LaurieWrites

Friday Linkage, Because Laurie Apparently Still Writes

I'm at a point in my life where I need the creative work I do to pay a lot of my bills. 

Have I mentioned that I hate money? I really hate money. 

That said, I also do not mind working. I love to have a good time and I  can slack off with the best of the slackers who ever slacked, but I'm a pretty hard worker when it comes to the actual working part, even if I do loathe mornings and everything to do with that whole harrowing enterprise. 

I've been editing for almost a year now, entirely in the background, for a site that I've written for for a long time, and it's been one of the best experiences of my professional life. Don't tell writing, but I think I may like editing better, at least as a job. I also think I'm better at it than I am at writing, so understand it's all about me feeling better about myself. 

(Not really. I also like liking things a lot.) 

Recently I've picked up some more writing assignments again, because I like to keep myself on my mental toes, and also, like I said, I like money. And when money and creativity and the internet coincide? That is my favorite thing, besides that other favorite thing. I mean, really, if that could happen every day, all day? Happiness in this small corner of the world.

I'm going to share that stuff here from time to time, so you can check it out if you're interested, and also so I can keep track, because guess what? Not doing a very good job of that lately. And also? Because it's nice to encourage you to frequent the places that give me opportunities to shoot my mouth off on the internet, I think. 

I also went to Mom 2.0 and helped with Twitter and writing and things of that nature. I will share more about that soon, like I should have done already. BEHIND! So behind!

So, on with the writing show.

I'm back at MamaPop a couple times a month. I wrote an essay about the whole "I'm not a mother" thing that seemed to resonate with people. I hadn't talked about that topic in awhile. 

I wrote about how I really, really loathe the Lumineers and Mumford & Sons, to a mostly non-hostile audience of commenters, which shocked me, frankly. 

Also my feelings about the dirty rumor that Sharon and Ozzy were splitting up, which I really can't handle if that's true. 

And this week I was taken with Chris Brown's demon art, although is neighbors? Not so much. 

 

I've also taken to Instagramming Goon Squad Sarah's cats when I go over to visit, Sid more than Klaus, because he's much more of a lap and camera hog, and likes all of my igadgets, so how you like him now?  Are you on Instagram? Instagram is my jam. I am obsessed and have been for quite some time. You should find me there if you are, too. I'm laurieanne there. The web interface is pretty sweet now, too. Check it out. 

I was also at BlogHer a few times in the past week. 

I shared Angelina Jolie's story of her double mastectomy, and her New York Times 0p-ed, which I thought was gracefully and powerfully written. 

I also wrote some reflections about one of the worst stories I've ever read ever, that of Kermit Gosnell's murder conviction for his crazy train "clinic" and what this all means for abortion rights. 

And! And! My favorite, I think, was about Allie Brosh's first real, live post on Hyperbole and a Half in a very long time, which I was very excited about and it turns out that lots of other people were, too. 

Want me to write something? Right now, apparently, I'm your girl, so hit me up. It's still fun, even if it is still really, really hard for me sometimes. The muse can be mean, but if there's one thing that turns out to be true it's that I can't quit it, even when I try. 

Thank you for tolerating my links. For much better blogging than I'm capable of today, please check out Schmutzie's Five Star Friday roundup, and drop by our #BlogNow Twitter chat, Tuesday, May 21, 9 p.m. Eastern. We're talking creative communities this month, and it should be fun. Here's our Facebook page, too. 

I'm going to shut up now. Have a great weekend. 

606

I have lived in my condo for a long time, relatively speaking. Two years is a long time for me to keep a place afloat, or at least it feels like it. 

When I first moved in, my meditation teacher at the time told me to have a party. She told me that I needed to fill the place with good energy, with people I loved, who wanted good things for me and my life here. She knew, I'm sure, that it would also be a good way to help me deal with the grief spiral I was in a year after my grandmother's death, and at a time when I was back at work and miserable after grad school. She knew, like I wasn't willing to acknowledge, that I needed community and connection and fun. 

I had my first party in this place on St. Patrick's Day. So many reasons it's taken this long. Slow learner. Not a quick study. Stubborn. Busy. Doped up on internet and going other places always and dead ends and dumb things. Whatever. It took this long to get still and to crawl up and out. I have been grounded in this place, mostly, since life hit a deep skid in October. My travel schedule stopped suddenly, and I have been here. Here, just here. Working here, living here, not doing dishes here, not getting my sink fixed here, not organizing a work from home space here. Just here. 

That has changed, recently, for a variety of reasons and one friend, mostly. And it's so good, regardless of all of the garbage of the past three years, flying in the face of it really, proving it at the same time necessary and over, that I want to document it here, where I tend to document so few things these days.

I bought a lot of Guinness.

I bought a lot of potatoes, and beef, and carrots.

I made cottage pie (shepherd's pie, specifically with beef, not lamb) and beef stew, both from Elise's site, and I thought they were pretty good. This is unsurprising, because she helps you make everything pretty good. There were no leftovers, anyway (like, people licked the bowls no leftovers. This never happens. It made me so happy.) I made a makeshift rainbow out of fruit on a plate (strawberries, tangerines, pineapple, grapes, bluberries, skipped the v) because hey Pinterest, hey, and people brought me whiskey so what I'm saying to you is HAVE A ST. PATRICK'S DAY PARTY IF YOU LIKE WHISKEY AS PEOPLE WILL BRING YOU IT.

I also bought the most enormous bottle of Bailey's I am hoping exists in the world, which is to say, would you like to come over for coffee? 

And late at night after everyone went home and I was deep into my Spotify shame spiral and already fielding e-mails for Monday things because the internet never, ever, sleeps, not ever, my heart was full like George Bailey's after Harry came home and he concurrently received all of the mortgage money, and I wasn't sure this was possible anymore. It's been a frozen, confused, shit show in my chest for a longer period of time than I care for it to be. It's just that things were super dicey. All of the dials were screwed up and uncalibrated and finally it was winter and nothing that good tends to happen around here, then, generally -- it's not necessarily entirely terrible, it's just a waiting game. Ennui City.  

But today, the walls and the furniture and the floors look better in here. It feels warmer, although Maryland hasn't caught up with the calendar and it's still cold outside.

People do give a place some life, it's true, when they smoke on your balcony (sorry, upstairs) and help to do dishes unasked in your kitchen and play songs on your desktop and tell stories on your couch. I knew this. It's so elementary. It's been such an important part of my life in other spaces and times. But it got so easy not to work on it. It's so easy to let things go, log on and off with a learned, unconscious apathy, and not work on what's outside, the stuff that's harder, the people in my physical space.

I knew I didn't want to ignore that anymore, and I know now for sure that I won't. 

There is so much more that goes into my life right now and so many things that came together to make this happen and one person in particular who held everything together to make it possible for me to have this happen in my space. And after eight years of writing here I equally know that there's no possible way I could appropriately, fully reflect that on this blog, and that's okay. I've just put so much bad and uneasy here that I wanted to balance it out a little.

So instead I'll say that I had a party and the place where I have spent a lot of time crawling through life and change and heartbreak and not enough and other and alone, on at least my emotional and sometimes what has felt like my physical hands and knees, was full of friends and stories and plans. 

It's the best thing I could have hoped for out of the last three years. It's one of the main things that I have hoped for the most over the past three years. 

I think I can finally say that I'm going to be okay, Internet. 

I hope I think right. 

This post and this day are in laser-sharp memory of Christine. I wish she had hung on to have her own party. We are all not so lucky to walk through every single fire.  Every day is a goddamned flawed miracle. 

Editing My Own Story: Going Back to School at 36 Changed My Life

This post is sponsored content from BlogHer and Kaplan University. 

I was 36 when I decided that I didn’t want to do what I was doing any more, and certainly not every day for the rest of my working life.

As I considered my options, I knew that nothing had really felt right since the day almost 20 years earlier, when I held a letter from the dean of my selective journalism program, regretting to inform me that I had to pick another major due to my poor academic performance.

I’d gotten to college and had been distracted by a social life. I was overwhelmed by large classes and lots of freedom. My grades plummeted, and I lost my slot in the very selective admission program that had been my lifelong dream.

I decided eventually that if I couldn't be a journalist, then a career in the helping professions was a workable option. I got a master’s degree in counseling, ending up as a counselor and professor in a large community college.

Fast forward to 36. While I had always loved teaching, and felt that I could empathize with students because of missteps in my own academic career, I stopped feeling fulfilled by my job.

I began to feel way more invested in the freelance work as a web writer that I’d picked up than I was with my day job. The end of a long-term relationship had left me feeling at loose ends personally. I was craving a more creative, productive life, and completely unsure about how to attain it. I didn’t have a game plan.

I don’t know whether it was in the shower or driving to work or in yoga class, but one day it suddenly came to me: I was going to go back to J-school and finish this thing.

I knew the cons. I had very limited financial resources. I had a full-time job. I had bills. I had no time to devote to a demanding academic program and to my job at the same time. I applied anyway.

I had to challenge myself to re-take the required GRE; investigate my financial options; and ask mentors and employers for letters of reference. But I just kept putting one more application form in front of the other, and eventually it was done.

