Category: self-support

abundance · adulthood · determination · fear · intimacy · perseverance · recovery · relationships · self-love · self-support

Manic Panic.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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It’s what the junior high and high school kids
were using to dye bright streaks of their hair in the 90s. There was one store in the
mall that sold it (Nature Works? – The Nature Company! that’s it.),
and if you said you were going there, you meant that you were going to dye your
hair a brilliant shade of rebellious.
I never bought Manic Panic. I was as straight an arrow as
they come until the end of high school. There was too much order to maintain,
and too many rules to follow, for me to diverge any bit off the path I was
expected to walk.
And so, as I am very apt to do, once I hit college, the
pendulum swung so desperately and frenetically in the direction of “off the path,” that it
swung right around and hit me in the now-pierced face, like a rogue tetherball.
Obviously, this wasn’t the “way” either. This wasn’t
my authentic way, at least.
I had a therapist tell me a long time ago that if my mother
had killed herself when I was young, as her behavior threatened she’d do, that
I would have probably gone down with that ship. I’d spent so much time and
energy attending to the needs and expectations of someone else, there wasn’t
room to explore or attend to my own.
Years later, I had another therapist tell me that this life
was my own, that I didn’t have to make
choices anymore based on whether I thought my dad would approve, or disapprove
and retaliate anymore. That this life was my own was such a novel concept, I’d
rejected it for years. That I could choose now to dye my hair, pierce my face,
be alone, reject the world, participate in it, smoke, not smoke, date, not date – is still a
concept I’m adjusting to, but the marination of this understanding and
awakening has been long underway.
The idea that I am a master of my own fate … well, it seems
just as rogue! That I can choose the kind of toilet paper I want; toothpaste I
like; friends I call. That I can choose how I want to dress in the world; what hobbies to pursue; … job to have … partner to love.
Fulfillment, is the end game, or the suspicion of the end
game. Am I happy in my path? Note, Molly: this is your path. There is no mother to care for, no father to
obey. What is it you want in
life? And do you feel free and brave enough to pursue those desires?
Do you feel free and brave enough to apply for a new job? Do
you feel free and brave enough to wear clothing without stains? Do you feel
free and brave enough to accept that you want a partner whose clothes are also
without stains?
Do you feel free and brave enough to accept that you want a
good life? A job you respect? A partner
you admire?
Do I feel … stable enough, secure enough, self-supporting
and self-worthy enough to not only admit these “taboo” desires, but also to
express them to the world, through action?
Do I feel ready to tell you, world, that I want in? That I
want in on the goods, on the joy, on the self-respect, on the intellectual
stimulation, on the bed-rocking sex, on the critical, yet specious-seeming ease?
Well, I guess I’m telling you. I guess it’s been long enough
that the tetherball has hung limp and impotent, and it’s time to begin playing
again. I no longer am… tethered to ideas of being and living that aren’t my
own. The cord is cut, the apron strings untied. The life, really, is my own. 
And though today that may not mean dying my hair
green or copper, as I wish I’d been able to do a dozen years ago, it means I now know that I could. And that I would be awesome besides. 

action · addiction · clarity · commitment · community · fear · fortitude · procrastination · progress · recovery · self-esteem · self-love · self-pity · self-support

Forte. Più Forte. (Loud. More Loud.)

