23 Days: Go go Gadget gumption!

gump·tion (gmpshn)
n. Informal
1. Boldness of enterprise; initiative or aggressiveness.
2. Guts; spunk.
3. Common sense.

I have a job interview of sorts today.  It came about casually.  Met “the boss” at a BNI (business networking) meeting last week, and he kind of loved me, wrote notes to me during the meeting, told me he could probably help me out, that sort of thing.  It’s an insurance company for travelers, both in Israel and abroad, mainly specializing in health care.  And it’s a big company.  A good one.  I’ve bought from them before.  Last week, in fact.  Renters’ Insurance.  So…why do I feel nervous?  I tried to confirm the interview by emailing him politely. Never responded.  Yes, it’s Israel.  I saw him write the appointment in his diary when I was with him, so, like, I should just show up, right?  And who knows if there is an actual job for me…it could be an informational thing…or a nicety.  He made it seem like he doesn’t like some person who is working for him now is some position, and wouldn’t I like to take her place….whatever.

I’m going to shower.  I’m going to dress well.  I’m going to get there early.  I’m going to eat something for breakfast.

And then it will happen.

And afterward, I go for Chinese medicine and acupuncture!  Hoorah!  I love those days.  I only wish my income was more stable because every time I do something like this…acupuncture, see my therapist, it’s hard for me to really enjoy it because I wonder how much longer I’ll be able to afford it, or whether or not I’m already going into debt over it.  These are currenly quite necessary expenses for me…so maybe I’ll just really go for that job today.  Who knows?  It could be the best thing to ever happen to me.

Until I get the book published, that is.  Time to grow some balls, darlin’!

Enjoy this video that never ever fails to make me smile (it may not let me embed, but go to the link!)…Good day to you all!

206 Days: Fear and Laziness

I just have to put it out there – I’ve just realized, concretely and in black and white, how lazy I have been.  There.  I’ve said it.  I’ve been so scared, blinded by fear and denial, that I’ve chosen to ignore my novel.  For a long time.  And now I have all of 2.5 days, if not less, to whip it into shape.  Which includes writing about 10 chapters (!!!!!!!), which I have certainly sketched out in outline form, but somehow forgot that I hadn’t written.  I am in such deep hot dangerous water, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.  But at least I’m working now.  At least I’m looking at my problems in the face.  And come Friday, and then the coming weeks, I will finally face the music: is my work any good, or have I been wasting my time for the last two years.  OMG.  Heart pounding madness.

208 Days: Therapy Revelation

Just when you think you don’t need therapy, that you might be able to get on without it, that maybe it’s too expensive to be worth it…breakthrough.  Real breakthrough.  One of my biggest issues.  Opened up, or significantly cracked enough to get a decent view at something real.  Oh boy.

I’m feeling fragile, but also really good.  This is natural, I suppose because putting your finger smack dab on a problem and its causes and dots are connected and lines drawn and lightbulbs go off…it’s good.  It’s real light at the end of a tunnel.  It’s useful because you think you’ll be able to get over some of your real hindering day to day problems.  It seems a way off.  But tangible.  Like if I can start to figure this puppy out, I’ll really have a chance at being really OK as an adult, as a caring responsible sister, daughter, friend, and lover.

I don’t want to bore people with huge details.  But I also want to get some of it off.  Still, it’s way personal.  In short, I am an expert at cutting people off, ignoring people, learning to live without people.  Not that I’m a bitch.  But when I’m far from people I am close with, if contact with people I love is sketchy, if I don’t have regular contact, regular meetings with people…it’s really easy, if not completely in my nature to forget about them.  Not in a mean spirited way.  But it happens.  Long distance – longish term relationships don’t work because of this.  I have even gone so far as not speaking to one or both of my sisters or parents for months if not close to a year because of this issue.  And it doesn’t phase me.  As they really don’t exist to me.  It doesn’t enter my mind.  At all.  Like I have a vault in a section of my brain that absorbs people that “don’t exist” for me at this point in my life, and makes it easy as pie for me to never think about them at all.

Sometimes it’s OK and logical.  Friends from college or high school sometimes drift.  If I come back into town, it’s like time never passed.  All is well because there was no expectation that we would be each others’ support system over the years and the distance.  But sometimes it’s not OK.  Like when I illogically cut off in anger loved ones, good friends, whom I need.

