I turn the radio on, I turn the radio up…

October 31, 2018 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

halloween bear.jpg As I complete the 21-day meditation, “Desire and Destiny,” we’re called today to “share our vision.” To try to move from dreading the word networking to see that the more we talk about and share with others what it is we want in the world, the more able it is to manifest. Deepak said, maybe it’s following the thought to go to the park where an idea is sparked or to go to a party (we don’t really want to go to) where perhaps we meet someone who can help our dreams come to fruition.

The scary thing about owning our dreams is that it puts them out there for the dreaded derision. This fear of derision from others seems to be the motivation for hiding them that most plays out within me. Next on the list of negative voices is the derisive voice from within myself that says, You’ll never follow through anyway, so why bother telling anyone or trying in the first place.

Both of these voices are tools … well, were originally tools for safety, actually, but they’re long outdated, and I don’t need to hide anymore who or what it is I want or am in the world. But those voices haven’t yet received their invitation to leave in strong enough terms… and perhaps those voices don’t actually vacate the vicinity, maybe they just get turned down like a dial on a radio, becoming less distracting and thereby less convincing.

It’s easy, simple, and habitual to listen to the voices that say, You’re not good enough, your dreams are dumb, you won’t attain them anyway, you’re a queen of self-abandonment so why try.

But, it is also soul-crushing and life-limiting to listen to them.

So by the opposite tack, it is harder, more “effort-ful,” and not at all ingrained to upvote the voices that say, I am good enough, my dreams are worthy, I will attain them in whatever time, order, and manner I’m supposed to, and I can become a queen of self-support so I’m excited to go out and try!

Yeah… that feels silly and saccharine to tell myself.

But frankly, I, Molly, am nothing if not silly and optimism-sweet, so I better pump up the volume.

Happy Halloween, Everybody!:)

children · joy · mortality

Creating a Life Worth Living.

October 30, 2018 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Perhaps it’s my status as a cancer survivor, but I think about my own mortality a lot.

On Sunday, J and I walked to the Punjabi Burrito place in Fairfax (which, yes, is as magnificent as it sounds!!!). We were having the, “So if this is really happening, what about kids?” conversation.

We’d discussed having kids before. Within the first month of dating, I let him know that I wanted to have children if I could, that it felt really important to me. Two years later, it still does.

Sitting eating a pumpkin basmati rice enchilada(!), I said my reasoning was still partly about sharing this awesome thing called life. As I’d put it then, “Yes, the world is f*cked up and falling apart and dying… but it’s also amazing and fascinating and rich.” As I said to my friend on the phone last night, “Only humans get to experience salted caramel ice cream.”

But I noticed on Sunday something new within me, a new reasoning. I told J that the idea that once we’re gone, that’s it, there would be no one to remember, no legacy to live on, no lineage to carry forward, that it felt empty to me, or sad or like an absence. That, with us, the branches of our family trees stretching back millennia would just end felt … like an incompletion, a void.

I said it reminded me of Macbeth: “Out, out, brief candle!” (To which J replied wryly, gamely, “Yeah, that’s totally what it reminded me of, too.”);)

J’s concerns about having kids are typical ones: the expenditure of time and money. Which, of course, are real, relevant, and not miniscule. But. So what, frankly? All of life’s endeavors require time and money.

I told him that I wasn’t “Closed Book” on the having kids subject, that if he were truly able to lay out a vision of a life together that felt fulfilling (that really did include the pieces he wants that he’s afraid he won’t have if we have kids), that I’m honestly open to listening.

I want fulfillment, too. I want him to feel fulfilled, too.

Our visions are not at odds, but whichever way they go will require openmindedness on the other’s part.

So: We’ll see. This life thing is so good — and I’m so awed it includes salted caramel.

abundance · gratitude · healing

Owning Abundance.

October 29, 2018 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

10.29.18.jpg On Friday after work, I was taking down the garbage from the Marin house, where J lives and where I’m apparently moving into (!). As I was descending the stairs, a woman a little older than me was parking her car outside and getting her small son out of the car. Many people turn around or park in the cul-de-sac where we live, walking dogs, playing, passing through the pedestrian short-cut, so I didn’t consider it odd, but she kept observing me.