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

It’s come into my awareness again this week the fallacy of
perfection, and its venomous tendrils. The three “p”s: Perfection,
Procrastination, Paralyzation.
I’ve also read that procrastination is simply another way
for us to prolong feeling crappy about ourselves, and to delay feeing proud of
ourselves.
This week, after a conversation with some people of
authority at work last week about my position, my ambition, my vision of “Where
I’d like to be;” after I was given the feedback that, great, sure, put it in
writing and we can talk more… I stalled and dragged my feet.
It wasn’t acres of time, this time; it was only from Friday until
Tuesday evening, when I finally wrote what I needed to
write. But I could see those tendrils curling up around me, waiting to choke my
ambition and self-esteem from me. The tendrils of hopelessness (What the use
anyway), uncertainty (What about acting, my art, moving), and simple
perfectionism (If it’s not perfect, they’ll reject it, and then I’ll be stuck
answering phones the rest of my life, anyway, so f* it, I’ll just watch some
more Once Upon a Time).
It was so helpful to hear other people talk about how this
weed of perfectionism crops up in their lives, marring their attempts at a full
life—it reminds me that I’m not alone, and mostly, as I heard people talk about
their struggle with perfectionism, I sat
there in that chair and decided (for the hundredth time) to go home afterward
and do the write-up I needed to hand in to my superiors.
I heard them battling the beast, I heard them being flayed
by it, and I decided I wasn’t going to let that be me, if only for an evening.
I cannot tell you how many times I make this declaration to
myself. And then, simply do come home
and watch Netflix, or surf Facebook. I wonder if the advent of television and
internet has created in us a generation of procrastinators, but I certainly
know that I am none too helped by it! (in binges, especially)
But for whatever reason (and I won’t call it exasperation,
because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been exasperated, and still done
nothing), I came home on Tuesday night, wrote what I needed to write, emailed
it to a few friends for feedback, and handed it in yesterday.
And here’s the/a reward for overcoming perfectionism: It may not go the way you wanted anyway. I may hear, “Thanks, Molly, but we’re not
in a position to… We’ll think about it for some undetermined date… This just
isn’t in our vision or budget… We just need someone (you) to stay doing what
you are doing indefinitely, or at least through the next year or more.” I may
hear things I don’t want to hear in response to my action on behalf of myself
and my ambition, BUT, the reward is that I get to hear something at all,
instead of sitting, spinning, resenting, foaming, fuming, and … watching
Netflix.
The reward for overcoming perfectionism (and it’s
paralyzation) in just this one moment is that, no matter the results, no matter
the response, I am actually moving
forward, internally, for sure. What this does is tell me that, See Molly, once you did something. One time you took action on your
own behalf, and instead of delaying your good, instead of languishing in a sea
of self-pity, you get to feel proud, pro-active, like a leader. You get to feel
like yourself, instead of like the skin of mutating fear that creeps up yours
and mimics you out in the world.
I don’t know the result of the action I took, externally, at
least. However, having put things in writing and gotten clarity around my
vision and desire, if I don’t get the result I “want” here, in this environs,
then I get to take that information and that knowledge and shop it around
elsewhere. Because I took the action that I did, suddenly, I have a beginning
instead of what my brain and that malevolent skin tells me is an end, a sorry, pathetic end.
Finally, I’ll repeat something I heard a long time ago,
which I’ve agreed with and disagreed with over the years: We ask “god” for what
we want; “he” gives us what we need; and in the end, it’s what we wanted
anyway.
I know that what I wanted anyway was clarity and
self-esteem, so, Team: Mission Accomplished. 

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. 

abundance · adulthood · affirmations · change · community · isolation · self-esteem · self-support · spirituality

Easy

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

“Pain carves out a place in us that allows us to feel more
deeply and be more usefully whole.”
Bullshit.
This is the kind of thing you tell someone who’s had to go
through shit and needs something to hold onto as a reason why. And I’m not
going to tell you it’s not true or that I don’t believe it to be true, because,
maddeningly, I do think it is.
But what about all the people who don’t have pain carve out a place in them? What about
those of us who haven’t have the razor of life cut into our quick? What about
those who have lived what some might call “normal” lives?
Are they not as valuable as human beings? Of course not. Are
they not as deep in thought or artistry? Well… that’s really hard to answer.
There is a pervasive ideal of the martyr in our society
(and, again, I’m not the first to write about this). There is also the
thick idolatry of those who are young, innocent, unscathed, “beautiful.”
So, we have for ourselves, as a society, a conundrum: We
both want desperately that kind of luxury and ease that calls to us from the
pages of Sunset or Dwell or GQ, but we disdain those whose lives
closely resemble them, condemning them for “having it easy.”
So, what do we really want? Do we want the life of ease, or
do we want to tear down those who actually have a life of ease? And if the
latter is true,… why, then, would we
ever want to be a person of ease, and be the object of disdain and
envy-laced judgment?
There is an affirmation in my repertoire: Life is easy for
me.
How nice is that?
“Life is easy for
me.”
What would that be like?
Life is easy for me.
I just smiled. 
Ease. Flow. Calm. Centered. Guided. Held. Easy.
Why should it not be?
An affirmation is something you tell yourself until you live
and believe it, according to my own understanding. So this isn’t something that I
can tell you today with assurance is accurate. But I can tell you that it is something that I would like to believe and live with assurance.
“Life is easy for me.”
Pain may have carved out a place in me that enables me to
help other people who have been there. But there is a downside to identifying
with others on the commonality of pain: What happens when one of you doesn’t
want to identify with their own pain anymore?
A friend of mine inherited a sum of money
a few years ago, after the death of her mother. She, my friend, is one of the
pain-carved women. She is shorn and built and pyred from pain – she is one of
the strongest and most admired women I know.
And yet. After the inheritance, she, on her own, bought a
vacation home—she bought a second home, just because she could. She has a
husband, and two kids, and this was what she wanted to do, and could do with
that money.
It was only after the fact of the purchase, however, that we
began to hear about it. She had to “confess” to us that she had this boon, this
exciting news, this abundance. And she’d been avoiding telling people,
precisely because of that envy-laced judgment.
However, she realized that not talking about her success was just as dangerous to her well-being as
not talking about troubles, and that by isolating and hiding her good fortune,
she would certainly falter.
Not talking about success, about “what’s going on,” is just
as precarious as not talking about challenge. However, because we are a culture
that feeds off mutual exchange of stories of strife, because all of our
literature is based on triumph over adversity, or simply is an account of
adversity, we do not share about it.
We are ashamed of our success. We are ashamed of our good
fortune. We are ashamed to admit that life is easy for us—and so we couch it in
“humility”: Oh, it’s only because of the inheritance from a death; Oh, but I had to overcome such hardship to get
here; Oh, but it’s really only this one time that I’m getting a boon in my life
– I promise the rest of my life is a shit show!
SO WHAT if my life were easy? What does it impede on you?
(is a question I pose to myself as well.) What are the merits of slogging
through a desperate existence, to live to possibly be honored post-humously as
a great writer, as a Baudelaire (and the
list is endless)?
A while back, I wrote you about a poem of mine whose only line went,
            Otherwise,
who would eat the blackened one?
And I told you how I’ve come to see that the answer, which
had so long been, “No one, so I better eat it first so you won’t have to,” has
become, “No one. Period.” I’ve told you that I no longer feel as fated or
compelled to be a martyr.
It seems the other side of that action is to embrace what
our culture feels so aggressively conflicted about: Allowing my life to be easy.
Perhaps my “meta” affirmation, then, would be: It is easy to
allow my life to be easy. 

