No Soup For You.

April 8, 2014 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.

abundance · beauty · fun · joy · life · self-care

Thirsty

March 19, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Normal
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0
1
507
2893
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5
3552
11.1287

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0

Home sick again today, I began to clean up my apartment
which has become a bit of a wreck lately. Weeknights spent in rehearsals,
weekends spent at auditions, mornings a cluster of Morning Pages, meditation
and blogging. I’m up at 6:15 every morning, and am still late to work.

So, I began with the bedsheets, the laundry that was washed
last week but still remained in the hamper, the clothes strewn on the closet
floor, the dross of everyday living.

Back and forth across my apartment, each time, I passed the
black silhouette case by the entry way. The case the singer of the band bought
for me so I wouldn’t have to carry my bass my its neck anymore.

My bass has sat in that visible corner, tucked in its sheath,
for nearly two months, since I quit the band to focus on acting. My acoustic
guitar collects dust. My keyboard, shoved in a closet to avoid visual clutter
when the 25 y.o. was over.

I went to a music show last Friday night. It’s this fun band
my friend introduced me to, and we bought tickets for their SF show nearly the
day after I heard them. I hadn’t been to a music show I wasn’t ushering….
well, since I was in the band, I guess. That was one of the fun things about being in the band, was that I got to hear a lot more
music. “Lack of music shows” is on my list of “Serenity Moths” I have tacked to
my fridge. The list was written at least 2 years ago, and though many are now
crossed off, some remain. (Serenity Moths, to me, being things that just eat
tiny holes in my well-being; e.g. lack of music shows, no light over my desk,
chipped nailpolish.)

It was REFUELING to go to a music show where I could enjoy and focus on the
music. I smiled and watched the bassist voraciously, was flattened by the vocalist and shimmied my little tush
in my little section. I admitted to my friends who were with me that I missed music. So much. I think I actually had a dream about
it last night, come to think of it. But where do you find time for it?

I am still such a newbie at bass, I have so much to learn,
dexterity to gain, simple basslines to master. I just miss the endeavor, the
trying.

So, you can guess what happened this morning as I cleaned up
my apartment between sips of turmeric tea: I slowly unzipped the black case, and said
aloud, Hello again.

I tuned it, it was still pretty in tune, actually. And I
know how long it’s been since I’ve played, since my nails are all so long
again. I pulled out the keyboard from the closet, and laid it on my bed—where
Stella climbed up to watch as I tuned the acoustic too, the one that was my
high school graduation present that still has the strap from O. Dibella Music
in New Jersey.

My nails still so long the chords were hard to make, I
played. I played until the skin on my strumming finger got raw. I made up
some new words and played my old songs. And felt the vibration of the wood against
my coughing, constricted chest.

Sometimes I live without music so long, I forget its
blessing. Honestly, I horrifically have sometimes gone months without turning
on my iPod, and when I finally do, it’s like an oasis. Like lavishing in a
Caribbean waterfall. It opens something, releases something, allows something
to enter. I hate that I forget that it does this—and in some kind of
masochistic pattern, I deprive myself of its joy.

When will I play? I don’t know. What will come of it again?
I don’t know. But for a few minutes, I opened back up to the
aching light of it, and I’m sure something was healed.

acting · dating · honesty · relationships · self-care

State of the Union

February 9, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Yesterday, I sat with a group of folks, and admitted that
continuing to participate in activities that I’m not 100% invested in (or even
85%) is dishonest. That I was not being honest with my intentions or
priorities—and was thereby wasting time. (You finite commodity, you.)

There was a meditation/writing portion of this meeting, and
so I wrote a series of questions for myself:

How is being dishonest with others serving me?
How is prioritizing others’ needs serving me?
How is NOT prioritizing my own needs serving me?
What need am I
fulfilling by not prioritizing and owning my needs?
How is dismissing my desires serving me?
How is devaluing myself serving me?

Heavy, huh?

But, for me, that’s what pushing important things off to
“tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” is. It’s devaluing myself, what I have
deemed important to myself.

Because I’ve been hemming and hawing a little on letting
those folks know that I can’t come out and play anymore. Even though I am clear
that my priorities and intentions have shifted.

So… Yesterday, I committed to those folks that I would make
two phone calls. One was to the 25 y.o.

He asked, adorably, if he were in trouble, when I said I
wanted to chat when he wasn’t in a café. I said no, but that it was sort of a
“State of the Union” conversation, so to give me a call back.

He did. And we did.

I’d been feeling throughout this week that this couple-dom
wasn’t on course for relationship-land. It’s a pretty appropriate assessment
after a half-dozen dates. We’ve kept it PG-13, so there isn’t any animal-brain
“must keep orgasm giver” going on.

