Ever bake something and wonder why it doesn’t look like the picture in the cookbook? And take sixteen whole minutes to remember that you aren’t Nigella Lawson and you substituted baking powder for baking soda (because how different are they really?) and that might begin to explain why?

Ever stroll blindly through the park, so engrossed by your own cycling mental processes that you don’t register accidentally ignoring a friend until two blocks later? Then have to send a sheepish “Sorry I was raised by dingos” text?

Ever look back at specific points in your life and think, “I was drowning and I didn’t even know it”?

Ever chat on Skype and discover that if you move your head a certain way in the tiny video box, you closely resemble a lurking crocodile? And decide to film it and send it to all your friends? Then realize you really should find a hobby? Then decide that filming yourself impersonating a crocodile is so totally a legitimate hobby?

Ever ask a bunch of rhetorical questions and wonder why no one’s socked you in the mouth yet?

…..

Why am I not a bird? A bird that summers in the tropics. Where it is warm. Possibly even hot. Hot like Vegas-in-a-strapless-sundress-hot. Not that birds tend to wear strapless sundresses, but I envy their ability to strut about clad only in feathers and a smug expression. Because they have flown merrily off on their convenient wings to summer locales while I’m still shivering in San Francisco. Sorry for harping, guys. I love San Francisco. I do. I’m just…so cold. In late May. I’m wrapped in a blanket trembling over my heater. WHERE ARE MY WINGS? WINGS WITH WHICH I CAN WHISK MYSELF TOWARD THE SUN.

I mean, I don’t have to be a bird. I’d take being rich. WHY WASN’T I BORN WITH BIGGER BOOBS, SO I COULD BE A TROPHY WIFE? See, this is what happens when I’m cold. My life ambitions reduce to whatever will warm me up fastest. Though, arguably, marrying someone rich so he’ll take me to a Caribbean island is not as fast as, say, putting on another sweater.

…..

People react very differently to the necessity of taking the early morning Super Shuttle. There’s the surly girl. There’s the chipper older woman with her coffee and her earnest desire to find out where everyone is going and how they’re feeling at 4:45 in the morning. There’s the guy on his cell phone offering everyone within earshot the privilege of hearing about his girlfriend’s unwavering desire to eat barbeque ribs in bed. (What?)

Then there’s me. Who reacts to the necessity of early morning flights by doing dumb things in airports. If there’s a clear partition masquerading as the open air in that place where you can buy gum and magazines and Popchips, that place whose name I might remember if I’d gotten more than four hours of sleep, you might, in your exhaustion, smash into it like a misguided robin into a plate glass window. This will be hilarious for everyone except the plastic partition, which is still feeling a little hurt that you could so cavalierly treat it like it doesn’t exist.

I’m sorry, plastic partition. I respect you.

Basically, this has tapped into every fear I have – about money, about not valuing the work I put out into the world, about my capabilities as a writer, about how to design a goddamn PDF. But I did it.

This would not exist without major support and encouragement from Nicole and Becca. Not to mention Becca’s knowledge of fonts that made the PDF look more like a PDF and less like something I wrote in seventh grade with a dull pink crayon.

It’s a ten-page essay, a more personal version of the damn Brain Hamsters, with a few things that were very, very scary to say in public. So, go me.

Why Loving Yourself Is One Seriously Fucked Up

(Yet Ultimately Freeing)

Process

Since I’m weird and random, so is the price: $3.17. Though you can pay less, if you want. Or you can pay more. Or you can just go read the archives instead. Or you can go somewhere else entirely. OH, THE CHOICES YOU HAVE!

If you buy it, I hope you like it. And thank you so, so much for supporting me in something that freaked me the hell out. Just publishing this post is a huge victory. Thanks for being here for it.

Maybe I’ll just wear sneakers instead. (THEY’RE CUTE SNEAKERS, I SWEAR.)

See? Perfectly acceptable, in my humble Crocs-wearing opinion.

This is what happens when I try to blog everyday: My conversation devolves into shoes and donuts because I can’t have deep thoughts all the time, no matter how my brain tries to force me.

Brain: MORE DEEP THOUGHTS.

Me: Please, no. No more with the hyper self-awareness and overwrought contemplation about the nature of insecurity. JUST LET ME WATCH MORE GOSSIP GIRL ALREADY.

Brain: BUT I AM VERY IMPORTANT. YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO ME.

