Category: growth

awareness · community · fatigue · fear · friendship · growth · hope · sharing · the middle way · trust · truth · vulnerability

On Leave.

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The thing about being a good little soldier is that
eventually you suffer battle fatigue.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve had doctors appointments up
the wazoo because of a liver enzyme test that came back extremely elevated.
Granted, it’s the first time they’d ever run this test since I finished chemo
last Spring, but don’t try and tell them that.
In the meantime, I’ve gotten panicky emails from my doctor
to stop drinking alcohol immediately (check), to get another test immediately (check), and
asking if I’ve had my hepatitis vaccines when I was a kid (check).
Being the good little soldier I am, and using the wisdom of
not pushing the panic button, I’ve done pretty well these past two weeks, doing
what I’m told, following up diligently, and trying to follow the new all-organic
diet suggested to me by my naturopath.
This is all well and good not to panic when panic isn’t
prudent. But yesterday I came to see, while reduced to a ball of tears in front
of a friend, that there is a third option between panicking and “soldiering
on.” There’s acknowledgment of my fear.
I told my coworker the other day that I just feel weary – that trying not to freak out is exhausting; that
trying to maintain an emotional equilibrium is hard work.
And underneath that even façade, which also has a thick vein
of veracity, is fear. They can co-exist, but I have to acknowledge that they
both do.
It is activating to have to go through all these tests. It
is not my favorite thing to google “autoimmune hepatitis” (which, we learned, I don’t have). It is even less my favorite thing to contemplate that the reason for
this trouble in the first place is a result of something doctors did to me – despite the rational
fact that they had to. I had
Leukemia. The cure is chemotherapy. Chemotherapy causes havoc.
I am not freaking
out, but I am concerned. And I am “activated.” It’s hard not to be – I’ve had
legitimate reasons to freak out in the past – but even then, if you were a
reader when I was going through that, you saw that the times I freaked out were few and far between –
and then, they weren’t panics or freak outs, they were the falling-armor
acknowledgments of a real threat to my security and joy.
I was a good soldier then too, but it was also very important to break down sometimes with someone
trustworthy. To acknowledge both sides: Bravery and Vulnerability.
Which are coexistant. The first does not preclude the
second. And I’m pretty sure the second enhances the first.
It was not as if I had some grand easy epiphany about
allowing all of my emotions to be valid. I sat yesterday with a group of
folks, and by the end of our time together, I was leaking silent tears. I
didn’t anticipate to do that, but we create a sacred space together, a place
where it was safe to allow something I didn’t know was happening arise. And
because of that, a friend was able to see my pain, and sit with me while I let
the soldier take a rest, and let the scared and weary and angry woman take a
spin for a while.
I felt better after I acknowledged all that was going on.
And coming to realize in conversation with her that I’d been forcing my
experience into two categories: Panic and Perseverance. Acknowledging fear does
not equate panicking, is what I learned. And it was important, so important,
for me to let some of the rest of my emotions out, besides good humor,
diligence, and perseverance.
Because I believe that without letting some of that pressure
out, without allowing that vulnerability to arise, our capacity for soldiering
is greatly hindered.
What happens is burn-out, instead.
When I only allow validity to one side of my experience, I am
hampering my ability to move forward.
I don’t have to be a crying mess about having to seek out
only organic meat and my fear of the cost and the inconvenience,
and wondering if I’ll have to now be like those people in food addiction
programs who have to carry around heavy-ass glass containers of their own food
to restaurants because they can’t eat anything else and become a burden to
myself and my social life…
but sometimes, at least once(!), I do have to admit that
these are thoughts and emotions that are happening, too.
I’ve never really been a fan of the Buddhist term, “The
Middle Way,” but fan or not, I seem to be learning all about it.

change · childhood · compassion · growth · healing · health · joy · pain · past · recovery · truth

Not Knot.

