A Lifetme Ago

Wow. I haven't been here in awhile. And I had COMPLETELY forgotten that I had actually built up a little bit of a head of steam before I abandoned this poor thing on the side of the information super highway so very long ago. (Like over a year and a half ago - yikes!)

Wellll, life has changed. Not that anyone is reading this to keep up. But there's something about shouting into a void that feels good for the soul. "Just getting it out," I suppose.

As I was saying, life has changed. I am now working full time as an administrative assistant and miss terribly the days back when I could make my own schedule - tell "the man" to go fuck himself if I wanted to. Miss terribly the days when I was constantly worried about money and not having health insurance and not knowing what I was doing with my life and not really being able to do that much in this incredibly expensive city because I was constantly worried about money...wha? No. I do not miss those days. Duh.

But I do miss having days off during the week and getting to walk around the neighborhood when it's all nice and quiet and empty. Miss not doing anything, not getting my ass out of the house all day, wasting time in the apartment watching stupid shit on my computer, calling my girlfriend and bugging her but not doing the dishes while she's gone. Again, do not miss those days.

However, I do at least miss those days when I could look forward to my girlfriend coming home from work and making dinner with me. Miss fighting about who cleaned the apartment the most recently, why she doesn't want to have sex with me anymore, why I'm insecure about her going out without me, why we can't do more with our apartment...

There seems to be a theme here...

I suppose what I'm getting to with all of this is that I am at a point of change in my life. Big change. The entire last year was one big shift, in fact. (A phenomenon which seems to have been present in MANY people's lives - it's kind of creepy how many people have told me that 2009 was rough.) Lots of dying family, pets and relationships - my own and close friends'. And it is easy to fall into the trap of looking back at those halcyon days - shading them all with a golden, glowing light - and not remembering the shit that I was slogging through at the time.

But what am I really getting to with all of this? Good question, dear, imaginary reader. Good question. I suppose the thing that is prompting this outburst is that this moment of transition is still in progress and I am at a crossroads of sorts. A point at which I can either really, totally go down a new road or try to maintain one of the cardinal directions I was following, but with some major improvements. Well that metaphor just fell flat on its face.

I have to figure out if it is possible to grow and change as a person while staying in touch with an important person from my life or if I need to totally sever ties in order to fully move forward. Which also means that I have to figure out if I even want to fully move forward. Or if the gamble of trying to hang around and seeing how things play out is worth the possible side effect of feeling like an idiot who has wasted a lot of time if things don't work out.

Alright, I'll stop beating around the metaphoric bush and be direct for once:

How do you know when a relationship is really over? You can say it's over. You can say "Yes, we are broken up. We are no longer dating. We are 500 miles apart. We are just friends." But does that really mean anything when you talk at least once a week? When not talking to the person for more than a week makes you grumpy and a good conversation makes you feel like you're on the moon? When, really, you're still very much still in love with the person? When you've started to think that she might just be one of the loves of your life but you can't quite tell if that's just crazy-talk? When you have both agreed that you'd like to get back together at some point, just "not in the immediate future." When you're pretty sure that she's still in love with you too? If all that is true, are you really broken up?

And what if you really, truly, want to grow as a person? Want to learn more about yourself, become more independent, more confident, feel capable of following your dreams and looking out for yourself. If you want to make sure that if you ever do get back together, you do it with open eyes. And have grown and matured in the ways that prevent you from simply falling back into all of the old, horrible habits that you quite rightly broke up over. Do all of those self-actualizing things that you can really only do when you're single. But you somehow want to accomplish all of that growth while still having that person in your life in some capacity? What do you do then?

What. Do. You. Do. Then?

Well, it's been a full month since I last posted. Which isn't a big surprise (what with "the ADD" I never expect myself to be able to stick with something,) but I'm still annoyed with myself. And really, the fact that I didn't realistically expect myself to keep up with writing regularly is part of what annoys me.

Having lots of grandiose plans, more grandiose plans than you possibly tackle is a common trait in people with ADD. As is finding it extremely difficult to accomplish any long-term projects. I have struggled with both of these tendencies for as long as I can remember. And let me tell you, it's a neat little set up for feeling like a schmuck.

