Changes

Oh hello there! You must be lost, right? Oh. You're not? You've been waiting for me to update for like...two months? Crap. Um. Well hey, here's an update for you!

Life is change. If you're not changing you're not living. New Years happened--and it was pretty exciting! I had an impromptu party where copious amounts of alcohol was drunk, food eaten, and a lot of deep discussions happened. I really don't think I've ever been to a New Years party with friends where we didn't in some way end up talking about world religion, writing, or the moors of society. I guess that's what I get for having smart, artistic friends. We can't do anything right apparently!! But it was fun!

I didn't make any Resolutions this year....at least not on the correct day. I've actually been thinking about it really hard. I wanted it to MEAN something, and not just be empty ones I'd give up half way. (Or two days in....or two minutes in. Any one who says they're giving up chocolate is setting themselves up to fail. Don't do that.) So this year, my few resolutions are this:

1.Make this the year of homemade soup (You heard me! I'm going to make lots of homemade soup!)

2. Eat healthier (not diet. Just make better food choices)

3. Not be afraid of success (I've realized this is a big problem of mine)

4. Speak kinder to myself/compliment myself more (because if I don't love me, who will?)

Those are my 4 resolutions. I don't like diets because they're CRAP. And also, I like food. No. I LOVE food. So I refuse to give it up! I just eat smaller portions now--I've already lost quite a bit of weight doing it, so there you go, proof! If you haven't noticed I didn't put up there "become a writer" or "get published". There's a very good reason for this. It's because that's already going to happen--it's not something I need to make a resolution on. It's an undeniable fact. This year is a year of changes, which brings me to my next paragraph!

This year is different. This year I can feel a monumental shift myself and how I think. It started back in early December but it's been growing rapidly. The feeling of Change. A big change is going to happen, my old life is going to die and be replaced with a new, bigger, better one. I feel it coming and it freaks me out a little with the intensity. But I know it's here. All the stars and planets are aligning in my favor I guess! I made a couple of life changing decisions and the second I firmed them in my mind as "I will do this" the universe just snapped things into place for me. Clearly I've made the right decision. But writing. Writing is a thing. It's one of the big changes. There's no going back, no stopping, no worrying if it's the right thing to do in life. It is.

So I will not put it as a new years resolution, because that time for getting things published, for making a living off my books--that time is NOW. Not in half a year, not in four months. NOW.

Another big change that I'll be making (other than fully writing as a career and no longer needing to rely on an outside job for money) is that I'll be moving to Japan. It might take slightly longer than I wanted (which was the end of this year) but I should be going by early spring next year. If that isn't exciting I don't know what is! I'll be starting school this month, going into Japanese II and taking psychology classes (for writing! Because understanding human conditions are important!). It's a new year and new me!

Life is about to get very interesting around here, so expect more updates (Because also, as a thing, I DO want to be better about writing in my blogs this year!)

The Open Road

This weekend I head off to San Francisco to visit a friend I've known for nearly 12 years. I'm very very grateful for the friendship I have. We've helped each other through many things, and despite the distance and sometimes even the amount of times when we don't speak, we're always close. There's no hard feelings or blaming when one contacts the other after a long time in between not speaking. Just pure joy at having a friend you know you can call and just...be. I go perhaps once a year (and I really should make it more often) and it's always such fun when I go! It's truly a life long friendship that I know not every one has in this life.

When I go to visit her, I drive. It's a long way from my house to San Francisco, but I really enjoy it. I have to wake up really early--which, I admit, I hate--but when I cross over a mountain pass into the flat lands of Bakersfield (the land of cows and cow poop. Seriously. Just miles and miles of cows and poop. Welcome to California folks!) the sun will just be rising and I see a desert valley stretched before me bordered by brown mountains. Bakersfield is really just shades of brown with patches of green. I stop at the same gas stations that I stopped at as a kid when my mom took me up the redwoods, and eat at the same diner. I see the same mountains and hills and when I hit Gilroy I always stop and buy local fruit and garlic from the stands on the side of the road. Because it's tradition. Because when I do it, I feel like I'm more myself.

I'm alone.

If you don't live in the US you might not understand the appeal of a road trip. But for me, to be alone in a car as I drive across the expanse of California alone with my thoughts and the radio...I love it. It's a great way to get some perspective and as I drive I feel my concerns and worries go away. I can relax and just look at the ribbon of cracked gray road I drive on. I can use the time to just be myself in the car and listen to my thoughts and be. I think that's why I like traveling so much. I love rediscovering myself. But driving up to San Francisco is different.