Me: Actually, I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t listen to you. You told me to pick Crocs up off the street corner and take them home. Is that really the case you want to make for sound judgment and impeccable thought processes?

Brain: Shut up, you know you love those shoes.

Me: ONLY SORT OF.

Brain: You were the one who decided to dress in unbroken navy blue today.

Me: I’m wearing jeans. So that only counts as half navy blue.

Brain: ALL NAVY BLUE.

Me: Oh, hush. You’ve never had to choose an outfit, you just wear a skull all the time.

Apparently, my brain and I spend a lot of time trying to silence each other. I love you, brain! I do! I love you even as I boot you firmly out the door so I can watch Modern Family and laugh hysterically when Claire says, “Well, honey, you’re going to have to smell Daddy’s receptionist some other time,” startling the small dogs waddling past my door on their lunchtime walk.

Speaking of sitting by my window all the damn time, because the square foot of bed next to the window is the only place in the whole apartment that gets any sunlight and after three years I’ve turned into one of those plants that lean into the light, only with a more sprightly internal monologue. (Although maybe house plants do have a sparkling, Aaron Sorkin-esque inner world. WE WOULDN’T KNOW, NOW WOULD WE?)

What was I talking about? Oh, right – window, sitting by, all the damn time. I was sitting there this morning, garbed in Target fleece and unbrushed teeth while I worked on my laptop. That’s how the person who was walking by found me when he stopped and started TAKING PICTURES OF MY WINDOW. I mean, I assume he was taking pictures of the rather lovely flowers (some red fluffy thing, I don’t know what they’re called, horticulture was never my thing) (though I’m the person to call if you ever need a daisy identified) next to my window, but it was still a little…creepy. It was pointed right at my face. If I was some random celebrity or minor royal, I would have ducked. (And I probably wouldn’t live in a basement apartment with only one window that faces right onto the street.) Since I’m not, I just gaped. So if you see a picture of me in fleece and unwashed hair looking cranky, let me know. FOR I AM CURIOUS.

If something scares the living daylights out of me, I want to drag that fear back to my lair and feed it cupcakes until it succumbs. (Unless it’s a raccoon, then I just hide behind the nearest tree until it takes its ornery, be-clawed self elsewhere.) Example: I used to crawl beneath large pieces of stationary furniture to avoid having my picture taken. So I did this. I also did a random Gap photoshoot that put my picture in their 2010 annual report, which was kind of bizarre. Now I’m a lot more comfortable with people photographing me. This came in handy when Trent the stripper was gyrating in my lap and everyone else in the room was doing a very credible imitation of the paparazzi.

Public speaking is next on my list. The last time I spoke in public was at my oldest friend’s wedding. I was set to give my toast after the officiant, the groom’s older sister, made hers. She was maybe 29 at the time and already a professor at Yale. Yes, that Yale. Public speaking was kind of her thing. She was erudite, charming, witty, told a lovely story or two. Then it was my turn. I honestly don’t remember what happened after that. To this day, I have no idea what I said because I pretty much just blacked out.

I’d be tempted to avoid this whole Make Public Speaking My Bitch thing until forever, but I recently did a recorded interview for an assignment. Meaning I had to listen to my disembodied voice over the course of hours as I transcribed the interview and oh, how painful it was. Hearing your voice the way others hear it is a profoundly sobering experience, requiring no small store of stoic forbearance in the face of grinding discomfort.

Canadian Canary: 1. Moose: 0.

(* The prognosis is…confusing. My poor, beleaguered laptop may come back good as new or I may have to buy a new one. There’s no middle ground here. Like going to the emergency room and being told you either have an ingrown toenail or you’re already dead.)

But friends with spare laptops and my own inimitable coping mechanisms (crying, raging, gnashing teeth) (not really) (there was some teeth gnashing, but there’s ALWAYS some teeth gnashing) (this is why I have a bite guard) (HOTNESS) mean I’m back to work and writing and only marginally scarred by a previously innocent beverage.

Peppermint tea: YOU ARE DEAD TO ME.

Trader Joe’s Peppermint Hot Chocolate: you are granted a reprieve. It’s not your fault you were born into the peppermint crime family. Don’t abuse my lenience.

Will evolution eventually catch on to the fact that most of us are more lost without our laptops than without our left leg? I can hop to my car a lot easier than I can figure out how to get to Danville from the Lower Haight without the benefit of Google Maps. I mean, I’d like to keep my left leg, but I’d prefer it with a laptop to growing out the top. Then when I spill peppermint tea, I can simply fetch a towel and carry on.

