That’s the name of the current chapter in the Lance
Armstrong “recovery from cancer” book.

I’ve been thinking about this concept, and besides the
things that come to mind about “how will life be different on the other side of
cancer,” I recognize, surely, the amazing fact that I am thinking about life on the other side of cancer. The
hopefulness that simply contemplating that future embodies. It’s a buoying thought.

But, unsurprisingly, I have been thinking about what things
will look like on the other side. At some point, life will take on the
trivialities that make up life – washing the dishes, waiting for a delayed bus, making a living, knocking
your shin into something, rolling your eyes at your parents’ continued
“them-ness.” At some point, it will stop being about the fight for survival,
and things will ebb to a different level.

What will that level look like? I am hopeful that it won’t
look the same, but of course, in the ways listed above it will indeed. Will I
write more? Paint more? Will I move back east? Will I find a different line of
work? Will I date?

What will it look like? Will I actually exercise now? Will I
be more than I have been, really? Will I take this opportunity for what it’s
worth? I have no idea. I don’t think I’ll know till I get there, and I hope to
be patient with myself when I am – because no one does change overnight, and
there will be a long period of adjustment, of equalizing when this is done, I
imagine.

Will I become a cancer advocate? Will I work with bringing
art or music to children with cancer? Will I advocate to have them put yoga
videos on the TVs in hospitals, so you’re not watching the weather channel or
the QVC channel all day? Will my priorities change like that? I don’t know.

One woman I’ve spoken with through the Leukemia &
Lymphoma Society as a “peer-to-peer” support had Leukemia 20 years ago, and now
works for the American Cancer Society. Will I do something like that? (Likely
not!, but I like the idea of being a peer for the next person coming down the
line with all their fears and questions.)

I like the idea that I get to think about this.

It’s like a major, massive pause in my life when I get to
take stock in a way that I wouldn’t have thought to or had the chance in quite
the same way to before.

People have said this is just a bump in the road, but I
don’t really see it like that at all. I feel like I’ve jumped the tracks of the
life I had before – taken a major left turn, and am no where near the road that I’d been on. I think my road has
changed, and I think I’m grateful for it, as I get to take that stock and look
at where my life has been and is, and where I want it to go.

Often people talk about wanting to pull a giant emergency
cord on their lives, wanting to get a handle on where it is and what’s
happening, but usually, we do not have that luxury. There are still those
dishes, and that living to make.

With these months of convalescence, I have that emergency
cord pull. I am in a suspended state at the moment. I get to look over it all,
and see what changes I want to make.

There are a lot of “Will I…?”s in my Morning Pages this
morning. Will I be different, advocate for myself, will I rent an art studio
space, will I move back east, will I go back to my same job, will I be able to
afford my student loan bills, will I find the support back east that I have
here – will I really be different? Or
will all of this fade into a bad episode, really fade into a bump in the road,
rather than a game changer? I don’t know.

I won’t and can’t know, but I think contemplating it is a
good beginning to helping the change come to fruition. I don’t want to fade into the sameness of before. I think
it’s a lesson wasted. And a cosmic shame to dismiss or ignore what is a
steel-toed kick to the soul – or mind, rather.

I don’t know what Survivorship will look like to me. I am in
so many ways still in the middle of the current process. But I do want it to
look different, and whatever they may say about roads and intentions, I’m going to try to
keep this one. 

I started this blog yesterday, with the title only, so, here
we go again.

I’ve been reading the Lance Armstrong book It’s Not about
the Bike, which someone leant me when I got
into the hospital. Whatever might be happening in the world with him and his
accolades, I’m more interested in the story of a man who overcame long-shot
odds against cancer.

And the book is quite good, thanks, I’m sure, to his writer.

But, as I was reading it, he writes about getting on his
bike even as he begins chemotherapy. That if he can just get on his bike, he
can beat it. If he maintains some semblance of his old life, and his old sense
of control, then he can control cancer. That if he can persevere through this
by sheer will alone, all is not lost.

And, healthy or not, deluded or not – I like his line.

It’s only the first few days for me being back in hospital
on my second round of chemo, and the first week is usually quite easy (she says
with all her experience). It’s the second week when all your blood counts go
down that you get that pallor and weakness we associate with cancer patients.

So, I’ve been walking around the veranda in the morning. My
perseverance. I remember the first time I was here, there was a woman who I saw
flaming past each day, pulling or pushing her IV pole, but each day, as I sat
sick and listless in bed, I watched her fly past my door on the veranda, and
was judgmental and jealous. Who does she think she is – outrunning this thing –
how come I can’t do that – here she comes around again, the show-off. But, now,
having the energy that I do, I get it.

There is a sense that if I can only move, I won’t be caught.
If I can get my street clothes on, I’m not as bad as all that.

But, more what I wanted to say about perseverance was this:

I have never had to persevere in anything. As a relatively
intelligent person with no real encouragement to excel from home, I have skated
along on half-steam for the majority of my life, and done well enough.
Adequately, as my friend would say. My life has been adequate. Nothing
extraordinary, I haven’t pushed through any barriers or boundaries, and have
generally continued to plod along for as long as I’ve been alive.

