The sky is an iridescent grey, at once inspiring and eerie.
My day is stretched before me with a loose idea of all the things I have to do, mostly of the meetings-and-appointments sort. A murky mess sits at the bottom of a mug I wish was filled with fresh black coffee. I just shrug at its emptiness and type on.
Inside, calmness has settled in. A calmness I probably haven’t felt in a number of years.
It began yesterday morning with a kind of prescient feeling about how much I could or would get done during the day. I blew that out of the water and settled my to-do list with great authority, meeting and beating all aspirations for the day.
At the end, I decided I’d finally take a look at my finances. For the first month of my unemployment I’ve applied the Ostirich Approach to my situation — only after I’d taken a hard look at the bottom line of what I would need to live on each month, and had the vague notion I might be okay until June. Then, I buried my head, spent as little as possible, and just did my shit, with the assumption that Spending Almost Nothing was all I needed to do.
Much of what I did spend was covered by “found” money — gifts from a couple kind people. (You fucking rock.)
I knew when the month started it would be tight and was 95% sure I would either be deferring my loan payment or telling my landlord I needed an extra week to pay the rent. I mean, the reality is, the first month of unemployment is ALWAYS the hardest.
I was in the situation of having had a bad-spending winter, followed by the Olympics crushing my savings, and had NO idea that a complete lay-off loomed. I thought I’d lose a day of work a week — I was praying for it — as we’d applied for the Workshare program (spreading a lay-off throughout the company, with the government paying 55% of the one day a week each employee gives up).
I never thought I’d be laid off entirely this year. And after a year spent rehabbing a back injury and two years of having to replace entire wardrobes with every season due to weight-loss, and that I’ve been making lower-middle-class income in one of the world’s most expensive cities… well, yeah, no savings either.
But…
But I managed to get enough ducks in a row as soon as the “OMG, lay-offs might be coming” fear that hit around March 24th, before finding out on the 25th that I would be entirely laid off, likely the next day, that I sort of had a fighting chance.
I was also insistent with my employer that the additional 3 days of work at the end of March would make the difference between me surviving until June at least.
And it did.
I finally scrounged up everything I had last night — not including a little emergency money I’ve set aside or what’s on my Visa — and know I can pay rent AND groceries until the middle of the month, without even receiving my government employment insurance benefit. AND I keep what little safety net I have intact.
That changes everything.
I feel like it’s the stamp of approval. “Go forth, Steff,” it says. “All will be well.”
I know, I’m supposed to be all embarrassed that my money’s this tight.
I’m supposed to be ashamed.
Wealth is a sign of success and position and talent and brains, isn’t it?
Fuck you.
Fuck ANYONE who thinks I need to be ashamed that things have been so close.
I’ve NEVER been irresponsible with money. All I’ve been guilty of is being average with money. At my income, spending an additional 10% every month cripples you in a hurry.
I am NOT my adversity. FUCK that.
Try losing 70 pounds and having to buy new wardrobes every three months, or getting so severely injured you spend a month laying on a floor and for months have to take cabs and pay 20% more in groceries just for the convenience, because you’re in too much pain to bus from a further, cheaper store.
That I’m even paying rent tomorrow without any interceding forces makes me more proud than you’ll ever fucking know.
Fuck anyone who thinks money and whether someone gets through a jam financially is a reflection at all of that person’s intelligence, ability, talent, or resilience. Money is as much about luck and selective adversity as it is savings abilities.
Some people just have more things to overcome. In my life, money was always the villain. That line between getting by and barely surviving is thinner than most people might realize.
For once, money doesn’t feel like my villain anymore.
I’ve got rent, baby. And food. And I’m gonna buy me some wine and a steak tonight to celebrate.
[shaking head]
Yeah. I don’t know… I feel like I have to say more:
So many of you need to feel what kissing poverty is like. You need to feel how much it hurts inside when you’re terrified about paying the rent or you’re sure you’ve got to resort to drastic measures to get by. You need to know what it’s like to think hope is too expensive a luxury for your position. You need to imagine what that fear’s like when it’s not just you it affects.
You need to know how hard it is when money’s not within your grasp. Everyone needs to feel that.
I hope I never feel it again. And I hope I always remember that pain. I hope I always have the empathy I wish more people had shown me earlier — but so many are showing me, even showering me with, now.
Today is a day of gratitude, goodness, and calm. For me, at least. You? You can choose that, too.
Take a minute to think about what you really have, and pray you never come close to losing it.
Some fears aren’t fit for anyone. But gratitude is one-size-fits-all.
Beyond the talk of money? My future’s looking great. What a ride this summer will be. Stay tuned.
PS: Methinks unemployment might’ve been the best thing that ever happened to me. Wait’ll you get a load of me, baby.
Category Archives: Autobiographical
Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?
I had an end-of-the-night chat on Twitter with my friend Tris Hussey (@TrisHussey), one of Vancouver’s best WP blogging smartie-pants, about the strange life of being a vanilla girl in a sex-blogger-world.
It’s had me thinking since, which is why I like smartie-pants like Tris.
See, he thinks the world needs more sex-positive voices — especially from everyday-peoples like me, I guess.
Me, I still have a hard time swallowing the role. So to speak.
That’s what my whole journey in sex-blogging was about. Discovering my own sexuality in a more positive way, where I no longer judged my tastes or worried what things might suggest about me ethically or morally.
It was a hard fucking battle and I’m not even sure where I am on that road right now because I’ve been abstaining for too long. Just… because. I didn’t want to think about sexuality. I had to think about me.
But I’ve thought about me. I’m a better “me” than I’ve ever been. Now I’m ready to be more. Again.
I think the reason my sex-writing has been so successful at being applicable to the average person is because I am one. I’m not interested in burlesque. I couldn’t give a shit if I ever experience a threesome. I don’t have anything too crazy going on in my closet, can’t tell you about any really freaky encounters or swinging parties. I don’t have really odd kinks, I don’t need to push any boundaries. I don’t need more/crazier/harder to get off than I used to.
