New Blog Post: Who Do You Think You Are?

I used to have a signal for myself when things were getting out of control in my life – I started getting parking tickets. It was a combination of not paying attention to the rules of the world because I was distracted by something else and in some way thinking those rules didn’t apply to me. “I won’t get a ticket”, I’m me.”. Most of the time I’d get a ticket.

This has been a horrifically difficult time of late, I’ve hardly been posting on Twitter, I’ve rarely blogged, because well, everything I have to say is moany and negative. I’m in that place. But it’s time to talk about that place for a minute. It hit me as I was standing in line at the Coffee Bean with my son after picking him up from school.

I’ve been attending a conference all week, getting up very early, dropping my son off early at school and picking him up late. Attendance is mandatory this week and it has been exhausting and at times excruciatingly boring. This morning (Friday) my son had a nightmare at about 4:45am and neither of us got back to sleep. I was so tired and so discouraged by the week that I just decided to call in and tell them my son was sick and I couldn’t make it. The last day, the last time I needed to be there, I wanted sleep, and some time alone, time to get some other things done. Understandable, but I had showed up on time every day before and just needed this one last day to complete this conference. But I didn’t. I just couldn’t. And if I didn’t, I’d have blown the week – those were the rules and I knew it. But did I?

So, did I think I could get away with that because I am ME? That they would let me skate by on the last day even though every day attendance is required? Yes, honestly, part of me felt they would. Why? I have no idea. I am no one special to them, I am one amongst perhaps 40 in this group. Will they let me slide? I don’t know, they never got back to me and when I called in the secretary told me she gave the message to the moderator but I never heard back from him. Her suggestion.? Show up on Monday as planned. Just like I should have done on Friday and not created this mess. So why create the mess? One more day was all I needed to endure.

I was doing so well, following the rules of life, living life on life’s terms, whether I liked them or not. Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today – really taking things as they came, showing up honestly….so why did I put myself in this situation? I was tired, yes. I was cranky, yes. I was over it, yes. But i signed up and committed to it and I only had one more day. One more day and I have potentially thrown everything out the window.

Concurrently, when I picked up my son from Kindergarten I saw he got a yellow card in class meaning something went wrong (green is best). He told me he had punched a girl who had punched him. Now, there are all kinds of things wrong with this of course and I told him everything he needed to know, for the twelfth time. If someone bothers you, go to a teacher, never hit, follow the rules. Rather hypocritical if you ask me. I really had to hold off on any kind of major scolding because I had acted as much as he, as a five year old did, in his own mind. Me as a reaction to my body’s tiredness, his to being hit and reacting in kind, we both broke the rules because we didn’t think they applied to us even though we’ve been told they do, only I have about one million more times than he has.

Gratefully I don’t do this kind of thing very often anymore. I used to live like this and I used to condemn those who I knew who did it. Again, rather hypocritical. But clearly when I do it, I go for it 100%. I don’t know what the consequence of my lazy action will be but I have no choice but to accept the consequences and continue to be exhausted from them (and myself).

(I am) Stagnant

stag·nant adj.                                                                                                                Showing little or no sign of activity or advancement; not developing or progressing;            Lacking vitality or briskness; sluggish or dull:

Truly, though I love the picture and the quote above what I really am (besides the above) is  exhausted by how stagnant everything feels in my life right now.

This is a bit of a moany blog so if you’re full of rainbows and sunshine feel free to stop reading. Things will improve but for a while now I’ve been feeling rather crap. Today I ran into a friend who does amazing artistic work creating custom flooring for mansions and creative spaces. She has lived in LA for her entire life (more than 50+) years and she used the word stagnant today to describe the city and how she feels in it. It finally defined my world or at least my perception of it at the moment.

Work is slow. I feel unmotivated (hopefully no clients are reading this). Actually the ones who might be reading this – I don’t feel unmotivated by you but by some other things.  At the beginning of the summer several big projects that were really exciting and gave me gusto fell apart. It happens – they went away for various reasons and I was left with some really good projects and then the second tier. And really, I hate being a second tier kinda gal. So, work has been a bit hard to get up for but it’s going on and it will change and bloom again. That’s one thing to remember about everything – it always changes. That goes for when thing are going well too by the way – life has a way of keeping us on our toes!!!

