Mar

Imaginary Lives.

I’ve got a job for you.

I’m sorry?

I just heard you say that the company you work for was sold. I’m looking for people and I can’t hire ‘em fast enough. Starting pay is 90K a year.

Wow. What’s the job?

Easiest money you’ll ever make. Just sitting behind a desk.

Yeah, but doing what?

Setting appointments. Making calls. Basic admin stuff. You’d be working for me and my team.

And what do you do?

I sell machine parts. Essentially, I’m a mechanic.

Oh. I don’t think that’s the right fit for me. I’m a creative: a writer, a marketer, and a brand strategist. I’m really looking for a job in a creative field. But thank you anyway.

I don’t think you heard me. The starting pay is 90K a year.

It’s not about the money.

Bullshit. It’s always about the money.

Not for me. But thank you.

I’m sitting in the lobby of my hotel in Kent, WA, sipping a glass of Cabernet. The awkward conversation (err, confrontation) that is currently unfolding is a perfect example of why I wanted to avoid this hotel-sponsored “Wine and Cheese” night. But after a long workday, the complimentary glass of red mere steps from my hotel room proves too difficult to resist. So here I am, trying to politely brush aside the attention of a strange man who’s sloshed on free booze and – worse – impervious to social cues.

The “conversation” quickly devolves, largely due to my refusal to acquiesce to his worldview that money makes the world go round. He takes personal affront to the fact that I have no interest in the job he’s trying to sell me, and within minutes, he has resorted to cursing and name-calling. Thankfully, it’s not long before he stomps out of the lobby in a huff, but not before delivering his final assessment: “If you’re just a snob that wants to write about eyeliner, there’s nothing I can do for you!” I laugh, in spite of myself. You’re right, dude. There’s nothing you can do for me.

My week in Kent has been a strange one. I’ve been working as an independent contractor, helping train employees of the medium-size company that bought the small Los Angeles-based accessories brand where I have worked for many years. Not only is the town of Kent itself odd – an industrial district populated by block after block of sprawling warehouses in the shadow of Seattle’s Sea-Tac airport – but the situation is odd, too. For a week, I’m immersed in a corporate culture completely alien to me – taking meetings, interfacing with all types of people and personalities (many of whom are suspicious of me and are not particularly friendly to the foreigner in their midst), and navigating office politics – all the while knowing that my immersion is temporary; that my normal life has simply been put on hold for a few days while I try on this very different life and see how it fits.

During the week, I find myself daydreaming both about what my life would have been like had I accepted a job in Kent, and what my life will be like once this temporary independent contractor position is over. It brings to mind one of my favorite exercises from Julia Cameron’s seminal book on creativity, The Artist’s Way, called “Imaginary Lives.” Here’ s a synopsis of the exercise, excerpted from the book:

If you had five other lives to lead, what would you do in each of them? I would be a pilot, a cowhand, a physicist, a psychic, a monk . . . Whatever occurs to you, jot it down.

The point of these lives is to have fun in them – more fun than you might be having in this one. Look over your list and select one. Then do it this week. For instance, if you put down country singer, can you pick a guitar? If you dream of being a cowhand, what about some horseback riding?

The question I am asked over and over again when people find out that my job is ending is, “What are you going to do next?” And what they actually mean is this: “Have you found another job yet?” When I reply that I’m not actually looking for a job, that instead, I’ve decided to take some time off, they are baffled. They usually manage: “That’s great – good for you!” But their faces tell a different story: one of confusion, skepticism and – often – envy.

Of course, “time off,” doesn’t mean lying on the couch binge-watching Netflix or spending every day at the beach. For me, it means taking all the time and energy and creativity that I have invested in working for someone else and instead, channeling that effort into exploring my passions and building a life that I had previously only dreamed of. It means investing more time in this blog and on my writing in general. It means producing a brand new play (that I’m still writing) this summer at Hollywood Fringe Festival. And it means allowing myself the time and space to breathe deeply, to reflect on the hard lessons of the last few years, and perhaps, to try on some of the imaginary lives on my list and see how they fit.

At the end of my week in Kent, I tagged on an extra day in Seattle with no agenda other than to relax and explore. I took a long walk through the city and ended up at the Space Needle, buying a ticket to a museum I’ve wanted to visit since it opened: Chihuly Garden and Glass. The museum and accompanying gardens are not very big, but I lingered there for hours, immersing myself in the color and detail of every piece. Later, while flipping through a catalogue in the museum’s café, I was struck by this quote from the artist:

I discovered my first collection of beach glass on the shores of Puget Sound when I was four or five years old.

I’ve never stopped collecting since.

As a Pacific Northwest kid, I’ve collected my fair share of colorful beach glass. But as I read that quote, I realized that over the course of my life, the things that I’ve been collecting more than anything else are stories. Stories both real and imagined, both my own and other people’s. And now, as I prepare to move forward on to this next, more exploratory phase of my life, stories are the things I’ll continue to collect. They’re what I’ll continue to figure out how to bring forth into the world. And they’re what will inform my next steps, including any of those so-called “imaginary” lives I might decide to try on.