Three months after my flash of clarity, I’d arranged a leave of absence from work, wrangled financial support, and was sitting in my intro writing and editing classes, in the same building where I’d studied years before.

I had no idea how it happened, and especially so quickly, but what I can tell you is this: Once I started, I never looked back. This was mostly because I was just too busy -- but also because from the first day, I knew I was in the right place, even when it was difficult.

Once in school, I said yes to everything I was offered. As a returning student, I had sacrificed significant stability and my income to pursue this, because I knew it was that important for me to follow what I loved and to express my best talents. It was my commitment and financial and time investment now, so I owned it fully.

Unlike the first time around, I went to every class. I took every opportunity I could, and as a result, I learned on a level I never really had before in school. I was the oldest person in my class by at least 20 years, but I got to know my classmates anyway, and some of them remain my closest friends. (I tell them what to do in their 20s, so they won’t have to worry about it in their 40s, like I did. They tolerate this because they are nice people.)

I also got to travel to places I wouldn’t have had access to on my own. I ended up crawling through a ditch by the side of the road outside Hanoi, reporting a story on industrial growth in Vietnam.

This lovely lady runs the school for kids with hearing impairments in Hanoi. I went to shoot the Operation Smile dental mission on my last day in Vietnam. It was the best thing about my trip.

I roamed Invesco Field as a reporter when then-Senator Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president. I still can’t believe that happened to me, but it did.

I finished a master’s program in online journalism in 18 months. My graduation day was one of the happiest of my life. Earning my degree has been my favorite professional accomplishment, because I worked the hardest for it, and cared about it the most.

Many people ask me why I chose to go back to school, since I had a master’s already. I've been told that I could have worked my way into an online journalism career with my blogging and social media contacts alone. This may be true, but earning the credential was important to me.

For one thing, I still traced my basic confusion and dissatisfaction with my professional path to my failure to complete the journalism program almost 20 years ago. Short of time travel, returning was the best way to correct a situation that had always bothered me, regardless of my successes since then.

A master’s degree in journalism also qualifies me to teach in a community college setting. I already knew I loved teaching, and I was pretty sure I'd love it even more in a discipline I care about as much as writing.

And finally, I knew that making this change required a major shift. I wasn’t sure committing to that change was possible if I stayed at work, and hacked away at it part-time. As an educator, I am also very much a student, and I knew it was the right move for me.

I resumed my day job after I got my degree. But I left for good last year to run my own business. Returning to work in an office full-time never really worked out for me. It was like trying to stuff clothes back into a suitcase after vacation.

Today, I work at least the equivalent of one full-time job as a one-woman writing, editing, social-media-managing machine. I also teach and advise at my old institution, to supplement my income and to keep my head in the academic game. I believe in pursuing dreams, but not burning bridges, and in keeping stable options open as I experiment.

I have never worked this hard in my life, nor felt more intellectually or professionally energized. I respond remarkably well to working in a virtual community of other entrepreneurs and creative types. Every day is different, and while some days are a challenge, it’s been a resoundingly positive year.

I had a choice that wasn’t really a choice at all, looking back, because I had to change or stay stuck. I’m grateful that I had the motivation and resources to actively envision a better, more appropriate life for myself, to give myself the best chances for success, and to take the chance when it came down to it.

I can't recommend it enough.

As I have learned from personal experience, education has the power to change your life. And there are so many options for going back to school. Kaplan, a global company dedicated to helping individuals achieve their educational and career goals, knows how to make a change. Kaplan wasn't satisfied with how the educational system was working, so for 75 years they have been re-writing the rules because they believe education is not one size fits all. A system focused on individual needs has the power to change lives. Kaplan uses technology to learn how you learn, to teach you better; they tailor classes around the needs of employers; and hire teachers with experience in their fields.

Kaplan wasn’t satisfied with the status quo, and you shouldn’t be either.

How can education give you the power to change?

Ringtumdiddy

I knew it was a ringtumdiddy day as soon as I got on the doorstep home from school. Something about the combination of cheese, tomato soup, onions, and whatever else he threw in there was powerful enough to move straight through my grandparents' thick, wooden front door and punch me in the nose. 

I hated that smell, which is unbelieveable now, given my love for both of those foods separately and, I'd guess, in combination, if I tried it.

"It's Ringtumdiddy Day. Gross!" I'd say to my grandmother, making dramatic gagging motions, as she told me to shush, maybe I could learn to like it. 

Inside, he stood at the stove in their tiny, galley kitchen, smaller than any I've had in any apartment, stirring, stirring, stirring. 

He hummed always, at all times, but especially when he cooked, and he had our genetic quirk of word repetition. 

"Hmmm...ringtumdiddy. HMMMM HMMMM HMMMM."

"Ring."

"Tum."

"Diddy." 

"You want some, Laurie Anne? You want some ringtumdiddy?" 

"NO WAY GROSS NO WAY." 

"Alrighty. Fine. Fine. More for me. Moooorrrrreeee ringtumdiddy for me." 

The stuff we have no idea we'll miss while it's happening is both a crime and a comfort. 

At holiday celebrations now, my family unravels stories we've retold hundreds of times about ourselves and what we've seen together like they're new, bringing my grandparents into the room as surely as if they were sitting there, because they can't be anywhere else when we are all together. We time travel to that tiny kitchen as we walk the rooms of that duplex. We talk about the bacon my grandmother cooked for breakfast, leaving it on a paper towel on the back of the stove for all-day grabby hands. We talk about cinnamon-sugar bread and tuna fish and hardboiled eggs on Friday. We talk about his chocolate chip cookies and blame our ovens for why we can never replicate them, no matter how much we try to decipher the hidden lines on the back of that yellow and black bag of chocolate chips.

Inevitably, one of my uncles will say,

"Ringtumdiddy. Daddy loved that godawful stuff. You'd know what you were in for as soon as you hit the porch after school."

I knew what they knew, and so did my mom and my aunts, my sister, and my older cousins. The younger kids who cruelly didn't get a chance to know him, meanwhile,  repeat their lines, no rehearsal necessary.

"RINGTUMDIDDY, what's THAT? Did you have to eat that, Dad?"

And we tell them it was something Granddaddy made, and poured over toast. We note that it came in handy during Lent. We may mention the silver double boiler, and how we don't know where the recipe came from, and we should ask one of his surviving siblings if it was something that stretched for the 18 kids in their family, or it was just something he picked up randomly along the way.

And I'll say to them the same thing, always, the thing I believe besides that he likely did enjoy the taste of it or he wouldn't have made it so many times throughout his life. I'll say what I believe after I've searched for it on the internet and found it spelled differently, and with different things thrown in, making it not what it was in our house, not the same smell of cheese and tomato soup, and maybe some onion, that came through that solid wooden front door like a memory it would be someday. 

I say, "I think he really just liked to say the word."  

Do What You Love: the Happiness May Follow

I drove to have lunch with my mother today, with a three-hour gap between conference calls.

It was noon. I had actually had time for coffee and deadlines and general catching up at home. I was wearing jeans, and had nowhere I had to physically, absolutely be outside of my house until the next morning. I had a commitment to do a live Google+ hangout this evening, representing one of my favorite clients. On the way to meet her, I took a call from a former colleague who wanted me to teach a class on short notice (as in tomorrow.)

It occurred to me as I drove that I was happy, and specifically so in my work. All of the projects I was managing were happening almost entirely in words and pictures. I had variety, enough excitement to keep things interesting, didn't have to sit behind a desk in a windowless office 40 hours a week, and flexibility, while I'm getting paid for things I'm producing on a daily basis.

It was one of the best moments I've had in a long time.

It probably helps to know that the path to this was circuitous, and not without tears, worry, and the belief that things could never be better. I could not have told my 15, 25, or even 35-year-old-self that today's feeling was possible. For one thing, the technology that enables me to do the jobs I have now didn't exist. Go back to the early 90s and tell 20-something Laurie that I would someday work most consistently and effectively, and also swap jokes and life news, with a person who is based in California? It wasn't even real.

For another, the person I was, prior to 35, anyway, didn't dwell so much in possibility as in limitation, arising from a difficult college experience and unfocused early career launch. I did mostly good work, sometimes even of high quality. I helped people as a counselor and a teacher. I pulled off some interesting accomplishments in spite of a general lack of a core plan. But it had very little do with my best and most effective skills, and made me feel more regularly stressed than fulfilled.

I started working towards fixing this in 2007, when I went back to journalism graduate school. And since I made the radical financial decision to quit my full-time job last year and embark on a life in writing, editing, photography, and social media, I have had a good number of the most difficult days of my life. Going from a bi-weekly paycheck to freelance checks that arrive on other people's schedules hasn't been easy. Shedding my workplace identity, and learning to work for myself, largely alone, at home? Another good but sometimes jarring change.

It all set me up for the moment I had today, though, where everything almost made sense.

I have always told people (cough**mymother**cough) that there was a method to my madness -- that walking away from a stable job at a supposedly rough economic time was the thing that made the most sense for me at this point in my life (translated in my head as absolutely essential to my daily functioning and any shot at future happiness, honestly.)

Now, at least I believe me, 90 percent of the time, anyway. I don't know what things will look like next month, but today? They looked pretty good. And I know that the people who care about me appreciate that I'm easier to get along with, and somewhat obviously happier, too.

