LaurieWrites

(Don't) Let Her Sing

2010-01-24T00:15:47-05:00

The other night I was driving and recorded myself trying to sing Sheryl Crow until I got disgusted with Soak Up the Sun and stopped. I have been encouraged to share the results here. You do not have to click play. In fact, I recommend that you do not.

But if you came here to hear my Darius Rucker impersonation as it segues into a deconstruction of Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue (WOAH! YEAH! I TOTALLY FORGOT MOST OF THE WORDS EMEFFER WOAH YEAH!) you are totally in luck.

If you didn't, all I can tell you is that I like to drive, a lot, when traffic is not a consideration, and I like to sing, when talent is not a consideration. I have no problem driving relatively long distances alone. I'm into back roads and road signs, and pretty much anywhere you put me I want to cruise around and check it out and listen to music.

I drove to North Carolina and back last weekend and left my iPod radio adapter at home. I didn't realize it until I had left and the Aquia, Virginia, Target (a ritual stopping place for me on 95 South, every single time for reasons beyond my understanding) did not turn up a clearance or even sale-priced replacement that I could justify buying to have around as a second string. So I was relegated to the radio and the weird assortment of cds I've jammed into the slot on my car door, plus a few I had in my laptop bag that I'd picked up at Best Buy (Nirvana-Nirvana, Alice In Chains-Facelift and, um, Def Leppard-Vault, hahaha) that clearly out the grunge/metal/whatever the hell roots that I have no idea I cling to so hard until I'm in front of a rack of $7.99 cds and I end up buying stuff I used to have a long time ago before someone moved and took it or I crushed it under my car seat or gave it to someone to copy and they never gave it back or any of the myriad reasons why I'm currently destitute because I spent most of my late teens and 20s buying cds multiple times.

As much money as I toss into the iTunes black hole, I still probably come out ahead, seriously.

Long story short I listened to Appetite for Destruction five times nearly in a row with some breaks to scan through country stations and Christian pop stuff that I cannot stand regardless of its message and the stations that seem to cycle through that Ke$ha character and the new Britney single and FloRiDa's hot new song, Low, which is not really new but at least it's not that "You're a Jerk" "song."

By the time I got home I had perfected my rendition of G'nR's Rocket Queen, which, if you are not aware, is one of the best songs recorded by anyone, anywhere, I swear. And I had also thoroughly revisited the therapeutic practice of singing while driving, and drew a few conclusions, some rules for singing in the car, if you will.

The first rule of the singing in the car club is that there are no rules.

Obviously. That is why Hoobastank suddenly seems like a really great idea. And no I don't know how I know all the words either. Shut up.

And no, I did not hack off the end. I'm not editing this stuff. Why are you watching this anyway? Why don't you go read a book.

The second rule of the singing in the car club is that you do not have to know all the words. I mean, it's nice if you do, but who's policing you? It's also totally fine to make embarrassing noises that approximate the sounds of the instruments. This is the musical equivalent of mooing at cows or bleating at goats when you see them in fields by the side of the road.

What, you don't do that either? What is wrong with you?

And actually, bleating might not be far off of the mark.

I just remembered that my best friend in high school and I had a strange ritual where a song would come on that we didn't like and we'd go, "I hate this! Let's turn it up!" And we'd sing it.

I know, I'm not sure either.

The third rule of the singing in the car club is that talking back to the radio and/or the artist performing the song is not a sign of instability but rather an indication that you are fully engaging with your entertainment source. This includes habitual accusations, such as when I say "You are so not from Philly" to Elton John without fail whenever "Philadelphia Freedom" comes on, or statements of need, such as "I wish I was in New York RIGHT NOW OMG I LOVE NEW YORK" when I hear "Empire State of Mind." It may also simply signal a profound need to pull over for a Frosty, but that is perhaps my particular evaluation of this behavior.

Fourth and final rule? (I think. I'm making this up as I go along, totally) is that no genre of music or performance deemed unpleasant (i.e., "not cool") in normal circumstances is off-limits in the car. This is why I know the words to some of the worst songs ever recorded in their entirety, including "Fancy" by Reba McEntire, and why I generally don't turn off any 70s light rock song, which is one of my specialty genres.

This is also why the clip below features me impersonating Darius Rucker singing a song that I have sung approximately 237 times in my car at various times in my life, with some color commentary and Hootified trash talk. Then the clip segues into the aforementioned Kickstart My Heart ridiculosity which, you know I don't even know. It had been eight hours at that point.

Honestly, I don't even know why I'm posting this, except that the stupidity below makes me laugh so hard for some reason that I cry. And it is not funny. It is not really funny like "Pants on the ground" isn't funny to me. And yet I laugh.

This is all very self-serving.

[Oh, and editor's note: As Kerry pointed out in the comments, this clip is almost eight minutes long. I don't expect my mother to watch it. Please don't. My "work" here is done, as noted below.]

And with this post I need never post myself singing on the Internet again. Or maybe I'll do it all the time, or just do a special Run DMC post, because I can perform Raisin' Hell in its entirety, and also still get a daily dose of inspiration from Rev. Run on Twitter, true story.

This feels really awkward.

2010-01-14T11:27:10-05:00

I mean really awkward.

Graphic courtesy of Aimee and I guess I should go over and tell Chris I read his blog too. :)

You, if you're there, and never comment (or even if you do, because good Lord a post like this with no comments would send me straight to the oven with my head) are supposed to comment.

I feel like I should give you an assignment, a prompt, if you will, but maybe that's just my teacher brain.

I'm also really resisting the urge to call out specific locations I see and am intrigued by in my Sitemeter and demanding that you tell me who you are but that would just be really, really weird.

So just tell me something, anything. Something nice. Your favorite song of the aughts, maybe. Or is that too cliche?

Actually, since I'm a photographer, you should maybe share a link to your favorite picture if you've got it. In FACT, you can visit my lonely Flickr stream and comment there. That would be fantastic. I'm re-thinking this whole thing.

Eh, whatever. Tell me anything. I'm easy like that.

Here, I'll even go back and put in a stupid picture of myself so it's kind of like you're saying hello to a real person. Which you totally are, anyway, but whatever.

Bonus points if you know where I am and why I look so freaking tired.

And for a lot of you these really should be easy bonus points. I'm just sayin.

Now I guess I should go comment on some other blogs on which I never comment. Stupid Twitter.

The Girl Scouts and Their Cookies Are In My Computer

2010-01-12T15:56:48-05:00

Cross-posted at BlogHer.

January started innocently enough. The eating - er, holiday - season passed and I had a vague plan to get back into last year's fairly successful effort to get myself to a more comfortable weight and back to a sanity-saving exercise routine that tanked in September.

I don't want to talk about it.

Anyway, just after my new year's snack of bacon with a side of black-eyed peas and greens, (that I made myself so I know just how much that ratio is true) I went back to work with my almonds and tuna, my newly re-upped membership in the water club and the spring wellness schedule bookmarked on my desktop.

