Propping Chairs Under Doorknobs: The "Real" Job

Propping Chairs Under Doorknobs: The "Real" Job: Remember how I said this wouldn't become a wedding blog? Well, it didn't! It just died. This blog was like Old Yeller, if Old Yeller...

The "Real" Job

Remember how I said this wouldn't become a wedding blog? Well, it didn't! It just died. This blog was like Old Yeller, if Old Yeller could talk and saw "Nah, man. I'm not a wedding blog! You don't have to take me out back. I thought we was tight!"

I've  never read Old Yeller.

But, like a zombie beagle ascending from the grave, here we are again. Just me, my thoughts on things, and you--dedicated reader, who somehow found this blog while trying to look up a vegan cookie recipe on Pinterest.

I love how when artists talk about people who have left the industry, it's like they are talking about someone who has developed a terminal disease. "Remember that actress who was in Blacklight Theatre's production of  The Crucible and that commercial for Shop Rite with the ethnically ambiguous family? I heard she went into marketing for a tech start-up..." Pause here for dramatic effect, tsks, and silent head shaking and crossing ourselves. 

We're not sad, not really. In fact, we're probably trying to hide our feeling of slight superiority, because goddamn it, we're still here! Still holdin' on! They may have a steady paycheck and health insurance, but we have our passion and dedication! It doesn't even matter to us if they like their new jobs. They couldn't possibly, right? I mean, they're total sell-outs. That look of contentment and pleasant demeanor? They probably just ate a donut.

Right before I began freelancing as an actor, an actor-friend of mine (meaning she was a friend and an actor, not that she was someone I hired to act as my friend. Though for the record, I'm not above that.) wished me luck, and said "I just haven't figured out how to make it work." She meant life as an artist. "What's to figure out?" I thought, "You get a job at Starbucks, you audition your butt off, you get a show as often as you can, and you live out your days sipping coffee and advising young artists on how to be artists while sounding  a lot like Dame Maggie Smith or Dame Judi Dench. Either way, you should be British, by then. Like, honorarily British, for all your theatrical knowledge."

 The next year, while working seven jobs, an accountant-friend of mine (see above explanation. And I hope he would do my taxes for free.), said "You're an actor? That's awesome. I really admire people who pursue what they love." I was living off of my savings, my parents were paying for my health insurance, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd actually been in a show. I did not feel admirable.

My question is, must it always be one or the other? Must we be sitting in an attic somewhere, wearing pants with patches on them, clutching an old afghan around our shoulders to keep out the chill, while staring out at the cold streets of the city, and eating stale bread to create our art? Must we feel empty inside and fall asleep in online meetings where there are literally buttons you press to express your emotions (press the clap button to praise someone! press the lol button for the laughing smiley face!) and take our only joy from our lunch breaks to have a "successful" career and support our families? Yesterday, I heard someone say, "At work? Or in real life?" What!? Most people work 40 hours a week, on a slow week. That's a quarter of your life--that's not real? Do you go into the Matrix from 9-5 everyday?

Where is the balance? Regarding my career, someone recently said "Kristen used to be an actress, but I think she's giving that up." Why? Because I have a steady job? Do these things have to be mutually exclusive? I laughed it off, of course, because I'm an American, and we laugh at things that make us uncomfortable. But I wanted to shout out "Never!" and then surf into a crushing wave like Patrick Swayze at the end of point break. Let's all just stop worrying so much about what other people decide to do and agree that we don't have to be one or the other. We don't have to be an artist and be poor, we don't have to be office employees and dislike our work, we don't have to be mothers and not be leaders in our career fields, we don't have to be fathers and not be equal contributors in the home. I guess we don't really have to be anything.

"Illusions, Dad. You don't have time for my Illusions!"

This blog has suffered some serious neglect, reader. This is partially due to the wedding process, which has replaced my blog writing time with trying to convince DJs not to play "Let's get ready to rumble" as our reception entrance song and contemplating throwing the Macy's reception gun into a display of Stuben glass because you can't decide which brand of mixing bowl you want. I haven't been completely slacking, though. Part of this time was spent inching my way through the book "How to Create a Magical Relationship" by Ariel and Shya Kane.

Now, you may think this sounds like a corny self-help book, written by two people with total hippy names. And you would be right. This book was really more of an advertisement for the couple's weekend relationship seminars, and less of an actual guide for healthy relationship. This humorless couple spends 300 pages patting themselves on the back and taking things too seriously (there's even a part where they borderline freak out about the phrase "better half." Let's take a joke, shall we, hippies?)  Basically, the theme of the book is "We are awesome. You'll never be as awesome as us, but pay $300 for our seminars and you can certainly try."

