My Daily Bread

Everyone has something they need to do every day. Some people need to run, some people need to pray, some people need to plot, some people need to sit in a tree. We all have daily needs beyond the obvious food, water, and sleep. My mother's cat needs to yowl beseechingly at the closed door until someone gets up to open it. My box of tea with the festive holiday lemur needs to fall from its perch every time I look at it. I need to write.

Fine, I don't need to write. I won't die if I don't write each and every day and 2012 and 2013 prove that most conclusively. But you won't die without water for a few days either. You'll just get really, really uncomfortable. If I don't write, I get itchy and anxious and can never quite understand what's wrong with me until I sit down at my laptop and learn for the 9,472nd time in my life that my brain calms down when I start putting words together.

That's why I started blogging in 2005, back when the internet was fresh and shiny and full of primary colors. It was a reason to write every day and Twitter hadn't been invented yet. But in the days of people as brands and monetization and micro-blogging, I feel like crawling back to my blogging roots. They're warm and comforting and I need some comforting that doesn't come from the bottom of a bag of potato chips. I started blogging to write daily. I kept blogging because of the stories and connection.

Sometimes I fall into the trap of feeling a grave need to go all Useful or Here's How You Can Do This Thing. But that rarely feels right to me. Who am I to tell you what you need or how to live your life? It doesn't necessarily make sense, as I tend to love those posts from other people (TELL ME HOW TO DO THINGS, PEOPLE) and I know that if something doesn't make sense or feel real, you can always make hasty use of that handy x at the top of your browser. Nevertheless, the only authority I feel I have is to share my story, my struggle, my joys and if you can parse something useful out of it, that's a bonus for everyone.

But I haven't written much here the past few years. Stuff happens. Fathers die, hurricanes blow, you move out of one apartment, you move out of the one after that. My life got fractured. But that splintering was a blessing, because it's given me a chance to look at what parts of myself I don't need any more. I'm in the process of re-learning who I am, without all the bullshit I've carried around my entire life.

I write for the same reason other people sit in trees or pray - I write to find out who I am today.

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Blogging daily until the end of November. Let's see how long I can go before resorting to pictures of cats. 

To The Rescue

When a small boy in a superhero cape stands above a city and listens to a gathered crowd chant his name, it's not about a five-year-old's battle with leukemia. It's not even about making his dream come true. It's about watching an entire city rally around hope.

Because we're all fighting our own battle. By supporting his fight and his dream, we are able to stand strong in the face of our own.

Thanks, San Francisco. Thanks, Batkid.

Time's Construct Eludes Me Yet Again

Red leaves are already hurling themselves onto the ground. Jeans roll down, boots climb up, scarves wrap around, and the holly of Christmas steamrolls the more sedate turkeys of Thanksgiving. I feel like I missed autumn entirely. The past month has been weird. Did anyone else feel that? Does anyone else feel both unmoored and stuck, overwhelmed and leisurely, progressing while also completely halted? I'm jumpy because I drink too much caffeine and I'm angry because my brain has been bashing itself against the inside of my skull like a hamster enraged at the devious confinement of its clear plastic ball. The amount of self-judgment I've applied topically could set a city block on fire. I've felt stuck in my crappy story, powerless to rewrite it, unable to edit it and annoyed because those are two things I'm supposed to be good at.

Yes, if you want joy, create it. If you want love, give it. If you want magic, kidnap a wizard. But sometimes you just can't get there. Sometimes you have to let your crappy story be your crappy story for awhile. And that's okay.

Sometimes you just have to take a breath and do what you can do. Run your miles, eat the hash browns, write the things. It's so easy to fall into the habit of requiring each part of your life to be useful and perfect. But I am messy and imperfect and I don't have an editorial calendar but I do have new running shoes and a bad attitude.

New running shoes and a bad attitude can take you far.

Training for my first marathon began last week. I wish everything in life was as straightforward as running a race. You have a training plan and you know that as long as you lace up your shoes and put in the miles, you can run the set distance at the set time. Life really is that simple. But my other plans are more susceptible to the power of my self-sabotage.

I want to be amazed. I want to be bowled over by joy. I want to be reminded that magic is a thing people can see. But for now I'll run and write and breathe and remember that life doesn't have to look perfect to be perfect.

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This is my attempt at National Blog Posting Month. Yes, the month started fourteen days ago, but I'm late for everything and the month of November is no different. I feel a deep desire for structure right now and I hope the simplicity of writing and posting everyday will shake some things loose. 

Last Call

When I feel hurt, I disconnect. My body remains in my seat but my soul jumps out and tries to crawl through the ceiling. Because I'm so removed, I go blank. I can't formulate a response or even a thought. All I can do is sit there like a banked sturgeon. It's unnerving for everyone. Especially for the person who's left with a shell instead of an Amber.

Since feeling hurt is a major part of the human condition, this is something I need to address. Because once I learn how to stop having out of body experiences every time I feel threatened, I might be able to inject some levity or empathy into the situation.

Empathy > Shell Human

But how do you shift something you've been doing your entire life? I often don't even realize I'm doing it until I'm so far out I don't know how to get back in. When I realize I'm gone, I take a breath and search for the soul that's attempting to claw a hole in the roof. Then I lasso it and reattach it to my body. But that takes a few minutes. In the mean time, the person across from me is getting more and more disconcerted.