I haven’t needed to excel. I haven’t needed to persevere.
Until now.

With each creative endeavor, as you know by now, I pull back
at some point. Painting, acting, writing, singing. I will spend a few months
active in pursuance of these interests, and then wane. I will talk myself back
from it, in any number of ways, and move back into my mediocrity.

It’s not about being outstanding, mind you; it’s about being
authentic. And, simply, being in the middle of a pack for me is not authentic. Having a plodding life is not adequate
for me. I am and have more than that.

But, I have never needed to push through the fear that keeps
me hidden. I have never been forced before to make the choice to go past the
threshold, and continue on.

With cancer, I don’t have a choice. I simply have to push
through, past the fear, past anything – because there is nothing but the choice
for life. I simply have no other option except to persevere, except to push
myself into excellence, out of the dark.

I have never had to fight for anything the way that I am
having to fight for my life now. Nothing has ever been more precious. To be out
of options for how to proceed is a gift at this point. There are choices that
I’m going to have to make, and I’ve been presented with the concept of the
“burden of choice.”, But with my life, there is no choice. There is no option
to recede, to play down, to retreat, to ignore. I am being given the
opportunity to persevere in a way I never had.

And, as I’ve said, this knowledge has become my talisman and
my lighthouse. I will do everything in my power to be as healthy as I can for
as long as I can, simply because I must. Simply because it’s the only thing
that is.

I’m, in fact, glad for this opportunity, having never had it
before, having before had the option to tap out, and say this is too hard or
too scary. This, THIS, cancer, IS hard
and scary. It is by far the most hard and scary thing I’ve ever had to do, yet
in this situation, there is only one way forward, and that presents freedom. 

A friend came by this morning and shared a story with me.

Back in New York, she was acquainted with a guy she didn’t
like very much. He would brag about his work, and generally sound superficial
and as if everything was amazing in his life.

One day, he came and shared that he’d just gotten laid off.
And what he shared from this she said was, to her, the first time he’d ever
simply been genuine:

“I have to ask myself, Why is G-d doing this for me, instead of Why is G-d doing this to me.”

I walked around the enclosed veranda here at the hospital
with this, and a note from a friend in Chicago, in my mind. Her note read: What
questions does my heart need answered?

As I meandered, still feeling pretty amazing, since I’m only
in the beginning of this treatment, I held these questions.

Perhaps it might sound Pollyanna to want to try to turn
cancer from something happening TO me, into something happening FOR me, but as
soon as my friend said this, I felt something shift in me. A perspective shift
palpable.

I don’t know the why is this happening to me, but what can I
take out of why this might be happening for
me?

Already, I’ve noticed that my most basic desire, front
and center as it is usually receded in all of us, is I Want To Live. With this desire as my
touchstone and the epicenter of my purpose, other things have taken a different
tenor. Mostly, I see that I’m not dismissing my talent any more, whether that’s
for writing or for art.

I Want To Live translates for me as I Am Awesome. That I
have so much to do, and so much to give. I have never been able to feel an “I Am Awesome” before. It was always tinged with
doubt and perfectionism. But as I begin to ground myself in my will to live, I
see the development of a place inside me that can hold the space for I Am
Awesome.

It has never mattered how many accolades or compliments
someone may give me, no matter what it’s about – if I don’t actually have a place to match that sentiment
within myself, then it falls on deaf ears – I can’t hear it. Without a place
inside me that will recognize the truth of who and how I am, any external
validation can never settle, make sense, be truly appreciated or absorbed.

In addition, starting to see myself perhaps a little more
clearly, I am beginning to notice the places where all this external love makes
sense to me.

It was so overwhelming and seemingly unusual to have this
outpouring of love and support when I found out I was sick. I simply didn’t
know how or where to put it all. But, on Sunday, two friends came over to help
me clean my apartment while I packed. They didn’t quite know what I needed, but
they came to help, and I sheepishly said, well, my kitchen and bathroom really
need to be cleaned…

And. They were on it. One of my friends said it was like
being in camp when we had chore day, and each girl was doing something. These
girls got on their hands and knees to
clean my apartment with and for me. I was astonished. Why are they doing this?
Is this too much? Are they going to get resentful that they came to hang out
with me, and I handed them a bottle of Lysol?

No. They did it because they love me, and because they want
to help. But, again, back to the “where does this fit in my cosmology of self?”
I considered one of these two friends, who recently moved to a gorgeous house in
Berkeley. A few months ago, while I was unemployed, she needed help with her
yard. I spent an entire day with her ripping up ivy, baling mulch. I did it
because it made me feel good. Because it gave me something to do. Because I
care for my friend and wanted to help her in a way that I was eager and happy
to get dirty and sweaty to do.

I wasn’t resentful. It wasn’t too much. I remembered this
after my friends left on Sunday. I realized that they are like me, they did
it because of reasons like mine. Because
they have generous souls and love me and want to help. Because it makes them feel good.

I began to settle into acceptance of their care. I began to
recognize that I had a place where that fit within my cosmology. They, are like
me. I have this place in me, and when they show up, it’s because they have this
place in them.