That first morning back I fired up my computer. And checked Facebook, because that is important to do before proceeding with any other important tasks. And there was my friend Karma, all up in my newsfeed.

(These names are not real. I will not call my friends bad names. Draw your own conclusions.)

"Hi everyone! Happy New Year! As you may know, Beautiful is a Girl Scout now and she is eager to meet your cookie needs.

This post included an image of a Thin Mint, and a link to a site entitled "MEET THE COOKIES" that not only included graphic depictions of each variety but also gave me a link to "FIND COOKIES NOW," which indicated that if I keyed in my zip code a nearby Girl Scout would arrive at my office door bearing Samoas and a glass of milk.

Not really, but you know, it was sort of implied. And all of a sudden the spring wellness schedule icon shriveled and died on my desktop like the Wicked Witch of the West under water. Damn.

I mean really, this has to happen in January? Where are my gift wrap and mixed nut children? I can't eat gift wrap and I have to actually think about taking the lid off of a can of nuts. Do the chocolate bars and pre-fab pizza dough come out from their hiding places now too?

Is anyone selling wine?

It should be noted just for kicks that I was not a blazingly successful Girl Scout. I never went camping beyond a day trip to a nature preserve or two, and mostly stuck to badge-worthy yet reasonably sedentary activities like cooking and chess.

Yes they give badges for chess. Shut up.

My final straw was the inability to evenly sew the seam on a fake suede skirt - a fuede skirt, if you will. And I honestly wasn't kicked out, it just didn't work out for me. And there may have been other reasons, other small badge infractions maybe because I've just never been much into those sorts of systems, but for me that was the deal-breaker.

Also there may have been some crying before meetings because I wanted to stay home and watch repeats of Laverne & Shirley rather than build bird houses. That may have been the real problem, but my mother gave turning me into a responsible scouting citizen her best shot.

Yes, my mom, the faithful team player who remembers her days in sash and uniform fondly, was still the cookie mom for one year out of the two I lasted. All I can remember is a dining room full of boxes, the neon Do-Si-Do orange and Thin Mint green, and the stress of thinking how many I had to sell to meet who knows what benchmark of cookie stardom.

Anyway, now that that pressure is long gone, I cannot tell you in acceptable language in this forum what I can do to a box of Samoas. I mean, I can, but I have issues with sharing that kind of information publicly. I could maybe share with you how I can picture in my mind what a Trefoil looks like as it disintegrates in a glass of milk in the dim light of a kitchen at midnight, and how my hand trembles and my brain negotiates with itself while it chooses a number to write in the box next to the Do-Si-Do picture on the very colorful order form.

"Six...NO! What is wrong with you?!? That is approximately one quatrillion peanut butter cookies that you do not need in your life! Three...Ehhh. Still no. Two. Blah, okay. Two."

Yes. And that is not even taking into account the mental gymnastics required to calculate how many boxes of Trefoils are required for those days of simple milk-and- shortbread comfort cookie needs or the yearly limited edition with the fancy kind that you have to try although you won't like it as much as the Tagalongs so you just should have gotten another box of Tagalongs or how many Thin Mints you'll need minus that rogue box that you find in the back of the freezer on that crappy July day when you most need them because they fell behind the pile of frozen burritos.

What? WHAT?

But now there is no order form needed. There is no paper trail here. There is just a link. And a wall post with a smiley face from Karma who needs, she NEEDS to sell these cookies. For Beautiful. And also, let's face it, for me, so I can guiltlessly or at the very least less guiltily avoid the table of girls and their parents who accost me at the grocery store until well past the spring thaw ("OMG, isn't cookie season over YET?" I will think to myself, as they smile at me in their sashes and threaten silently to kick me in the shins) because Beautiful, SHE has gotten my business. I know her. I have contributed to her cause - to her badge, or her trip to Juliette Lowe's birthplace or to her iPod, because they probably entice them to sell these things with digital music players now.

Samoas. Oh, you coconut and chocolate and caramel siren cookies of my dreams. Six boxes. Six!

Now I can tell Karma how many boxes I want at a distance, in a minute. And then they will arrive in her office, and I will write her a check or fork over at least one of my ATM twenties (only one? Cheap. Cheap cheap cheap, cookie miser) and think, that isn't a lot now, is it? That isn't so many boxes of cookies.

Until I feel compelled to buy five more from other people. Because as it turned out, Karma was not the last, oh no. I know a lot of people, in-person people and people who are not only close enough to leave cookies on my porch but those who inhabit the vast recesses of my computer and distant lands like Indiana. The blog people. The Facebook friends of friends. And among them are many moms and dads and grandmas and aunts and godparents. And those innocent little children who stare back at me from Flickr? Some of them are joining the nefarious ranks, memorizing the Girl Scout Law as we speak. Some of them are taking their cookie pleas to video (even if it is just, allegedly, for Grandma and Grandpa.) I remember what it was like. And while it may be taking me a few days to adjust to this new digital world cookie order, I would have YouTubed this whole enterprise too, if YouTube had been invented then.

Other voices around the Web:

Michele Cozzens would have bought more boxes from the Girl Scout on her door step but they're only taking cash this year because so many people have paid for cookies with bounced checks.

Sheryl Taylor wanted to support her friend's daughter's cookie efforts but didn't want the goods in her house. She told her, and they're donating her cookies and lots more to a local nursing home. Sheryl sounds scarily like me:

This way the Girl Scouts win, the recipients of the cookies win, and you win for not eating them while you are on your resolution. Although I must say, she is only the first of many that I know I am going to have to dodge and pass up those Thin Mints! Dang those Thin Mints! (fists in the air)

Finally, the Girl Scouts do have an Internet Safety Pledge, which says nothing about a wall post from Mom but does prohibit them from collecting money online. So at least I'll have to walk over to Karma's office to drop off my payment. That's good for at least a Trefoil, I'd say.

On forgetting whether or not I ever told my blog that I danced to I'm Every Woman with Jane Fonda.

2010-01-05T00:13:16-05:00

Seriously.

I'm going through my photo archives for another day in a row, putting together some images for a friend of mine, and wow. The things you don't really forget but don't actively remember. Like this:

That's my mother on the far right in this one. She looks like we all felt.

This is what happens when you follow Dylan McDermott into the W hotel in New Orleans because you figure that's where the party is because his stepmother just happens to be throwing it. And then somehow you end up in the party yourself (**coughpresspasscough**) standing a few feet away from an open bar and Rosario Dawson.

Dudes this is still funny, almost two years later.

That will never not be funny to me. That ain't no On Golden Pond.

I have no idea what I said exactly to get us in those doors but I will never be sorry. Like Ferris said, life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Whole set here. Fabulous trip.