These are a few things that it would have helped to know as I agonized over what to do and how to be, as a college student and an early-career professional:

Identify and use your strongest and most favorite gifts and talents.

I never knew how or wanted to do anything but write. I failed out of journalism school at 19, and always thought that derailed everything, and it was done. Histrionic much? But I was young, it hurt, it was hard, and I didn't rebound well. I could have been a writer anyway, but I took that external event as a sign that it wasn't meant to be, and that I wasn't any good. Never mind that I got As in my writing classes, and it was failing the gen ed classes that bored me and I therefore blew off that wrecked my GPA and sent me out of the major. It took almost 20 years of being called upon to write in all of my completely-unrelated jobs, depression related to a daily working life that had very limited relationship to creativity, and the advent of blogging, to make me wake up and realize that I had to, and could, turn this car around.

Because it can be done. All of the cliches about "doing what you love" aside, figure out what you're good at, and what lights up you up, as early as you can, or I believe that it will keep nagging at you and distracting you from the things that are in front of your face now. Plus, everyone will be better off when you put this into practice. Especially you.

Don't stay in unsatisfactory situations for longer than you absolutely must.

I loved doing this. I loved carrying the torch and playing the tiny violin of the weird assignment or the overworked position. It became my habit, and my excuse not to send cover letters to better jobs, or to submit freelance articles to local publications.

Don't do this. It is an unattractive waste of time, and we don't have a lot of that as it is. You can find another job. You can stay in your job that you hate while you find a new one. You are allowed to quit. You are allowed to hope for and eventually find better. You will be okay. Trust me.

Stop cramming yourself into the wrong spot and wondering why it hurts. Find what fits you.

A big part of my happy moment today was realizing that I was valued in my current work for some of my skills, insights, and personality traits that were considered negatives in my previous positions. And these were some fundamental things, like creativity, independent thought, and the ability to change course without a blink at the last minute. Sometimes it's not just you that's wrong in the environment -- it's that the environment is not right for you. Considering this has allowed me to forgive myself for what I considered solely my errors, and to look at where my personality and habits might fit the best in job. (We're at the best place in history to do this, by the way.)

Do Something Productive

I did not do a single internship, practicum, or independent study in undergrad. As curious about the world as I am, I didn't study abroad, or go anywhere other than Florida or Mexican resorts for spring break, and lolled away my summer vacations.

I didn't have the best advisors, no (which I can say now, since I've been one) but I also didn't seek out challenges or experiences beyond my own backyard. It wasn't until I found myself staring down 40 in a job I knew I didn't want to have until I was 65 that I got motivated. It wasn't until I was the oldest person in my graduate program with the knowledge of what not taking risks had cost me that I said yes to reporting trips to Vietnam and the 2008 Democratic Convention. These were two of the most significant experiences of my life. This is what happens when you start saying yes to things.

Better late than never, but the risks were definitely higher later on, and I can't help but think sometimes, although I know I'm in a good place now, of all of the opportunities I missed to go places, to meet people, to learn things.

I'd go back and tell that (smart, impassioned, confused, needy) slacker to go to the advising office instead of to the quad to take a nap. Hindsight is its own torture, and effective motivation.

Get a Mentor

The people I respect personally and professionally have been essential in helping me identify my strengths, helping me find the confidence I needed to leave a bad situation, to fix it if I planned to stay in it, and to envision a better future regardless (letters of recommendation and job referrals are nice, too.) There are a lot of smart, experienced, kind people in the world, and many of them want to help you. Make friends with them. I did not until the past five years or so, and now I'd be lost without a few mentors in my phone for specific situations. I wasted all of my undergraduate years not reaching out, and who knows how much farther along I'd be if I hadn't?

Create. Have fun. Do good.

My jobs now come from other people, but there is so much of me in them, in addition to the effort it takes to manage my daily entrepreneurial schedule, that this is a strictly DIY operation. It stands or falls on me, and as much as that could seem like the worst kind of pressure, it works better for me than anything has.

It's everything I may have believed at one time that I was capable of, before I started to think I wasn't capable of anything. Now I'm circling back to the beginning, a much better place of possibility and opportunity. I could feel sorry for the me of years ago, that it took us so long to get here, and for the trouble along the way, but that would just take my time away from being glad that it ever happened at all.

There may be a time when it's too late to get it right, but I'm glad that I never got there.

This post is part of BlogHer's Success Guide for My Younger Self editorial series, made possible by Kaplan.

Proust Questionnaire

I'm already failing lists. This shouldn't surprise anyone who is familiar with my noncompliance with daily practices, although so far, six (now 26, failing blogging too, wow) days into the new year, I have managed to participate successfully in the-photo-a-day challenge (until I got the flu two weeks ago, when that fell apart too, SO THINGS ARE GOING WELL), so that's crazy. It's not a list, though, so I have to recommit, or decide that my plan to write a list a day this year was crap. 

(Ed. note: It was. 1/26/2013) 

I'm going to try the Proust Questionnaire today (many days ago) because as they say in the big city, "We are in the big city." 

That is a lie. It's just easy and readily available on the internet, and of course, that is always how I proverbially roll. Here we go. 

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness. 

Great food with people I like. Rock star parking. Ledos ranch dressing. My family on a holiday evening in front of the television. Atlantic Ocean beaches. Kissing someone I like a lot. On the beach, maybe. 

2. What is your greatest fear? 

Dying, duh. I thought this was happening to me a few times this year and if I thought I was ever afraid of anything more, I was wrong. Being completely broke. Anything bad happening to anyone in my family or my closest friends. 

3. Which historical figure do you most identify with? 

CLEOPATRA, BITCHES. 

Not really. Probably Louisa May Alcott, because I like to write, and I am occasionally heard to shriek "MY HAIR IS MY ONE TRUE VANITY" when I'm alone. And although she attributed that line to Jo, you know she was basically Jo, so there it is. 

4. Which living person do you most admire? 

My mother. Any woman, in particular, who has made a positive difference in the world and kept her sanity while doing it. 

5. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? 

Any time I am self-centered to the point of myopia. My chronic disorganization and tendency towards indecision. Occasional paranoia. Seriously, calm the fuck DOWN.

6. What is the trait you most deplore in others? 

Dishonesty. Arrogance. Condescension. Bigotry.  Meanness. Littering. 

7. What is your greatest extravagance? 

A car I really can't afford, and cable television. 

8. On what occasion do you lie? 

I am a terrible liar. If I ever try it, it's because I panic and spew nonsense. Also if I really don't want to hurt someone's feelings. 

9. What do you dislike most about your appearance? 

I do not like my chins in pictures. My face is generally pretty shallow, and there isn't much of anywhere for them to go when I've been eating too much ranch dressing. Besides that, my midsection, I guess. I also hate that my ass is flat, but I come from a long line of awesome people with flat asses, so I guess I should take it as a badge of honor. 

10. When and where were you happiest? 

It's so hard to answer this. Do you remember these times? We probably should, more. For me it's always in moments where I feel absolutely mutually loved by the person/people I'm with, even if it's just me. Connection with one friend or significant other (conversation/more than conversation/understanding.) Golden hour on the beach. Eating crabs with my family on the Bay. The best part of a really good concert. The perfect song on the highway. Shooting photographs. All the experiences that are fleeting and so awesome are what keep us plodding along all the rest of the time, in the hopes that we may have it again, I think.

11. If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?

Right now, I would be more grounded and less anxious, so I'd like to be  happier in the actual physical space I occupy, and way more caught up financially.   I'd be a morning person. I'd be neater. I'd have a stronger in-person community. I'd do more things on a daily basis for the people who have done so much for me, instead of getting caught up in deadlines and moods and crazy.

12. If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be? 

I have no idea. Maybe we'd have more consistent traditions? But I don't fault this organism for much, anymore, and I don't want it to change. It and the people within it have given me much more than it's left me wanting in any way. They're my people. I hope I do them a little bit of justice.

13. What do you consider your greatest achievement? 

Every day, staying in motion. In life, my journalism master's degree. Also any writing award I've ever received, because it's the only skill I have. I am proud of myself, I admit it, when I use it for good instead of screwing around on the internet.

14. If you died and came back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be? 

A glass of wine, or a seagull, or please let it be a well-compensated music promoter. Lord knows I've done enough of it for free.

15. What is your most treasured possession? 

My grandmother's ring, my cameras, and my copy of Leaves of Grass that I bought at the Yellow Springs (Ohio) library sale. But I could lose everything else in life except that ring and be okay. She kept all of her jewelry that she never wore in a baby wipes container for years. I still remember the day she randomly decided to dole them out and made me sit on the bed and sift through the rings and tell her if I thought the other granddaughters would like them and what did I want and was this important to do at all? Sometimes I just think we spend the next fifty or however many years processing the first 20. It's possible. Also if I get a next life? I don't want to come back as the oldest kid, in any configuration. I don't think I was equipped for it this time, and I don't want to try it again.

16. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? 

Shame. Betrayal. Grief. Loneliness. Hurtfully lost love. Reality television.

