Confidence on building confidence

I linked to this video two posts ago and now I've become obsessed with it. I love all of these treble jig steps.

Returning to dancing after 10 years is both rewarding and frustrating. I've talked before about how I'm currently rebuilding my stamina and working on little things: new single soft jig steps, ceili dances, pointing my toes, lifting my legs, trying to remember grace. But I’m itching to be back where I was when I left off. I wish I had never stopped dancing. Stupid college, getting in the way.

I’ve missed so much of this. These girls are good (I estimate most of them are prizewinner level-dancers) but most of them are lacking definition in their trebles. It’s like a certain confidence – the girl in the pink is the best at being authoritative with her step – you have to want to pound those steps out. I never tired of making noise. I loved how loud I could be.

In almost everything, I am unconfident. My self-esteem rises and falls; I lack assurance. In the back of my head I question I am doing this right? Is this OK? I am awkward and wavering in all I do. Dance was never like that for me. Competitions rarely made me nervous. I performed with ease. My dad called it “owning the floor,” the way I would carry myself so the adjudicator would watch me instead of the other girls. Even when I didn’t win, or scored poorly I would not become insecure. Disappointed, yes. But never doubtful.

Returning to dance I am doubtful. I’m nearly 30. I am much fatter. My jumps are low. But then I watch that girl in the pink and I remind myself that I can do this. I have done this. My body just needs to remember.

(Cross posted from Tumblr)

Open and honest

Sarah wants me to delete my entry from Saturday morning/Sunday night, but I am not going to. Because at that moment, that is exactly how I was feeling. Awful, dejected, and sad. Come Sunday I had had time to process everything and, you know, it's fine.

Curious as to what was going on? Fine, let me fill you in.

It was Leslie's Bachelorette party (oh my goodness, pictures are on the way. Stay tuned for that). We were in Ice Nightclub, which is appropriately trashy for such an occasion. Bride-to-Be was shaking her groove thing on the dance floor. Justine, being an awesome friend, was finding men for her to dance with. Justine would go up to a gentleman, lean in close to him and say, "Hi my name is Justine. Do you dance?" They would smile and nod and she would lead them blithely to the dance floor to get down with Leslie for a few minutes. I had consumed enough liquor by this point in the evening that I decided to be Justine's helper. So I went off with her, in search of reasonably attractive men to dance with our bachelorette.

Justine and I spotted them at the same time. Two guys opposite ends of the bar. I went to the one, she went to the other.

"Hi," I said to the guy, whose tie was loosened around his neck in that sort of roguish, attractive way. "My name is Katie. Do you dance?"

"Not with you," was his immediate reply, before turning his back on me.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE

1. Tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Congratulations, you're an asshole."
   
   
2. Took off my heel and started beating some manners into him with it.
   
   
3. Let it go.

WHAT I DID INSTEAD

1. Turned it around on myself and felt like shit.

I stood there stunned for a minute before heading into the bathroom. I looked over my shoulder and could see Justine leading her guy to the dance floor. I could feel my face growing hot and my throat getting tighter. I walked into the bathroom and came face to face with a bunch of girls from the group and tried to play it all off all, I'm fine! What, my eyes are a little wet? Must be all the vodka! before blubbering into the A boy was mean to me and I'm so sad I might as well go back to the bell tower with all the other Quasimodos! confession.

It ended up being fine. Vodka and girlfriends can cure anything. Special hat tip to Krista, for counseling my drunken ass outside (where we witnessed an epic, Jerry Springer-worthy girl fight).

Bullshit like this is the reason I have self-esteem issues. One dickish comment by that guy and BAM, I was back in junior high.

This is a bad pattern for me. If we look back at key incidents, some chronicled in this blog like Skirtgate, My conversation with B, and recent events with Brisket, it's not about them being the bad guy, or being tactless, or not having their shit together. I mean, it is, obviously, and I am aware it on some level because I admit it in those entries. But I ultimately make it about me -- something must be wrong with me to make them behave this way. I must be ugly, or "asking for it," or not worthy of their time and consideration.

Let me just tell you, this is a fucked up way to think and behave. It's not healthy and it's certainly not productive.

I'm learning, though. I'm trying. And these entries are part of that. This place has always been about me expressing myself in a candid manner, and I hate to edit that moment out, just because some sobriety and personal reflection has made me wiser a few days later. It stays here as a reminder of how I felt in that moment. And I should I feel that way again, I'll read a few entries ahead and remember I have wonderful friends who love and care about me. I'll remind myself that I am complete within myself. And just like Scarlett O'Hara would say, "Tommorrow is another day."

Ugly

Facts on Facts: I have never, in my life, felt pretty.

Ever.

Tonight, Krista and I played true confessions. I admitted:

1) I would change everything about me if I could.

2) Anytime a guy has liked me, anytime, ever, I have always considered it a momentary lapse; a temporary insanity.