She walked up to the front gate and asked, “Do you live here?”

I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond—since the answer was “sort of”—but I replied, “Yes.”

She told me then that she and her family used to live here when it was a rental property of the former owner and asked if a package had been delivered for her. As it turned out, I was supposed to drop a “return to sender” package we’d received at the post office, but hadn’t done it yet… so YES! I had her package.

She was kind of dancing around the front gate, unsure of where to be while I retrieved it. Her son said something that he meant to approximate, “We used to live here.” I told him that as I was cleaning up the yard the other day, I found a green plastic stegosaurus — was it his? Did he want it?

He said yes (of course), so I invited him and his mom into the backyard to get it from where I’d placed it on the fence post, a reminder of the families who’d lived here.

He snatched it out of my hand, his mom asked me a question about the house, commenting a little shyly on how different the backyard looked now (without any furniture!). I wasn’t quite sure what to say.

I walked them out the front gate and off they drove.

I was struck by the fact that I felt embarrassed. I felt embarrassed and almost ashamed that this woman and her family were kicked out of the home where I now live, where J now lives.

Clearly, that’s absurd, but it’s also how I felt. That I was somehow to blame, as I was party to the choosing of this house, for her family having to vacate and move. (The 2nd bedroom has those glow-in-the-dark stars still on the ceiling in real constellations from where they’d placed them.)

The “fault,” if there is one, clearly doesn’t lie with me. It was a home that was being sold no matter what, and J happened to be the person to buy it. The family was going to be asked to move no matter what.

But I felt embarrassed to tell this woman that I was party to owning this home. That I do, in fact, live here. That this abundance was mine.

This is the piece I’ve been sitting with for several days now: for years, I’ve been talking about abundance, wanting it, working toward it, “attracting” it, visioning it, vision-boarding it.

And now here it is and I feel toe-in-the-dirt shy to say I’m achieving some part of it.

A person could roll their eyes at the woe-is-her struggle to own abundance, but the truth is I think many of us struggle with owning our achievements or our successes or our overflows.

When I was living in San Francisco in a 1bedroom, I had social gatherings and parties regularly because I felt so fortunate with my abundant space that I wanted to and had to share it with others. Those gatherings were one of the most joyful experiences about my time living there.

The wonderful thing about having abundance is getting to share it more widely. If I eschew it, avoid it, don’t have it, or don’t embrace it, then I’m not really getting the full benefit of it at all — and would be better off back in a small life that I can feel embarrassed of for entirely different reasons!

“Owning abundance” was never something I foresaw would be a challenge, but having to shed the smallness and embarrassment that is arising in me will be a journey worthy to undertake.

How can we hold the excellent and wonderful things in our lives with equanimity? How can we honor what we’ve worked for or have been given with gratitude, awe, and celebration? And… are we allowed to?

love · mortality · relationships

The Days Are Long…

October 26, 2018 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

10.26.18 But the years are short.

I invited J to lay on the wood floor with me. We were in the house he’d purchased earlier this year in the northern suburbs of San Francisco, him sitting on the camping chair I’d brought over last week and me on the nice single chair he’d purchased since he moved in this June.

That’s all the furniture that exists in the living room. Right after he’d purchased the house, I’d ended things and this isn’t the kinda town where a single guy wants to spend out his days. So he hadn’t bought anything besides a mattress and this one nice chair.

“Lay on the floor with me,” I asked. It was after 9 o’clock; we’d been sitting in the nice and camping chairs, drinking hot tea, lazy talking about the house, next steps, ring sizes.

He groaned. “Come on, two minutes.” He scrabbled up out of the camping chair and came to lay next to me on the blanket I’d set on the floor.

I nuzzled into his shoulder crease. It was likely the only time we’d be able to do this before it all got painted and furnished and shaped like a lived-in home. It felt like a picnic, like a marking of time, that time we could lay on the floor together at 9pm on a Thursday only now, before it was too late.

