I'm in hell right now

I seriously have problems. I’m in hell right now. It’s such a simple, stupid hell, the kind of hell where nothing really bad is happening, I’m in no real danger, yet my anger—my reaction—towards every little thing, makes me want to throw and break something big, something that will make a crash, something that will make a loud sound. Fuck! Anything. I just want this emotion out of me.

I write. I paint. I laugh with friends. Sometimes, I cry (by myself, or with friends.) I try to find the lesson in everything. Before I find the lesson, I talk shit about how hard the getting-to-the-lesson is. I complain. That’s how I deal with life. That’s what I do. I’ll do something better when I get better at life.

If I don’t get to see my friends often enough, then I have my writing, or my painting, or my crying. If I don’t feel like crying, then I have my painting, or my writing, or my laughing with friends.

This brings me to this evening’s hell. I just wanted to paint. I’d done my laundry for the first time in a month. I’d cleaned my entire house. I’d convinced myself I was over last Friday night (last Friday, I had another emotional blow out and found myself C-shaped on my couch. Surprise, surprise, my special talent has found me another toxic work environment that has a way of stressing me out so much I seem to need to cry to express my grief. I could go into all of that now, the work bull shit, but I’ll eventually find a way to complain about that later, so let me stay on task) and all I wanted to do was to fucking paint.

But I can’t paint. What’s the problem? Seems simple enough. Get out your oil paints, put the plastic drop cloth over the carpet in your new apartment, open the new fan you bought to blow out the turpentine fumes, put a light on it all, get out the jar to hold your brushes, get the turp jar with the spiral coil thingy to wash each brush as you go and mix color, get your gloves, so all the turps and oils don’t seep into your skin, figure out where to put the wet painting when it’s done, so you, the klutz, won’t knock into it, knocking it over, or won’t brush up against it and get it on your clothes once you clean up.

Oh, and change into your painting clothes (because you are a fucking single-minded-in-the-zone-maniac when you paint and everything around you will get destroyed if you can’t get to your color, your paint, your clean brush, the new brush, the tube with the white, the black, or the other color fast enough, to mix it up enough, or to get it on the canvas fast enough… GET it, NOW! Get into your weird zone where you become an ambidextrous freak and hold paint brushes in your mouth, chase color with your mind, feel need from the brush strokes, and catch up to the happy accident, and fix it, and then move into a new explosion of color as the canvas tells you now what it needs and marries color with accident).

WAIT! Fuck off everything! You still don’t have your studio set up in your new apartment yet, even though your new apartment isn’t that new. You’ve been in another toxic work swirl and have been neglecting your own creative needs. You haven’t figured out, logistically, how it’s supposed to work in this new place.

Remember what happened the last time you felt the urge to paint, a couple months ago? You couldn’t find a drop cloth. The sun was going down and the only natural light was in the kitchen so you found yourself hovering over the kitchen sink and cleaning out a marinara jar from the trash can for your turpentine because the lid to your spiral coil jar thingy, which is where you usually put your turps, which is your usual best friend to cleaning your brushes during the process, was sealed shut and you were fucked, because you would have had to drive a half of an hour to the art store to get a new one.

Is it all coming back to you now? How you got paint all over the kitchen counter. How you started to get high on the turpentine fumes because you didn’t have the proper ventilation and didn’t open enough windows, and your new place doesn’t have the air flow of the last place and you didn’t already have it all set up to protect you against maniac you.

Do you remember crying to Ava because your crazy couldn’t understand how everything wasn’t all ready set up like at your old place, your old home of almost 14 years, the home those fucking butt head neighbors pushed you out of. (Separation anxiety much?) Remember how Ava told you that you’d figure it out?

Yet, you still haven’t. It’s still a mystery how it will logistically work in this new place and you feel like an ass for having such a small problem.