3) I hate how seemingly easy it is for other people. I admitted to a lot of envy and jealousy for girls in our group. Girls that I love. Girls that I would trade places with in a heartbeat. Girls who I have analyzed, studied, and copied in an effort to be that careless and light when it comes to attention from members of the opposite sex. Girls who don't realize how lucky and easy they have it. How fucking nice it must be to be thin, and pretty.

4) How fucking douchey men can be.

5) How despite all my accomplishments and talents, I will always be less. Second best because I don't fit into a nice package.

6) How all it takes – after fooling myself and building myself up for months – is one asshole comment from a guy to tear it all down again.

I hate being this way.

Edit: Realize now that I was being a self-loathing wanker and need to MOVE ON ALREADY, because this kind of thinking, behavior, and attitude is frankly getting old and boring. See two entries above for why it's not deleted completely.

Confessions of a Checkout Girl

Jezebel had an interesting post this weekend about Anna Sam, the author of the book The Tribulations of a Checkout Girl, who after graduating college returned to her job as a checkout girl to tide her over until she could land a job in publishing.

The post caught my attention because I spent 8 years working as a checkout girl/deli attendant at a mom & pop neighborhood grocery store when I was in high school and college. The job served me well – it forced my shy little bandgeek self to talk to complete strangers and forced me to develop an outgoing, friendly personality.

The post mostly talks about how nasty customers are to checkout girls, blaming the checkers when their coupons expire or when prices don't scan properly. I had one woman ream me out because we refused to discount her purposefully dented cans (it was store policy to send damaged merchandise back to the vendors, and the clanging sounds coming from aisle 3 gave me a pretty good clue that the cans had not arrived damaged) and when I politely offered to get her replacements for the dented cans, she called me a bitch and stomped out of the store, leaving an overflowing cart of groceries for me to return to the shelves.

Working in retail is a particular form of hell, second only to waiting tables, I imagine. You back aches, your feet hurt, the constant drone of the beep, beep, beep of the scan, the grouchy customers determined to find fault with whatever you're doing. If you've ever seen the movie Go, those opening scenes of Sarah Polley's character ringing up the harried woman who bitches her out about double coupons and how her bleach is bagged, well, I've been there. I've been the exasperated checkout girl with dead eyes working the double shift and politely asking you between clenched teeth if you want paper or plastic.

But one section of the post caught my eye:

"There are many difficult aspects to being a checkout girl that people probably don't realize; there is a lot of loneliness, stress, sadness, and frustration that comes through the lines, such as seeing an elderly man pay for 15 frozen 50¢ burritos with handfuls of warm change; having to tell a young mother with three sweet-faced children that WIC doesn't cover a specific cereal or type of juice and seeing her face fall as she realizes she has to put things back, and watching people wince as the totals add up on the computer screen. You can feel the stress of your customers; you get a sense of who they are by the items they continually buy, you can tell when your regulars are struggling when their orders go down or when they begin to switch from fancy brands to generics."

This is so true. Working long-term in a grocery store, especially in a non-chain neighborhood store where many people walk as opposed to drive, you quickly begin to develop a relationship with regular customers. You get somewhat intimate glances into their lives. Like the woman who every month would excitedly purchase a pregnancy test to only return sadly a few days later for tampons. Or the woman on WIC who, after 8 months on assistance, triumphantly high-fived me when she bought her first non-WIC order.

The one that sticks out the most in my mind was an elderly gentleman who came into the store nearly everyday. On Tuesdays he would do his regular grocery shopping. Most of it included typical old-man fair: Creamed corn, Rice-a-Roni, low-salt ham, the pre-made pot-pie from the deli and frozen dinners. Every other day of the week he would buy a newspaper, the discouted "meat ends" from the deli, and a can of dog food for his Irish setter, Lady. If I was working, he always came through my line. "How's Lady today?" I would always ask. "Just beautiful," he would always answer, usually following up with an account about how they had gone for a walk or she had seen a squirrel or some such story. "She's a rascal," he would always finish up. I gathered from the amount of food he bought and the way he doted on Lady that he lived alone and that she was his only companion. Early one morning, shortly after the store opened and I stood yawning at my register he entered into my line carrying only a newspaper and a package of meat ends. The synapses in my brain were not yet firing properly so I thoughtlessly asked, "No dog food today?" And with that he burst into tears, hunched over my conveyor belt and began sobbing. Between tears he managed to get out that he had woke up that morning to discover Lady had died in the middle of the night, while he had been sleeping. "I lost my Lady," he choked out to me. "I just don't know what to do." Neither did I, other than to pat his back and pass him tissues. A few years later he stopped coming into the store altogether, and I wonder if he had died or moved or gone into assisted living. I wish that I had known his name.

We had our regular weirdos, too. The schizophrenic who would come into the store and buy cans of Juicy Juice because they were the only ones "unregulated by the government" and would only pay in $2 bills. The homeless man who wandered into the store and urinated on a display of TastyKakes. The skeezey overweight "fireman" (we later found out he wasn't a fireman at all, just owned a lot of firefighter gear and wore it to impress people) who would come in and leer at all the girls while buying donuts. The religious woman who would pass us Jack Chick tracts with her money.

