Nine Months Catch-22 feat. Drake

 The thing is every day that passes the more people die or get extremely ill, the more people I know whose lives are affected and sometimes destroyed. I keep finding new backdrops to punch through. I thought I was as deep in the anxiety pool as I could go, but another false bottom shows me otherwise. "What's WRONG with me?" I bemoan, freelancing from inside the one bedroom apartment in a lockdown last friend I saw was two months ago, last family 9. It's like this diary I read of a woman who was kidnapped and lived with her abuser for years before she escaped. "I should be happy" she wrote. NOT TO EQUATE MY LIFE WITH HERS. Obvi. Good gravy. I'm essentially in a palace of privilege writing from the kitchen table, palm trees waving out the window.

So the thing is these days keep passing and I have insane thoughts at times, "like is this the last year of society as we know it?" Then I'm like, "Haha, no everything will be normal one day" and then I'm like "Hm climate change though." So, essentially, there's more YOLO inside of me than ever before. But also I am still inside following all the rules. The very crisis that's making me believe life is short and meant to be lived is keeping me from living my dumb life!

Nov 10 18

It's been a long Sunday. The night begins at 4:45, so I'm left anxious like I wasted a day that was not, after all, wasted. Have a show tonight. I feel out of practice and don't want to go, but if I don't go when I can, then I'm even more out of practice, so I always go. When asked.

My anxiety has been topping out around 11 AM this week. I have to be on set by 12 or 1 or 2, and I've learned that isn't good for me. I don't want to go hard working in the mornings because I'll be on the clock until midnight, but I get frantic by the time I'm shoving my junk in a purse, trying to get out the door in the late morning. "I didn't even do anything!" I mutter.

My nails look great. I opted for a bright purple, which seems Novembery. I also put two stickers on my laptop today, which I have never done before. I thought about it for a long time. First, do I want to deface valuable object. Second, do I want to put stickers I like on an object that will eventually be valueless. I thought about a mural in a Thai restaurant by i_ in Chicago. It's downstairs by the bathroom. Something like, "Use the good China, you only get one life." I'm sure the person who painted those words in a restaurant basement didn't consider me, a decade later, putting a cartoon clam on my computer.

Friday afternoon I decided to spend some quiet time cracking this screenplay I'm outlining. But I didn't feel like my usual pastry antics, so I went to Del Taco for Beyond ground beef and Diet Coke. I set out my pens and paper and started going at it, but a very dirty man three booths from me was truly hacking so hard I thought he might die right there. He accentuated each cough with a loud, angry swear. "Can't even read the paper," he'd be yelling. I was afraid of him and afraid for him. I think I want to help people, but I can't help everyone. Perhaps I can help at least the people in front of me, but then sometimes the person in front of you is too scary or you've decided they don't deserve it for some other reason.

I've always had this belief that anyone can do anything I have done. I guess it sort of makes all my accomplishments less shiny. But I really really do believe any old person, given a couple weeks rehearsal could pop off an improvised musical, run a marathon, write a play, be in a healthy relationship, pitch jokes to their own high school comedy idol (current job). Lo tells me she is sure she could not do it. But I know she could. But also I don't know that!

I'm grateful to have been so close to shimmery possibilities this year and watch myself come to dislike half of them once they're out of my view. It's not fun, but it is telling.

No No Nobody

Easter ice cream double date!

No no nobody cares--
except for you.
No no nobody is worried--
except for you.

Instead

This morning gifted me a particularly beautiful Arizona run. The week is starting. A big week. I was pounding out anxiety and grump and hope. My iPod was on shuffle, and this little gem caught my ear. Perfect. So perfect. It was from a fat playlist of albums Lazz gave me right before I moved far away from the Midwest.

Oh, I wish I had a suntan.
I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine.
I wish I had a beach house.
Then we could make a big fire every night.

Instead I'm just crazy. I'm totally mad.
Yeah, I'm just crazy, and ______ in the head.
And maybe if I really try with all of my heart
then I could make a brand new start in love with you.

Today I Am Binging On:

-Next to Normal soundtrack
-vegan cookie dough dip
-rainy naps
-writing in my diary
-The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies

School has been very challenging in a totally manageable way. But, still. There are days when I try to make a list of everything coming up, and I get a little finicky. Next to Normal is such a good show because when I watched it last night/when I listen to this music, despite it being fraught with themes of anxiety, I myself feel competent and able, at peace, and loved.

I am the one who knows you.
I am the one who cares.
I am the one who's always been there.
I am the one who's helped you,
and if you think that I just don't give a damn,
then you just don't know who I am.

Grinch's Log: Entry #0007

Shells' gift. Filled with pb.

The days are long and full of sugar, artificial heat. Stir crazy is setting in. 7th day in my sister's tiny apartment. First mate Char keeping up the morale, but also falling asleep pretty regularly. Henchman Pookie on KP--washing dishes with lightening speed from the multiple entrees of pie and mallomars I am consuming at breakneck pace.

Journeyed to a local cinema to see a buffalo nickel movie yesterday. Ironically, we chose Argo, you know, the one about the hostages. Hitting too close to home. In other news, still hating the cold, snow, being indoors, having to drive everywhere, and, of course, Christmas in general.

