She had. Nonetheless, subtlety is not my strong point.

I wear my heart on my sleeve. I have no talent for acting, so when I’m trying to sneak in line to catch up with a friend at, say, an insanely packed ski show to buy cheap warm things for careening into pine trees, I’m completely incapable of acting cool and nonchalant. I’m also prone to flipping people off, especially if I’m a little tipsy and they’re haranguing me.

On Saturday, over a dinner of roast chicken that Limon must surely import from the poultry farms of heaven, I was trying desperately to be social, but failing miserably because I would open my mouth, begin speaking, and realize half way through that no sound was coming out. It took a combination of mime, charades, and fledgling psychic ability to make myself understood. As I was trying to relay a story in a whisper yell, a friend said, “No, really. It’s OK that we can’t hear you.” Abandoned by my traitor voice, I was left with no recourse but to flip him off from across the table.

Then I flipped him off again at a bar two hours later. Yes, another bar. Possibly an unwise decision given the plague that felled me all last week, but I was starved for human company that didn’t come from my laptop or Netflix, so any suggestion was a good suggestion. Plus, who am I kidding? I spend more time in bars now than I did in college. (I was one of those alarming studies-on-Saturday-night students, which hopefully placates my parents for all the money they spent on my education. Thanks, mom!) When he left for the bathroom, I asked his girlfriend, “He’s not offended when I do that, right?”

I like to consider myself sensitive to other people’s emotional landscape and reasonably socially adept, but I have been known to miscalculate. Which is good, I think, as it lends perspective when I feel slighted. In the “Oh, right. I shoved my right boot so far down my throat last week that I almost kicked my spleen, but I really like that person. So surely This Thing Which Has Injured Me doesn’t spring from malicious intent.” Sure, it might take me three days to remember this, but that’s also good. If I was perfect, no one would want to hang out with me, because perfection’s really fucking annoying.

Anyway, she told me, “Oh no. This is how he bonds with people. By giving them shit. The more you flip him off, the more he’ll respect you.” When I find a group who understands that I love them dearly but am just occasionally filled with an overwhelming compulsion to make rude hand gestures, I have found my tribe. My delightfully twisted, occasionally antagonistic, and often drunk tribe.

My voice still hasn’t come back, but as long as I’m in possession of my middle finger, I should be able to make myself understood.

I’m convinced all this goodness appeared solely because I put on lip gloss and walked out my front door.

Therefore.

This is a heartfelt message to those of you wrestling with the wily badger of doubt over whether or not to don pants and leave the confines of your living room. Know this, my friends: take the bold step past your stoop and people will give you things. Like flavorful chicken and the next step toward your dream of light-filled rooms and hardwood floors. I highly recommend it.

Life Advice From God, If He Descended From the Great Cloud in the Sky to Expound

Everything you need is already within you. So in your relationships with others, expect nothing – simply love, serve, and care for them.

Do what brings you great joy. That is your path.

Life Advice, The First

I am learning – slowly, oh so very slowly – to take things lightly. To avoid jamming people and situations into little boxes I have constructed out of the spider webs and chiffon and dust mites of What Should Be. And I am just…being. (Sort of.) (Don’t give me too much credit just yet.) (Life is long and my memory is short.) (Yet there’s discernible progress.) (Which is nice, because it’s been awhile.) (Should I stop with the parentheses yet?) (No?) (A few more maybe?) (WELL, HERE YOU GO.)

Naturally, because I felt like I was finally getting a handle on such drastic maturity and was maybe feeling a little smug about it, I lapsed straight back into a situation where I Have Expectations and You Clearly Have Not Met Them and Now I’m Going To Make You Listen To My Ceaselessly Circling Thoughts on the Subject. But c’est la vie. I’ve made the executive decision to allow the “expect nothing, simply love” idea to apply to myself as well as everyone else. What a relief.  So I get to forgive myself for unfortunate reactions, especially when they give me valuable information about my triggers, i.e. feeling like I am always the least important person in the room and everyone around me has a closer relationship to that other person over there, even if it’s the new gardener because HELLO, THAT GARDENER HAS TENDED HER GRANDMOTHER’S ROSES FOR THREE WHOLE WEEKS NOW AND WHAT HAVE YOU EVER DONE FOR HER GRANDMOTHER, HUH? Yes, I could take that sentence to a licensed professional and use it as the basis for a solid decade of therapy, but whatever. Part of growing up means identifying and accepting my shit and then figuring out how to manage it. Shit like shutting people out so effectively that such hysterical assumptions about gardeners and roses actually ring true because lo, YOU HAVE MADE IT SO. How is it that I have such an effect on my environment? I seriously thought I was just an innocent bystander. Oh, life. You win again.

