Exile.

November 27, 2011 Molly Daniels Hayes1 Comment

So, it’s finally happened – i’ve admitted that being in
Oakland is really lonely, and I’m
willing to do something about it. So, I called/texted 6 East Bay friends
tonight to see if they wanted to go to the Saturday night “cool kids” meet up
place, and I got 6 denies. It’s okay. I had to read for school and had a pretty
awesome day of out&about self-care (the trees are finally turning colors –
they look incredible), but I actually took action around it, which was a long
awaited step.

I have a few, mainly school, friends here, but most of the
friends I consider my closest live in San Francisco – yes, only across a
bridge, but that’s an immense distance if you’re on either side of it (It’s
like Brooklyn to Manhattan: you likely ain’t gonna make it) – I remember back
to times when in SF, venturing to Oakland seemed like crossing Egypt. Which
means, if I’m not willing to cross Egypt to hang out with people I know and
love, I better get willing to reach out to people on this side of the Nile …
Sorry, extended metaphor collapse!

I didn’t really realize it until last weekend at that
meditation workshop I went to – which was about relationships with others. I
said it out loud in my “hey I’m Molly, this is why I’m here,” and that was one
of the things that came out. Being so busy with everything is a good
distraction from making friends, and making effort to make friends.

Cuz, that’s what it really boils down to – there are plenty
of people out on this side of the Bay – I just have felt petulant to make any
new friends, and I have 5 years’ worth of friendships built up in SF, and
friendships take work. To form, to grow,
to create trust and intimacy, and I just haven’t been available for it since I
moved over here – it was just too exhausting to think about “starting over.”

In the beginning, last year, when I still had my car, I made
effort to get to the “cool” meet ups, but I didn’t feel any connections (or
make effort to go much beyond a few cursory hey how are yas). Then, I
had no car, and it was much easier to stay cocooned.

It’s pretty funny, cuz the first thought that I had in the
workshop last week which I shared with a friend (as there were two girl friends I hadn’t seen in ages, and just seeing them brought such relief – here
are people who know me, who’ve
seen me grow and change, as I’ve seen them – it was seeing these friends,
feeling that relief, ironically, which made me realize how starved I was for
them, and how non-friend-having I’d been over here). So, I say to one of them,
that my brain immediately goes, Maybe I should move back to San Francisco.

Of course, the simplest of all answers, Molly! That makes
perfect sense! It doesn’t. School is over here, which it’s why I’m over here,
“exiled” in the first place. – Just like the “simplest” answer to my
punctuality/time problem is to get a car, of course…

The simplest answer is to make friends over here. To admit
that it takes effort, and it’s scary, and I still think I come off as terribly
uncool around new people. But, it’s that, or me and my cat on Saturday night,
and I’m at least cooler than that. Well,
not this week, maybe – but I made the effort!

Next Saturday I’ll be in the city modeling in my friend’s
fashion show for her non-profit (that’s cool, right?) ;P but the following
Saturday, I now have plans with a girl I sort of know to go hang out with the
cool people. … in Oakland.

courage · dating · honesty · integrity · intuition · laughter · performance

Make ’em Laugh

November 15, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I just texted the blind date guy to politely decline his
invitation for a second date. Beforehand, when I presented my case to my best guy friend saying that I just wasn’t
sparked by the coffee date but maybe I should try a second date, he said that ambivalence wasn’t a good sign.

So, if it’s not a good sign, it’s a bad one. And although my
gut had been telling me even before the date that I was having misgivings, I am a Libra –
and I need to thoroughly weigh everything from every angle until my head
explodes – This usually happens several times per month, or per day if I’m
overtired ;P

That isn’t precisely true – I’ve gotten more used to
listening to the voice of my intuition, the longer it hasn’t told me things
like “another line would *really* make this party awesome” or “his girlfriend
isn’t here, so…” I have since learned that this voice may not have been my
intuition, but that’s what I interpreted it as for years, and so it’s taken me
a while to get accustomed to the idea that perhaps my gut isn’t trying to kill
me (my brain is another story).

That said, I spent a significant amount of time and
brainspace on second guessing my gut today. “How much can you know from a first
date, anyway?” It just felt beige. He
wasn’t funny. “Oh, everyone’s on their best behavior on a first date – you
can’t really know if he’s funny or not.” He didn’t make me laugh. “Wouldn’t you
know more if you went out again?”