Oh, how about the clean up? Was it fucking miserable trying to figure out where to put all your shit away, back, or where better it should go, since it doesn’t have a spot yet, none of it, not like the studio you’d set up in the old place where it was all open, all there, all ready to leave a painting wet, the chemicals undisturbed. Shelves, time, lights, work, effort, thinking, planning, years, convenience, had all gone into your old small studio space off your old small kitchen in the old place and this space had handed you your crazy inspiration on a convenience train. You could paint within less than two minutes of inspiration.

Now, 20 minutes later, inspiration is wearing thin and you are in a fucking logistical hell.

Before, that last time, when you were painting in the kitchen, was it smart to bring turpentine into the kitchen and place it right next to the dishes you eat off of, the counter you cut food on, and pretty close to the stove? (Just curious.)

Move on.

How’d tonight work out? Was it fun trying to hunt down the plastic gloves you never found? How about that fan you bought three weeks ago for ventilation (you were finally thinking ahead and trying to get things set up). It was good, yeah, with this fan that you left in the package and had to cut out of the cardboard box to set up in a makeshift spot in the middle of the living room? That was pretty cool, eh, how it rendered itself useless when you turned it up to the highest speed, the speed it would take to blow the turp fumes out, and it fell backwards on your carpet because it’s own velocity was to much to keep itself balanced on your living room carpet? What a hoot. Oh, how you didn’t laugh.

What about trying to get the right lighting? That was way more fun. After you were already pissed off about trying to find your oil pastels, because getting out all your oil paints seemed like a bigger hell then the inspiration of the need for immediate creation, that was fan-fucking-tastic that you didn’t remember your oil paint reserves were low and you only have the obnoxious colors left, the ones that would only be perfect for painting a 1980s puked-up disco. Go purple and peach.

It was also pretty cool how that new light you purchased, the one you bought to replace that old one you loved so much (the one that got broken in your move to Colorado), which was the kind of light that is just for these sort of occasions (late night painting in the dark), started flickering, making you feel like you were about to have a seizure. It would have seemed silly that the new light bulb in that new light would shatter, as you tried to tighten it, and keep it from flickering, but, still, it did.

It broke into enough pieces to get into your wine, get onto your couch, get all over your carpet, and speckle on the black drop cloth, where you can’t make out the difference between the broken bulb pieces and the flecks of white paint amongst the other paint flecks that have collected over the years, so you can’t deny the pleasure in that, shattered light bulb every where.

All this before you even got to paint (pastel) even one stroke of paint? Way to go! No, really. Good job. You really got right to your painting, didn’t you. You had you some fun. And you didn’t even cry, or call a friend? You only wanted to purposely break more things and wish you had a casino wall to throw a high ball glass against? (No wonder you’re writing.)

It would seem even sillier that the bulb to your other other light, the clamp one, the one that made it through three moves and that’s worked in some of your worst need-some-damn-light pinches, worked fine just yesterday but was all now, tonight, suddenly burned out when that light was supposed to be your last please-I-fucking-need-some-light-on-my-sitch back up. (Good times.)

Painting, it seems simple enough, doesn’t it? Inspiration hits, and away you go. But, if you are me, if you are one part organized and one part crazed, and if you need some sort of order for your spontaneity, for your inspiration, if you are intensely visual and you require everything you need to create to be in view, to be available, to be ready, to be there in the instant you think—you need—so that your crazed but inspired process is not interrupted by the little things, like breaking lights, potential paint, turpentine, and/or chemical spills on the carpet, or by falling fans, misplaced tools (brushes, paints, gloves, etc.), changing clothes, then the process isn’t that simple.

When I paint, sometimes I don’t know where I go. It’s just me. I could care less about shit I knock over, what I’ve eaten, need to eat, if I’ve eaten, what time it is, and so on… The canvas, the paint, and the process they take over, if order is there before inspiration hits.