Please forgive the hippie-dippy nature of this next statement, but the only thing I can think to do about the aforementioned Shutting People Out issue is to imagine all the walls I’ve constructed around me with cement and mortar and the occasional instance of macrame, and then shut my eyes and picture those brick and macrame walls dissolving into the ground. I was sitting outside in the sun today eating a chocolate croissant, as I am wont to do, and I could feel myself as this little island around which everything happened. Hipsters with cello cases were talking, dogs were barking, children were discussing aliens and what one should name a cat-eating alien. But I was holding myself completely separate from it. Nobody engaged with me and I couldn’t even begin to think of how to engage with anyone else. So I finished my croissant and closed my eyes and did my Wall Dissolving thing. Then I opened my eyes and knocked over my latte. The small, alien-naming child looked over at me and his mother hopped up to fetch me some napkins as the cello-owning hipsters yelled to watch out as the latte spilled off the table to be greedily sopped up by my denim-clad knees. Now that’s some life engagement. I might have chalked it up to klutziness, rather than my very California-esque ideas, the ones that are inevitable when you’re raised in the Church of Hippie and decide to return to your roots because nothing else is working, thanks. But then a very (very) cute guy asked to share my table. And then we had a nice chat. He even noted that my coffee stained knees simply showed my willingness to engage with life. HE ACTUALLY SAID THAT TO ME. UNPROMPTED. Unfortunately, I kept talking, as is my wont, and eventually went from charmingly quirky to making off-color jokes about how blood-sucking aliens are HILARIOUS, at which point I’m pretty sure he lost interest and started casually edging away. BUT STILL.

I sense I’ve veered off course.

Oh, right: Expect nothing – simply love, etc. As delightful-yet-imperfect humans, I think this is a lovely goal and worth aiming for, but isn’t something to get bent out of shape about when the inevitable failure occurs. This sucker is definitely going to take a solid beating with a sturdy bat when I find myself in a relationship and begin thinking, ‘Damnit, I SHOULD be able to expect something.’ But good to practice and maybe write on a post-it note and feel all zen about when it gets managed for thirty minutes on a random Wednesday.

Life Advice, The Second

Helpful if you needed a path. Do you need a path? I think we all need a path. Keeps us from wandering aimlessly through the grocery store in search of unspecified snack or accidentally taking the wrong train and ending up in Lafayette when aiming for Oakland and hey look, the show starts in 20 minutes, WHERE IS MY HELICOPTER AND/OR TELEPORTATION DEVICE? (We made it on time – barely – with coffee in hand instead of dinner.) If someone could invent an iPhone app for teleportation, I would be much obliged. Anyway, it’s good advice. Naturally I took it to mean that I should spend more time blogging and eating chocolate.

What Brings Me Joy

Blogging: About contemplative stuff, as has become something of a habit (cough), yes; but more when I have some random adventure to write about. Like putting a dollar bill in a go-go dancer’s g-string. Or sitting in the corner at a party sculpting pasta ducks in fetching headwear. I would love to do more bizarrely awesome things and write about them here. Take what brings me pure, unadulterated joy and put it into a form that brings me pure, sometimes-adulterated-depending-on-how-easily-words-flow-that-day-or-how-guilty-I’m-feeling-about-not-blogging-in-a-week joy. (Incidentally, that’s why I’m buying random, never-would-have-thought-of-it-otherwise things on Groupon. If it ends up in my inbox, and it never would have occurred to me but suddenly seems like a good idea, I buy it. Trapeze classes? Sure! Pole dancing lesson? Why not! Cupcakes? Well, I could have thought of that on my own and in fact I did last Thursday, but still!)

Dancing around my living room: Like a loon, a la this.

Reading: You should see the library fines. But not doing so much of it that I stop…

Engaging with the world around me: I’ve been known to make it hard for myself, but I do love it. I love meeting and talking to random people in cafes, I love interviewing artists (yay, freelance writing!), I love meeting blog readers, I love going out with random groups of people, I love molesting dogs on sidewalks. So…time for more of that.