It began to make room for the kindness of others as I began
to recognize I have that impulse in myself.

What questions does my heart need answered? Perhaps that there
are places inside me that have been closed and closed off to the truth. Perhaps
my heart needs to learn that opening to my own truth allows for the influx of
love and care by others. 

Ultimately, that opening to my own truth and my own
acceptance of self allows for intimacy with others.

Why is G-d doing this for me? Where is alchemy in this? Can I allow my will to live to be my
lighthouse to a new phase of myself?

Hi Lovelies. I’m going to make this quick, as it’s my last
few moments of freedom before we start with procedures and chemo today.

But, that said, I’m doing ok. I slept really well (here at
Hotel Kaiser), and am feeling optimistic, though scared – which I think is
likely the most normal thing in the world.

What I’ll ask of you, if you please, is if you could
concentrate on my maintaining the health of as many systems as possible as I undergo this treatment. My
throat became really bad last time from the chemo, making it impossible to eat
anything but Boost and Ensure shakes, and I’m too young for that, so maybe you want to
focus on the health of my esophagus.

Maybe you want to focus on the chemo attacking the hidden
cancer cells.

Maybe you want to focus on my heart, beating soothing,
healing patterns into my body. Maybe you want to focus on my mind, sending out
into myself thoughts of health, love, and recovery. Maybe you’ll focus on my
reproductive organs (don’t be gross), as these procedures may make me
infertile.

Maybe you just want to focus on all of me, surrounded by
white, healing light. Allowing the drugs to do what they’re supposed to, and
leaving the rest of me intact. Maybe you want to focus on my future, on when I’m
healthy, taking that flight lesson, painting that canvas, performing that poem,
throwing that frisbee on a beach. Waiting for a bus, even. 

And most of all, maybe you just want to focus your beam of
love straight into me, where it will do whatever is most needed of it. 

And my thanks is to let it. 

I haven’t unraveled in several years. I haven’t gotten all
the way down to bare wooden spool in quite some time. Apparently, sometimes you
need to go all the way to splinters.

Tuesday and Wednesday were days of this. Not knowing whether
I would stop crying. Not knowing if it were okay to just cry – or if I should
somehow feel something else – something more like acceptance, or serenity or
simply not so unmoored.

I didn’t want to let myself get that far – it’s been so long
that it felt dangerous, or juvenile to go all to pieces. If I hold on to
something, some semblance of being all right – some appearance of being
alright, then I’m alright, right?

So, on Wednesday, I watched The Karate Kid on
loan from the library. And as soon as it and the special feature commentaries
were over, I started to bawl. Again. Two hours relieved, distracted, and then
it all crashes in again.

It was then I called around for help – just to cry, to have
someone witness and hold the space as I did, so it didn’t feel so alone to do
it by myself in my apartment. If someone else is there, then I’m not unraveling
fully, am I? I’m not to total pieces, am I? I’m not a leper. Or a lunatic.

At the end of the night, I spoke with my
friend in Chicago. She moved back to Chicago after desperate attempts to make
it work in San Francisco, after she had to leave her job, needed to leave
her apartment, was trying in every backwards, upsidedown, whatdoyouwantfromme
way to make it work and stay in San Francisco.

In the end, she moved back home, to the suburbs of Chicago,
where she is living with her parents. Her greatest fear of what would happen if
she didn’t “keep it together” came to exact and swift fruition.

Her life unraveled exactly as she thought it would if she
let go of the desperate trying. … And yet, she’s okay. She’s in exactly the
place she feared she’d be, she didn’t want to be, she thought it was a failure
to be – but she’s not a failure. She’s still her. She let it all go to pieces,
she allowed herself to unravel, and she’s fine. She’s still amazing, and it’s
not as bad as she feared when she was trying so hard to make pieces fit that
weren’t fitting.

Her moral to me, was sometimes unraveling is simply what we
have to do. To let myself cry for 48 hours is simply what I needed to do. I
felt better afterward, yesterday.

I needed to, and I kept trying to keep myself together from
falling apart, as if that would eliminate the need for me to do so. And it
didn’t. Trying to force my feelings into a box they do not fit doesn’t work,
apparently. So, I let it all go, because I simply couldn’t hang on to it
anymore.

I used an entire box of tissues, and made the mental note to
get the ones with lotion next time. I ached, and dribbled, and sobbed at the
ceiling for answers.

I fell apart. I really didn’t want to or intend to. If I
don’t fall apart, then it feels like I’ve still got some control in the
situation – I can still handle this, I am still the master of my destiny.

However, the truth simply is otherwise in this situation. I
am not the master of my destiny here.
This is utterly out of my
control. I have no say in this whatsoever, and yet I have to continue with it
anyway. Who wouldn’t wail against the Universe for such a raw deal?

I didn’t want to see my powerlessness in it, really is the
bottom line. If I can maintain, even to myself some semblance of “I got it,”
then somehow, I can convince myself I really do. To fall to pieces is to admit
that I really don’t “got it,” and I really never had it – as far as this goes…
and as far as a lot of other things go to.