Until next time, friends.

10 years ago Short URL 42 Comments

Art/Change/Creativity/Memoir/Writing

Change/Chihuly Garden and Glass/Extra Dry Martini/Imaginary Lives/Julia Cameron/Sarah Kelly/Seattle/The Artist's Way/Transition

Jan

Where I live.

January has not started out as I’d hoped. I began 2016 filled with enthusiasm for the year ahead and the changes that it promised, but that enthusiasm was quickly replaced with the less-than-bright-and-shiny realities of the day to day.

Immediately after the glow of the holidays wore off, I found myself surprisingly unmotivated: sluggish, fatigued, even a bit depressed. In December, life was moving fast and I struggled to keep up, but the manic energy that it brought also seemed to serve as a sort of inspiration. Words and ideas flowed out of me. I had so much to say, and writing felt easy.

Not so, lately. Every day, I sit down to work on a new piece: a stage play I’m planning to produce in early summer. And every day I find myself frustrated, tugging at a narrative that hasn’t quite shown me how it is meant to unfold. Little by little, I’m getting there, but the progress has been a maddeningly slow one of scribbling words into my notebook and scratching them out, throwing out more than I’m keeping, writing and re-writing.

And then there was yesterday. Running out for groceries, I shifted my car into reverse, and heard something that sounded like a motorcycle revving its engine. Is that me? I thought. I turned off the engine and the sound stopped. Turned it on and there it was again. What in the hell? I had never in my life heard a sound like that come out of my almost stealthy quiet Prius. Exiting the car, I smelled gasoline in the air.

Calls to Toyota and Triple A revealed what had happened: someone had stolen my catalytic converter. Prior to yesterday, I’d never even heard of a catalytic converter, but it is amazing how quickly Google and a couple of mechanics with I’m so sorry faces can turn you into an expert.

According to Auto.com, “the job of the catalytic converter is to convert harmful pollutants into less harmful emissions before they leave the car’s exhaust system.” Without it, not only does your car become a major polluter, it makes a roaring sound akin to having a pack of Hell’s Angels riding shotgun. Not pleasant. As the apologetic mechanic at my local Toyota informed me, there has been a rash of catalytic converter thefts all over L.A., due to the fact that it contains valuable metals that are then melted down and sold. And as an external part, they’re relatively easy for an experienced thief to remove (by sawing them off!) within minutes. Now the kicker: because of the recent epidemic of these thefts, catalytic converters are on a national backorder and mine could take up to eight weeks (and cost thousands of dollars) to replace. Eight weeks? Without my car? In L.A.?

I suppose you could say that this was the punch in the gut that turned a disappointing January into an abysmal one.

Later, as I’m on hold with my insurance company, trying to figure out if any of this is covered, it hits me that it’s not just the money, or the hassle, or the fact that I feel stranded without a car that has left me so shaken. It’s the fact that for the first time in the nearly two years since I moved to this (mostly) quiet residential neighborhood, I feel unsafe. Yes, I live in a big, dangerous city, and yes my neighborhood is tucked away right off a busy intersection, but the street where I live is populated with nice people: young working professionals and families with kids and dogs. I know – and like – my neighbors. I walk everywhere, striking up conversations with friends and strangers alike. I don’t feel scared walking home at night. And yet, someone still came along and did this: hacked up a piece of my car in plain sight. It’s the car that has faithfully and reliably carried me around this city for eight years. The car that my mother gave me. I feel sick.

Through my living room blinds, I see the late afternoon sunset beginning to streak the sky pink. I get off the phone, take a deep breath, pour a glass of wine and go outside to my patio. I’m lucky, I tell myself, as I breathe in the sunset and try to calm down. This sucks, but it will be OK. Maybe I’m not supposed to drive for a while. Maybe I’m supposed to slow down and simplify and focus on my writing. Maybe I’m supposed to move – the thought creeps in without my consent.

No, I think, as the rosy glow of the waning sun fills in the blue sky behind the majestic, lone palm tree that towers stoically above my roof. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to run away, just because things are difficult. I’m reminded of a saying from Lao Tzu that I posted on the Facebook page for my blog only yesterday morning, before I knew about any of this stuff with the car:

Stop leaving and you will arrive.

Stop searching and you will see.

Stop running away and you will be found.

I was attracted to the quote because it reminded me of my writing, and my tendency to abandon long form projects whenever I get stuck or when inspiration runs out. But maybe there’s a bigger life lesson there. One about endlessly searching for something to make me whole again, and always coming up short.

This is not the start to the New Year that I wanted, not at all. But maybe, buried underneath everything that’s icky and uncomfortable, maybe there’s something in it that I needed. Maybe instead of running away in search of something better, this is where I will be tested, and where I decide to stand and fight. And maybe, in that fight, I will learn something about myself that I needed to know.

Maybe. Or maybe it’s just a really crappy January.