But, I have simply felt like I’ve crystallized that I don’t
want to date this person long-term. It’s just a feeling, not a fear, not a
defense mechanism. Just a fact.

The big however is, I
don’t want to stop seeing him. And thus, my hesitation.

I really enjoy spending time with this person, getting to
know him, getting to know myself in relation to him. And I thoroughly enjoy our
frisky make-out sessions.

So, that’s what I told him. Pretty much all of the above. I
don’t see this heading toward relationship track, but I enjoy spending time
with him, and I enjoy making out with him.

That the outcomes I saw were we transition to
friends, or do that and try to keep with the sexy-time, or do neither. So, he
asked me, then, what I wanted? If I knew what I wanted? And I said, no. I
didn’t know, but perhaps in talking it out, and hearing his thoughts, we might find
some solution.

He admitted and agreed that he was “along for the ride,” but
not in a place to invest in a relationship. So that pretty much leaves us two
options: continue seeing one another with the frequency we have been, or stop
seeing one another.

I replied, honestly, that the idea of seeing him less was
unappealing to me.

(And I have to admit here, that part of my hesitation in
letting go of this couple-dom is that this person is the first I’ve met who is
really in the theater world, has insights, and knowledge, and can point me
toward plays and monologues and acting worksheets and websites—which he has—and if
I let this go, I won’t have that access anymore.

And that, my dear friends, is scarcity mind. That this is
the first person with those bodies of
knowledge does not mean that he’s
the last person, and to continue a relationship based on a selfish need and
fear of loss is the definition of crappy. Doomed. Dishonest.)

So, at the end of this conversation, we agreed to continue
to see one another on the semi-regular, as we have been, and that if the
ambiguity “gets to” either of us, we can talk about that then.

I did say that I am a person who is wanting a relationship,
and that he deserves someone who thinks he’s the sunandmoonandstars, but, for
right now, no one is blowing down our doors, so… here we are.

I don’t think it’s “settling for less.” I think it’s being
perfectly honest with my desires, honest with my intentions, and my continued
task is to show up in the single world and be available.

That might mean a week more of the hot make-out sessions, it
might mean a month. I don’t know. It is
ambiguous. And we know how I LOVE that. But, I am not willing to let go of this
connection yet, because of what it does for me on multiple levels, nor am I willing
to let go of my intention to have a true partnership with another human being.

In the meantime, I have that list of questions to answer for
and about myself, and some theater websites to explore.

fear · friendship · health · honesty · love · self-care · vulnerability

Welcome To The Jungle–We’ve Got Fun & Games

February 5, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Dear Blog-Reading Community & The Inside of Molly’s
Head,

Don’t Freak Out.

Dear Suspicious Lump Under My Right Shoulder Blade,

Don’t be an asshole.

Be a mutated muscle, embarrassing adult acne, a rogue tooth stem cell that formed in the wrong place in utero; even be a benign
cyst that I have to go through biopsy limbo to confirm. Just don’t be an
asshole.

Today, I go to the doctor. I am grateful and lucky to have
the community who shows up for me, available at 6:30am-text notice. One of them
is coming with me to the doctor visit–though I didn’t ask, I just “wanted to inform someone who isn’t my mom and wouldn’t freak out,” she offered. I wanted to
ask, but asking for help… especially help to attend to an amorphous, “Am I just
paranoid?” symptom…

Yesterday at work, I spoke with someone who also has
intimate experience with things like this. She said, it’s not paranoid. It’s
not hypochondriac. We have reasons, and good ones. She said she gets alarmed
too. And so, what do we do? We get things checked out.

I was trying to play it cool. Sure, I’ve just been really tired; it’s normal, you’ve
seen my lists of activities. It’s nuhhh-thing. And MAYBE IT IS. But you know how I tongue the other
side of “maybe.”

So, I went to get labs drawn yesterday afternoon. My blood
is all normal. Leukemia Negative.

But, this lump. I noticed a few days ago.

Is this too much information? Is this too soon to tell you
anything? Is this just me mental-masturbating onto the page to diffuse some of my worry by spewing it onto you?

Maybe.

The same friend who will accompany me today once said,
“Don’t Worry Twice.” It’s the best advice I’ve ever been given, and a thousand
miles toward following it.

But, I remember it. I try to do that.

I’m as worried as the situation warrants. Which is, hmm,
this is suspicious. I am not a doctor, I should get this checked out. The end.
It’s why I got my blood tested finally; and glad that I did. It’s why I’ll see a doctor today, who may really seriously in fact tell me, this is just a really bad zit
under your skin, Moll. Use some ProActive and get on with your life.