It has to do with needing people and them not being there for me.  Incredible.  And that’s all I’ll say for now.  I feel like I can make it out.  Scary.

259 Days: Fear of Grandma, Sex, and Dating

Weird title, I know.  Had a great day, for the most part, walking all over town on a Friday — best day of the week for it.  Tel Aviv is most alive on Fridays.  Markets are overflowing with people.  Restaurants have lines out the door.  The streets are full of people rushing around, or enjoying a leisurely stroll, eating ice cream, crepes, falafel, or lafa with labaneh abd za’atar.

But I’m at home now, and I should head out.  Why?  Invited to a movie.  Don’t feel like moving, but I know I should.  I think I got into a bit of a funk when I got home.  Why?  Grandma.  Or Savta, in Hebrew, as I shall call her.  She had been around.  She drops by unexpectedly all the time.  It’s not cool.  Yes, this is her place.  She allows me to live here.  But nobody else would be, if not for me.  And I really take care of the place.  She could call.  She could write a note and leave it on the door.  She could ring the bell, and if I’m not there, come back later.  But no.  It’s because of the cats.  They are teething, I think, or they’ve recently picked up a bad habit.  And because I live with artwork, I am constantly afraid they will chew up a painting.  A legitimate fear, believe me.  But I have taken measures.  Placed extra boards on top of the stacks of watercolors, and I’ve turned the oil paintings paint-size away, and move them around a bit, to make sure there’s no damage.  Well, the cats have started eating up the boards.  No harm done, I just make sure that they always cover the paintings.  How on earth am I to scold a cat when I’m not there when he chews?  When I came home, I saw that Savta had placed newspapers and magazines and plastic bags over the boards.  She must be livid.  She didn’t even leave a note which is customary.  She will expect me to call her.  And there is a voicemail message, and I’m afraid to check it, because I’m almost certain it’s her.

See, I’m more afraid of my grandmother than of my parents.  Funny that I talk of fear?  Yes, it’s fear.  No matter what, I know she loves me.  But that doesn’t change the fact that she is nuts, crazy, psychotic at times, and just a real pain.  She has screamed at me countless times throughout my life, told me I am a beast, a horrible human being, and worse.  She needs to be medicated.  But she teeters within the range of sanity most of the time.  It’s just — scary.  It’s almost good I’m in her life to keep an eye on her, NOT vice versa.  And I haven’t told her I’ve left my job.  I haven’t told her about India.  Why?  She lectured me about two weeks ago about how I have to be responsible, that she doesn’t take rent because she won’t from family, but that she wants to know I’m putting aside money, as if I were paying rent, so that someday sooner rather than later I can have my own home.  Sure.  Legit.  But here’s the thing, there was so much hype leading to this encounter I believed she would kick me out.  I came to terms that I might have to in a matter of days.  She’s just that unbalanced.  And she’s paranoid about having enough money.  OK.  Fine.  But I tell her repeatedly that I’m very unhappy at work, but her line goes — an income before everything.

Why do I care?  I don’t know.