I like a little bondage, a little kink, trying creative positions, and have a little thing about sex in interesting places if time/lack-of-visibility allow. That’s about it.
I’m not off-the-charts with my sexuality, and I’m not even promiscuous. I’m old-fashioned.
But I think into every sex life a little doggy-style must fall. Or maybe a lot. It’s open for debate — let’s bang-out a plan of attack. What can I tell ya?
I think sexuality is probably one of the biggest journeys we all take.
How many people ever truly get comfortable in that context? How many people not only get comfortable with being truly sexual, but do so in a healthy way — they don’t overconsume porn, hurt others in their quest for fulfilling needs, or develop unhealthy dependencies on any particular activity, person, or lifestyling?
The world doesn’t have enough oft-laid happy “average” people skipping through life with a “I”ve been shagged SILLY” bounce to their step. How many accountants do you see walking bow-legged on Monday morning, huh?
The attitudes we DO have about sex, unfortunately, are being shaped by really fucked-up messages on the media, in Hollywood, and the internet. Sleeping around’s more popular than it’s been since the ’70s, STDs are on the rise, people are experimenting left, right and centre because media’s showing all these alternative approaches to us…
But where’s the heart?
Where’s the emotion?
Why’s there such a profound disconnect between what we’ll let ourselves feel in the crotch versus what we’ll allow our hearts to feel?
What the hell are we thinking?
Sigh. Don’t ask me, man. I’m only beginning to even attempt to crack that nut.
For the last 2-3 years, I’ve not been considering sexuality and society as much as I once did. Re-reading my work has reminded me of why I’d been so angry about it all in the past, and has rekindled my interest in being one of the voices to bring some reason to the argument.
I think so much of what’s wrong with us as a society can be explained through our skewed perspectives on sex.
I’m not suggesting getting laid equals world peace.
I’m suggesting that it’s the attitudes we associate with sex that matter, not necessarily about whether we’re getting laid or not.
When we do get shagged, how vulnerable do we truly let ourselves be? How willing are we to let our loved ones into our deeper darker places we’re scared to admit exist? How ready are we to open the doors to where we keep our skeletons?
Sex is the physical realm of mental trust. What you’re willing to do mentally SHOULD translate sexually, vice versa.
Yet how often is that true?
Are you open to others, do you accept all ways of life, can you trust those around you, are you comfortable expressing your needs? Tell me what kind of lover you are, and I’ll tell you the answer to those questions. Again, vice versa.
If everyone was open, trusting of others, accepting of other lifestyles and worldviews, willing to be versatile, able to be vulnerable but also strong when needed, and could let others lead when necessary but follow when called for, what kind of world do you think we’d live in?
Don’t tell me sex can’t heal us.
Don’t tell me sex isn’t an important statement on who and what we are as a people.
And don’t even think of telling me we’re okay.
I’m not crazy about standing up here and being the sex-positive poster-girl. I’m not enthused about the judgment or speculation it promises to hold for me. I’m not happy this job needs doing by anyone.
But there’s no one out there talking about sex for ME.
There’s no one *I* get. No one echoes the battles I’ve fought, the lessons I’ve learned, and the thoughts I’ve had in a way that really resonates.
And I know how alone I felt and how fucked up and self-judgey I was, and for how long.
Someone needs to speak for me.
So I will.
And hopefully it’ll mean a few other people feel spoken for.
Because I’m getting real fuckin’ tired of the people who’ve been doing all the talking so far.
A Writer's (Re)Reading Life
In a world with a million distractions and life that moves faster than ever, it’s easy to forget just how far we’ve come — and how many hard grades, sharp turns, trying twists were along the way.
The devil really is in the details.
This morning I’m facing the reality that I’ve gained five pounds in three weeks. I’m not surprised, I’m an emotional eater. I got laid off, then threw myself into the hardest project of my life. Five pounds? I’m surprised it wasn’t 10.
The hardest part of that hardest project is just opening the door — the door to my past and all those crazy fucking worlds I’ve travelled through.
I like my re-runs left on television, thanks.
But I’ve cracked that door this week and it’s been every bit as hard as I expected. Better than I expected, too. But it’s taking longer, which makes the “hard” part that much more insufferable. The last couple days have been spent poring over the months leading up to what was the hardest part of my life.
‘Cos, as much as I’ve had REALLY hard times in the past, that’s the only time when I truly was NOT myself and couldn’t find my strength and self inside. It was a chemical depression.
I’m rereading these passages and little cracks are appearing in my heart. My heart’s slowly breaking for myself because I can truly remember the pain and horror of going through that terrible, terrible depression. Fucking pharmaceuticals, man. Birth control pills sent me spiralling into the darkest place I’ve known. (I doubt I’ll ever take them again. The right choice for me, but not necessarily for you. Know your options and proceed carefully & judiciously.)
The depression is not there yet in full, but it’s starting to arrive. Bleakness, sorrow, a sense of loss about choices and the future.
I know why it cost me my readers. I understand and accept exactly why people walked away from the blog.
I probably would have, too.
When I write in a “normal” depression, I’m readable. I’m insightful, level-headed, never the victim. I’m determined, I try to be objective about the adversity.
But in a chemical depression? There was nothing to gain from me. I offered nothing.
I was a shapeless, meaningless cloud moving through a thick intimidating fog. Nothing in nothing, with nothing to define it.
That time period is just unfolding for me now in my archives. I’m plodding through, a heavy weight holding down my chest, gulping often.
You see, the thing is, it’s kind of worse than I remember.
Only now that I’m so far away from it can I admit that I forgot how oppressive it was, how scared I was, how day after day after day after day the struggle to hang on to that last little bit of dignity and hope was so goddamned HARD.
In frequent postings, my desperation of reaching out is hitting me hard. I’m not that person anymore. But I was.
