Where a Quote From Ernest Hemingway Blows Me Away

"Never mistake motion for action."  Ernest Hemingway  

Wow.  Here's what I wrote on my Facebook for 100 Days in Bed...  

"Whoa... this is me, I think I will blog about it tonight. I AM moving but am I getting enough done? No. The chaos (distracting myself with ridiculous errands and list making, etc.) serves me because I am in "big decision making" time and I'm scared. But if I'm frantically busy with nonsense then I won't HAVE to concentrate the "real" and "necessary." So... I will put up a post later about this. Anyone feel the same?

Do you distract yourself with busy work as a way to push the bigger decisions out of your mind?"

Part 2

So here I am.  Very aware that in order not to focus on things that would be BIG LIFE DECISIONS, I distract myself with things are not as equally as important in the moment.  I want to go live in New York for a bit of time to see if that is where I would like to live.

The idea was to be there by Sept. 15.  Then I got a big meeting.  The date September 13.  Hmmm.  I mean, I can't put off meetings that are about my lively hood but I wonder... what will come up next?  Another meeting, another series of meetings?  In getting ready for these meetings, I often do 40 - 60 hours of preparation to pitch a show.  

But it began to dawn on me, I could, by that time, be very deep into writing the script and have that handed out.  Is that the better decision?  Will I make that decision?  When?

Because I know what's going to come, "Can we move the meeting?"  Or "We like it, can you come back the 1st of October and we'll discuss it at length?"

For me, writing is my love and that's what I want to do.  But I don't love this city.  I'm quite bored with it.  Bored sounds so arrogant... "This city bores me."  No... it's just that I KNOW BETTER now.  There is a bigger life out there for me than just sitting around and talking about TV show ratings, what the Networks are "looking for."

Now, I've tried to infuse my life with things that are greater than me.  Donating blood and getting tested for being a donor for a bone marrow transplant.  Then I got involved with promoting an organization that helps kids with severe burns go to camp.  I'm "Love Bombing" people.  Have you heard of that?  Check out their website.

So I am trying to counteract the things I don't like about this city by doing things that I think separate me from LA.

But still, I'm off track... I know what decision I have to make - "motion is not action."   I did not know that.   Man, have I been fooling myself.  Redoing my bedroom and living room and taking pics in hope someone will sublet STILL does not get me to New York.  It's all this movement "Move the couch this way, should I get more plants, you this couch makes the living room look so much bigger..."

It's all meaningless until I say, "I'm going" and if meetings come up, I fly back for them.

My sister is in New York.  I'm certain that she has flown to Vegas and bet against me.  She knows I put work first, myself second.  She listens to my "plans" and just says, "yeah" and "that's nice."  She doesn't think I'm coming.

I WANT TO.  I just have to stop the nonsense and the distractions and MAKE A REALLY DECISION WITH A REAL DATE.  

Fear, change, out of my element, leaving my friends, finding out that moving to a new city is still not the answer, confusion, excitement, don't want to have any regrets...

 

Have any of you made big life changing decisions?  How was it?  Is all my hand wringing normal?  What do you do when you need to make a big decision?  xoxoxo

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Where a Quote From Ernest Hemingway Blows Me Away

Blog Dangerously

I was surprised when I read through all the comments from the post "What Do You Want From Me?" and there were so many comments from people weighing whether or not it would be better to blog anonymously.

Most were finding that, when you put your name on your blog, depending on who knows about it, you might not have the same freedom to scream, cry, rant, be petty, freak out or confess to eating a whole box of Ding Dongs after laying into a coworker, friend, mother or boyfriend.

It seemed a lot of you were "editing" yourselves as you wrote. It becomes convenient to be the happy, best, most upbeat version of yourself if you know someone is reading. How can they judge you when your life is so happy/perfect/awesome/neat/tidy/not full of Ding Dongs?

But with that, certainly, comes the price of falling farther and farther away from the person you truly are, and more importantly, farther away from your purpose to blog.