abundance · acting · self-esteem · self-love · self-support · vision

…And all the men and women merely players

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Audition Over. I feel exhausted. I am hoping that some day
soon, I can stop reporting my exhaustion to you, because I won’t be.
However, if I get into this play, which I realize is an SF
State Production, I think, then there are rehearsals there every evening and weekend
for 4 weeks. But, cart, horse, one bite at a time. (And, although that sounds
exhausting, I know it’s part of “building a resume” and a body of work; so, worth it.) I
won’t talk too much about this play, until I know I’ve gotten into it. To
paraphrase my new go-to book, It’s Just a F***ing Audition. So, now, I go back onto Theater Bay Area website,
follow-up on another message board the 25 y.o. told me about, and get another
audition lined up. And another monologue into my brain.
You know, this memorizing thing is work. It’s amazing to be able to keep so much information
in our heads. I remember words from plays I did years ago, when I click into
that gear.
And that’s the other thing I realized as I walked out of the
audition last night into the Sunset streets: I’ve done this before. I know how to do this, if still gelding-like. But this isn’t as foreign to me as I like to let my brain tell me
it is. I’ve stood in small rooms in front of strangers and performed words to them before. I’ve conversed awkwardly with auditors, having rehearsed so many lines for them, I forget how to just have a normal conversation. I’ve filled out audition sheets, and printed headshots, and doctored a resume. I’ve stood in hallways waiting my turn before. 
I left last night – just as I’d left the CCSF audition last month –
thrilled that I showed up. THAT’S the result that is most important to me. I
was just so glad that I let myself try. And I did “not bad,” in my own
estimation, which is like high, throwing-flowers-at-myself praise in my own
scale. “Not bad.” Ha. In fact, really, I think I did well. They’re students, it
seems, the auditors, and they gave some feedback that skewed positively.
I remember when my friend Melissa came to see me in The Vagina
Monologues at Mills about 2 or 3 years ago,
now. She said afterward, and her sister is a director, so she’s seen her share
of plays and players—she said, I feel like I’ve finally seen you do what you
were born to do.
It was the best compliment I’ve ever received. Because I
knew she wasn’t a bullshitter, and because it resonated with me. And because it made
my insides do a happy dance. Like, SEE, MOLL! We told you you could do this!!
On Tuesday night, the 25 y.o. came over to help me practice
my monologue. He’s a director and an artistic director, so he’s seen his share
of actors. So, very nervously, I did my piece for him. And I begged him
afterward to be honest with me: if I was wasting my time, and someone just
really needed to be honest with me, tell me to move on to something else. I don’t want to be like that person on the American Idol audition tapes who no one ever told was horrible because they didn’t want to hurt their feelings, and so now all of America laughs at their idiocy. 
He told me, no, he wouldn’t say that at all. But, he also
told me that, like the bell-curve, I fall somewhere in the middle of the curve,
“if a little to the right of center,” he said.
I could be crushed by that. I could say, well, forget it, if
I’m not excellent, f*ck it. But, HELLO, even though I’ve done this somewhat,
I’m a TOTAL NEWBIE. And if as an untrained, total newbie, I’m average, then that’s AWESOME!
I mean, come on, man.
My bass teacher said the same thing to me when I was working
with him. That noting my incredible lack of training and beginner status, I was
much farther along than he’d seen.
I’m good at picking
things up. And I haven’t ever put concerted effort behind this acting vision before. So… seems to me…
leads me to believe… it follows that… logic says…
I better keep doing it. Because I’ll only get better.
*INSERT CHEESY THIS-IS-AWESOME GRIN*
P.S. The 25 y.o. also told me there’s plenty of work in this
town for a start-of-career non-equity actor. And I told him, Tell your friends
– I’m happy to be in their crappy plays. 😉

change · creativity · dating · growth · self-love · self-support · truth

Look! SHINY!!