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Last night, I listened to a woman share her intense pain and
entanglement with her past. In listening to her, I realized something crucial for myself: I don’t actually feel that way anymore.
Despite the trailing tendrils and my habitual gnawing back
at it, my past and I are actually not so enmeshed anymore – at least, as I
listened to her, not nearly as much as we were. No. That’s not accurate. We’re
just not. It’s there. I poke at it, like a plate of live octopus bits, still
wriggling on the plate, long after everyone’d finished jamming them into hot
sauce and tried to chew and swallow before they attached to the inside of your
gullet. (Uh… See: My years living in South Korea for reference!)
But, I poke at it, and if I do, it’ll squirm. But for the
most part, my past isn’t a thing crawling toward and suffocating me anymore.
Listening to this woman, hearing her say that she can’t seem
to get under her past, I realized very
clearly that I have. Again, it’s there, but it’s not a shackle around my ankle anymore; it’s
just some dust I can kick off my shoe.
(Apparently, this’ll be a metaphor-heavy blog!)
I have liked to think
that my past is something I’m still slogging through, carrying around behind me
like a behemoth, its hot putrid breath at my neck asking me how it feels,
whether I am able to ignore it now, How ‘bout now, Now?
I’ve liked to think that my past is still a quicksand pit
I’m wading through, slow as molasses, fetid and shoes lost.
But, something about having this woman’s story as comparison
(not better or worse, simply different), I got to see into a mirror that I haven’t been able to
hold up for myself.
I am not
there anymore. I am under my past. I’ve excavated, charted, spelunked
and had more than one canary die down there with me.
But, in the end, in the now, we’re kind of done there.
There’s a cave we’ve dug down into, we’ve opened the land around it, we’ve
cared and cleansed and ameliorated the land. We’ve begun to forget that it was
a horrid, dark, and dismal place, now in the open space that we’ve created from
it, and we’ve used that dank soil to plant new things. Exposed to the sun, it’s
something new, now.
(I do like me my extended metaphors!)
(Though, actually, I’ve done this exact work in
visualization meditation over many years, opening the cave of my pain and my past, exploring, mourning, and later watching flowers begin to sprout where there was only hurt. I’ve done this work of opening my past and my pain up. It’s
finished, or as finished as it can be.)
So, I got to see something yesterday that I haven’t been
able to see yet: The truth.
As I listened with compassion to this woman tell us, tearful
and anguished, that she is so knotted with her past she can’t see her way out,
I wrote in my notebook:
           
My past is really not that knotted anymore.
                       
Actually.

authenticity · community · growth · hope · singing · theater · vulnerability

LiveStrong.

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Yesterday, I was given the cosmic and delightful (sarcasm)
opportunity to put that day’s blog message into action: I was asked if I was
coming out to spend time with folks. … But I really had to go home and watch Netflix, you know. Not that
I have anything I’m particularly watching at the moment, not that you can put
that on my tombstone (“Excellent t.v. watcher, Achiever of many
episodes”). But the alternative was to spend an hour with people. Blech.
But, health won out. (Damned health.) I went, I smiled, I listened, I shared, I had conversations with people. Netflix won’t really converse with me. It’s selfish
that way.
I got the chance to hear what was going on with a
friend and offer some suggestions, and she got to hear me share what’s going
on with me and offered me some help, too.
Again, Netflix is really loathe to help me out. The bastard.
I also got to notice that I’ve gained a few readers in the
past week who’ve gotten to read things about me that some of my closest friends
don’t know about, and that … well, that’s okay. It’s what this, the blog, is
here for. Not to “connect” with people in a complete way, but to offer
something. To offer a catharsis, a container, a mirror into their own
experience. To hear someone say – or read someone write – about what have been issues
or concerns or triumphs in your own life is to get to feel you’re/we’re
not alone. Our experience as humans is not isolated; we’re not as different as
we think we are when trapped alone in our heads.
I’m grateful for that, for this opportunity. And I know it can be intense. For anyone who’s joined us
this week, it’s not always so dark. But, it is likely always as honest. Don’t
worry, I don’t tell you everything. You don’t in fact get the all of me by
reading me, and we both know that. But it’s a good thread between us. And I get
to feel cathartized, too. Not that this is therapy or anything, but that I’m
putting my voice out there in a way that feels relatively safe, but also authentic.
On voice, I emailed an old voice teacher yesterday to ask if
she still gives private lessons. I was in her voice class when I was at Mills, and
earlier in the week, I got the message from Theater Bay Area that applications
for the General Auditions for the South Bay are open. And, you have to note on the application if
you think you might sing. You don’t have
to sing if you check that box, but you have to indicate if you might so they can group you with the other
singers in that day.
I applied to the Generals last year, and didn’t get in. But
I have real headshots this time, and two more credits, and possibly a third
that I can add before I send off my resume. I certainly have enough gumption and
the substance to try this time, especially if I had even less to my name last
year!
I was talking yesterday with a friend about singing. About
how I know the voice is there, but I hide it all the time. Even when I was in the band, I hid it. I didn’t
sing to the best and fullest of my ability, and I also don’t even know what the
limits of my ability are. I want to sing. I’ve always said it. Or thought it,
so most of you didn’t know anyway.
It’s secret. Private. It’s tender, is what it is. It’s the
most tender dream I have, honestly. And I think that’s what makes it the most
protected and least acknowledged one. For me, singing has no place to hide, and
it’s an outpouring of your soul – or it can be. As I know well, it can not be that very easily, and no one would know the
difference but me. They’ll just think that’s what I’ve got.
It’s like when I work at 80% most of the time at my job. They don’t know. They just think that’s what I have to
offer, but the reality is that I hold back, in that case because I’m resentful,
entitled and begrudging. But I digress!
Or I don’t. It’s the same side of the coin of not participating
in life fully, of not offering myself fully. They’re different angles toward
that, but they’re both about self-protection and -preservation.
Tender shoots of hope always need a little more room and
space and care. For me, they’ve needed to be hidden so as not to be trampled by
the onslaught of life. But by keeping this thing small, myself small, by
harboring it and mentally reinforcing it as a tender and sensitive and fragile
thing, it will always remain that way.
A redwood starts out the same way, you know. As tender as a
sprig. But if you take the cage off of the plant, allow it air and sunshine and
nourishment. Soon it won’t be a small and tender, fragile thing anymore. Soon
it will be able to weather the strokes of life. By letting what I’ve carried as
a secret and a calling out of its confinement … I can allow it to become what
it’s always needed to be: Strong. 

