led me down a path I'm not proud of. I seriously thought about confiscating a bag of chips from one of the ziploc bags, but eventually reason prevailed. Where reason = not wanting to give any demonic minions the excuse to turn up the thermostat in my eventual resting place.*

* For the record, I don't believe in hell. Except the one we make for ourselves, one that happens a lot more often when I'm not appreciating what I've got. It's impossible not to appreciate what you've got when you're handing sandwiches to people for whom a nice sandwich is a major luxury.

We walked along the waterfront, and the kids handed out more food to the people camped under trees and perched on benches. Everyone the kids and their parents interacted with looked happier about the conversation than the food.

I have enough trouble striking up conversation with random people in coffee shops or on the street as a reasonably well-dressed girl with all the trappings of first world prosperity. (What up, cute sneakers and brand new iPhone.) It must be seventy billion times harder if you're careworn and don't have easy access to a shower and have been wearing that threadbare sweatshirt for days or weeks. In other words, obviously homeless. People often don't want to give them the time of day, and that's heartbreaking.

To be honest, I'm one of those people. I rarely engage. There are a lot of reasons for that and you probably know them all, especially if you live in a relatively urban area. But that's not really an excuse. I often don't talk to people because I don't want to take the time or I don't want to deal with whatever feelings I might have - guilt, pain, annoyance, not-precisely-sure-how-to-get-out-of-this-one-and-yes-this-is-the-last-time-I-talk-to-the-obviously-crazy-dude-on-the-bus.

As we walked along Ocean Boulevard, it was heartwrenching to watch them light up over that brief connection with someone who was asking - genuinely - how their day was going or complimenting - sincerely - on their spontaneous burst of Christmas caroling as we passed.

That someone was not me. This time. Maybe some day it will be.

So you do what you can. I could be there. Present, if not fully engaged. And I do know that I've never been so god blessed in my life as I was last Sunday.

If we're going to be obsessive with this whole honesty thing, I have to admit that it's because volunteering makes me feel better. It also furthers that whole Be Good Human thing. And means I might be able to have something other than lattes and blogging to report when I talk to my mother.