I honestly have no idea how these things comprise My Path, but whatever. I think the point is to spend more time being happy than less. That’s always a good plan. And more of a choice than I tend to remember.

First off: I’d like to adjust the vocabulary. We are not unemployed. We are very employed. Employed by life, if you will. Yes, we may be a little more strapped for cash, or possibly racing down the street flapping our arms and shrieking about refrigerator boxes and their decided lack of amenities, but I think it’s good to separate the two. Divide the admitted need for money from what you do all day.

If you find yourself abruptly without the job you enjoyed (or didn’t, more on that later), it’s good to give yourself a few days to do whatever you need to do. Vent, read fiction printed on cheap paper, pull out small tufts of hair, bake carrot zucchini muffins – whatever it takes to process the shock. But after a day or two or four, it’s important (so important!) (and I’m not being condescending, I’m actually speaking to my 21-year-old self) (does anyone know how to send an email to 1999?) to pick yourself off the couch and start doing whatever will comprise the next phase of your life.

But before we do that, we talk about feelings: OH, THE FEELINGS. Unless you’re a titanium-plated robot, you’re going to be feeling something and a lot of that something will probably be negative. I went through a three-week cycle this time around that involved lots of phone calls to my poor, sainted mother, and any number of aggravating emails to my friends wherein I USED LOTS OF CAPS TO ADEQUATELY CONVEY MY EMOTIONS. Then I stopped, because the last thing you want to do at a time like this is alienate your friends. Especially if they’re the type of friends who will invite you over for dinner and feed you chicken and that’s awesome because you stopped buying chicken as meat is more expensive and unemployment – sorry, BEING EMPLOYED BY LIFE – has turned you into a de facto vegetarian. Yum, spinach!

Social enculturation: is a bitch. No two ways about it. Because no matter how confident and kickass you are, there will be a point – whether it lasts a week, a year, or 37 seconds – where you wonder if you’re a failure. Or if you did something to deserve this. Because having a job is equal to success and being a productive member of society. Blah blah blah, etc. You know how it feels and you know it sucks. But I’m slowly coming around to the thought that slaving away in CubeVille doing something that doesn’t appeal to me or isn’t best contributing my skill and talent to the world may actually be worse than being a little unstable in the income department while doing what I do best. It took me a long time to get here, and it still disappears the second I think about December’s rent. (Incidentally, I’ve taken to avoiding my landlady because I’m pretty sure she’s noticed I’m around a hell of a lot more and might be wondering what’s up with that.) (Hi, landlady! Nice to see you at 3:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, but must dash! Very busy!) But I think it’s really really essential to separate Need For Money from Self Worth and What You Do With Yourself All Day.

Bring us to that vaunted next phase: Now is an amazing time to think about change. Really THINK about what it is that thrills you to your toes. Don’t worry if the possibilities of it paying your rent are so slim Heidi Montag is taking it out for a club soda and asking for diet tips. That doesn’t matter right now. Right now you want to get yourself so excited about something that you feel like you could have a conversation with Oprah and wow her sensible support hose right off. Because figuring out if you’re on the right track will do one of several awesome things. It might actually become your next plan of rent-paying attack, it might keep you motivated and excited as you hunt for a job, it might catapult you to a mythical land full of prancing unicorns and pool boys named Paco. I don’t know, I just think having something that motivates and drives you is essential. Always, but especially at a time when you don’t have a set schedule pushing you forward. And when it’s entirely conceivable to find yourself on the carpet with a bowl of rocky road and soap operas at 2 p.m. JUST SAYING.

I’m using the time I have now to put a bunch of projects in motion – things I’ve wanted to do for years but just never got around to. I’ve found myself at my desk clattering away on my keyboard only to look up and wonder why my back hurts and where the daylight went. And I love it. Because I’m doing things I love. After spending so much time in CubeVille gauging the precise motion of the clock, it’s entirely refreshing to consistently lose myself in work. (Whether that work is paying my way or not.) (Cough.) Whatever happens, this time is not wasted. These projects are getting over the first hurdle and they’ll stay in motion, whatever time I have to devote to them later. That feels incredibly powerful, which is WHAT YOU WANT HERE IN “I DON’T HAVE AN OFFICIAL JOB WHAT OF IT?” LAND, TRUST ME.