With each new plan, I inevitably convince myself that this is the one, that I will finally be able to clear the hurdle and become the super organized and efficient person I dream of being. Complete with a great outfit, expensive purse and sexy little blackberry. There I go, in my imagination, striding down the street with purpose. Of course it is never this simple. And I'm sure that the people I see who do look so put together only feel about half so much, if that.

So I am forced back to earth, with the consolation that at least I'm diagnosed and no longer have to live with the awful guilt of constantly blaming myself for 'not living up to potential'.

And when I'm really honest with myself, I have to say that my screw-loose ADD brain contributes greatly to my charm (or what I like to think is charm.) I'm creative, spontaneous, sympathetic, smart and funny. All traits that can absolutely be found in my non-ADD brethren, but are given a different, shall we say - flavor? in someone with ADD.

But still, having to struggle so much harder than most people to 'keep up' gets frustrating. And I am a master of beating myself up, so instead of letting my accomplishments build me up, I frequently just write them off as flukes. Kind of retarded, hunh? I agree.

So with the blog, I was getting this nice head of steam up and writing regularly and actually liking what I was writing. But then I started to think about it, and doubt it and worry about it. So I clammed up and have been waaaay critical about what I was going to write about and have therefore stalled out. Which is frickin' ridiculous because no one is reading this thing. So why be self conscious? Why not just vomit out the chaos that inevitably builds up in my jumbly brain into this blog and stop worrying about it?

Deal, self? Deal.

Well Worth the Heartburn

You know what I love?? I love it when the Egyptian guy in the halal truck asks me if I'm Miss. America, tells me that he will give me anything, including his truck, that I don't need to drink diet soda, and that I don't need hot sauce because I'm already hot enough. Oh and I also love it when he includes the diet soda for free. All done in a decidedly friendly and non-creepy manner.

I was grinning like an idiot all the way back to my building.

You know what else I love?? I love it when I decide to try a gyro on rice for the first time even though I don't know how it's pronounced and it embarrasses me to order and when I finally get it back to my desk and start eating it, it turns out to be one of the most delicious things I've put in my mouth in months. And yes, I meant for that to sound dirty. Because eating that thing was a very special experience. The sort of food experience where you just wish with every part of your heart that you wouldn't get full so that you could just keep eating. It was tender and perfectly seasoned and oh so fatty and the white sauce was so cool and the lettuce and pickle tasted so fresh and light in comparison. I was so very happy to have some alone time with it at my desk.

I feel like I could sing the praises of that gyro from the rooftops of every building on wall street right now. But that would probably get me shot down by some security patrol in about 7.9 seconds. I guess I will just have to settle for writing about it here.

Forward charge!

Alright, scratch that last, self-pitying, I-can't-get-anything-done, boo-hoo post.

Today I managed to 1)think my way through the whole show, (there are lots of transitions and dance, so it was really helpful) 2)call the doctor's office 3)cancel my horribly high interest rate credit card that I managed to pay off and 4)call the asshole restaurant that never paid me but then sent me a tax return which means I'll be receiving a check for $200 that I had pretty much given up on. Suh-weet!

Go me-e! Go me-e! Go, go, go me-e!!

And now I'm off to do the dishes. Wooooo! Ah, the excitement of everyday life!

People say I have ADD, but they don't understand- oh, look! A chicken!

Well, I have fallen down on the job slightly, not having posted in 4 or 5 days. Tisk tisk.

I suppose I have the fairly reasonable excuse of being in a show at the moment which is sucking up a large portion of my time. 13 hours of rehearsal (not to mention outside character work) since my last posting...yeah, that's pretty reasonable excuse.

But I've also just been feeling uninspired, rather 'blah'. I think it's mainly a combination of being tired from rehearsals, being disoriented from my unpredictable schedule and a low level anxiety about the show (we're opening in a little over a week - eep!)

Related to all of this is my increasing awareness how much of an impact my ADD has on my everyday life. And goddamn is it frustrating. To give you the background, I was diagnosed with ADD fairly late in life - when I was a sophomore in high school. By that point, it had worked domino-like on my life and created an indestinguishable tangle of related problems. I will resist the temptation to go down the cliche path of the high school sob story, and simply say that shit was fucked up.

Back to the present. The real world has been tough. College was great - it had it's rough points, but I pulled through and even graduated with high honors. And really, it was the perfect setting for me, given the ADD. I was in a place where life was structured, but varied and engaging, where there were lots of people and a limited number of distractions (I was in Ohio, for christsakes.) And every day responsibilities were minimal - I was cooked for, the space I was responsible for was small and easy to keep clean and I didn't have to deal with bills and the like.