Working in the store provided a certain element of fun. A good number of my coworkers were also high school/college students and we spent a good amount of time on the clock dicking around. Races with shopping carts when it got slow, riding on the huge stock conveyor belt in the basement, making out in the milk cooler, water and suds fights in the sink room of the deli.

Best of all were the unpredictable times. Like when late one night lightening struck our transformer and we lost all power, including our back up generators. It wasn't discovered until the morning when the manager went to open and even then power would not be restored for a full 24 hours. It was a financial nightmare for the store – thousands and thousands of dollars of damaged stock that had been unrefrigerated and gone bad. Still it was kind of fun, tooling around the dark store armed with mini flashlights and Polaroid cameras to document the damage for insurance, hurriedly loading salvageable items into the one refrigerated truck we were able to get, dancing to "Car Wash" by Rose Royce blasting from someone's car stereo as we formed a line brigade to begin chucking spoiled food into the dumpsters, the store owner buying us all pizza and beer for our hard work and setting up a store picnic in the middle of the diaper aisle.

Or the time the boiler in the basement began to hum and shake, causing the entire floor to vibrate and a strange dusty smell to emanate from the basement stairs. Just as we were all starting to glance at each other with that, Do you hear and feel that too? Should we be worried? look, a large BANG caused the entire store to shudder, followed by smoke floating up from the basement and the fire alarms going off. I remember the fear and panic in the manager's eyes as she got on the intercom and said in her best smooth and soothing voice, "Attention all customers, we apologize for the inconvenience but it would appear we have an emergency situation in the store, possibly a fire. Please calmly proceed to the nearest exits. Thank you." And then turning to me, eyes wild and voice shaking, "Get everyone out, get out, get out." Trying to herd customers out the door, most of whom were reluctant to leave because they hadn't finished shopping. "Look," I told a stoner woman insisting on buying cigarettes and Funyuns. "The STORE is on FIRE. You have to leave! NOW. Go to 12th and Maple if you're that desperate!" "I'm not walking all that way!" was her huffy response as she slouched out of the store. Turns out that boiler had actually exploded, and in the explosion several cardboard boxes caught fire. Luckily, because the boiler was in a fairly isolated corner of the basement (and because the fire department got there in record time) it was mostly just smoke and cosmetic damage. After the fire was put out, we all loitered in the parking lot with the firemen. The owner sent over food and drinks for the firefighters from our sister store across town, and we all pounded icy sodas and stood around with shaky knees trying to figure out what to do next. The only reason this story is fun is because no one was hurt and because it was my last day working in the store. "Well," my manager said as I handed in my apron. "You certainly know how to make an exit."

Sluggish

One of the posters on a social site I lurk on once posted the following observation about herself: "Yeah, I'm a lazy slug, but I leave a trail of glistening slime wherever I go!"


I've always sort of identified with that, for some reason.

Then my horoscope this week:

Taurus A recent National Geographic article reported on nudibranches: colorful, oddly shaped slugs that live in the sea. The members of a typical species, Nembrotha kubaryana, are whimsical blobs of neon green swirled with orange and purple. The slugs are "blind to their own beauty," however, because their eyes can only register the difference between light and dark. The "blind to their own beauty" thing reminds me of you, Taurus -- especially these days. Would you do me a favor and acknowledge your own charms more aggressively?

All right, FINE. In light of recent developments, I guess I'm not half bad.

Maybe.

Shut up, David Blaine.

Because once again, nobody cares.

Coin-Operated Boy

Yep, pretty much.

Time for change

Things are insanely stressful over here. Plates are wobbling all over the place, what with my art work for the show being printed out wrong and not fitting in the frame properly, me sucking at writing abstracts (one that is DUE TOMORROW, oh god, I hate myself), having to read tonight despite having nothing new written, my car making a noise that does not make me happy, fighting off a summer cold, and welcoming back insomnia into my life.

This morning I dragged my carcass out of bed and began stumbling around zombie-like, trying to find clothes and get myself ready for the day. My room is currently a disaster area, since I just come in at night, dump my stuff, crash in bed, get up and dash around the next day. Lather, rinse, repeat. My floor is cluttered with books, hangers, papers, mail, bags, zines, tripods, all kinds of random flotsam from my life. How I navigate that floor after a night of tossing and turning and anxiety dreams is beyond me. So when I tripped this morning it was a forgone conclusion. I managed to catch myself on my desk chair, cursing, and noticed that I had kicked open my box of Tarot cards. The card that sailed across the room to land by my bare feet?