To that pesky bill-paying thing: Fuck if I know. I’m trying not to fall into the first horrifically dreary money making opportunity that comes my way, because that’s how I’ve spent a lot of time stuck. (Even those horrifically dreary things are mostly absent in this climate.) I’m just trying to keep busy and do what I love and NOT PANIC. CEASE THY PANIC. REMEMBER THE FRONTISPIECE TO HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE. That said, I have lots of little things going and will hopefully cobble together a living by the time I really need it. Sometimes I feel way too naively zen as I do this. But that’s when I start getting scared again. Trust me, I get nothing done when I’m scared. So naive or otherwise, thinking in a way that makes me feel good rather than bad is absolutely the way to go. But yeah, it’s all a little iffy at this point in time. Chime in if you have this money thing sorted and how.

Details, like food (you know the subject’s important when food drops to the bottom of the list): When your cash flow suddenly drops, you start thinking far more carefully about your luxuries. I personally am happy to eat Trader Joe’s cheddar instead of Cowgirl Creamery, but you’ll wrest my pricey Blue Bottle coffee from my chilled, taxidermied fingers. In my 20s, I would have immediately cut everything because DOOM DESPAIR AND WOE FOR I HAVE NO STEADY PAYCHECK. But I’m too old for that shit. (As a caveat, I assume this works differently if you have a family to support. There’s just me and so I can cheerfully acknowledge that my decision to keep the fancy coffee affects no one but myself. If a small tyke with a growling tummy was staring at me with quivering lower lip, a la Oliver Twist, I’d hurl that coffee out a window so fast the coffee beans would actually travel back in time.) (This caveat goes for the entire post, I think, because obviously you might need to look at things differently if you have a family to support.) (But maybe not! I don’t know because I don’t have one!) Being single is handy here, because I can easily eat on $20-30 a week at Trader Joe’s. If you’re unemployed and have access to Trader Joe’s, GO THERE. GO NOW. THANK ME LATER.

Conclusions, profound or otherwise: Don’t say you’re unemployed. Say you’re freelance. That’s what I do. You can do ANYTHING freelance. You can be a freelance banana peel sculptor if you want. Then do something that really floats your proverbial boat. When I’m motivated by doing something I really love – and detaching it from the money question – I feel AWESOME. Like I could karate kick Jackie Chan and, after he peeled his spinal chord from the asphalt, he’d bow with suitable reverence and offer to take me out for a cheeseburger. It all smacks of Do What You Love and The Money Will Follow, and I’ve felt cynical about that for years. Possibly decades. But maybe it’s not about the outcome, it’s about how you feel while you’re heading toward it.

Take whatever your situation is and turn it inside out and maybe knit it a fresh collar or give it a hasty bleach until you feel better about it. Feeling good is the only way anything good will happen.

Stepping off ye olde soapbox because ye gods this has gotten long: I could write a 300-page thesis on this topic – and people have. But one must cease a blog post eventually. I may speak more to this later, but in the meantime: if you’re unemployed now or have been in the past and have something to say or to add or to argue, please do. The comments are your oyster.

Even better, other people found it helpful. This thrilled me to my very toes. I like being useful.

So who’s up for round two? Same deal: one month, one project, lots of emails from me. And an acronym that makes even less sense than it did the first time. This has been one of my favorite blog endeavors so far, and this month’s project is something I’ve been needing to do for quite some time. Maybe you have too. We could all use more spinach. And with that somewhat unappetizing teaser…

The Project: Get Healthy

We are all human and so our wonderful intentions sometimes (often?) don’t make it past the initial “Hey, that’s a good idea!” phase. Whether it’s eating leafy greens, using the yoga mat for something besides smacking the cat, or finally making that therapy appointment your friends have hinted about for the last year. Even if you’re the pinnacle of healthy living, and would put us to shame if you could spare the three minutes out of your marathon-running and fresh organic salad-consuming to brag about it, you might still want to jump in. It takes effort to drink all that spinach juice and MAYBE YOU COULD USE SOME ENCOURAGEMENT. Especially when people the next table over are eating hot fudge sundaes and you’re thinking about diving across the aisle to wrench it out of their hands. You’re stronger than they are, after all, what with all that weight lifting you do. (Resist. Your karma and your waistline will be the better for it.)

