It’s been quite difficult to hold myself accountable for things. I realize that probably a lot of people do this as well, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized this lack of accountability is holding me back in a lot of different ways. It inhibits my ability to let go and my ability to grow.

There have always been instances in my life that I have easily rationalized (one way or another) as “not my fault” and “out of my control”. But what if these things really were my fault and completely within my ability to control? Self-preservation kicks in and feeds your mind what it wants to hear. This isn’t some winey thread about how I think I’m a bad person so I must have deserved everything bad that has ever happened to me (although, there may be a few too many racist jokes in my past for me to ever be conventionally considered a “good” person.. BUT on the contrary, the only reason these jokes are funny is because the people I tell them to know deep down inside that I’m really not a racist at all… or am I? You will never know, and that is the key to any funny racist joke. Always keep em guessing). (also, a bit of a disclaimer here: I have the awkward habit of using the word “racist” whenever it suits me. If you don’t like biscotti, you are a racist. If you don’t like Billy Joel’s music, you are a racist. If you don’t like my use of the word racist, you are definitely a racist. As you may have noticed, my use for this word is usually completely unrelated to race. I consider myself a victim of a society that charges every issue with race and this is my attempt at making it obsolete. If you are offended, I’m probably only a tiny bit sorry and still think you are racist).

I am this person, good or bad, is irrelevant because I suppose we are all probably a little of both. This is about taking full ownership of the me that I have become after 29 years of living and experiences. It’s about owning my shit. Owning it, understanding it, accepting it and loving it (gross no, not my shit. ME, like all of me, even the shitty parts).

There is this thing in front of me every second of every day. Like a big black cloud (it could be a white cloud too, don’t start this crap now. This is serious ok?) that is always in the way. It’s this big conglomerate of stuff thats always right there in front of my face, in the way of everything and restraining me. A big haze of layered and intertwined, jagged messiness that blocks any and all clarity. I have gone through my days, all of them, with this dark cloud perpetually blocking my vision, and for the most part never even realized it until recently.

Before about 2 months ago, it was just work. I was happy working and I was happy going to work and I was blissfully unaware of the foggy clump before my eyes all those years. That was its first layer. J-O-B. M-O-N-E-Y. P-E-R-C-E-P-T-I-O-N.

When that layer was removed, I could already begin to notice that things became a bit brighter. The perception thing was a bitch though. It took weeks for me to figure out what the hell to tell people. It actually made me not want to go out for a while (you know, when you meet new people the first thing they ask you is “so what do you do?” When you aren’t doing anything, it’s an embarrassing question to answer. It seems to me, that everyone hates work, but thats all anyone ever wants to talk about). I was embarrassed by what people might think of me and embarrassed of what I thought of myself.

So, back to the big hateful black glob of doom. I realize that this fog, this thing that stays with me when I wake up and when I go to bed, is probably made of all of my excuses. Every thought and thing keeping me from doing what I really want and being who I really am. There was work, that kept me thinking that “it’s ok you’re not working on anything that stimulates you intellectually or creatively, you are making money and doing your part. It’s normal and what you’re supposed to do,” and now there is the questioning and doubt and the what-if’s that keep me from taking myself and my work seriously (prime example, I wanted to put quotation marks around the word “work” just now, because there is some part of my insides that is racist toward the idea of me being a writer and to that part of myself I say, boo.) I think this is because I think someone who just “claims” that they are something, better be really effing good at it. There is nothing I hate more than like drunk college kids being self-proclaimed artists and poets. It takes stones man. 90% of the time, they suck at everything and being creative just gives them an excuse to be painfully and averagely mediocre. I have a really hard time calling myself a writer for precisely this reason. I probably don’t deserve the title yet (and this is probably just another excuse in the dust cloud keeping me away from my dream).

The the thing about accountability and excuses is that they come hand in hand when you are rationalizing and coping, especially with failure. I accept that I had a part to play in every situation in my life turning out the way it has. I am cutting the crap, filtering the smog and attempting to unblind myself. I want to have no more excuses and I want rid of this fear.