abundance · community · debt · deprivation · finances · growth · integrity · recovery · self-care · self-support

No Soup For You.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

It’s astonishing, the lengths I’ll go to deprive myself.
The thick pattern of deprivation, living small, quietly,
unobtrusively, knocks on the door of all my actions and insists on being
allowed in.
Luckily, my latest personal recipe is: Me + G-d + Friends +
Action.
I was on the phone with a friend the other day discussing
the fact that I needed a spending plan for my upcoming trip to Seattle and
Boston this Saturday. I told her that I’d already “found” $235 in my usual
monthly spending plan, which means whittling funds from other line items, like
entertainment, personal care, household purchases–line items that
fluctuate anyway, so I consider them “fundgable” when they’re really not. (I’ve
learned.)
This isn’t to say that my spending plan is a monthly set of
10 Commandments, chiseled in stone and fatal when not adhered to. It’s an
ideal, a goal, a guideline, and the actuals that I tally at the end of each
month tell me the story as it happened, instead of how I thought it would.
Usually they’re pretty close these days.
However, when my friend and I were speaking about my trip,
and we calculated aloud bus fare, BART fare, coffee&food at 4 airports in
10 days, groceries, eating out, incidentals, tchotckes, gas money… well, we
figured it out to about $400, a number I’m supposed to double check before I
leave.
Immediately, I begin mentally looking at those fundgable
categories, which I’ve already cut thick slices from this month to support the
trip. And I start to get panicked and fearful about the trip and how much I can
spend, and try to pre-manipulate how I can spend less than I actually know
I’ll need.
This, friends, is the compulsion. How can I whittle down my
needs, how can I deny what is actually true about my needs, hide them, dismiss
them, and discard them, so that I can live in a way that I misguidedly think
will support me?
Luckily, I was on the phone with my friend as we spoke all
this out, and I admitted to her that I have nearly a grand in my vacation
savings account… but, I told her like a child revealing they’ve stolen a
Snickers, I’m “supposed to” be saving it for my hypothetical trip to Paris with
my mom next Summer.
I don’t want to give up my Snickers. I don’t want to break
part of it off to eat now, because I believe I just need to save it for later,
or there will never be enough.
This is preposterous. And where voices that don’t live
inside my own head are so valuable.
She didn’t even have to say anything, as I admitted my
vacation savings money could easily provide the additional $200 that I’ll actually need for this trip. I just talked myself through it,
admitting it, accepting it, saying that I see the fallacy and the deprivation
in that kind of save it ALL for some unknown date and live in fear
right now thinking. And I told her I would
move that money over this week, so that I could use it in today, for the
intended purpose: vacation.
It’s not actually called “Paris Vacation with Mom” savings
account: It’s just called Vacation. And if this isn’t the time to use those
funds, when I need them, when I’m plotting to slice myself and my funds even
thinner than they already are this month, then I haven’t learned a thing.
Yesterday, I did move that money. It felt illicit, illegal almost. I felt
nervous and anxious and excited and proud to know that I was supporting a
vision for myself without putting myself in deprivation.
The ridiculous part is that I will easily replenish that money in the vacation account over the next few months. “Vacation savings” is a
line item in my spending plan every single month. It’s not like I’ll never get to go
on a vacation again because I’m using this money now.
But my addiction to deprivation and fear continues to knock
on my door and insist entry into my life and my decisions. So, luckily, today I have
an antidote: Me + G-d + Friends + Action. 