Pictures, 2009

2010-01-04T03:00:19-05:00

I go back to work in a few hours after 12 days off with lots of stuff decided and lots of things yet to do. This year has started off with the decision to move and the logistical nightmarish stuff that goes along with that, also a car that decided today that it was tired of running.

What this year has not started off with is the desire held by a large percentage of the Internet to stop eating, or at least to stop drinking and eating specific things. I think I'm eating more, actually. I should probably look into that. I am, however, yes, going to do our wellness new year thing at work and I am going to be reasonable. I just didn't hear the siren song of quitting everything and running a lot of consecutive miles when the ball dropped.

Not that there anything wrong with that.

In the first couple days of 2010 my favorite thing I've learned is how to make serrano pepper vinegar. It's astoundingly easy - acquire said pepper and vinegar, boil the vinegar, drop pepper in it. So I think maybe I'll use this as some kind of totem for my year - the easy pepper vinegar year, that's it.

Meanwhile, as I am the kind of Saturnine figure that looks both forwards and backwards at all times, here are my favorite photos from the previous year, by month.

I'm going to try to stick to one but eh, maybe two here and there or four. Thanks for playing along.

January.

February:

March:

April:

May.

June.

July.

August.

September.

October.

(Totally self-indulgent but I loved the way my hair looked here. Because I didn't do it, of course, and could never make it look this way myself in a billion years. This is what my rockstar alter-ego's hair looks like every day. It was fun.)

November.

December.

2009, right?

2010-01-01T23:59:34-05:00

This year was really great. It really was.

I mean it.

It was hard and it kind of kicked my ass as I believe I have stated here before but among the mess of growing pains and things I complained about and stupid, difficult lessons I had to learn (all of them in some way because of things I screwed up or didn't care to prioritize or procrastinated about, really) so many great things happened to me. So many wonderful people literally entered my life as some of my dearest friends, and others stayed, they stayed like they always stay regardless for some reason beyond my comprehension and for this reason alone I should not be allowed to complain.

I don't know what has happened to me to deserve it, but there is one thing I can say for sure about my life. And that is that although I may joke about being a freak magnet and how strangers come up to me out of the blue in places like public restrooms and malls and tell me personal information including their most disturbing problems, that I also concurrently have attracted some of the best people I know exist in this world to be my friends.

(I'm an unequivocal fan of my family so I should note that they are never excluded and never far from my heart or mind. And this year was mostly great and especially meaningful with them, too.)

I started off my year losing my grandma and I wrap up this year heavy with that knowledge still although it's processing better these days. And I am learning to use her as a catalyst and a guide as I believe she would appreciate, although I still think mortality sucks and we all got a raw deal but there is nothing I can do about that. No wonder everyone loves this Twilight train wreck. It's like global death anxiety permeated the pop culture.

I also went back to work full-time after finishing my graduate degree and that was a really difficult transition, I admit. I was tired, really, fundamentally, after 15 months of such crazy concentrated newsgathering work and a crushingly disappointing news bureau experience that was so stupid it almost defied description. I was bummed out about my weight and nervous that I couldn't do anything about it due to some bizarre combination of my body's stubborness where that is concerned, my relative dislike of exercise and my infinite love for wine and cheese and things that make you go mmmmmmmm in general.

I began to deal with that and in some stroke of luck won an insane Biggest Loser contest at my workplace. The mood police were on duty and along with the effort to exercise almost daily and eat better I lost 20 pounds and actually felt really great by the time May rolled around.

Summer rocked. Summer was fantastic. I was in a naturally fabulous mood for the first time, I shit you not, since my ex-boyfriend left in the winter of 2005.

Four years. Four years of maintaining, of tolerating my daily life, punctuated with occasional minor happiness. Suck.

Anyway, I was so grateful that I remembered how to be happy this summer without effort. I couldn't really believe it was happening but it did and I feel very, very grateful that although since then I've hit upon some darker times again that it happened. I know it's in there. I am inspired to keep working and striving towards it, even though that just means living my daily life in the best way I know how. I know I have the capacity for joy.

(If you don't understand this part it's okay. Just know it's in no way as self-indulgent as it can sound. It's really, really tricky.)

BlogHer in lots of ways made my summer and my year, and not just because Chicago is one of my favorite places in the country and it was invigorating to get a tattoo there. It was a profound experience for me this year. It's difficult to explain it, and that may be why I never wrote a recap post, but it's like a three-day festival of everything good about my corner of the Internet. So maybe it's my Blog Woodstock, or three-day Lollapalooza (I am incapable of speaking in terms other than outdated music festivals, apparently.)

It is this community that has built up around me in the past five years live and in person. It is wine and words and pictures. It is a ridiculously good time and I'm sure that for a lot of people who have not embraced the particular world of blogging that I do it would make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but that's okay. I wouldn't get what those people do either, maybe. I don't care about skeet shooting or Bunco or any number of other things that are probably pretty cool if you yourself do them, this just happens to be what I do. You know, over there, in that hotel lobby with some fucking awesome women who happen to think it's totally fine to take pictures of ourselves reflected in salt shakers.

Anyway, I've more or less integrated the people and experiences that mattered to me from this summer's experience into my daily life so it's not such a shocker.I could easily call them out. Karen makes me feel beautiful. Laurie put me in her phone in the lobby and brought me down a barrette the next day because I said I wanted to learn how to fix them in my hair and beyond that is a genius who became someone I could visit at the beach the very next week and at her house months later. Sarah reflects me back to myself in the most peculiar way and makes me believe in best friends like when I was 15 but without the crazy, and also may have to bring me beer in the nursing home. Suebob and Maria make me wish I lived in California. Melissa is illuminated and makes me want to be a better writer. Suzanne and Heather astound me with how much I am inspired when I'm near them. It is infinite, really, and I think we are all so lucky we have it. I believe so much in the ultimate goals of that Web site and this community. I will always be so glad I've had the opportunity to be a part of it.

By the way? Genie is the best (and also MY) BlogHer roommate who also became a mom this year and I am so happy for her and her little family. This post made me cry, because it is one of the nicest things anyone has ever written about me, ever. It is also one of the most scarily accurate summations of my personality - the darker side of it with the light of understanding and compassion shed upon it, mind you - that I have ever read and this is another freaking example of why I'm so lucky. SO LUCKY.

(This is my year-end recap and is therefore by its very nature allowed to be narcissistic. I'm calling it. ;))

There is such power in relationships. I may not have gotten the boy in 2009 that I really think I want, I may never get him, and in some ways, eh. Maybe I'm the reconstituted Virgin of Guadalupe or some shit like that. But dammit, I have FRIENDS. Offline ones, too. They are not written about so much, they are not often seen here, but they are real and they are so loved and appreciated. They tolerate my iPhone addiction and tell me they love me and know my story as writ on walls in hieroglyphics back when we used those, you see.