This also means the Apple store will be less a horde of people desperately crowding the genius bar and more a row of cushy leather chairs where you sit down, swipe your credit card, stick the plug in your upper thigh, and get an upgrade. Steve Jobs and Darwin should get on that.

(It also gives me an excuse to watch excessive amounts of Community, a show that encapsulates the glorious joy of being alive. And being a slacker. A funny slacker. This obviously holds great appeal for me.

I have to go there, I have to show the clip of Abed as Batman. Beaten in televised awesomeness only by Abed as a vampire, but youtube keeps pulling that clip down, presumably because such profound awesomeness destroys the functionality of the site, much like the awesomeness of wine destroys the functionality of my brain. Or something.

Um, close parentheses.)

Something I’ve realized, reading through the past five years of my life, is that I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of my time being very down on myself. Very, very down on myself. I spent most of 2007 flagellating myself with the grim determination of a Spanish monk joy riding his iron maiden through the peak years of the Inquisition.

On the one hand, welcome to being human. On the other hand, dear god. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why? I’m not perfect by any stretch of even the most flexible imagination, but I’m a decent human being. Even a kind one, on certain days of the week. Dogs like me, I give good hugs, and I will help you move. (Anyone need help moving?) Some days I’m forced to take comfort in the fact that I’ve never killed anyone, whether on purpose or by accident, but still. So why all the ego-driven existential drama?

As you can imagine, this is something I’d like to stop. I’ve been devoting a reasonable amount of time* to digging up uncomfortable things and peering at them and then sending them off into the ether where I hope they explode in a shower of bright sparks, sparks that settle again somewhere far, far away from me.

* If you assigned “reasonable amount of time” to a person and that person aged as most people do, you’d have yourself a toddler.

I tend to suppress important pieces of myself – mainly because feeling them is painful and I don’t like pain. Examples of Suppressed Pieces: 1) incriminating adjectives I use to fillet myself, 2) judgmental little darts that tend to make people uncomfortable (YOU DON’T SAY), 3) ducat doubts.

Frankly, it sucks – and has been known to send me into the blowing-cloak-on-windy-cliff doldrums of an eighteenth-century heroine with no suitors and no TV. But ultimately it’s valuable. Because every time I let something go, I get a little lighter. A little more imperturbable to the buffeting forces of the world, a little more “Hey, dude. I’m pretty cool. If you say something that contradicts this belief, I will shovel it through my Self Worth Filter and watch it morph into a compliment and I will thank you with genuine pleasure and you will be understandably confused.” (Some call this delusion. I call it Being Awesome.)

It can be hard, taking your ego and making it redundant. So I’m trying to give myself space to do things that make me happy – like go to Baker Beach on a sunny day and bounce up and down like a 13-year-old at Starbucks when we see a pair of dolphins swimming just offshore. Or walking to the Japanese Tea Garden in the morning and drinking tea by the pond before doing anything that resembles work. I’m pondering what brings me joy and – here’s the truly inspired bit – ACTUALLY DOING IT.

Exhibit A:

Doing things that bring me joy. Also known as slacking. And forgiving myself for slacking, because sometimes being happy is worth it. I would even venture to say that happiness is always worth it.

Frankly, my inability to accurately predict or properly control the future never ceases to frustrate and flummox me. For surely I must be able to bend the world to my whim. (No.)

The typical answer, beloved of Zen teachers and abhorred by me (I usually demonstrate that distaste by sticking my tongue out at the person or book unwise enough to suggest this in my general vicinity), is that you can only control yourself. And then only if you’ve avoided the siren call of bourbon.

Luckily, I have some measure of success controlling small children and puppies. Following Wombat around a party as his little legs carry him in slightly drunken circles and petting Kristin’s new puppy Ella into submission makes me feel as if all is right in my carefully controlled universe. It only lasts ten minutes, but oh, what a glorious ten minutes it is.

Rosie the Riveter, if Rosie the Riveter had to clean mold out of her closet.

At least I can control the cleanliness of my immediate environment. This took significantly longer than ten minutes, by the way. Damn San Francisco damp.

2. Any persistent drama is cultivated by yours truly.

3. That said, if the only way I can get peace, blessed peace, is to stop dating altogether…SO BE IT.

4.  The last time I was as patently uninterested in dating as I am now, it was 1986 and I was eight years old.

5. Generally understood dating principle: Like draws like.

6. This insidious principle seems to be guiding me toward wanting to become a better person so I can find the kind of person I want.