And while I’m re-reading all that, I’m “unpublishing” some of the posts. I’m making them private. They’re there. I’m not deleting them. I’m just being true to my original statement, that I write this blog for me, not you.
I overshared. I take it back.
At the beginning, I felt bad for changing a post’s status to “private”, but as I’ve progressed, it occurs to me: I’ve written about a lot of really important things. I’ve written some really good stuff. Not ALWAYS, probably not even that OFTEN. But I’ve got a lot of good content on this blog.
And I had so much BULLSHIT in between them. Needy, desperate, oversharing little blurbs that you don’t give a fuck about and I don’t give a fuck about, so why’s it there?
Probably because Twitter hadn’t been invented yet, really.
But this tweaking, slimming-down, and weeding-out of my blog is for the best. You’ll get the best of me, or just the most readable of the journalling (because, let’s face it, some of those journal posts are exactly the kind of thing we like to read in a blog — it just depends on the mood within).
Coming up? This weekend I’ll probably read through the darkest part of that chemical depression.
The part where suicide started seeming like maybe it might make more sense than this seemingly-endless waiting for something better. God help me, that’s going to be a hard time to wade through, too. But important to revisit, methinks.
Then it’s a year of reading through just holding on, just trying to stay alive.
Then I start reading about my journey to be 60 or so pounds lighter.
Then the rest of my blog is tagged and it’s the Post-Wordpress era, and I can probably avoid going there.
But it’s been a heavy fucking few days. It’s probably why I got so worked up in my posting from yesterday, because I went from the girl I was before EVERYTHING went horrible in my life to being that kind of woman who needs to respect herself and know her value isn’t in a man — and that’s the part I’ve been re-reading recently.
All the pain and the little moments and the stupidity of that year, it’s just a little too much to take in at once. I’ve been trying to slowly digest it, but it’s still a mighty big meal. I should be through the worst of it in the next few days.
I’m really, really happy I’m doing this, though.
We need to be reminded of how much we’ve really done. As time slips past us and the years blur together more and more, we forget just how hard the day-to-day once was, and how much an accomplishment just getting through that really, really was.
I’m patting myself on the back. Rightfully so.
But I’ll still be happy when this part of my project is dead and buried.*
*Well. Until I dig it up again. Part of this tagging/SEO/editing project is so I’m not as intimidated with researching my archives for my book. Now I’ll be able to just search a “depression” tag or “money” tag and get what I need, and just skim through relevant areas, instead of reading the whole blog post-to-post and trying to figure out what’s worth saving & for where in a herky-jerky by-the-post method. Hey, it’s a book. This shit’s slow going! But it’s going. And I like this method, because I’m thinking a lot of how the pieces all unfold one to another, and the in-the-head stuff’s helpful too. Also… some writing. Just not for you.
Respect Yourself
I’m tired of women who get into a relationship, lose all of themselves in the man, the relationship ends in a matter of weeks, they come apart at the seams, and it’s “Oh, I’ll never love again.”
Please.
Get serious.
And to moan and piss and whine like this publicly, on social media sites?
Please.
Get serious.
I’m not lying and saying I’ve never done that.
I have, and I’m not proud of it, but it’s been a few years since. I don’t respect myself for having been that way, but at least I know it was because birth control fucked up my estrogen. Even then I knew it was shameful, the way I was coming apart over this guy I knew didn’t really deserve me or my heartache, not now, not after all I’d come to learn about him.
It’s a few years later and I know now that, this dude I came apart for, I wouldn’t even date today. I’d be friends. I probably wouldn’t get turned on by him, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be having the delusions of marriage I entertained then, but maybe it’s because I saw how he became in times that got bad.
All of us are pretty undesirable when our lives go off the deep end. We’re not ourselves. That makes sense, it should be apparent to others.
Times get bad. Hurts happen. Sadness is inevitable. Anger bubbles up.
These are human elements and we’re at home with each of them.
But I draw the line at tolerating victims. I draw the line at anyone who thinks shit keeps landing on them on purpose and that they have nothing they can do about it.
In the last decade, the amount of shit that’s come my way — man, if I thought someone had it in for me and it was happening to me intentionally, I’d just cry. And I’ve kept my head on reasonably straight about this throughout more than one depression.
Just an example: This back injury that debilitated me for a year? Rehabbing it repaired most of my other long-ailing injuries, and taught me that I finally understood how to eat properly to maintain my weight, and gave me insight into really seeing what living a long-term compromised life did to others, and I think the whole horrible year made me a FAR better person.
Almost every negative that has found me — including my mother’s death — has resulted in incredible personal growth and insight.
Am I tired of the endless struggle? Fucking right I am. But am I feeling like a victim? NO.
I’m feeling like someone who’s woken up and realized all the fighting I’ve been doing just to survive has been completely misplaced — those energies can be better spent, my attitudes & goals can be refocused.
If anyone can do it, I can, and don’t you even think I don’t know it.
I know I’ve overcome incredible odds, but the odds I’ve overcome are the kind that HURT the bank account and HURT the bottom line, not help them. To the outside, I’m some underachiever getting by in an expensive town with a job that doesn’t nearly compensate me for my skills and talents, working too little to really get anywhere, with a stubbornness about “selling out” to get by.
TO ME, though, I’m an incredibly resilient person who’s been kicked somewhere new by life almost every 6 months for 10 years, but I still keep improving, I still get better, I develop more empathy not apathy, and I grow from every single thing that hits me.
I don’t need to be a social butterfly or the talk of the town. I don’t need a fancy car or pretty things. Like Atwood says, as a woman, I need a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
What do I need?
I need to respect myself and know I’m doing what a girl’s gotta do. That’s it.
I got that. I’m down widdat. On it like Oprah on a ham, baby.
I still like the directions I’m going in. I wish I could have more — I wish I had a man on this beautifully full plate of mine, someone to sink my teeth into and a relationship to take shelter in on weekends, but space to enjoy during the week. I wish I had the energy and money for friends and good times.
