This is the place, where everything's better...

I’m the first to admit I can be pretty negative about things.  When I’m struggling or frustrated or so tired I can’t fathom doing anything beyond crawling into bed, my mood and my outlook get all sorts of dark and cranky.  What can I say?  I’m human.  And there are some days when it’s just too hard to put on a smile and try to find that silver lining. 

And then something happens that reminds me that life is way to short to be a cranky ball of bitch and moan.  No body wants to hang out with that.  Or be that.  Just like the chicken pox, I fully believe toxicity is contagious.  I work with it all day long and well, I don't want to turn into one of those people.  So I’m consciously flipping the bitch and moan switch off (at least for today) and instead focusing on things that please me.  Things that lift my mood.  Things that, dare I say, make me smile.  So here goes…

Vacation!  I just booked my tix for a girl’s trip - two weeks in Portugal.  We went last September and it was amazing.  So excited for another chance at an adventure.  And to dance until 7 a.m. to 90s music in literal dark, underground clubs that let you put your drinks on a tab that you pay at the door to get out.  And while I remember getting drinks (some sort of Fanta orange and liquor combo) I don’t remember ever paying on the way out.  Hmmmmmmm.

Fresh strawberries.  Peanut butter.  Ice-cold Diet Coke.  Starbucks Peppermint Mocha.  Flatbread pizza. Breyer’s Mint Chocolate Chip ice-cream. Always.  And forever.  But not all at the same time. 

The fact that The City is now available for streaming over Apple TV.  I plowed through the first six episodes of Season 1 yesterday.  Oh how I missed Olivia’s puss and Whitney’s “job” at DVF.  And any show that showcases Kelly Cutrone’s filter-free moments and tosses in an LC cameo for good measure is high on my list. 

Orchestra tickets to see “Anything Goes”.  Again.  So. Damn.  Good.

Rediscovering an old song that I forget I loved.  This one popped into my head on Friday when I was heading home for work.  Suited the day perfectly.  This clip doesn't do it justice.

My new carpet!  I can’t help it. I still get excited every time I come home and see it.  I know…talking about my carpet installation makes me sound very old.  And boring.  And like I have no life.  (I do.  Swear.)  But you have no idea what I was dealing with here, so allow me to illustrate:

(To note, I should probably be more ashamed of posting this, but oh well…)

Before: (also known as “ick”, “gross”, “bleck”, “oh the shame”)

During: (Less than 24 hours with those rolls and I probably tripped over them twelve times!  Life in a studio.) 

 After: (Hello, lover!  Walking barefoot has never felt so good.  And a heads up for potential visitors…yes, you will have to lose your shoes on the stone floor at my front door.  Clean feet and socks only!  Nothing gives me an excuse to be high-maintenance like new carpet.)

Which leads me to,  my new Electrolux vacuum.  I ditched my upright for the Rolls Royce of canister vacuums.  I am a changed woman.

When my internet shopping stuff comes in the mail and opening every package is like Christmas morning.  Even if I do wind up returning half the crap. And possibly forget ordering a quarter of it.  And I’m fairly certain my doorman judges me, not only by the amount of clothes that show up, but by the cases of wine that have recently arrived.  Whatever.  It’s been a rough road.  And hello, this is all about what pleases me! 

Bliss.  Sure, the feeling, but also the place.  The massage.  The products.  The little brownie squares in the lounge.  Even when I’m forced to cut back on the luxuries in the not-so-distant future, I refuse to give up my Bliss. 

Baseball. 

I said it before and I’ll say it again…I find so much solace in music.  In my head there’s always a soundtrack playing. Sometimes I pretend I’m living in a movie sequence or in the coda of a One Tree Hill ep and I pick out the songs that would be playing, fully capturing the moment.  Right now my random soundtrack includes “The Gift” by Angels and Airwaves, “Steal My Sunshine” by Len, “You and I” by Lady Gaga, “Walk On the Ocean” by Toad the Wet Sprocket and “Praise You” by Fatboy Slim.

“Somebody told me, this is the place, where everything’s better and everything’s safe.”  See Toad, above.

Kate White.  I just starting rereading Over Her Dead Body.  I think she’s such a cool chick and have total career envy.   Am bummed I’m going to miss the launch of her new book in August, but then again I’ll be on a beach in Portugal, trying to get a tan, so I’ll find a way to deal.