7. Logic which seems both flawed and totally valid.

8. This is understandably confusing.

9. Yes, waiting until you’re perfect to let yourself have something you want is simply setting yourself up for a really, really long wait.

10. But I want someone who embodies certain principles that I don’t currently embody myself. It doesn’t seem fair to expect qualities in my date/mate that I don’t possess.

11. We’re always growing and changing, so maybe I should let it be OK that I’m not perfect and hope I find someone who grows and changes with me?

12. Maybe?

13. I have a sense that I’d like to become more…me before I find someone. Because it will result in a better match.

14. Does that make sense?

15. No?

16. Damn it.

17. All this is more indicative of stalling than any kind of devotion to valuable dating strategy.

18. But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s not the right time.

19. Which means it’s not the right time.

20. So I should just stop thinking and return to my Enjoy My Life Until I Want To Date Again policy.

21. My brain doesn’t like this plan because it means I won’t be slavishly devoting energy to listening to its whirling dervish upheaval.

22. Sorry, brain. Better luck next time.

I dance perilously close to the edge of Bank Balance: Zero Dollars on a regular basis. I don’t have to do this. I could earn more. I could scale back. But tottering on the edge of zero is, oddly, my comfort zone. Despite the fact that it sounds NOT AT ALL COMFORTABLE, NOT ONE BIT. Since the psychology runs deep here and there are many things more entertaining than listening to a neurotic sort through her deeply ingrained money issues, like maybe inspecting your toilet paper for wrinkles, I will proceed to Layer Two.

Layer Two

I like being single. I like it a lot. Do you know how much time and space gets freed up in your brain when you’re not interested in anyone? A LOT. A LOT OF SPACE. ECHOING CAVERNS OF SPACE. ENOUGH SPACE TO BUILD YOURSELF A NICE TWELVE-BEDROOM STARTER HOME WITH TENNIS COURTS AND MAYBE THE PACIFIC OCEAN. I’LL STOP YELLING NOW.

Not being interested in anyone means I’m not constantly checking my email to see if he wrote, I’m not engaged in cyclical justification for whatever shiny crimson flag he’s waving, the one lovingly embroidered with “I’M NOT REALLY ALL THAT INTERESTED IN YOU,” I’m not actively ignoring my own gut instincts because I like him and if I like him and ignore my gut instincts then I get to stop dating.

After trying to explain this and failing miserably on every point but the hand-flapping, a friend summed it up nicely: “You’re not interested in bullshit dating.” Yes. That’s precisely it. I’m not interested in bullshit dating, but since that’s all I understand at the moment, I’m giving myself some space to grow out of that phase. NEXT PHASE, PLEASE.

Layer Three

Fears. I have a lot of them, as do we all. Fears like to congregate, cuddling up together until they harden into a tunnel of pitch and brambles and bat guano. A tunnel you have to walk through, something you’ve been trying to avoid by waiting for a bus, a bus that will carry you easily through the tunnel, where you can sit with a magazine and other people, knowing all you have to do to get there is wait for your stop. But it’s not coming. Because that bus doesn’t exist. Nor does the little red wagon pulled by some obliging soul. So it’s time to start walking.

My fears include: Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear that I’ll spend all this time and effort on something and then it will the wrong something. Fear that I’ll hurt someone. Fear that I’ll die. Fear that I’ll end up broke and alone because I did the wrong thing. Fear that I’ll get what I want and it won’t feel like I expected.

Intellectually, I know they’re ridiculous. Or, if not ridiculous, then something I can make peace with. But knowing something intellectually isn’t the same as knowing it emotionally. In order to fully understand how ridiculous those fears are in the emotional center of my little reptilian brain, I have to confront them. Which means WALKING THROUGH THE GODDAMN BLACK TUNNEL. Don’t ask me how I’m going to do this because I only just now admitted that the tunnel even exists. Let’s not rush things here.

All those fears relate to work/career/money stuff. I suspect there’s an entirely different tunnel waiting for me with the word “Relationship” inscribed at the entrance, prominently featuring my inability to let myself find someone who qualifies as Not Bullshit Dating. But I can’t think about that right now because if I do I’ll just sit down and watch more Glee and I’m not allowed to watch Glee until I’m finished writing. And I have to be flossing my teeth while I watch. No watching Glee as an alternative to despair. I only get to watch Glee as an alternative to flossing my teeth without musical entertainment.