Until next time, friends.

10 years ago Short URL 30 Comments

Change/Los Angeles/Me/Well-Being/Writing

Catalytic Converter/Change/Extra Dry Martini/Los Angeles/New Year/Resolutions/Sarah Kelly/Theft/Toyota/Writing

Oct

Doe Bay.

I’m sitting on Meditation Point, a promontory overlooking the sea, trying to decide where to fix my gaze. The unseasonably warm October weather has abruptly turned cold, and I’m shivering in my thin flannel shirt. I long for the puffy down jacket I left behind in the Retreat House, but I brush the longing aside, choosing instead to focus my attention on the rippling waters of Otter’s Cove, and the fog rolling over the tops of impossibly tall evergreen trees.

A few minutes ago, as part of her workshop at Write Doe Bay, papercut artist Nikki McClure led us on a walk through the woods, instructing us to remain silent as we followed the forested trail toward the overlook. Rather than speak, we were meant to simply observe the natural beauty all around us, find a spot to settle in, and sketch what we saw.

As our group of writers trudged along, passing campsites, we encountered a middle-aged couple cavorting among the trees, the door of their yurt flung open as they enjoyed a morning picnic. They hollered “hello!” at us, and though I (mostly) obeyed the instructions to stay quiet, the pair’s unchecked exuberance left me unable to suppress a chuckle. I wanted to shout greetings back at them, but instead, I smiled. A smile that said, “I know just how you feel.”

I’ve been back from Doe Bay for just over a week, and though it was my second time attending Write, this trip was a markedly different experience for me. Sure, the teaching artists were different, as were most of the attendees. But one year later, I was also different. And it was this difference that I found to be the most striking.

There’s a phrase that the founders of Write often use when referring to the workshop and to Doe Bay itself: The power of a place to unlock you. To underscore this idea, participants exchange vintage keys at the close of the workshop, placing them around each other’s necks on a string of suede.

But here’s the thing: if a person is going to be unlocked, they have to be willing to open up. And last year, I wasn’t. I came to Doe Bay fragile and frightened, hollowed out by tragedy, and desperately seeking some magic elixir to heal my battered psyche. I listened to the powerful stories of the other writers. I was moved. And I tried my best to be present. But if I’m honest, I wasn’t able to allow myself to participate in the workshop in any meaningful way.

Fast forward one year later. On this visit, waking up to the staggering sunrise outside the window of my cabin felt like nothing short of a miracle. On this visit, I found myself passionately curious about all of the attendees, wanting to connect with each and every one of them – even if only for a few minutes – in the short time we had together. And on this visit, the fear that churned in my stomach at the thought of reading my unpolished workshop writing or deeply personal stories from my life served as motivation to jump in and share, rather than something that held me back.

During her workshop at Write, Jenny Feldon asked us to consider changing one thing upon our return to our “normal” lives. “Change one thing,” she said, “and believe that other changes will follow.”

One year later, with Doe Bay as my barometer, I can tell you that, for me, many things have changed. Maybe the island and the rolling fog and the space we share together over the course of those three days really are magic. And maybe I simply needed to try again, to come back to this beautiful place tucked away amidst the trees, to realize how much – over the last year – I have been coming back to myself.

The power of a place to unlock you.

Until next time, friends.

10 years ago Short URL 4 Comments

Creativity/Me/Pacific Northwest/Travel/Writing

Doe Bay/Extra Dry Martini/Jenny Feldon/Nikki McClure/Pacific Northwest/San Juan Islands/Sarah Kelly/Write Doe Bay/Writing

Oct

Ten thousand.

Last week, I reached an incredible milestone on this blog: 10,000 email subscribers. I can scarcely believe it.

When I first started Extra Dry Martini 3 ½ years ago, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I only knew that I had a lot of ideas and opinions and I wanted to carve out my own little corner of the Internet on which to share them. I named this blog after my favorite cocktail, while the tagline, Straight up, with a twist, was a nod to my often blunt (sometimes foot-in-the-mouth!) Sagittarian nature, and my rather edgy, sarcastic sense of humor. Away I went.

I couldn’t have anticipated that only a few short months later, life as I knew it would fall apart. Or maybe I could have. Maybe I did. Maybe I intuited, in some strange, cosmic, sixth sense-ical way – the way animals can sense an impending natural disaster – that creating this platform to express myself would be the very thing to save me during the darkest nights of the soul I have ever experienced.

When it all came down, I didn’t write for a year. One whole year. To this day, I have only a vague, foggy idea of where that time went. I call that period of my life “the vortex,” a black hole of funerals and whiskey and airports and late night phone calls and never ending to-do lists and sleeping with one eye open.