17. Who are your heroes in real life? 

My mom. My sister. Hard-working people who struggle through financial and cultural and social hardship to support their families and keep our economic engine running. (I've been thinking a lot about this lately, since I've been back in a restaurant kitchen.)

18. What is it that you most dislike? 

Violence. War. Greed. Inequality. Bullshit. Cold coffee. Bad wine. Traffic. Mean people.

19. How would you like to die? 

Quietly in my sleep. I am over physical drama of any kind. 

20. What is your personal motto? 

For many years, it's been "You must do the thing you think you cannot do," and I will rep Eleanor Roosevelt always, but now I think it'll always be "Ramble on. Now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song." Because it is. It's always that, for everyone. 

2012 over and over again.

After consultation with Schmutzie I have decided that I am going to attempt to make a list every day in 2013. Yes, I am four days late. Bygones. 

I have been procrastinating and lallygagging over this list mostly because I kind of hated 2012, and I hate to hate a year. What kind of madness is that, to hate a year that you have been given in your life, when you have friends and family who have died and left who would have wildly appreciated that year? Who am I to hate a year? 

I am me, that's who, and 2012 was an asshole. It was of course an asshole that taught me a ton and woke me the fuck up and gave me the incentive to make the rest of my stay here in this space way less terrible, however, so I should thank it, ultimately, I suppose. But you know what, it was hard and awful as it taught me things and while I gritted my teeth with gratitude for its good stuff, and it's still okay to be happy that it's over and to keep my sights set on the glory and promise that is this odd-numbered fantasyland of 2013. 

As a champion multi-tasker, I can do both. 

Therefore, I was not okey-dokey with leaving this trail of tears unremembered. Also tonight I went to my first day of yoga in a very long time, the first of a 40-day series that is meant to bring me back to myself and my space on this planet, so I'm kind of considering this my new year's day. Therefore and thereunto, is the meme I discovered once upon a time from Erin Shea Smith, and may find the energy to link to to my previous answers, or not. Here's this year's.: 

1. What did you do in 2012 that you'd never done before
Drove cross-country and back. Was a passenger in an ambulance (only vaguely related.) 

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't remember what they were, but probably not. And no, not really. I have goals, not resolutions. I hate that word, "resolutions." We never use it otherwise, so why now? It lends a weird kind of pressure that I think we all have enough of already, I think. 

Best eternal resolution: don't fall in love with a dreamer, cause they'll break you every time.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My brother-in-law's sister is close enough, I guess, because I consider them extended family. Also I got to take that gorgeous baby's first official portraits and that was a very sweet experience for me. 

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My father's best friend since childhood, whom I considerd an uncle, really. It was awful. I will always miss him, and I really still can't imagine a life for my dad where's he's not alive. Sometimes things happen that suck and there is just no good explanation, and this is one of them for me, for sure. 

My Aunt Catherine died, too, after a long walk with Alzheimer's disease. She was my grandfather's younger sister, and one of the first examples of a strong, independent woman I ever had. I loved and respected her.

5. What countries did you visit?
This one. I saw an awful lot of it. 

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you didn't have in 2012?
A stronger business plan, which is happening. A website. More clarity would be nice, and I've made good strides towards that in the past few months, I think. I hope it keeps going. Peace of mind. A stronger in-person community. More food that I cook at home, and knife skills to make chopping and dicing less dangerous, so I'm excited to learn those. I need better shoes. My flats really suck. 

7. What dates from 2012 will be etched upon your memory, and why?
August 23-September 24, because that trip really marked the end of an old life and the beginning of this new one. A few others will be, but I don't remember the numbers of those days. They mostly involved ephemeral love, which left behind a strange combination of happiness that this was still possible after several years of...not, along with sad for reasons that all humans know, but would rather not. I'm learning to appreciate all of this much better in the rear view.

8. What was your biggest achievement of this year?
Working every day, pretty much, no matter what was going on with me mentally or physically. Always moving forward even when it seemed like the most futile, ridiculous thing. Never giving up. 

9. What was your biggest failure?
Letting my emotions get the best of me in some fairly self-destructive ways. Not planning better financially for leaving my job. 

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Hypertension and anxiety attacks were new to me this year, and both were terrifying, no joke. I do not recommend either. What I do recommend is taking care of yourself. I didn't, for a long time, and that is what happened to me. Be ye not so unprepared. You only get one you. Make sure you're in the best shape that you can for whatever it is that you need to do. This life is fairly physically demanding. 

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Lunch at Eataly in New York after BlogHer. 

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My mom, my sister, and my best friend, who essentially kept me alive and gave me this sort of unconditional love that is the only thing I would wish for anyone on the planet if I could. My other good friends and family, as I am lucky and loved. All of the writers and friends who let me stay with them on my trip. The activists who pushed forward for equality for all of us. 

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Lying liars who lie, rape/abuse/misogyny apologists and litterers (they are obviously way farther down) remain at the top of my list. Fast lane abusers become a source of extreme distress on a 4,000 or so mile drive across the country and back. 

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent. Gas. Food. Wine. Stuff. 

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
My sister calling me when I was in California to tell me she was going to have a baby. That was a great moment in my life. I am so happy for her and my  brother-in-law. 

Visiting Graceland. Duran Duran in Virginia. New York. Always New York. 

16. What song will always remind you of 2012?
Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball cd. Bob Schneider's "Let the Light In." Billy Bragg and Wilco, "California Stars." 

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: A) happier or sadder? B) thinner or fatter? C) richer or poorer?
A) Neither. More peaceful and resolute, which is different.
B) A little thinner, I think. 
C) Ha. Hahaha.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Being peaceful and happy for no reason. Holding someone's hand is always nice. Hanging peacefully with my friends. Listening to music. 

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Riding in an ambulance. Complaining. Focusing on the wrong people and things. 

20. How did you spend Christmas?
With my family. It was nice. 

21. Did you fall in love with 2012?
In a peculiar sort of way, yes. Also out. 

22. What was your favorite TV program?
I'm still committed to Glee and Parenthood against my will. The Good Wife is fantastic. I discovered Homeland and blew through the two not-long-enough seasons in the past two weeks. It owns me. I am checking under my car that is parked in the garage of what is an essentially assisted-living building for bombs. This show is that bad and good. 

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I work on not owning hate for anyone. It's really destructive. Don't get me wrong, I dislike more people than I'd like to admit, but I can let that shit go in a minute. Hate gets into you, deeply, and stays. I don't want it, can't really handle it. 

24. What was the best book you read?
Patti Smith's Just Kids is art of the highest order. She is a beautiful memoirist, and Robert Mapplethorpe was a lucky SOB to know that kind of love in his lifetime (although I know she'd say the same about him, which is always how it goes when people = alchemy. As fucked up as their situation was, I admit I was jealous. If I'm going to love,  may as well love big, right?) Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things got me through a few tough nights with some straight talk. 

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Lots of things, mostly my own mixes of old stuff, which sounds lame, but hey, I drove a lot of miles and it was really important that I created my own soundtrack for that experience. Do you know how hard it is to stay awake through West Texas? Hard.

I really believe your most important music sticks with you throughout your life and serves different purposes depending on where you're at. Like, I listened to Depeche Mode's Some Great Reward over and over again for a week at one point this year, and "Somebody" came back into rotation for me and was as true for me as it had been in my late teens but in an entirely different sort of way, so now it's important to me again, but different (but that piano? Still gorgeous, the same way.) Deep, right? :) I  listened to a ton of Bruce, Stevie Wonder, Prince, old Hem and Cowboy Junkies as usual, country that makes me smile, old metal that kept me awake...As far as newer stuff, Alabama Shakes, Gossip and Black Keys are awesome in different ways. I loved Civil Wars, and Butterfly Boucher fixed my heart in a weird way. I listened to a LOT of Spotify playlists from people who are way hipper than I am at this point, but this year I had way too many nights when I needed Elton to burn down the mission just to stay alive. It's just how it goes when you're sorting through stuff. 

26. What did you want and get?
I survived, mostly. I had a few dicey days and after they were over and I woke up from two years of chaos and questionable behavior, I found that I had retained the support and love of my family and closest friends and that is the only thing that I could never bear to lose. It's always nice to hear "I love you" and I heard that more than a few times from a few people who matter, so that's a lucky thing. My family members are intact and reasonably healthy in their own rights. I got out of my windowless office, finally. The aftermath may have been kind of ugly, and still weird, but I really hated it there, so I think it's safe to say I got what I wanted in not having to go back there every day for most of the year. I think I'll look back on that as a good sign. 

27. What did you want and not get?
Truth, on occasion. Affection from someone who was incapable of providing it, which is a pattern in my life so I'm hoping this year was the teacher that finally appeared. A ticket to a few shows here and there. More consistent chips and guacamole. 

28. What was your favorite film of 2012?
Pitch Perfect made me laugh and sing with my mom at a time when I desperately needed to do both. It wins for that alone.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 42 last week. I had a really nice raw bar dinner with my family and I went out and drank and laughed afterwards with some very good friends who love me and forgive me my failings. I feel pretty lucky about that whole day. 

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Probably more money and less stress, definitely fewer ill-advised text messages, emails, and phone calls? But this is tough to answer. I'm learning that if you're playing it right you end up in the right place, and it's not about what you missed. 

