Category: letting go

abundance · action · courage · direction · faith · fear · finances · Jewish · joy · letting go · life · responsibility · synchronicity

Effective but Wordless Chant

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So I did look at one SF apartment ad today. It was through
my old employer, a property management company, which is how I got my sweet
deals on my SF and Oakland apartments. Granted, it wasn’t a handout-out, I
worked well there – maybe not that hard, but it wasn’t that challenging or enticing, and
eventually I found myself overcome by the Ugly Cries (maya’s accurate term) in my car at lunch one Friday on the phone
with a friend having another job existential crisis.
That day I gave my two weeks notice, that night I threw my 1st pre-Valentine’s party, the following day, I went blonde. This was almost 3 years
ago now. My boss wasn’t pleased, but he knew I wasn’t happy –
that I wanted to do something creative, anything.
So that began several months – two, to be exact – of
job hunting. I remember I didn’t even tell my parents I’d quit my job and was
looking for work cuz I just couldn’t face their “Are you kidding me, in this economy??” spiel. It was hard then – I had notes all
over my SF apartment – “This is a world of grace and abundance and I am letting
go.”
A friend afterward told me to change to wording to “–and I
allow myself to receive” – more “open.”
Two years before that, I’d been “downsized” from a corporate
real estate firm, my first long term gig in SF, and was on unemployment for the
full 6 months. The first month? Awesome – yay paid vacation. By the end of six months? I was desperate. I began to
answer every ad. The very week my unemployment was going to run out, I had two job interviews one day, and I’m driving to one of
them, out somewhere near Bayview, and I’m in my car and I have this
mini-epiphany: I had every single thing I needed at that moment. I had eaten
breakfast, I had coffee in me, I had gas in my car – I didn’t need anything
else at that moment – no money in my hand, nothing. For that moment, I was
completely taken care of.
I forget what it was now, but I even began this little chant
while I was on my way to that interview. Something about being content and
caffeinated, or something? That afternoon, I had my other interview – at the
property management firm. And I got that job. The woman I was replacing
happened to be out sick that day (she was going on maternity leave), and so I
interviewed with the owner of the company – and we got along fabulously. (A big part of me feels that had I met the woman instead, I wouldn’t have made it through the door.) The
mug that I’m drinking out of now, he gave to me because he got tired of me
using the one that had a photo of his kids printed on it for my coffee (it was
the biggest mug!, What?). The one he bought has sort of colorful swirls on it,
and he said it reminded him of the tattoo on my wrist.
So, yeah, he wasn’t pleased when I left my job with them,
but, obviously still liked me enough to let me have parties in my SF apartment,
and to move here into the Oakland one on a slight deal.  – actually, it’s a really good deal, i
should be (and am!) really grateful – the rent isn’t that much cheaper, but I didn’t
have to pay security deposit, or pet deposit, so that’s quite generous.
Reminds me the theme of today’s CITO is generosity …
But, back to grace and abundance, and letting go – or
“receiving” rather.
I quit that job with the property management, and spent two
months looking for creative work, again. And finally what happened was I woke
up one morning and asked myself, still groggy from sleep and receptive to the universe, What else
am I interested in?
The reply came, Well, I like being Jewish.  … So I typed “Jewish San Francisco” into
Google, and applied to every position there was.
I got one of those positions. (Actually I applied to one I didn’t get, but my resume got passed along to someone else in this Jewish
education non-profit, and I got that job
– for which I was surely more well suited.) … 

Then, on a not so whimish been-looking-at-the-college’s-website-for-three-years whim, I apply to the MFA program, and get in. (Note, there: I actually intended to apply to the Master’s in Literature Program, but didn’t have a current academic paper, and am pretty sure none of my professors from college remember me … but the admissions coordinator for the English Department told me that the MFA program, I just needed 15-20 recent poems. How many did I happen to have recently? 16.) Nudgey McNudgerson, you sly Universe, you.
I dunno. I guess I’m feeling reflective about all of this –
about all of my “being taken care of” and steered into a more … “Molly” direction — because I have no clue what’s going to
happen when school is over in May. I quite imagine that it will work out well –
and I also imagine I’ll freak out a bit anyway.
But, if any of the above isn’t evidence that I’m being
gently but firmly guided, I don’t know what is.
So, Universe, Let me be receptive to the strange and unusual
nudges you have to give me. I sit here, in a heated apartment, with food in my
belly, electricity running, December rent paid, and I’m chanting the tune to
that chant whose words I no longer remember. Amen.