If I don’t have order before inspiration hits, then I can’t tell the canvas what I am thinking and I can’t hear what the canvas is telling me back. I don’t get to have the conversation inspiration allows me. Instead, all I can hear is the chaos of what I’m wrestling with in order to attempt to get to my inspiration. The breaking lights, the misplaced drop cloths, the stupid shit not there, the other shit not here, the more shit not working or not in the right place, those logistics, being fucked up… to me, that’s hell. Total HELL. It feels like I am going crazy because I can not get at what makes me sane.

Problem is, I just need to figure out how to set up a studio space in this new place. I like this place. I do. It’s not like the fucking condo bat cave with the weird lingering energy. Not at all.

This place feels comfortable to me. I even made a carpet snow angel the day I found this place with Samantha’s help. After my toxic day at work is done, this place says, “Come in. You’re home. Breathe. You’ll be fine.” But, since I don’t have a studio space yet, since I can’t figure out which will be better, carving out a chunk out of the living room, where the carpet is, where I’ll so fuck the carpet up, or taking out the whole not-really-a-dining room space, where I now do my writing, I will probably remain in hell. (No. I’ll get it. I just don’t got it yet. Nesting takes time.)

Again, a small problem in the scheme. But, in my stupid crazy, it’s a problem. In the scheme of things, I’m an idiot. I have people in my life who are sick, who are fighting with their health to just reach a balance where getting through a day is hell.

Finding the right climate is paramount.

By the way, my parents are moving to a warmer climate to ensure my dad’s continued health and to ensure my mother’s ability to make it, just in case, and another friend is having some incredibly difficult health issues and these are two other cans I can’t open because it’s easier to be shallow and hate my can’t-paint-hell then to remind myself of what an asshole I am for my trivial hell.

Yeah, pulling the normal card on this one. It’s easier to be pissed at my life than to feel how scared I am and worried for the people I love (mentioned and not). So, I have to consol myself. I might be a little crazy. But, I can only forgive myself for letting these things get to me since hell is relative.

Texting is dangerous

Remember Ross, the Greek God, Matthew McConaughey and Jeff Bridge’s baby, the sexy-ass brilliant pot-savant friend? The guy I’d known for years before every inch of my sexual being, which hadn’t been laid in forever, had succumbed and found its way into bed with? Still struggling to recall him? Go back to my Friday, February 12, 2010 post, “I’m Not Getting Laid Because I am Boring,” then check back.

Why bring up Ross? More than a couple of reasons. The first reason is that I must admit that I am realizing I might be an angry little bitch. As I went back to figure out which post Ross was in, so I could see what I wrote, I was a little taken back with the way I’d introduced Ross, a man who has one of the most beautiful hearts I’ve ever known. A man who I said I had nothing left to learn from, but, now, years later, I continue to think of with great affection and cherish how much we both learned from our time together.

In that long ago post, I talked so much about how lost Ross must have been in order to want to cheat on his girlfriend to be with me, but if I’m honest, I never admitted that I was lost enough then to need Ross to want to be with me. Fuck. Even if I wasn’t lost and probably way more damaged then Ross at the time, there’s just something about Ross. So much of what we shared together had so much more to do with where we were both trying to grow as individuals and very little to do with where either of us had fallen short up to that point. Plus, Ross made me laugh the kind of spontaneous laughter which makes soda pop come out of your nose. Very few men have done that.

Ross made me feel beautiful. Not because he chose to be with me while he was with someone else, but because every time I was with Ross I could see the best parts of me through his eyes. Over a year ago, I’d called Ross. It was tough to make the call, because, based on the sexual chemistry we’d always shared and the deepened friendship which had grown from our time together, I knew I’d be playing with fire and asking Ross to play with fire, too, but a dear friend of mine had a child in trouble and I knew Ross had some specific medical contacts which could help my friend’s child’s issue. (Again, I’m being vague on my friend’s child’s issue to keep specific people’s personal details out.)