change · community · faith · fear · growth · prayer · trauma · vulnerability

Witchy Woman

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I’ve been back to reading through that Louise Hay You Can
Heal Your Life book before bed. Just
reading through some of the affirmations, saying some of them out loud.
I’ve also begun more consistently reading my Tarot cards,
pulling one daily.
And, it should come as no surprise to you that I have variously: burned sage,
taken a bath in a blend of “protection” salts, participated in a sweat lodge,
buried letters to G-d, dissolved some in the ocean, carried rose quartz in my
jacket pocket, and burned a blend of incense powder mixed for me by a man in a
dress.
When I was in college, I took a class on Witchcraft in Literature. I don’t remember much from it, except what the classroom looked
like, and probably that most of the classmates were women. I know it’s not
gender specific, but I feel like in the teenage years, many women (or those
that I’ve come into contact with) delve in the occult for a little while. I
mean, with the proliferation of movies at the time we grew up that embellished
witchcraft as both hot and powerful, like The Craft, Teen Witch, Practical Magic, and Hocus Pocus (for a humorous bent!). Plus, the 80’s show, Out of This World, where the main teenage girl could freeze time
(though, she was half-alien, not a witch), or Sabrina the Teenage Witch (a far worse show).
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(both the movie and the t.v. show) can also be seen as a teenage girl “coming
into her power,” the development and surge that happens in the teens. And I
think there’s something about the occult that offers girls a channel for that
energy; something that offers safe guidelines and something a little special
and weird and creepy and, perhaps, powerful.
I’m not saying I believe in witchcraft; I’m saying I believe
that we all want to believe that we have the power to change ourselves and our
circumstances, whether that’s through spells or prayers or good karma or electro-shock
therapy.
And I want to believe that I can divine some information
about the world and myself through things like shamanic journeys, meditation
circles, and, yes, Tarot cards.
Recently, I’ve been pulling this one card consistently. The
8 of swords depicts a woman bound with ropes, blindfolded, and surrounded by a
barricade of swords. In the distance, there is a castle on a hill. At least in
my book of interpretations, the meaning of this card is restriction, hopelessness,
accepting inaction. The last paragraph of the description says, however, the ropes are not that tight around the woman; she
could ostensibly wriggle free out of them, knock over the swords, and head
home. She, the figure, waits for someone to save her, instead of acting to save
herself.
The words “accepting inaction” have been echoing for me
these few days and weeks.
I met, post-cancer, with a therapist who works with PTSD. I
described to her the vision/metaphor I currently have of myself:
There is a birdcage. I (forgive me) am the bird. The door to
the cage is open. Has been open for some time. I walk out of the cage into the
freedom, but the freedom is too big, too unknown, too scary, and so I walk back
into the cage.
I know I am not alone in describing self-made prisons. I
know I am not alone in cleaving myself to the devil I know rather than the
devil I don’t. I know I’m not alone in fearing that there’s a devil at all out
there in the wide scary world. (Not like THE Devil. Pretty sure I don’t believe
in that!)
But I have become restless in this self-made prison. In the
looking at things that interest me, and backing away. In the participating in
things I love for a little while, and quitting. In exploring what kind of work
I want to do, and procrastinating indefinitely.
And, I do know that countering fears with affirmations is one of the only tools I have in my belt
right now to help me wriggle out of those self-made, and self-maintained,
bonds; to bend a crowbar behind myself and shove/encourage me back out of the cage, where, underneath all the doubt, I know it is not only safe, but inviting, enlivening, and waiting for me to play/lead/inhabit.
So, if I have to meditate to a drum that “mimics an alpha state” for 20 minutes, tack the Sh’ma AND a cross
to my wall, or pull a card from a deck to help me feel like I have support and
protection as I try, so very falteringly, to enter this wide scary world, so be
it. 