But when I did come up for air, my writing was different. I wrote with a sort of raw honesty that would previously have been unthinkable to the me that started this blog. I wrote and I wrote, without a goal or a clear direction other than to simply keep going. And through the process of turning Extra Dry Martini into a sort of public journal to air my very private feelings, I changed. No, strike that. I didn’t change. Writing through pain, trying desperately to find meaning where there was none, the real me started to shine through the cracks in the old, broken me, the one I’d unwittingly hidden for years under layers of self-doubt and insecurity. It’s as Steven Pressfield says in his brilliant, essential, book The War of Art: “Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves to some idea we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”

Thank you to everyone who has read this blog. The sheer volume of kind-hearted, compassionate, thoughtful comments that I receive from readers never ceases to astound me. While I don’t always have time to respond to all of them – particularly on the posts that WordPress has chosen to feature on Freshly Pressed – I do read every single one, and they mean the world to me. Thank you.

Speaking of thank you’s, thank you to WordPress.com, without whom and all of their generous shares of my blog posts, reaching the 10K milestone never would have been possible. In just over a year, Extra Dry Martini has been featured on Freshly Pressed a whopping SEVEN times, including just last week. If you haven’t yet had a chance to read these posts, or if you’d simply like to revisit them, I’ve linked them below at the bottom of this page.

People sometimes call me “brave” for writing about some of the things I do, and for sharing intimate details of my life on the Internet. I’m not brave. I simply write to survive. I write to remind myself of who I am. And I write for all of the people who respond to one of my posts with the comment: “I thought I was the only one.” Let me tell you, with one hundred percent certainty: you are not the only one. If there’s a single lesson I take away from writing this blog, it’s that despite all of our differences – geographic location, family background, age, gender, ethnicity, religious faith or lack thereof – we are far more alike than we are different. We share the same hopes, the same heartbreaks, the same struggles and the same joys. We are united by the same powerful experience of being human and in this experience no one – not one of us – is alone.

Ten thousand is an impressive number. It’s a humbling number. But I’m not resting on my laurels. As I prepare to head off for a few days of creative recharge at Write Doe Bay, I’ll be thinking about how to make this blog bigger, better, and somehow more. Among the things I’m considering: spinning off Extra Dry Martini into some other iteration like a book, a play, a film, or possibly all of the above. I have no idea how that will look, or what the next steps will be. All I know is that anything that I create will be undertaken with the same commitment to honesty, to cutting to the core of the human experience, and will always, always be served straight up, with a twist.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for sharing my journey. And – fingers crossed – here’s to the next ten thousand.

Until next time, friends.

P.S. – If you would like to read the posts that WordPress featured in their Freshly Pressed section, here they are:

– Ice Water

– Time Out

– Things My Mother Never Did

– Putting off Tomorrow

– Little Steps. Big Steps. First Steps.

– Moments

– Three Years

10 years ago Short URL 15 Comments

Me/Writing

Blogging/Community/Extra Dry Martini/Freshly Pressed/grief/Sarah Kelly/Self Discovery/Steven Pressfield/Wordpress/Writing

Aug

The end of a thing.

This past weekend, I closed another show. It had been a while since I’d been on stage – two years – and I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it: the energy in the dressing room as the clock ticked toward curtain, the palpable excitement in those few, electric moments after “places” are called, waiting in the dark until it’s time to go on. The rush of adrenaline flooding my body when a cue line was dropped, and the sweet relief of recovery when the scene righted itself and moved forward. The utter you-can-hear-a-pin-drop silence when I realized the audience was right there with me, waiting, hanging on every word.

This play, Bare Naked Angels, was markedly different than any other play I’d done before. Autobiographical in nature, more solo performance than ensemble (though, really, a hybrid of both), it featured raw, personal stories from my and the six other cast members’ lives. It was the first time I’d produced a show without reading a script before signing on (our final script wasn’t ready until three weeks before opening night), and I had only a rough idea of the show’s concept and the journey it would take me on when I began.

During the months of workshopping that led up to Bare Naked Angels’ performance dates, my life was hit with a series of jolting events – both good and bad. The closer we got to opening night, the more change swirled in the air around me. It was almost as if by saying yes to this experience, with its leap-without-a-net nature, the universe began to demand more from me. I imagined Madam Universe needling me, saying something like, “Hey kid, don’t think I haven’t noticed what you’ve been doing. Complacency is no longer an option. And if you don’t take action on your own, I’m going to push you into it.”

Push me, she has. These last few months, my insides have been shifting, a shift that has been echoed in the world around me. I’m not quite sure how to reconcile all I’ve seen and felt and experienced, or how to process what it all means. And to be honest, I haven’t had the time, at least not yet. In the days since the show closed, I have been preparing for an impending office move that will happen while I’m out of town. That’s right – more change – the company I’ve worked at for the last decade is being evicted from our office park, and I’ve been packing up my desk, cleaning, purging, organizing, and attempting to catalogue and archive fifteen years worth of a brand’s history; a history that is inevitably intertwined with my own.