Because work is slow and in a strange place so is money. Except money isn’t strange, it’s a necessity. Last year was plentiful and then something happened to take it all away and this stagnation is not helping fill the well.  I have asked people for help. Some have been very kind to give it. Others are unable and that’s absolutely 100% fine. It’s the people who can and won’t that I stick pins in a doll over. I’m not trying to be a brat but I have two friends who are multi-multi millionaires and one of them owes me many many many thousands of dollars and I asked her for some of it and she didn’t even respond. I think this is why these people are so rich! They don’t part with a dime. Anyway, I was in a fantasy land to think they would help but seeing as they have children and I have a child and there is a child in some trouble here I thought they’d see a little into their heart but that was, well, that was probably the stupidest idea I’ve ever considered.

Anyway, work, money…what’s left? People. This is my fault really because I’m just so damn blah right now. And honestly, one can only take so much of the blah. My son and I get along famously. He brings me out of the blah about 98% of the time these days, he brightens my life immeasurably.  But few others do at the moment and its making me feel lonely. I work on my own, I am a parent on my own and I am lonely. I feel it lately, not always but right now I need someone. There are no romances on the horizon though I do have a slight crush on someone on Twitter but he is married so off limits. My friends are all very busy with their children and their issues and though Teddy and I see them as well as single friends and male friends I feel only mildly and ‘in the moment’ rejuvenated by them. I guess it’s obvious I’m a little depressed. But I don’t feel terribly depressed inside – I feel that the world is stagnant – the economy is stagnant, traffic is stagnant, the weather is stagnant, peace is stagnant, and we are a world focused on The Bachelor and Kardashians. As someone said to me the other day, which I agreed with – this has been a year of a lot of stress and very little achievement. Not for lack of trying.

I’ll tell you what the positive aspect of this blahness is and this is important. People should pay attention to their negative emotions and not just sit in them and wait for them to pass, but when appropriate, understand that they need what I need and that is this – I need change. I don’t need a job to come along and make things better or more money or a boyfriend. Well, yes, I need all those things, I want all those things and those things would help any negative situation become better and will very likely happen once I get off my ass and do something about what I can control, and let what I cannot happen in it’s own time. What I can do with this knowledge that I am stagnant in this stagnant city is make change for myself.

I have been thinking about making a change for a while. LA is well, it’s just boring now. I’ve been here half my life and it’s a hard city to live in for a woman who is not a MAW (model/actress/whatever) and who is a single mom. It’s a disconnected city. I want weather, not a lot of bad weather but I can take a little change here and there. I want different creative people and to try my creativity in different ways. I want to meet new moms and dads and men and women who can contribute to my and Teddy’s life and commit to a real friendship. It’s always been hard to find people you give you anything in LA. I give a lot and I have always taken less. That’s OK as long as it’s worth it (as they say “giving is good as long as your getting”) but lately the LA crowd has been disappointing. I’m not a stereotypical LA person. I’m a New Yorker, a Londoner. I want a new set of four walls, Teddy is dying for a big beautiful garden to plant in. I cannot make that happen here right now even though we do have a little backyard with two dying plants. And I don’t know that I want to wait for it to happen here. Not as things are. Not in the stagnation. In America? I don’t know? I don’t want to idealize anywhere else and I don’t think that just leaving somewhere makes things better somewhere else, but it can help, especially when the city you’re leaving has so many real stereotypes attached to it.

I love what I do and I don’t want to change it but maybe alter it. I want my son to have everything he wants within reason. I want to feel safe and not scared. I want to be found attractive and desirable. I don’t know that all of that or much of that is available in Los Angeles anymore. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that Teddy starts Kindergarten in the Fall and it’s paid for so that gives me a year to sort out what move I need to make. I have a very small and very odd family so they’re not a necessary part of the scenario for me. Where can I go for a fresh start where I can serve myself and others, live comfortably in or near a nice city, find a handsome gentleman and give my son a proper garden? This is what I’m going to spend the next year thinking about and putting into motion, even as things become less stagnant, because just putting those ideas into motion for real helps loosen things up. It is of course an inside job as they say but it doesn’t mean it can’t be done in a new outside as well.