But money and love, they’re out there, and I’m getting to them. They’re usually the icing on your life cake, and patience is needed.
I know, deep down inside, that I’m changing at a clip I can’t believe. The last thing I need is to get into a relationship with someone who’s where they want to be while I’m going a mile a minute. I need some stability and some comfort with where I am before I think I can choose rightly as far as man-things go. The more of this “self” I enjoy discovering, the more I’ll have to offer in a month or two or three, as my newly changing realities take firmer hold.
A month or two? Yeah, I’m not biting at hooks TODAY but I’m looking as of now. Why not? What’s the worse that can happen? I love a little, get left a little, hurt a little? Okay. So be it. I’ll try.
Because I know, who I am has nothing to do with a man. My attitude, my goals, my abilities, my dreams, they’re all me. Would I like to share them? Sure. But no one’s co-opting them or taking over the driver’s seat. Not now, and hopefully never again.
I think, biologically & anthropologically, something in women hardwires us to pairbond for security and protection.
But what happens in 2010 when a girl’s forced, through economic & social realities, to survive on her own? To get her own security taken care of? To protect her how interests?
Then what’s she looking for in a man? What’s she need now?
Does anthropological history and biological predisposition still kick in? Or does a different quality of pairbonding happen? “I’m the queen, I’ll let you rule in my kingdom alongside me. You, your chair is there. Don’t even think about sitting in mine.”
I don’t know.
But I know I look at men differently now than I did four to five years ago.
And I know I’ve proven I’m a survivor of the kinds of things that most people would rather not test themselves through.
So, a girl’s got to wonder.
What am I really looking for, and what’s it going to take to get it delivered? (Grin.) I really don’t know. I really don’t care. ‘Cos I know I’m gonna find out. Don’t know how, but I’m gonna. So are you.
And if, or when, it goes south, since there’s 95% chance of that when every relationship starts, well, I’ll try to hold myself with a little decorum, because I’ll be pretty confident in the knowledge I’ve overcome bigger things than a boy.
On Becoming a Sometimes-Sex-Blogger Again
As a so-called sex writer, I went off the reservation a long, long time ago.
As a writer, I’m writing a book, and it means revisiting all my work from the last few years. In the process, I’m tagging & categorizing all my posts so you’ll have an easier time to search relevant topics.
But, boy, is it interesting taking a look at all the passion I wrote about sex with in The Old Days of this blog.
It’s important, too, because I’m remembering why I used to write about sex.
For example, I came across one of my first postings on this blog, Shut Up and Screw, in which I wrote “During sex, when I’m not using my mouth for pleasure, I keep it shut.”
And, it’s funny, like the addendum note at the top of the posting said in 2008, I’d drastically revisited that position about liking quiet lovers.
Ahem, I probably revisited the position in probably more ways than we should be counting, but there was a moment later that year with a certain lover in which I made the jump from quiet to vocal, and it was a profound jump in a lot of other sexual ways, too… and maybe even in some inner-life ways.
I realized that there was this psychological place that you get past when you no longer care if someone hears you climaxing. It’s like that great philosopher George Michael sings, “Sex is natural, sex is good, not everybody does it, but everybody should.”
Unfortunately, I’m one of those that doesn’t do it these days — I’ve been celibate for an embarrassing length of time now, despite the occasional date, the men who’ve propositioned me, and so forth. I got to that place where I finally had no libido, and life was simpler not pushing it. If my libido was active, my social life would be a whole ‘nother story. Then, I mean. Now’s getting to be a different story.
She’s in there, the feisty one. And she’s starting to emerge, now that life’s moving past the always-be-surviving mode I’ve been stuck in for so long. Now that I don’t have to just focus on getting through this week, this month, etc, I really want to start playing outside my sandbox again.
Back then, when I wrote that silly little posting, was when I probably entered into the best two years of my dating life. I was dating often, getting tons of interest, and keeping very satisfied sexually, thanks to a couple partners over that time.
One of whom was later that year, the one who made me vocal in ways I never assumed I’d be. Oh, wouldn’t you like to know more. Tsk. Good thing you’ve got your healthy imagination.
That orgasm? Pretty life-changing. What? An orgasm? Life-changing?
Yup. And why not? When you finally get to that place after a lifetime of hangups, where you can loudly and proudly hit a climax and not feel like you should be ashamed and silent about it… yeah, it’s a big shift of self.
And that’s why I write this blog.
Or why I did.
And why I want to again.
Because everyone needs to take that journey.
Everyone needs to think more about how small things — whether it’s saying what you really think, expressing how you really feel, or just screaming out with a little sexual pleasure — can redefine who and what we are.
I believe in the examined life. I believe in accepting & appreciating that the little things do add up, that they profoundly change the landscape of our lives.
It’s like the rah-rah speech Pacino gives in Any Given Sunday.
“You find out that life is just a game of inches. So is football. Because, in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half step too late or too early, you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow or too fast, and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game — every minute, every second.”
If, in every moment in life, we milk just a little bit more — from that kitchen you’re cleaning through to the kiss you want to deliver — the payout is so greater than “just a little bit more”. It’s the difference between surviving and thriving, liking and loving, and the difference between mere enjoyment and ecstasy.
I think, in some ways, my battle to make people see that has been successful, but more so in the earlier days of these writings.
I’m not satisfied with “more so in the early days”.
And this inspires me to somehow bridge the gap between the writer I’ve become and the writer I was — a reminder on the importance of spreading the word about sex in a non-porn way, while also continuing the exploration of outside-of-sex selves that I’ve been trying to journey through over the years.
It’s kind of awesome, this little walk through memory lane. Creatively and personally.
If you haven’t read a lot of the content over 2005 to 2006, and you think I’m a good writer, you really might want to take a read through those times. It’s probably the best creative period of my life. But I know it’s not the last.