anger · fear · growth · recovery · sex · sexuality · the middle way · vulnerability

Discovering The Third Thing

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A or B, Molly? Your life depends on it. Is it black or
white, Molly? Your life depends on it. Is Dad coming home right now, your life
depends on it. Is he in a temper-FIGURE IT OUT-your life depends on it. Is Mom
crying? Is she still alive-LISTEN HARD-your life
depends on it. Is it black or is it white, Molly, YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.
A woman I met once and have never seen or sought out again asked me, What if there’s a “third thing?”
Much of what I hear is about how we break things into black
and white, but that life is not that way. There is an indoctrination, as above
italicized, that makes us learn and perceive that life is and must be black and
white as a way of survival. And in adulthood, that must be unlearned.
What folks have suggested as remedy to this, however, is
“life is gray,” shades of grey (no allusion intended). That it’s somewhere in
the middle.
Years ago, I decided that “grey” didn’t work for me in this
metaphor, too bland; that instead, “not black and white” could be interpreted as “in
color.” Life isn’t “black and white;” it’s in color.
But, this woman told me something else entirely. That it’s
something I haven’t even conceived of before.
We were not talking about life. We were talking about sex.
I was telling her how I’ve vacillated in my life between the
icons I have named Betty Crocker and The Vixen. How I swing the pendulum of
myself from one to the other; bored by the first, burned by the second.
I was emailing with a friend yesterday about how some of situations I find myself in at the moment are reminiscent of something that happened in my early twenties,
a situation I got myself in as a result of swinging from Betty Crocker to the
Vixen, to disastrous results. She pointed out a few places where things are different now, that I’m
sober, older, and it was just plain different.
But there is a rubber band that pulls this circumstance
back to then, a sense memory that lashes out, OH! UH-UH we’ve done this, lady!
Remember!! Remember the outcome, the consequences, the disaster! Warning,
warning!
She tells me it’s not the same. I remind myself of the year;
I look around myself at who and where I am. And it’s very freaking hard to
separate the past from the present.
Which brings us back to the trust I’ve been working on. To
trust that I am different, that I am safe, that I can allow myself to
experience life in a different way today. That I am able to be the third thing.
It only occurred to me today that perhaps the person I’m
becoming as I sort all this out is the
third thing, neither the puritanical Betty Crocker (who avoids all human
contact in search of the unicorn idea of a risk-less relationship), nor The
Vixen (who overrides all hesitance toward prurient wantonness).
I had my first initial phone call yesterday with a woman who
works somatically with trauma. We’re scheduled to meet next Wednesday, the one
day I have off rehearsal during “tech week.” As helpful and warm and not really “getting into anything” as our
conversation went, my body closed up tighter than an asshole over a flame. And, this is why I want to see her! (duh.)
I used the words “ingress” and “egress” a lot in my morning
pages today, the allowance of things to enter and to exit. Currently, I allow some of
myself out, but I refuse anything entry. Or, if I allow entry of someone or some
emotion, then I refuse them anything in return.
The two-way mirror of my skin. One side can look in, the
other cannot look out.
The third thing, here, would be a window, instead. (Don’t
even suggest something without a pane; I might deck you.)

adulthood · growth · service

Be of … service?