BBM.  IM.  Video chat.  Life changing.

The fact that I discovered Desperate Housewives so late in the game.  I quit back after Season 1, but have now worked my way all the up to the last episode available on Netflix. I almost don’t want to watch it because then what?

Stumbling upon a really good blog.  My latest find (by which I mean addiction) is  http://itakephotosinthebathroom.blogspot.com/  1.  What a genius idea.  2.  I’m a big fan of her color combos.  3.  Reading blogs by people who are committed to what they’re doing and who I can relate to inspire the hell out of me. 

Clean laundry. Fresh sheets.  Warm bath towels.  Jeans that fit perfectly *after* you wash them. 

The Rachel Zoe Project.   I downloaded the whole series from iTunes.  Bananas.  Shutting it down.  I DIE!  You get the idea.  Another case of career envy/inspiration.

Yoga pants + a tank + an oversized hooded cardigan sweatery robe thing = my home uniform.

This picture.  It makes me happy and a little sad. But almost a happy sad, if that makes any sense.  Oh, Kermie!  I was just talking to my friend at work about how I grew up watching The Muppet Show.  I would say I was generally a pretty happy, self-contained and self-entertained kid and this just reminds me of being a kid vs. the Nana I am now, who talks about her carpet like other people would talk about their child.  Don’t judge.  It’s damn good carpet.

They call me Chumbawamba

Now anyone worth their salt knows where I’m going with this.  “I get knocked down, but I get up again.  You’re never gonna keep me down.”  Oh, how I do heart a one hit wonder!

Many moons ago when I was belting this song out, at the top of my lungs, at some random Boylston Street bar in Boston, I doubt it ever crossed my mind that it would become my theme song all these years later.  But here I am.  Waxing poetic about a band that probably got called "Chewbacca" a lot. 

What can I say? It’s been a bad day/week/month/stretch.  And just when I thought it was getting better, well, you guess it…I got knocked down.  And sometimes I stayed down.  Because when you’re in the middle of a hurricane it’s hard to see anything clearly. (How’s that for epic imagery?)  I'll admit I can get caught up in the minutiae.  I’ve been here before and sometimes, to be honest, I can't see the forest for the trees.  Can't figure out what I want to do, even when I know what I need to do.  Or figure out what my first step should be.  Or know for certain if I'm ready to take that next leap of faith.  (But is anyone every *really* ready?!?!??!)  

And then comes the “a-ha” moment.  And the feeling that my horoscope is speaking directly to me.  Now I’m the first to admit I read a lot of daily horoscopes.  It’s ritual.  There are three sites I’m pretty much faithful too.  And no, I don’t keep reading until I find one that applies.  I just like to cover my bases and be prepared for what’s to come.  Some days it’s a big old case of “say what”?  And other days, like, oh I don’t know, say today for instance, it’s a case of hello, nail. I’m going to hit you on the head. 

“You have arrived at an important starting point. Set out on the path that you have always wanted to take. You are in the perfect position. The road may seem long, but it doesn't have to be daunting. You need only take one small step at a time.”

Now it hopefully goes without saying that the path I’ve always want to take, that the big dream, is to be a writer.  I never set out to have a corporate job, despite my childhood love for 9 to 5 and the fact that I used to make chocolate milk and pretend it was coffee while I “played” office.  (I was never one for playing house.)  But by high school I knew that writing was what I wanted to do.  I had so many fantasies in college about writing novels from the comfort of my couch in my pj’s, noshing on Cheetos and Diet Coke.  (It goes without saying that I would magically not gain any weight or turn my computer keys orange from Chester Cheetah’s heavenly treat.)  I could make up stories and weave in pieces of my own life, getting revenge on ex’s, respect of my favorite authors and having a happily ever after in my books and in my life. 

But then reality came crashing down.  And writing internships at magazines in Boston don’t pay.  (Though I did get some bylines which was cool.)  And rent checks bounce.  And I temped my way into a full time job where I stayed and stayed and stayed.  Several writing classes and groups and stories and contests and one novel (as yet unpublished) later and I was back in New York, ready to start over.