What should I have expected? The book has the word "magic" in the title. I should've prepared for some fluffy, rainbow BS. Still, there has to be something good to extract from this reading experience. One of the things that I actually did take from the book was that most fights between people come from a person's innate need to be right. The Kane's propose that the need to be "right" keeps us from being "alive." Stay with me, skeptics. Have you ever had a fight with your partner, where you said "Oranges are the best fruit!" and your partner has said, "Well, I've always loved blueberries, but now that you mention it, I agree with you. Oranges are the best fruit, and I apologize for thinking otherwise." No? That's because that interaction doesn't exist. What really happens is you say "Oranges are the best fruit!" Your partner says "Blueberries are the best fruit, and you never listen to my opinion." Then, you say "Never listen to your opinion! Are you kidding me?" And World War III has begun.

How do we get over this obsession with being right? Growing up, I had a Tapanga Laurence-type pension for always being the one to raise my hand in class. It made me SUPER popular in junior high, I'll tell you that.   How do we let go, especially in the heat of the moment, when you know you are SO right and the other person is SO wrong? Most of the self-help books have said that if you want good relationships, you cannot concentrate on changing other people, but on changing your reaction to them. They suggest saying to yourself "What did I do to contribute to the problem?" This is difficult, because at least my gut reaction in the heat of the moment is "Nothing! I am the queen of everything and you are all pawns!" But if you really search for it, you can probably talk yourself down from your anger and into better state, where you can accept the fact that you don't need to convince someone else that you're right.

So, that's what I took from this one. I can tell you though, my next self-help book won't sound like a text book from Hogwarts.

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way  it does not exist," Friedrich Nietzsche.

Getting off the bus

I decided to take some advice from the book Decisions, Decisions. This book says that we often make decisions in avoidance of what we don't want instead of in the direction of what we do want. For example, we decide not to join a gym because we don't want to pay the money, look silly in front of others , or fail to meet our fitness goals. Instead, we should think of what we do want (to be healthier) and make a decision towards that (join the gym). I started Community College four years ago, because I needed a new direction and a goal to work on. After four years, I realized that I didn't feel the "match and fit" in the career I was pursuing. By "match and fit", I mean the feeling you get when you know you are in the career or on the right path. You may remember me complaining that I felt like I was on the wrong bus. Well, I left that career path and managed to stop the bus. While scary, I feel like it was the right decision for me. I don't feel panicked or stuck anymore.

 However, now that I have hopped off the bus, I'm not sure where I am. Please imagine me staring a faded public transit map in the middle of nowhere. Maybe a tumbleweed passes by. I don't know, it's your imagination. So now, while I'm not headed the wrong way anymore, I'm not sure which direction I'm supposed to be headed, or what bus, train, or dirigible I'm supposed to hop on to get there.

I began contemplating grad school today. I know, how very late-20's of me, right? Still, I felt like it was decision in the direction of what I want--mainly, all theatre, all the time! Then, there come the creeping doubts. How long will it take? How much will it cost? What if I can't get a teaching job when I done? What if I end up on the wrong bus again? Or back at this depot with my faded map and my tumbleweed?



If someone knows where I am and would like to give me a ride to where I'm going, I'd sure appreciate it.

"A musician must make his music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to ultimately be at peace with himself."
- Abraham Maslow

Help me help you help me

There's a new mascara called "Club Crusher." I think this would have been a great mascara for my early twenties, but what about now? What do we call the mascara for us ladies in our late twenties? Here's a few titles I've thought up:

The "It's hard to go out on Friday nighter"

The "All my friends are getting married, having kids, or moving away-er"

The "Really late 401K starter"

The "The three beer hangover"

The "It's too loud in Hollister"

I should also mention that my mascara would never run or need to be reapplied. It would just stay on there forever or until my eyelashes fall out and I have to get permanent false ones like J-Woww. Hers only come off when she gets punched in the face.

With all the angst and uncertainty we 20 year olds enjoy, it's maybe not surprising that I love self-help literature. Here's a list of the recent reads and old favorites.

1. He's Just Not That Into You and It's Called a Break-Up Cuz It's Broken by Greg Behrendt. I know, I  know. Cliche, right? Why don't I just dig into a tub of Ben and Jerry's and pop in a Sex and the City Marathon. Because I don't own the box set and I'm trying to stay fit for the wedding, otherwise don't think I wouldn't. Anyway, you need these books in your life to survive the dating world. They were pretty much my bibles. You can't have two bibles, you? Well, they were like the Old and New Testament then.

2. The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman: I should let you all know that I read a lot of books on relationships, but not because my fiance and I don't get along. On the contrary, I believe in learning more about communicating while things are going well, so that you can prevent conflict and feel closer to your partner.

2. Communication Miracles for Couples by Jonathan Robinson. See above.

3.  The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. See my previous blogs

4. Decisions, Decisions by Dr. Randy Green.

5.  Magical Relationships by Ariel and Shya Kane.

Most of these I have read to improve my decision making and communication skills, with varying degrees of success. What I found interesting, was that a lot of these books came back to the idea of mindfulness. We can only make decisions when we are at a state of readiness. Annoying habits do not bother us when we do not judge these habits as good or bad. I noticed how helpful mindfulness was when I was working on my happiness project, but I find it ridiculously hard to keep up.  Why stay in the present when in my day dreams I'm a broadway star with six pack abs  who never spills food on herself when she eats? Too often, our dreams turn to worries. Or imaginary fights that never happened or will happen, but we have them in our heads that way we'll have the perfect comeback when the sociology teacher doesn't want to give us credit for our last community college class.