The Six of Swords.
Instead of ruling the emotions, the Six of Swords actually offers a highly controlled balance of logic and intuition. This is how true mental clarity arises; you can use your intuition to guide you through easy situations and call upon your impartial and analytical nature when it is needed for a more complex decision. Do not seek to suppress your emotions any more than a sea captain would want to eliminate the water. Rather, respect their presence and their power in your life, and use them to your advantage. When a balance between head and heart is achieved, truly great things can be accomplished. The Six of Swords may be a time of peace and relaxation after a long time of struggle. There could be a journey involved. Passage. You need to realize that you are now in a much better position in life. You endured a difficult transition and are now more able to deal with what may come. Change your beliefs about yourself. A trip will do you much good. This is not only a time to get away from problems, but to chart a new course that will hopefully lead to greater happiness and glory.

Make of this what you will. For me, it gave me a much-needed moment of serenity.

Juicin' on the job

Janice was right. Every hour should be happy hour.

The nicest compliment

Outside after the reception for Kit and Tim's wedding.

Joe!: And you! You take such awesome photos, you should go into business or something.

Matt: Thank you!

Me: I...

Matt: Shut up. You took a shitty band in a shitty bar and made us look like rock stars.

Me: You guys are not a shitty band. Not in the slightest.

Matt: Yeah, OK, but it was a shitty bar.

Me: True.

Lessons

Today I've learned:

• To let Debbie handle things because Brian is too busy being Brian to actually handle anything.
  
  
• Not to rush when trying to refill coolers with Gatorade because in so doing, you will slam your hand into a shelf while trying to grab bottles and thus jack the fuck out of your knuckles.
  
  
• Rugby is mother fucking HARD CORE. Anyone who says different is lying. Today I saw two rugby players slam into each other face first, and in the process, both players broke their noses. AND THEY CONTINUED PLAYING.
  
  
• Rugby players -- generally speaking -- spit, cuss, bleed, curse, grunt, fight, slam, yell, and eat. Essentially, they are 6'2" of walking testosterone, all bollocks and swagger.
  
  
• It's kind of sexy.
  
  
• In fact, it's very sexy.
  
  
• In response, your estrogen will kick into high gear. You will want to bed all of the rugby players.
  
  
• So when only a fraction of the players actually show up to the bar, you will be very disappointed.
  
  
• Never go to Maggianos with Brian, and never let him order. Our poor waitress.
  
  
• Peach Bellinis are sofuckinggood.
  
  
• I have to do all of this again tomorrow.

Examining Insecurity

Back when I wrote about SkirtGate, I wrote Luke a Myspace message basically to thank him for being awesome and standing by me. In response he wrote to me:

Over the past couple years it has been obvious (at least to me) that there was something wrong with the way you perceived your physical image. Obviously I never asked, because EVERYONE goes through this at one time or another, but I can tell you that at times I have wondered what would make one of the most confident people I've ever met take such a slide.

This was fascinating to me, because I have never thought of myself as a particularly confident person. Ever.

And yet, the word keeps coming up. As I was looking through my journal today, I came across an entry from forever ago, something I drunkenly scribbled that led to this post the next day. "B" struggling to come up with a compliment for me saying to me, "You are the most confident...confident..."

But then today in the car as we were coming back from Kutztown Jim said to me, "Katie, I think you should be more confident."

"Okay!" I replied, all energetic-like, as if I could just take off my Insecurity T-shirt and plunk on my Confidence T-shirt.

It wasn't like anything major prompted Jim to make this comment. Not in my mind anyway. We had just passed a roller rink and I made the suggestion that we should go roller skating sometime, even though, as I put it, "I'm a complete klutz and always falling down."

Jim pointed out to me that I am always putting myself down and saying things like "I'm klutzy" or "I'm dumb."

"Seriously, though," I told him. "I'm not just being self-depreciating right now. I really am a klutz on wheels and fall down when I roller skate. No lie, the last time I went skating my ass was 4 different shades of purple from falling down."

Stephanie pointed out that I do this with any number of things -- from writing, to my weight; from my photography, to my hair. And really, she's not wrong. She pointed out that she does it too -- but why?

This got me thinking: At what point does good natured self-depreciation become a cycle of insecurity and self-hatred? Where does that line reside, and at what point did I cross it? Is putting myself down simply a fucked up way of "softening the blow" because I think that others will trash me and maybe it won't hurt as bad if I do it first? That way I can tell you all that I told you so?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do know that my confidence is something I promised myself I would work at. Stephanie and I have plans and projects in the works and self-esteem is something that factors into it, big time.

A little over a year ago, Zefrank did a Show on creativity. It's a show I come back to a lot, because he talks about having the courage to start projects, to believe in your ideas and take that first step. As this is something I constantly struggle with, it meant a lot to me, and I appreciated hearing it from someone who I view as very creative and successful.

"...that unity seems to be found in that word, 'creativity'. I'm amazed we have one word that can apply to all these different things. A word that evokes wonder when I think about what other people have done. But evokes fear and self-doubt when I think about myself. Some people think of it as a born-in attribute like big hands and big feet. Some people think of it as infrequent visitations from an other-wordly muse. Some people think of muscle that can be built up and trained. And many people don't think about it at all.

