My Next Adventure

Things I've Let Stop Me In the Past

Not having a catchy title.

Not having a plan.

Not having enough time.

Not having enough money.

A giant stress zit on my chin.

Sweat.

Unwashed hair.

Not knowing how it's going to end.

Not knowing how it's going to be received.

Caring about how it's going to be received so much that it's easier not to start.

Cure

Doing it anyway.

Doing the thing as soon as you think of the thing.

Letting the momentum carry me from idea to execution, stopping only for crackers with almond butter because my blood sugar was veering me toward werewolf.

Trusting that everything I need will come.

Realizing no one cares about a zit on my chin or unwashed hair.

Deciding that the thing I want to say and the thing I want to do is important enough that I don't care how it's received.

Totally caring, but deciding not to let that stop me.

I don't know what this is going to turn into. But if I waited until I knew, I would never find out.

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You Can Take Your Roots With You

I moved to my beach-side apartment in Santa Monica earlier this year in hopes of finding stability. To find my feet in the sun and have a place to put my coffee grinder after one of the most tumultuous years of my life. Seven months later, I'm unexpectedly moving out. I could've stayed, thrown down, dug in, put my stubbornness to good use. But sometimes, even if it seems goddamn idyllic, a beautiful apartment near a ferris wheel that glows neon in the twilight isn't the right place for you to be. Security - at least what I've always thought of as security - continues to dance just out of my reach. So I've decided to stop grabbing for it. To sink in instead. To find security where it really lives - which, as it happens, is not on my red couch or in my triangular dresser or stuffed into my yellow comforter. It's not hiding in another person, a person I have to find before I can feel safe. Being grounded doesn't need to come from having my name on the lease of a sunny apartment. Security can come from putting my bare feet in a patch of grass or filling my lungs with oxygen and letting it out slowly.

It can come from putting my clothes and toothbrush in the trunk of my car and driving six hours to run my first half-marathon. It can come from knowing that whatever shifts in my world, I can handle it. Even if "handling it" sometimes looks like "crying on a kitchen floor on a Sunday morning."

As any toddler will tell you, crying is a totally legit way of dealing with the world.

Security can come from always having a home to go to, whether it's a friend's home or the home I grew up in, where my mom still lives and my dad's ashes are waiting in the dining room where we unceremoniously dumped them after they arrived courtesy of the US Postal service last December. He's finally getting out of that cardboard box. Next week we're going to scatter him on his favorite beach, because I inherited my love of sand and water from him.

Four blocks to the west. At least until Friday.

Security only ever comes from inside you. As we've all learned, what's outside is constantly and sometimes unexpectedly shifting. If you place your security in a relationship or a living room or an accomplishment, life will find a way to tilt your axis so everything that was on the left is suddenly jumbled up on the right or sliding over the edge. Life just wants you to recognize that you already have everything you'll ever need. But the lesson can be a painful jolt.

Being a creature of whimsy, I've always moved toward what felt right rather than what made sense. Logic has no place in my life. Thinking about staying, in this enviable spot with the security I longed for, didn't feel good any more. Thinking about moving forward into whatever is next felt open and expansive and crackling with energy.

Last time I put my books and furniture in a storage unit, I traveled the world, hunkered down in the middle of a literal and metaphorical hurricane, and watched my father die. In more tremulous moments, I worry. Because the beginnings of that year look very much like the beginnings that are coming for me in a few days. But I also know that whatever is coming will come whether I'm in LA or San Francisco or riding a llama through South Carolina. So I may as well live my life. I've handled disaster before and with that disaster wrangling came the roots of something deep in me that I can always call on, no matter where in the world I am. Strength and sense of self is the reward for moving through death and grief and natural disaster and a constantly shifting life.

So what's next? I can't even begin to imagine. But I'm looking forward to finding out.

Don't Waste Your Time

On people who don't love you. On dreams that don't send jolts of electricity coiling down your spine.

On relationships when what you really crave is creation.

On creation when what you really crave is relation.

On t-shirts that don't thrill you.

On love affairs that suck your life force.

On books that don't make you laugh or feel or know.

On Twitter, when it's not making you marvel at the depth of the world.

On Facebook, when the life of someone else makes yours feel less.

On apartments that don't feel like home.

On projects that don't feel like your true work in the world.

On whatever doesn't feel real to you.

Instead....

Plant your feet in the grass and tilt your face to the sky.