And I’ve been thinking about sex.  My complete disinterest in it.  At the moment, especially, but predominantly over the course of my life.  I think I have been very concerned with whether I could get it, whether I was having it, whether someone wanted it from me — than it.  Because once the lights are out and the jeans are on the floor, I become stiff as a board.  And I’m not a man here, this is not some exciting metaphor.  I wonder if there could be a disconnect between my body and my brain.  I wonder if it’s possible that my brain cannot tell when my body is aroused.  Because if it’s all psychological, I have way more therapy to get through.  Or if I was right back in high school and I am in fact gay.  I’m pretty certain on the Kinsey scale, I’d be smack dab in the middle.  I am pretty certain that for me, at least, dating men has been a choice.  It has been exciting.  I’ve fallen in love.  Glimpsed some intimacy.  But as I’m a petrified naive, goodness knows what of a person, I haven’t had a real relationship.  And truth be told, I’m much more of a women-person.  I like men.  I love men.  But I am more comfortable around women on a day to day basis.  It could be my upbringing and experience, sure.  But here’s the thing –  in public, who do you notice more, say, when you’re sitting in a cafe for the mere purpose of zoning out and people watching, men or women?  I notice women.  Infinitely more than men.  I think most women would, though.  Women are by far more interesting to look at, from a purely aesthetic stance.  The clothing, the accessories, the huge variety of body shapes and sizes, the hairstyles, the shoes, the asses, the breasts…women are beautiful.  They are the beautiful sex.  Sure, there are beautiful men, but most of the time we ask ourselves whether they are gay.  So, even though I pay a lot more attention to women, it doesn’t mean I’m swooning after them.  In fact, I am not.  I’d feel it, right?  Arousal is something you can feel.  But still…  I don’t fell arousal looking at men, either.  And the few times I felt tingles, well…I can’t even be certain.  For me, it’s about the person.  And I have had plenty of crushes on women and men.  Thing is, I see myself with a man.  It’s a man-woman-child-dog-house-carport-lawn kind of picture.  I’ll take a woman if I fall in love her.  But I’ve been programmed for the former.  And because I feel so little in the groin, I go for the men.  Because whether dating men or women, dating is an effort.  A huge effort.  Dating both gendres would spread me too thin.  But I’m considering it.  Considering it.  Because what if I’m missing something?  I’ll take Heather Has Two Mommies, if I’m happy with it.  I will.  But it’s a matter of looking.  And I don’t know if I’m ready to be a lesbian in Israel.

Heather Has Two Mommies

282 Days: You Can’t Always Get What You Want

I’m sitting in one of my favorite cafes listening to “It Ain’t Me Babe,” Dylan straining his sandpaper voice as I stare into nothingness.  I really need that slap in the face.  Which slap in the face?  A slap by the Stones.

I know it’s silly, girlish superstition.  Superstition of my own, mind you, but superstition nonetheless.  The first time it happened to me it was like a lightening bolt.  I was feeling very scared and very sorry for myself.  I was in smelly dirty little train station in rural Poland waiting for a midnight train that would take me to Prague.  After several hours of calling every hostel and budget hotel and mid-price hotel in Prague, I couldn’t find a bed for myself for the next night.  I should mention I was 20 years old at the time, traveling on my own, backpacking through Europe, a friend having bailed on me at the last minute.  I had started in Dublin where I’d been studying that year, and the goal was to make it to Israel only by land and sea within about a month’s time in order to get to the opening of my grandfather’s art exhibition, which would prove to be the last in his life.  So, here I was, in Poland, very disgusted by my surroundings, very disturbed by not knowing where I’d be sleeping the next night, and alone, all alone.  I had decided to call my mother in Chicago on a payphone, and she listened as I cried and cried.  Nothing she could do, at all, but I thought it might help to talk to someone.  It didn’t.  It served to pass my misery on to someone else.  Inflict worry onto someone.  Should I disappear, at least my mother would know my last known location.  There were homeless people there who smelled worse than anything I had ever smelled in my life.  I sat in the tiny cafe, or, not even a cafe, a minute kiosk of a thing.  I probably was writing in my diary, dribbling on and on about not knowing what to do, when before I had so been looking forward to visiting Prague.  And then – and then – and then.  Something I will remember forever.  A familiar tune crackled from the tiny transistor radio in the kiosk.  You know it.  The Stones.  And they were singing to me.  Well, not to me.  But to me as much as anyone else. A recording artist must be hoping to touch lives far and wide.  And I laughed, and I smiled.  You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.  Everything seemed trivial after that.  It was a slap in the face.  Here’s a girl from an upper-middle class family, a couple credit cards on her, and fair share of international street smarts under her belt.  What on god’s green earth could happen to her?  She would not sleep on a gutter.  And even if she should, it would not kill her.  And of course, everything worked out. From that day forth, I have noticed every time that song has played.  Often it has been when I’ve been freaking out.  And it helped to think of that disgusting Polish railway station and the first time the song helped me.  So…come on now.  Mick?  Keith?  Help me out.  I need a sign.

Because I make tempests in teapots.  Mountains out of molehills.  I need contingency plans.  Because for some reason it has always been important for me to grasp what the worst case scenario would actually be.  And 9 times out of 10, if death or career suicide aren’t in the cards, I should be able to calm down.  But it doesn’t usually work out that way.  Now, detoxing.  Now, depressed.  Now, alone.  Now, lost.  It’s hard to be realistic.  To put things in perspective.