Maybe, or maybe I’d learn more if I actually listened to my
gut for once instead of hitting the override switch. Build up that muscle of listening
to myself, trusting myself, and also, caveat – if it’s meant to happen again,
it will. … But I don’t think it will.

I was talking with my actress friend today for my
“informational interview/omigod this is hella scary” phone call, and I was
telling her that this performance thing is a gut thing that just hasn’t gone
away. I recently found an exercise from when I was doing The Artist’s Way three years ago – it was a list of “Forbidden Joys”
– things I would love to do, but am “not allowed.” And on it was “Audition for
a play.”

So, my friend told me that first, I would just need to start
auditioning, and likely fall flat on my face. I told her that I already did
do that.

Earlier this year, I responded to a casting call on craigslist (you
can see how much credence I was willing to give to my gut!). We were asked to
prepare a monologue and a song – as although this wasn’t a musical, the
director believed that having actors sing was a good way to see how they’d do
when they felt uncomfortable. … So, I prepared “Make ’em Laugh” from Singing
in the Rain – it’s a hilarious outlandish
routine by Donald O’Connor – and it is OVER-THE-TOP.

See, I’ll show them how not uncomfortable this makes me! … Turns out, I made them quite
uncomfortable. Somewhere between the wildly gesticulating arm gestures and a
prat fall, I think I lost them. But hell, if it wasn’t hilarious … to me, at
least. Sure, I was a little disappointed – and I felt like I had totally blown
it by not being “more serious” or even a little serious – but for christ’s sake
the play was about a woman’s love affair with pot!

So I told this story to my actress friend, and she was
delighted! She said I’d already made a fool of myself, and lived (and laughed)
through it, so obviously I’m willing to try and fail – but I also have to be
willing to get out there again. So, she gave me some good advice and said I
could check in with her in a week, which seems like an awfully sweet thing, and
will help to keep me accountable to some of the tasks I have before me (buy a
monologue book – and that monthly subscription to Theater Bay Area I keep on shoving under my coffee table? take it out
and look at the casting calls in the back).

Because I want to be a woman who can be disappointed and
still follow my dreams, and my dreams also include a man who makes me laugh.

p.s. just got a text back that said he was offering sex not dinner – that…makes me laugh. Thanks, gut!… + seriously?!

abundance · courage · dating · joy · letting go · love · performance · responsibility · self-care

weekend update.

November 14, 2011August 9, 2017 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

yesterday, I went to a “meditation & creative writing”
workshop with a friend from school, and although we both agreed we were ready
to leave at the lunch break, i got out some writing that needed to get out. my
friend said afterward that her qualm with workshops like those is that they
continue to bring people back into the very story they’re trying to let go of,
but for me, like I said in the “Excavation” blog, my writing isn’t about
spinning my wheels or wishing it were different anymore. I’ve found traction
on this stuff, but for me, for my process, it still needs to come up and out.

My friend/spiritual teacher lady said to me today that in
Buddhism, they talk about those things as blocks, things that are solid and we
knock up against and then back away from – and that they must become diluted
for us to move through them. And so, I hear what my friend is saying – and I
have certainly been there, simply hitting up against the bricks of my “story”,
but – it feels different lately.
It doesn’t feel as solid, weighted, or shameful. There are still pieces that
need processing, but on the whole, I do feel I’m getting through to the other
side – the side where there is freedom and levity and possibility –

and action. To update on another item this week, I’ve scheduled phone conversations in the next week with those two working actors in SF I
mentioned – indeed giving not only voice to my desire to perform, but also
giving traction to that as well by actually putting in some action. Sure, I’m nervous
to head in this direction, as uncertain and as fraught with nay-sayers or
“realistic” people as it is (esp. when those people live in my head) – but it’s one of those internal nudges that hasn’t
gone away, and the longer that I listen to myself, the stronger it has become.