I spiraled out in the fall and the bad times hit again. The living situation was a little weird and work was hard. I struggled with what my next step should be and creative inspiration was limited.

But I kept writing. I kept shooting. I kept at it, although I didn't know why, and that's probably what should be my epitaph.

She kept at it although she didn't know why.

This year I took a long trip to California to watch my sister celebrate her master's degree. We had a really meaningful family vacation in August, and reconvened on the same beach in November to celebrate Thanksgiving and my uncle's birthday.

I spent some time late in the year with one of my oldest and dearest friends, someone who in spite of miles and distance and such different lives will always be one of my touchstones, who taught me in the weeks after that visit that we never, ever know what effect we're having in the moment. We just have to do and say the best things we can. We have to be honest to the best of our ability with the people who mean the most to us, the people we'd save from fire and flood if we could. We have to trust them to make the best decisions and to be able to hear what we're saying when it is based in deep love and concern.

I had some great meals this year and some disasters. The best in restaurants were a Cioppino at Sogno DiVino in San Diego's Little Italy that I would have shipped to me frozen without question and a shrimp burger and beer at Fannie's on Tybee Island, Georgia, that combined with an ocean view made my trip and made me believe once again in the restorative power of coastal American food. I ate more sushi and edamama this year than I have consumed in my entire life thus far. I still didn't have my own kitchen yet, so I didn't cook a whole lot myself. That's on my list.

I drank a lot of wine (mostly Spanish and South American, red) and some reasonably good beer. I hated the Pittsburgh Penguins and lost my mind when they knocked the Caps out of the playoffs, but this season I had a fantastic seat at a game because Sarah and her father-in-law are nice. I still believed in Terrapin basketball and the Washington Mystics. I saw Green Day live and it changed my life.

I wore MAC #3 perfume and green eyeliner almost every day. Green and orange are still my favorite colors. I still miss having a dog, also daily. I spent ridiculous amounts of money on my paid-off car. I got an iPhone in March in Austin and it is perhaps my most favorite material possession ever, second only to the pink Sony boombox that saw me through the late 80s and many, many dubbed tapes from the radio.

Michael Jackson's death knocked me sideways.

I stood in freezing Washington, D.C. at the Inauguration concert and felt an energy that I have never felt before in a city I've lived I've lived beside my whole life. I watched on my television the next morning as the first African-American president, a person I still believe to be a true agent of change, took the oath of office.

I went to Charlotte twice and Austin for SXSWi and the aforementioned Chicago and San Diego and Pittsburgh and to New Orleans for my most awesome first Mardi Gras. I finally sat on and broke my beautiful green glasses so I have to get another set of frames. I spent a stupid amount of time searching for my chargers for my seemingly endless array of electronic devices. I made three apple pies. I finished NaBloPoMo.

I didn't welcome Christmas. I wasn't ready and to be honest I didn't really care. It came anyway.

It is January now. The last month of 2009 was punctuated with me entering this photography contest and being so blown away by the nice things people were saying about my entry that I felt that whether I won or lost I had already accomplished something. And then another friend called and asked me to enter this other cool contest for people of the blog sort and these two things combined have served to make me ready to make a life change that has been simmering for a long time. Like a decade.

I think it involves Virginia and I am seriously freaking out.

Speaking of the aughts, I think I might do some sort of wrap-up posts this weekend because this was a DECADE here, people, and for me it was the most profound one yet. I'm coming up on an anniversary next week that started out a very happy one and ended up sending me into my own personal bell jar for most of the aughts. It is fundamentally why this blog exists and why I am currently inarticulately telling you about my year. I'm going to write the shit out of something about it because you know what, I can.

Happy new year.

And I'll tell you one thing - and you can write this down, as we are wont to say in my family:

Next January 1, 2011? If I'm not dead, I'll have just turned 40. I'll be writing some crazy wrap-up from Pittsburgh if the Caps play up there in the Winter Classic because Kim and I have a tenuous date for it already.

And also? Next January? I think I'll have some kickass things to share. Really. Because I'm finally allowing myself to expect a lot from a year, whether I'm ultimately disappointed or not. I'm not staying home so I have to go big.

39

2009-12-27T23:59:19-05:00

I have three minutes to post on my birthday and I'm going to do it, no matter how short it's going to be and how inadequate I might feel like it is.

It was a great day. It was spent with people who matter the most to me, really - who get it and support me and for whom in return I'd pretty much do whatever they need. That's the way it works for me.

I have high hopes for this year.

38 was amazing and beautiful in some ways (I am so rich in friends and family it's ridiculous) but mostly it was really fucking hard. It was the worst phase, I hope, of the scab healing over, the caterpillar working extra hard to turn into the butterfly, pick your metaphor. I boxed with the universe for a lot of it.

I ended it just kind of asking for guidance, from somewhere, for what I need to do next.

I'm lucky in a lot of ways. This is the year I need to get brave.

Wish me luck.

Video killed...me.

2009-12-20T11:51:25-05:00

Okay, a few things to contend with at the moment, I'm just warning you.

I am buried in my house. Not literally, of course, but given that the Washington area received almost two feet of snow over the past 30 hours, there was naught to do today but sit around and work on stuff, really, in between bouts of guilt-induced activity. I had purchased some supplies for this crafty thing I have on deck (I know, I know) and some Vodka and a variety of cured meats and was fairly certain I was set. Also I was going to finish watching Elf which I cannot finish and if you read Twitter and/or my Facebook newsfeed (get out of my Facebook newsfeed, freak job) with any regularity you would know that everyone is watching Elf. It is a four alarm Christmas conspiracy.

Where my Christmas Vacation people at? Doesn't anyone around here watch Scrooged, one of the best holiday movies ever?

No it's all ELFELFELFELFELFELFELFELFELFELF. Screw Frank Capra, says the world. I want my Will Ferrell.

The world is a hollow tree.

Anyway, it is really beautiful outside now that I am not doing last night's white-knuckle ride of death from Germantown to my parents' house, which is not and never will be funny even in retrospect, it will always suck just as very much as it did last night. Horrible, friends. HORRIBLE. I refuse to fair weather pray so I was doing that ridiculous, "Oh my GOD I'm a good person right?" litany in my head. "I still have things to accomplish and DO oh SHIT is that Jacob Marley over there behind that tree? I can't tell because of the white out conditions on this icy snow emergency route that is generally a deer-laden death trap anyway."

The early sleet was the issue, because it made things slippery on the road immediately and no matter what the idiots in SUVs who are going 50 miles per hour think, there is just no way to tell what will make a little movement turn into a slide and some of the hills I was on are not hills I want to slide on at all in thousands of pounds of metal heading towards trees and buildings. I am the dork who will go five miles per hour no matter how loserish I may appear because I trust nothing, especially not black ice and other drivers, and guess what? When I'm alive when I get home the person flipping me off will never see me again.