I angled to lie on top of him, propping myself up, looking into his face.

“It’s so short,” I murmured.

“What is?”

“Twenty-five, thirty-five years,” I replied. “It’s so short.”

I got kinda teary, staring down into his eyes that I didn’t get to see for three months, feeling body warmth I didn’t get to experience, hearing the wry, insightful, hilarious, ridiculous, planful words I didn’t get to smile at.

I saw the New Years’ turnings, flying off like film pages. They seemed at that moment like just a handful. Only a few, what felt like only a sample.

“It is short,” he said, closing up his eyes against new wetness himself.

“The days are long, but the years are short,

and I want to spend them with you.”

commitment · community · self-support

Act our way into right thinking.

October 25, 2018 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

10.25.18.jpg Because of the change in my commute status (insert gif of woman doing backflips), I no longer have to slog through an hour of bridge traffic anymore, but I also don’t get to participate in the morning phone call with like-minded folks I’d been calling in to for 2 months either. So, I’ve had to make some adjustments.

On Monday, and once since then, I called in to a new phone line geared toward Artists. It’s the same overarching community, but this daily call is intended to focus on the particular challenges artists and writers may face as they attempt to get out from under their own thumb.

I hadn’t intended to, but I piped up during the “3 minutes each” sharing time and at the end of the call, during the “phone number exchange,” a woman requested my number and reached out to me the next day.

We spoke by phone last night (she’s in Chicago) and just having the call helped me to see that maybe I’m not stalling out in my personal work and progression — and maybe (just maybe!!) I’m not going to.

I had my Goals Group call on Tuesday and admitted to them too that I was afraid of not “doing much” after the highlights of the article publication and two performances this month. So, yesterday, I emailed my piano player friend to talk this weekend and brainstorm what was next. After Tuesday’s goals call, I also spoke with one of the women on the line to ask how on earth to find an easy way to email out these blogs (just through WordPress without having to go through extra steps — if you know, please message me!!!).

With the addition of the woman who called yesterday (we set up an “action phone call” for Sunday to support each other in our personal progress writing), I realize that there are several barriers around my visions work that are now set in place. Even if I want to flake off, hide, retreat, sloth away my time, I kind of can’t get far!

My hems and frames now include: action partner whom I text daily (sometimes it’s a list of things I don’t do! but sometimes I really do!) and speak with weekly; a weekly Goals Group call (that includes women who are “watching,” as one of them put it, to ensure I don’t dissolve into the relationship); a mentor with whom I’m completing personal progress work (but seeing as I haven’t been doing that writing, I now will have…); a weekly writing action partner to carve out and sanctify this writing time.

Many of these hems were not in place when last J and I were in relationship. Nor did I then open the discussion with him, as I did last week, about ensuring that I have my morning practice held in trust (morning pages, meditation, blogging).

I can point to the places where “I’m not doing anything” or “not working hard enough” or “not fast enough” — I really, really can (and sometimes do!) — but I am so heartened to be able to point today to places where I’ve created and invited in structures that will not allow me to flake or stray too far.

For a person like me, these structures are vital—in the literal, life-sustaining meaning. Without visions, goals, writing, meditating, speaking with fellow travelers, or taking mini-actions, I lose hope, momentum, self-esteem, and eventually I threaten my existence. I know this about myself.

So, here I am today, 6:53am, 3rd cup of coffee on the table, telling you how much I want to live.

breakups · love · relationships

Everything Old is New Again.

October 24, 2018 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

10.24.18.jpg As you may have guessed from my recent vaguing about relationships, I’m in one. To be more specific, I’m back in one. With J.

I was walking to meet an internet date for dinner on a Friday night at the end of September. I’d planned it so it was in walking distance from my apartment and I didn’t have to drive, as is my prerogative!;) I’d gotten glammed up and looked good — well, I’d taken a shower, at least!