I am alarmist.  Do I need to analyze myself to find out what it is before I can take measures to try to stop?

Can’t I just go out there, out on that limb, and buy that ticket to India?  Can’t I start my food publishing empire?  Can’t I get my PhD?  Can’t I get a move on already?

And now it’s the Fab Four heading back to the USSR…not the Brits I need right now.

At least tomorrow I’ll be heading up to Binyamina for a counseling session.  A fantastic woman, friend of a friend that I met at the Ashram last weekend.  It’s upsetting to her that I’m very unhappy with my career right now, and as she’s some sort of coach for people, she offered to give me a free session, or some conversation time.  I’m excited to be getting out of the city again.  I’m excited to be seeing her again, as she was a really gentle, lovely, comforting woman…one of those “mom” figures I seem to be drawn to.  A nice afternoon in the country, some cups of tea, good company, and a potential for real help.  Wish me luck…

Don’tcha just wish sometimes that world could be like Star Trek?  No money, no disease, equality, opportunity, liberalism winning out over conservatism, science over religion, multiculturalism over capitalist beige-ness.  A genuine spirit of discovery and cooperation.  If I ever become wealthy, after I make sure I feed and teach several African nations how to take care of themselves, save the ozone layer, find a sustainable form of energy, bring at least a dozen species out of extinction, and other of the most worthwhile causes, I would pay for a ride up to space.  I really would.  I pine to know what’s out there.  I suppose I should take comfort.  All of us are on a spaceship.  A giant spaceship.  Spaceship Earth.  The “Terra”.  Hurtling through space, all of us tethered together.

286 Days: Taking risks, ashram madness, a downer of a homecoming

Ashram was fantastic.  I prefer it quiet, not like it was over the weekend, busting at the seams with people, a crazy mad amount of new-age workshops and meditation sessions, and tents as far as the eye can see.  I can’t stand the Patchouli crowd for too long.  Visiting is nice.  Dread locks are kind of funky for a while.  But it ain’t reality.  Some highlights:

• AUM Meditation – a student of Osho’s created this method.  It takes 2.5 hours, done with a group, and it goes through twelve stages of human emotion, from anger, to love, to laughter, tears, and much more.  It was a roller coaster, and I felt such release.  Imagine getting to be crazy, getting to scream as much as you need, be hugged by 50 other people, etc.
• Spiritual Leadership – an interesting conversation with a kabbalisticly oriented therapist and leader.  I connected intensely to what she was describing.  Leaders may in fact be born.  I suppose many of us may be born into our purpose.  And if we’re not accomplishing it, we feel immense suffering.  Every one of us is a pipe, a funnel, a conduit.  We receive information, we learn, and we are meant to pass on.  If we don’t, we are stopped up.  Like I need a spiritual plumber…. (ha, ha, ha).
• Laughing Yoga – kind of fun, kind of bizarre.  It’s a “fake it until you make it” kind of process.  All sorts of group exercizes where we are made to laugh.  And we had to laugh whether it was real or not.  Eventually, it became real.  And it didn’t always (I mean, I was there for almost 2 hours).  But the theory is, the body doesn’t know the difference between real laughter and fake laughter.  By laughing, you are tricking the brain into releaseing endorphins.  Laughing can heal dramatically.  Hence, clowns in hospitals, etc.  Don’t know if I would cut out the medical profession altogether, but, hey, I might just force myself to laugh for a couple minutes every day.
• Psychodrama – a type of therapy whereby the person acts, along with the therapist, on a stage, in situations that trigger the person’s issues.  Very interesting indeed.  I was just an audience member for much of this, but it seemed quite powerful and effective.
• Eye contact – every session I went to that involved interactivity stressed eye contact.  Duh.  I come from the theatre world.  I have been in therapy.  Eye contact is very very important.  But I came to realize how difficult it was for many people.  We were instructive to look carefully into each others’ eyes, and still there were people averting their gaze, people looking down, and all sorts of “pretend looking,” taking a quick glance, kind of, and moving away.  Eye contact is powerful.  People cried during exercises where I kept a steady connection.  It helped them to know I was with them and listening.  That I cared.