I am a writer. My couch in my apartment is my office. I am scared that what I am doing really won’t matter at all. I am a writer. I am selfish that I think anyone would care to read about this. I love the fact that some of you do read it. I am a writer. My book is only 4 chapters in. I need to re-learn to edit. I am a horrible speller, but I am a writer…probably.

I’ve been having really awesome confusingly twisted dreams lately. I haven’t had dreams like this since I used to play Beatles Monopoly before bedtime (the MOST stressful game on the planet and I have no idea how anyone thinks that it serves a recreational purpose. Not just Beatles Monopoly, all the various strains of Monopoly are probably equally as horribly nerve-racking.) So I’ve been dreaming that I’ve been having these long dialogues with the protagonist of my novel. It starts out that I’m sitting in some dimly lit room that looks like it came straight out of a Lynch film, and I’m drinking what looks like a bourbon or whiskey in a fancy little tumbler (catching up on Boardwalk Empire has been a bad influence, all I want to do is smoke lots of cigarettes, drink hard old-man liquor and spend all my money on prostitutes and other entrepreneurial shit), and in walks my main character, alive and walking and exactly how I imagine her looking in my head. In my dream I don’t seem to give a shit, and the entire situation seems completely normal. She walks over, pours herself one of whatever it is I’m already drinking, and we start to talk.

The first frustrating thing about this dream is that I can’t, for the life of me, remember what the hell we talk about. I can only remember the situation, which is cool as hell, but the content is all waxy and smeared and completely incomputable. The second frustrating thing about this dream is that I distinctly remember thinking that this girl is a total douche and I couldn’t wait to get away from her. I mean, at first when I woke up, I thought it was kind of funny. You know, I meet this person that I completely made up, her personality and style loosely based off of myself and some of my favorite people, and she SUCKS. Then I realized that it’s probably not ideal. This is probably my subconscious telling me something is really wrong with the construction of this character.

She is flawed, as all characters and people are, but she is supposed to be like effortlessly awesome despite these flaws. Her flaws are supposed to make her more charming and lovable (yeah I threw up in my mouth a little when I wrote that just now, but I’m leaving it so you can continue to think it’s something that people actually mean when they say it to you). If I could just remember why I hated her so much in my dream, it would probably help the story.  Or maybe, it’s ok that she’s super lame because it will just make the supporting characters better in comparison? (I know it sounds like I’m having a bit of a panic attack about this, but it’s really probably nothing. I’m probably fine and just need to stop trying to remember the only dream I’ve ever had that probably held the key to making my book not embarrassingly suckingly blowey and stupid. Probably no big deal at all).

Maybe it was just a fucking dream that means I’ve still got work to do (optimism folks, give it a try, it’s basically just denial for naive grown-ups). Either way, I hope I have a chance to talk with her again and maybe see what she thinks about all this. Even though she may be the least interesting fake person I’ve ever sort-of met, she might have some sort of insight of her own about the situation I’ve put her in. Next time I’ll pay closer attention.

In this dream, either nothing she had to say was worth remembering, or I was just too inebriated to retain any of it. Dream drunkenness is the only rational explanation for all of this…probably.

So… it’s 5:30 and one of those days where life has totally gotten in the way of ANY creative productivity happening in this household. Things like technology, the post man, this crappy excuse for an apartment complex and things of the like, have sucked up the day and now, it is mid-afternoon and what have I got to show for myself? A blog post thats only a little written and a still unfinished book. ugh. My eye is twitching.

At what point to you put up your middle finger to the life of being grown up and make the conscious decision to close it all out, it’s not important, it can wait. Whatever “it” is, it’s much less important than the important things you have to do. Like finish your effing novel so you can actually feel like you finally accomplished something. (I promise that this attitude is all just because my eye won’t stop twitching and it’s driving me slowly and painfully insane… it’s like hiccups but worse. Like eye-hiccups.)

I also hate that being a woman, no matter how modern and open to culinary artistry your significant other may be, that it is automatically my responsibility to bring dinner to fruition. This is stupid and it’s taking up limited brain space that needs to be used for those important things mentioned above. Instead, I’m sitting here, trying to be bloggingly profound, but all I can think about is what the hell I can do with that week-old cauliflower sitting in the fridge. (This also leads me to making up words like “bloggingly” that you have to deal with. No I’m not apologizing, I’m rationalizing and defending my right as a creative being to make up words to fit my very specific and bitchy needs. It’s certainly not my fault if they don’t exist already.)