Sometimes I think about confidence, what it takes to get from zero to one. It seems like what you think about creativity can affect that confidence. There's a book edited by Robert Sternburg that deals with psychological research into creativity. One of the articles says that one of the only reliable indicators for increased creativity (however they measure it) is a person's belief that creativity is something that you can work on, and change.

Confidence about gaining confidence.

For me that's the interesting battleground: fighting against things I don't think are possibilities. Not with the goal of having an inflated sense that you know you can do something. But instead just to get that glimmer of hope of possibility. To move from zero to one.

Those battles of confidence are what make that word 'creativity' so terrifying for me."

Oh, I hear you, ZeFrank.

I don't have any pat conclusion for this post. It's very late at night -- Kelly and I just got back from the Flim Festival -- and I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow in the library doing school work. I think this line of examination is important. And I'm curious. What do you think? Where do you struggle? How often do you put yourself down, and why?

Observations at 2:38 a.m.

• Regardless of anything and everything, I had a really good time tonight.
  
  
• I came for "one set" to "drop off a CD" and yet spent the entire night there.
  
  
• When the frontman of the band catches sight of you and waves excitedly because he completely did not expect to see you -- that feels really good.
  
  
• It also feels kind of rad when three people demand of you, "Where the hell is your camera? Because your photos are awesome!"
  
  
• Having guy friends in a band is across the board fun. (Not that I didn't before, but...you know.)
  
  
• So is making friends with all of their girlfriends who demand you a) drink more, and b) dance more.
  
  
• Making fun of the little groupies that gather at the end of the night may make you feel slightly bitchy, but you get over it.
  
  
• I am so, so glad I didn't puss out because I thought none of my friends would be there. Turns out, Jim and Stephanie came for a bit and later Justine made it to the last set. And even if they hadn't, it still would have been OK.

Internal argument

Voice 1: "I don't have a snowflake's chance in hell."

Voice 2: "Stop it. This is precisely your problem, you know."

Voice 1: "Whatever. My gift is realism. I know what the score truly is."

Voice 2: "I said, STOP IT. This is exactly what we reflected on at Ostara. What did we say binds us?"

Voice 1: "Fear and self doubt."

Voice 2: "And what energy did we concentrate on when we danced the winter away? What seeds did we plant?"

Voice 1: "Creativity. Travel. Passion."

Voice 2: "And what did we say we needed to do to break the bonds?"

Voice 1: "It's just that--"

Voice 2: "WHAT DID WE SAY?!"

Voice 1: "That I needed to put myself out there more. Take risks. Not be afraid to flaunt myself a little."

Voice 2: "That's right."

Voice 1: "But...I doubt myself for a reason. I've stumbled enough times. I've seen others succeed where I've failed so that I know exactly what my assets are, where my faults reside. I don't dream them away. I'm fucking practical."

Voice 2: "You're fucking cynical. And cynicism? It isn't attractive on anyone."

Voice 1: "Oh, so sorry. Guess I can't do anything right."

Voice 2: "Piss off. Dr. McCormick thinks you're talented enough and smart enough to start your own magazine. The Doc thinks your ideas are unique and interesting enough to get to Cardiff for that conference. Liz wants you to submit your stories to publications. On Saturday, Haven said that you're too hard on yourself. These are not people who compliment lightly or blow sunshine up your ass for the fun of it."

Voice 1: "..."

Voice 2: "So why can these people see these things and you can't?"

Voice 1: "I just don't like being rejected."

Voice 2: "Well who does?"

Voice 1: "At this stage in the game, I honestly don't think I can handle the disappointment."

Voice 2: "Disappointment is a part of life. It happens, you deal, you learn from it. Remember what Renee said, 'We all are fully in charge of our own happiness.' What are you going to do? Spend the rest your life on the couch with Dill?"

Voice 1: "No. I'm going to spend the rest of my life safe."

Voice 2: "Fuck safe. You're only going to get what you're willing to take. That's what YOU said on Sunday."

Voice 1: "I did?"

Voice 2: "Yes. What happened to that confidence, that kick-ass behavior?"

Voice 1: "It...dwindled."

Voice 2: "..."

Voice 1: "What? Why are you looking at me that way?"

Voice 2: "..."

Voice 1: "Stop it! You're creeping me out."

Voice 2: "Are you fucking kidding me with this?"

Voice 1: "What?"

Voice 2: "It DWINDLED?"

Voice 1: "Yeah."

Voice 2: "No. Cojones like that? They don't just dwindle."

Voice 1: "Um...they don't?"

Voice 2: "NO. They don't. Whatever the outcomes, you rocked this weekend AND you had fun. That confidence? That power? That 'balls to the wind' behavior? That's lurking away inside of you."

Voice 1: "Ok, yeah. But--"

Voice 2: "But nothing!"

Voice 1: "One word: Alcohol."