To really allow myself to unravel is to really admit that I
am not in charge of everything. That I am not G-d, and that I am simply,
unalterably human.

Who wants to admit that?

The irony, of course, is that when I finally allowed myself
permission to fall apart – or rather, when finally I had no further resources
to hold it all together, I did exactly that – I fell apart. I sobbed on the
phone to friends, to my mom, simply to the quietude of my own home. I cried.
And it felt like it would never stop – the grief for how different and
uncontrollable everything is for me right now.

But it did. I cried myself into that state of dehydration
and near-cross-eyedness. I poured myself into bed, and I woke up better.

My Chicago friend said something else. She suggested that I ask to speak with G-d’s manager. That this particular representative was not
being very helpful, and I simply needed more help. If my Higher Power wants me
to get through this, I’m going to need more resources. So, I’d like to speak to
your manager, G-d, you’re simply not giving me what I need, and I’m going up
the chain of command.

She suggested, even, perhaps I could talk to G-d’s mom. Tell
his mom what rotten things G-d had been up to lately, frying ants’ backs with a
magnifying glass, and giving a young artist cancer. Grounded.

These lines of thinking give me some power back. I don’t
have any external power here. I cannot control the doctors, the needles, the
hair loss, the fatigue; but I can control how I deal with it. How I choose to
address what’s happening to me.

I needed to fall apart first. I needed to let myself free
from my own ideas of what it looks like to go through something like this
properly. I’ve never done this before,
is what I kept on saying to my mom on the phone. I have never done this before
– of course I have no idea how to
do it then.

Of course, I have no idea what’s the “right way” or “wrong
way,” because, there isn’t one. There’s just what I need to do. I needed to
cry. For two days. And I’ll likely need to do that again.

Today, I don’t feel that need. I’ve asked for more help from
the Universe, and I believe it comes to me when I’ll need it. The help that I
needed the other day was permission to let go, to let go completely. To tell
myself, I don’t know how to deal with this, to hold this, and to simply grieve
for that.

And, so, now I’ve unraveled. I went all the way to bone and
back. And I’m alright. I let myself fall to the depth of my sorrow, and I came
back. Therefore, I now have the experience of that being a viable option – it doesn’t
mean I’ll drown in it forever. Unraveling is allowed. Unraveling is not the
end. 

NOTE: I warn you in advance, this will not be the
happy-go-lucky of yesterday. However, I also promise to go meet up with some
people today who will hopefully help shift my perspective.

I am scared. I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want
my chiropractor to tell me that the pain I’ve had in my side for a week isn’t
muscular, it’s an inflamed kidney. I don’t want to question if it’s the daily
injection of blood thinner I’ve been giving myself that’s causing it.

I don’t want to talk with the coordinator at Kaiser about
“relocating” to Stanford for a bone marrow transplant. I don’t want to have to
tell him that I haven’t had my bone marrow biopsy yet. I don’t want to speak words like, I will likely
stay with chemotherapy for 4 rounds instead of going the transplant route. I don’t want my doctor to say words like “complications from each round.”

I don’t want to have to feel scared falling asleep last
night. I don’t want to have to tell the dark that I don’t want to die. I don’t
want to think about this specter of cancer following me for the rest of my
life.

I don’t want to be so reminded of how mortal I am, or how my
body functions and currently malfunctions.

I don’t want to have to notice everything so acutely, or appreciatively. I don’t want to wake up and the first thing I say to be, I’m
glad to be alive. I don’t want this to
be the reason I say it.

I want to have the problems I already had – romance,
finance, family, career. I want normal problems. I want normal activities, and
normal griping. I want what I had. And I can’t ever again in the same way.

I don’t want to do this anymore. 

I don’t want to go in
tomorrow and have them gauge some muck out of my skeleton to observe under a microscope. I don’t want to
plead for them to stop because it hurts, like I had to last time.

I don’t want to feel so powerless to do anything except
accept what’s happening. I don’t want to remember the phrase: The distance
between what we want and what’s happening is proportional to our pain. I don’t
want to remember that I’m upset because I’m not in acceptance of what is
happening.

I don’t want to accept it. And yet, I have absolutely no
choice.

I don’t want the doctors to tell me that I have maybe a 60%
chance of having kids now – even though I wasn’t sure that I wanted them. I
don’t want choices taken away from me that I haven’t been able to approve of.

I don’t want to be so fallible, and so human. I don’t want
to be so weak in a human body that can betray me.

I don’t want to lose my vision. My eyes continue to do
things that the doctors can’t really explain, but aren’t as concerned about
anymore. I don’t want to hear solutions like a shunt in my brain to relieve
pressure on my eye, or surgery to the muscles of my eye in order to fix these
problems.

I don’t want to THINK ABOUT THIS ANYMORE.

I want to go to work. I want to go to the coffee shop. I
want to go to art shows. I want to procrastinate, and leave dirty dishes in my
sink too long and leftover food ‘til it grows mold in my fridge.

I want to talk about boys on the phone with my girlfriends,
and squeal when one gets engaged. I want to go home for Thanksgiving like a
normal person.