If you’ve been around a long time? Thanks for your support, readers.
If you haven’t been around for much of those 5 years? I hope you will be around for the future.
‘Cos I plan to be here — in ever-changing and ever-growing ways.
Bracing Myself For What May Come
Throbbing pain behind my eyes makes writing sort of the last thing I should be doing right now. I can hear the blood coursing in my head in between the droning waves of traffic grinding up the main streets by home.
I close my eyes and nausea swims on top of my belly. Nerves, or just general dis-ease after two days with this headache.
So much got done yesterday — most of my floors, organizing, rearranging, decluttering. Much more needs to occur in the coming weeks for me to have the perfect little home I’ve always wanted but… I’ve never been this close out of the gate, y’know? Feels good. Even as my head pounds and pulses.
I dropped a line to my Mystery Mentor today, all the while going “Gee, what crazy antics in my life. Zoinks! I should write a book about it or something.”
After all this home-fixing-up stuff is done, it’s onto the book in earnest, but not in a “I’m gonna siddown and write eighty-umptillion-schmillion words today!” kind of way — instead, I’m writing me a book proposal.
It’s kinda assbackwardy, truth be told.
You figure out kinda an outline for your book. You pitch it. You go “Holy smokes, this is brilliance, buy my book!” in a way that doesn’t actually say that. Then you send that to agents and hope one goes “Holy smokes, this is brilliance, I must buy this book!” One does, they sign you, you’re hard at work on the book you’ve proposed, and meanwhile the agent goes to publishers and says, “LOOK. BRILLIANCE. Buy this! Publish it!” One does, you get a fat advance, you finish the book, everyone lives happily ever after.
Uh-huh. Or so I wanna believe.
I wrote last week about the Patti Labelle advice for her 30-year-old self, “Believe the hype, baby.” Honestly, I believe that’s been the biggest struggle for me in recent years. Learning to see myself on the inside as other people perceive me to be — and I still ain’t there by a long shot.
And that’s the interesting dilemma I’ll face in the Book Proposal Project: I need to believe.
I need to believe the story I’ve got to tell and sell is better than one that anyone at a party has behind them.
I’ve got to believe my story’s compelling enough to make someone stop in the middle of filling their glass at the office watercooler and say to their coworker, “So this book I’m reading, you should totally go there!”
THAT’S the game you need to believe you bring BEFORE you write a book. If you don’t THINK you’re that compelling, if you don’t BELIEVE your story has that much gravitas, then what the fuck are you doing? Don’t waste MY time, but sure as shit don’t waste yours. A book’s a one, two, five-year commitment, man. It’s not frivolity.
Believing this is where being raised as a Catholic Canadian really hoodwinks a (not as) fat-girl.
- Who’s better at feeling guilty than a Catholic?
- Who’s better at being sorry than a Canadian?
- Who’s better at being insecure than a fat girl?
Oh, hey, now… have I got a book for you!
So, as I sit here with my pounding head in my ever-simplifying home, I realize next week is game on and I start this book proposal. My awareness of its psycho-emotional implications, though, are new.
My understanding that the book proposal itself may turn into a therapy exercise is probably the most important realization I can have. Therapy’s great, but then you gotta stand back like a comedian and point and laugh.
But this is the week the foundation is laid. By removing all my distractions — this pile of papers there, the clutter over here, the floors that need to be cleaned or the crap that needs to be donated — I’m creating a landscape or work environment in which my focus can only be pulled so far away at any given time.
The focus next week is to start the book proposal — but deliberately doing a therapeutic version. I’ll get the bullshit out, then blast it away with my irreverence and self-deprecation. What’s left will probably be a very good fascimile of who I am as a writer.
But I won’t get there if I don’t go through who I am as a person first.
The reality is, my book is about me. Between now and the end of this, I need to believe I — me, myself, girlie-o, chickadee, moi, yours truly — am worth plunking down some $30-40 on in hardcover form. I need to believe I can see YOU sitting in an armchair with a blanket around your legs and a glass of wine in hand, flipping page over page as you can’t wait to read how I got out of that NEXT jam, while ignoring your phonecalls and promising you’ll get to those emails come dawn.
I need to believe that.
And if you want to write a book? You need to believe that, too.
There’s a strange dichotomy in the mind of anyone who needs to have YOU buy a piece of themselves for their livelihood. There’s the legend-in-one’s-own-mind syndrome that butts heads against the reality of almost all of us getting taunted, mocked, or just plain failing at one point or another in our lives.
Insecurities aren’t rare. They don’t all cripple their owners, though.
My insecurities were bigger because I was bigger. I couldn’t fucking hide. I was 277 pounds and size 24. Where the fuck am I gonna go, right? That was only the beginning of the end of where it all came from, the beginning of what I needed to get past in order to tell the story I now think you’ll one day be okay with dropping $29.95 on.
In the meantime, minions?
Unemployment’s giving me the chance to get back into a life I somehow lost for a while — cycling, writing, enjoying my home, living simply, and, yes, even dating. I’m dusting myself off and getting back into dating** after a long time of just being completely disinterested. Do I want “love” right now? [shrug] I dunno. Whatcha got? Right?
We’ll see what the world unfolds. I feel like anything can happen right now, and despite the seemingly negative turn of events losing my job would appear to unleash, I feel very much the opposite — that opportunity is everywhere.
I feel like it’s my time, but the only thing holding me back is finding the path from here to there, and dialing up the courage and resilience it’ll take to keep walking that path long after the bloodied sores and blisters emerge.
Ever read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist? No? You should. Right now, no matter what I do, there’s a very quiet little air of Maktub* in the back of my mind.
But I still need to do the writing.
*In the book, Coelho explains MAKTUB as meaning “it is written” in Arabic, a sort of idea of fate and determination.
**I’m taking applications. No. Really.
Believe, Baby
I’m blogging so much because I don’t want to write my book. You realize this, don’t you?