Rather than thinking about where I'm going, I think about where I've been. I remember the road well, I remember who I was and how old I was when I was on the road. I remember the feelings and even thoughts I had. I go backwards. But it helps me to see who I was and how far I've come, and compare who I am now. I also feel very free and independent when I drive alone on such a long trip like this. I feel my self confidence grow in my ability to travel by myself, take care of myself, trust myself to take the right roads. It's a much needed break from my life back home.

My fondest memories when I take this trip (Besides seeing the flat lands of Bakersfield) is the twisting road that snakes through Gilroy. The lush green hills and mountains are right against the road, tall and filled with trees and bushes that cling to craggy rock and soft soil. It should look scary and intimidating with how tall they tower above you and press around you, but it isn't. They feel friendly. You feel safe rather than scared. I've been through the pass many times and it still makes me say "WOOOOW!" every time.

I love the open road.

I need this trip. I need it to reflect on my life and to review my past. This trip is long over due, and when I get out of the car, it'll be to step into the arms of an amazing friend who'll be holding a glass of wine out for me. Because that's how my friend rolls. Good thing I'm bringing some bottles of wine in return!

Shedding Skin

    I didn't grow up in a normal home--I think a lot of people don't. But I grew up very unconventionally because my dad was a motorcycle riding, Santa look alike, hippie. He had me grow up in a tepee in the mountains with trees for friends, a boat where our table became our bed, and a quaint small home by the ocean that he lovingly grew wild flowers around. All of these places hold very definable memories for me and my life. I look at back on them and remember them with almost perfect clarity. Perhaps not every day of my life, but many life lessons and even inconsequential things like watching him destroy a colony of ants in the wildflowers. I was devastated because I was watching them and found it fascinating to watch the queen lay eggs. Sure, they would soon grow and enter our home and eat my sugary snacks, but it was so interesting to watch how nature worked! Then it was destroyed by his shovel right before my eyes. 

     But the thing is, even when I look back on these moments in my memory I remember them because at the time that the events were happening I said to myself "you need to remember this moment and this feeling right now." I have always looked towards the future impatiently. I wanted to grow up. Hell, I FELT grown up at a young age. I felt too mature for my age. As a teen I didn't understand other teenagers who didn't question everything, who did stupid drama things and had boyfriends only to break up two weeks later. Why call them a boyfriend? Why have one at all? The friends I made in high school were unhealthy in a lot of ways...but I also learned from those bad experiences and to be fair, they DID have brains in their heads and were very serious to a degree about life--at the age of 16 we opened our own legitimate business and ran it for three years (legally owned the name, paid taxes, everything.).

     So here's my point. I've always wanted to grow up, or be in the future. I enjoy being in the present for sure, and I don't regret things in my past or choices I've made. But right now....right NOW I'm on edge. I'm losing it a little. I don't regret things I did in the past.....but I'm terrified of the present. I'm terrified of the me I am now. I feel like I'm on a high wire above a very large canyon and one small step, one gust of wind, is going to blow me away into oblivion and I will have failed without even getting started. Maybe this is all the backlash of me turning 29. Maybe its my fears creeping in saying "you should be farther a long in life. What the hell are you doing?" I do. I feel like I'm failing right now.

     But also I feel this....ripple. This change. All my fears that were at the back of my mind are now bubbling forth to the front, and from it I feel the desperate need to CHANGE. Like....completely change ME. I want to be different. I want to act different, I want to be so different my friends don't recognize me. Along with the fears--like that suddenly I'm too old to achieve my dreams like living in Japan or not making it as a writer--is a writhing, seething, screaming urge to transform.

    This isn't you!  

     That's what my inner me is saying. Who you are right now, that's not you. This present me needs to die. I need to be different. It's terrifying. I've never wanted or felt the need to change so dramatically. But I want to. I want to change so bad, and I don't think there's a way to stop it. But it's a good change, it really is. If I let it. But first....first I think I need to conquer my fears. I have a lot of them. I think the biggest one is disappointing people and not doing things I want to because they seem crazy or too far fetched. I want to stop thinking that way. I want to go for the gold. I want to hold my head high and say "So what? You got a problem with it? Too bad!" 

     This need to change....I've always had little bits of change I want to do, that I go through--everyone does. I want to change so badly that my skin feels itchy and I want to rip it all off. I've never had this experience...this drive, before I don't know what to do with it or why its happening. Just that it IS happening and I need...no HAVE to do it. I don't know what I'll look like on the other side. I don't know who I'll be. That scares me. But what scares me more is  the thought of being who I am right now, forever. This is NOT who I want to be. This is not who I'm meant to be.

I need to shed this skin.

Growing Pains

Have you ever had growing pains as a teenager? No? Me neither. But that's because I'm Irish and short and never had the need for them (ha!). But my sister did. She was always growing. Always. When shew as a teenager she had a few months where it physically hurt her to grow. Her bones ached, her hair ached (totally a real thing, apparently), even her teeth ached. And all from growing a bit too fast. Growing pains suck, or so my brothers and sisters tell me.