I want my hair back.

I don’t want to know that it’ll take three years for it to
grow back. I don’t want people to tell me what a nice shaped head you have.

I don’t want to know that each time I go through chemo, I’m
going to get weaker each time I get home – so this, right now, right the fuck
now, is the best that I’ll feel for the next 5 months.

I don’t want to know this.

I broke my foot when I was in 6^th grade, riding
my bike home from Sunday school. I was on crutches for 6 months. I remember
being embarrassed – I mean, I was 11, and being different at 11 is awful. I
remember having to hobble down the 6^th grade graduation line next to
the shortest boy in class, because I was on crutches so I couldn’t stand by height like everyone else.

But, really, I don’t remember the length of six months on
crutches. I remember a few stand-out incidents of that time, but I don’t
remember it like it was “forever.”

I don’t want to know that I know that this won’t be forever. That “this too shall
pass.” I don’t want to know that I know this.

But I do.

And it sucks, because it spits in the face of all my
complaints and my self-pity. I’m allowed, I know, to have some of this
self-pity. I know that I’m allowed any emotion I want to have. But, I know it
won’t last either.

I’ll feel different. I’ll feel better. And then I’ll feel
awful and cry again.

I do want to be
thinking about bus stop boy again. I want to be thinking about earning money to
save to move back East. I want to be thinking about art for a café show.

But, instead, I think about mortality. I think about how
tenuous this is, and how if I don’t do exactly what’s in front of me, I’m going
to die.

Instead, I talk with doctors about stuff I don’t want to
know about at all, let alone have it be about me and not fictional and on House.

I want to read Harry Potter without the stain of tick-tock in the background.

I will feel better. But I needed to say all this, because
it’s true. Because today is a day when I’m crying about my circumstances.
Because today is a day I can’t see past the end of my own shit.

I need to say all this because it takes the isolation out of
it, and helps me move through it. So, thanks. 

There’s a perhaps mildly racist parable in the How to Get out of
Debt… book which recounts the following
paraphrased story.

A boy in assumedly South America or Mexico has a bull. This
bull is his best friend. His father, however, cannot afford to buy food or
shelter for himself and his son for much longer. He tells his son that he needs to
sell the boy’s beloved bull in order to buy the things they family needs. The
son pleads, saying this is his only friend. His father tells him that with the
money from the sale, they could afford things that can’t now – like school and
new shoes and supplies. The boy thinks on this, and replies, “Keel the Bool.”

The intention of this story is to illustrate that there may
be things that we are holding on to out of pride or vanity or stubbornness.
And, that if we are in tried financial straits, it is time to Keel the Bool.

I have brought to the local bookstores my supply of “B” books.
Books that I wouldn’t miss if they were gone, and I have sold a handful over the
last few months. This morning, I began, in my morning pages, to write a list of
all the things that I could sell at a yard sale that I am now planning to have
on Saturday. There were things that were obvious that I could part with, things
that wouldn’t be missed, or wouldn’t hamper my quality of life. There are those
which would be missed, but an acceptable loss. And then there are those that I’m not sure I have the
audacity to sell yet.

I made the decision earlier this week to sell the electric
guitar and amp that I’ve carried around since my friend gave them to me about 4
or 5 years ago when he was moving. I have liked having them around. Being able to use the electric unplugged when it’s
late but I still want to play and not disturb the neighbors. But for all
intents and purposes, I have rarely used it, and even more rarely as it’s
supposed to be used – as an electric guitar.

So, I have little problem getting rid of it, except that my
ego has enjoyed knowing that I have it, and feel “cool” having it.

But this morning, writing all these out, figuring I better
just bring this equipment to the music store that buys things, and see if I can
sell them there, well, I wrote down if I could sell my acoustic guitar.

I have had this – nice – guitar since I was 17. It was my
high school graduation present from my parents. It’s not top of the line, but
it wasn’t cheap either. But, like it’s electric cousin, I rarely use it.

I do use it though. I probably pick it up at least once a
month, and if I’m on an “I’m really
going to learn how to play this damn thing” kick, then more often than that.
When I had been taking guitar lessons about 3 years ago, I was playing it
almost daily for about 6 weeks. Then my funds ran short, and lessons got cut. I
don’t know that I could sell it, though, out of sentimentality rather than future visions of Clapton-like skill.

So, I moved on through my apartment, back to my book shelf.
And now, stacked on my desk, ready to be taken to the bookstore today to see
what they might take and pay me for in return … are “A” books. Books, surely,
that I could get from the library. But there’s something you should know about
me – I hardly ever buy books. Ever. Avid
reader and writer that I am, I was raised going to the library. There were lots
of books coming in and out of my house as I grew up, we were a reading bunch,
but there were surely less than 100 books for the entire household, including
cookbooks (well, maybe not including cookbooks – my mom had a little bit of an
addiction thing).

Point being, any book that I now own is owned because I bought
it. Some are ones I bought for undergrad or grad school and decided to keep because of their literary value to me; some, I bought because there was a very rare occasion when I wanted to own that book – knew
that I’d wanted to read it repeatedly, which, to me, is the only reason to buy a book. 