That’s okay, it’s just temporary. I’m adjusting. Going straight to work on the book is too ballsy psychologically — it’s accepting I’ve really been laid off, and it’s acknowledging that I have choices I need to make about my future.
It’s also terrifying financially, because writing a book TODAY likely doesn’t pay for two to three years, if ever. But we don’t talk about “if ever” because I’m choosing to believe the hype.
Have you ever read my writing about believing the hype? Possibly the single most powerful line I’ve ever learned off a talkshow, that’s what that is.
Patti LaBelle was on an episode of Oprah that was all about Fabulous Women in their 50s or something, and the question du moment was, “If you could tell your 35-year-old self any one thing, what would it be?”
So, Patti grins and goes, “Believe the hype, baby. Believe the hype.”
I’m TRYING to force myself to have this point of view where I believe I’m All That, Yo, but it’s difficult. Let’s face it, some insecurities take a lifetime to get over. I’m working on things. But getting tossed from a job, even if it’s by a boss who’s so upset her eyes have been red all day, doesn’t do a lot to prop up the self-esteem, no matter how channeled you are into running with the unemployment opportunity.
This week’s about transitioning — it’s about resting and chilling, getting in touch with silence and not talking to people. It’s about thinking about things I want, and little things I need to accomplish. Mostly, it’s just finding focus, cleaning house, and recharging batteries. And lots of baking. Oh, lord. Step back from the flour, lady.
Not sure I’ve explained the particulars of my situation to y’all.
I’m in the awkwardly strange situation of being in an open unemployment.
I’m laid off indefinitely; they have three months to get enough work to give me my job back, but someone else has seniority. On July 1st, I either will be back at work or cut a fat severance cheque. If, however, I was to take a new job before that 3 months, I’d lose severance. If I decline to return to the job when I’m offered work again, I lose severance.
The uncertainty of this time off makes me wonder how committed I can be to it. It makes me think about choices I have to make. My bosses know theirs is the last job I ever want. Everyone knows I want to write a book.
I’m not good with uncertainty.
You tell me a thing’s a certain way, I’m head-down and moving on, man. Tell me what is, and I’ll show you how to accept it and get over it. But keep me in suspense, have me living in the unknown of this-way-or-that? A part of my brain’s always chowing down on the potentials to try to process the invariable “what ifs” that come with.
But when it’s What Is? Pfft, I’m down with that. I just need to know, then I make a plan and run. Otherwise, my focuses scatter and I’m a twitchy scattered fool too.
For now? All I can do is reduce the chaos around me as I try to figure out the direction I’m supposed to go in.
I’m pretty sure that direction is writing.
It doesn’t make it any less scary to be “pretty sure” of it. I’m fucking terrified.
Writing’s easily the hardest art to pursue emotionally, and that’s biased, sure, but every other art has buffers between you and it. Art can abstract and be only an aspect of a view into the artist’s mind. Photography reveals nothing of the picture-snapper. Music can be picked apart in 20 different ways and can be liked and disliked at the same time. “Great vocals, but the melodies sort of suck.”
But, writing?
There’s nothing HERE but my words. That’s IT. Hi, reader! See? Nothing. Me, you, my words. That’s what we got, that’s all that’s there.
Emotionally, signing up to write a book at the same time I’ve become unemployed and can’t afford a life at all, it’s just kinda like agreeing to take a long dark walk into the deepest parts of my mind that, y’know, I’m more than happy to avoid. All alone — very, very alone. And when I want a break from it? I’m too broke to take social breaks — just getting out of my Cube Ghetto costs $4.50 return.
I’m not scared of monsters, I’m scared of long dark walks in unrelenting caves. Like writing. And I’m scared of not having excuses. I gotta put my money where my mouth is. I hate that.
Work — the 9-to-5 rat-race kinda dealio — is an excuse. “Oh, I never do X anymore because of work.” It’s such a time obligation and mental distraction that it’s easy to buy or sell the “got no time, I’m a workin’ stiff” excuse.
Take work out of the equation, then what can you blame when you avoid it? Nothing.
You know what I got?
I got no excuses. You, me, the fat lady in the street, we all know it. I got no excuses. I got time, I supposedly got the will, I got skillz. I just ain’t got no excuses.
For now, I have the “but my house is a mess!” excuse but that’ll be dead and gone by Monday, I imagine. Don’t worry, I’m stretching that out.
Then? Yeah. Onward.
Belief in yourself is easier when it’s not the only thing between you and the street. I’m not well-monied. I’m one of those people who’s two cheques from the street at any given time. This city isn’t kind to the lower-income sorts, and fear’s something I’m pretty in touch with right now.
But I still got belief. Do I believe the hype? Nah. Not yet. But I believe discussion’s merited, and that’s a start.
[Oh, and I’ll point out the PAYPAL DONATION button top right. And if you think I’ve got gall for doing so, just remember who’s doing the writing. There’s nothing wrong with me believing my work possibly might be worth something to you. I’m also pretty aware not many people have money to give these days. There’s nothing wrong with me point out a link, is all.]
Kurt Cobain, Still Dead
16 years ago today, Kurt Cobain put a bullet in his brain and robbed us all of everything that spoke to MY generation at a time when we were so fucking confused about what mattered.
We were tired of the fluff and pop of the ’80s, sickened by the everlasting everywhereness of the Oliver Stone Wall Street mentality and the increasing loss of meaning in the modern world.
Then there they were — Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder… specifically Kurt.
Cutting through the bullshit, discarding the pretty-boy rock images that commandeered ’80s MTV, throwing down their rage and speaking to the discontent that’d been hidden by pop-hooks and plastic performances for too long now, the posterboys of the grunge-rock movement gave the establishment the finger and we roared in approval as we lined up in droves for Lollapalooza and other epic events of festival rock that brought us all together for bodysurfing, moshing, and community.