When Ross called me back, he gave me the information I needed for my friend. Then, we quickly and easily fell into our laughter and caught up on each other’s lives. By the end of the call, Ross and I were in agreement. We’d acknowledged our mutual interest in hoping the best for each other in life and vowed from time to time we’d check in with each other to reinforce the friendship we’d built.

Anyway, the last reason I bring up Ross is to also admit how shitty my memory is. For starters, I can’t remember if I’ve blogged about Ross since the February 12, 2010 post. And, aside from the request from him for a contact for my friend’s child, I also can’t remember the last time I contacted Ross. But, apparently, it was not so long ago. On my way to getting a hold of one of my other friend’s whose name also starts with an “R” I must have been going through my numbers in my cell phone, I probably saw his name, I probably wondered how he was, I probably wondered if he was single now (not in a relationship with the last other girlfriend he was with since last we talked), and, with equal parts hope-you’re-doing-well and what’s-your-status, I must have sent him a text, left him a voice mail, or something, hoping me and my old friend and lover could lean on each other again like we did once before, but I don’t remember.

 But, he did. Because now, however many weeks or months later, he’s responded. Today, I got this text from him: "How are you? Hope all is well. Sorry bout the non reply, but I’m living with my girlfriend and you are a very dangerous person for me to be around, with lots of fond memories. I am sure you are as gorgeous and brilliant as ever. Love Ross."

I wanted to text Ross back, and say, “Ross, I’m an idiot. I honestly can’t remember contacting you. I’ve been so stressed and stupid lately, that I really I don’t know if I texted you or left you a message, or what, and I don’t remember when, so it’s a surprise to hear from you. So, thanks for getting back to me, but since I didn’t remember I contacted you, I wasn’t worried about the non reply. By the way, I could not agree more that we’re both dangerous for each other. Whether you know it or not, you are far more dangerous to me than I am to you. When I was with you, you made me forget me. You made me forget the hard in life because of how we laughed. I’ve always feared that seeing you again would have the same affect on me. You see, I’ve not been happy in life where work is concerned, so in the last two-ish years, I’ve gone from being so stressed by work that I couldn’t eat and lost 20 pounds to being only slightly less stressed and gaining back that 20 pounds plus 12 more.

Yes, Ross, my dear, sexy friend, it is true. While I’d love more than anything to go figure out again if we’re going to do it before or after we go out to some concert, or great dinner, and then settle on doing it before and after, I’m not fit for naked yoga in anyone’s living room right now. Worse truth be told, those smiling eyes you used to know now have the stress of the last two years bagging and blue-circling under them which tell the story of how the last two years have aged me more than the last decade and those years have been even less kind to my body. And, while I have had my dear family and just as dear friends to lean on, I’ve not found it in me to ask a lover or the likes to be another shoulder to lean on. Which means I’m not dating. I keep wanting to. I keep meaning to. But I keep not dating.

So, hearing from you, from what seems like out of the blue, even if it is obviously out of my own miserable memory failing me, I’m at more risk than you. But, that’s an awful lot to reply in a text.

Thus, I settled on sending the following reply: “Glad to hear you are in committed relationship. So, no worries on non reply. Don’t worry. I’m not dangerous any more. Still brilliant as ever (LOL) but stress, life, and time are fucking with the gorgeous part. Ha ha. Best to you, always! Take care. Stay true to your commitments.” Of course, he’ll know that I meant my gorgeous insides are melting as opposed to me being arrogant about my looks, but he’ll appreciate the humor. And, I know that’s a dangerous message to have sent him, but I’m not afraid to admit that getting a text from Ross today, on a day where my heart was beating out of my chest from work stress, was… Well, it was a reminder of how much Ross and I meant to each other for the time we were together.

We’d crossed paths for so many lessons and I’d be an ass not to acknowledge the affect one of my fellow travelers has had on me. I will always be just as fond of Ross as he is of me. Oh, and I'd be an extra asshole not to admit that I am an asshole and I'd love to send another text to Ross, saying, "BTW, hearing from you made my day," just to keep the connection open, because the asshole in me wants to play with fire, but everything in me that supports girl power, and not being the bitch who tempts a man, can't send that text. So, I won't. But, I wouldn't be human if I didn't admit I want to.