And then mortgages and the last of student loans needed to be paid.  And I enjoyed my corporate job, until I didn’t.  And then more writing classes and a mystery novel and more contests.  And then rejections and revisions and the job plummeting downhill into a whole new level of rock bottom, fifty feet of crap, then me. (Thank you Rachel for feeling miserable when Ross comes back from China with Julie and uttering one of the best lines EVER!) 

And then there was settling.  UGH!  What an ugly frigging word.  To settle.  Just writing it makes me shudder.  But I gave up.  Gave in.  I stopped working towards something more.  And I know how pathetic and cowardly this all sounds, but what can I say?  Sometimes it’s easier to stay when you know you should go.  So I settled.  I bitched and moaned and complained my ass off about work.  And got seduced by the money and the security.  But it has nothing to do with writing and at the risk of being dramatic (I’m getting in the mood for disc one of Dawson’s, Season 5, that just arrived from Netflix, so drama is in order), this job is completely eating away at my soul.  I’m unhappy all day and then unhappy for part of my night.  I’m just a big old ball of settle. 

And then came today’s horoscope and it was like Moses parted the Red Sea and I could cross over.  (These analogies seem to be taking a weird turn.  And I’m sure my religious naivety is showing through.  Nativity?  A non-church-goer say what?  Don’t shoot the writer.  I worship in the aisles at Barnes & Noble.)

But I digress.  And I have seen the light.   Cue me some Green Day.  

I had this same epiphany four years ago when my company got sold to a shit-tastic company full of pompous, condescending, very short men.  I am better than this!  I deserve better!  I will leave and they will be sorry!  (Yes, I have revenge issues).  And here I am, in a similar looking boat, knowing that my destiny is not to work at this company anymore. 

And then I had a dream.  Literally.  I was hiding out in a house with two other people and there was some murderous creeper outside who was shooting at us.  (There’s a chance that my recent obsessive Murder, She Wrote watching slash I’m-reading-an-amazing-new-thriller may have also contributed to this theme).

But, anyway…

So in my dream we’re all crouched on the stairs and rather than run down them we just keep hunching down when the guy shoots at us.  And what pray tell does all this mean, you ask (and should I be embarrassed that I had to Google “pray tell” to find it how to spell it properly?):

To dream that someone is shooting you with a gun, suggests that you are experiencing some confrontation in your waking life. You feel victimized in some situation.

We were never shot, but the bullets were lodged in the wood next to me (for the record I jotted all this down very sloppily sometime after midnight when I woke from this weirdness which is why the details are vivid).  So dreaming about seeing bullets pretty much means anger, aggression, or just needing to “bite the bullet” and accept a difficult situation. 

Ah, how wonderful to have a dream telling me to suck it up. 

And maybe I do.  Maybe I’m being just a big, whiny brat.  It seems like everyone I know is unhappy in their job.  It’s an awful time to be unemployed.  And it’s a hard time to be working.  It seems like none of the old rules apply.  Any ounce of fun is long gone.  And while I don’t need ass-slaps and high-fives all day long, a simple “thank you” on occasion would go miles.  Though I’d settle for being treated with respect.  I’m crazy like that. 

If money wasn’t an object (or health insurance for that matter) I know what I’d do – I’d walk in heartbeat. I would stay home and put all my time and energy into writing.  I read about so many authors who hated their corporate day jobs and it drove them to write and they landed agents and are now free to write full time and do what they love.  I can relate to the drive, but lately, with all the distractions, I can seem to get my ass in the chair. Or if I get it there I wind up shopping and buying crap I don’t need.  Filling a void, much?

But in reality I’m scared.  Scared to stay where I am and let it eat me up inside.  Scared to leave and struggle and not have a job or security or money to pay my mortgage or to travel or to buy crap I don’t need.  The proverbial Catch-22 and what feels like a classic case of damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

And just like the horoscope rang true, so did the words of Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile. 

“Look only forward.  Remember time heals everything.”

(Have I mentioned my obsession with mysteries?  And my love for Angela Lansbury who is a wonderfully funny, always drunk, eccentric novelist in this one?)

So I’m trying to do just that.  And when I do get back up again, I turn to another old friend.  One who has gotten me through many runs on the treadmill, when I’d rather be laying on the couch, with or without the Cheetos.