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.

Pretty Time!

otter pelt thick, kinda wavy/kinda curly hair + one month overdue on a haircut + bangs + humidity + 10 minutes of blow drying + light mist + high winds = pretty

hopefully something of more substance later, I just had to get that out of my system.

Polar Bear Homicide

I was dutifully sorting the mail at my temp job, when a catalogue fell open to reveal this* little item. My first reaction, naturally, was to think: "Holy Hell! Some bored little kid from the mountains of Virginia fed his pet goat a whole ream of paper and made an art project out of the byproduct!"

And then I paused, took a deep breath and considered the implications beyond the visual heresy being perpetrated. How many of these things will end up in landfills? How much gasoline was consumed to make it? To ship it? How many polar bears will drown so that people can experience the "warm spice scent" on a "cold winter night" or "romantic evening"?!

Sorry for the self-righteous and oh-so-Oberlin rant, but there is zip, zero, zilch reason for this thing to exist. And no, I don't claim to really know anything about the environment, but a 5 year old growing up in this day in age could tell you that this thing will only make matters worse.

*I would have just include the picture, but when I tried to save it, the website informed me that, for god only knows what reason, it has been trademarked, or whatever. Meaning that they actually care about this thing.

Busy like a little bee

Saw Bluemouth Inc.'s Death by Water on Friday night with C. I don't even know where to begin with it, so I'll just boil it down to highlights and hope that you'll have the great good fortune to go see one of the few remaining performances.

highlights:

1) Following a cowboy who's pulling a rickshaw down a sidewalk of Fort Greene, accompanied by a ?Chinese? song as a soundtrack. (Cue lots of confused pedestrians.)

2) Sitting in a plexi-glass shed, wearing headphones, watching a projected video and two dancers/actors careen around an eerily lit corner of the park.

3) Listening to the dancers/actors who are miced and whose breathing, sniffling and intermittent dialogue is superimposed over the music playing over the headphones.

It was awesome. The only thing that could have possibly made it more awesome is if I hadn't been carrying the aforementioned devil spawn.

The rest of the weekend was also pretty great, including two first times - walking across the Brooklyn Bridge (beautiful!) and going to a bar by myself.

alien spawn

Whew - that first post was, shall we say, verbose. Maybe this blogging thang will help me develop the ability to get to the point. (Note to self: talking about getting to the point does not get you there.)

On to the juicy bits! This morning was a grade-A crappola. Fridays are supposed to be exhilarating, filled with the promise of the weekend. But no. These were the events. (Warning: this may get self-indulgent. Will be self indulgent.)

I was reminded that C (the gf) is unexpectedly going upstate tomorrow. I'd known for a week, but I kept forgetting. I struggled not to flip out. (She gets to see people she loves. You see each other every day. Yes you've both been busy, but that will pass.) I kinda flipped out. But then I pulled it back together.

Walking to the train it came out that she would actually be gone alll weekend. I kind of started crying, but fought it off. I walked faster and put my stony angry face on. C expressed concern. I brushed her off. And felt like a jerk.

We got to our coffee shop. I realized that my leftover chinese had leaked all over my bag. So I really started to flip out. And really kind of started to cry. It was the kind that more comes out of your nose than your eyes - you know, the really sexy kind.

In the midst of blotting vinegar off of all of my stuff, I told C that she should just go ahead without me to the train. Have I mentioned that I can be a drama queen? Being sensible, she walked out. I felt abandoned and hopeless. I threw all my shit back into my bag, bought my croissant and huffed out the door, swearing at a little yappy dog on my way out. (I have become someone who swears at random animals. But that's another post entirely.)

As I was preparing to storm my way to the train, C popped out of nowhere and offered me a drag of her cigarette. (You should know that I'm actually dating an angel...who wears a puffy coat and baseball hat. To hide the wings and halo, probably.) After a little nicotine, the world looked better. (Sorry mom.) I made it to work and I can't even smell the vinegar stench that I'm sure my bag is giving off.

The moral of the story? PMS + stress + sleep deprivation = me birthing THIS

poptarded

Well I have taken the leap and joined the blogging world.

On the surface, this may seem like a run of the mill event, but hidden beneath the surface is a story of destiny flouted, genetic predisposition resisted, history not repeated.

We will begin at the beginning.

My father did not know who the Beatles were until 1967. While browsing the $3 bin of a record store in Saratoga recently, he called out to my sister and I - "Do you know this band? I think they're Dutch!" He was holding an ABBA CD.

Things don't boil down so easily on my mother's side. Let's just say that 1)she grew up in small town Ohio 2)her father was a concert pianist and a snob, a genius snob, but a snob nonetheless and 3)she's just kind of a shy dork.

So when one thing led to another and my sister and I showed up on the scene, we were raised on classical music and PBS. I did not listen to Michael Jackson or the New Kids On the Block. I would very occasionally sneak some Punky Brewster by asking to watch the McNeal Lehrer News Hour (frequently, I would actually just watch the news.) And to this day I don't really know what Fraggle Rock is. (There were puppets involved, right?)

In 2nd grade, I made the decision that I needed to update myself. I needed to listen to music more current, more hip, something written after 1900. So I started listening to Oldies 103.3 FM. This did not improve matters much.

I think you get the idea.

Let's fast forward to college, shall we? I went to a small, liberal arts college in the midwest. When I arrived, I did not know what a hipster was. I quickly learned the proper level of intimidation, envy and scorn that should be shown towards those cool enough to sneer at you while wearing a granny dress. Because my school was teaming with them. We also had a great concert scene - Sufjan Stevens, Cat Power, Peaches and a bunch of other ones who people were excited about but whose names I've forgotten. I've forgotten because I didn't go to any of the concerts. Because I was in rehearsal. And clueless.

Jumping ahead again to graduation. I had a BA in theater and much better taste in music than when I'd arrived (thanks to a series of savvy boyfriends and roommates.) I had spent 4 years rubbing elbows with a bunch of displaced New Yorkers, which always helps raise your pop-culture awareness. But the fact that the rubbing had occurred in small town Ohio put a damper on things.

I was hopeless at movie trivia, I did not own a pair of converse and I had never drunk a 40. I was still poptarded.

So where did I decide to move? Brooklyn. Who did I somehow end up dating? A recent graduate of a top local art school who'd studied Industrial Design. Someone who grew up in Detroit and knew about things like beat matching, (it's something DJs do?) sneaker culture, and the New York art scene. Someone who was cool. Someone who was a girl!?

So that brings us to the present. I live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend, I go to parties with DJ's, I have a record player, I know about things before they've happened (let alone before they've happened 5 years ago) and I keep track of internet trends.

The next logical step? A blog. Not that I expect that anyone will read it. Not that I expect that I will post regularly. Not that I expect my writing to be the pithy, current and witty stuff of the best blogs I read. But it will be out there. If the mood strikes me, I can blog. I can sit in my Brooklyn apartment with a glass of red wine purchased at a little independent store, listening to the mix my girlfriend made, bobbing my head to the beat of old school hiphop and blog.

I am still a dork. I am still pretty poptarded. But at least I have a blog. And considering my heritage and history, I think I've beaten the odds.