I was cantering down the commercial corridor where I live and spotted a car that looked like J’s. But I’d seen many of those around—each time, spotting a blue Subaru, darting my eyes through the windshield, assuming it wouldn’t be him since he didn’t live close but had been about to accept a job nearby when we’d parted in June.

Now, I spotted this familiar looking car. Then, I read the license plate. It was his. My eyes flashed through the windshield… and there he was. Sitting in his car, typing on his phone.

My breath stopped. I came to a halt beside his car. He looked over. He both smiled and looked horror-struck.

J. rolled down his passenger window. “Getting a haircut?” I asked. (He’d found a place he liked when we were living together and, once found, he was unlikely to veer from it!)

“Yep,” he replied.

We remained there, just kind of staring at one another. Eye-lock, look away. Eye-lock, look away.

We exchanged a few update words: You change jobs? Yep. You start the school year? Yep. I fiddled with the window frame. Well, this is hard, I said, half-smiling, somewhere near tearing up. Yep.

Somepoint soon, within this 3-minute conversation that reached to the horizon, we said goodbye.

Later that night after the date (underwhelming but fine), I dialed J’s number.

I’d texted about two weeks earlier, on the 90-day mark on my calendar that indicated it’d been 3 months since we’d spoken, my own self-imposed separation/no-contact. I’d written him if he were interested in being in each other’s lives, “friends or something.” He’d replied he’d love to, but he still saw a future for us together and it would be too hard, too painful. I typed okay. And resigned to / accepted that he would contact me, if and when he were ever ready, or not.

So, as the phone rang that Friday night in September, I didn’t know if he would pick up. The hurt of the break-up, the hope and pain of seeing one another. The love that had clearly not diminished an iota. … the constant comparison of J to any of the men I’d met or communicated with during my recent re-entry into dating.

No one was like him.

Our first date lasted two hours. We walked and talked and laughed. We were wry and joking from nearly minute one. There was such ease and familiarity … he could always make me laugh.

I wasn’t immediately sure after our first date. I went home and took the quiz I’d bookmarked, It’s Just a F*cking Date (from the authors of He’s Just Not That Into You and It’s Called a Breakup Cuz it’s Broken). He didn’t score record highs after that first date, partly because two of the questions were “did he make a plan?” and “did you like his plan?,” but I’d made the plan! (Coffee shop in walking distance of my house, naturally!)

But, he’d squeaked over the line to, “Give him a second shot.” So I did.

On the 2nd date, he scored full marks.

The phone rang. I perched on the edge of my bed, heart a bit full, a bit poundy.

And he picked up.

focus · goals · relationships

Ready, Aim, Keep Aiming.

October 23, 2018 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

10.23.18.png I was able to share on a phone call yesterday some of my fears about “going into hiding.” I told them how I’d done this flurry of work, inspired to send out this essay recently to magazines for publication … and then how it was published! … and then I stopped writing my blog for a few days because I got scared (of what, it’s hard to say).

Then, my bandmate and I played a small gig the other night for about 60+ people after some success 2 weeks ago when we’d played out, and I told the phone listeners that I was afraid that if I didn’t set up another gig or specific plan for sometime soon, it would be another year before I sang in public. In fact, I said the same thing to my bandmate as I drove him home that night!

I also told the phone listeners that I’m … moving in with someone right now, and how I know that my time and attention can become exceedingly divided, and I can get off-kilter when in relationship, and I wanted to tell on myself so that I could keep my priorities front and center.

These are the priorities for me. A relationship is wonderful, and what will happen here remains to be seen, but thinking about it, or him, doesn’t move me toward my visions. And my visions are quite specific nowadays, thanks to my Goals Group, so I really have no excuse.

Magazine columnist; Small plane pilot; Lounge singer.

These are my goals, and I want to ensure they stay that way. Whatever else happens around them. To do that, I want to be focused on them, I want to set up guards in place so that they’re unstoppable, inalterable, have fail-safe mechanisms. I want my goals to be impossible to fail. Not necessarily on the basis that I’ll succeed in my business ventures, but that they’re not diverted from, that they have a chance to succeed because I’m putting energy and attention and intention into them.

