Secret Project!

So, I did something so absolutely awesome last week, I'm still making the Songwriter pinch me. Seriously, you guys.

I'm contractually prohibited from saying anything yet, but check back around the end of July and I'll be shouting it from the balcony.

You could also take a peek at my Instagram (@cityofangelle) if you want a hint.

Dying to Work

For years, my aunt Mary Lou would throw up every day before she got into the shower to get ready for work. It wasn't an illness or dietary intolerance or an eating disorder. 

It was much, much simpler: she hated her job.

But day after day, year after year, she got out of bed, threw up, put on a skirt suit with shoulder pads and went in anyway. She had to. There were people depending on her.

Mary Lou was the second of six girls. The oldest was a wild child and the next youngest, my mother, was a drifting dreamer. Mary Lou was the responsible one. When something needed doing, she was the one who did it.

Through a bad marriage, a divorce and multiple depressions, Mary Lou held it together. Sometimes just barely, sometimes by the barest tips of her fingernails. Her house might be filling with unwashed dishes and a dry, dead Christmas tree in July, but her mortgage was paid on time and her son was clean, fed and in Catholic school, all because she kept getting up and going in to a job she despised so much it made her physically ill.

Work is how we show love in my family. My grandfather held three jobs when his girls were little. My mother used to ride with him sometimes when he drove the milk truck (Job #2) and those are some of the happiest memories of her childhood.

Work equals love. I internalized this from a young age. No lie - I used to resent my parents for not having a family business I could work in as a kid. I couldn't wait to get my first job in a used bookstore when I was 14.

And I worked steadily, non-stop, often at multiple jobs from then until the economy tanked. I knew going into unemployment that it would be hard for me in ways that had nothing to do with money. How would I show the Songwriter how much I loved and cared for him if I wasn't bringing home a paycheck? 

Back to Mary Lou. With apologies to Mom's younger sisters Shelly and Loretta, Mary Lou was my favorite aunt. She was solid and funny and smart and kind. She had dark hair, like me, and let me borrow her books, even the ones I wasn't supposed to be old enough to read. I wanted to be just like he when I grew up.

After years of unhappiness, something wonderful happened. Mary Lou met a younger man, a friend of her sister's, and they fell in love. And got married. And were generally awesome together. She still had the job she hated, but her confidence was growing, and she was starting to think that maybe she could have more, do more with her life.

Then she got cancer for the first time.

It was a tumor on the lymph node in her neck. Chemo and radiation and heartbreak ensued. But she beat it. The bottom half of her hair grew back, she and my uncle redecorated the house, and they picked right back up with enjoying each other and planning their future.

It took another few years, but Mary Lou finally decided to start her own company, along with a couple of friends from the job she hated. They would do the work they enjoyed, but out from under the oppressive place and people that had made them so miserable. Letterhead was designed. Paperwork was filed. Offices were rented.

And then she got up in the middle of the night to get some water, and her leg broke.

A lump in her breast, which she'd been too frightened to get checked, had spread to her bones. From there it was a long, bittersweet road. Mary Lou died in December of 1999, leaving behind her only son, her adoring husband who had cared for her for so long, and the rest of us who loved her.

She once talked to me about unhappiness. About how the anger and the misery turned inward never leads to anything good. She didn't tell me outright that she believed it caused her cancer, but that was what I took from our talk.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because I find myself coming home from work every day now with my guts in a free falling knot. When I woke up on Thursday and my first thought was "Please don't make me go back there today." I woke up on Friday and rushed to the bathroom, sure I was going to be sick.

And I thought of Mary Lou. 

I'm lucky. I have options. We have no children, we have no debt. My parents are still healthy and don't rely on me for care or support. But exercising those options is a choice.

There are so many things I have on my big, life-sized to-do list. And if I let this job get to me, let it grind me down because I think I have to, then I am admitting that I am willing to abandon the people I love in the name of some short-term monetary compensation, or worse, in the name of ego as my family's breadwinner.

This is deeply scary stuff to think about. So scary in fact that it's taken me months to be able to look it in the eye and name it for what it is. So scary that I have set this post to go live at a time when I will be at a Ramones tribute show, and won't be able to change my mind at the last minute.

So I find myself at a crossroads. Am I going to suck it up and take it, because that's what we're "supposed" to do and the alternatives are uncertain? Or am I going to choose happiness and love and saying yes to life and not living scared?

I hope Mary Lou would be proud of me.

Try Something New. Then Try It Again

We went to an art show in a hair salon, because,
well, why not. And discovered this little guy.
Photo by Steven Gullett, art by Kelsey Dyer.

My friend Kylee's Facebook bio reads, in part: "I try everything twice, just to make sure I really hated it the first time."

Smart lady.

Life holds a whole lot of options. Thousands, millions. It makes your head hurt if you think about it too long. We burn a ton of energy trying to parse them out, separate the signal from the noise. We try something once, declare it "not for us" and go on about our day.

But as we get older,we become set in what we know we do and don't like. Or rather, what we think we know. We let our capacity for novelty slip away, we take fewer and fewer risks, and our sense of wonder and joy begins to atrophy.