I’m pretty sure I heard my neighbor have a mental breakdown through the walls today. It really made me want to stop everything and just get as close as I could to listen. There was a lot of swearing and screaming and it was like the best reality tv type entertainment I’ve heard in quite sometime(and I live in Philly, people are constantly making spectacles of themselves in public. It’s actually quite easy to be entertained just by looking out the window and people watching.)

I wanted to write about her crazily inflated reaction to water dripping in her bathroom because it made me think that she is either certifiable, or completely validated. I secretly admire people who can just freak the fuck out without thinking twice about how society might view said freak out. I am an admittedly calm individual. I’m not saying that I don’t get angry, but I think my version of angry and neighbor ladys version of angry are on opposite ends of the spectrum. (aw man, I wish you could have heard her massive, probably aneurysm-causing, meltdown.) People are often just too polite and should probably just learn to tell it how it is. If you’re pissed off, scream about it. If you think someone is a tool, tell them about it. If you hate that your post office can’t ever seem to deliver one single freaking package without a million problems, bitch at them for it. I mean, a little water dripping in your bathroom is probably not the most reasonable avenue for the carnage I was fortunate enough to listen to this afternoon, but think of the world change that would ensue if we were all brave enough to just let our inner crazy out every so often.

Shit would get done the way it’s supposed to because if it wasn’t, you know you would be in for some crazy. People wouldn’t be harboring pent-up anger and stress just waiting for some drip of water in their bathroom to put them over the edge and lose their shit. I really think a bit more overt and outward crazy in society would probably not be such a bad thing.

Dear Neighbor lady,

I support your right to unleash the beast anytime you feel the itch. I hope that this will keep you from going on a crazy murdery spree some night in our building.

Sincerely, Your Supportive Neighbors

I bet she’s not as bat-shit as I’m making her out to be. Maybe she was just trying to deal with her eye-hiccups while stressing out about cauliflower… probably.

Today I don’t feel like writing…correction, I don’t feel like thinking about writing or writing about writing. It seems redundant today for some reason. Tomorrow, though, all bets are off and I’ll probably write the longest most awesomest post about writing. Then again, probably not. Who the hell knows. I digress.

Today is one of those sun-shiny days in mid-winter that makes me certain the whole city is probably having a secret giant fantastic festival somewhere. They have to be, because it is almost 40 degrees out, which feels like the freaking tropics compared to the frigid shit thats been going on, and people need an excuse to wear their flipflop, sorts and hoodie combos. For the record: I am against this personally, but would never want anyone to feel like I was forcing my own beliefs onto others. I just want it to be known, that I happen to feel very strongly, that if it is socially acceptable for adults to have the bottom 1/3 of themselves basically completely unprotected anytime that it is still sub 60 fahrenheit, it should also be equally as socially acceptable for those who own adult, animal inspired, fleece onesies (which are singlehandedly and easily the most practical and underrated garments of winter) to wear them without fear of beratement. Again, I digress.

It would make no sense if the rest of the world was wasting this beautiful afternoon introverted indoors like the cold-intolerant vampires of winter we are. I surprisingly don’t mind. It’s funny though, because if I were at work on a day like today, in an office somewhere just looking out the window (yes I’m making fun of you now, but really just to make myself feel better about being job-less so don’t get all pissed off about it) I would have bitched about it relentlessly. I would have spent my entire afternoon thinking of all the other things I would have done to enjoy the day if I didn’t have to be at work. Now that I am not withering away at a soul-sucking job somewhere pretending to be busy but actually just effing around on the internet (yep, about you again…I can see you…calm down I’m just messing, I probably can’t really see you), I am sitting on my couch in my apartment trying to figure my shit out. Trying to be productive. To produce.