But I feel there aren't just physical growing pains in life. There are emotional ones too. Growing your mind, accepting when you're wrong about something, growing out of an environment or a situation, that's all a type of growing pain. And we humans HATE change. Most of the time we "suck it up" and keep going even if its not the best thing for us. Because it's what we know even it if sucks. But you know what Life Growing Pains are? Those are the pains life gives you that LOOK like terrible things but are really designed to make you grow from them. They look like big, nasty, scary monsters bent on drinking all your nice alcohol and turning your life into shambles. But what they are, what they really are, are lessons. Improvements. It just doesn't seem like it right away.

My life has thrown a couple of oh-dear-god-how-will-I-survive-this situations my way recently. And to top it all off, they chucked them at me while also giving me a terrible terrible cold AND insomnia. Ugh. I haven't been this stressed out since all those years ago when I lost my job and rent was due AND my roommate left me to cover it all. Yeah. I felt about that level of stress this last week. It was not fun. But now that the horrendous week is over I can BREATH. I woke up this morning without a cold and without, for the time being, stress.

I took a deep breath this morning as I drank my tea, and thought. All week long several people have told me about my car Stella (who I loved soooo much, it hurts to think about her). That while she was good and had so many memories, this new car that I bought will make more memories, new and fun memories. I wasn't ready to hear it yet. In the back of mind my baby car was coming home. But this morning, I finally came to terms with my new car, and my new situation, and this is what I have decided.

Life isn't going to throw me things I can't handle. Sure, a higher insurance bill than I've had in nearly six years SUCKS A LOT, and the fact that I now have a higher payment for a new car coming due, that sucks too. But then I have to ask that question that you learn at the age of 2 to annoy your parents. WHY? Why did all of this happen? Why do I have to get a new car RIGHT NOW just when I got a new job that provides me with income that I can actually start saving again only to see that money disappear!? It doesn't seem fair. It seems like Life is out to get me and has enlisted the mafia to help. But really, its just growing pains.

Earlier, on another blog, I posted about how I felt, deep in my writer bones, that this was the year for me. This year was going to be the year that writing was going to take off. And you know what? I'm probably not wrong. But that means extra income.  That means I'm going to be okay. And this new car and slightly higher insurance? That's going to be okay too. Because Life is really just balancing things out--or preparing me for another shift. A good shift. And I mean sure, because of my new job I CAN afford this hiccup in my life, but it's painful. That was money I was hoping to save and not have to touch. But you know what? It's all going to be okay.

This pain is only temporary. The future is going to be much brighter.

A Driver's Ode to Car

What can I say about my beautiful car Stella? She was a trooper, she survived many a harrowing and terrible driver on the road (I'm looking at YOU all non-native SoCal drivers who don't know what the fast lane is and plod along in it WELL below even  the actual speed limit), and even transported wounded friends. She was the bubble in which many secrets and dreams were told in, rants were screamed in, and junk food and hidden candy were consumed in.

She drove through rain and sunshine, through hill and dale, mountain and desert road. She was a piece of red metal but she had personality and LIFE. She never gave up. Even on her last day as a car she when by all accounts she should have combusted, she drove kids around safely, kepts us cool, and even got me half way home and safely into a parking lot before firing her last pistol. No other car can replace my beautiful Stella, but like putting down an old dog or falling off a horse, I need to move on quickly to a new car so as to dull the bitter disappointment of my loss.

You were a wonderful friend Stella.

And so ends my Ode to my car. Tomorrow I must go forth and collect my things from her dead body and then move on to another car. No one can replace Stella, but hopefully new and better memories can be made with my new car. 

Lemons

When life hands you lemons you don't make lemonade--you throw them right back and say "no thank you, I already have enough!" 

If you're lucky, life will freak out and quickly retreat, taking its lemons and stop hounding you. If you're NOT lucky (aka, me), then life laughs at you and then throws more lemons before running away. It seems to me that recently every time I take one step forward, I get chucked at with lemons. This specific lemon is the in the shape of my beautiful baby car, Stella.

I know lots of people just see a car and go "pff, it's just a car. " But this America my friends. AMERICA. We live in our cars. We raise our families in our cars. Stella was the car that I saw driving my someday adopted kids in as we journeyed in the summer of an epic Across the Country adventure. It was where I've spent six years of my life in. It's traveled up and down California, Oregon, and Washington. I was going to take her so much further. She was the car I had when I took my little sister Audrey to her very first drive in movie. She took my little sisters to their first Ren Fair. So many wonderful memories were made in her, and I had intended to keep her forever. And now?

 Now it looks like forever looks more like next Monday.