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I downloaded the book yesterday, It’s Just a F***ing Date, by the same people who wrote He’s Just
Not That Into You and It’s Called
A Break-up Cuz It’s Broken.
One of the first things the introduction says is, you’re
obviously stuck in something you don’t like doing, or you wouldn’t have picked
up this book.
I love their books. I first picked up Not that into you when I was living in South Korea. It was a lark,
there weren’t that many books in the English-speaking section of the bookstore,
and I thought it would be more funny than anything to see the stupidity of
these women who didn’t get that these guys just weren’t into them; that these
women needed a book to spell it out for them in order to stop knocking on the
closed, booty-calling door.
And yet. Of course, I got to see that I was one of those
huddled women justifying all kinds of behavior (theirs and mine) in the hopes
of romance. 3 a.m. text = he’s just not that into you. Not able to hang out
sober = he’s just not that into you. Has a girlfriend? Sweetie, come on, where has your self-respect gone?
When I broke up with my last serious boyfriend in 2011, I
was wrecked. Walk into the house and stand inside the front door empty for several minutes wrecked. It felt like every day I was hit by a Mac
truck. And yes, I was the one who ended
it. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t love there, that I didn’t care about
him, about us, it’s just, we weren’t meant to be an us.
My brilliant friend Katie once told me the following: The
thing about grief is that something is broken, but you’re not, and you’ve got
to keep going.
I had no idea how. So I picked up Cuz It’s Broken. It gave some practical advice, funny anecdotes, and
a great dose of compassion. And in time, it healed.
I love their books. So, having read an excerpt from their new It’s Just a F***ing Date book
a few weeks ago, prior to this new dating thing, I thought to look at it again yesterday, considering that my manic phone checking was probably not what the
gods of serenity have in mind.
And here’s some interesting intel I’ve gathered. One of
their questions is, When was the best period in your life, and What was going on
that made it great? My answer was surprising and heartening: the best period of
my life is happening now, the last few months of my life. What’s happening in
it? Playing in a band, signing up for acting classes, going on auditions,
planning a trip to the sea shore with my cousins, buying a new (to me) car,
upgrading my wardrobe, going on a meditation retreat, eating well, seeing live
entertainment, working the steps.
Also, I was using the Gratitude Journal app on my phone that
dinged twice daily to remind me to pause & write something in.
When did this change, it asks? When I was asked on a date by someone
I’m interested in. That’s when.
Suddenly, my center of focus has veered sharply toward
someone else, what they think of me, if I’m approved, if my life activities are
good enough, if my success is enough, if I’m prudent but sexy enough.
In short, what changed is that all the things that attracted
someone to me in the first place, all the things that were bringing me joy, and
self-esteem, and hope, have been tossed in favor of what you think of me.
This is a terrible
recipe for self-love!!
This is not the first time that my eyes have wandered off my
own music chart onto someone else’s in the orchestra of life and dating. I’d
explained to someone once that if life were an orchestra, the most important
thing is that we stay on our own page, with our own notes, listening to
what’s happening around us, but focusing actively on what’s in front of and important
to us. It would be a disaster if the oboe began to play the notes of the viola.
But, that’s what has happened for me before; I get worried, I get crazed.
Not attractive to me. Or to you.

So, what can I actively do to get back to that place, the
book asks next? Well, for starters, I can type some things into my daily
gratitude app. I can choose two photos from my portfolio to send to this
modeling agency that may be a dead-end, but I was stopped on the street for. I
can go back on Theater Bay Area and find another casting call, and I can find
another monologue and start on that.
There are PLENTY of things that I can do to get back to that
place, because in that place I was simply doing what fed me, was important
to me, was fun, and enlivening.
And one of the changes can be to remember, it’s just a
f*cking date and was never meant as the end
goal – the whole “meet you on the way to meeting me” DOESN’T WORK if I stop
trying to actively meet myself, you know.
It’s time for me to allow the mass rush of thinking about
this, the boy, etc., recede into just one part of the array of my life. I have so
much else I was doing that created now as the greatest period in my life—and, really, it is. 