At least I can count

Sometimes work can be a four-letter word. (Okay, most of the time it is.) But, thank goodness for seven-letter words: friends. Wayne W. Dyer: 'Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.' Shit. I just tried to change. It didn't work. Work is still a four-letter word. But, at least I have seven-letter words to get me though it. :>)

Is it getting hard?

Is it getting hard yet? That’s a great question, isn’t it? Do you have an answer? Have you rubbed up against the truth long enough to start asking yourself, “Why is this getting harder instead of easier?”

If we’re on the right path, if we’re living a life of purpose, living the life we were meant to live, is that when it starts getting easier? I hope so. I also hope that I’m on my way, that I’ve finally figured out that the reason it seems to be getting harder and harder to fake my way through the corporate life is because I was never meant for it.

Is it all going to start getting easier? P-p-please, Universe! Guide us all. And, if you can, give me a little extra attention. Not because I’m special, but because, apparently, I’m special.

Who’n the fuck else takes as long as I have towards making a life change? Okay, most of us take a bit of time. Change is scary. But is everyone else as fit to be tied as I am? A little help? Tether me now before I’m lost. Seriously, I think I’ve moved away from being a panicky scaredy cat to an angry little ball of hiss.

Is that an improvement?

BTW, turns out I won’t have to share a room with my co-worker (manager?) when I travel for work next week. I’m still being asked to give up four nights of my life in a hotel room after bringing approximately 10 people up to speed on how their jobs have changed when many more of their counter parts have just been canned, but that’s pretty much the point I am making. If I don’t feel excited about what I am being asked to do, if this choice is not of my making, if this feels difficult instead of easy, there’s a chance I’m not on the right path.

Universe? Are you listening? If you are, could you also help me navigate the financial blow as I transition? Oh, and if there are any additional tips you could throw my way on how to get reasonable private healthcare when you have some pre-existing conditions and a less than desirable family health history, that’d be super.

Let's play a new game...

Instead of me giving my opinion, I am going to pose some questions and let you decide how you feel about what I’ve asked. I am not very confident that I can follow through with my side of this game, because I am prone to letting it rip, but let’s see how I do.

Is it appropriate for any representative of a company to ask an employee, who is being asked to travel on behalf of that company, if they would like their own hotel room or if they would like to share a hotel room with a fellow work associate? Have you decided? Yes? No? Okay, how about a little more? Is it appropriate for an employee to share a hotel room with their manager?

Have you tried to break this down further, deciding if the gender of the associate and/or the manager makes a difference? Have you decided why that would make a difference? Let me ask another question. Should a company ask an employee to sleep, shit, or shower in the same room as someone they work with? True, a lot of people shit at work, but do they change into their pajamas, undress, or snore in the same room as someone they work with? Does it still matter what the gender of that someone they work with is?

Have I been asked if I want to share a room with someone I report to while traveling? What do you think? How do I feel about that? What do you think?

Alright, I’m done.

No. I’m not. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? If you idiots can’t afford for me to get my own room, regardless of associate, reporting structure or gender, then maybe you shouldn’t ask me to travel. In what world is sharing a hotel room with someone you work with appropriate? Hasn’t anyone ever heard of the term HR nightmare?

Beyond the potential HR ramifications, am I the only one who knows the term work/life balance? Boundaries, anyone? What’s scary is that the person who asked me probably didn’t have a clue of how inappropriate the question was. This brings me back to my point. Why was the person who asked if I wanted to share a hotel room or wanted my own room put in that position to ask me in the first place?

How in the hell can a company that has somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 employees be so fucking stupid?

One last question. Has the world gone mad?