My meditation (Desire and Destiny from Deepak and Oprah) tells me I have only 2 tools in this lifetime: Attention and Intention.

With my intentions clear, but my attention divided, I cannot get to my goal. I need the same voice I intone to my more distractible students: Stay on target, Mol. Stay on Target.

habits · relationships · self-love

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain—No, really.

October 22, 2018 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

10.22.18.gif I learned the very hard way during my European trip with my mom that I still have a tremendously strenuous time staying focused on myself. Because of the dynamic early formed with her, she puts off a beacon call that I am constantly attuned to, like a bat. She sends out her sonic waves, attuning to and calling me in.

This interplay between us plays out in my other relationships by habit. I’ll send out sonic waves to others, since I’m near-programmed to see what’s up with them — where are they, what do they need, is there anything in their path I need to remove so they don’t stub a toe?

And while this may be a useful skill in some situations (e.g. watching a toddler), it is less beneficial in mutual adult relationships. I am currently noticing this pull to attune to the radio frequency of others because I’m noticing more and more my need to attune to my own frequency, to find out what’s going on with me, what do I want, what do I need?

It’s not my habit to return to these questions yet. It’s more like playing a piece of music you’d known by heart, but when reading the sheet music, you discover you’ve been playing these few notes wrong the whole time and now need to re-train yourself to play it that way, the properly intended way.

As I pursue the relationships in my life, I find that I’m becoming acutely aware that my radio dish is pointed outward. This is draining for me, cumbersome for them, and not a constructive balance for grownups (not that it was a constructive balance for a child and parent either).

Misdirection, like a magician. My attention is pulled away, and I am tricked. I am fooled into not paying attention to the important things to me, from my real source of magic.

I would like to better build the strength of my ocular muscles, focusing them back to attending to my own visions and goals, better to craft my day’s intentions toward what it is that will bring me closer to the fulfillment of my goals. Toward what actions I need to take to move an iota forward.

It’s easy sometimes to ignore or neglect those iota-movements, because they can seem so inconsequential and miniscule. Oh, no, it’s fine, I don’t have to [blog, work out, write on my personal growth process]; those things are so small in comparison to whatever I’m picking up on my radar.

I notice I need re-training, re-habiting, and a large swath of self-compassion (and compassion from others, which I have) as I attempt to learn how to put myself first.

growth · love · work

Good Enough.

October 20, 2018 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I cried at work the other day.

I was in my weekly one-on-one meeting with my boss. We were outside, as we’ve taken to meeting outdoors when it makes sense since we rarely see the sky on busy school days.

We were talking about a hard parent meeting that had happened this week, and I was also expressing my concern about not getting materials to a co-worker at the moment they’d wanted it. Places, basically, where I felt afraid that I wasn’t doing enough, or that I wasn’t good enough.

And she said to me: “I see what you’re doing.”

I see how hard you’re working; I, and we all, see you as confident and competent. I see what you’ve taken on; I see great things for you, a bright future here. I see you as the superstar you are.

And, at some point during this monologue of positivity, I started leaking from my eyeballs.

“What’s going on right now?” she asked as she noticed I was crying.

“It’s just been really hard,” I said, “it’s been stressful, this time.” And she began again to say those positive, glowing things: We don’t want you to leave (not that I’d expressed to her that I was considering it), I see such great things, you’re doing awesome.

I had to put my hand on hers, as my tears were coming harder now, and say, laughingly, soddenly, “You have to stop”!

It was so hard to hear, to listen, as she was telling me these things. What was it that made the waterworks turn on? What was it that made it so vulnerable to hear words of praise and affirmation? What was so hard about being truly seen for the work I was doing… for work of mine to be acknowledged that, perhaps, I didn’t see as clearly as others apparently were?

What is it about praise for my work that was so painful, and so ecstatic, to hear?