This week, I am thinking about endings. And tomorrow morning, when I settle into my seat on the Boeing 737 bound for the only place I’ve truly ever considered home, I will exhale. I will take some much-needed time. Time to reflect on all that has happened. Time to grieve all that has ended. Time to swim in the sea, time to breathe in the salt air. Time to hug people that I love. And time to listen to what life has been teaching me over these last crazy, chaotic, jolting few months, so that in stillness, I can ask myself that big, looming question, “what’s next?”

Until next time, friends.

(Photo credit: Instagram.com/AlaskaAir)

10 years ago Short URL 13 Comments

Art/Creativity/Los Angeles/Me/Well-Being/Writing

Bare Naked Angels/Change/Extra Dry Martini/Reflection/Sarah Kelly/Taking Risks/The End of a Thing/Theatre

Jul

Owning it.

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

– Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Four months ago, I started work on a new play that is unlike anything I’ve ever done before. It’s a solo performance workshop called Bare Naked Angels, conceived and directed by my friend Stacy Ann Raposa. The workshop is kept to a small group: our cast, which started as eight people and became seven, is on the larger side.

In the beginning, using readings and exercises from Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” to guide us, we each brought in weekly writing assignments to read in front of the group. As the weeks went on, the seemingly pointless ramblings about our day-to-day experiences or random childhood memories evolved into discussions about our hopes and dreams, the events that shaped our lives, and the nature of our identities. As we settled on the stories we wanted to tell on stage in front of an audience, we each emerged with a strong point of view about how we see the world.

I began this process with a clear idea of the story I wanted to tell. These last few years, my life has contained an inordinate amount of darkness. I didn’t want to dwell on that. I wanted to tell a story that was uplifting, that was about survival, about hope triumphing over despair. I wanted to tell a story that was more beautiful than what I’d been living. A story that I would want to read, that I would want to hear.

Like many things in life, the place I ended up arriving at was far different than the one I had envisioned when I began this journey. It turned out that I wasn’t so much writing the story as the story was writing me. And gradually, I learned to submit to that process, to let my words come out the way they wanted to, the way they needed to. Without judging them, without censoring myself, without worrying what other people would think. To just let it be what it was: the truth.

When the writing was done, Stacy (our director), took the seven intimate, honest, and (dare I say) incredibly brave stories written by our cast, chopped them up, and wove them together to create something beautiful: an achingly true script that is essentially a solo performance/ensemble piece hybrid. With only three days left until the show’s opening night, I’m equal parts exhilarated and exhausted.

To be honest, I have no idea how audiences are going to receive this show. I hope they love it as much as I do, but there’s really no way to tell with something like this. There is certainly nothing “escapist” about Bare Naked Angels. It puts real life in your face and dares you not to look away. Yet it’s also full of so many sweet, profound, heartbreakingly human moments. Ultimately, like the story I wanted to tell – and which, in large part, I think I did – I believe that this show will leave audiences feeling hopeful and with a greater connection to their own lives.

So here we go. It’s time to jump into the deep end of the pool and hope I can swim. Wish me luck.

P.S. – If you’re in the Los Angeles area and you want to come see this thing go down, I would love to have you. The flyer is below, and everything else you need to know can be found at www.fringetheatreco.com

Thanks for reading, friends. I promise to let you know how it goes.

11 years ago Short URL 15 Comments

Los Angeles/Me/Memoir/Performing Arts/Writing

Anne Lamott/Bare Naked Angels/Extra Dry Martini/Julia Cameron/Los Angeles/North Hollywood Arts District/Sarah Kelly/Solo Performance/The Artist's Way/Writing

Jun

Roll the dice.

The other day, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was sitting at my desk, dutifully checking off items on my to-do list, staring vacantly at my computer screen, wishing I were somewhere else. I had awoken extra early to put the finishing touches on a new piece for this blog – something about the importance of focus – but as I read it and read it again, I realized I couldn’t publish it. It felt dishonest, like I was trying too hard to sound like someone else. Someone who – unlike me – had their sh*t together.

And that’s when the existential dread set in. Who am I, anyway? What could I possibly say that’s important, or that will make any difference? Who cares?

The what’s the point of it all feeling rose quickly in my chest and caught in the back of my throat, a dull nausea spinning in my stomach, and I knew I had to get out. Before I could let the to-do list stop me, I slammed my laptop shut, laced up my beat-up running shoes, grabbed my keys and left. I got in my car and drove westward, toward the coast.

I live only seven miles from the ocean, but it’s staggering how little I make time in my schedule to go and see it. Throughout my life, the sea has always had a powerful effect on me. The sense of calm and peace it instills is so profound that I know in my bones I could never live far away from a body of water. When times are toughest – when I’m sad or lost or feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin – that’s when I crave the sea the most.

I parked my car on San Vicente. Putting my ear buds in, I trudged down the Santa Monica Stairs and then back up the incline that leads to Ocean Avenue and Palisades Park. I jogged through the park, marveling at the dense marine layer still blanketing the coast, even though just a handful of miles inland, my little stucco bungalow was already baking in the 11 a.m. summer sun. The fog shrouding the sea was so thick and white, you couldn’t tell where the horizon ended and the sea began, casting a hazy sort of magic over Palisades Park. I breathed in that fog, the sea, and almost immediately I felt soothed, better.