I should probably indicate that among my weird issues with life is a real sadness about people who die in weather events - like the morning after when it's all sunny and melting it's horrifying to know that someone died because they were on the wrong icy road at the wrong time, just passing through. Same deal when the water calms down after someone died in a squall. Unbearable to me.

It was no joke and the worst part of it was that I knew I was out until after the snow started falling for perfectly illegitimate and stupid reasons. This involved a trip not only to Wal-Mart (where I never go. Desperate times.) but to the grocery store at 11 p.m. that resulted in this sort of view of the chip/snack aisle

Those things in the gold bags down there at the end must really suck. Must be an off-brand pretzel or something.

And then a hellish wait in line that included a few special souls, first of all the lady next to me who was inspecting the cart of the young couple in front of her going, "All you need is BEER, DVDs, and your PREFERRED METHOD OF BIRTH CONTROL I SEE YOU HAVE CONDOMS why are people concerned with TOILET PAPER and they crack me up with their PAPER TOWELS."

Sorry, she was a yeller who spoke with no punctuation. I was also plagued by those people who do not understand that protocol when lines are out of control is to STAND in the vertical aisle directly across from the register you are going to so that you are NOT blocking the main HORIZONTAL aisle. And this protocol does not entail moving as closely up on my ass as you can and being all weird like if you stay on the appointed vertical side until there is reasonable room to move up that people are going to cut you off. It's not going to happen, and if they try, you have the power of protocol (I couldn't care less about protocol usually but in the grocery store I'll invoke it a million times over) and like 50 other people on your side at that point.

Because you know what I will do if you move that close to me, destroyer of my happiness? I will refuse to put the little grocery barrier thing down on the belt that removes mine from yours. I will do that because I am a mean, mean little girl with anger issues who solves problems ineffectually in large groups of strangers. And also because you are an ass and I am your karmic justice in black boots.

Actually what I did last night because I was so over her huffing and puffing with her five items behind me was move out of the way and gesture to her to go ahead of me, not because I'm a nice person but because she was driving me crazy breathing down my neck and sighing (I hate sighing. I hate when people set off my personal space alarm.) And then she had the nerve to get irritated: "I wasn't mad at you." (ed. note Good, thanks. I'm hiding my rage sufficiently well myself. Just put. your. stuff. on. the. belt.) I've done it before and I'll do it again. I will move out of the way to get you on yours, for both of our sakes.

The grocery store really is a horror show.

Another wintertime rant while we're at it and I'll just get it out of the way: the people who drive around with piles of snow on their hoods and roofs should be fined huge sums so they will stop doing this or they lose their right to drive. They are related to and are often the same as the people who brush off a circle of snow on their driver's side window and clear nothing else off, so they're basically driving with windows - all windows, including rear views - covered with snow and I don't know how this is possible. When pressed I have to say that I'm more bothered by the first group though because it's really not helpful to be driving behind someone or the road and have whatever frozen mass is on top of their car come flying off and slamming into your windshield.

Do the right snow thing, really.

#########################################

I am agitated perhaps because I spent three hours in my basement last night trying to record myself on video.

I knew it would be difficult but I had no idea to what degree.

I'm applying for something for which I need to submit a video of myself primarily and I wasn't at all sure I could do it given my total hatred of being on video or watching myself on video or worst of all having other people watch me on video.

So I decided I had to do it, because even if I don't win (and it's entirely almost 100 percent certain I won't, just saying) there's nothing like a totally awkward and uncomfortably self-revealing activity to add to my current end-of-2009 review.

It's really, really difficult for me.

It's almost like it triggers dissociative identity disorder, like there's this person I think I am, I mean, just the shell of her, you know - and then there's this person I see talking at me in the computer box and it's very strange and difficult to correlate the two because they are NOT THE SAME.

I mean, I know all about the chins, trust me. I just don't necessarily feel like watching them played back at myself.

And not only is there the wacked out way I feel about watching myself talk, it's what I hear myself saying. There is a content and flow issue here, and it's horrible. I have to admit at some point - like, oh, maybe about 10 seconds in - it starts to get funny because I'll try to address the question I'm supposed to address in this clip and I start talking about stuff that has absolutely no relationship to the question at hand. Or I'll start out on topic and then all of a sudden it's like, "Whoo, let's take THIS left turn right here, it's a PARTY" and I'm talking about something completely ridiculous and unrelated and...yeah.

So then I have all of these odd screen shots of me making faces at myself as I go to hit the "stop" button and I'm saying stupid things like "Well that won't work," and "GAH, DUMB" and "What the HELL did I say that for?" and "Oh well, that was wrong too." I also have strange facial expressions. Why has no one told me this? I cannot sit still. I cannot keep my eyes still and I have an odd tendency to look up at the ceiling. I move my head back and forth with reckless abandon. The hell?

Anyway, I am struggling with video.

There is deeper commentary here about self-esteem and pushing one's limits and why can't the world be kind and why can't I be BEAUTIFUL and the type of person who chases video cameras around to show the world my 1,000-watt awesomeness. But that's really not anything I can analyze right now without plunging myself into some depressing intellectualization of something that doesn't need so many words to describe it in the short or long run.

And believe me, I truly know how fairly unimportant this is in the long run. I do not think it is more important to be comfortable with one's appearance in a moving picture show than it is to be good or kind or whatever fa-la-la-la-la else. I have some friends going through some heavy life things right now, some stories this weekend alone in this crazy snow that tell a lot about why we're really here and just how difficult this life can be and it makes me feel stupid to be focusing on the surface.

But this is just part of my story in the here and now. It's a pretty simple fact that it makes me uncomfortable and I think I'd be better off if I didn't feel that way. I think I'd be more functional and productive if I raged against this bullshit a little bit, if that makes sense. It's something I apparently feel the need to contend with and do, maybe to inoculate myself against it in the future.

I have so many things I want to do next year and that's where my focus already is. If I could I'd skip Christmas and go straight to the new year, and I say that in the most non-nasty way possible. I'm tired of it, honestly, and again, I don't mean this in a bitter or unfriendly way at all. It's just the way I feel.

I don't have any time to screw around, and all the barriers are, really, in my own head.

This dumb video is also totally due tomorrow and I have no game. So I'm going to go for a walk and take some pictures.

TK

2009-12-18T13:29:49-05:00

Look, it's a video I took of absolutely terrible quality of you playing a song at Celia's coffee house!

Oh wait, no it's not. Lie. I can't get it to embed. It's just a picture of you at the only open mic I will allow myself to attend at this point in my life, solely because you play there on occasion.

You are one of my favorite people, someone from whom I've learned a lot about the measure of my words and a little bit about boundaries too.

I've been proud to play a tiny part in encouraging your musical efforts, because as you know I've spent a lot of time listening to dudes play guitar and it is the measure of your talent and of my healing ears that I can say very honestly that I would choose to listen to yours even if you weren't my friend.