Lock anything with a signal in the closet for an hour, a day, a week.

Find someone who adores all that infuses you.

Run until you find something new.

Walk until you find something you once loved.

Read until tears dampen your neck.

Jump on the bounciest surface available to celebrate the invention of the sports bra.

Explore your town like a tourist.

Learn a foreign place like a native.

Eat something you crave and savor every bite.

Hug someone who makes your chest cavity feel like it's going to explode.

Hug someone who needs it.

Give the kid with the sign outside the Starbucks her favorite drink and 20 bucks.

Write love notes and scatter them on your way to work.

Most of all, don't forget that every last bit of love and magic in the world grew from the tenderest hidden places of someone just like you.

Choosing the Fire

People talk about low self-esteem like it's something shameful. Like it's a dirty blanket used to hide every cracked place that really just needs to be accepted and healed and loved. The idea of low self-esteem implies we need fixing. But we don't need fixing. We don't need to be hammered or spackled or hoisted into underwear that will make us a different shape. We need gentleness. We need to reframe our story and shift our perspective toward something that soothes us and allows us to move forward, rather than cuts us when we make a mistake.

There are no mistakes. There is no one with low self-esteem or no self-confidence. There are just people who need love and understanding and forgiveness and gentleness. From others maybe, but mostly from themselves.

I'm not trying to fix myself any more. I'm pretty bright and spectacular, just as I am. In the way that everyone is bright and spectacular - you just notice it more with some people. Probably because they've already recognized that truth about themselves. Some people aren't ready to dig themselves out from under whatever comfort the weight of feeling broken holds. Not ready to accept what's burning like an Olympic torch under that grimy blanket. But it's just a choice. And every passing second is a chance to make a new choice.

Hurl the Crystal Ball Off a Cliff

I keep trying to plan my future, like I have a crystal ball and purple turban and a misguided faith in my ability to wield both. If I've learned anything, it's that I know nothing. I have no idea what's going to happen next year or next month or even next week. That's okay, I like it. It keeps me moving and motivated and energized. I just have to stop trying to plan more than a month or two out. I keep saying I'll do x until y happens. I may start with x but suddenly I've left the alphabet entirely and I'm on Pluto with a glass of orange juice wondering whatever happened to that crafty y. So I should really stop postulating and assuming and thinking I have any real say in the direction my life will take. The only thing I can decide is what happens now. All this to say, my landlords have caused me some serious angst this week. One phone call on Monday and suddenly my whole life has been tossed up like confetti. I have to decide if I'm going to leave by September 1st or if I'm going to wage epic battle with the landlord. I made a video - because video messages are the best way to be weird with friends who live in other countries - and my face was pink because I'd burst into hysterical tears three times that day.

I was all set to fight the righteous fight, but after leaving messages all over the city and going to office hours and still not having any answers beyond an appointment on Tuesday (which is already halfway through the month, for anyone else who doesn't understand how time works), I'm starting to wonder if this is life's way of telling me I'm moving in the wrong direction. When things have been right, they've flowed smoothly. Getting this apartment was laughably easy. I decided I wanted to live by the beach in LA or San Francisco and something like thirty seconds later I had an apartment. Doing things only if they're easy seems anti-American. But working hard isn't the same as smashing your head into the same brick wall time and time again.

My hackles are raised. I want to give them hell. But maybe I need to get over it and realize that this is simply the world nudging me toward something better. Whenever I've left one thing, even something I've loved or was right for the time, I've always landed an upgrade. Sometimes it behooves you to rise above the anger and the injustice so that you can do what's right for you. I'm not saying I know what's right for me yet, but in all the grand leaps I've made, the net has always swooshed under me with admirable speed and fluffiness. Just because my last leap resulted in mayhem doesn't mean that this one will. And just because it was mayhem doesn't mean it wasn't the right thing.

Right now, it doesn't excite me to try to stay in this beautiful apartment, in this beautiful place. I'm more energized by the thought of spending a few weeks with my friends and family in San Francisco and then maybe going on that road trip through the South that I've talked about for years. Then maybe finding another place in LA. Or going to London for the fall. Or...see what I'm doing? Trying to plan months in advance, like I have any idea what's happening. How quickly we forget the lessons of four paragraphs ago.

My apartment by the beach has always felt a bit impermanent, like I was only here until whatever my future held. But maybe my future is now.