abundance · change · debt · family · self-support

Wanted: Nice Things

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

There is a Tarot card, a Pentacle, can’t remember which one,
that depicts a gentleman standing with two figures crouched on either side of
him. To one of these figures, he’s handing gold coins, to the other, nothing.
One interpretation in my book on the cards is to see which one of these two
crouching figures we identify with: do we think we’re the one who gets or the
one who gets passed over? But lately, I’ve been looking at the third figure in
the card: the one who has enough, that he gets to choose where he gives it.
A woman once told me that I needed to start “identifying
with the ‘haves’ instead of with the ‘have-nots.’” I didn’t understand what she
was saying, and our relationship as mentor and mentee didn’t last very long.
But over the past year, several months, I’ve been beginning to absorb and even
adopt that idea.
I earn what I earned last year; in fact, it’s the same as I was
paid 6 years ago and far less than I was paid 4 years ago. But I said it to some friends yesterday, “My income has not
changed, but I feel more abundant.” You can stop reading if that makes you mad,
or vomit in your mouth, or roll your eyes – but if you’ve read me before, you
know I say plenty of sweeping statements you may not roll with!
But, the statement feels true, today. Yesterday, I went to a
stand-up comedy show at Cobb’s Comedy in S.F. I’d never been to see live comedy
before, and I loved the comics who were performing. My coworker mentioned that
the event was happening, and within minutes, I had a ticket. I bought myself a
ticket.
I bought a car I actually can afford payments on; I’m
planning a trip to the North Carolina shore with my mom and our two cousins
this summer; I’m saving for the trip my mom and I are taking to Paris next
summer.
That I can even conceive of these things, these trips, these
“haves” is astonishing to me.
When my current mentor told me in the early months of last
year that she saw me having my own car, that I would need one, that I had to
get to band practice, I thought she was bananas – wishful thinking; for you not
for me; there’s no way I can have…”nice things,” is the end of that sentence.
“There is no way I can have nice things.” Sound familiar? To
me it does.
But she said it was true, and though I didn’t believe it AT
ALL, I trusted her.
To drive my car now isn’t a sign to me of affluence or
status, it’s a symbol of doing what I’ve imagined impossible for me – of
attaining things that I had previously imagined, no, believed myself incapable of having, doing, being.
But, my income did not change. I have 80 thousand dollars in
student loan debt, 4 grand in back rent from when I was sick and not working,
and a few outstanding others. And yet….. here’s the joy part – I’m still having
fun. I’m still enjoying my life.
I didn’t think that was allowed, or possible. If you have debt,
you aren’t allowed to enjoy life. If you have debt, you can’t afford to buy
comedy tickets, or the pedicure I shared with my friend this week, or acting
classes at an actual acting school. If you have debt, you should sit in the
dark under a blanket and wait for your soul to eat itself.
😛
Right?
But it sounds true,
doesn’t it? It did to me.
I have payment plans for all of the above debts, and I have
no idea how I’ll pay it all off. But I am no longer willing to deny myself nice
things under a lash of shame and punishment and longing.
To watch this shift within me, the shift from No f*cking
way to maybe, even just maybe, has been radical. I really didn’t
believe my friend when she said about the car, and now it exists, in my hands,
I drive it, it works, it’s not a jalopy, it runs, it’s safe.
If this can happen around that, surely the same shift can
apply elsewhere. Hence the cousin reunion; hence the Paris trip (though really,
it’s just my way to get to Barcelona, where I really want to go!). Actually,
the Paris trip is way more than that, to me. It’s to be with my mom, assuming
“all works out,” and I have to tell you how very much more aware, and…
frightened… sort of, I am of the limited time she and I have left together.
She’s not old, she’s 65, but there are only a few more years
of her and I being able to run around and do things together.
And part of my “Yes”ness shift is trying to believe that I
can spend time with her without actually moving back there. That I was able to fly home to New York over Christmas, that I’ll be able to do it again this summer.
Because here’s my other landing realization: I want to stay
in California.
The agony this decision has caused me has been massive.
Particularly because I want to be with my mom, and my brother, and his
girlfriend, and their probably-to-be-had kids, and my best friend and her new
baby and watch all of them, all of us, grow up. I want to be there and witness
it. I don’t want to parachute in every year and see that things are so
different, and only have limited time to run around, and inject all the joy and
events and activity we can into a few days. It’s horrible living so far from
people who feed your soul.
And yet.
Coming home, coming back to the Bay, after that trip, taking
the train out of SFO, and seeing the green green landscape—who could leave this
either?
Compost versus Styrofoam. Mild weather versus Polar
vortices.
California versus New York is Me versus My family and
friends.
So, what about the abundant thinking, what about the shift
in doing and being able to do that which I’d previously thought impossible?
Well, my “you will have a car” mentor asks me if it wouldn’t be possible that I
would earn enough to be able to get home twice a year. Radical thinking, I
know.
And although it is viciously hard for me to stand in my
decision to stay in California, and I may waffle and weave and dodge and balk over it, what I can do
in the meantime, until I actually allow myself permission to be where I love,
is to make those occasional plans to visit–because I can afford to identify with
the haves. And haves go on vacation.

acting · action · change · commitment · confidence · kindness · laughter · life · performance · persistence · progress · recovery · relationships · self-support · sobriety · time

For those of you playing along at home. . .