What made Nirvana’s brand of electric-pop grunge-rock so eponymous for my generation was that it could BE EVERYTHING all at once — it could be funny, hard, soft, loud, bouncy, moody, angry, and exuberant simultaneously. It was OUR existential noise put to a bouncy beat, and it GOT us. It took our insides and folded it out, and made it fun to act out and scream along to.
Few bands can push the cathartic-heart-restart button for me like Nirvana. Maybe the Replacements or the Butthole Surfers… but nobody put a finger on it like Nirvana did, and I still feel robbed today. ROBBED. Robbed, motherfucker.
Fucking hell. I’d like to beat depression and addiction to death with a tire iron for all the people and things it has robbed me of in life, and Kurt Cobain makes that list.
I’d like to say we’ve made lots of advances in the areas of addiction and death since news of Cobain’s death sent everyone in my age group (I was 20) into a depressive funk for days — even non-fans who felt he somehow had a message worth hearing that encapsulated why our generation felt so lost, even if they weren’t into him…
I’d like to say we’ve made advances, but we haven’t. We’re going backwards — losing more soul, losing style, losing voice, losing control.
Just today are reports that more people than ever before are overdosing on prescription drugs. We’re oblivioning ourselves to death. It’s so tragically ironic. Where’s our Kurt Cobain for today? Who’s trying to snap our apathy now?
For me, Nirvana woke me up about how having more than one emotion at one time could be all right, even be a good thing, that life could be felt in different ways at any moment. I could be happy and angry, glad but resentful. I could be overjoyed but despondent. I could just feel it all. I was human and it was how we rolled — Kurt Cobain said so.
And his death? I was 20. He was my Lennon, man. I remember where I was, I remember hoping it was another hoax.
Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.
~Kurt Cobain
My friends and I suddenly dreaded aging — 27 was the age of death now. Him, Morrison, Hendrix — all dead at 27. But Cobain was different from the others.
Cobain gave up. It wasn’t just stupidity, it was a shotgun blast. It was a willful choice that life was too much. This unassuming anti-hero we all put our hopes in, blam. Gone, dead, done. He was our voice and he just fucked off.
We had hopes for Cobain. He was like that fucked-up friend with incredible soul that you know is a beautiful person through to the core, and even in their sadness a soft sunlight pours from their insides.
Cobain was kinda like that, the tragically-beautiful big-hearted broken-souled rebel we all understood in a small way, who spoke of beauty while ripping at his existential scabs, who mostly fucked up but sometimes didn’t and THAT was awesome? Kurt was THAT guy.
Lennon was stolen by a madman.
Cobain was taken by madness.
In nearly 30 years, we’ve done nothing to change the isolation and hopelessness felt by those with mental illness. The lonely are alone by design, even now. Increasingly, now.
Medication is doled out by the fistfuls because it’s easier to mask the symptoms than it is to solve them. To solve them would be to admit that everything about our modern life — the pace, the technology, the goals, the ambition — is a sham. We can’t have that. Not now. We’re so awesomely tech-dependent that we can’t possibly admit it might not be helpful to us on some deeply emotional/spiritual level.
Technology didn’t solve your life, so, here, this pill can help you — and if that pill doesn’t work, take this pill, but don’t worry about turning in those other not-working pills, and never mind about all those processed foods you’re eating or the lack of life you live, or the fact that you think your Wii exercises you. Don’t worry about solving what really ails you — turn on Glee and take this pretty pink pill and enjoy that tasty beverage, because nothing really matters anyhow. Hey, is that a text message? Hold that thought.
We ARE the soulless society Kurt Cobain railed against… times ten. We’re so empty and vapid as we all walk distractedly through our days that Cobain’s existence seems almost a cutesy little ironic footnote in my generation’s life.
WE rebelled against it all and now we’re the expense-account smart-phone motherfuckers micromanaging our lives in a desperate attempt at the illusion of power over a very real powerlessness. We want to pretend we control our lives. It’s all a sham, but it’s one that’s just so PRETTY, and LOOK it’s so SHINY.
I’m 36. I’m not a rebel these days, per se, but I sure as shit didn’t drink the social Kool-aid yet, either. I’m not the anti-establishment type some still are, but I’m enough of one that I’m a little more broken-hearted on this anniversary.
Even today, I don’t fit squarely on the right or left, but I speak truth to power and I don’t hide behind or excuse-away my ideas.
I own how I feel, I put it out there and I don’t apologize for it. I say it like it is so SOMEONE hears what oughta be said, or at least I know I tried to speak the truth to power.
I’d like to think much of who I am ideologically comes from those early heroes I had — especially the rock’n’roll types, ones who made me realize being multi-faceted wasn’t a contradiction in terms — it was a lesson in humanity.
Cobain taught me, along with a few other antiheroes of mine, that my emotions and my anger were an important part of who I am, that they drove the art I wanted to create, that they made me a more complete person than I was when I lived under the veneer of good’n’happy little citizen. They taught me that my word choices were my weapons, and I could be more at one time than I thought I could be.
Yeah. I still feel robbed. And I’m angry Cobain’s death feels in vain. I’m angry I have so little of him to draw on after all the years that have passed — that I’ve grown in my world-view and never got to see Kurt do that in his.
Some small part of who I am today, though, was in large a part of what Nirvana tried to do. And I thank them for that contribution.
Fuck you, depression and addiction. Fuck you hard.
Of Insomniacs and Night Owls
It’s 4 in the morning and I’m thinking in my head.*
I fell asleep on my couch a little after 9, tired of the whole “stay up till midnight sleep till 7” routine of the working life. Now, I’ll sleep when the thought occurs to me.
Where do I have to go? What do I have to do? None of it is on schedule beyond the odd appointment or shop hours. Sleep, sleep I can afford. At any time, day or night.
So, it’s 4am and I’ve been sitting in a chair, in silence, thinking.
No TV or music, no droning of traffic on the nearby highway that never stops, no worry this’ll affect my sleep pattern and make work difficult later in the week.