I let my brain race freely as I jogged along. When I got to the construction zone at the California Incline, I turned around and headed for the entrance to the steep set of stairs at the Montana Beach Overlook. I descended the sandy wooden steps toward Pacific Coast Highway, dodging beachgoers carrying bikes and surfboards. And then back up I went, the burning in my calves intensifying as I climbed faster and faster. Descend and climb. Descend and climb. I pushed myself again and again, the fatigue in my body finally allowing my tired brain to relax and settle into something that felt less like chaotic noise and more like calm, focused thoughts.

As I climbed, I thought about my Dad. Father’s Day had just passed, and his birthday was coming up. If he could see me now, what would he think? I didn’t have to wonder about it, I already knew. He’d tell me that I needed to stop complaining about my “problems” and get to work. Throughout my life, whenever I was slacking off or not doing all I could, I’d dread the inevitable grilling from Dad. He’d always unearth the truth in his lawyerly fashion: straight to the heart of the matter. “Well if you know better Sar, then why don’t you do better?”

The truth is, my recent lack of motivation isn’t rooted in laziness, or lack of ambition. It’s rooted in fear. I’ve been experiencing what you might call a crisis of confidence: blocked in my writing, hating all of my creative ideas, feeling hopelessly stuck and worried that everything I’ve been working so hard on is no good and a waste of my time.

Time. Whenever this “what’s the point of it all?” paralysis sets in, it always comes back to that question of time. What am I doing with it? Am I making the most of it? Is activity A, B, or C really worth my time? I’m ever aware of how precious it is, ever fearful of it slipping through my fingers, even as it does that very thing.

Plenty of things we invest our time in don’t work out. People die. Relationships fail. Jobs end. Does that mean they weren’t worth our time? I don’t think so. It’s all a part of life, experiences we need to have so that we can learn and grow and (hopefully) improve. I suppose that nothing about how we choose to spend our time can really be a waste unless we willfully choose to waste it.

Is that what I’ve been doing? Willfully wasting my time indulging in my own neuroses? What would Dad say? He was an “all in” kind of guy. He wouldn’t let fear or doubt stop him. And as I thought about Dad, I remembered a poem written by Charles Bukowski. It’s called “Roll the Dice” and it’s something I’ve loved for years, returning to it again and again whenever I’ve needed a swift kick in the ass. Here it is:

if you’re going to try, go all the

way.

otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the

way.

this could mean losing girlfriends,

wives, relatives, jobs and

maybe your mind.

go all the way.

it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.

it could mean freezing on a

park bench.

it could mean jail,

it could mean derision,

mockery,

isolation.

isolation is the gift,

all the others are a test of your

endurance, of

how much you really want to

do it.

and you’ll do it

despite rejection and the worst odds

and it will be better than

anything else

you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,

go all the way.

there is no other feeling like

that.

you will be alone with the gods

and the nights will flame with

fire.

do it, do it, do it.

do it.

all the way

all the way.

you will ride life straight to

perfect laughter, its

the only good fight

there is.

I left the beach and went home, utterly exhausted. Later, when I re-read those words by Bukowski, I thought about how my Dad spent much of his life as the living embodiment of them. I thought about how I wanted to be more like that. And I thought about how the best way I could honor my father as I approached his birthday was to stop hesitating, stop moving through my life with so much doubt and uncertainty, and simply “roll the dice.”

Easier said than done, but maybe my first step is to spend a lot more time climbing those stairs, breathing in the ocean, clearing out the noise.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 32 Comments

Los Angeles/Poetry/Well-Being/Writing

Charles Bukowski/Doubt/Extra Dry Martini/Father's Day/Los Angeles/Palisades Park/Roll the Dice/Santa Monica Stairs/Sarah Kelly/Writing

Jun

Going dark.

I haven’t published a new post on this blog in almost three weeks, which feels like a really long time. In truth, May was a difficult month for me. It had some lovely bright spots – like a trip to the San Francisco Bay Area to visit friends – but overall it was challenging, leaving me exhausted and drained.

I spent a lot of the month of May writing about my mother, both autobiographically (a theater piece I’m working on that will premiere in July) and fictionally (exploring the mother/daughter relationship that’s at the heart of my screenplay). All of this recent personal archaeology, combined with the fact that Mother’s Day and my Mom’s birthday are both contained within the month of May, left me feeling emotional and raw – like an exposed nerve – these last few weeks.

I tried to write my way through these feelings – I often do – but found myself hitting a wall. I started writing several potential blog posts, but abandoned them all halfway through. Sometimes what I end up writing turns out to be so dark that I don’t want to share it. Sometimes I catch myself falling victim to a “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” form of self-censorship. And sometimes I just want my life to look better to the outside world than it actually feels, to me. I guess all of these things are my own personal stumbling blocks.