The thought that occurred to me this morning, waking up and
deciding to get this zit-in-sheep’s-clothing checked out, was “Rule 62.” Don’t
Take Yourself So Damned Seriously.

A thousand thoughts go through one’s head when….

No.

One thought went through my head when, yesterday morning, I
wrote my blog to you, got ready for work, and broke down crying in my closet. I’m
so tired of being brave.

The thought that follows that is: I won’t go through this
again.

The thought that follows that is: Of course I will.

Because tired of it or not, bone-weary or not, to gain a
year of hell, perhaps five years of health, perhaps one perhaps twenty, I would do it.

I hate that I would. I hate that I love this all so much. I
hate that I have such a burning, singeing ambition to do more. I hate that I
want to have my own life story to hand to someone to type. To have someone
record and note my life, my legacy, my
experience of living a full and long life.

I hate that I love myself and most especially you and all of
this so damned fucking much, that I would do whatever it took to stay.

And then, of course, I don’t take myself so damned
seriously, I eat my daily eggs, and I don’t worry twice.

Dear Blog-Reading Community & The Inside of Molly’s
Head,

Don’t freak out.

Reach out. Follow up. And get back to the business of being awesome. No.Matter.What.

P.S. It is a nice change from the 25 y.o.- should I/shouldn’t I argument. So there’s that. #SilverLining

assertiveness · authenticity · fear · health · self-care · self-love

Heeding the Cautionary Tale

February 4, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

When I was sick, I contacted the Leukemia & Lymphoma
Society. They were great, and recommended this Peer-to-Peer program, where they
connected current patients by phone with survivors of similar age, background,
and treatment.

I asked to speak with someone who’d chosen only chemo, as I
was doing, instead of chemo + bone marrow transplant, which was standard (and
recommended) protocol.

I spoke on the phone once to a woman who was a few years
older than me, who’d also had the cancer come out of nowhere, and who’d also
chosen “only chemo.” She went into remission, and when she was done with
treatment, she began training for marathons.

I can’t remember if she’d been a runner before she got sick,
but she told me she went at it with abandon. Not “fun runs,” not 5ks, but the
long New York City Marathon-style kind of marathons.

Her doctors advised her to “take it easy,” to go slow, but
she, like me, felt that she had time to make up for, and also like me, wanted
to prove that her body was her own, and not a foreign infectious parasite. She
wanted to prove that she could be above, beyond, and more than her cancer. She wanted to tell it, Fuck you.

Within a year of remission, healthier than she’d ever been,
this woman’s cancer returned. Leukemia. Again.

So she finally went into the recommended bone marrow
transplant treatment, the year of absolute hell (with two small children at
home), and was now 5 years out from that relapse.

Tell me if you don’t get where I’m going with this story.

This is part of the
reason I need to slow down. To focus my energies.

I got a bill from Stanford Hospital yesterday, only for a $10
co-pay, the actual cost of my meeting with the bone marrow expert much higher.
I’d gone twice to see them when making my decision. Once with a friend, and
once, gratefully, with my mom. Because we really all just need our mom
sometimes, and I’m lucky mine is around.

The Stanford folks explained the harrowing treatment process, and took some blood to
type-test against my brother to see if he’d be a bone marrow match—and he is,
should I ever need the assist.

There’s a family at work, a congregant’s family, where the
sister of the couple I know just is going through the phase of integrating her
brother’s marrow with her own, and apparently the grafting is going well.

I’m typing up a “life story” for an older woman not inclined
to typing. In it, she recounts the tale of her friend, diagnosed with one
cancer, gone into remission, and then relapsed with Leukemia, and dies.

Cautionary Tales, I think is the word for these stories.

To be cognizant with my body, my efforts, my love of self
and others. To be compassionate to my own twitching reaction to the above
stories, too.

In the first few months of returning to work last Spring, a
congregant I’d known only in passing told me he was 15 years out from Lymphoma,
and if I ever wanted to talk, he was available. I took him up on that offer a
few times. He’s the one who told me the Damacles’ Sword story.

I asked him when the vicious paranoia stops? When every
cold, fatigue, sore throat doesn’t send your mind reeling to the far end of doomed?
He said, Five Years.

He said, he knows it’s just a magic marking in time that the
doctors put on us, but they do. Five years in remission is the marker they use
to say, “Okay, you’ve made it this far, so you’re pretty much as healthy as any
Tom, Dick, or Harry. Good on ya.”

He said that even though it’s a nearly arbitrary
mile-marker, that’s when he felt able to breathe for the first time in years.