Anyway, I met some cool people, hung out a bit with some friends I had met at the writing workshop the last time I had been at the ashram, and had a decent, if rushed, weird time.  Excellent chai tea, though.  Decent vegetarian grub.  But they make a killing, they do.  Not cheap to buy the food there, and there is little other choice.  No fires allowed anywhere on the ashram or campsite, so no cooking.  We brought some snacks which helped us skip meals.

But on returning to Tel Aviv, I did not have an easy time.  I slept OK, the cats survived without me.  And there was a new episode of Star Trek Voyager uploaded.  But on waking up this morning, I was in a different world entirely.  Like the weekend hadn’t happened.  Or rather, maybe my reality of being back made it that much worse.  Juxtaposition.  Such a cool word.  Such mixed results in reality.  I had the hardest time getting out of bed.  It took over an hour to convince myself to take a shower.  I hoped that I would be envigorated when I got out, but no.  No.  I was moving through sludge.  I called my assistant to tell her I probably wouldn’t be in but that I’d work from home.  Hardly.  I tried so hard, answered some email, but I fell apart.  I was so tired.  I slept for several hours in the middle of the day.  Then tried to work again.  Then gave up, cleaned out the cat box, and went to a cafe.  Sat and did nothing as I drank a fruit smoothie.  Then feeling guilty, got up, went to a bookstore, and bought my boss a birthday present (it was last week).  Then I went to therapy.

So…it seems I grew up in an environment where I was taught NOT to take risks.  An environment where even if I took a risk, I felt confident that I did not have a safety net, that Mom and Dad were not close behind to catch me or back me up.  Which sums it up pretty well.  Thank you to my therapist for packaging this explanation up so well.

I know I have to leave this job.  It is toxic.  I feel trapped.  Often.  And especially now.  But as I learned in therapy, I somehow believe that I am not capable of earning a living doing something I enjoy.  That staying with the status quo, with the safe, is the best option.  I have completely internalized this.  But being the open-minded smart, ambitious person that I am, have always conflicted with it.  And it’s won out most of the time.  The fear-monger in me.  The anti-risk-taker.  Not any more.

My task this week is to brainstorm and take small steps at coming up with a real option.  A career I can both love and thrive at financially.  Why not?  I am a very capable person.  So what if I am deathly afraid of failure.  Of being without money.  Without an income.  Without a plan.  Of having to crawl back to the family as a shameful failure?

I risk not living a life at all if I don’t just jump…and I still have India.  I will go this year.  I will.  It’s rather cheap from Amman.  Maybe…600-700 USD.  Roundtrip.  Half that of going to the States.  Awesome.

I will be a great chef or personal chef or food media mogul or food writer or novelist or cheesemonger or restaurant critic or documentary filmmaker or…or…or…

Osho

327: Investing or How to make adult decisions in this confusing world

I just got back from my therapist.  It was a good session after a rocky week.  I haven’t gotten to the very root of why I have such trouble making decisions, why I have such guilt over leaving things (hobbies, professions), and why I move around so much.  But through our session today it became very clear that I often keep myself on the fringes, keep myself uninvolved, keep myself temporary, fluid, flexible.  It’s kind of the story of my life: don’t get too attached – you never know when you have to leave.  The thing about leaving all your options open, is that at the end of the day, you’re left feeling empty and unfulfilled.  My therapist said at one point, sure, at 13 it’s great and fun and necessary to be figure skating, and taking piano lessons, and going to space camp, and learning French.  But as we get older, we just can’t keep doing that.  If we do everything, we end up with nothing.  And that’s what I’ve gone and done.

I could very well blame it on my parents, for giving me next to no guidance and trusting that because I was so mature, I could figure it all out and take responsibility for myself…from about age 16.  Both of them had quite opposite upbringings, with their parents suggesting, recommending, leading them in a certain direction, making sure they at least were able to have occupations that would enable them to sustain themselves.  I guess my parents, my mother especially, felt that the hands off approach would have been so much better, and why not let the kids decide for themselves.  Well, we can’t.  Sometimes parents get it wrong, make people become responsible accountants and horrible things like that (apologies to accountants, my dad included).  But a little guidance goes a long way.  A dose of reality early on would really have helped with the major decisions I have had to make in the last ten years.  Decisions on grad school, first jobs, job satisfaction, job versus career, quality of life, etc, etc, etc.