I'm not happy. There's a sliiiiiim chance she can be saved--but it doesn't look good. And then not only will I be car-less, it means I have to find a new car. A car that doesn't suck. I don't want to give up on Stella. She's my baby. But what else can I do? Life threw a lemon at me I can't dodge, nor really make lemonade out of. Maybe life is just testing me before easing off and giving my car back. Cross your fingers for me, because I really want my baby back. We have adventures to take together!

Lament of a 20-Something

My birthday is in exactly 10 days. I feel safe putting it out on this since I know no one is really reading this! And why would you!? I'm a terrible blogger who only posts at my whim and not on any known schedule. You poor, poor, non-readers. I know how hard that must be. But we soldier on with martini glasses in one hand and a shot glass in the other in the hopes that I will write a post. Well you've all imbibed enough alcohol to please me, so here is your post!

  So yes, my birthday. It's my last year in my 20's. My last year to be able to look around wide eyed and say "I dunno what to do with my life, I'm still young!" and get away with things that would be considered 'young foolish mistakes'. Its such a shame then, that I hate making dumb foolish mistakes. I was that kid that watched other kids get hurt and say "And that's why I won't do it." Yup, I was a survivor at a young age. Watch how people do things that get them hurt/in trouble and don't do it. Or just get REALLY good at lying. I think the technical term for it is 'Acting'. But I digress. It's my last year to be 20 something and then I get to be a spinster at 30. Hey, I've read the Victorian books, I know my title!

Personally, I feel bad, because I feel like I should have this panicky feeling of being considered almost over the hill.  But I don't. I mean, sure, it's the 21st century and most girls are in their PRIME at 30 right? Riiiiiiggghhht.....but usually at 30 they magically meet a man and have a kid a year later, or land a terrific job in an exotic location. Or maybe that's just our hopeful thinking. But that's not me. I haven't been in a serious relationship (okay, ANY KIND of relationship) in the past three years. I feel like I'm not even anywhere near ready to be 30, let alone 29. But anyways, turning 29, realizing that I'm becoming older has me reflecting on my past quite a bit lately. Do I regret things? Do I wish I had done more? You're almost over the hill! My brain screams at me. THINK ABOUT IT. And I do.

Personally I regret nothing. Even the bad things that have happened in my life--bad things that were beyond my control as a child and bad things that happened to me through my own mistakes. I needed those experiences for a reason. Why? I don't know. But I'm sure the answer will become clear later on--it always does. I don't always LOVE the things that happened to me, but I don't regret them. Life shouldn't be lived that way. I do wish writing didn't take so long, I do wish that becoming a writer wasn't my goal in life--but it is. I can't be anything else. Its my soul. So I trudge on feeling like I'm going nowhere but knowing that somehow, my wagon and oxen are making slow gain through the mud.

Looking back, am I proud of the past 28 years? Well, I'm alive, not a drug addict, an alcoholic (I'm Irish, that's almost genetically impossible, but I did it!), or 100,000 dollars in school debt. So yes, I think I'm doing pretty damn good. I'm proud of several things I've done. I've always tried to live by the expression "Will I regret not doing this when I'm 80"? And act from there. I started saying that when I was 11. I heard it somewhere and it just....stuck. So I constantly look at my present with an air of  "this is your chance, this won't come again, gogogogoooo!" Within reason of course. I want to LIVE past 80, so some things are just a "NO".

But now to look to the future! What do I want to do in the next ten years, when I'm 39? I want to see myself looking back and shaking my head in disbelief in thinking that I would be a nothing writer. I want to see myself having impacted and inspiring children to want to read, and teens to not feel so alone--or even better, that they too can be writers! I want to be 39 and looking back at the past nine years where I traveled the world, where I woke up with a different view in my window every few months. In the next ten years I want to be creative in every way. I want to not only write--I want to work with artists to make comic books. I'm a NEEK. That's my word for a nerd and a geek. I am both.

I can't just be a 'writer' I want to be more than that. I want to write. I want to help other artists, I want to collobrate and make a mark on this world with more than just words. In ten years time I  want to be waking up in a hotel room in the summer time about to attend Comic Con because I'M A GUEST. There will be pocky and ramune bottles and pizza boxes everywhere while I and my kids and my sisters Audrey and Izzy wake up slightly hung over. Not the kids of course. They'll be the ones waking us up. But they'll be very smart children and they'll do it by offering us all tea. And I will be on a panel to help inspire fellow geeks. I will let them know you CAN make it, even if you're a later bloomer like me. You can do it. YOU CAN.

That's where I expect to be by the time I'm 39. And I'll get there. One birthday at a time. For now, I'll enjoy my last year being 29. I will not fear the aging process. It means i'm getting smarter, faster, stronger. Daft Punk knows all to well. SO BRING IT 29!!! BRING IT OOOOON!