So, a select stack of these now sit on my desk. Joyce,
Dickinson, Winterson, Ensler, Steve Martin, even (Pure Drivel – if you haven’t read it, there is an incredible
short story/vignette about a shortage of punctuation marks, and he is therefore
allowed to use only ONE period in the entire story. It is beyond brilliant). Faulkner.
I’m going to sell back a Faulkner. It’s like slicing off a chunk of skin.

There are a few that I will not sell. But I admit that that
choice was made more because of the condition of the book and the unlikelihood
that they’ll be bought back. Most of my treasures are on the to-be-sold pile on
my desk.

Yes, come tomorrow morning, I will have either accepted the
receptionist job I’ve been offered, or I will be finally chosen for the marketing position I want. So, yes, I
will have a job, and will know which one it is in approximately 12 hours, following
my Google Hangout interview. But, a job doesn’t equal a paycheck until about
two weeks into the gig, if not more, as they get you on the payroll.

So, I have money for September rent, and about $30 left
over. For food, for transportation to whichever job it is. But, mostly, for
food.

I am willing to sell back these treasures, assuming, of
course, that the wary and selective eyes of the bookstore even wants them. I am
willing to sell them back to feed myself, and my cat.

I am willing to sell a musical instrument I don’t use. I’m
not willing to sell the acoustic, because I don’t think, yet, that I’ll have
to. But I am also willing to put a lot of junk and not-so-junk on sale at a
yard sale on Saturday.

So, if you’re in the Oakland Piedmont Ave neighborhood on
Saturday between 10 and 3, please come by the “Help me feed myself and my cat,
Stella” sale.

Lastly, I’ll just note, that, yes, all of these things are
just things. Not nearly as important as
housing and feeding myself. And further, once I do have a job and a paycheck,
anything that I sorely regret, I can replace or buy back again.

And “A” books as these may be, I can get them all at the
library. Just don’t judge my worldliness by the emptiness of my bookshelf.

A friend of mine recently moved into a 3 bedroom house that
she’s renting with her boyfriend up in the Berkeley Hills.

The process for her of finding this house was not easy. She
looked for over a year for the right place, staying as she was in the rental
house in East Oakland, where her car got broken into twice, and her home once.
They looked and looked. They raised their price point to see if maybe that
would bring something in. They looked still.

At one point, she tells me, she broke down to her boyfriend
in despair, saying that nothing was happening, that they’re right were they
were a year earlier.

He said to her, No. We’re making firm and consistent
progress.

She felt calmed. “Firm and consistent progress.” Not, “going
nowhere,” “nothing changing,” but “Firm and consistent progress.” Alright. She
could get behind that.

Not long afterward, they found this house, which fit into
their original, lower price range. And it’s gorgeous; and she’s happy.

I remembered this story this morning, because I became aware
of something. I’ve spoken a lot here about my reluctance to take on
responsibility, that responsibility for me had meant more than I was
developmentally able to do when I was young, and so I have a “thing” about
shirking it.

But what I realized, is that it’s not necessarily responsibility that I avoid, it’s consistency.

I am not a very consistent, or reliable person in many ways.
I have felt too flighty, too magpie – ooh shiny! – to stay in one spot, or one
job for too long. Even this blog has been difficult for me to maintain on a
daily basis.

One of the positions that I’m in the running for, I was
reflecting this morning, will demand that I hone and discover the quality of
consistency. Because of the nature of the work, I would have to be “on top of”
several things, repeatedly, and consistently, in order to garner the kind of
support and engagement the job expects.

Oy. This is not an ingrained skill in me. Or, at least, I
haven’t seen it as one. When I’d considered my dislike of responsibility, and
recognized its effect on my professional and personal life, it made sense as a
reflection of how I grew up. When I look at consistency and how that might have
been a quality that was skipped in my development, I can plainly see why as
well.

There were the days, or even hours, when things were good.
And others were showing up for me, and I was showing up. And then, things would
turn, and it was “abandon ship.” This cycle of calm and storm was so … consistent in itself, that that kind of existence became the
norm for me.

There’s always been a period of calm, and a period of storm
in my life. Sometimes, perhaps even most or all of the time, I’ve been the
impetus of that storm. Don’t get too comfortable where you are – things are
about to shift.

Oh yes, I feel that. It’s why I’ve moved so much; it’s why
my friendships ebb and flow; it’s why my relationships always dissolve – or
erupt – after a few weeks or months.

I have no experience with “firm and consistent progress.” I
have experience with one step forward and two steps back. I have experience
with, as my college roommate told me, being “always one step behind where [I]
want to be.”

Consistency. What is that like??

And, moreover, consistently showing up to my
responsibilities, for my friends, for *gasp* relationships?

I honestly have no idea. I have switched jobs every two
years or fewer since I was 16. I have moved every two years or fewer since I
was 18.

The moving thing is occurring more to me now. In my first
month of college, each year beginning in a new room or house, I would have rather bad insomnia. After the first
two years, though, alcohol helped that. When I moved to Korea, the day I
landed, we went out to the bar and got shitfaced. The night I moved to San
Francisco, I insisted that we stop in all the bars we could as my
friend/acquaintance and I walked down Divisidero.