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept of 2012?
Tank tops. Yoga mat flip flops. A couple of reliable sweaters. Chucks. Pjs. Chipped toenail polish. And way shorter hair! I'm digging that the most. 

32. What kept you sane?
My mom and my sister. Sarah, Vikki, Schmutzie, Suebob, my editor Julie, Malbec. 

33. What political issue stirred you the most?
The election made me crazy up until the two days before where I don't think I slept for 48 hours until President Obama made his second victory speech and then I passed out. Women's issues and the insane march backwards that was halted, for the moment, with the election, I hope. Marriage equality. 

34. Who did you miss?
Always my grandmother, I will always miss her face and her hand pats and her clucking over my every move every day. I wish I'd seen my friends more consistently. 

35. Who was the best new person you met?
Vikki, who I met randomly through blogging and who continues to look out for me and make me laugh every day, as has always been true of my very best friends. 

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012.
There is very often someone else behind the curtain. Don't be super paranoid about this, but do be a little bit more careful in your dealings. At this point in your life your intuition probably knows what's up up front, even if you don't want to listen. Listen. The people who challenge that impulse the most have the scariest agenda, and will wreck you the worst, no matter their role in your life -- friend, lover, boss. Run from them, slowly if you have to, but run. It's them, not you. 

We should be more careful with each other. I think that we would like it if others were more careful with us, so we should do it first and equally. I'm taking this on hardcore, for life, from now on. 

Most importantly, don't speed in Wyoming. 

37. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
"I know a heartache when I see one."

"I know it now, you've got to go home." 

"Now when all this steel and these stories, they drift away to rust/And all our youth and beauty, it's been given to the dust/And your game has been decided, and you're burning the down the clock/And all our little victories and glories, have turned into parking lots/When your best hopes and desires, are scattered to the wind/And hard times come, hard times go/Hard times come, hard times go/And hard times come, hard times go/Hard times come, hard times go/Hard times come, hard times go/Yeah just to come again/Bring on your wrecking ball"

Bring on your wrecking ball, 2013.

What should I make lists about this year? 

Fill the Cup for Kids Around the World

"I'm starving." 

Have you ever plopped yourself dramatically into a restaurant booth, or shaken your coat off in the lobby having eaten breakfast only a few hours earlier, with those words? 

Guilty. Countless times. So guilty. My own mother will confirm that "I'm starving" is her oldest, more dramatic, certainly-not-ever-starving child's favorite pre-meal phrase, even if the last one wasn't that long ago. 

And the truth is, I probably am hungry. Blame chemistry, biology, I don't know, but I am well-acquainted with the desire for food. I love it, always have, and grew up in an environment where along with everything else that signified love, it was at the top. 

Do you want a sandwich? 

Do you need a drink? 

Can I get you anything else? 

I don't know from starving, not even remotely close. There was always, always, always, an offering, a desire to provide, even when I had no evident need. Every day, several times, I heard this, and basked like an...animal that basks (manatee? Sea lion? Do they bask? Oh my hell. I fail all science.)...in that security and knowledge that someone was standing by to fill my not-that-needy mouth and stomach.

That is what everyone in my small, close-knit, essential sphere heard and said and relied upon as a marker of time and connection and some kind of cultural identity, I know. We didn't have a lot, still don't have more than many, but we have always known that we could feed each other, that we, ourselves, could be fed. 

What a luxury we had, and have, I've come to learn. Because starving? Beyond exasperated hypberbole, no, never, not here -- maybe in my zip code, it's not like I don't know that's possible, but not in my house. 

When I was a child in Catholic school, we collected milk cartons full of pennies for children in countries we could barely envision, and where our small brains couldn't possibly imagine the need. As an adult, this imperative has returned to my view, better illuminated, with thankfully some more concrete interventions, which I like. 

I see the issue of global hunger differently, now, of course: as a self-supporting individual, as a person responsible for my own care and feeding, as an adult more clearly and painfully aware of inequities at home and around the world,  as a person with a television and an internet connection and a professional network that includes people who have traveled the world over and come back to say that there is need in so many places that we can't possibly imagine, but can perhaps help to meet. 

I say it as a person who has taken but a few international trips, to Vietnam, to the Bahamas, to Venezuela, to places where I nonetheless saw need like I'd never seen in my backyard, things I can't ever unsee. I also say it as a person who has driven through neighborhoods in my beloved American South and in my nation's capital, my own almost-backyard, where I know the kids and grown-ups would benefit from more and better food sources, where who knows what or how much they're eating. 

So here I am, to talk about the Fill the Cup program, for all of these people. I'd like you to listen up for a few minutes, and only a tiny bit because I agreed to tell you about it. I'd like you to listen, because the facts are rather dire, and because you and I are not starving, currently, I'm guessing. I don't know about you, but I can at least get up and go to the refrigerator, where I guarantee I will turn up my nose at a good bit of the contents, because it's been a few days since I picked up anything I feel like eating.

Anything I feel like eating, and yet I have a full pantry. Privilege is a fascinating, insidious thing. 

I'd appreciate it if you'd check out this World Food Program (or Programme if you're in the UK and feeling fancy, because I dig it) fact sheet: 

(It's all a lot ridiculous, when you think about it for .5 seconds.) 

Today, an estimated 66 million children across the developing world (which is most of the world, not our little corners) attend school hungry, 23 million of them in Africa alone. 

That is disgusting, y'all. 66 MILLION. CHILDREN. I could barely tolerate school WITH breakfast. Can you imagine? Maybe your life was way different and you can, in which case, I want to hear from you more than me, because I salute you. But I can't.

Without food, children get sicker, and are less likely to be able to learn. 

Duh, right? I have planned training programs for adults for almost two decades. They fall asleep without three cups of coffee and write scathing comments on evaluations about a room that is too cold into which they failed to bring a sweater. I have dealt with unchecked rage over the wrong kind of Danish. Without adequate breakfast, of any kind, for a child? What can we expect of brains to learn? 

Thankfully there are organizations working mostly in obscurity, although this should change, to intervene and try to fix this horrible problem. Enter the World Food Program, who were brave enough to invite me to speak on their behalf during this season of relative abundance in the United States. 

They do the life-saving, revolutionary work of bringing food and supplies to places where there are few or no resources. Here are some photos of the kids they help. 

The World Food Program provides school meals for nearly 20 million children in 70 countries around the world every year.

For the price of a cup of coffee, or a donation of $1.50, you could feed a child for a week. For $50, an entire year. This is not fancy food. It means rice, or porridge, but it's what they can access, and it may help their brains work better than nothing. 

If I told you I could relate to this kind of existence, I'd be lying, but lately I feel that it's important that I try. (Dresden can speak more intelligently and personally about food and financial insecurity than I can, so I suggest you read her on a regular basis, honestly.) Because if I had babies, or parents, or siblings, or anyone in my charge whom I literally could not feed, I don't know the depths of despair that would descend upon me, or what I would do to make that happen, but I imagine it would be beyond the scope of what I currently envision for myself, so far beyond an seemingly-inconvenient trip to the grocery store. 

If this resonates at all for you, please learn more about the World Food Program's Fill the Cup project, and add it to your short list of organizations that may warrant some of your support. I know that times are tight economically (believe me, do I know.) My friend Jess and her kids put their household spare change to work to send $27, which means half a year of food for someone. It doesn't take a lot, just a lot of someones, and it really does add up. I have my cup on my desk, and when I get in from working at the restaurant where I'm currently filling in some financial blanks, I throw my change in there. I'll convert it in January and see how much I can send. 

You'll see us on Twitter at #FilltheCup, and on Tumblr, too. If you can fill one yourself, that would be great, too. Thanks. 

Moira

I was lucky to have the new experience recently of taking pictures of a brand-new baby.

I'm very excited about babies lately. Two great friends of mine -- who are not yet ready to share their little girl photographically with the world at large - welcomed a daughter this month. And also! My sister is pregnant. 

I'm so excited. 

I'M SO EXCITED. I am going to be an aunt. I may be a better aunt than I would have been a mom, I'm thinking, although I still have my emotional issues about not being a mom, but that's just how it shook out. Life. It happens. It gives what it gives, takes what it takes. I'm 41 and almost 42. What are the chances, right? So, we march on. This isn't about me anyway. This is about the best baby who will ever be, so let's move on. 

I haven't specifically discussed my sister here that much, but she is my only sibling, crucial to my daily life, my conscience, my gift, my favorite person. She knows my gold and my trash. She has forgiven me unforgivable things. She is resilient and funny and fun and intelligent and driven. I'd step in front of a train for her. 

She has, also, scrapped and worked for everything she has ever had. I know this. She is the most impressive person I know. 

I love my brother-in-law, too. He is a person I respect above most other human beings I've met in my life, mostly because I know he'd step in front of that train, too. I am so grateful for him. So, overall I'm just really lucky to have them, as individuals and as a family unit, in my life, and they are going to have a stellar child. 

I like them. 

Prior to taking endless photos of my sister's baby, my sister's sister-in-law trusted me to take the first formal portraits of her new little girl. I was very excited, but also very nervous. I had never done an infant photo shoot before, and I really believe that these first portraits are important. This compounds my belief that asking anyone to take pictures of you and/or your family on milestone occasions is an investment, as well as a statement of trust, and I so much wanted to capture what this family wanted. 