I have been sitting with this question for the last two days, and haven’t yet had the time to dig deeply into it, but I do know that praise for my effort was not a tape I heard often growing up — or if I did, I’m sure I didn’t have the capacity or receptors to hear it.

My own myopia on performance and achievement precludes my awareness from the whole of my being.

Will this awareness broaden for me? Will I begin to consider that what I’m doing is not only “enough,” but more than f*cking enough?

I don’t know yet. It circles back upon the “Judgment Loosening” I’m attempting lately, because as harshly as we judge others, we do ourselves tenfold.

I am grateful for the openness of my boss to reflect these affirmations to me; it’s not every boss who would see or say such things. I’m grateful that she simply held the space as I processed trying to hear her praise, instead of shutting down or dismissing it (her or me).

And, I’m grateful for the chance to discover another ripe and rich place for me to grow.

love · money · power

Head of Household.

October 18, 2018 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

10.18.18.png In the continued quest to unwrap the new question of love and power that I stumbled upon the other day — whether a person could have both — I’m remembering a moment when J and I were walking up in the suburban hills near my apartment a while back.

We’d been bandying around the idea that he take some time off, that maybe I become the breadwinner for a while, as he got a new business venture running that would only earn a stipend-like amount. We were crossing this foot bridge overlooking a fancy suburban schoolyard, watching children play soccer on the neat, always-manicured plastic turf. We were leaning on the concrete ledge of the bridge, and I experienced a gut-freezing moment. A sudden pang of anxiety, as I considered what that would really mean to have to earn enough to support us both, and a family.

Some major financial things would have to change. I would probably have to choose a different career. I would need to work more. I would need to count the pennies. I would need to say no to things. Maybe there wouldn’t be vacations for a while, or museum memberships, or dinners out. Suddenly my brain became filled with spreadsheets and numbers and a sodden anxiety of trying to keep the whole ship afloat. …

My breath became shallow. I saw the disparity between what I could currently afford and what I would need to afford to make a family life work for us. It was dizzying.

I turned to him in this mild hysteria and asked: “Is this what men feel like when they feel they have to be the breadwinner??”

He wryly smiled and replied, “Yes.”

Love, and Power.

It is not merely women then, or, speaking for myself, merely me, who feels confused, torn, afraid that we cannot have both love and family and a life that feels fulfilling to our passions and goals.

I felt sudden, markedly new waves of empathy for every breadwinner. (Including my father.)

(I also note here that single parents, gender non-conforming, non-hetero, adoptive, foster, POC, immigrant, differently-abled, parents of differently-abled have all these same financial anxieties and challenges — plus a whole additional mess of anxieties and challenges of which I cannot conceive, and I am drastically humbled and awed.)

I realized on that bridge the sweeping assumptions I’d made and held: that it was in any way “not that hard.” That it was “easy” for the man to provide because they earned a dollar to my sixty cents (white men at least). That they should just “suck it up” because this was their intended role, modeled since infancy. …

I suddenly saw with new eyes why J was so focused on financial success, why he struggled so hard, why he chose this business-suit life instead of the entrepreneur-t-shirt one he dreamed of. I saw his challenge differently.

What I’d considered his deprivation addict, cookoo achievement bent, or Scrooge-like flaw I began to see as his battle toward providing. (Whether this is the whole case, I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter to the point.)

I began to consider the weight carried by anyone who desires to be an adult in a household. I began to consider the decisions that person would have to make over a lifetime. The micro and minor decisions of how to spend one’s money and time. The decision of what area to study in school. The decision to follow a career that wasn’t altogether fulfilling but “paid the bills.”

I had new empathy. My perspective, and my judgment, had shifted.

Suddenly all the Google buses didn’t seem crammed with idiots driven by dollar signs. Wall Street wasn’t just a grunting pit, but a battle for a family’s stability.

I’ve had judgment (clearly!) about the choices people make when living as a means to an end, rather than “living in the journey of every moment,” etc, etc.

As I continue to probe the “Can I have Love and Power simultaneously?” question, I notice that I’m wondering if breadwinners have been asking themselves that same question for eons.