As it can sometimes happen in this crazy life, it took something of a breakdown in order for me to experience a break through, or at least, a moment of clarity. At my lowest point, I was sitting on my therapist’s couch, crying because I was feeling sad and hadn’t been able to shake the feeling for several days. I had thought I was finally done with the waves of grief, but here they were again, rearing their ugly heads with a vengeance. “I am so tired of this,” I wailed. “When am I going to feel better?”

“What does better mean?” she asked, in that annoying way that therapists can ask questions you don’t have the answers to. And we sat in silence while I pondered what in the hell exactly I did mean. “I just wish it were easier to be happy,” I said, finally. “Like it used to be.”

“I feel like I’m doing everything I can think of,” I continued. “I exercise and I volunteer and I keep a gratitude journal and I practice self care. And,” I said, indicating, my therapist, “I’m here with you. Which is a big deal for me.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “You’re good at doing the right things. But what if, sometimes, there’s nothing you can do? What if, sometimes, you can’t fix it? What if you just have to let it be what it is?”

Nothing I can do? I was speechless. I am not used to doing nothing. It makes me feel weak and ineffective and powerless. But as I sat there, silently, feeling sorry for myself, I wondered if she wasn’t right. Have I been trying too hard, pushing too stubbornly to be someone and something I’m not?

Going dark scares me. It’s a slippery slope, and after watching my mother slide into blackness and never come out, I am terrified that the same thing could happen to me. Perhaps that’s why I fight so hard against the dark days when they come. But I have to admit, not only is denying my sadness not working, but it’s wearing me out. What if I could learn to simply sit with those bad days, to embrace them, even? What if I could do it without judging myself, without worrying that others will judge me, or distance themselves from me because I’m too difficult to be around? What if I could allow myself to be sad when I’m feeling sad without fearing that those feelings will swallow me?

Maybe going dark – on occasion – isn’t so bad. Maybe it’s just like the weather. Some days it rains. Some days the sky is clear and blue. And no matter how bad the storm, it will always, eventually, lift. And as anyone who has ever enjoyed hiking in the city I live in – Los Angeles – will tell you, the best time to ascend a mountain is the day after a downpour, when all the smog has blown out, the air is clear and beautiful, and you can see for miles, all the way down to the ocean.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 45 Comments

Los Angeles/Me/Noir/Opinion/Well-Being/Writing

Extra Dry Martini/Going Dark/Los Angeles/Mother's Day/Sarah Kelly/Therapy/Writing

May

Words: a Love Story.

I’ve been writing my whole life, but until recently I never really considered myself a writer. Not like that. Writing was just something that I did. Whether they were high school essays, papers for a college journalism class, or the plays and short films I wrote when I first started acting, writing was always just something that came naturally and was fun to do, but nothing I ever took too seriously.

That all started to shift about three years ago. I’d been writing Extra Dry Martini for just a couple of months – something I started doing for fun – when my entire life fell apart. I’ve written in great detail about loss on this blog and I don’t feel the need to rehash it, but suffice it to say that the spring of 2012 through the spring of 2013 was a very difficult year for me. A very difficult year, the ramifications of which are still reverberating throughout my now very different life. When I finally came up for air and felt brave enough to write about it, I published a piece on this blog about my experiences entitled The Lost Year. And from there on out, my writing was different.

So it was that writing became less of a hobby and more of a lifeline. In the last year and a half, writing has been not only my most reliable creative outlet, but it has been my therapy. I would no sooner give it up than I would give up breathing, and in fact, I’ve often wondered if I were to give it up, if I would still be able to go on breathing.

When I feel lost or adrift, getting all those thoughts and feelings down on the page is sometimes the only thing that brings any relief. And while I don’t really believe that you can “get it all out,” there is something liberating about being able to wrap my mind around a moment, around pain or sorrow, around joy, around love, and to articulate it in such a way that it’s no longer a swirl of chaos in my brain, but something more ordered and easier to understand. Once on the page, with the words and thoughts at a slightly safer distance, I can read them with a measure of objectivity and think, maybe this thing has a little less power to hurt me than it used to.

I write out of a burning desire to transform the sad, empty spaces within me into art and in doing so, transcend the parts of me that still feel broken. And while I cherish the time I’ve spent absorbed in thought putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, I sometimes wonder if all the hours I’ve invested in crafting pretty sentences have left me less able than before to say the things that need to be said when it comes to face to face interaction with real, live people.

At this moment, I find myself juggling two projects that will soon bridge that gap: a gap between the solitude I’ve been spending in my own little creative laboratory and the big, bad outside world. The first project is a play. In July, I’m going to stand on a stage and talk about some of the very personal, very vulnerable things I’ve been writing about on this blog as part of a solo performance workshop called (appropriately) Barenaked Angels. For the first time, I’m going to say some of the things I’ve been writing down out loud, in front of an audience. Yikes.