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

For those of you playing along at home, below are a few
updates on things I have here written about:
  • The
    caffeine-reduction experiment has been a near-fail since beginning the
    temp job, but continues to remind me to feel guilty.
  • I realized this morning that the free bus I sometimes catch to BART can take me all the
    way to the city, instead of transferring to BART (thank you to my school’s
    student bus pass, making bus transit in the East Bay free).
  • I put
    back up the series of my paintings that I’d taken down during Calling in
    the One    , at which time I’d realized that women
    not looking at their lovers was something I wanted to move away from. I
    put them back up when the okJew was potentially going to come over, and I
    didn’t want a blank expanse of wall over my bed. I’m not sure if I’ll take it back down. 
  • I have
    not yet finished, but I have begun, the art project for my friend’s
    wedding. It sits on my desk, accusing me.
  • I
    bought cat food.
  • I graduated with a Master’s degree a month ago. And I was offered a weekend job at said pet food store. Generously offered (not the compensation), but no thank you. Not yet, at least.
  • I have
    art that I need to make for the September art show my friend invited me to
    join. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it’s been backstroking through my
    psyche for a month or so.
  • I must
    follow-up with the boss at where I’m temping to ask her precisely what she
    meant when she said she would be happy to give me “a recommendation” for
    auction houses here and in the city (um, I meant NY city – I guess that habit still dies hard).
  • My dad
    will be closing on the sale of my childhood NJ home in the next month or
    so, and is planning to move with his fiancé to their new Florida home
    toward the fall.
  • I am
    eagerly awaiting June 20th, when the results of the daily
    sweepstakes I’ve been entering for a trip for two to Italy will be
    announced. You may be the lucky winner.
  • My
    writing style is influenced by who I’m reading currently.
  • At the
    moment, I just finished Nora Ephron’s new book, and began a collection of
    essays by David Foster Wallace, whom I’ve never read, but seen the
    author’s name so many times on my BART rides that I thought to give him a
    whirl. I’m not sure I will continue.
  • I will
    be art modeling this Sunday for the artist who I first worked for, and two
    of her friends. I’m not sure I will continue.
  • I have
    9 new voicemails I haven’t checked.
  • I went
    on the walk I’d planned to take on Tuesday evening yesterday evening, and
    it was glorious. I ate what must have been a small, cherry-sized peach,
    unless it was of course, a cherry, from a nearby tree which I jumped to
    pluck from the low hanging branch. I’m not dead, so it was not poisonous.
  • As
    soon as I get paid this cycle, I’m going to register for the summer acting
    classes at A.C.T., and I can’t f’ing wait. I looked up all manner of
    electronics yesterday that I could hypothetically use my more regular
    income of the next 6 weeks to purchase, and yet, I realized that what I
    really want are those lessons. And new shoes.
  • I’m
    now working one-on-one with a woman who’s found recovery around negative
    patterns of behavior with sex and men, and I’m infinitely looking forward
    to freedom around some of this.
  • I’m
    continuing to work with a woman one-on-one around financial recovery
    stuff, and am looking forward to being “placed in a position of
    neutrality” around money.
  • I love
    Patsy.
  • I haven’t
    yet played my bass with my friend with the drums up in Berkeley, and it
    too stares at me, not gently weeping, but with silent mewling.
  • I
    realized that most of the writers I’m reading right now have written as freelance
    writers, and it occurs to me, that I might be able to do that, if I look
    into it.
  • I
    haven’t applied to any jobs since last week.
  • I used
    my 3 lb weights yesterday after my walk for about 3 minutes. And began to dread the 3 hour posing/drawing session on Sunday.
  • Dr.
    Palm Reader’s office wrote to ask after me, and so I looked up my
    soon-to-end chiropractic benefits “in network,” so that I can get back to
    that kind of thing, without breaking my bank, or participating in a
    somewhat murky flirtatiousness.
  • This
    is the end of my list. 
acting · adulthood · crazy · family · forgiveness · humilty · love · money · persistence · receiving · self-support · the middle way · work