Voice 2: "SHUT UP."

Voice 1: "It's just that--"

Voice 2: "SACK UP, HO."

Voice 1: "But what if--"

Voice 2: "Oh, wah, wah, wah, wah. What if the other kids on the playground don't like me? What if McCain wins the presidency? What if zombies attack on Christmas Eve? What if the world ended tomorrow? You can't base anything on 'what ifs.'"

Voice 1: "Zombies attacking on Christmas Eve? That was the best you could come up with?"

Voice 2: "Shut up. You know what I mean."

Voice 1: "No, seriously? Zombies attacking would be kind of cool. I know exactly who I would have on my Zombie Attack Force."

Voice 2: "Stephanie, Mikey Likes It, Renee, Dave."

Voice 1: "Exactly!"

Voice 2: "CAN WE GET BACK TO THE SUBJECT AT HAND?"

Voice 1: "Oh. Right."

Voice 2: "The point is, you're never going to get anywhere if you're second-guessing yourself. Cynicism, self-doubt, and timidness aren't helping you. You've held onto them long enough. They're not working. They're not attractive. You know what does work? You know what helps? You know what is attractive? Confidence. Proximity. Boldness."

Voice 1: "Well isn't that just so easy for you to say? Isn't that so easy for everyone else to tell me? How very fucking convenient. Them in the perfect relationships, with their perfect jobs, their perfect little plans falling just into place."

Voice 2: "Oh, you know what? You can eat it, wanker. No one has the perfect relationship, job, or plan falling into place -- no matter what it may seem from the outside. You know what they do have? The sense to take a risk, to fucking try something instead of silently wishing for it. The sense to fucking work on it."

Voice 1: "It shouldn't be this hard."

Voice 2: "It shouldn't be too easy either. The only things worth having are the things you've worked and struggled for. If you fail, you're no worse off than you are now."

Voice 1: "..."

Voice 2: "You know I'm right."

Voice 1: "....Yeah."

Voice 2: "It's time to get your ass in gear. Get moving."

Voice 1: "Ok. Hey...?"

Voice 2: "Mmm?"

Voice 1: "I'm scared."

Voice 2: "Me too."

Samhain

At Mabon, Tree flat-out asked me, "So are you going to become Pagan, or what?"

I wasn't sure how to answer her. I sort of laughed and told her that I didn't know. That I was learning a lot.

A few weeks later, I told the Doc about Tree's question and asked what he thought about it. "Well," began carefully, "I think you're a Catholic Pagan."

"A Catholic Pagan? Isn't that a bit contradictory?"

"You were raised Catholic, and your family is Catholic. So I don't thing that will ever leave you. You will always find comfort and familiarity there. But I think you're discovering the more Pagan parts of your vernacular."

This gave me some pause. Something that I turned over in my mind, a lot. When I repeated Doc's theory to Tree at a party recently, she laughed as I knew she would, but then she said something I didn't expect. "He never told me that. He told me that he thought that deep down you were a Pagan and that I should invite you to some rituals."

"What?!?"

She nodded and smiled, "Yeah."

"That sneaky little punk."

Samhain was an important ritual for me to attend. Not only because the ritual was being led by friends and I wanted to be there to support them. And not just because it was the Big One, the most sacred, the one everyone thinks of when they think of witches.

For the first time I truly and fully embraced the ritual. Not that I was holding back before, exactly.

But I was. Perhaps that Catholic side of me was hesitant. Something.

Friday night, I gave myself a lot of permission. I dressed with care. I bought special fabric, specifically for this ritual. I wove flowers through my hair. On the way to the ritual, the sun was setting deep and orange, kissing everything around me with a golden hue. And for a moment, it felt like it was all for me.

During the ritual, Hades encouraged us to open up. To remember that we are from the Gods, to look deep inside and find that spark of Divine, the one that is within us all, and kindle it.

What a fucking awesome concept.

Something that I think we all forget, no matter what our denomination or belief system. Christians say that we have been created in God's image and likeness. But then we weigh ourselves down with all our problems, sins, and shame. And we forget.

But I like this concept. That there is a spark of Divine in us all, a whisp of beautiful fire within. It shows itself in our kindness, creativity, love, talent. A part of us that we can link directly back to our creation. And to one another. Separate flames from the same fire. Beautiful.

Later, Hades and Hecate both asked us to look at what we had blocking that flame. Anger, sadness, stress, loss. And release it. Get rid of it. Cast it away. Hecate exclaimed, "Give it to me! I can take it!" And she did.

Later, post ritual, Nina told me, "You were crying."

"Yeah. I cried a lot. So did everyone around me." It was true. There was a great deal of tears at this ritual. Tears, sobbing, screaming, and moaning. Rather intense. I personally expelled a lot. I looked back to everything I had been through since last October -- and there's been a great deal -- and got rid of a lot of unnecessary shit. I'm no longer allowed to be angry or ashamed or sad about of any of it. It's done. It's gone.