And I'll go to an open mic night. On purpose. I just wanted to reinforce that point.

Selfishly, you give me hope that some good ones are still out there. I admire your family and the way you embrace your life and your home, your personal integrity and your spirit.

And although I will never, ever, EVER root for the Philadelphia Flyers or stop short of wishing them anything but a crushing loss against any team but the Pittsburgh Penguins, it is in your honor that I really usually hope the Eagles and the Phillies win even though I don't really care so much about football or baseball. I may even pull for them mentally a little bit. I figure it's the least I can do. Because it's a real friend from Philly who feels genuinely bad for you when the Capitals flame out in the playoffs, even if it is at the hands of that jackass Sidney Crosby (but if that shared loathing doesn't bond us I don't really know what could.)

Happy birthday, dude. I hope this year finds you living the dream even more clearly. You deserve everything good.

Sarah.

2009-12-17T23:22:00-05:00

On the day you were born I was threeish years old and I like to think that somehow I was rambling around in my toddler state and all of a sudden my little baby hands went like this towards Ohio.

\m/ \m/

Because I would find it very strange that I didn't have some kind of telepathy where you were concerned even then.

I think sometimes when you get older you think that you won't find friends like you found when you were younger. This is not to say that you will not find friends, because surely most of us will at all places along the path. But what is unusual is finding a friend who you feel like, if there were ever a place where you had met that person that they would have fit right into your life right into that spot, wherever it was or what was going on.

Like say you were drinking in a parking lot before a really dumb show, if you were ever inclined to do that kind of thing? Like that person would have been the person you'd most want there to do that stupid shit with you. Like that person would have been there anyway and if she had it would have been better.

And maybe even for some of the smart things too.

Exactly.

Ha!

The day I met you for real in person I sliced my finger almost in half in a door and then we ate prime rib sandwiches that we should go have again because they were very good. And I think you felt more sorry for me than you were inclined to laugh at me because I didn't feel stupid and that was very nice. I also recall feeling like I'd talked to you before although I hadn't and that pretty much sums the whole thing up.

So I could really stop this there. But why, when I don't have to?

Oh, and I took this a couple of weeks later. This is the first one I have of you besides the giantess/Melissa/Devra picture. I totally forgot about it. Nice one. You see this?

And it turns out it can feel a little weird for some reason, when you're reasonably used to being cool and collected and stuff and just down with the enjoying of the people in general when all of a sudden you're thinking wow, who the hell are you? Because you're kind of teh awesome in tiny letters?

It can feel a little weird while it also doesn't feel weird at all.

Bloggers are weird.

Admit it - it was disorienting at first, like we'd been in some of the very same places although there was obviously no way that could have been true, and at the very least had come to some of the very same conclusions, wherever it was we'd been. Mirrors. Parallels. Echoes. Poetic crap like that.

I recall a lull in the BlogHer madness between the Shutter Sisters party and whatever drunk lobbyfest came after it (not that BlogHer is a drunk lobbyfest, if anyone else is actually reading this. I mean, there is wine and there are generally lobbies and sometimes the twain do meet, but BlogHer has changed my life in a very profound way that has nothing to do with alcohol. Case in point: I would not be writing this very thing I'm writing without it. I'd be writing about something entirely different and it would probably not be half as good. So the wine is just a big, fat bonus that I consider my prize for the rest of the year where I stare at the little white square of death and die of writer's block and feel inadequate as a blogger all by myself with my own wine and without a thousand of my closest friends. You think this is easy? Try it.)

ANYWAY we had gone back to your room so you could change your shoes, maybe, I don't know. And I said something and you said something like "No one thinks that usually except for me. Is that weird that we think the same thing about that?" And I said something like "Well, welcome to the new world order, bitches."

I'm curious to know what it was we were talking about, because it seemed like a profound thing in my memory, which maybe it wasn't.

And I really didn't say that thing about the new world order. I really didn't. He would though. Jerk. :

(Sorry to steal this from you. It's habit-forming, goodNESS.)

I probably just said "Yeah I usually think that too." And you said something like "Are you noticing that we think the same things a lot of the time. Are you sent here to toy with my brain?" (Not really. I made that last part up.) And then I really do recall saying "We'd probably just better get used to it."

And I think that's when we came to terms.

You understand this:

And this:

And this:

And other things also, too many to list. I think sometimes that we are the same person but then I really think that you're just the person I know who is most like me who isn't related to me, and in that I find a very real sense of comfort and relief that I never have to pretend to be interested in your stories. I am so happy that you were born and that I had a blog and that you finally had the good sense to locate it even if you didn't come to the community keynote and FIGURE IT OUT A YEAR EARLIER HELLO.

But then again I wasn't so sure what a goon squad was either until I really had a reason to find out.

That's all water under bridges now and the important thing to focus on now is that if I had a friend fantasy team you'd be my first round pick for countless reasons both silly and profound that somehow make perfect sense to me, even the giblet parts.

You are so much better than you know, even though I know you know you're fine.

I love you to pieces. A Hot Metal Street of badass pieces.

And I don't think any of it is weird anymore - just nice.

Happy birthday.

Heather.

2009-12-17T20:52:00-05:00

I don't remember when we connected exactly but I know when I lost my gig writing about photography that it was because of you and also really because I blew deadlines but of course I blamed you even before I knew you because really, this blaming myself thing? Tiresome, right?

So I was expecting greatness when you showed up, dammit.

And when I realized it was really you - that you were inherently great and it didn't matter what pictures you took or what you wrote about or why or where - then it was just that you were immediately my friend that mattered.

You were another amazing human being arisen from the beautiful mess of the Internet, the sort of person who, like all of the deepest friends I've found in this medium, I would have immediately liked in real life so really the fact that the computer was the initial matchmaker made no nevermind. It just made knowing you possible, whereas honestly, the odds of us meeting in real life otherwise, were slim to none.

Maybe. We both kinda get around.

Minutes after the above photo was taken (really, could someone have helped me to attend to my hair?) and hours after Obama accepted the nomination, we were walking through the streets of downtown Denver. And I, altitude-sick and exhausted, prat-falled straight off the curb, face-planted into the cement. Ugly. And that guy came out of the mist, literally, to help me up, and you were like, "Holy shit, you just conjured him up. You fall down, there's a dude stepping out of nowhere to pick you up."

That never happens, or maybe almost never. We both know that. But it put a little bit of fun and funny into the road rash, and as much as I miss my Nikon from that week and as much as my knees have never been the same since they hit the street that night, I'm glad you were there if it had to be anyone.

I'm sure I'd have met other cool people were it not for the computer, it's true, but they wouldn't be you.

We share something very specific, a similar experience that the very vast majority of people don't and that is a way of looking at the world because of the way people look at us and the lens through which we have always seen ourselves. We share the experience of people taking our faces in their hands from when we were babies, literally and ostensibly to heal them. And you know and I know what that does to you, what kind of a person that contributes to turning you into. You'd no doubt describe it in some different words, and it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to hear them at some point. But I think, empathetically, I understand, at least the broad brush outline.