When I moved, sober, into a new place within San Francisco,
I had anxiety flutters the whole time I was moving. And now, I’ve been having
trouble sleeping for 3 nights in a row. Which is rare for me.

Except during these times of actual change. It’s like a
switch gets thrown, and all my fight or flight instincts get kicked up, even
though there’s nothing to fight or flee.

Faced with the opportunity, no matter how this job thing
comes down, that come Monday morning, I am sure to have a new job, I’m a little
fucked up.

I know that either will give me the opportunity to be
consistent, but one demands it more directly in its job responsibilities.
Consistent outreach, consistent updates, consistent ensurance that the company
name and mission get out there in several ways, on a regular basis.

On a regular basis.
What on earth does regularity mean? I haven’t learned that in my bones yet. My
bones are still primed for don’t you fucking trust a damn thing to
remain as it is. What an exhausting way to
live life? I’ve perpetuated the story. I’ve made decisions that would give me
new evidence that things in life are not to be trusted or relied upon.

I’ve made decisions that would inform others that I’m not to
be relied upon. And so they don’t. They expect me to flake. To be engaged for a
period of time, and then withdraw. To be totally around and happy to be there,
and then to be removed and distant.

I have learned that to be engaged is a temporary thing. I
have learned and honed my skill of doing the same thing I learned from others –
to allow others to depend on me, and then to pull the rug out. It’s a
self-fulfilling prophecy.

I guess, I’m looking forward to trying out this thing called
“consistency.” To attempt, however falteringly and humanly, to show up engaged
on a regular basis. I also imagine that I’ll have internal reactionary moments,
of This is too scary, This can’t go on being good. I may have more moments of self-sabotage. But, perhaps, on the road
to learning how to be a responsible and consistent woman, I can be comforted by
knowing I’m making “Firm and Consistent Progress.”

So, my writing group approves of the poems I want to read at
next Thursday’s poetry reading (event found here!). Yes, explicit, they said,
but that’s not the focus or the point of it. Precisely.

So, I guess I’m going to be reading these poems! I shared with
them my fear of reading these, and then coming to sit down back with everyone
else, feeling hella awkward, but, in another way too, it’s just my art. It’s
not necessarily “who I am,” it’s just how I chose to express myself. I don’t
have to be as tied into its reception.

Speaking of “reception,” I’ve been offered a receptionist
position. Now, before we go peeing ourselves with glee, I’m going on my 2^nd
interview this morning for a job I really do want, rather than the receptionist, which, I will, potentially/likely
take, should this job not come through. But, I don’t … well, I don’t really
want it. I suppose at this point “any” job is worth doing and having, but …
man, my poor ego.

And more than that, my poor wallet. There’s a marked
difference in pay between these two positions. I also have an interview on
Friday morning with an SF museum, but it’s for a short-term gig for less than
the receptionist pay. So, although, for the love of Jehovah, I’d LOVE to work at this SF museum … it’s not quite right either.
I don’t want to come up in 9 months, and be right back here again, having
already had to live meagerly for 9 months – and there’s no guarantee that I’d
be shifted to another position within the company.

So – PRAY FOR ME, to get this job this morning that I want. *and would be good at*

I’ll still be meeting this afternoon with the receptionist
place, to talk about start date, salary, benefits. I mean, those words alone
make me tingly inside. But I also know the
kind of internal work that I’ve been doing to bust out of this job bracket –
and it feels a little – a lot – like moving backward. Receptionist.

I did ask them if there was room for growth in this
position, and he said, well, honestly, it’s limited, but there could be.
Farkle.

I’m not making any hard and fast commitments for or against
anything. I’m too atwitter with excitement about the job interview this
morning, and already feeling a time crunch to get ready and get out the door.

But, some morning pages, though I admit, not the full ones,
and some blogging, though perhaps not the full thousand or so words.

I couldn’t fall asleep well last night either. I couldn’t
tell if it was nerves or the green tea I had in the afternoon.

What I can tell you
is that after I went to my writing group, I came home and started to work on a
broadside of one of my poems. A broadside is basically like a print of a poem,
large, like a small poster of it. It’s artistic, and has maybe some colors or
images. I don’t have a printing press, so I had to figure it all out by hand, and
I loved it. I had to count the lines in my poem, divide it into the space on
the paper I had, line the paper in the infinitesmal increments for spacing, and
then write the whole thing in. But, I like it.

It’s a first/rough draft. I want to use different paint, as
the paper I have isn’t that great, but I don’t want to buy more. I intend to
try to sell some of them at next week’s reading.

But, I’ll tell you. I had a great time with it. Counting the
number of letters in the longest lines of my poem to figure out how wide the
lettering should be. Practicing the handwriting. And, in the end, seeing that
it sort of does just look like a homemade project 😉 But, I intend to do a
little better job on the next ones, practicing the painting part, so they don’t
obscure the writing.