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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When I first started to hear this phrase, and became
conscious enough to hear it and its message, I said: No.
I feared that if I “gave of myself,” if I “give to others
what was freely given to me,” I would have none left. I feared that if I gave
to you what I had, there wouldn’t be any left for me.
Imagine a channel, a tube, a pipe, and into it is being
poured all the light in the world. For the first time ever, the owner of that
pipe feels what it’s like to feel grace, held, helped, hope. The owner of this
pipe, however, has blocked off the bottom. Pinched it off like a garden
hose—No, I will not let it spill out the other side. If I do, I can’t be sure
that the water will fill my portion, I can’t be sure that my side of the
channel will be full. I can’t risk not having what I have now. No.
Something happens, however, when you block up a hose like
this—what’s inside the hose begins to turn and spoil, it loses some of its
luster and charm. In the end, what you sought so hard to save and keep has
rotted because you sought so hard to
save and keep it.
I still fear that if I give of my time or attention or love, that I won’t have enough for me. Even despite all the evidence I’ve gathered as I slowly loosened my grip on the nozzle and let some of what I was receiving
open toward others. I have plenty of evidence for the benefits of giving, and yet I still get
scared.
I could also point to the outpouring of love and help I received when I was sick—and I
don’t think that depleted my friends… Well, actually some it did, and one was
able to say as much and I respected her need to back off from helping so much;
and one was unable to say she was
being depleted, and instead our relationship turned to one of resentment, and
eventual distance.
I mean, I guess there is a way where giving can be
depleting, and I think that’s where my sense-memory barges in to tell me to give
of myself means to give away myself.
But, I think this is a different manner of giving than the one intended by the
“be of service” mantra. The kind of depleting giving is one where there is ego
involved, and an expectation of something in return—approval, appreciation,
reciprocity. Or, you give in a certain way because that’s the way you think will get
you the order you want, the result you want for yourself or the other person.
The kind of help that I think I’m supposed to offer is the
kind that really is “freely given,” demanding nothing in return, truly having
no expectations of how the other will receive, or even reject, what I offer.
I don’t really know why I bring this up today, why it’s on
my mind, except perhaps my review at my job happened last week, and I’ve been
thinking about some of that feedback.
Actually, that’s probably a lot of it. A mentor of mine
intones to me near constantly about my job: Just show up and be of service.
And to her, I say, F’ service.
It is hard for me to show up and be of service at my job. I
know that it is, and it comes out in resentful ways as impatience,
procrastination, neglect of detail. “I don’t know how,” is really my answer to
her advice. I don’t know how to be of service at my job. I don’t know how to
appreciate every interaction I have. My job exhausts me. Being the front face of
every phone call, every person at the door, everyone who wanders by the front office all.day.long.–and I can’t give all the time.
I just can’t, and so I protect myself and my energies by being less than
welcoming – which is the feedback I heard last week.
So, I found an image online from Elf, the Will Farrell Christmas movie. It’s of him wearing a huge, manicly excited grin, and
the words, “I just love to smile. Smiling’s my favorite.” I pasted a copy under
the receiver of my phone, and behind my computer monitor. It reminds me to
smile, but not because of service. More because of sarcasm and irony. More
because of contempt and rebellion.
I don’t know how to be of service at my job. I know I do
tasks well enough, and so, I do. But, if there is a way to unkink my hose and
allow some of the grace I know I have and have been given to even trickle a
little more throughout the day, and not just toward my favorite people or
assignments, … well, I suppose I’m open to learning how to be of service
without getting dried out. 

dating · fallibility · growth · honesty · humaness · learning

The Longest Lesson

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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There is a phrase around here that says something like,
“Life is day at school: Some of the lessons are easy, and some of the lessons
are hard.”
I went back into my email this morning to grab an old
“Oprah/Deepak” meditation (because even though the last 21-day meditation
“challenge” ended a while ago… the link still works!). The one this morning
centered on the thought, “I attract that which I am.”
Sometimes I love this idea. I feel full of love and
potential and vigor, and love that I am attracting that into my world and
orbit.
Today, however, I heard that phrase, and my guts steeled a
little. I attract that which I am.
This isn’t a tear-down of myself, but these few days, I’ve felt
scared, inexpert, impulsive and mistaken. – I sent the blog that said I don’t
want to “escalate” things with the 25 y.o. to the 25 y.o. … I wrote with it, There’s
probably a better and more graceful way to let you know why I have to cancel
Saturday’s date, but here.
And like pulling the pin on a grenade and handing it to him,
I pressed send.
You can imagine this brought about a series of results and
reactions, which I am now attempting to repair. Inexpertly. And perhaps unsuccessfully.
Yesterday morning, I did some writing about my motivations
for doing this and had a conversation sharing this with someone else. It’s part
of the reason I wasn’t able to write yesterday morning.
It feels sucky, is how it feels. It feels shitty to know
that there are different ways to do things, and know you did it otherwise.
I feel sad because I (rightly) pulled the cord on a
potential relationship, and I feel ashamed of how I did that.
It’s okay. I’m human and inexpert, and learning and growing
and trying.
But, that also means I’m attracting into my world people who
are the same – AND WHY CAN’T WE ALL JUST BE FUCKING PERFECT?? Be kind, and honest, and simple all of the time? It would
make this “lesson” much easier, wouldn’t it?
Can’t we all just get A’s, and “go to the head of the
class,” and all be valedictorians?
Can’t we all just stop stubbing our toes against our own
fears and hardships and boogeymen?
Can’t we all just have lives where we feel confident,
expert, proud, self-admiring, and kick-ass?
Why, in order to get to all the above feelings, must we go
through all the stubbing first?
It sense no make.
And I’m tired of being a flailing human being. I’m tired of
doing it almost right, of showing up almost fully. I’m tired of almost feeling
whole and complete and awesome.
Sometimes, I do. I won’t lie. Sometimes, I really really do.
Sometimes it’s for minutes, sometimes for hours. And even a few times, for
days, I feel like I’m really walking on a yellow brick road toward Oz.
And then the trees start to throw apples at me.
I *get* that “this is all part of the process.” But
sometimes the process sucks.
And in my attempts to wriggle out of discomfort, I land in a
higher degree. By being dishonest, abandoning my truth, trying to make someone
else deal with feelings that are uncomfortable or pave a way for me that is
less rocky, well—I know it’s the very absolute best that, as fallible,
learning, human, I can do today. But I wish, well, I wish I didn’t take that
person and potential friendship down in the process.
(End of tantrum)
(…maybe.)