And now that it's gone, really truly gone in that away place, I feel so much more relaxed. Chill. At ease. I could have danced forever Friday night. Joyful, wild, Pagan dancing.

So maybe I am. A Catholic Pagan Unitarian Peace Mission Quaker. And maybe I'm OK with that.

Some observations at too late on a Sunday evening

• I can never ever travel to anywhere in the U.K. Know why? Because ten minutes off of the plane, I would be pregnant. British, Scottish, Welsh, and especially Irish accents are so dead sexy, I just don't know what to do with myself. Well, actually, I know exactly what to with myself, if you catch my drift.
  
  
• Shout out to Pete, whose accent made me realize it. Seriously, man. If you didn't have a super cute, smart, amazing wife whom I rather like, I would be all up ons. You had me at, "Bugger all, yeah?"
  
  
• I am totally going to your next cricket match. I am going to score me a bloke with an accent.
  
  
• Brian actually asked me "What's this? New man in your life?" to which I laugh and laugh and laughed my fool head off and responded, "You realize you're talking to ME, right?"

Say hello to Finn MacCool and the Pooka for me

More and more I am beginning to think that, stereotypical though it may be, I need to be half lit to read some of these books we're assigned for my Irish Novel class. I'm loving the class and for the most part enjoying the reading we're doing, but something in the back of my brain is telling me they would go down a lot easier if I had a cold Harp in my left hand.

We just finished James Joyce, which despite all the Latin, I really enjoyed. I'm sort of seeing what the Big Deal about Joyce is because like it or not, man was artful in his use of words. I'm not about to rush out and nab Ulysses just yet or anything, but I'm developing an appreciation. Still, there were points where I felt like I could have gotten more out of the text had I had a healthy buzz going on.

Currently I'm reading At Swim, Two Birds and more than ever I feel like a I need a drink to get through it. It's a good book — cheeky and funny, artful too — but it's a frame story within a frame story within a frame story...within a frame story? And some of it deals with Irish Mythology. And...how do I say this? The bending of worlds? Like the Narrator of the story creates this character who creates other characters who then come to life, kind of, only he holds them hostage in the basement of a hotel. And seduces one of them. Or something?

See what I mean about needing a drink?

So I propose that we follow Dylan Thomas' suggestion. When asked for his opinion of At Swim, Two Birds, he said, "This is just the book to give your sister if she's a loud, dirty, boozy girl!" I'm starting a book club. Nature of the book club: We meet at the bar, get hammered, and read. Who's in?

Turn the page

I don’t quite know how to begin discussing this cohesively, but there’s a definite problem facing the magazine industry. Well, at least the section of the magazine industry I’m interested in.

Yesterday, Jane announced it was folding.

Today, I found out Punk Planet is ending.

I’m obviously more upset with the Punk Planet news, which I only found out about because I happened to pick up the last issue at Rosemont’s bookstore. But Jane is worth mentioning as well considering the kind of publication it was intended to be.

Jane was started by Jane Pratt as a follow up to Sassy – essentially to cater to the grown up girls Sassy left behind. For awhile I was reading Jane pretty regularly, but eventually felt a shift as the magazine’s publisher merged with Condé Nast, and even more so when Jane Pratt left the magazine itself. While it wasn’t the best young women’s magazine, it was better than the vapid recycled articles of Cosmo or Marie Claire. This past weekend, while delayed in the Providence airport for an hour, I popped by a book vendor and picked up my first issue in at least a year. I read the entire thing on my flight home and have to say: It sucked. The entire thing was such a mess, start to finish, from the design and layout to the article content. The issue I bought is this one (now the last issue, I guess) and several times while reading I thought to myself, What the hell am I looking at? It was just so…disorganized and …empty? So much of the writing seemed like fluff. Oh, and that “You + This Move = Sex Goddess” headline on the cover? The move was rated a 4 by the girl and a “6, I guess” from the guy in the test couple. How that makes you a sex goddess, I don’t know, and when I realized this was the move they were boasting about on the cover I actually thought, “Congratulations, Jane. You’ve become Cosmo Lite.” How completely disappointed I was.

Punk Planet, on the other hand, is going under due to some bad distribution deals, which explains a lot. I used to steal Kelly’s issues of Punk Planet when they came in the mail, and when her subscription ended I would buy it whenever I saw it on the newsstands. In the past couple years, though, I stopped seeing it so much, not even at the now-defunct Tower Records, and now I know why. Because their distributor went under and lost a lot of newsstand spots. This led to less issues being sold, led to the loss of ad sales, led to the demise of the publication. Sad.

I guess my point in mentioning all of this is that there are so little interesting magazine publications out there. With so many magazines being owned by huge publishing conglomerates, everything seems to be a copy of a copy of a copy and it’s distressing. Not to mention boring.

It worries me, this crazy industry that I’ve decided to make my living in.