Waiting for heart growth steroids. Worried will not arrive based on holiday parcel traffic. Fear for my henchman and first mate. Their souls are subject to my bitter seasonal rage, anxiety, and moodiness. Over and out.

November 12th

Last night a staged reading of my newest play went up. This production has been a point of stress in my life since my proposal for the show was accepted last year. It was garbonzo bean size when I left school in April, rolled to the size of a lion cub by summer (conceptualizing etc.), and by yesterday morning I could barely breathe with the Taj Mahal of anxiety that had been constructed on my chest. Two hours pre-show I was too inebriated by worry to even lead my cast in a warm-up. I secluded myself and got my tech cues together and stared at my shaking hands.

I feel good now that it's November 12th. I've been looking forward to this date for a long time. Last night after the lights came on, and I ran a talkback, and I hugged and thanked friends, and the cast went out for froyo, and I got onto my scooter, and I got into bed, I felt overwhelmingly emotional: happy it went well, nervous it didn't go as well as it maybe should have, grateful for my hard-working cast, surprised by some zany comedy friendos who actually showed up, disappointed by peers who didn't make it, unsupported, supremely supported, worn the heck down from being "in charge," excited by the idea of rewrites, horrified by the idea of rewrites. Mostly? Just tired.

Hill asked me what my favorite part was, and I answered truthfully the bows (to "Hey Hey Hey" by Jack's) because I knew it was OVER. I really do hate seeing my work performed--it's part of that terror I blogged about a couple weeks ago. I know it's just an itty bitty thing, but I dunno, as an artist if you don't take the itty bitties seriously, the serious things never happen for you.

Me and the cast post-show

But, ultimately, mostly thanks to the affirmation of the people shown above, this morning I woke up fresh as a daisy. Terror at bay, emotions drained besides an aftertaste of pride, mental space immediately filled with what comes next. I am very grateful.

Where I'll be tomorrow is God only knows,
seems there's science at hand, but I'll finish the shows when I land.
I said hey hey hey. We're all gonna die.
Hey hey hey. We're all gonna die--
we're all gonna die someday.

Lasting Advice Comes From Funny Places

No clue why, but today I had this flashback of anxiety. Maybe because I took a mid-day nap and dreamt I was driving a van with this girl I knew when I was 15, a totally random I-was-more-friends-with-her-brother girl, and the brakes went out as we whizzed down a hill. I woke up one second from death.

Anyway, this anxiety memory: when I was a high school freshman, I was in the band room rehearsing for an Edgar Allen Poe performance piece. (Ugh. My life.) Anyway, I was in it with this guy--let's call him TR. TR was a senior and the best friend of my first boyfriend. When we started dating, TR said, "If you hurt him, I'll hurt you," which is a funny thing to say to a braces-bearing pipsqueak, but whatevs! I thought TR was soOoOoO wise. A. He wore these all-black outfits. B. He played a lead in the school musical (Thenardier in Les Mis, WORD). C. He had been dating the same girl for, like, a full year. This was foreign to me just getting off the middle school boat. Dude was the height of maturity to me.

Anyway, this day in rehearsal, we were on a break, and I walked over to a chair and saw an open notebook. I stood over it reading. I honestly didn't read a full sentence when TR came over to me, scooped it up, and said, "Don't read other people's stuff." And I said, "I didn't know whose it was...or if you minded...or..." This is the anxiety I was talking about. And he said, "It doesn't matter. It's how you get in trouble."

Looking back on TR...some things: A. He and that long-term gf broke up because he randomly got a crush on some other girl. He moped around for a good several months spitting lines like, "I don't look put together? Maybe I'M NOT." B. He wore pajamas to graduation and this t-shirt with wolves on it. Before irony was cool. C. The last night of the spring play, he ad-libbed a homophobic slur. Good. So, he wasn't actually a sage or anything. But, that advice is really good right? It's true. Reading other people's stuff, whether you know whose it is, or if it's personal...it never creates a GOOD situation, right?

And literally any time I am considering opening someone's medicine cabinet or something, I think of TR. It is amazing what we tote around and from whom we're toting, and what we've tossed into the world to be toted.

What Makes Me Think I Know?

Me and Kath. One year ago.

Sometimes when I'm getting antsy or worrisome about things not going the way I think they should go--from arriving to work on time to affording another year of grad school--I have learned to stop and ask, "What makes me think I know?" Because we get antsy and worried based on the foundation that we absolutely are certain how things are "supposed" to be. When, uh, not to be a jerk, we really don't.

Everybody is a part of everything anyway.
You can be happy if you let yourself be.

Oreo Pie Monster

Pookie. Baker's Square. June 2011.

Same old graduate school song: I am sinking in quicksand. Sinking, sinking, SINKING!

Papers to grade.
Emails to answer.
Sketches to write.
Research to do.
Presentations to give.
Plays to revise.
Plane tickets to buy.
Living space to clean.
Restaurants to try.
Haunted houses to scream in.
Rehearsal to attend.
The Grand Canyon to visit.
Phone calls to make.
Letters to mail.

Plus, I had this goal of ordering a piece of every pie from Baker's Square. In this mess of muddled brain-muck, I freeze with anxiety over the readings due in two days and the pies I want to eat and what to wear to KWall's wedding all at the same time.

STUFF TO GET RID OF BECAUSE IT IS THE MOST UNPRODUCTIVE:

Guilt.
Anxiety.
Worry.