Someone got all up in my Twitter last week about being "authentic" and that she thought I would find a deeper honesty if I didn't blog anonymously. And I was like, "What the fuck, are you kidding me"? She's kidding me, right? Because I could not be more honest. (Okay, I could be. But right now, I could not be more honest.) (I'm at Level 9 honesty, BTW, that's pretty frickin' good.)

There seems to be a judgement over what is or isn't authentic or brave or real. Here's the thing and I mean it. If this girl wants to put her name to her blog and she can write with 100% honesty, do it. That's great. But she might also be being honest about her favorite recipes or her new weight loss program (not that those aren't great topics to blog about). But those subjects don't have collateral damage.

I blog about super private things. It is not feasible for me to be a comedy writer and go to a meeting at a Network and then be completely thrown when an executive asks about this blog which his assistant found when they Googled my name and as my ears start to tighten, and the sweat profusely comes and all I can think about is mother-sickness-grief-kidney transplant-breakups-murder-holy shit how am I going to take this blazer back to Bloomingdales now that I'm sweating like a mother fucker-court cases-funerals.

Meeting bombed. Agent angry. Career doomed. Bills not paid. Dogs not fed. Me, eaten by dogs in the middle of the night.

That's not going to be good for anybody.

More importantly, I have a family. Let's say, I put my name to this blog, how freely could I blog about my Mom's nervous breakdown? Because that makes guys wanna date you and people want to hire you. (And for new readers, let's be kind about my Mom, her breakdown was just after the trial for the person who killed my cousin.)

So forget how it would affect me - me, now being clearly BALLS out AUTHENTIC & REAL & BRAVE for putting my name on my blog, while my mother, a therapist, loses her job because she had a nervous breakdown.

Unemployed, boyfriend-less with family not speaking to me. Good times.

I started writing this blog for so many million reasons. It was really to have a stare down contest with the second year anniversary of my cousin's death and try to do that with not only some dignity and grace but with some god damn life in me. I was daring myself to... just DO MORE with my life than just feeling bad about it.

I feel sad that these are not conversations I felt like I could have with friends. I haven't really been raised to be very open or emotional with the people I love. And yes, I'd like to change all that, yadda yadda - but the fact is, when I was 12 and my Dad had months to live if he didn't get a heart transplant (he did), it was journaling that saved me. That I could write down every fear, worry, guilt, regret, sick to my stomach thought about what the outcome might be. Even as I was split up to live with another family for a year while this surgery happened, that journal, ANONYMOUS, kept me tethered, focused, free to purge and then walk away and have some remnants of a normal little girl life.

So that's why I blog anonymously. And it can still be dangerously, as one blogger put. It's not easy, either, just because it's anonymous. It's still a force not to move back, not to rewrite, not to reread. Just lay it down. Make it bare.

It's a personal choice. It's different for everyone. This just happens to be mine. Putting your emotions into words, to me, is the brave part... not putting your name to it.


I'd love to hear of you agree, disagree or if it's making you rethink changing your blog to one that's written anonymously.
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Blog Dangerously

You, Too, Can Learn From a Selfish Horny Loser

This post is totally long and worth it.

First of all, WOW, so many new readers. What I love even more is that so many of you are commenting. As, you know, it's very important because comments, to me, are better than getting on the scale and losing 2 pounds.

Today, we're talking about a topic you guys had a lot to say about: How To Get Out of A Rut.

I was reading this article in "Elle" magazine called "Danger Man" by Phillip Nobel about a man who walks out on his marriage, kids, his life. He committed to this life - the family life and then he realized, he didn't want it anymore.

"I was bored, Just bored... I had one thought and couldn't shake it: This isn't the life I was meant for."

It's kind of amazing how socially acceptable it is for men to create a certain life for themselves, marriage, kids, the house and cars and then walk out of it when it all becomes too much, to routine, too boring.

But then I got to thinking, maybe there's something we can learn about that.

It's incredibly selfish and self-centered to just leave and barring that a woman is going to be devastated, cry a lot and start drinking martinis at 3:00pm because her life has gone down the tubes... it's kind of admirable what men do.