So, I am upset.  I am upset that I am a “Jack of All Trades”…because a Jack of all trades is a master of none.  At the end of the day, I need to be excellent at one thing.  Whether it be decorating cakes or perfecting screenplays.  I need to give something important of myself to the world,  At 25, I went to work at a Museum, thinking to myself, this is a cool job, for now.  For now, I’ll work hard, I’ll learn a lot, I’ll do good.  And so what that my life sucks a little now, this is a good job and good experience.  But there is no way in hell I’m doing this when I’m 30, when I’m 35, when I’m 40.  How on earth could I live with myself?  But what did I want to do instead?  I didn’t know.  I directed plays on the side because that’s what I was supposed to do.  It gave me some joy, earned me some respect, but I’m not sure I loved it.  I loved the creativity.  I loved the self-expression.  I loved the attention.  But was the theatre it?  I am writing now.  Many have told me I’m good at it.  The thing about writing is that there is a practical, journalistic, media-oriented, communications, regular income producing kind of writing, and then there is artful writing.  And the two crossover all the time.

Investing.  This is the word I left my therapist’s office with.  Investing.  In Tel Aviv I have stayed on the fringe.  Sure, I’ve gone to the beach a lot, picked a cafe I liked, tried to make some friends.  But it isn’t living.  I have a job with a healthy income, yet I choose to stay in my family’s art-warehouse of an apartment, cluttered, so-not-mine-it-hurts, and temporary.  In Chicago, before, in many ways I stayed on the fringe – was this THE job, were these MY friends, was this MY apartment?  I have always found it difficult to make decisions, and very difficult to establish close friendships.  Despite a healthy dose of social anxiety, a lot of this, I now think, comes from not wanted to become tied down.  Fear of commitment is an “easy” definition to throw around.  But it runs very deep with me.  Most use this term for people not wanting to get married.  With me, I can’t pick a country, not to mention a city within one.  So, friends, family, job, career?  Right.  And I always ask, am I making the right decision?  I want someone’s permission.  Now.  Alas, no.  There is nobody’s permission to ask.

Investing, in the non-financial definition, is to spend or devote for future advantage or benefit, or to devote morally or psychologically, as to a purpose; commit.  To devote, to spend, to devote morally, to devote psychologically.  These are big things.  You cannot reap the benefits of anything, unless you invest.  You will not have crops if you do not plant seeds.  Plain and simple.  And the fact that it is both material, physical devotion – as well as psychologically and morally – it fits the whole picture for me.

I need to invest.  I need to do one thing, and then do it.  I need to stand on my own two feet.  Get my own place.  Stick my neck out.  And do all of it even though I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do.  Even though it may totally fall apart.  Even though it scares me to death.  Because now, I’m planting a seed here, and a seed there, and I’m not watering enough, and I’m not there to tend everything, and nothing is growing too well, and I enjoy nothing.  Plain and simple, I don’t have much enjoyment in life, because I haven’t invested.

What does this mean practically?  I haven’t decided yet.  Ha!  Don’t blame me, I just walked through the door from the therapist’s.  But it may mean coming home.  Yes.  Leaving this place.  Because in Chicago, I know the streets, I know the shops, I know the theatres, I know the lake, I know downtown, I know uptown, I know the suburbs, I know my university.  In Chicago, I know.  In Chicago, I have friends.  A lot of them.  And I’ve always said I wished I could spread myself all over the world and be where all my good friends are, from Ireland to Norway to Thailand and Australia and back again.  But I can’t.  Nobody can.  And a good solid amount of my friends, good, good people, are in Chicago.  And it might not happen.  I might yet give Tel Aviv a fighting chance.  They say if you don’t know where you’re going stay where you are.  But they also say, go where you know people.  And I have people in Chicago.  No place has ever really felt like home to me.  Even there.  Sometimes especially there.  It’s not beautiful romantic Paris.  It’s not the hip, friendly, bustling Dublin.  It’s not the chic happenin’ London.  And it doesn’t have the beach of Tel Aviv.  I have called all these places home.  But my people are in Chicago.  I have to invest.  Sometimes I think to myself, just take all the money you have (and it ain’t much), and make a downpayment.  Just buy something.  Anything.  Anything you can live in and make your own.  And decide to stay there.  Writing is good.  It’s scary as hell.  Singing for your supper, kind of.

So, I have a lot to consider.  But for some reason, I feel I have made some peace with myself tonight.