Just silence. And all the time in the world.
So, I just sat there, me and the pinging and creaking of my 1952 radiators to keep me company as the fridge groaned and adjusted itself from time to time.
I was thinking a lot of the time I’ll be needing to talk to a crowd about at Northern Voice 2010 — when, for a moment, everything exploded and I was a pretty talked-about little blogger girl after I wrote a rant that got quoted and linked to all over the web, in sex-blogger circles anyhow.
Then everything came apart in my private life and all blogging momentum stopped. I made some other stupid mistakes that began driving nails in the blogging-success coffin before that, but that’s all another topic for another time…
Like for the folks paying a hundred bucks to hear a bunch of us speak at Northern Voice, for starters.
But what I was really thinking about is how I sort of have very little regrets about fucking all that up.
What if it’d been the other way? What if momentum really exploded? I’m pretty sure I’d have really fucked that up.
Oh, don’t give me “believe in yourself!” speeches. It ain’t that. I DO believe in myself and wish most people had the quiet inner knowledge I have about myself.
Then? I’d have fucked it all up.
Had I never lost the plot and gotten successful then and there?
I’d never have lost 70 pounds without a trainer or dietitian. I’d never have gotten into sports like I did. I’d never have blown my back out like I did and have to survive that fucking year of hell. I’d NEVER have proven all these things to myself in such a short time.
I fucked it up because I had a lot more to learn.
I’m glad. Life’s been a right bitch since 2006, but I’ve never been so smug and satisfied with myself as I am now — even if I’ve just become unemployed. Why? Because of everything I’ve been through in the last seven years, particularly the last 5. When it comes to getting by, I know I get it done now.
I’ve needed no man, no parents, no helping hands beyond small generosities of spirit and time from friends. I got through it all. Sure, uncertainty looms as I sit here in my silent clacking, but… it loomed before, and darker. Then it went away. I did that.
I guess I was just sitting there and thinking of the madcap events that dot the timeline between then and now, and how surreal life feels when you just sit back in silence at 4 in the morning with a single thought:
“So that happened.”
And now I’m off to bed. Thought, thought, and more thought.
Here’s one of my favourite insomniac tracks.
Easter and Change in the Air
My earliest memory of something atypical of Easter-cliche-happenings was in the year I would turn 8, 1981. It was Easter Sunday morning and my father, mother, brother, and I were gathered in the bright yellow sunroom for breakfast when the phone rang.
It was family back East. Seems my father’s father died that morning. I’d never met him. Phillip. But if he was my father’s father, well, he must’ve been a giant of a man, then.
We lived on opposite coasts of the world’s largest country back when air travel wasn’t exactly a bargain. But that was the summer — we were going back for almost the entire summer, spending it in Prince Edward Island for my mother’s parent’s 50th wedding anniversary and family reunion.
Two months too late to meet the last of my father’s parents.
Ever since, I’ve always found death and rebirth to be synonymous with Easter.
Winter rages, summer bites back. Seasons change. Lethargy bleeds out and enthusiasm rears up.
The romantic in me is enjoying the realization that such a major and untenable lifechange should come for me as Easter dawns.
I wish I could bottle and share this cauldron that bubbles inside me — a (in)toxic(ating) mix of excitement and fear, curiosity and dread, confusion and confidence. I have no idea what to make of it, how to pull it all apart.
It’s like my emotions are fighting like a carload of five-year-olds.
And this week coming up is filled with grey and cold and wind. A batten-your-hatches and clear-your-files sort of week filled with naps, short wet walks, pensive moments, and strategizing.
The weather gods apparently feel next weekend is a good time for Spring to begin her return engagement in the fair city of Vancouver, after peppering us with an ironic blast of late winter and snow after our “warmest Olympics ever” came to an end — and the city’s been in a freeze ever since.
From weather on down, change is coming every which way in my life. From my professional focus to my health attitudes to the time I have to focus on myself to my ability to be out in the world to my back account.
EVERYTHING changes here, now, this very week.
It’s not like this is some happy slow transition. No, dude. I’ve lost my job — I’ve gone from trying to juggle seems-like-60-hour weeks to juggling zilch, nada, zippo. My landscape of my life is like a vast stretch of prairie scrub. Goes for miles and miles and miles.
Its vast emptiness is paralleled only by the expanse of my savings account.
The life I had, overnight, is in cardiac arrest, sustained only by the faint hope that is the three-months-to-hire-me-back open-ended lay-off I’ve been handed. Aside from that?
Well, shit, son. Not every aspiring writer gets her bookwriting ducks in a row then gets her pink slip.*
My whole life’s kinda weird right now. I had a Mystery Mentor step out of the works on Twitter and give me very valuable advice for starting my book. I’m reading How to Write a Book Proposal by Larsen now. Very “start here” positioning when you have a good idea of how your book unfolds. As I’m beginning to.
But I’d been working toward this readying since December — figuring out plot and structure, style and voice, basic timeline. In my head, of course. But sometimes that’s a good start.
Life-wise, I was able to get just a few things in a row — not everything will unfold at once but instead it will unfold over the next few months, slowly making me able to sustain the kind of adversity I have to be ready to face if I’m to use this sudden shifting of worlds to my advantage.
All in all? Easter? What an exciting unexpected scary time for me.
Thank god I believe in myself and have an inkling that, despite this appearing to be “bad” luck, this may actually be the start of something wow for me.
WHAT, exactly, I don’t know.
But isn’t it fun?
Happy Easter, everyone. Save me some ham.**
And avoid the “death” part of Easter. It’s kinda lame. Ham’s better. Not for the pig. But, you know.
*Pink slips are blue, incidentally, in Canada. Get yer passport now. Yer missing the fuck out, people.
**You ever think the Christian tradition of ham at Easter is sort of an ironic slap at Judaism, which kinda started the whole Easter-ball rolling anyhow? I’m more a turkey girl.