He also said it sounded like I have done and am doing a lot
more concerted work around my disease, my process, and my healing that he was
not able to do until some years later.

My cousin told me the other week that I talk(ed) so much
about the nuance and subtlety of being sick. The multi-faceted nature of health
and wellness and life.

I get to have my experience of being scared, I get to
have my experience of processing the fear, and I get to have the experience of
saying, Hey you, Fear: Go bother someone else.

So I am slowing down, I am pulling the e-brake on my spinning
world. Because I listened when that marathoner told me about her relapse into
Leukemia. And I am more scared of going through that than I am of telling
people, I’m sorry, I can’t participate in that thing right now.

adulthood · balance · dating · integrity · love · progress · relationships · romance · self-care

Opportunity Knocks

May 29, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, first, some news – Remember the “SOLD” blog when I asked
all y’all to pray for my childhood home to sell so my dad and his fiancé could
move to Florida and retire? Well, 10 days after that blog, the house sold :)!!
Thank you ALL for your prayers and kind wishes! I’m really happy for them, even
though my dad is still shocked he didn’t get the price he wanted… Oh dad, you can’t win em all.

Next on the horizon, date # 2 happens tonight (this is the first 2nd date I’ve had in almost 2 years), and lord have
mercy, I’m trying to ground myself in every way possible. Stop tripping out.
Remember that I’m worthy of love and am able to give and receive love in an
appropriate way. Stop trying to script or plan. It’s not about “him.” I mean,
it’s not about wanting this person or not. It’s so much more about how do I
show up and stand in the experience of something new, trying something new. To
stand with integrity, and self-esteem, and awareness, and that fair and
balanced view thing that keeps coming up.

I don’t need a person to validate or complete me. I need to
be able to allow myself to stand without armor. I had a pretty funky
meditation/shamanic journey this morning. Unexpected, but right on track. About
my ability to receive love, and the melting of my resistance toward it.
Overbearing or absent were the ways that I learned love could show itself.
Overwhelm or rejection. I’ve carried out that pattern with my own partners, and
with myself as well. I’ve believed, and have stated in the past, that my fear
is that my needs are too great – that my needs are like a barely held back
tidal wave, and that to let them go, even in the slightest, to let them out,
would be an invitation for drowning – particularly, drowning someone else. So,
better to keep the dam contained.

It all comes back to what is the evidence for that today? Is there evidence of that today? And again, back to,
I’ve never let myself try, or others try, so really, I don’t know. Again, I
could be more capable of a thousand things, but having stopped and shunted them
all, I’d never know.

I am grateful for this “obstacle to practice on,” as is
written in a lot of the work I do with a woman one-on-one in the city. But I
said recently to someone else, that I think I’m going to begin using the word
“opportunity” rather than “obstacle.”

For a while, when I began writing that phrase with my
friend, it tasted so bitter and awful in my mouth – obstacles, fuck obstacles, I don’t need no steenkin obstacles.
I was pissed. How many more f’ing obstacles did I need in my life, I asked her.
And she told me that it wasn’t up to me. It wasn’t really my choice. These were
being presented to me, whether I wanted them or not, and it was my choice on
how I chose to use them for practice.

She was right. What do I know about my path? I want to get
from A to Z, but the “path” needs me to stop at H, J, and O on the way to
garner skills and friends and love and esteem. So, I wrote it. Thank you,
G-d, for this obstacle to practice on.

But, be it the “law of attraction”ish believing part of me,
or simply a framing shift, I don’t want to see or write them as obstacles anymore.
They’re not. They are opportunities.

These are
opportunities for me to choose – Turn Left, toward freedom and serenity, or
Turn Right, to well-worn misery. These are all mental paths, psychological
paths really. And in my phone right now, on my cover screen, I set the display
to read, “Turn Left.” It’s a reminder to me that in every given moment (what a
phrase! “given moment,” these moments are given, even gifts, if I can see it),
at any time, I can remember that I have a choice. I have the choice to obsess about tonight or not. I
have the choice to believe in my inherent worthiness or not. These are all
choices. And my choices are reflected back to me in real time.

I’d like to choose to
not obsess, to remember that I am talented and worthy, and don’t have to sleep
with people I don’t know well, and that my house can still be off limits even
though I said I was cleaning it to make it “guest appropriate.” I was told that
I am the czar of my own experience, and further, my own body. That I
don’t owe anyone anything. Repeat. I
don’t owe anyone anything. A date is not a
promise. A date is not a sexual invitation. It is an invitation to get to know
someone better. To vet each other for each subsequent date. A friend once told
me that a first date is just an interview for a second one. And so on they go.
That’s all.