When I think of you I think of long hair and a love of pictures and animals that I share, I think of a simultaneous constant engagement with and yet energetic search for a sense of origin and place that I relate to so deeply that it is occurring to me in this moment that it might be our deepest similarity, others notwithstanding. I I think of someone who knows California and loves Colorado and the Gulf Coast, a sharp contrast to this stubborn East Coaster. I think of someone who writes and shoots like a champ whose damn blog should be more widely read.

I think of someone who risks - for love, for life, for self, for sanity. I think of someone who knows how fucking funny this all really is - the bitter and the sweet, all mashed up together. And who not only knows this but lives it.

And that is why, beyond any other similarity, I think we connect so very very well. It's why I'm the most glad that you're my friend.

Robert T.

2009-12-16T23:19:00-05:00

I am not in the place where my scanner is so it being your birthday and all I got some photos out of the albums and just used the iPhone and the ShakeIt app instead.

It occurs to me that the scanner you were obsessed with was of the police variety and the kind I use wouldn't have made any sense to you at all.

I like this image, though. You were overexposed in the bottom shot originally so there wasn't much to be done with that but that is the place and stance that I really remember you in most besides the front porch so it may as well stand.

You would have been 88 years old today, which seems very young to me when I do the math. You've been dead since 1987 and that feels like such a long time that it seems that you should be ancient by now. When I first thought about calculating it I thought, wow, he'd probably be almost 100. Wrong, but I can see why I thought that.

You were one of the most challenging people I've ever known but it was difficult not to appreciate some of the things that could be the most off-putting about you. One of the things I've inherited in a few different genetic ways is a struggle with the art of compromise and while I see how that can really bring me some problems what it also carries with it is a near-inability to back down from representing my own point of view when I know in my heart that I'm right not to do so. It's a trait that when flipped on its head and used for good is not such a terrible one to have, and I definitely try to flip it. You are a significant example of the fact that I do not come from wishy-washy people. I guess there are reasons why I usually speak my truth.

There are things about your life that I wish had been easier not only because no one really needs an especially difficult life but also because I think it would have made life easier for everyone else too. And I really wish that your body had not been ravaged by disease quite so young - 65 is still young to die, to me - because I can see now from my adult vantage point that you were growing into being a grandfather, mellowing out a little, and that would have been the best time by far to have you around. I think you could have made a positive difference. I think you were finally genuinely enjoying yourself.

But that is not what happened and it's only worth the few line of speculation and when I think about you I think about simple things for the most part, like food and the country and being a Marine and lottery tickets and a new car every two years.

I think about how when you were on oxygen all the time and nearly on your last legs you came to the play in my junior year that was really a defining experience in my life and you were obviously genuinely proud to be there. And I remember how in spite of my teenaged angst making me a little embarrassed - because, like I said, you weren't quiet or halfway or tactful about much of anything - I was really happy and proud that you appreciated it.

It's a good memory to have.

And I hope it's okay with you but I also use you as my cautionary tale to really try not to drink bad beer, and I'm especially grateful for that unintentional life lesson (because if you knew how much it costs to drink good beer you would die again and talk about it loudly for hours.) I did not have one for you today, because I was out with some of my friends consuming sangria which is definitely what you would have called a sissy drink. But I definitely will tomorrow.

The way that light attaches

2009-12-16T13:46:37-05:00

Disclaimer to you among the Google-hit masses (you know, all tens of them) who love me and read this stuff: This is where it's working for me to put this right now. And I thank you for everything, as always, especially for making me feel less like a misfit toy than I otherwise would. Now let's just have a drink, shall we?

One night a couple of weeks ago I was standing in the kitchen of an old friend's house in a southern state, looking out the window into darkness, pretty much. She wasn't there. She and her kids were still on a trip and I had come in early to hang out for a few days by the water and it is the benefit of having old friends who trust you that they'll leave the code to their gated community in your e-mail, the key to the house in the fern on the porch and a lasagna in the refrigerator.

And standing by her sink that night I realized that here I was in the space where someone else lived her life, a beautiful house, a place where I felt really comfortable moving through the rooms. And I soaked up knowing that someone with whom I'd sucked down many beers in parking lots had a house that could be featured in Southern Living, that had more than one hammock and neighbors who waved and a little spit of sand you could sit on by the marsh.

But it wasn't mine. I could walk around in it, borrow it for a bit, feel as comfortable sleeping and eating there as I really did.

It just didn't belong to me. And if I was honest, I knew so distinctly at that moment that I didn't really have that place that did.

And let's not talk about the space I do have. It meets the baseline on Maslow's hierarchy and for that I am grateful but beyond that it's...unsatisfying.

A few days later I was in one of the warmest homes I've ever visited - both in the way it looked from the curb and from the corners of every room and the way it felt. Again, the doors were opened to me and I found friends inside who if they weren't happy to see me are incredibly good liars. Sunday morning amazing light streamed through so many windows, and there was Elton John on the stereo, kids with serious plans and engaging conversation and an incredible homemade breakfast in the kitchen.

On my way home to my own life later I started ugly crying about 20 miles outside of Durham after a loud rendition of Last Christmas segued into some bs like Home for the Holidays and I lost my toehold in stability.

It turns out the line about the fool who goes all the way to Pennsylvania from Tennessee for a homemade pumpkin pie can be quite the little bitch of a trigger there, friends.

Anyway, there was something in that last place in particular that I knew I needed and I lacked, something I quite believed I ought not to lack at this juncture, something I tried to believe simultaneously in the car that I would be okay without if it never came my way while knowing that I absolutely would not. I knew that I would die, or might as well, if this is all there is.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair.

But it gives you something to aspire to shut up.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair.

You're not dead yet. Shut. Up.

It gets harder to repeat these things to myself the harder I'm pushing 40. And it turns out that it's tough for me sometimes to live on the fringes of other peoples' lives, although without other people I'm kind of screwed, and when I'm with the right people I don't feel fringey at all. This is all very difficult to describe.

I kept thinking this all the miles it took me to settle down between there and the huge I-95 discount store, that it wasn't fair, that I wasn't as good at this alone thing as I've appeared to be for a long time and I didn't understand why this had happened to me, that as much as I've traveled and as much as I've run and as much as I've tried to make things better for a very long time, that I really didn't know what to do anymore if I ever did know. That as long as this existential loneliness sticks that I would remain in this weird life I've been living for a very long time now.

Ten years, to be exact.

That I would always be unhappy.

I blamed the universe. I blamed my ex-boyfriend for the ancient things that always come up from the ether when I get like this. I blamed the media. (That's a lie but I really should, I mean they get blamed for everything else anyway.) I thought judging thoughts about just about every human being I know even vaguely who didn't deserve the surely blessed life of domestic bliss that they were living if I couldn't have this too.