action · adulthood · faith · joy · letting go

Compensation

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

A friend once told me that the Universe gives us
compensations. This was after I’d just spent an emotionally, mentally,
physically, and spiritually bankrupting week at my family home in NJ last month – I was
there to clean out my childhood room as my dad and his fiancé have purchased a
new construction home in Florida and plan to move there in April, so he is
clearing out the house to get it ready for sale.
He was going to yoke my brother into the task of clearing
out my room – and somehow, not really being sure if I’d cleared out all the sex
toys, drugs, or writings about such things – and in addition wanting the
experience and process of the ritual of “leaving my childhood home” – I made a
snap decision to buy a flight home in October. My dad’s not really a
sentimental kind of guy, and wasn’t really getting that it was an emotional
thing that the house I grew up in – that we shared a family life & history
in – was about to be sold.
That same friend also told me that her parents had sold her
childhood home without her packing up her things, and that if my dad wanted to
clear it out, then whatever he found was his own fault/problem, and that
although it sort of sucked that she didn’t get to do it herself, it happened,
and it was what it was. But, luckily, I knew I had the money, and there was a
cheap deal on a flight, and off I went… to a whirlwind of entirely fucked up.
In describing the state of the house to friends once I
returned to SF, two people asked word for word “Was anyone living there??” And
my answer was yes – yes, two adult men, my dad and my brother, were there,
living in a home that had dead flies on all the window sills, dead bugs caught
in the scum of the oven hood, beyond the forever unmowed, uninviting lawn. You
remember when I said we never had people over growing up? Yeah, my house was
not the entertainment house. It has gotten significantly worse since my mom
moved out ten years ago after my parents’ divorce, and to be fair, my dad has
been splitting his time between his own home (he kept the house – my mom is a
city dweller by very nature) and his fiance’s home, and keeping up the
maintenance of a barely used home is a trial. Plus, my brother had been away at
graduate school until last year, so … The house reflects the loneliness and neglect.
I did a lot of work before I went home on untying my
identification with the house – if it only had more attention, love,
consideration of its assets, it could be beautiful, exciting, a success. I was
livid that the 200-year-old oak tree in the front lawn was now rotting, and
will have to come down before the house is sold – its roots had died; I felt
personally affronted by this.
So, I went home – to pack, but also to make peace with all of that. With the deep depression, the anger, the
resentment, the despair that house witnessed. To make peace with the shattered
door frame to my bedroom as it was once attempted to be kicked down. And also,
to thank it. To honor what was, what it sheltered, what it witnessed, and then
to let it go.
I did sort of well – no, I did as absolutely as massively
well as I possibly could in the situation. When on a streaming tears emergency
phone call to an SF friend, she asked me what more I could be doing at that
moment (We’d just come back from visiting my dad’s parents in Queens – and
their home is, without any exaggeration, a fertile candidate for an episode of
“Hoarders”, … and some very strong meds). I thought about what more I could be
doing at that moment, and the answer was nothing; I was doing absolutely everything
I knew to do in moments of distress – Once we’d gotten home from Queens, I went
out for a long walk, I called my spiritual teacher lady (who said we all have a
Grey Gardens branch of the family tree)
😉 and I made plans to go to dinner with a girl friend who knew my situation.
So, I told my friend on the phone, I was literally doing all that I could be
doing – and I knew then, that that had to be enough. I was fucking
uncomfortable – I was sad, anguished at the
state of my family’s homes, of their comfort with or ambivalence toward or
simply paralyzing despair in the face of such obvious … sickness. Yes, I was
uncomfortable, but I also was doing the very best I could – that had to be
enough.
So, I went to dinner with a girl friend; I cleared out my
childhood room (there was only one book of porn and no drugs!); and I saged the
damn place – because I don’t want no bad jujus hangin’ out there in NJ while
I’m all the way back here in CA.
And I came home.
In the tiny window of my layover in Detroit, I get a phone call
from the temp agency in SF asking me if I want to work at the interior design
firm again – I could start the very next day. … Having cleared out the old, I made way for the new.
And so my wise, wonderful, now-Brooklynite friend told me
upon hearing this story: “The Universe gives us compensations.”
The reason I wrote today’s blog on this? This afternoon I
found the most perfectly ‘couldn’t be more perfect’ purple wool coat that I’ve
been actively envisioning, believing in, and hunting down for the last month –
on sale. And after the blind date disappointment, I remember her words, and
smile joyfully at my plum compensation. 😉
abundance · courage · dating · joy · letting go · love · performance · responsibility · self-care