So, mindfulness. That's the goal. Listening, feeling, seeing, and experiencing each moment instead of dreaming about Huey Lewis and the News playing at our wedding or what I should have said to susie what's-her-face in fifth grade when she threw me in the mud.

"“Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.”- Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Photo by http://www.loudoun.k12.va.us/roundhill

This will NOT become a wedding blog

Many of you readers connect to this blog through Facebook, which is awesome sauce, so you probably know that I got engaged over Christmas. I couldn't think of a better time to work on improving my personal relationships, because as it turns out, weddings have a lot to do with people. In some of the communication books I have been reading, they discuss the importance of listening, appreciating, and accepting. I have always struggled with listening. I once read a therapists analysis of me as a child, and basically they said I spent the entire class period staring out the window and sighing to myself. I like that I developed a general sense of ennui early in life. That usually takes people years to achieve. I do, however, remember devising ways to squeeze out the bathroom window and into the ditch by the school so I could catch tadpoles. What was I saying? Oh yeah, bad at listening. So, let's start with appreciation. Here is a one-word(ish) list of things I appreciate about people.

I appreciate:

My mother's loyalty.
My father's even-temper.
My fiance's empathy.
My sister's knowledge.
My brother's work ethic.
My sister-in-laws self-confidence.
My best friend's street-smarts.
My other best friend's maturity.
My grandmothers' dignity
My grandfather's smile
My other grandmother's wit.

That's just a short list, but it's a good start towards not taking people for granted.

I've also been thinking about what this blog is. Is it an advice column? Lord, no. Is it a happiness project? Not really? Is it the infrequent musings of a total spaz? Most definitely. There is a theme developing, and that is Self-Help Books.

I'm a total sucker for self-help, and here's why. I have a strong belief that everyone wants to be reassured that they are not nuts. Self-help books show you not only that your are not alone in your crazy ways, but that there are people out there who are crazier than you! I don't want this to become a blog book report, where I discuss the underlying themes in A Wrinkle in Time (that author was on shrooms, I am sure) or A Bridge to Terabithia (which taught me at a young age that life is going to be really sad), but an experiment and review. I'll read different books, try some of their suggestions, and report back to you on if it worked, or if it got me fired for turning my fourth-floor accounting office into a yoga studio or something.

"Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well."~Voltaire

Pic by:
http://synaptoman.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/self-help-for-dummies-chapter-3/

You on low self-esteem

Even though I had a whopping three blogs, I'm going to end the chapter on self-esteem. Not that I've improved my self-esteem, oh no. All I've managed to this month is get a haircut and cook up some beauty products from whatever I haven't snacked into oblivion in my kitchen.

Counselors say that we have something called a "self-esteem tank". When it is too low, we become irritable and tend to look for someone to blame for it. It's the classic "bully" scenario. Bully's are self-conscious, so they pick on other people to feel better and refill their self-esteem tank. It's also a reason why many couples fight. One person feels insecure, blames their partner, and through argues in attempt to lower their self-esteem to their level.

This next section of my little experiment here is going to be on relationships. I would like to focus on all of my relationships, boyfriend, family, friend, and work relationships. This, of course, is going to be a tall order, and possibly longer than my other segments.

Many of you are thinking, "Listen, Dr. Philamina, is any of this little red ribbon science fair project working?" And I'd say, "Shut up, they were yellow ribbons, and they said 'Honorable Mention', so there." Then, I'd tell you this: The everyday stress and not being able to do what I love is still frustrating and discouraging. I still end up in tears once a week, and write in my journal using only the mascara that runs down my cheeks and makes the poems of despair that only my soul knows. Sorry, I wanted to make that as emo as possible. Should I have added a raven of emptiness? No, save it. Next time. Next time.

ANYWAY, what has changed is my interactions with people. I don't want to throw a stapler across the room when someone interrupts my work anymore. I don't sigh as loudly as possible and roll my eyes when someone goes on and on in class. I don't make my emails to community college employees outwardly hostile. Just subtext-ually so. So, that's a start! I think having an overall positive look towards the human race is definitely a step in the right direction. Let's see if we can continue that this section.

Simplicity :(
Energy :(
Mindfulness :(
Passion:(
Self-Esteem :(
Listen :/
Appreciate :/
Accept :(

“Life is too short to waste any amount of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the first place, if they had better things going on in their lives, they wouldn't have the time to sit around and talk about you. What's important to me is not others' opinions of me, but what's important to me is my opinion of myself.”~C. Joybell C

Original Photo by http://paulwilkinson.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/mark-sayers-on-low-fuel-tank-faith/