Theory Behind The Latest Round of Madness

When I’m healthy, it’s much easier to be happy. And good things seem to happen when I’m happy. Even if they don’t, who cares! LIFE STILL THRILLS ME AND, GOODNESS, IS THAT A FRESH ORANGE I GET TO EAT? (Seriously. And, yes, it’s exhausting being that enthusiastic. Which is my excuse for falling off the proverbial wagon so often.) If I’ve learned anything this past year or two, it’s that when I’m not healthy – physically and mentally – things just.do.not.work. And I feel stuck and hopeless and my punctuation goes all wonky.

As one of the more oblivious of our fair species, I had to watch my life implode around me (good-bye significant other! good-bye house! good-bye cute dog! good-bye fledgling writing career!) before it connected that I needed to get my act together. So over the past year and a half my main goal was Get Healthy. I put aside work, relationships, vacations, and took a random CubeVille job so I’d have the mental energy to focus on it, and the money to pay for it.

To all outward appearances, my life looked like Failure Personified and it certainly felt that way some of the time. But I’m convinced it was the best thing I could have done for myself. I notice that when I’m putting in the effort – exercising, eating things that grow in the ground rather than in the Cheetos bag, meditating (I cringe too, but IT HELPS, MY GOD SO MUCH), therapy, and being creative in some way – I feel so much happier. And, in my experience, that’s when good things start happening. Even if Good Things don’t happen right away, it doesn’t matter. BECAUSE I FEEL GOOD. AND DAMN IT, THAT’S A NICE CHANGE.

Obviously, you can’t ever finish something like this. You don’t ever get to say, “Great, now I’m eternally healthy! WELL DONE ME.” It’s a work-in-progress and I find myself doing well for a month, only to slip back into bad habits when life shifts again.

Dear Life,

I HAD JUST FIGURED YOU OUT. PLEASE STOP MOVING FOR A FEW MINUTES SO I CAN ENJOY THE NOVELTY OF HAVING MY BEARINGS. THANK YOU.

Love, Moose

What I’ll Be Doing, Besides Sending Out Lots of Encouraging Email

My experiments over the past year have yielded some good tools, now I just have to integrate them more fully into my life – rather than swinging wildly from one polarity to the other. For example: NO SUGAR, NOT EVEN HONEY, SHALL CROSS MY HALLOWED LIPS. Well, all right, just a little. It is my birthday. One cupcake is fine! Now that I’ve had a cupcake, I may as well have two cupcakes. Three days later, I find myself lying face down in the gutter, smeared in frosting and wondering why I can’t feel my legs. It happens.

Here are my health goals for the month:

1. Eat what makes me feel good AFTER, not just during.
2. Exercise, whether it sounds like a good idea at 6 a.m. or not. (My money’s on “not”.)
3. Therapy – acupuncture, massage (DUDE, IT COUNTS), whatever feels like a good idea.
4. That’s it, really. Whenever I make my lists too long, I have to hide under the covers and shiver like a chihuahua who’s been threatened with the need to earn his keep.

If You’re Interested

Plan to pursue whatever health goals may have been gathering dust. (Or rotting in the fridge.) (Produce has a tendency to expire quickly. Which makes frozen fried chicken feel like a better option.) Maybe make a list. Faithfully tend to that list for a week or two weeks or the full month – whatever would be most helpful to you. I will be sending out emails of the useful and encouraging persuasion, with the ever-so-occasional bout of DROP AND GIVE ME TEN, MAGGOTS! Because this amuses me and god forbid I go unamused for more than three minutes.

Email (mooseinthekitchen(at)gmail(dot)com) or leave a comment saying: YES, PLEASE! I’m starting the list from scratch, so if you did it last time and want to do it again, say the word.

I’m excited. My keen love of butter and sleeping in is less so.

“So, I hear you’re not working with us any more. How’s the new job?”

I told him I was starting on Monday and really looking forward to it. He wished me luck and we parted with amicable “Have a nice day”s.

People, to the best of my knowledge I’d never seen this man before IN MY LIFE. But he obviously worked with me and knew I had a new job. In return, I couldn’t tell you his name if the fate of the free world depended on it.

Also in the Category of Failings, General and Specific

I’m not the most socially graceful mammal ever. I mean, my people skills are reasonable – I can make conversation and I’m a nice person and only taste my size nine shoe leather once or so per evening. But I have what might kindly be termed a disarming lack of subtlety. Years ago, I was having dinner with a friend, and his ex-girlfriend walked into the restaurant. He made quiet note of this, and I swung around like my chair was on a turn table and shouted, “WHERE?” Now, I can’t read minds, but the look on his face suggested that, should the opportunity present itself, he would quite cheerfully rip off my arms and use them to beat me senseless.