acting · clarity · commitment · consistency · dreams · growth · perseverance

Get Real.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Blogger lets you see what posts are being read, how many
times, and where in the world the reader is (HELLO! Those of you in Poland, Germany & Israel…whoever you are!). This morning, I saw that someone had read
“Pulling a Carmen,” my first blog-a-day in November of 2011. I haven’t stuck
with it daily, but fairly enough.

Amazingly, a) it’s the same things I talk about now (wanting
to act and perform; letting myself be in a relationship; owning my dreams), but
b) it also shows me where things have
changed: I have been a bass player in a
band – I certainly wasn’t in Winter of 2011 when I wrote that; I wasn’t until Spring of 2013.
In that blog, I write that my
relationship with others is reflected in my relationship with myself: how am I not committed to myself and my goals? And here I am present-day, whittling down my goals to only theater, finally. 
This week, I
wrote the lead singer in the band I play bass in that I can’t be in the band
anymore. It’s sad, but I know it’s ultimately for the best. It’s a pruning
game—like a bonsai. Or fichus. (cuz who doesn’t love the word fichus). And I
think it will ultimately help me in my attempts to focus on and even achieve
anything at theater.
I write about all the same things that I write about now,
but I do think I’m at a different place with them. I mean, I guess I write
about the same things all the time: relationships, healing, self-care,
self-derision, past experience, authenticity, perseverance.
Perseverance. I’ve written a bunch about that before, but
without one goal to head toward, the whole thing becomes dispersed, scattered,
and ineffectual.
Yesterday, I put down a deposit for real headshots.
The friends I’ve had who’ve helped me out over the years
produced incredible photos, artistic, fun, and fun to shoot—but they’re not
“acting headshots.” And there just is an industry standard. I’ve been trying to get the name of someone from an actor
friend of mine, but her voicemails are all garbled, and somehow it hasn’t been
working.
Enter Yelp. Yesterday after some searching and
clicking and emailing, I sent half of the $350 fee to this woman in Berkeley.
Later that day, I got emails back from my other inquiries,
friends, who would be willing to do a much reduced rate, or photos in exchange for
babysitting.
I cursed myself (mildly) for being so impetuous and
imprudent, for not being patient and thereby “wasting” money.
And then, I looked at these friends’ websites, and I said,
ya know, it’s worth it.
As Maybelline says, I’m worth it. (or is it clarol?)
Because, after hm, 3 years of headshots that I felt either
okay, or less than okay about (fine photos though they were), I’ve been being prudent and cutting corners and trying alternatives–It’s time to put
my money where my mouth is. And I mouth about being an actress.
Does this mean I’m suddenly an actress? No. Does it mean
that I’m taking myself seriously enough to invest in myself? Yes. Does it mean
that I can focus more on what I’m showing the auditors rather than what I’ve
handed them, or emailed them? YES.
Because it IS my calling card, my first impression. And if I
want to be a professional, I get professional help. If I want this to be real, then I get real.
I could look at that first blog and laugh/lament that I’m
talking and writing and working on the same damned things 3 years later. And a
little bit, I do. But I also recognize that big things have shifted since then,
too. I’m glad to have this kind of record to mark my progress. Even when
progress looks circuitous and labyrinthine.
The last line in that first blog is that maybe there’s a
tall attractive employed funny Jewboy who is looking for a
“writer/singer/actress…bass player.” At the time I wrote that, “bass player” was only a
vague hope and notion, a funny, last second, “doorknob comment” throw-away, because you shouldn’t really know that it’s important to me. Today, I get to own that mantle. I am a bass player. I
play bass, I’ve been in a band. And I am now hoping to own the mantle of
actress.
If you glue it, they will come. 