So many years of believing I was promising something I
didn’t want to deliver, or was obligated to do because he was hard. Not my problem.
Sure, don’t be a tease on purpose, but he’ll live. An erection is not an
obligation.

This is an opportunity for me to hear that and feel that in
a way that I haven’t. For me to try to see that I have assets beyond my
physical self. And for me to allow those assets to be shared and seen. Dating
can start so physically, and that part is critically important, but physical
attraction is a dime a dozen, really. (I mean it’s not exactly that easy, as
I’ve realized that too) – but sex itself is a dime a dozen. I don’t want that.
– as in hell yes, I want to get laid, like every other hot blooded person on
this planet, but I don’t want only that,
and my experience has taught me for sure that when I go to that part too quickly, I undermine myself every time, and I quash any ability for me to learn
that I am worthy for more than my looks and my pussy.

So, here’s to an opportunity to try something different. To
try to believe something different. And I am excited for tonight, and that’s
all well and good, but I’m also going to pay attention to my own music stand,
and Turn Left toward the tasks I have ahead of me right now.

Wish me luck.

adulthood · authenticity · band · compassion · courage · dance · discovery · letting go · life · maturity · music · performance · persistence · poetry · receiving · responsibility · self-care · singing · surrender

Pulling a Carmen: 2

May 5, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

When I began this blog-a-day back in November of last year,
my first post was called “Pulling a Carmen,” as I’d been reading and was encouraged by her own blog-a-day postings. In the time since, sometimes I
just find it hugely funny how parallel my path is to my fellow blogger and
friend.

For recent example:

I also just starting going back on to the internet dating
scene. In fact, I have a coffee date today with someone I met on JDate

I too have said fuck it, and asked out a dude yesterday.
Unfortunately, turns out he’s married, but it felt really good to do so.

Several of the books that are lining my desk and bedside
table are travel books about Europe, underlining my intention to take a real
freaking vacation some time this century.

And, I also rented a camera and video camera from the
school’s A/V department to begin taking pictures again.

Sometimes I feel awkward about our exceedingly similar
trajectories, as if I’m copying her, but the reality is that independently, we
come to these things, and then come here to write about them. It’s really
funny, and also somewhat comforting to know that there is someone who is
traveling a similar path toward “To thine own self be true.”

On that note, I went to see my friend’s band play in the city
last night, and then headed with my girlfriends to go out dancing in Oakland.
Prior to both these… we went to the Dharma Punx meditation – nothing says
spiritually fit like meditating for 40 minutes before downing coffee with an
add-shot. 😉

But to relate it to the ‘self be true’ part – each of these
are places where I want to feel more connection. I hadn’t been to see live
music in MUCH too long. It’s on my current list of “Serenity Moths” on my
refrigerator (a list of things that aren’t cataclysmic, but slowly and
subterraneaously eat away at my serenity and foundation). Yes, “Absence of live
music” is on there, and so should be “dancing.” I’m a white girl. I have no
ambition or goal to be anything but a mildly flailing Elaine Benice, but … i
love it. The absence of self, the absence of self criticism or posturing or
need to be anywhere or anything else. Lost in the music.

The band brought something else up for me. Like the
“dropping” of the whole acting bent at the beginning of this year, what I’ve dropped
more often than anything is the “being in a band” idea.

As you may know, I have 2 guitars, a bass, and a small USB plug
in keyboard. Each as dust-covered as the next. The bass amp sits as a monument
to abandoned dreams in my apartment.

Last night, watching my friend’s band, I remembered that this is
something I want to do. In fact, I’d emailed one of the guitarist’s wife about
6 or more months ago to talk to her about her own process of getting toward
singing in a band – embracing her inner teenage rock chick. If I had my … well, if I had my own back, I guess, I’d play
bass, and I’d sing. Talk about vulnerability.

This week, I stood practically naked in front of an audience
and spoke my poem into a microphone in a moderately full theater. That isn’t nearly as frightening to me as
standing in front of an audience, singing, or playing.

The truth is that for several years, I’ve been gathering information
about the whole bass playing thing. But, no, I haven’t been playing. A few
years ago, I asked a guy I knew for bass advice, and he sent me a long list of
places to start (which I didn’t pursue). About a year later, I contacted this other guy about bass
lessons (which I didn’t pursue). … And the guy I asked out yesterday is also a bass player. Apparently,
I have a thing.

Every few years, I’ll troll craigslist, and I’ll answer a
few ads for singers. I even recorded myself a little on my computer’s
Garageband to send as a sample. I got a “not a good fit, but thanks anyway” from one,
and no reply from another. And, hey, I don’t blame em. When I’m terrified, it
comes through. I don’t know. I’ve written here about it kind of frequently –
and dismissed it and been “embarrassed” by it just as often.