I think we ended up doing okay, mostly because this infant girl, like most babies, is just precious. I will be ever grateful to her mom and dad for allowing me to take her first portraits. 

Baby in a pumpkin hat!

Pea pod baby! 

(This is my favorite, because she's winking at me, kinda.) 

Eating my hand, hanging out, whatever.

Baby's foot and Mommy's finger. 

Miss Thing just hanging in her seat in her ballet slipper onesie. 

Mama so LOVES me.

I feel really lucky to have gotten to share these images of this brand new person with the world. Until I have a proper online portfolio, of which she is most deserving, this will have to do. Welcome, Moira. You are a gem. 

Mighty Things Again

This was Palm Springs. 

And this. 

This. 

This too. 

Finally, this.

It happened at exactly the right time for me, this year. It seemed to work that way for a lot of people I talked to, people who are at so many cool and interesting, sometimes terrifying, points in their lives. They want to do things. They want to help people. They want to have things and learn things, be things and change things, break them down, build them up, you know how all of that stuff goes. 

It is like no event I've ever attended, and I'm not sure I can explain any of it to you effectively, except to say that something good is afoot almost every single second. 

This year, I worked with the fundraising team for charity:water, mostly because I will follow Laura Mayes anywhere to work on whatever powerful and interesting thing she's got going on, and this year it led me to Camp Mighty for the second time, with a bit of an expanded role. I liked this a lot. A great team is at work on this event, and I'm learning that it elevates my brain, my interests, and my access to my own goals and hopes when I'm a part of something with other people who don't settle for less than great. 

Laura already knows how I feel, because I babbled it out on the last night, but I'll say it again in this week of Thanksgiving, because sometimes you just need to acknowledge that your life is better because a certain person or the other brought you into a scene that made things better, for reasons known only to them. So thanks, Laura Mayes. May you have all of the pie and pecans and adventures with your amazing son that you need to fill you up forever. I appreciate you. You are, truly, the human illustration of rad. 

I did sit in with a team this year, although I flitted around to the other four to make sure they had their...whatever they needed. Group Three listened to me rattle off a list of five goals I had to pick from my ruthlessly edited and updated life list to really focus on this year. 

Look, if you know me at all, or if you have read any of my awkwardly punctuated, rambling sentences on this blog, you know for real that picking five out of one hundred anything is a joke in this joint, right? But what you may not know is that I am oddly, latently superstitious, which may be a result of crossing myself thousands of times as a Catholic person until young adulthood, or an anxious personality type, or whatever, I don't know. But stuff MEANS stuff around here, y'all. I cannot divest it of its meaning. I have TRIED, trust me. I would trade places with you people who can bark out your five and be on to the Moroccan patio for a Road Runner (have one, if you ever go to the Ace Hotel, do it. Eat that blackberry right up. Do it for me.) But I am not one of you. I need you to drive me around, or be my girlfriend, or my nanny, or my accountant. But I am that other trainwreck, over there.

So. Up until the time I had to read, I was scratching stuff out and circling it in my omnipresent green felt tip pen, underlining it, praying over it, because these were to be my FIVE ALL YEAR, until boom, my turn, so I had to say some stuff. 

I'm still not entirely sure what I gave up for the ones I picked, and I'm trying not to think about it, because the final five are all good and worthy and supportive of my personal growth, professional viability, and participation in my community of people I care about and who care about me, which is really the most important thing of all.

All I know is I AM going to Ireland in 2013, and drinking a Guinness, although it is not listed here. It didn't make it into my stated five, but that's only because I'm so sure this is going to happen that I wasn't wasting a slot. I am ultimately quite crafty. 

Here are my five, I think. 

• Have a clean, organized living and working space that supports peace and productivity, i.e., streamline my life. Throw away all belongings that no longer serve me. Start fresh. Grow up about this. 
• Photograph a gay wedding in Maryland. 
• Publish an essay in Washingtonian or the Washington Post, or a national magazine. Maybe both. What the hell. 
• Practice fun, meaningful, intentional gratitude, and make it a habit. Do 100 cool things for my family and friends (especially those who have helped me so much through this last insane year. (Details TBD. I doubt I'll be able to hit 100, but at least get a good start.) )
• Meet or exceed my past highest salary with freelance work (writing, editing, photography, social media not-mavening.) Or, at least don't cry inside when I write my rent check. 

My bonus list, because I couldn't stop: 

• Finish and launch LaurieMedia as a professional, multi-purpose website.
• Make a new recipe every week for a year. 
• My favorite addition: get a picture taken with Bret Michaels, both of us making devil horns, because that is what he does in every single picture taken of him. I'm hoping this will occur at a PetSmart, because he is quite involved in his own line of pet toys, because of course he is. It's just too bad that Rock of Love Bus is no longer a thing, because I'd love that in the background. (What? I'm a multi-faceted human being. Who has seen Poison live many, many times. If you did not know this, you are not paying attention. Or maybe you just didn't know this. It's okay.)  

If this year is like last year (and honestly, I'm hoping it's not, because I need it to be less chaotic and supportive of my mental health in just about every way) I'll do things on my list I wasn't planning and will space on the things I really wanted, because I was all YAY DRIVE CROSS COUNTRY WHOOO, so that's off my list, but wow. Intense. I think I need at least a month and several more thousands of dollars, next time. However, BYGONES. 

I feel good about all of it, though. I feel good in general about things right now denial except cutting the Ace Hotel pool wristband off of my wrist a few thousand miles east of Palm Springs, because as fun as it was to still have it on, it was a little sharp around the edges. 

I can almost wait for next year, but not quite. I also have a lot of work to do. 

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Life List 2012

So here I am, the night before life list day at Camp Mighty, finishing my list, as I did last year. 

I am so, so late to the life list party, later than I was last year. It's shameful. Part of the issue is that it appears that I went into some kind of strange, challenged place for most of 2011 and, well hell, most of 2012 too. When I looked back at last year's list, I was all, "Who wanted to do that?" and "Who wanted to go there? NOT ME." It didn't resonate. It just felt weird. So I knew I had to rewrite it. But you know what that means. 

I had to rewrite it. 

It didn't come easy. 

This is what I came up with for this year. I'm finishing it just as I get in from the Camp Mighty space party. Although I may have mentioned a time or two around here that I fail costumes, I gave this one a teeny bit of thought, and a try. 

Space cowgirl. Yeehaw. 

So here's the list. There are a few blanks at the end, because you never know when you'll change your mind or come up with new stuff. 

1.     Learn American Sign Language

2.     Write and publish a book

3.     Understand wine, become a certified sommelier

4.     Drink a Guinness in Ireland

5.     Become a Red Cross disaster volunteer

6.     Visit all 50 states

7.     Photograph a gay wedding in Maryland

8.     Become a master photographer

9.     Take my mom on a fabulous trip, anywhere of her choosing, on me.

10. Live in a European country for a year.

11. Exceed my past highest salary, this time as a writer, editor, and photographer. 

12. See Bruce Springsteen live in New Jersey.

13. Have competent basic chef skills, and own a professional set of kitchen knives.

14. Pay off all student loan debt by the time I’m 50.

15. Digitize and archive all family photographs. Put the prints in books.

16. Publish an article in a national magazine – print or online.

17. Visit every country in Europe.

18. Throw a crab feast for my half-birthday.

19. Take trips on all Amtrak routes in the U.S.

20. Learn to play the drums.

21. Outfit my kitchen to indicate that I’m not in college anymore.

22. Live debt free.

23. Do a full photo/travel/food tour of New Mexico with someone I love.

24. Return to Vietnam, spend time volunteering.

25. Photograph an Operation Smile mission.

26. Attend NYC Pride and Mermaid Parade 2013 in a recovered Coney Island.

27. Establish a nonprofit association in honor of my great-grandparents.

28. Drink coffee and wine in Paris on the same day.

29. Have a yard that contains both a lilac and a hydrangea bush.

30. Understand how to competently use Speedlite flash and studio lighting.

31. Go to a Stanley Cup championship game.

32. Go to Oktoberfest in Munich.

33. Support surgeries for at least five children per year through Smile Train/Operation Smile.

34. Own a home.

35. Do the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg/Vienna.

36. Eat sushi in Japan.

37. Visit all tourist spots in D.C. that I should have seen a long time ago, if I didn’t live here. 1.White House. 2. All the Smithsonians and monuments. 3. National Archives, etc.)

38. Celebrate my December/Christmas birthday on a warm island, with friends.

39. Live in New York and know it well.

40. Have a professional website that I love and that represents my skills and portfolio well.

41. Have a clean, organized living space that supports peace and productivity.

42. Have a place at the beach that I can go to anytime.

43. Visit Australia. Have Eden Riley show me around.

44. Have Boston Terriers in my house again, and support rescue efforts.

45. Go on a food and wine tour of Tuscany.

46. Send my parents on a honeymoon.

47. Meet Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

48. Learn to change my oil and perform other basic maintenance on my car.

49. Be published on McSweeney’s.

50. Meet Bret Michaels. Get picture taken with him making the metal horns, as he does in almost every photo ever published of him.