Knowing this is my downfall, I try to head off any potential social awkwardness at the pass. Luckily, many of my friends are certifiable Southern belles and kindly field my many questions, often with the subject line: WHAT DO CLASSY PEOPLE DO?

What I’ve Learned Thusfar

1. Classy people DON’T lose track of time when planning a Fancy, No-Penis-Straws-Allowed, Non-Bachelorette Party. So that the To Do List item “Find and send fancy, vellum invitations with red sealing wax and pretty stamps” suddenly becomes “Send out massively tardy email.” Oops. (I don’t think anyone minded, but MY GOD.) (Will you all still come to my eventual wedding if the invitations arrive via evite?)

2. When my new job gives me the first day off (How did I get so lucky, you ask? I HAVE NO IDEA), email my favorite people at the old job – i.e. people still languishing in CubeVille – and say, “Hey! Guess what! I don’t have to go to work today!” In my defense, I just wanted to go meet them for lunch. ONE MUST SEIZE THESE OPPORTUNITIES WHEN THEY ARISE. (But still. I probably should’ve kept my flapping trap firmly clamped.)

About that Job Thing

My last day in CubeVille was Friday, and my mood this weekend was downright jubilant. I suspect people sense such things. Do you ever notice that your surroundings pick up on your general mind-frame and echo it back to you? When I’m unhappy – even if I’m doing my best not to let it show overtly – dogs avoid me and babies hide their faces in their mother’s shoulder. When I’m happy, pugs run right up and sit on my shoes, German Shepherds nose my pockets for treats, and babies offer slobbery grins. I was waiting at a crosswalk, about two blocks after my introduction into the Most Oblivious Person Ever Society, when an older man on a bike started making cheerful conversation. I admit, I thought he was going to ask me for money – he didn’t have much in the teeth department and I was in the Tenderloin – but he just wanted to gab while the light changed. Conversation just sort of happens when I’m in a good mood. When I’m not, people notice and steer clear. Or maybe I’m not as experienced a thespian as I claim to be.

But no cheerful front is needed these days: I am genuinely happy. It’s exciting when things start falling into place in unexpected ways. So here’s to all the wonderful things happening – new jobs, babies, successful projects, engagements, weddings, and all the champagne involved in these grand life events. Looking forward to it, my friends.

I wasn’t looking for a new job. Getting a new job wasn’t even a speck of shimmering dust on my personal event horizon. I wasn’t sending out carefully edited cover letters or scouring job boards or even sitting at my desk and wistfully thinking, “You know what would be swell? BEING SOMEWHERE ELSE RIGHT NOW.” (Fine, I was thinking that. But only in conjunction with some not-very-proactive daydream about reading a large, leather bound gothic novel in front of a roaring fire while the butler fetches me a hot toddy and a warm brick for my feet.) (July in San Francisco is cold, yo.) After months and months of job hunting last year that yielded little more than rejection and unusual amounts of dry-cleaning, I accepted my current job and have determinedly shunned Craigslist ever since. I thought it would be at least another year before I could gather the fortitude to start looking again. So imagine my surprise when a new job jumped gracefully into my lap, like a gazelle auditioning for Alvin Ailey.

Here’s where I blow the ending into smithereens small enough to make any truly dedicated storyteller cringe – I GOT A JOB OFF TWITTER. Yes, I did.

Wherein the Fairy Tale of Getting a New Job Without Looking, Especially in This Economy, Is Explained. Also, That Vaguely Hysterical Twitter Announcement.

Like many of my fellow internet brethren (hello, fellow internet brethren! you are some of my very favorite people! truly!), I spend inordinate – even obnoxious – amounts of time on Twitter. This is a source of much amusement for my work friends. They enjoy tiptoeing up to my gray padded cubicle, lurking around the corner so the fluorescent lights don’t cast looming shadows to alert me of their nefarious presence, and loudly asking some trumped up question. Just to watch me jump and scramble to minimize the telltale blue, be-clouded page.