Weekend Recap: Addiction, Avocadoes, Gooooal!, Lonliness

People, this is serious. I have a problem. I can't stop buying cameras. Somehow I managed to acquire 4 cameras in less than 48 hours. It started when I bought the pop-art camera and the DIY Pinhole camera because I had been wanting them for a little while. Then talking about it with my friend, she told me her Mom had a 1950's Brownie Bullet, and would I want it? Damn skippy. I even found a place online that still sells 127 film (albeit for $6.99 a roll plus shipping, yikes). Score! Saturday brought a flurry of flea markets and yard sales where I found a sweet little Vivitar for only $3! And just this very second, while looking online for a photo of that Vivitar, I discovered that camera is worth about $89. I think I got myself a bargain. And you all know that to me thriftiness and bargains are like obtaining Nirvana.

Friday night was a happy hour that initially I had been looking forward to, but once there found myself feeling less than enthusiastic. I ended up feeling sort of detached and out of place, something that was not helped when I coworker who I don't get to see much sat down next to me and started in on the whole "So why are you not dating anyone" line of questioning. Two drinks and an appetizer later I was ready to book out of there. I settled in at home on the couch with Dill and a book, cozy and content until I realized that the couch, Dill, and the book are all very probable reasons for why I'm not dating anyone.

Saturday morning was filled with the aforementioned thrifty goodness. After several good finds (I also got books, shocker, and an interesting piece of original art) I headed to Whole Foods to buy the necessary ingredients for guacamole (second only to perhaps Maryanne's, my guacamole is AWESOME, yo), only none of the avocadoes were ripe. Seriously, none of them. I must have stood there for 20 minutes and felt up all the avocadoes. Then I remembered Rachel Ray saying something about forcing avocadoes to ripen if you keep them in a paper bag for a couple of hours. So I bought everything anyway and tried my hand at it. I am here to tell you that Rachel Ray LIES. Or else I am smoking crack and was imagining her telling me that. The avocadoes remained as hard as rocks, and no matter how I tried — microwaving them, whatever — they remained that way, making for the worst guacamole I’ve ever made in my life. I headed over to Stephanie’s then, damned guacamole and all, for the FA Cup finals where I learned that Manchester United is like the New York Yankees of football. No matter, Chelsea won, in overtime and even though Yahoo! Sports effed up the timing for us, we managed to celebrate the win anyway by downing Heinekens and a viewing of the British Acting Mafia in Love, Actually.

After all the British fun and goodness I raced home to change and headed off to an Anniversary party where imbibing two chocolate martinis, two glasses of chardonnay, and a glass of champagne reminded me that alcohol is a depressant and despite an awesome darts victory against Christopher earlier in the evening, left me feeling sad. Once at home I tried to rectify my mood with some cherries and a couple episodes of My Name is Earl, but nothing doing. I glumly headed off to bed, where I lay listening to moody music on my iPod until Fate stepped in. Fate had Becky call me at 1:30am on her way home from bar hopping, and while we didn’t talk about my depressing mood (I doubt I could have put a finger on what was bothering me anyway) just hearing her voice and chatting helped me immensely. After hanging up, I switched my iPod over to Monty Python and drifted off to sleep feeling much lighter.

Sunday I woke up early and grumpy. Of all the things that I could do on Sunday, the last thing I felt like doing was heading to a bar. But deep down I did want to go to the bar because I know that my time with my cousin Sean is limited (in the fall he’s headed to the University of Limerick to study Irish music). I dragged myself to Kildare’s where a cup or two of coffee and the brunch buffet dragged my emotional funk away and left me feeling happy and fond of everyone around me. A few Strongbows helped that feeling even more. Sean played excellent and to a good crowd since Cabrini’s graduation was that morning and everyone was coming in for post grad lunches and celebrations. Emma, who usually plays the flute with Sean and Caitlin wasn’t able to come and so a very attractive fiddle/banjo player filled in for her. I think I said all about two words to him, mostly because I was intimidated by him. He was my age, completely self taught, and phenomenal on both instruments. I can’t imagine being that good at anything I’ve taught myself.

It was later than I thought by the time we were done at Kildare’s so I headed home where I crashed out on the couch for a late nap and then a viewing of Match Point, which again somehow managed to depress the shit out of me.

I think I’ve decided that I’m manic-depressive.

Big Decisions

PROS
It's a writing job
It's more money with bigger yearly bonuses
A chance to see my work get published on a monthly basis
Good networking opportunities
Possibility of travel
Looks great on my resume/good foot in the door for more serious magazine work

CONS
Technical writing, so it's boring and not creative at all and I don't care about subject matter
If I get the raise I expect next month, the money and bonuses pretty much equal out
I would work in close contact, on a daily basis, with someone I really dislike
In fact, this person would be my boss
And this person drives me insane as it is
And the work I would be doing is all his bitch-work that he really should be doing anyway
I would have to work on a PC (yes, this is a most definite CON)
I actually like production work and I would miss it a great deal
High, high stress levels


I think I know what my decision is. What would you do?