Is “writers block” just an excuse writers use instead of just admitting that they are feeling lazy? I want to know who the person was that decided being “lazy” was deserving of a negative connotation. There are many worse things that one can be, and if you are, in fact, a lazy person, it probably takes very little to content you. You are probably happy in most situations and you probably adapt well because you lack any real opinion or decision-making capability because you’re probably too lazy to give a shit. That’s not so bad. I can think of at least 30, much worse, character flaws in a person off the top of my head at this very moment. I mean, I am obviously just having some sort of creative drought and am not at all lazy (shut up, I can feel you judging me and it is pretty rude of you).

So, the decision before me now is to A: push through the lack of desire and spend the afternoon motivating my creative self to make an appearance, or B: push though the lack of desire and spend the afternoon motivating my creative self to make an appearance. I guess when you decide to give something a go, you give it a go, no excuses (even when the struggle is real). Alright masterpiece…I’m coming for you!

I should probably just go find the secret winter-vampire festival. There is probably beer there. Beer and dancing. Damn, that sounds like fun…probably.

Yesterday I re-started working on a novel I have been trying to rip out of myself for about a year now. The story is there, the characters are there, the wit and comedic banter is there, but the ending is nowhere in existence. I suppose its not ready for the end just yet, but its almost as if I think that I need to know the ending in order to have the story working toward something. Clever foreshadowing, some sort of meaningful magnitude of “why” being resolved. I don’t even know if the ending will be happy or sad. This is probably a big problem. All I know is that I refuse to have a whiskey-dick of an ending. All that anticipation and excitement leading up to, well… whaaa whaaaw. Poor little fella.

All of this fret about an ending really got me thinking that this writing process of mine is probably perfectly reflective of this life process of mine. (I know what your thinking, and leave the whiskey-dick analogy alone at this point. Yes, you’re very clever, we all agree, now leave it alone and try to keep up.)

Trying to enjoy the present and not get ahead of yourself, all caught up in the future in your head, is something people talk about a lot. YOLO and all that, but I am not quite sure its entirely possible. There are big beautiful moments that you get lost in that make you forget about everything else, past, present and future, but the rarity of these moments are precisely what makes them important and memorable. If you live your whole life for each individual instant without thinking of future consequence, without at least considering the end game, you are probably pretty selfish, probably on a lot of drugs or probably both. No judgement here. It may not work for my life, but it might make for an interesting story.

Then comes the big question: If I don’t know how it ends, why keep going at all?

Why keep going through the painstaking process if, in the end, it could all be just… whaa whaaw? I’m terrified, and rightfully so, it’s terrifying. I’m sure most “creative” individuals (basically the artistic way of describing someone without a 9-5, but still considers themselves to be working) are terrified.  To be honest, it’s a feeling I haven’t felt in a long while. I actually can’t remember the last time I felt it.

As a little worker bee in the system, I was numb to most of these terrific feelings. I felt more rage, confusion and complacency. Money will make you put up with a lot of weird shit that no one seems to think is weird at all. It’s all so weirdly normal. Now, I realize that this terror probably means freedom. It probably means ambition and it probably means that any other emotion that comes my way on this journey to a dream and to an ending is genuinely part of my artistic self that needs embraced.

Those big beautiful revolutionary moments that make you forget… those are probably more important than the ending. They can be endings all on their own…probably.

About a month ago, I was “let go” (aka fired) from a gig that made me money (aka job). As a result, a friend told me that “now is the time to follow your dream”.

Issue: I’m a bit unsure I even have one.

I think there are flickers of a dream, but not like the massive – up in the clouds – dream that most people seem to have. You know, the one that people are sometimes even too embarrassed to admit to. I don’t have one of those. I think maybe I used to, but I think somewhere along the way I may have lost it. Now, in its place is just a muddled mess of radical ideas that would make me rich someday if I knew how to bring them into being. I’m probably lacking some significant tools in this area.

But if the green stuff was no object and a dream didn’t have to support you but instead, lifted you, what would it be? … shit, I really have no idea. So, instead of spending my days in a frantic search for employment, I am going to find and reclaim my dream, and you should probably read this while I do. It is probably going to be pretty brilliant and you are probably not going to want to miss the revelations of my rambling.

Maybe writing stories of my life, my experiences and my random thoughts is simple enough to be my dream. Stay tuned and we will find out….probably.