weekend update.

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 😉
integrity · letting go · love · recovery

The Cousin.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

When I was 19, my brother’s best friend’s cousin (got that?)
came to visit NJ from Ohio. His name was Ben, like my brother, so we just
called him “The Cousin” for clarification.
And, oh, how we fell. I wrote a poem about that too. (pasted
an excerpt below). The cousin and I have been each other’s… well, he’s been my
“if we’re single and 40” contingency plan. I said to him once that if I were
willing to let myself fall into the painting of the white picket fence
with him, I would. We were very good painters.
He was the first (and only) guy to send me flowers on
Valentine’s Day. He sent me a poem about my hair (that it was “everywhere” ~
not like that! ~ like it’s so unruly) and it had little hand-drawn cartoony
pictures of me with my unruly hair. Enclosed was a “self-portrait” he’d done in
Microsoft Paint or something, with a backwards cap, because that’s what 16 year
old boys did back then.
Yes, 16. He was 16; I was 19. Be grossed out – but that’s
how it happened. My best friend dated my brother’s best friend that summer
– of course it was summer – and the 4 of us were a raucus ball of Summer
Lovin’. We had a blast. I was his first. And although it sorta sucks to say, I
think part of what has kept our link for so long is that the fiery kindling of
that summer romance never had time to extinguish. The summer ended, he went
back to Ohio. But for the next five or more years, we kept up semi-regular
correspondence, lots of meandering, poetic, off-kilter emails. Jokes, and
references, and randomness – a randomness that almost, well, it made sense
between us. Our individual off-kilter-ness made sense to each other. We felt
understood; I felt understood. (I’m sure you understand) 😉
Last I visited him was on my drive out to San Francisco in
2006; we had another lovey weekend together – sensitive, understood, silly –
and drunken. Last we were both in New Jersey, I was no longer drunken, and he
couldn’t remember the mildly offensive things he’d said the night before. Then
it’s 2009 and he says maybe he should come out to California … and I tell him
that California didn’t fix me – I had to do a lot of work to get out of the
mess(es) I’d been in. And he says, Oh, and we hang up.
And I hadn’t heard from him in two years … till a month ago.
I was in New Jersey and I get a text from him. He hadn’t
heard that I was in town, he just decided then (cosmic Universe oo-ee-oo sound)
to text me. Remarkably, a “Calling in the One” exercise of that very week was
“Renegotiating Old Agreements.” 
(“Marry you when we’re certain we won’t find anyone else & are done
doing everything else” Agreement ring any bells? ~ cue music again.)
So we talk on the phone the next day, and I play “friendly”
catch-up because, really, what is there to say? … What is there to say when I’m
standing at the threshold of letting go of a promise written in gossamer? How
can I say, I’m getting “over” you. Because that’s not the truth either. I will
always be that 19 year old in NJ August heat in my best friend’s bed with my
hair strewn across his vibrating body. I will always be her, but I will also
always be the every-other-age-woman that I’ve been, including today’s ~ and
that woman is very desperately sorry to disappoint her 19 year old, and to
disappoint The Cousin ~ but I am available for a different kind of love now.
One that isn’t a painting of a picket fence, but one that breathes, is adult,
is still random and off-kilter, but, frankly, is no longer available for “if I
can’t find anything better” ~ because everyone is worth more love than that.
I still have a renegotiating letter to write and likely
burn, ceremony-like. And a potential conversation to have. Or maybe, as has
been suggested to me, a promise written in gossamer will simply fade when I
stop re-writing it.
***
(from “Love Poems”)
There’s a
voicemail I’ve pressed 9 to save for two years—it’s a joke, without preface, 
and he just hangs up when it’s done—and there’s a text poem about a porch and twilight
and hands I can’t yet erase, and there’s him, 16, in August heat, on the bench seat
of my dad’s cutlass.
***
acting · action · Jewish · letting go · love · performance