Anyway, I’ve got to run, wish me luck of the Irish!

p.s., I found 26cents yesterday 😉 

Well, whether it was my colorful display of language that
did it or not, yesterday I applied to a job, and later that afternoon, got an
email to schedule an interview for it.

How ‘bout them apples?

It reminds me of my friend and his parking mantra. When
looking for parking, he repeats a mantra (which, I found out later was, in
fact, an actual Buddhist mantra: Nam-myoho-renge-kyo,
but as I heard it, it was Nam, Yo, Orengie, Kyo). He repeats this mantra, and
insists that it works in helping him to find parking.

In my own experience, I think the way it “works” is that you
say the mantra until you have found parking, and Miraculous! the mantra “worked.” It also is really great at
keeping your mind focused on something other than, damnit there’s no parking.
So, it serves a purpose at least.

Whatever the spiritual or magical effects of the mantra, I
think it’s sort of the same with this job interview on Friday. I cursed at G-d,
then applied for a job, then I got an interview. Did the cursing at G-d “help?”
Would “G-d” be motivated to act by my refusal to accept the anguish of my
situation? Dunno. Maybe not. But, maybe so.

I was writing about it this morning, asking why it’s taken so long for anything like this job, and
the one I have a 2^nd interview for tomorrow, to come through. It was
“indicated” that it was simply because these jobs weren’t available yet.

Guffaw. Come on,
Master of the Universe – there were no other jobs that would have been as acceptable as these over the last
three months? I find that hard to believe. So, then, what “lessons” was I, or
am I still, supposed to be learning from this protracted period of panic,
anxiety, and desperation?

A simple and easy answer is: Patience and Persistence.

Farkle. Who wants to learn that?? Have I learned it? Well, in spurts. There have been
periods during this time when I’ve cursed myself into exhaustion, and
“surrendered,” and came to believe that perhaps, just maybe I had a “higher
power” that really did have my best interest in mind. I have come to a place
where, over these months, and through other work I’ve been doing, I’ve come to
introduce myself to a very new Higher Power, one that perhaps, maybe, I might
actually trust.

Because I’ve done so much work on this front, this
particular path of getting closer to spirituality, I’d thought, come on, of course, I believe that my Higher Power has my best interest in mind. Of
course I trust it. But, strikingly, in this new round of work I’m doing, I put
it down on paper, and, in fact, I still have my default G-d. The one that is
untrustworthy, inconsistent, and unreliable.

And so, I’ve been hiring a new one that embodies the
opposite of these qualities.

I’ve imagined this new Higher Power as a Rookie from the
bush leagues, coming up into the Majors. I am the coach or manager. This new
Higher Power is stoked to finally be on
deck. Finally to be able to prove what skills and moves and plans he has. “Put
me in, coach! Put me in!,” he tells me eagerly.

And, so I started to. I began small. Because this is a new entity,
and I’m not sure I entirely trust it; and, very much, trust is an earned emotion. Like any relationship, this is a trial, a
getting to know you period. So, I decided to put my new Higher Power in for a few innings.
I started to say, let’s see how you do for these next few hours, and we’ll
revisit if you’ll be on for the next few.

And I did that, for probably a week or two. Okay,
things have gone well these few hours, let’s see what game plan you might have
for the next few.

And on it went. Until, not long ago, I decided to put this
new player on the team’s official roster. To invite him on, perhaps, permanently.

So. If I’ve begun to form a relationship of trust with a
“Power greater than myself,” can I trust, therefore, that all this mishigas is
actually for my benefit?

Well, there’s the rub. Where the rubber meets the road. A
trust and a faith that works in rough going. Do I have it?

Yikes. Well, what I have is a more firm belief that there is
the option for me now of something/someone I trust more than I have before. I
do feel, honestly, that I’ve established a layer, even a foundation, of trust
with this entity. When I close my eyes in meditation, I can see the eager young
ball player, I can see that he only wants to show me what grand things he can
do and wants to do, if he’s only given the chance.

I can see that this is not a flighty entity.

Therefore, if, as in math, a = b, then b = a. I trust that
this power wants my life to work. Therefore my life is being guided by a force
I can trust.

There’s not really a way around that, unless I question “a”:
that I trust this Power.

So, how does this play out in my everyday life then? Well, I
can remember this equation. I can remember that I have decided to trust this
power based on evidence that I’m not dead, crazy, or in danger. That’s pretty
big evidence. I can continue to gather it on the smaller things too, which is
where, for me, the “real” evidence is – “Okay, you got the big stuff, but what
about this smaller shit – LIKE MY JOB??”

Well, the week that I was putting my HP in the game for a
few innings at a time, I started to find pennies on the ground. Call it
whatever you might, but I considered them “Pennies from Heaven,” and to me,
they were like little winks from the Universe that, yes, I am being taken care
of. That I am and was on the right path.

So, is it a parking mantra? Is this conversation with a new
higher power just something to hold my attention and faith as I go forward with
my job search, never knowing if such a power exists? Maybe. I’ll never know,
will I.

Do I feel better when I think about that Rookie and his
toothy grin, tapping the side of his wooden bat against his cleats, excited to
prove himself to me? You. Bet.