One day I was at a loss for words and, instead of slinking off the internet to wallow in dull but self-respecting silence, I decided to steal someone else’s words. I credited the source (making it not so much plagiarism as laziness, I suppose) and the source found me. After yelling “Hey, look! Brian Andreas is on Twitter!” – rendering null and void my “of COURSE I’m devoted to this spreadsheet!” aura of work ethic yet again – I clicked the handy “Follow” button under his name. A few months and several exchanges about black licorice and pirates later, he asked: “Random question, but what do you do for work?” I replied, “I fax things for attorneys and YES, IT’S EVERY BIT AS FASCINATING AS IT SOUNDS.” Then he asked if I might be interested in a job.

A job? A job, you say? A job that would probably have very little to do with gray cubicles, Polizei-esque glares if my computer is turned on at 8:07 rather than the precise turn of the hour, or a Committee on Committees? (No, I’m not exaggerating any of that. Not even the Committee on Committees.) SIGN ME UP.

So I drove over to Sausalito and, after a two hour discussion about philosophical quandaries and books recently loved and nothing whatsoever about my resume or work challenges over which I triumphed, they hired me.

I’ve never been hired on the spot for anything. Not even when my father was the one hiring. I believe the best word for my reaction was “gobsmacked.” And the best description for my facial expression was “cow, paused mid-chew.”

My answer wasn’t immediate (see: gobsmacked, cow-like), but as I was driving home I thought, “How can I not do this? HOW?” So I’m doing it. I start two weeks from now and, lo, I am thrilled. About the company, my new job duties, the possibilities, and, yes, for my grand escape from CubeVille. I admit nothing, but there may have been some celebratory dancing. Said celebratory dancing may have included an Irish jig and possibly a crude polka.

Now that Twitter sorted out my job, I’m wondering if it can do the same for my love life. Maybe I’ll put up a few clever @NathanFillion comments to see if that yields fruit. YES, I’M CONSIDERING IT. AND NO, I’M NOT ASHAMED.

But I’m generally a pretty happy person – one might even call me sunny. Sure, I’ll catch myself thinking, “Oh, I can’t be happy now – I don’t know where my paycheck’s coming from in December, I’m the only single person I know in this city, I haven’t achieved anything impressive, my storage closet’s not organized.” As I grow older, I’m getting much better at calling BULLSHIT on this nonsense.

The flip side is, as good as I am at being content in crappy circumstances, I’m equally good at being miserable in perfect ones. I’ve been known to feel utterly dejected and wretched while sitting on the back of a boat in a Caribbean harbor on one of the most beautiful starry nights a tourist could ask for. At this specific point in time I had a partner, an interesting job, plenty of money, and – oh yes – was spending two and a half weeks sailing around lush tropical islands eating barbequed shrimp, drinking rum and gingers, and watching dolphins leap around the prow of the boat. From the outside, it appears to be everything any sane person needs to be ecstatic. But I wasn’t.

I suppose you could look at it as a prime example of Privileged Girl Being Profoundly Ungrateful, but I think it’s more accurate to say that you can be unhappy in the best of circumstances and happy in the worst. Which leads me to believe your current circumstances don’t prescribe your happiness or lack thereof.

(For the record, it was amazing trip. It just didn’t manage to make me into a different person. Damn.)

Being miserable on a Caribbean beach may just be my own macabre talent, but it always reminds me that what I – and our culture in general – tend to recognize as harbingers of great joy don’t make one bit of difference to your actual happy quotient. Nice house, good-looking mate, successful career, sweet vacations – I’ve had all these things (OK, the house wasn’t mine, but I lived in the damn thing, so for the purposes of this post, it counts) and not had those things and I’ve since realized they don’t have the substantive effect one hopes they would. Sure, I’d rather be unhappy with these things than unhappy without, but there’s just no good substitute for actual contentment.

Well, fine then. GO AHEAD AND MAKE IT SO MY CREDIT CARD DOESN’T FULFILL ITS GLEAMING PROMISE.

For me, right at this moment, there are any number of things I can use for short-term happiness: a mocha, a new paperback novel, a hike in Pacifica, pulling out the dusty yoga DVD, coercing friends to brunch. Long-term reliable happiness is a little trickier. Or maybe it’s not. In the past six months, whenever I feel the unhappy creep in, I try to pull myself out of my head – maybe by taking those deep breaths people are always talking about (oxygen is important! who knew?) or just looking around and noticing where I am, right at that moment. Often, where I am is pretty good.

Essentially, there are two ways I can look at my life right now:

Way Number One

I’m alone.