However, once again, the thing that occurred to me last night as I
watched my friend’s band was another case of “I want to do that” … followed by
“I can do that.” There is no one stopping me, obviously except for myself and
my fears, and that critic that says “Not good enough” and chops me off at the
knees before I start.

One thing I’m working on releasing at the moment, a pattern
and belief and behavior that is just not fucking serving me anymore, is my need
or habit to stay small.

When I was living in South Korea, my friend nicknamed me
“Ballsy Mollsy.” I had the absolute chutzpah and hubris to ask anyone anything,
go anywhere, and do pretty much whatever I felt like doing in the hedonistic
way most drunks do.

However, there is a quality of that Ballsy woman who still I am,
somewhere, and who I want to resurrect or reveal or uncover or let loose – or
even just let into the light a little tiny bit.

I find it’s happening in some ways. And I know to have
compassion for myself as I try to aim in this direction which has been a Siren
song for me (uh, no pun intended) for … oh, 15 years.

But compassion for slow progress, and acceptance of
stagnation are two different things. And I’d really like to move forward from
here.

So, for your reading pleasure, here’s a poem composed about
a year ago. Reading aloud is encouraged. As is recalling the line “So let it be written, so let it be done.” Cheers. m.

Band Practice

Tnk tnkTNK thwap

Bzzzt FLARE feedback

TNK tnktnk THWAP

Tnktnk THWAP tnk tnktnk THWAP

TNK tnktnk THWAP

Tnktnk THWAP tnk tnktnk THWAP

Tnka tnka thwap

Tnka tnka tnka thwap

Tnka tnka thwap

Tnka tnka tnka thwap

Tnka tnka thwap

Tnka tnka tnka thwap

TNK TNK THWAP!

acceptance · adulthood · change · friendship · honesty · progress · self-care · self-support

R-E-S-P–…oh you know the rest

April 28, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Things I have the power to change:

my hair color

my perspective.

That’s the list for now. Sure, it could be really long, but
that’s what occurs to me at the moment. I haven’t, in fact, changed my hair
color in a few years – after the blonde debacle, and subsequent re-browning –
and, it sort of feels that i haven’t changed my perspective all that much
lately either.

I met up with a friend in SF yesterday, as I went about my
day flyering the city (note the gazillion workshop flyers on the lampposts of Hayes
Valley), and basically, she told me that although she could see that this was
important to me to talk about – where I am in my life, basically, … or rather,
my opinion of where I am in my life –
that she just couldn’t process with me anymore. That she herself, as I well
know, is in a similar position, going through similar changes in her life, and
I guess she’s just fed up with the whole “Let’s figure it out” routine. And so,
she told me, gently, that I’m still in the problem, and not the solution, and
that until I start to do things or see things differently, of course it’s going
to be painful for me.

I was both disappointed, and heartened – our friendship is
that strong, that we can let one another know when we’re being crazy,
basically, and that the other just can’t bear witness to crazy right now.

I have a few marching orders, work I’m doing with a woman
one-on-one, that I can proceed to progress on, and that’s where the change will
come. But, for now, my friend is right – as Jung said (loose paraphrase): we cannot solve the problem at the
level of the problem.

So, if all I have at the moment is my ground level view,
it’s better for now to stop reporting back from the (perceived) bleak front lines, and do
the work I have in front of me which will help me to get a foothold up and out.

Perhaps this all sounds sort of vague, but it’s all I got.

I was reflecting this morning on respect – that something
that I can change is how I respect myself or don’t. Who am I to disparage
myself for not being x y or z? How would I react if a friend came to me and
“should” all over me? (You should know, it should be different, you should have
figured it out already, you should be better…)

I’m realizing that all the time that I spend in lamenting
this situation is time I’m spending beating myself up, and treating myself
unkindly – and without respect. What would it be like to respect myself – to
look at myself from an outsider’s view? To congratulate myself on my
accomplishments, take real stock and account of things that I have done and
talents that I have. What would it be like to take a more well-rounded view of
myself? Would I ever disparage myself as
in the above paragraph? Discounting all that I am? No. Because here are a few
reality checks – a) I’m human – guess what, I come with assets and liabilities. b) I’m hosting a workshop that I’ve
dreamed up, crafted, advertised and implemented all by myself today. (with due
thanks to all my helpers!) and, c) I am poised to graduate from graduate school. I didn’t
make it to my college graduation. I got
high as fuck after my high school one. This time, I’m showing up – period. I’m showing up
entirely differently.