Day Jobs.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Yikes. Unintendedly, I apparently freaked my mom out. I
guess “What goes around comes around” is a less than spiritual comment here.
When I was camping this weekend, one of the women said she’d
used this 23andme site that did genetic mapping and testing. She said she found
it to accurately confirm things she knew she had and “labeled” her cousin as
her own on the site, so she felt it was reliable when it came to the things she wanted
clarity on or might not know. So, on a whim, I looked it up yesterday. Part of
it is my own rampant curiosity about my dad’s father’s side of the family, about whom
we know nothing (very hush hush, gramma got pregnant at 15 in an Irish Catholic
family under-the-rug), so I’d like to know about that fourth of who I am.
Secondly, and importantly for me, my mom’s mother died from
Alzheimer’s and I want to know if I have the gene or not. You can get it
without the gene, and you can not get it
with the gene. But, I’m curious. And a little excited. If I don’t have the
gene, I can (and would) worry less; and if I do have the gene, they’re coming
up with all kinds of new things people can do these days to stave it off or
minimize the effects – and I’d look for more information on stuff like that.
So, in an effort to “share the good news,” I emailed my mom
and brother yesterday to let them know about it (though women are more likely
than men to get Alz). I got an email back this morning from my mom saying that
no matter what to never [BOLD FACE] EVER tell her the results of it.
Yikes. Granted, my mom is a class-A worrier,
anxiety-disordered woman on medication, but… yeesh. That obviously wasn’t my
intention, to freak her out – I guess I imagined she’d react as I did – “Cool,
what can I learn, so that information can be useful in how I lead my life?” …
Best laid plans, I suppose.
It’s Friday, so it’s a little rough to go into what I
remember of my mom’s parents’ deaths, and what I consider to be and have been
“wrong” ways of grieving. And so I won’t do that today. It’s NOMB – None Of My
Business.
So, I’ll undeftly switch topics, as I’m uncomfortable. 😉
Yesterday, in reading Tina Fey’s book, I had a sort of
realization about “day jobs.” Fey worked at a YMCA for $5/hr in Chicago when
she left undergrad. She wanted to take improv classes, so she angled for a job
“upstairs” in the office of the YMCA. When she was asked on the interview why
she wanted the job, she replied unabashedly, So I can afford improv classes.
She got the job, took improv classes, and quit the job less than a year later
when she got work with the improv group.
I had my informational interview with my former acting
teacher last Friday, and she said nice things like I have “great instincts,”
and that “it’s obvious [I] really enjoy it.” She didn’t really give me the
“constructive criticism” I was looking to get – areas that I could improve in,
and as I was recounting this to my friend last weekend, she said it sounded
like I wanted to hear places I could just do X, Y, and Z, so that I could “fix”
it, and suddenly everything would fall into place. Yes, give me a set of
movable problems, let me fix them, and then let me be free of problems forever.
That sounds about right.
So, I didn’t get that. I got what felt like nearly reluctant
suggestions. Again, I guess I had expectations. But, I heard that acting
classes would be a good idea to continue with. So, yesterday, I looked up the
classes at A.C.T. Studio, and their summer program. It’s not very expensive,
but surely more than I have now.
And I remembered what Tina Fey had said: she took a job so
she could afford to do what she really wanted to do. For SO long I’ve been
agonizing over what is my “ideal” job, or what will feed me spiritually,
intellectually, and creatively – what one
thing would fit all my needs. I don’t feel this way about people, why would I
feel this way about work? I don’t expect one person to fulfill all my needs –
that’s ridiculous, unfair, and leads to disappointment. So, why should I feel that a job
would or ought to do the same.
There’s something in this. It takes a shit ton of the
pressure out of whatever job comes to me next. That it is a means to an end. And further, I’m honing in more
closely on what I’d want those “ends” to be – what I want my job to afford me
to be able to do. Lessons, classes, (acting & music, for now). I’m not sure what
this realization will bring me – except that I already feel less internal
pressure about “What I’m going to do next.” Chances are (G-d willing!!!!!!)
that the job that I get next can
afford me the disposable income to take classes like that. Or, rather, the
chances don’t have to be there, I can just start angling the satellite dish of
my focus in a slightly different direction, picking up on things that I’d
dismissed, as they wouldn’t “fill me spiritually.”
Like a person, it’s not a job’s … job to fill me spiritually. That’s up to me. That’s up
to me to take the kinds of actions that will allow me the freedom from financial
worry to do things that do feed
me spiritually and creatively. I have a phone call date with another acting
friend next week, having been inspired by the new angle of my satellite to be
able to continue having these conversations with people.
What comes of it? Who knows. But I feel more open to things,
and I’ve noticed that makes a world of difference.
(Sorry, Mom – didn’t mean to freak you out. LU, m.)

authenticity · camping · community · confidence · hobby · honesty · laughter · music · responsibility · self-support