51. Do 100 cool things for my family and friends. 

52. Cross the border to Canada. Visit Dolores in Montreal.

53. See a Duran Duran show in London.

54. Learn to ride a motorcycle at the Harley Davidson Rider’s Edge class.

55. Trace my family history accurately and completely.

56. Be competently conversational in Spanish and French, maybe through immersion programs.

57. Print all meaningful/beautiful photographs, and hang them in my home.

58. Match my old 401K within three years.

59. Write and publish an “Ask Auntie Laurie” advice column on the internet.

60. Have fun and meaningful traditions with my new niece or nephew.

61. Go on the tour of Eataly NYC and take a class. Go to Eataly in Rome.

62. Photograph a birth.

63. Own and use a full set of pro-level Canon lenses.

64. Publish an essay in Washingtonian or the Washington Post.

65. Photograph 50 people who make the world a better place. Profile them and publish on the blog.

66. Go to Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, SXSW Music, Coachella, Virgin Festival in London. 

67. Endow a scholarship.

68. Spend time in San Francisco and get to know the city. 

69. Streamline my life. Throw away all belongings that no longer serve me. Start fresh. 

70. Visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder spots in Missouri and South Dakota.

71. Send one surprise present per month for no reason.

72.  Learn how to DJ (I already know how to rap.)

73. Get my 200-hour yoga certification.

74. Host a fun beach weekend with some of my favorite people.

75. Drive cross-country with no time constraints. Stop wherever I want to take pictures. Don’t skip Marfa, Texas, this time. 

76. Host a holiday.

77. See all the oceans. Float in the Dead Sea.

78. Design a website.

79. Work for at least one whole season from a deck by the water.

80. Have a king-sized bed with really great sheets, an actual duvet, and pillows that don’t drive me crazy.

81. Write something that I don’t think I’m capable of writing at all.

82. Win a poker game. Wear sunglasses while doing so. 

83.  Live in a real neighborhood where I actually interact with my neighbors. 

84. Manage social media for a touring band. 

85. Go on a heavy metal cruise. 

86. Have a decent bra fitting. 

87. Go to Hawaii with Sarah to celebrate our birthdays. 

88. Get overall financial house in order so it is not a constant source of anxiety. 

89. Have a regular practice of having people over to my house for meals and conversation.

90. Write my travel stories down. 

91. Create an annual tradition with my cousins. 

92. Drive cross-country (Check, September, 2012.) 

93. Organize and edit all of my best pictures into an online portfolio. Make prints and hang the ones I really love. 

94. Know how to cook all basic meals/foods without a recipe. 1. Soup 2. Roast 3. Cake ?

95. Have an Etsy store or other online shop that actually sells things. 

96. Travel somewhere fun with just my sister. 

97. 

98. 

99. 

100. 

I have to pick five goals now that I want to focus on in the coming year. I'm going to sleep on that. 

Mighty Fundraising for Charity:Water

I fly to Palm Springs tomorrow to attend Camp Mighty, and I'm so excited. I went last year, and it was a wonderful, transformational experience for me, and not just because I acted out a little.

(This year I can't even make a little ponytail, that's how short this hair has gotten. What's up, 2012?) 

This year, I've been working with the teams prior to Camp, and that, too, has been so good for me. I may have mentioned a time or two on here in the past year that online community -- particularly involving creative people who write, take pictures, design (websites, illustrations, homes, or lives), teach, and basically shake things up and make them happen, every day -- is turning out to be where it's at for me. It's a slightly less manic preferance than what Jack Kerouac said, that "the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles, exploding like spiders across the stars." 

Jack talked a lot of crap, and I'm not a fan of spiders, but he got that one mostly right. 

This year I'm going back to Camp Mighty pretty much in an entirely different life circumstance and mental state than I did last year. And even though so much is more uncertain, and I've been through some really weird business this past 12 months, some of it more than I wanted to bear or handle or even entertain for five minutes much less longer, I can say upon reflection that I am a better version of myself, in almost all ways, than I was when I went there before. 

So I'm going to make some Twitter handle cross-stitch ornaments, and offer some photos, if you want to kick in some money for charity:water. 

This is the Twitter handle ornament I made for Jen, aka @dell0717, a couple of years ago. She liked it. In fact, she just tweeted the other day that she'd just hung it up to start getting in the holiday spirit, and she called me a witch because I mentioned it and her just minutes later. I don't know that I'm one of those, at least not in the supernatural sense of the term, and I'm a little concerned that Jen is a holiday overachiever this early in the year, but she's really funny and nice, so I'm going to let her slide on both counts. 

I threw in a little 4x6 print of one of my pictures with her ornament. You may also be so lucky. 

There will likely be some variation in canvas and floss color, and if Christmas is not your bag, I am of course open to other holidays and non-holiday options, as well. I'd like to stick to Twitter handles, just to keep some sense of organization going here. You know how I am. These will go for a minimum $20, because they take a lot of time, mostly, and mama's hands are getting older and tireder from all of the typing, you see. 

And there's another option! Two, actually. Your options cup runneth over. 

My website, which will display my photographs beautifully, is not complete. I do have a portfolio of sorts in the works at my LauriePhotography Flickr account. If you would like a print of any shot in this "Favorites" set, it can be yours for the low, low price of $15 for a 4x6, $25 for a 5x7, and $30 for an 8x10. (My Ritz Camera that produced awesome prints for relatively cheap shut down, so I can't go as low as I'd like.)

My favorites are this one: 

And this one.

You may like other ones better. That is okay, too. 

I'm warming up to sell my stuff just for me in the new year, along with the portrait work I'm doing. These are life list goals, people, so your support can make a difference in my confidence and personal growth, too! Don't you love that? I KNOW YOU DO. 

And finally! If you'd like to pick a shot from my Instagram album, or my main feed, I will send you a Postagram  (yes, like a real postcard from Instagram. Isn't the future fun and insane?) of said shot, for the low, low price of $15. I will also send you a very nice message on that Postagram, if you email me your address. There's more information about the Instagram business here. 

So that's it. If I cannot scare up $200 to help my people dig a well from this PLETHORA of visual and crafty options, I am going to hand in my internet fundraising card. If you want to do any of these awesome things, go here. Pick your dollar amount poison, and what you would like to receive. Put my name in the notes. Comment here and tell me what you want. (Make sure you include an email, so that I can get back to you.) If you cannot comment because sometimes TypePad doesn't like to let people comment, @me on Twitter @lauriewrites, or email me at lauriesays@gmail.com, and I will hook you up. 

Whew. Okay. I'm ready to go now. 

*Date and processing/shipping time information: I will be in California until Monday, so no picture-making or stitching can happen until at least Tuesday, when I am emerging from jet lag hell. I aim to have ornaments done by the second week in December, pictures before that, probably. Just so you know. 

Bring on your wrecking ball

 

I drove to the restaurant on Saturday, for the second first time, where I worked my way through college.  

It's a small, sweet story, how I ended up logging any hours there again. Suffice to say that I walked in the door for a meal last week, and this is how it turned out, for a couple of reasons. I'm not in a position to turn down much financial opportunity, for one, the way things are going. Things are strange around here. I wouldn't call them wildly stable, but I am working, thanks to several years of writing and editing work that I did on the side of my teaching job, to the community I built up from blogging and Twitter and conferences, to the endless conversations I've had since I started talking on the internet.

And I like it. I like working, essentially, for me, although at the same time I work for, and with, lots of people, at a distance. I like being mostly in charge of my day, even though it's weird not having much of a schedule. I like working with smart, insightful, engaging, people on exciting projects. I like finally confirming, after years of knowing but not having any real, workable proof, that this non-routine routine is where my brain thrives, that I can get results (for me and for you) as a result, that I don't get sick of it, that it makes me more energized and productive and creative, every single day. 

I like being my own resume. I like telling you I'll do something at midnight and having it settled by 11 a.m. I like the people in my inbox. I can't tell you what a gift this is. 

But, economically speaking, I also like watching Rachel Maddow and Top Chef. I like having access to cable, and I'm not willing quite yet to turn it off. First of all, I live alone, do not Skype a lot or watch web video, and I hate the telephone, plus no one ever calls me except my mother and Sallie Mae (I love you, Mom.) My cable bill divided by the number of days in a month is probably worth its weight in sensory exposure that is not internet-based. Plus a certain level of the way I exist in the world is tied to pop culture, like it or not. I'd call it shallow, but I can't, because it's just part of who I am, how I think, how I connect, and how I process the world.

I also really like watching Rachel Maddow. I would have been an even uglier mess on election night without her. A daily hour of her plus, oh, one and a half minutes of Ellen dancing, is like therapy tax, whatever. 

I also like paying my rent, and buying the very occasional pair of shoes, it's true, and not eating garbanzo beans for every meal (although I would, if pressed, eat them every day. I like them that much. I'm into legumes.) And not having a regular paycheck every two weeks, even though random ones come in now and again, is an unnerving and, yes, scary situation for me. I don't know when it will happen again, or if it will happen again, but I know that I will never again in my adult life take it for granted. It not happening has made my brain different. It's changed my social life. It's changed my plans, on a daily basis and in the long-term. 

