Something Else in 2004

As usual, I made no New Year’s Resolutions this year. The one I made last year (to take to drink) didn’t work out very well, as I remain an unregenerate teetotaler. And it’s already twelve days into 2004 and so far I haven’t lost thirty pounds or written a novel or found my dream job or anything. So why bother, right?

However. However, when I was at coffee the other day with my opera singer friend (who can no longer drink anything with caffeine because of something to do with her money-maker, i.e. her vocal cords, and said forlornly when presented with her decaf chai “Sometimes you really wonder how much you want to give up for your art, you know?”) I started thinking about this a little more. Anne Carolyn and I were talking about important experiences we’d had over the year. I think the words “transformative” and “paradigm shift” may have been used. I told her that I didn’t have any big successes like losing thirty pounds or writing a novel or finding my dream job or anything, but that I had had a couple of little things…the ABL party, Stupid Burning Man, and JournalCon…that made me think quite a bit about the parts of the person I am now that most correspond to the kind of person I’d like to be in the future, and what I can do to get those things more in accordance with each other.

Here’s what I wrote about the ABL party this year, some of what I liked about it so much:

This weekend, I wore my cutest clothes and went barefoot all the time and ate whatever I wanted and talked and laughed so much I temporarily lost my voice and stayed up late had three thousand crushes and hugged and kissed and hugged some more and had secret plans and told stupid jokes. I didn’t carry my cool new purse and forgot where I put my keys. I didn’t knit my brow in frustration once.

See? Doesn’t that sound good? I like that part of me. That part of me showed up for a good deal of the time at Stupid Burning Man and for almost all of JournalCon. Of course, it’s hard to be happy and giggly and fun-loving all the time just because of stupid things like your job and the cat hair all over your couch and the headaches you get sometimes and the frozen sheet of ice on your car in the mornings that you’re not quite sure how to get off. I know some people are able to be cute and smiley all the time even in the face of (gasp!) everyday life! but I don’t seem to be able to sustain the Party Persona 24/7. I manage to have a decent amount of fun in my day to day life…because if drinking cranberry sparkly and knitting while listening to AudiOasis on KEXP isn’t fun, I don’t know what is…but I’m certainly not in the Party Persona all the time.

So, aside from being on vacation all year, what can I do to be more like I was during those times?

I guess I can just try to recapture the magic by doing those same things again this year. The ABL! What will it think of next? JournalCon! Damn Millionaires in 2004! I don’t plan on going to Stupid Burning Man this year though. Not just because it’s Stupid, because it’s not completely stupid. The wearing fun costumes and hanging out with your old friends and making new friends is quite nice, as well as the art and even some of the happy squishy love vibes you can feel there, even if you have a heart made of stone. What’s Stupid is the tons of money you spend to get really hot and dirty and listen to the hippies talk about their amaaaaaaaaaazing experiences, man (even when you are sometimes, yourself, one of those hippies). And some of the wondering you do about all these intelligent and creative people who have nothing better to do with their intelligence and creativity than to build gigantic phalli that fill the horizon. However, in lieu of Stupid Burning Man I do plan to do some other fun stuff, travel-wise, this year. So far those plans are in their embryonic stages right now but I am confident that there will be much fun involved, somehow.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe I just need to have more fun this year. All sorts of fun. The kind of fun that involves sleeping in late and going to your favorite brunch place and then maybe for a walk and then perhaps to Target or the Fremont Sunday Market; the kind that involves hiking and camping and kayaking; the kind that involves talking on the phone to your best friends and spending half the duration of those conversations going “Seriously, thank you SO much for listening to me,” and then the friend goes, ‘Of COURSE! I mean, anytime!” and then you go “You’re the best, I love you,” and then the friend goes “No YOU’RE the best and your hair is looking really cute lately, did I tell you?” and then you go “See what I mean about being the best?” and so on; the kind that involves watching multiple hours of TV shows on DVD because you still don’t have TV; the kind that involves smooching; the kind that involves finally figuring out how to caramelize onions for your Book Club meeting (confidential to Book Clubbers: I think you’re going to be very proud); the kind that involves staying up late and laughing and laughing; the kind of fun that involves finally getting a pair of knee high boots and looking pretty fierce when you do finally get them. I think I can make a pretty firm commitment to More Fun. I mean, how hard is that.

I think it was the famous and fabulous Gael that one time said she wanted to be the person her blog thought she was. I’ve had that conversation with Sundry too. Maybe you’re not exactly what you want to be right now at this point in your life (and when the hell did you get to be almost thirty, by the way?), and maybe there’s some stuff in your life that you thought would have been resolved by now, and maybe there are some changes you have yet to make that are proving to be a lot more daunting than previously anticipated. And by you, I mean, as usual, “me.” It’s hard to come to terms with all that. Especially when you feel this little kernel of How You Want To Be For Real lodged in there somewhere, especially when you feel like the dishes and the rain and the heartbreak make it really hard for that kernel to grow into anything bigger and more permanent. But I think, somehow, that having at least one little place in your life, like, say, your online journal, can help with that. You have incontrovertible proof that there were times when you were the person you want to be, even the person you’re meant to be. It says so right there on the screen. Even if you were lying or exaggerating half the time, even if you left out half the details because they messed with your prose, even if you remained suspiciously silent on certain topics, still, the real you got a chance to be on display for at least the amount of time it took to type and upload the entry. And that’s better than nothing, right? Better than deciding that you’re never going to be who you want to be so you might as well just give up at twenty-eight and three-quarters and just put your head down and get on with the business of living out your days.

Here’s what I wrote about a year ago for my year journal of keeping Ampersand:

I think I thought that by my one year Ampersand Anniversary that I would have made a bunch of internet friends and would constantly be emailing hilariously and I would be getting tons of hits per day and maybe get nominated for a Diarist Award and that my writing would get better and better and that all of a sudden I would be…something else, I guess.

All of that happened in 2003. (Except maybe the “tons of hits” thing, but I’m very happy with “ten times the hits I was getting a year ago”). I did make a bunch of internet friends and I did get nominated for a Diarist Award (complete with my very own dangerous and beautiful Nemesis) and I think my writing has become better. And while I hope to continue the trend of emailing hilariously and making more friends and improving my writing, I am wondering now if maybe I am edging into being something else: being more often the person the journal lets me be, that I found through writing here (although I admit I had hints before that it might exist), being that little part of me that’s the part I like best.

I guess I’ll have to let you know this time next year.


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