Some things in life, you know right away that once was more than enough - like getting cancer, or taking a group vacation, or watching an internet video featuring twice as many girls as cups.

Novelty is good for us. Trying new things causes our brain to build new neural connections. Couples who try new experiences together report greater long-term satisfaction with their relationships.

But too often, we  carry around ideas about who we are and what makes us happy based on a single experience that happened decades ago. When, if you're like most people, you were a completely different person. One who didn't like broccoli, but also one who thought acid washed jeans were awesome. You were wrong about the latter; maybe it's time to revisit the former.

Today, try one new thing. Or, try one old thing you thought you didn't like. Could be black and white movies. Could be cranberry juice. Could be performing stand-up comedy or doing yoga.

Maybe you still don't like it. Once a year, the Songwriter confirms all over again that mushrooms are an invention of Satan himself. But maybe you'll discover something new about yourself or your friends or the the world, and either way, that's good enough for today.

What Are We Waiting For?

I believe way too many of us live our lives in the conditional mood. This is another one of my core principles. To illustrate what I mean, I want to talk about computer programming. No, I know, but it'll make sense. Sorta. I promise.

Back when I was a wee little tot, they brought a bunch of Commodore PET computers into my tiny Catholic school. We were the first class in the history of Corpus Christi to be learn computer programming, the wave of the future!(TM)

Once a week, we learned to do simple problems and animations in BASIC (we saved our work to cassette tapes, that's how old school I am - none of your fancy floppy diskettes here!), and to be honest I only remember two things. Every line of code must begin with a multiple of 10, and how to construct an "if/then" statement.

Life before USB

photo by Toni Saarikko

Simply put, you told the computer that "if" the result of a certain line of code was X, "then" the computer should do Y. Like, "if" the answer to a math problem was input correctly, "then" the screen should display my crudely animated fireworks. Hey, math was not my strong suit, so every right answer was cause for celebration.

So. What do DOS computers and their antiquated programming languages have do with better living? Simple. Too many of us (including me way more often than I'd like) go through life shackled to "If/Then" thinking.

• If I get a promotion, then I'll be able to work on that project/issue/area I really care about.
  If you care so much, why don't you try to work on that project/issue/area now, promotion be damned? Seriously, you're going to spend AT LEAST 25% of your entire time on this planet engaged in "work." And if you drop dead of work or stress related ailments, that number only goes up. Maybe you should think about how you could be happier there, rather than dreading it.


• If I make $X-thousand a year, then I'll think about having kids.
   I know kids are expensive. I really do get it. And I would never in a million years want to raise a kid the way I was, in poverty and worse. But life is crazy. And uncertain. And no time is the right time, no reason is the right reason. If you want something as demanding and fulfilling as children in your life, and you feel like you're psychologically and emotionally as ready as you can be, just freaking do it. The money, the house, the vacations - that stuff will come or it won't, but you'll always have your kids and you'll always be their parent. Trying to put a financial metric on jumping off a cliff is crazy-talk.


• If I could just get a chunk of time off, then I could write that book I've always talked about.
  This one is particularly debilitating, and really, fill in the fulfilling pursuit of your choice: painting, acting, learning Japanese, building custom hot rods. It's one of those lies that feels true. I know, because I clung to it for a long time. Too long. Life is short. We all have to make choices about what to do with our time. Choose your choice. If what you're doing is more important than what you say you want to do, great. Awesome. Own that and stop arguing with reality. But if the other thing, the thing you keep putting off, if that is really what you want to be in the world, then for the love of all that's holy, do it. And not when someone hands you the time; when you TAKE the time with your bare hands, like some sort of creative Viking marauder. You'll feel better, you'll live better, and you'll love better. Trust me on this.


• If I get married, then I'll think about where I want to live and in what kind of home.
  I know that this may sound skewed towards women, but I have known a number of men who used the same logic to live in miserable squalor. Contrary to stereotypes, they didn't revel in it, either - it dragged them down, body and soul. But I've also known women who put off seeking their highest ambitions because quote-I don't know where my husband's job might take us-unquote. Some of these women were married. Some of them weren't even seeing anyone. The mind, it boggles. This life, this is the one you have. The only one. Planning is good. I love to plan. But planning will only take you so far. Sometimes, you have to plunge or you risk being carried away on someone else's current. Create the life you want now, and when change comes, you won't have to mourn that you never had it.

Creative Vikings Unite!

You can see how destructive this kind of thinking is. But it's so a part of us, so crucial to the ways we justify putting off our own happiness, that most of the time we shy away from it, like a horse wearing blinders.

The second half of each of those statements is a thing you could actually have, if you just stopped fiddle-farting around and got out of your own way. The first half? Sure, those would all be nice. But what do they all have in common? They are things that, to one degree or another, are NOT within your control. So what you've done is ceded your heart's desire to outside circumstances. And when you don't get the promotion, or the time off, or meet the perfect partner tomorrow, you haven't just lost out on one life-enriching thing; you've lost part of your deepest dream. And that, my friends, is corrosive. It eats away at all the good things in your life. You know that spiel about a dream deferred? Turns out he wasn't kidding.