I think about everything carefully now, from the number of months ahead that I can estimate that I can watch Rachel Maddow without major stress, to the choice of whether to eat what I have in this sad little refrigerator and pantry, or go snag the steak and cheese I really, really want, for some reason. (Friday night I opted for the steak and cheese. Tomorrow I may choose differently. This is all actually really good for me, although I don't like it at all. Out of the comfort zone and all.) 

Anyway, last night I got dressed up in decent clothes and got in my car. I got on the Beltway and I started driving in a really familiar direction, to work a host shift at a place I haven't clocked in at since 1996. Since I said I'd do it, I'd been thinking about it with a mix of amusement and nostalgia, and a little bit of dopey excitement. I'd be out of the house to do something useful, maybe. I'd be working a different side of my brain. I'd make a quarter of my cable bill. 

It came clear as I drove that it was a gorgeous, mid-fall Maryland pre-sunset evening. Everything glowed. Fewer leaves on the trees meant that the light got through more obviously. I was in what I'd identify as a good mood. So I turned up the radio in my car for the first time (I'm not kidding you. I know. Come on, lucky 2013!) since I got home from my road trip in September. Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball cd was in the slot, not surprisingly. 

The song of the same name was on. 

"When your game has been decided 

and you're burning up the clock

and all our victories and glories have turned into parking lots

When your best hopes and desires have scattered to the wind

and hard times come and hard time go and hard times come and hard times go and hard times come and hard timesgoandhardtimescomeandhardtimesgo just to COME AGAIN."

I started crying and I just cried like a fool, I cried all my way to that restaurant. I cried for roads I was on again and roads I'd been on and stuff that was messed up. Around the exit where I really needed to worry about my eyes looking crazy at my destination I said out loud "What in the WORLD LAURIE?" which typically makes me stop crying but it didn't. 

I cried because it was all hitting me, that there were times on that road to and from California when I thought my pain and confusion and the fallout from my choices would literally kill me. I listened to the entire Wrecking Ball cd on repeat for a good part of that trip, including one memorable moment when "This Train" took me around Dallas and on my way to Austin, triumphant, sun blazing, one of the most beautiful moments of the whole trip. 

I had been scared, that whole time, scared of the entirety of my life and of my feelings, of leaving my job and of broken trust and the everything that was unknown and the bitch of my own fragility. I thought my game had been decided, that victory and glory were foreign concepts, that everything was what I was seeing: parking lots. 

I cried because when I came home I walked back into an unmanageable vortex that landed me in an unpleasant room with my head buried in my mother's arms, weeping, terrified of my physical fragility. I was embarrassed and afraid and yet, and yet, I gave myself over to her and to my sister, to my whole family, really, finally. And that is when it started to get better, when I said I'd been carrying all of this stuff for too long and I couldn't do it anymore, and they said, to a person, that I would be okay, and I believed them. 

It's been a slow road back, it really has, but it started moving a lot faster when I said words out loud, when I trusted in that which and who has been there for me the whole time, even and especially when I told it to go away. It's still hard, but every day, it's gotten a little better. I'm still nervous and worried and I still toss what are probably not the smartest things around in my head on a daily basis, but I'm better. I'm so much better. 

I love Bruce Springsteen for unwittingly giving me context for all of this craziness. I'm just a drop in the bucket of people who appreciate him, but nonetheless, I am so grateful, because music is in many ways my most essential filter, and when I don't use it at my worst times, I suffer. My year and my path would have been lacking without this record, and when I look back over my life, this is really only true of a select few artists and their work.

This train
Carries saints and sinners
This train
Carries losers and winners
This Train
Carries whores and gamblers
This Train
Carries lost souls
This Train
Dreams will not be thwarted
This Train
Faith will be rewarded...
 

I finally added seeing him live in New Jersey to my life list. I've never seen him in concert, and that seems like the place to do it, if I'm going to.

Instagram Online (Finally) and Ramping Up for Charity:Water and Sandy Relief

Since last I failed NaBloPoMo, President Barack Obama was re-elected decisively, and the marriage equality initiatives in four states -- Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington -- passed. I slept very little for 48 hours because I was nervous, and I wasn't really sure what to say, other than "please please please" and finally, thank you. Tonight I came up for air, and found out that I have access to the legit Instagram web viewer for my account. 

This is like Instagram Christmas for a mobile photo dork like me. 

I am (really) active on Twitter. I am on Facebook a lot. I care about Pinterest and FourSquare, Yelp and FoodSpotting and all of the other food and travel apps that populate my iPhone. 

But I really love Instagram. 

My profile is here if you'd like to follow me.

I also really, really need to raise some money for Charity:Water, because I have a big event coming up next week and my team needs help. I'll be telling you more about that tomorrow or this weekend, but in the meantime, if you'd like to pitch in $20 for my campaign, I will happily make you a print of one of my Instagram shots.

What, some of them are pretty!

I'll be expanding this to some of my DSLR photos when I talk to you next, and splitting any proceeds over and above the $200 I need to raise (not a lot, right?) with a vetted Hurricane Sandy relief source.

Too much water or not enough, there is so much need in the world. It's been weighing on me hard, mostly because I don't feel like my access to funds and my lack of proximity to New York/New Jersey is enough to help anyone at all.

But I can still pitch in to get a big well dug in Rwanda, and some more to help my neighbors to the North, who are on my mind day and night. I know it's tough times for everyone, but I still feel compelled to spread the word. I'd Kickstarter everyone, if I could. 

NOH8

Today I drove just ten minutes from my house and was a part of a movement to promote "marriage, gender, and human equality through education, advocacy, social media, and visual protest." Hey! Those are pretty much all of my favorite things. (I care about people getting married who want to, but it's not my favorite. It's...a good thing when it works. Everything else, yes.) 

It's called NOH8, and it initially began as a response to the sad upholding of Proposition 8 in California, an amendment to the state constitution banning same sex marriage. Subjects pose with duct tape over their mouths, and in most cases in positions that support the concept of silence -- silent protest, silencing of civil rights, silencing of relationships and access and all of the things upon which our interconnectedness as human beings thrives. 

I have been looking for a NOH8 shoot that I could get to since I started really paying attention to Question 6 in Maryland this year. We are stuck voting on the Maryland legislature's passage of lgbt marriage this year, because opponents took the passage to referendum with enough petition signatures to get it on the November ballot. 

Because we don't have enough other stuff to do. Because people are that threatened by the desire of same sex couples to unite legally so that they may not only solidify their personal commitments to each other, but also their rights regarding property, health care, finances -- you know, all of the things that married couples share. 

I don't know if I'll ever get married. I don't know if and when I ever opt to do so if it will be a man or a woman who rocks my organizational and emotional world in that way. Just don't. But I know that if I want to go to a courthouse and get a certificate to sign my life on with another human being's in my state, I don't want it to be my neighbor's vote that decides whether or not I get to do that, just because I happened to like that chick's chocolate better than that guy's peanut butter. 

It is that simple, people. 

So today, I got out of bed and I put makeup on and fixed my hair, on a Sunday. (THAT IS HOW MUCH I CARE ABOUT THIS.) I also may have done the same yesterday, because my friends who were going and I thought that the shoot was yesterday. So that makes two weekend days I have fixed my hair and put MAKEUP ON before 2. Or at all. And I drove to Gaithersburg, which is this small town not even ten minutes north of me, and I met my friends (who are legally married in Washington, D.C., thanks, Washington, D.C.) and got my picture taken. 

You give them some money ($40 in my case, for which I get a digital print and this experience. I consider it my contribution to the cause of waking the hell up, America. Hello. I'd pay $40 a month to that cause.) 

They put a tattoo on your cheeck, and duct tape on your mouth.

Adam Bouska does his thing.

And he is good. I have done portrait sessions, and the thing I still find most awkward is telling people what to do. It can feel false and weird, but he just looks at you and seems to intuitively know how to tell you to stand and what to do with your hands. I want to be that good at it. 

I also appreciated him taking the pressure off of me. And from what I saw on the back of the camera, I knew he was right on. (Which you can tell from looking at the scads of portraits on the NOH8 site, anyway.) 

Adam shoots them all. He travels to all of the cities where the shoots happen, and takes all of the pictures. He also hugs you at the end, and you can tell he means it. 

I will get a digital print of my picture in a few weeks. I will then, undoubtedly, make it my Facebook picture, maybe my Twitter avatar. I don't even know. I will leave it on my computer for life. 

It'll be way past November 6 when I get this picture. I hope by then that Maryland will have done the right thing and voted yes as a body on Question 6, so not only can I and anyone else who lives here throw black and white gender definitions out the window as a legal arbiter of marriageability (really, just make sure that mofo has a source of income and a VEHICLE, y'all, and that they are trustworthy and dig your scene. Let's get down to business, here.) But I can also take my own damn camera to Rockville City Hall and support my economy and our greater sense of humanity by shooting some fabulous, if tastefully understated, gay weddings. 

I cannot tell you how much I want to do this. 

I want this for Minnesota, Maine, and Washington State too -- the other places who have ballot initiatives coming up on Tuesday. I want this for our whole country. I just want people to be people, and not to have to worry about this anymore. 

Yes on 6. NO MORE HATE, or H8. It's so over. Let's do this thing.