Pulling a Carmen

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, following in the footsteps of my friend Carmen, I’ve decided to post a blog a day, cuz why not. I thoroughly enjoy reading hers each day, or a few in a row, like catching up with a friend – and keeping up with people in this busy world.

So, can I admit that I just wikipedia’d adam levine – that maroon 5 singer, after watching some of charlie day on SNL (on hulu; no tv ~ not a california thing, just a … don’t have a tv thing). And lord, have, mercy. My god. That is one hot jewish man. And god save me, there are actually hot jewish men in this world.

Now I know you can’t chose (particularly) who you fall in love with, but boy, would it be nice to find a tall, handsome, jewish man. … and while we’re at it, employed. It’s been interesting – as a semi-result of reading Carmen’s blog, I bought and started to do the exercises in this book “Calling in the One”. Now, gag if you must, but I did a lot of browsing in the “preview” on amazon, and it seemed like it was up my alley – very Artist’s Way-style exercises and readings, and hey, why the f. not.  Now interestingly enough, I’m asked to look at what ways are my relationships with men a reflection of my relationship with myself – She, the author, asks, if we’re picking up this book, in what ways is are we not loving, nurturing, or committing to ourselves … and I knew immediately that there are tons of ways in which I am not committed to myself – to my dreams/goals/little internal nudges. And that is certainly mirrored back to me in the real world.

So, I’ve been reading this book, and doing these exercises – and shit you not, the week I was home in NJ was the week on “Letting Go” … I’m not doing it all precisely one-a-day, but reading, flagging, going back, doing the exercises on more than one situation like she suggests. And things are changing. Take a look at my apartment!!

But, also, I recently downloaded from the SF Public Library on eBook (yes you can do this now!), What Color is your Parachute? It’s a book about careers, career advice, how to figure out what you want, what you’re good at. And so I’m now doing the exercises in this as well. Because, no, I am not committed to my dreams. I am always embarrassed to tell people I sing. No one’s heard me (well, except Carmen actually, who once told me [after I’d just sung with a band in front of an audience of a hundred people…] that I was really good, and when I said “Really??”, she said, No I’m just trying to sleep with you) 😉 But more than just sing, I want to perform. I want to act, be on stage, riddle you with emotion – I wrote a poem about it once. About throwing you off the edge of a cliff and gently reeling you back in – about steamrolling you with emotion – and the fucked up thing is that I really do think I can. I really do believe that I have it in me to possess myself so completely that I might possess you too.

What a powerful thing is that?

Now, the advanced portion of this exercise, is to let myself head there.

This blog, I suppose, is a part of that. Emptying out my childhood home is a part of that. Finally completing the art project I began in July is a part of it ~ and I’ll tell you something, It Looks Amazing. Even I’m proud of myself.

I’ve been realizing I have a pattern of thought/behavior lately, which states that I can only have happiness when I have success. I can only have love when I have a job. I can only have a career when I … when I let myself take the hideously frightening action steps – even the baby ones, like call these two working actors I know in SF and set up coffee dates/informational interviews. So, putting up my artwork yesterday was part of spitting in the face of that belief – the art doesn’t have to be perfect for it to go up (that was actually the purpose of that project – was to let myself paint it, no matter how it came out – and when it was done – it was done, no finnicking with it). The art doesn’t have to be perfect to make me happy. I don’t have to be perfect to be happy, because let’s face it – that would be never. So, I’ve set up for myself a system of belief where I can never have love or joy in my life. And, in realizing this, I’m realizing how ultimately retarded it is, and I’m beginning to take action in the opposite direction.

Because maybe there’s another Adam Levine out there just waiting for an actress/writer/singer. … bass player 😉

(source: huffington post via Cosmo UK)
abundance · courage · letting go · spirituality

The Pan Story

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.)