Okay, now you hate me. Let me rephrase. Today, we're gonna learn a lesson from Selfish Horny Bastards, but in order to do that, we have to look at the action of walking away from a life that doesn't work for you.

So take the whole "walking out on his wife and kids" thing out of the equation, that's depressing. Just focus on the walking out on "High-functioning misery" as the author of the article calls it - that takes courage.

You wanted to know how to get out of your rut and I'm going to tell you:

YOU NEED TO BE BOLD. Bold like a Selfish Horny Loser.

Men are bold all the time. Why can't we be?

If I look at myself, I once was just too polite to walk out on a life I was not enjoying. I had worked so hard at a job I hated that I thought it was admirable to stay. The right thing. I had already invested so much time.

I don't want to start over.

I don't want to take a pay cut.

What if I can't hack it in a new job and then I get fired and END UP WITH NOTHING?

I imagined myself living in an over-turned dumpster in a back alley rooting around for leftover pizza in a trash can. (Everyone knows, of all trash food to eat, pizza is the most safe.)

THEN I GOT BOLD.

Okay, semi-bold. Semi-Bold is when life gives you a sign that this job ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY just isn't for you anymore. For me, that came in a scared-out-of-my-mind emergency room visit, my heart rate was at 230 BPM when it should be like 80 or 90.

The doctors thought I was on cocaine. I thought, "OMG, I wish my life was that glamorous! I want to be that girl!"

Then reality set in. "This job is killing me. I have to leave."

I had to face all those really scary questions that we all avoid by watching tv, surfing the internet or keeping so busy we can't possibly register a THOUGHT INTO OUR OWN HEAD.

My friend who is a writer, like a totally famous writer with shiny awards and stuff, said to me he gets the best ideas by just being silent right in the morning right when he wakes up. He said something smart like he always does that I should have written down but kind of forget.

But the idea was that your conscious, which we ignore all damn day, is kind of speaking to you in the wee hours, in a way we can't block out, so the most truest thoughts will come to you. (Just like they often do in your dreams).

So I did it. I did it a few times. It said:

"What happened to you? You wanted to be a writer but you're so damn afraid to really pursue it that you hide in a job you hate that is eventually going to kill you so you never have to risk having a career you could love. Yeah, good plan."

My conscious is such a sarcastic bitch.

So I was like that Selfish Horny Loser who, for my first time, didn't think about anyone else but me. And I did what I wanted to do. I walked out on my old life.

AND THEN I WAS SHOCKED BY WHAT HAPPENED.

I enrolled in a class at UCLA in sitcom writing. That teacher liked my work and tried to get me an agent. That didn't really work out but high praise from this former sitcom writer turned teacher got me to end the career that I hated and take a job as a writer's assistant.

It was a 70% pay cut. And no, I'm not kidding.

I was terrible at my job. I could only type with two fingers. The writers probably didn't love that I couldn't type their notes fast enough but when I was accepted into a prestigious writing program, people were really sweet to me. They listened to some of my ideas, I got an agent.

Two years later, I had my dream job. Because I was BOLD. Because like the author of that article, I was tired of living the life I wasn't meant for.

It's amazing the things we make sure we have in life. We whip out our credit cards and make sure we have rockin' clothes, big screen TVs, trips, cars, iPods. But we don't use that money to ensure our own happiness - like quitting a job we hate, taking another and supplementing the difference in pay with a zero percent credit card, a loan, etc.

This is just one part of getting out of a rut and we'll talk about more. I just thought a natural place to start is with a job because not only do we spend so much time there (70% of our waking day) but for a lot of us, okay for me, it defines a lot of our self-worth.

I'm not saying it's something to do today, I'm saying, it's time to lay in bed in the morning and let those thoughts come to you. If you can't, if it's too hard, it's journal time.

What do you want to do with the rest of your life?

What makes you happy?

How can you get there?

Are you ready to be bold?


This blog is dedicated to being mini-bold, semi-bold and gia-normously BOLD.

You, Too, Can Learn From a Selfish Horny Loser