Chop Wood, Carry Water.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Two weeks ago, I wrote this in the Grownupness blog:
“I grasp at things I think I want, but I’m not willing to
firm the foundation to get there – to mix the mortar, lay the bricks. Chop
wood, carry sticks. That’s where I need to be at. Very simply, I need to lay
hold of qualities and actions that I have tried to avoid.”
And so, this weekend, I carried sticks.
The simplicity of camping, even in the complexity of “car
camping” the bastardized cousin of “real” camping, was so easy. It’s so easy
for me. What needs to be done next? Well, we’re heading out down the river for
the afternoon while others go river rafting (a luxury expense I couldn’t
afford), so what did I need to bring? Sunscreen, towel, book I didn’t crack,
hat, water. That’s it.
It’s turning darker, what do we need to do? Get more
firewood, build a fire, refill the water, not at the mercury-laden river’s
edge.
There are things that I know how to do, and this weekend, I
got to see that very clearly. I know how to build a fire, I know you need something
like paper or brush to catch under the kindling to catch under the wood blocks
that were neatly chopped for us in a bundle wrapped with plastic. I know that I
need to slather sunscreen on myself and wear a hat because I’m paranoid of skin
cancer since my encounter with the Australian sun – the sun won.
I know how to make coffee, and put up a tent and roll my
sleeping bag and to remember to bring earplugs and tarot cards 😉
I know how to camp. At least, I know how to car camp.
When I unfurled my sleeping bag, in it was a long-sleeved
shirt I hadn’t seen in two years, since I was in that tent, with someone else.
I played Ghosts of Camping Trips Past this weekend.
Remembering acutely who I’d been with and when. Each and every one of the even
mildly significant and more significant relationships I’ve been in over the last six
years, I’ve been camping with that person. I haven’t slept in that tent alone
in a long time.
This particular camp grounds, I’d been to maybe 3 or 4 years
ago, when I’d been newly dating someone. It’s a beautiful spot on the American
River, up past Sacramento, and almost to Tahoe. It’s amenitied out the
yin-yang, but that’s alright. I remember the photo of me and that person in
that very landscape, I remember the release I feel when I’m out there. Not with
the person, but out there, knowing and feeling confident that I know even that
little bit.
I haven’t roughed it. I haven’t hiked out into the woods and
set up camp since I was 19 and leading a camp group overnight with our packs
into the Appalachian Mountains. And even then, it wasn’t roughing it – That’s
alright. I know it’s something I still want to do.
I wondered why it was, as I went through my previous
camping trips over the last few years, that each had included a man I’ve been
involved with. Was this my test for them? For “us”? Was I only able to be there
with someone else?
No. The reason, I realized, is because I love camping. And I
happen to go and be invited, and then I happen to invite the guy I’m with.
That’s all. Turns out, camping is a hobby, I suppose. It’s likely the only same thing that has occurred with each relationship I’ve had over the last few
years. The only “adventure” or “event” or excursion that has happened in each involvement. It just points out to me
that this is an important thing for me. Something I love.
A way that I don’t feel I need to be any different than I
actually am.
I feel confident out there (yes, even with the general store
and port-o-potties nearby). But I feel like myself. I usually look like a
wreck, and I don’t care. My hair matted and loved by the sweat and dust and
river mist. Caked in various layers of SPF lotions and supportive sneakers. I don’t
look like Xena, I look like me. Like the me I am in private, with no one to
impress or stun or mesmerize. Like the me I am when it’s just me. Whole, and
unabashed, and unprotected. And capable. I usually feel like a leader, or at least like a competent
person when I’m out there. Something those of you who read this blog with
any consistency can attest is not my normal M.O. out in the “real world.”
I needed that. I needed to feel worthy and valuable simply
for who I was/am. Not for how I looked. Or for how much money I had. Or for what kind of job I worked. Or what cell phone I carried. Or degree I had. I could be valuable for my
contributions to the group, be it building a fire, or fetching the water, or
going off to sit and do my Morning Pages out on a rock in the middle of the
rushing river so that I could be more present and emptied of my junk when I
returned to the group. I could be valuable by bringing Madlibs to do by the
fire at night – which led to so much hilarity, and stupid good fun. I could
be valuable by making coffee the first morning when everyone was still asleep
or grumpy. I could be valuable by breaking out the guitar one of us brought for
a little while, and later, sing along harmonies with her, and remember that I
have a voice.
I felt purposeful. I didn’t question who I was or where I
was going or what I was doing with my life. I didn’t have any profound
judgments or insights. I simply “chopped wood, carried water” (no chopping this
trip, but you know what I mean). If I can take that simplicity, and that
confidence, and that sense of pleasure from being precisely who I was/am into
the world, I think I’ll be alright.
If I can dress nicely and put on makeup, and remember
that it’s just a lens through which to see the whole that I am.
If I can breathe in the fire smoke scent of my balled-up clothing and
recall what it feels like when I’m just me, then I think I’ll be alright.