Anyway, to really get back to the present - I have begun to realized just how much time I spend jumping from one thing to another, almost never thinking exclusively about one thing. And it sucks. Part of my problems in the last year and a half have certainly been your run of the mill post-graduation identity crisis (do I really want to be an actor??) but a lot of it has also been that I feel almost incapable of juggling all of the things that I need to.

I know that I should find a doctor post-haste and get back on medication, especially since I'm lucky enough to be insured on my father's plan. I've had a year and half to do this and am going to lose the insurance in 3 months. I've made essentially no real progress on this. Which is the horrible thing about ADD - getting your shit together enough to get help can be so incredibly hard. Especially since doing all of this has become such a dreaded thing for me that I've gone into code red Avoidance Mode.

To my credit, I work every day to be aware of when I'm distracted and I try my best to work with it. I write lists, I try to be aware of situations that easily lead to wasting massive amounts of time...(like reading blogs)...I've asked C to help me (which she's been amazing about.) But I am still often left with such a sense of frustration and shame at my inability to accomplish the things that, given my abilities and intelligence, should be easy.

Of course, feeling down on oneself never helps to boost productivity or improve focus, so I try like hell to stay positive and praise myself for everything I do get done. But I just haven't been as good at it the past few days. My inner cheerleader is pooped and cranky. And thus, the blah.

Parallel Evolution

So, for those of you who've read it (if anyone is reading this thing) my first entry was called 'poptarded' - alluding in a not very pc fashion to the fact that I'm an idiot about pop culture. I thought it was catchy, cute, I was proud of coming up with it.

But NO - I googled it in a moment of desperate boredom, to discover that it is a full on entry in a slang dictionary and that someone has an entire blog of the self-same name! I don't know what to think of this?? Does this simply prove my point, that I'm totally clueless?? Or does it possibly improve my street-cred, given that I spontaneously invented a word already in use with those cool enough to need an entire slang dictionary?? My head spins with the possibilities...

Today's forecast calls for trite with a smattering of awkward

The guy who directed the oh-so-prophetic production of Stop Kiss I was in my senior year (more on this later) once made the off-hand comment that invariably, everyone talks about the weather. "That's not true," I protested "I never talk to people about the weather - that's so lame!"

Of course, once my attention was brought to it, I realized that, I did, in fact talk about the weather. Kind of a lot. And the more I thought about it, the more often I did it. Because now that it was in my head, whenever I reached an awkward pause in a conversation, my brain would naturally go into panic mode, lose the ability to form any original thoughts and I'd have to revert to the weather. It was a self-perpetuating habit.

Fast forward to today. The office I've been temping at for the last week does not have a system where guests' names can be put on a list at the front desk, so I have to go down 26 flights and get them. Which I don't mind, except that in the elevator on the way up, you have to think of what to talk about with this perfect stranger, with whom you are only going to have about a 60 second interaction. What do I bring up? Three guesses and the first two don't count...You got it! The weather. In fact, I am fairly certain that I have talked about the weather a grand total of 5 times in as many hours today. Maybe even more.

I don't know what I think about this. Part of me wishes that I had the balls to just be totally friendly and try to get to know them in the space of an elevator ride - "Where'd you grow up?" "Do you have children?" "What do you think about primary?" But that, I realize would both make people really uncomfortable and have everyone in the office thinking that I was a kook. Which I am, but in a different way...anyway. My other potential option would be to just go for comfortable silence. Which I sort of do do at times. Except that it's not really "comfortable" - more the kind of silence where you are suddenly extremely aware of where you're looking and what you're doing with your hands. You know, standard elevator behavior.

My third option, which I just came up with thanks to writing this post is to simply take it as it comes and then (wait for it, wait for it)...just let it go. Whaaat? Don't analyze it to death?? Don't worry about being awkward because thinking about it simply makes it more awkward? What a thought! I pick choice number three, please.

Now this is a realization I have come to possibly a half a million times in my life and yet, I keep having to remind myself. Which is funny, because when I do manage to let go of things and just take life as it comes, I'm invariably happier. So you'd think it would be an easy habit to keep up. But no, Mr. Self-Consciousness is not leaving without a fight. A long, drawn-out battle of attrition. Dammit.