Clearly, I have some baggage. Most people do. But I probably don't need to carry it all with me. It's heavy and all that dragging makes me testy. Especially if someone dares mention my baggage in my presence. I prefer to think it invisible and let's all just agree to support my delusion, thanks.

For the past few weeks, I've felt like the world is boxing me in, circling itself, so old conversations are recycled and something an ex said seven years ago comes at me again from a new mouth and it feels even more true this time around. But really it's just coming up again so I can finally let it go. Move forward into something that feels better, instead of being dragged down by the old stuff. 

I retreat when it feels like someone has peeled off my skin and left my organs exposed to the elements. Everything feels raw and any motion is too much, but the motion is needed to sweep it away. Sometimes all you can do is allow yourself to be swept. I don't want the truth to make me cranky. I want the truth to make me feel powerful.

But for that to happen, I need to leave my baggage at the airport. Board the plane with nothing more than my phone and a credit card, sit in a wide seat with a book and a bag of potato chips, and soar off into the sky while a bomb squad hurries into the airport to dismantle the ticking bomb carefully packed in my abandoned suitcases.

Catching a Constantly Shifting Center

Life keeps pushing me off balance, just to see if I can find my feet. I'm not sure if I'm being shoved or pulled, self-sabotaging or allowing the world to do its job. All I know is that I keep landing on my ass, confused because everything is suddenly so much higher over my head than it was a second ago. Not knowing where the epicenter sits is part of being off-balance, I guess. If you could find it, you'd be able pile it with bricks or to-do lists or some new kale habit to make everything stop shaking for awhile. Maybe defying gravity isn't the point.

Whether it's fate or my subconscious need to continually knock my life askew doesn't matter. Searching for the source is just one more avoidance tactic in my stellar arsenal of procrastination. It's a better just to get on with it.

How To Find Your Center When Life Feels Like Trying To Balance On a Basketball

Sink into this moment. Yes, the one that's happening right now. Right now I'm staring at the arch in a brick wall. I smell coffee and hear the murmurs of conversation and trumpets from a speaker above the door. Behind the arch is a roaster that hails coffee beans. I'm in Los Gatos, where my father moved after he and my mom divorced, soon after the 1989 earthquake, when the left side of Main Street was still boarded up. From the window of the coffee shop, I can see the Opera House where my senior prom was held. Half a street beyond is where I met my first boyfriend.

It's all too easy to sit at this marble table, with my laptop and long finished coffee, pondering my history in this town while also fretting about my unknown future. But all that really matters is that I'm here now, on a Tuesday in late October as red leaves and palm trees battle for dominion under a gray sky. It's a cliche that's both heartbreakingly true and astonishingly easy to forget: You only ever have this moment, the one that you're in right now. There's power in that. You can't change the past and you can't control the future, but you can always choose how you want this moment to play out.

Breathe fire. When you hold your breath, everything stops. When you take in oxygen, everything begins again. Stepping into the unknown - like moving out of your apartment without having another one lined up, shifting your work so you're doing what you want to be doing but your bank account is getting thin - tends to throw everything into upheaval. One thing has stopped, the next hasn't yet begun. It's easy to forget to breathe in the middle. But everything is better with oxygen, especially oxygen you have to think about. Like that Kundalini fire breath that I don't entirely understand, but I do know that when I pull in three short breaths from my nose and then release it slowly, my heart slows and my body softens.

Relax. I spent last Friday in Petaluma with a herd of horses, as you do. I learned that a horse will kiss me when I'm relaxed and shy away when I'm tense. If you're me, you will extend this metaphor from horses to life and realize that your usual reaction to triggers - bracing firmly, as if tension translates to armor - only makes it worse. When I unlock my knees, loosen my jaw and soften my stomach, horses like me better. Air flows through my body easier and I can move with the world rather than against it.

You don't move well when you're frozen. When you freeze, all the energy in your body freezes with you. You're solid and unmoving. You're static, in stasis, stuck in that place you don't want to be. To adapt, you need to stay loose.  It took me 35 years but I'm finally learning how to adjust, to move with what triggers me instead of jolting to a halt like a deer in headlights. Bracing doesn't keep you from getting knocked over, it only makes you go down harder.

A few weeks ago, I was driving home from Mount Tam, winding down the mountain in the dark, when I slammed my brakes so hard my car almost skidded into a mailbox before I fully understood what happened. A buck, complete with antlers and wickedly powerful haunches, skimmed around the left side of my car and darted in front of me, so close I could hear the bristles of his coat as they brushed the hood of my car. If he had frozen, he would have smashed into me. If I had frozen - or, more accurately, if my foot had frozen above the brake pedal - I would have smashed into him. He was so close to the driver's side that we both would've been badly hurt, if not worse. But he kept moving and, after a few stunned seconds, so did I.

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My experience in the world has taught me that the more you strive for balance, the more it delights in shoving you. It's not a malicious shove, just enough to knock you back a pace or two. Like a beloved boxing coach, showing you just how much you can take before you climb out into the ring.

So I'm not going to search for balance. But I'll do my best to keep breathing as I move.