Sure enough, my electric guitar came out of the closet this
week. The bass came out with the amp a few months ago, the acoustic is out
always, as is the small keyboard that mainly gets used when i’m plunking out
notes for my singing class– but, they’re here. and like the performance thing, “singing in a rock and roll band” is not going away either, and it too is just getting
stronger. That’s another one I feel retarded talking about – like, who am i, i’m too old, too square, and what have i done and i don’t know that much music and i don’t
have enough tattoos. … but, sure, be ALL of that as it may – i still want to sing
in a band. i can fucking taste the metal of the microphone. do i know what kind
of music? – it’s becoming clearer – it’s not “pretty” singing. i don’t want to
sing pretty, I want to sing passionate – and if they intersect, which to a
point i imagine they will, then all the better, but i’m not looking to do
pretty – i’m looking to do raw. I wrote an email to a girl friend/acquaintance
lady about a year ago because i read some of her facebook updates and watched
her go through the same thing, and she emailed me back echoing that her teenage
rock girl just wouldn’t go away – and at some point we listen.

or perhaps we don’t, but that’s not my story – anymore.

so, true to CITO, my closet is getting cleared and
organized, and an entire drawer is now empty – because “the universe abhors a
vacuum”, so if you build it – or clear it – they will come. plus, I feel
mentally freer in some way, like how you feel when you go away on vacation and
know you’ll come back to a clean apartment (it was once suggested to me to put
dirty dishes in the fridge so they won’t rot when you’re away – and sadly, i
have done this!). or like in feng shui where you’re not supposed to have
anything under the bed, because even if out of sight, it is taking up “room” …
energetically 😉

to close out my updates for the week, i will also tell you
that I finally wrote that “renegotiating old agreements” letter to the cousin
this morning on my way into the city – and about an hour ago, I wrote the last line on one of the petals from the flowers I bought myself, and let it go out
the window (burning didn’t seem the “right” thing with this).

and finally, yes, I went on my blind date today – it wasn’t a disaster, and there
might be a second one. but in the meantime, i’m going to continue taking
these itty bitty actions: moving the instruments out, talking to people in the
field I want to be in, and completing exercises that help me see myself, my
blocks, and my gifts more clearly.

Cuz, one month into being 30? Eat It, Saturn Returns! ~ I’m totally
learning my lessons on this go-round! 😛

Plus, I started those hand-made holiday cards I said I would too 😉

abundance · courage · letting go · spirituality

The Pan Story

March 22, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I was walking home yesterday afternoon, when it occurred to me.

I love to cook eggs. I’d been cooking eggs every morning, in the same pan, for three years. It was a black pan with a red bottom, as I liked to envision my future kitchen being kind to black pans with red bottoms. But this pan, had seen better days. The surface of the pan was shredding, and each morning more bits of egg would cling to more bits of iron, and surely I was eating more iron than was found in the eggs alone. And each morning, as I was earnestly scraping bits of egg from between the threads of raised, raw metal, I would tell myself I needed to get a new pan.

But I didn’t. Each day, I would cook eggs in the thoroughly aggravating way, with the thoroughly aggravating pan. And even took to microwaving the eggs so I wouldn’t have to deal with the pan. The pan with the red bottom. The pan that had been the first real piece I’d bought when I moved into my last apartment. My first apartment to myself in several years. And so I kept this damned pan, cursing it, and each day putting it back in the cupboard. After all, I am a student, living on student loans; I couldn’t really afford a pan right now. Plus my car was stolen a little while ago, so I couldn’t really get to the store that would sell the kind of pan I wanted anyway. And so on…

Until. One morning. I’d had enough. I put the pan in the garbage can.

The next day I took it out. Washed it, ripping up another sponge, and used it.

A few weeks later, I put it in the garbage can again, and took the garbage out to the building’s dumpster. The pan was no longer useful to me. Or to anyone really. It was now, after years of good service, not suited to my needs.

Two days later, I was walking home and out front of the apartment building next to mine, someone had put a box of moving-out items: mugs, magazines, candles, and… a pan. The pan wasn’t what I wanted it to be – medium sized Teflon with a red bottom – but it was exactly what I needed. A pan, with a smooth cooking surface, in reasonable condition. I took it home.

And so, I remembered the pan story as I was walking home yesterday afternoon. Not long ago, I’d ended a relationship that was not working for me. I had been waffling on that decision lately, agonizing over whether I had done the right thing. Wasn’t “good enough” good enough? Why isn’t “good enough” good enough for me? Can’t it have been?

And so, I remembered the pan story. If my Higher Power, or the Universe, is able to put a pan perfect for my use directly in my path just when I needed it, isn’t that same power able to provide me with a relationship that is mutually wonderful just when I’ll need it? I realized then, that perhaps, Yes. Perhaps relationships, as with kitchenware, are under G-d’s domain, and I can let it go, leave it be, and continue to walk in my life until I come across the relationship-sized box.

(P.S. My goal by the end of the week is to buy myself a new, red-bottomed, Teflon pan.)