abundance · adulthood · change · growth · love

Progress, Not Perfection…

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

When I have clarity of vision, pretty amazing things tend to
happen.
About 2 years ago, when working my way through the Calling
in The One book, I decided it was time to
get that 2nd bedside table to “energetically” be more inviting to a partner. The one I had on my side is sort of shabby/chic, wooden, painted white, with a little storage and
soft, almost country structure. Very soon thereafter, I wandered into a garage
sale down the block – and wouldn’t you know, there is the perfectly
complementary bedside table – different shape, but same country feel, wooden,
painted white, same height too.
Over last summer, I decided it was time to upgrade my
ever-chipping, ever-depleting plateware and bowl collection. I had one bowl left. And a stack of gray, unappealing plates
that I’d bought for cheap thinking they’d be “sleek,” but were instead just… gray. Very
soon thereafter, I was in Cole Valley, waiting for my band to
play at the street fair, and lo, there was a stack of multicolored, almost
Fiesta ware bowls and a stack of bright blue plates to go with them—for free.
Within the last two months, a man was crossing the street in
front of my car as I drove home from work. He was dressed “smartly,” wearing a sweater over a button-down shirt, well-fitting jeans, and real shoes, not
sneakers. I said to myself, I want someone who wears clothes like that. (Though, sure, I would have barfed at such a preppy [pulled-together??] look in the past.)  This wasn’t the first time I’d thought that, as I
noticed men milling about the world recently. And, you guessed it, very soon
thereafter, I met this new boy, who wears
smart clothing, fitting the above description to a T.
So, point? Well, my coworker would smirk at my “manifest-y”
meanderings, but my point is more that when I have a vision of what I want,
more often than not (and so often with housewares!), I get it very quickly and
with much ease.
I took a personality test about a year ago, the
Meyers-Briggs, with a friend who actually processes these tests for a living.
Part of the reason for my wanting to do this type of test was to find out what
I “should do” with my life—if there were places and arenas in the world that
would benefit most from the assets I already have, the things that come easy to me. And wouldn’t you know, for
“appropriate jobs,” my particular personality type listed all kinds of artsy
things (writer, painter, actor), also counselor and clergy, all of which I’ve contemplated in the past.
What it also told me about me about my “type” were the
pitfalls, and how to counter them. How to counter idealistic, magpie, not detail-oriented leanings? 

“Focus, Prioritize,
Follow-through.”
Eesh. Yuck.
But, see all my above Manifesty moments? These were ALL born
of something called “focus.” I had clarity. I knew what I wanted, and made
myself open to receive it by participating in the world.
One of the final meditations at my annual meditation retreat
in Napa a few years ago left me with the following directive: Use Your Time
Efficiently.
I’ve been SO F*ING BUSY, it feels. I’m doing and going and
participating, but I’m not focused or prioritized, so I don’t get done the
things I really want to do; I don’t move forward in those places.
Be it career advancement, monologue learning, song writing.
Gardening.
There are areas in my life I want to deepen. I want to strengthen
the roots of these priorities. I want to make forward motion with them. Which
means, I want to make time for them,
real, expansive, focused, invested time.
Running hither and thither is great. My life is FULL. So
freaking full, I don’t know my ass (non-essentials) from my elbow (essentials),
and, as example, I spent way more money on take-out food this month, since I
haven’t had any time for food shopping and cooking—something which actually does
feed me, in all the ways.
Focus. Prioritize. Follow-through.
If they came naturally to me, I would have honed them
already. They don’t. A personality test, and 32 years of knowing my own
personality have proven that these are not inherent.
However, if I want to
live the life that is more about quality than quantity, I need to (strike
that!) – I would like to encourage myself in learning how to do this. I know
it’s possible. My free amazing couch that I sit on right now is proof of vision
equaling results. But, in order to even have time to let the dust settle in the
glass, I have to sit still, listen closely, be open to asking for help in how on earth one “focuses, prioritizes, and follows-through,” and
most of all, allow myself progress, not perfection.