I’ve changed. I have
become someone worthy of respect – most emphatically of my own respect. If I
can begin to take ownership of feelings like that – or rather facts like that – then I can begin to move from the
problem into the solution. I do not need to know anything about what “will
happen.” What I do need to be very careful I count along side of the things I
have “to work on,” are the things that are worthy, lovable, respectable about
myself.

Because in the end, I’m the person with the power to change
my perspective. Because I will inform others’ interactions with me, Fate’s
interactions with me, by leading by my own example of realistic, balanced, and earned respect.

abundance · action · anger · change · faith · freedom · frustration · growth · progress · relationships · romance · self-care · spirituality · work

The Masculine Mystique

April 22, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Firstly, I would like to quote an acquaintance of mine as
they responded once to my tirade on SF’s chilly weather – “Then Move.” Touche,
quite right. And I will, just not today.

Secondly, my morning pages were like something out of a
schizo’s notebook this morning, and I’m rather heartened than alarmed by it.

As I began to, again, write that I could paint, a sentence which was followed immediately in my head by the thought, “Yeah, right,” … my morning pages turned
on me, and began a near-two page rejoinder along the lines of Stop Fucking
Saying Yeah Right, and GO DO IT! I channeled the very pissed off and frustrated
voice/part inside me that is exceedingly
tired of the self-defeating, Eeyore-like part of me that crosses all my
interests with a “Yeah, but,” or a “How will I make any money?”

I was happy to see that this activated part was so adamant,
and demanded that I Just Fucking Do It, rather than what I’ve been doing for a
very long time, question, debate, lolly-gag, despair. This voice is the fuck despair
voice. It is the voice, one might say, of my inner masculine.

I’m a little hesitant to draw the dividing line between
feminine and masculine in this way; feminine as pondering and questioning;
masculine as action and fortitude. But, it sort of feels like that to me, and
it’s only my interpretation. There are
plenty of other ways to categorize, or not, these disparate voices and parts of
ourselves. But, for the sake of the argument, I’ll call it my masculine side.

And the truth is, it’s right. Whatever it is, or I call it.
Because this is the point in the job search where I get frustrated and think,
well, nothing will come of it anyway, so phooey, here’s another admin job. My
internal beings of all sorts are having a coup. Nuh, Uh. Time’s up. Off the
pity pot, lady. Get on it.

And further more, Yes, You Can. Furthermore,

to segue,

you/I have very recent experience in NOT behaving as you
would have in the past. You very
recently responded to a situation MUCH differently than factual evidence
had it before. This means … you’re different. You’ve changed. You can do things
now that you couldn’t before, and your mental register aligns with a much
healthier set of behavior and thinking now.

The case in point, is that I was asked to go to the theater
by a boy…man. There is nothing wrong with this person, except that a) I
accepted the extra ticket thinking he has a girlfriend, so I thought it was a friend thing (I found out later he does not), and b) he is new to
the not-drinking world.

Over the last 3 days, I have felt icky – like the princess
and the pea. I know from my own experience that the first few months of not
drinking and trying a whole new way of life – no, not first few months, first
few years (or year, AT LEAST), are so incredibly
formative, that I would be damned to throw a wrench into the wheel works of
someone else’s critical development. I know people who have gotten involved, and it’s
worked out marvelously, but I, surprisingly, was feeling way too uncomfortable
about it.

Sobriety, mine or someone else’s, was way more important to
me than a fucking non-date date. No matter how long it’s been, how intriguing
it is, how fun it could be. Not doing it.

So, through a series of phone calls to friends, and a
confirmation that it’s the respectful thing for us both, yesterday, I texted
the dude and said I’d rather stick to seeing him “around,” than go for coffee.
That I felt “murky” around it.

You know what he said?

“Okay. No worries!”

???!!!

All my f’ing belly aching, and heming and hawing, and “Okay,
No Worries”?? Wow, this honesty thing really f’ing works.

Through a series of circumstances, the timing was different
than he thought, so I get to go see the play by myself and also get to have a
clean, peer-like relationship with this dude. I don’t have to feel weird, or
avoid, or future-trip about it. The play is the bonus prize – the actual prize
is the relief of doing the right and honest thing for myself, and sticking to a
new way of being.

I know from direct experience that I haven’t always
responded that way to someone who was new to not drinking, and I experienced
the fallout of that, however brief it was. I, apparently, have learned from my
experience. And my internal alarm system is calibrated to this new way of
being.

I say all this to say, that my masculine side has a point.
All that writing this morning about Just Do It has a point. The point is that I’m not the person I used to be. I don’t have the same
reactions I used to, and so I don’t have to follow the same actions I used to.
This whole “new way of living” has made itself quite apparent in my life, and I
can allow the boon of that to propel me forward.