I never said this was right or made good sense. I never said I had any.

I blamed myself. Most of all I blamed myself. I blame myself, for being broken, for not being the kind of person who can be connected to anyone but friends for the long haul, for not just hitching myself to someone decent even though I knew that wasn't what I wanted from them at all because it just wouldn't be right. I blamed myself for not being willing to pack up the next day and move to a place where I could maybe afford property more easily, because oh, wait, maybe I don't have a job there? And at least I have a job. I blamed myself for not being financially stable enough to have a house, a child that so many people seem to think I can just afford on my own in all the ways a child must be afforded (and I am not talking about money entirely here.)

I blamed myself. I blame myself.

And I blame myself for thinking these things, for not being content with what I've got and who I am and what I've accomplished, for not being happy for other people and accepting of what has gone down in my life at the same time. I blame myself for not knowing what to do, ever, although my job is essentially to tell other people what to do. I blame myself for faltering in hope and optimism. I blame myself for being afraid.

In truth I don't know what happened in my life to make this all happen. I don't know how I got here. I don't know what I did or didn't do, what other people did or didn't do, what way the stars aligned to make it pan out this way. I mean, I know. I know. It's just not like I knew in the moment, or even in the months and years when choices were being made, roads chosen and discarded.

I only knew what I was doing at the time. I only knew to follow my heart and to wish and to hope and to do the daily things we all do to get by. I trusted and believed and then I didn't. And that is how I got here, the short of it anyway.

I came home from this trip more unhinged than when I started and I was really hoping for the opposite outcome. I am completely untethered right now and I'm scared shitless. I am running out of coping skills and rationalizations and ideas and solutions. I am working too hard and not getting anywhere.

I don't know how this will change or when or what succession of steps I'll take to make it happen, although every day I still do some things that feel like they might be the right things to do. I reach out, although I probably will not answer the phone or call, and I'm sorry but that's just my own weirdness not talking.

At the same time it's ridiculous, really, how rich I am in friends. Quite specifically, several people have offered their homes to me while I figure stuff out and that has been amazing to me and so appreciated. And as an aside, two of these people are people I met on the INTERNET, and then became friends with in real life, so suck it, Internet haters.

It's embarrassing, almost, to think about it. It's awesome and nice but it's embarrassing, and that is another issue of mine entirely.

It's like I can't trust myself to be in anyone else's environment. I can't be around another family, another couple, another situation. I need to be in this limbo. I need to be uncomfortable. Because I think that's what motivates me. I think that's what will make the changes happen if they are to happen at all.

I told you I have no idea how I got here. I don't like it either. It is an unpalatable to describe it and it's awkward and disappointing to live it, particularly when I'm supposed to have a tinsel-like glow at the moment.

Sorry. Holiday fail.

So all of this is to say that this current whatever this is is why it's so hard for me to write right now. This is why I'm not living, either, as effectively as I ought to be. And that's maybe because I don't know what I'm doing it for. I honestly don't know. And once again, because I'm thinking there must be some reason why I'm here, I came back from that trip knowing that I have to tear everything down and rebuild it so I can figure it out in the process.

And I'm trying to figure out how to do some good at the same time, I really am. I am sick of myself, honestly and truly sick.

So every day I have to keep finding a reason to do this, even if it's just a self that I don't have a whole lot confidence in right now. And I really do have to keep trying to write it down, even though quite frankly it's the last thing I want to do. It's still really the only thing that helps.

Old December Views

2009-12-14T00:55:07-05:00

I am so far behind, I can't even explain what's been keeping me away.

This was on the table at a media dinner I attended a few years ago. I entered it into a Flickr Advent Calendar group that I was pretty dedicated too in December, 2006 (2006 - wow, eons) because I thought it was pretty then and I still like it now.

I had no idea what bokeh meant then. It's been a long, informative three years.

Micro This

2009-12-09T09:26:59-05:00

Melanie asked and I am answering.

I have been a TypePad user since April, 2005 (which reminds me I should update my credit card information to my new one so they don't suspend my account, yeah.) I was a writer and then a photographer first, concerned with design and content management very much second, so I was never that bothered by the way my blog functioned. I was concerned with getting posts written and shot and, well, posted.

Over the years I've been frustrated by my limitations here and have longed to move my blog. I wanted more freedom. What I really wanted - and still do - was to hit the design jackpot somewhere and have someone who really, really knows what she's doing to come along and love me so much that she just says, "Here. You're nice. Let me have your blog. I'll put it on its own platform and fix it and love it."

Needless to say that has never happened. I've haphazardly purchased a few other domains. I've downloaded WordPress and read about it thinking maybe that's the way to go. My primary complaints about TypePad have been about ease of use. As a way novice Web designer *which is more appropriately described as a wannabe, I'd like to have more obvious control over my masthead and my layout. I'd like templates that don't look like someone created them who's watched too many episodes of Microsoft Word. As someone who has paid for this service since day one, yes, I would like some updated stuff that isn't sixteen colors of the same pattern of leaves or paintbrushes.

And yes, I'm sure those hacks exist. I'm sure I could find them, but that's not the point. SixApart could do it, I'm quite sure. Vox looks kind of cool. I'm not sure why the ancestral platform has to look so...ancestral.

I just haven't had the time I need to investigate my options. When I did I didn't feel competent enough with the lingo and was overwhelmed enough that I was sure I was...doing it wrong. And in the meantime I have never stopped writing and posting except for a brief hiatus here and there, so I just kept logging in and doing my thing, even though it's felt a little more underwhelming all the time.

What I need from TypePad is a better way to design and manage my existing blog, and this is why I'm confused about why you'd move to the micro phase before the macro is the best it can be. I'd like better templates, yes, and also a less antiquated way to do photos (PLEASE!) I don't want to log in and post into a little box.

I want a way to do comment follow-up.

I want easier menus and help options to follow, instead of having to dig through a years-old library that feels like a rabbit hole.

Did I mention I want better photo management? And it would be awesome if it would sync with iPhoto?

I want a golden ticket, Father.

I want a better blog, here- not a microblog. That's why I come here. I can micro everything everywhere else. I do micro everything. I tweet all the livelong day. I also have an abandoned Vox, and a Posterous, and a Tumblr. I don't know what I'm doing with any of those things, but I have them.

My blog is not Twitter. I don't want it to be Twitter. Just like everything does not have to be skiing or cellphones or pizza, everything does not have to be Twitter.

I will say that I appreciate TypePad on my iPhone. I completed NaBloPoMo this year and it was cool to be able to post - a real, longish text post - from my phone. I'm satisfied with the interface and the way I can receive my comments there too.

But TypePad Micro, in my computer, is not what I need, because I can get it somewhere else. Call me crazy and demanding, but I'd like to get stuff I don't have here, where I pay for it.