I live in a hallway that’s prone to mold.

I haven’t had a vacation or real mental break in a year and a half.

My career is faltering or nonexistent, depending on your definition.

I don’t have any savings.

Way Number Two

I have a nice little place in my favorite city.

I’m young, healthy, and have always been able to earn what I need.

I’ve had the opportunity to visit some of the most beautiful places on earth and, statistically speaking, will get to go somewhere soon.

I have loving friends and family who are always there when I need them.

I’m figuring out how to do more of what I love, whether it makes me money or not.

~

I occasionally have moments – sometimes whole hours – where all I see is Way Number One. But far more often, I’m feeling Way Number Two. And that makes me happy.

~~~

Footnotes (Minus the Convenient Numbers):

Inspired by Susan and Chris because their posts made me think and isn’t it nice when that happens?

My happiness assessment is obviously culled from my own experience – experience which, thankfully, does not include homelessness or hunger or real tragedy. I don’t know what happiness requires in those circumstances, but I do know what it requires in mine – which I suspect is the best any of us can do.

Moose-Approved Concrete Actions:

1. Every time you get concerned about the state of the world, send money to the Obama campaign. (I personally do this only every third time I get concerned about the state of the world. I’m not Bill Gates, yo. Unfortunately, the Obama website does not yet have a coin slot where I can insert the three nickels and a dime I found at the bottom of my purse.)

2. When you open your mailbox in a state of high anticipation – even though you’ve ordered nothing from Amazon and have no reason to believe anyone has written you but the water company or your Great Aunt Mildred who wants her casserole dish back, you thieving heathen – and that high anticipation yields absolutely nothing, not even one of those aggravating menus from Hu Nan Wu Nan, send someone in your address book a little gift. I recommend salt caramels. 

3. Fool yourself. I am a prime, annoying example of those people who say they want to be healthy while choosing a chocolate donut to augment that vanilla latte. So now I say to myself: What would a healthy person do? And I try to fool my brain into thinking I’m a healthy person. Luckily, my brain is easily fooled and so I pick up a carrot.

All this registers in the crimson zone on the Captain Obvious-ometer, but it’s taken me a remarkably long time to adhere to the concrete action credo. I’m someone who can think about something for years, entire calendar years, before doing anything about it. It drives people batty, and rightfully so. I’m sure you’re all much better at getting things done, and have checked the box marked ”supremely impressive accomplishments” off your lists. If you have any concrete action credos, please share. Right there in the comment box. INSPIRE ME, PEOPLE.

(Um, can you tell I didn’t do a single productive thing this weekend? Except drink sparkling white wine, stare at glass exhibits a la Alice in Wonderland on acid, and snuggle with a pint-size chihuahua? You can? YOU SMART BEAST, YOU.)  

Dear Jenni,

Hope you don’t mind sleeping with your head in the oven!

Love,

Moose

She didn’t, of course, but I still felt bad. Especially when I took her and her vegan diet to an Irish pub and fed her large sausages. “What? That’s not meat! Ha ha! No! Those are filled with carrots! Brown, tasty carrots!” I win the prize for Best Host Ever. Anyone want to come visit? (Hey, where are you going? Don’t back away. I CAN STILL SEE YOU.)

(Picture snagged from Kerrianne.)

Know the secret of BlogHer? Sleep all day so you can wear a McDonald’s bag on your head all night. Where “all night” equals “until AT LEAST 12:30 a.m., because you’re crazy like that.” I didn’t learn much, what with all that sleeping, but I was sprightly and well-rested for getting kicked out of the CheeseburgHer party (for unseemly bag wearing, I assume). Then the party was kicked out of the hallway (for unseemly noise) and later kicked out of the lobby for unseemly, um, sitting. Because people need to get to the elevators, you lazy carpet-sitting bloggers, you. (I can still see his face glaring down at us as we sat with glazed expressions in a pile of cheeseburger wrappers. Maybe we should have offered him some fries.)

I wasn’t as participatory as I’d like to be next year (see: sleeping all day), but I did come away with the strong sense that 1) people are lovely (especially when they let you drag them on the Food Is Terribly Important tour of Hayes Valley – stops include Miette and Blue Bottle Coffee) and 2) blogging is something I love doing.

If I wasn’t a slacker, I’d end this post with something inspiring. But I am, so I’ll trust you to inspire yourselves. You’re an inspiring bunch.