I don’t have to be afraid anymore. Afraid there isn’t
enough, or I’m not good enough, or I’ll never make it anyway, or that a
creative life is a stupid one.

In fact, I don’t have these fears anymore, really. They’re
just echoes. There’s nothing real to scare me. There’s no one stopping me, or
chiding me, or making fun of me.

And if there ever is, I apparently have a massive bully to
yell affirmations at them.

balance · crazy · recovery · school · self-care

Elephantitis.

April 18, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, I gotta admit, I’m feeling a little discombobulated this
morning, and I’m not really sure what’s up. It’s like a wrong side of the bed,
but not cranky, just, off. Like the films aren’t aligned properly. Not sure.
Maybe as the day progresses, it’ll wear off. It’s threatening to be a gorgeous
day, so I’ll hopefully spend some of it outside, or at least in a café,
working.

Part of the discomfort is that I think I spent too many
hours hunched over my computer yesterday, working on both my thesis and the info
blast for May’s workshop. My neck muscles literally cracked when I turned to
shut off my alarm – ouch. Stiff and unhappy. Computers and health may not be
aligned either. Balance, I suppose.

I got the final copy of my thesis back from friends yesterday,
and began my final edits. The folks I gave it to were really helpful and
specific, which offset the entirely vagueness of my professors’ notes. I am marinating on a few changes that may happen – a word here, to delete
one or two poems there.

The nude suit is back in. By the way. I had my performance poetry class last
night, and spoke about my new idea, and that it may not warrant a nude suit,
but folks encouraged me, and said, basically, why the F not. Pretty much
anything that I’d get up there to say will be about getting down to the/my authentic, naked self. The professor said that it adds something visually, it
doesn’t matter what the content is. So,
now, the hunt for a nude-colored body suit. I have a hunch where I’ll find one,
and as I just got asked to babysit this Friday, I’ll have the funds to fund it.

Although he’s a little hesitant for me to be working on a
brand new piece for the performance, which is in less than two weeks, I’m
pretty confident that I can bust it out – as soon as I put pen to paper.
There’s SO much divided demands right now, is all. Each thing is important,
none can be “dropped,” and hardly any back-burnered, but this piece has been,
and I’ll do my best to crank it out in the next day or so. It won’t take long.
I have it mapped out in my head. I’ll post it when it’s done.

That’s really all that’s up right now – these school
demands, and the crunch time lead-up to both next Saturday’s workshop, and
May’s workshop. Each are going to require some more input from me. And I just
feel really thin at the moment. Only one person has actually registered for the
workshop next weekend, though a few have Facebook responded. But, I’m certainly
aware of the habit people have – myself included – of clicking “attend” to
something they have only a vague passing notion of attending. So, I’ll have to
blast that out again – if you get the email again, forgive me, but I sorta need
to know how many folks will be there. Like, if there’s really only one…!

Also, I have to print flyers for the May workshop, and I
need to do color copy cost research for that, and then I’m going to ask a
friend to help me drive around to various places in the Bay to post them up.
So, I’ve got to reach out for that.

Ack. You can see, perhaps, why I feel all off. I tried to
meditate some this morning, and got a few deep breaths, but not too much
grounding. Maybe today is a multiple attempt at meditation day.

There’s something I heard once: a guy said that on most days
he meditates a half hour, but on the days he’s really busy, he meditates an
hour.

That actually makes sense to me. Now, maybe I’m not the
hour-long meditator type, but I’ve sat in a few circles for 40 minutes. It’s
HARD … in the beginning. Then I sort of sink into it – once my brain has had
its say around what feels like 20 minutes or so of, OMIGOD are we done yet???
But, like working out, or something, once you get into it, you forget that you
hated it in the beginning few minutes. The adrenaline starts to pump, or in
meditation land, the serenity does. … Sometimes. Not always. Sometimes it’s 40
minutes, or in my case, 10 minutes of laundry list, punctuated by a few, oh
yeah, deep breath, follow the breath, touch down, just notice – I have to get
quarters for laundry – do I have any dollar bills – I love the sound the
machine makes when the quarters are changed, like in Vega– oh, right, breathe
in …

So, maybe today requires a little more grounding. I’ll go
meet up with some folks later today and have a bit of brain drain for an hour
or so, but, this is part of my self-care. The only way I can balance all that
I’ve got going on, is if I can let myself get balanced first.

I feel like that unicycle circus dude with the poles and the
plates balanced on top. I’d like to feel like the elephant, rooted and pressing
into the earth.