The second project is my screenplay, a project and process I’ve detailed in earlier posts like Putting off tomorrow and Little steps. Big steps. First steps. As I continue to work through the second draft and push toward a looming deadline to hand over scripts to actors for the first table read, I am discovering more and more that the parts of the story that aren’t yet working are the parts where I haven’t delved deeply enough into the main character’s hopes, dreams, and flaws. In other words, it’s an autobiographical story without quite enough autobiography in it.

Words are seductive. There is something exquisitely satisfying about capturing a moment on paper and thinking, yes, that’s exactly what happened, how I felt about it, and why it mattered. Words have an incredible capacity to illuminate a life. But in the end, words are not life, and one cannot live by words alone. I’m so grateful for what writing has given me – for the way it has sheltered me through pain and has allowed me to connect with the hearts and minds of other writers through this blog. I will always, always be writing. But the writer’s life is also about finding balance. A writer needs to experience the world in order to write about it, and I haven’t been doing nearly enough of that lately. So now it’s time for me to take the next step: to take the lessons I’ve learned and not just write better, but live better too.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 37 Comments

Los Angeles/Me/Writing

Barenaked Angels/Blogging/Extra Dry Martini/grief/Sarah Kelly/Writing

Apr

Little steps. Big steps. First steps.

Last week, I finished the first draft of my screenplay. It was a goal I’d set for myself so long ago – a goal which I had so often delayed – that part of me couldn’t believe that I had actually achieved it, and that I was really, truly, typing the words “Fade Out” on the bottom of page ninety-eight.

However, though I felt an initial surge of excitement upon reaching this milestone, my joy quickly turned to dread. I felt scared. Heavy. Worried.

The negative self-talk started screaming through my brain. “You finished it?” “So what?” “It’s not done. Not by a long shot.” “You’ll probably never finish it.” “And even if you do, who cares?” “Your story isn’t particularly interesting, Sarah. No one is going to want to see this movie.”

It took me three days after completing the first draft to force myself to sit down and read the whole thing from beginning to end, with an eye on what needed to be clarified, edited, and fixed. The process was horrible. As I read along, my self-judgment got worse and worse. Words like “stupid,” “cliché,” and “boring” sprang to mind. One particular scene made me laugh out loud as I covered my mouth in horror, thinking, “I can’t believe I wrote that.”

And on and on it went. My younger self would have been so discouraged at the end of it, I would have buried the entire document in a folder on my laptop and not looked at it again for months, until one night after I’d had too much wine and was feeling masochistic, I’d pick it up again and cry my way though it, bemoaning my poor talentless self and all the months I’d wasted on writing something that was never going to be any good and was never going to see the light of day.

But I am not my younger self. I am older now, and I – usually – know better. The older me took all of my harshest criticism and wrote it down, trying to make my notes as constructive as possible. The older me reminded myself that first drafts are almost always terrible, and I didn’t write this first draft to be brilliant, I wrote it to get to the end. The older me knows that this process is painful, but also knows that the only way to make the pain stop is to keep writing, keep pushing, keep showing up and doing the work. The older me knows that I can’t give up, because if I do, the unfinished work will turn into yet another unrealized dream that will haunt me. And I have too many of those already, thank you very much.

I am fortunate enough to have lots of amazing friends who are actors, writers, artists. And I believe that if we’re honest, we all grapple with the same fears, the same longing, the same self-doubt. We all worry that we’re not talented enough, not smart enough, not unique enough to add our voices to the crowded chorus of storytellers already out there in the world. But it’s not just the artists, is it? Don’t we all harbor a secret “Who do I think I am?” that holds us back from taking bold steps toward our biggest dreams?

After beating myself up for a good long time, I picked up my much-beloved copy of Steven Pressfield’s book “Do the Work.” (If you are trying to finish anything, get it, use it. I am not kidding – this book will change your life). I paged through it as I often do, to remind myself that nothing worth doing is ever easy. I laughed when I got to this part on page 46:

Sometimes on Wednesday I’ll read something that I wrote on Tuesday and I’ll think, ‘This is crap. I hate it and I hate myself.’ Then I’ll re-read the identical passage on Thursday. To my astonishment it has become brilliant overnight. Ignore false negatives. Ignore false positives. Both are Resistance.

And then, in big, bold letters, he writes:

Keep working.

In the end, I have no control over whether people love or hate my story. By extension, I have no control over whether people love or hate me. Making people love me is not my job. My job is to show up and do the work on a consistent basis, and to try every day to get a little bit better. The story that’s burning a hole inside of me deserves that. So every day, I try to remind myself that the process, not the end result, is what I have control over. The process, not the end result, is what demands my focus.

And I also try to remind myself that I have a community of friends and supporters – many of them right here on WordPress – with whom I can share my process, my fears, my journey. And this community reminds me that there’s nothing wrong with the struggle. The struggle is part of the story.

Lucky me.

Until next time, friends.

11 years ago Short URL 154 Comments

Writing

Extra Dry Martini/Fear/Resistance/Sarah Kelly/Screenwriting/Steven Pressfield

Category Archives: Writing