Leaning into it

A friend once said to me, "We all need to feel needed. You need to allow yourself to need others the way they need you. When you trust another person enough to share, it makes them feel good. They feel needed."

Wow. That’s a lot of need. Question: How many of us can actually say we’re better at trusting someone else than being trusted by them? Anyone? I’m betting not so many of us. It’s fucking scary to count on others.

We know it feels good to the people we lean on that we’ve entrusted them with a piece of our struggle. We know that no matter how small our need, when we break through our own walls we help to tear down the defenses of those we’ve called upon. As such, we are doing that relationship a service. To trust someone, and to reciprocate that trust, it's one of the most beautiful parts of our human experience. Still, we don’t lean into others willingly or easily, do we?

If you are anything like me, sometimes it's not about the basic need, or about sharing too much. It’s not even about whether or not you trust the person you have shared with and/or leaned on. Sometimes, it's about questioning how we feel about what we've shared. Sometimes, we haven't totally worked it out in our own heads yet. So, sometimes, if/when we put something out there, or sometimes, if/when we lean on someone else, before we've thought it through, we feel like we've exposed our self.

Put simply: We feel like we've opened up our innards for surgery without anesthesia. The tricky part is, we often don't know we weren't ready to leap, to lean, or to share, until after we've cut ourselves open and then think, "Fuck. I'm kinda bleeding here."

But, that's the thing. Life is life. It is a leap. That's the beauty.

And, we can do it alone, never sharing or leaning, never leaping forward or letting others in. We can do our best to make sure we never bruise or bleed. Or, we can do it together, sharing, leaning, loving, learning, and sometimes falling, but always getting back up because we have each other to lend a hand.

If this post seems like in any way I am appreciating the friends, the family, in my life again, and relishing in the fact that I have the kind of love in my life, the kind of people, who help me remember I don't have to do it alone, then I'm okay with being transparent.

If I didn't have people to lean on, I'd look for a way to stick a drill in my ear.

No, really, this isn't me.

What ever made me think I could continue to work in a corporate environment? How the hell have I survived this long, for the last 17 years, without throwing myself under a bus?

Man, I wanted to be so sweet in my last blog, and I wanted to be such a good girl in this one, but I can’t. Because when I say this to the VP, “One of the ways that I remain effective and available to the people I support is to make sure that they know that I am not management. That said, it’s imperative that I not communicate decisions and information which management should directly communicate to their staff, such as providing the details of why some employees have been fired and why many others have left the company,” and the VP translates that into telling someone else, “She’s right. She needs to remain close to the support so she can spy on them and tell us what they do wrong,” I can’t help but to blog about it.

My gangster wants to play. I want to tell the VP, “Listen, bitch, you’re making me want to bounce even more. But you’re doing me a favor, yo! Reminding me, I wasn’t made for this fool’s game. But check it. My fists are up. I ain’t gonna show you my back and tuck my mug in the corner like I’ve done before with other power trippers. You’re play’n me? You can’t play a player.”

I’d also like to know how I could think (even for a second) that I could get comfortable enough to forget that it’s not my destiny to work for someone else. It’s wickedly obvious that the universe is done tapping me on the shoulder. The last two years have been the smack in the face I needed. I’m not supposed to be comfortable.

I’m supposed to be afraid, every day, that if I don’t take action, if I don’t keep moving forward and doing whatever it takes to work it out with my art, with my writing, with making money from my creativity, I’m going to die. Either corporate life will be the death of me or I will kill myself. I will find my own fucking bus and figure out a way to drive over myself whilst I’m throwing myself at my bus.

I have a new prayer. Please God, Universe, Gus, Frank, Sally, Wendy, whoever, help me find the energy to make my dreams come true. Please guide me to be an inspiration, to be the story that worked, rather than the person who complained too much and did too little. NO, REALLY, please help me fight the propensity to be a part of my own problem. I want to be my solution.

Please let me be fabulous and not the stinky (complaining) kid no one wants to sit next to.