A Very Jobless Resolution

Each year, I consider “New Year's resolutions” and usually start by deciding whether or not this year I think they're bullshit. Some years, I go with it. I make a short passable list of crap that I probably, actually, should do anyway--have a photo exhibit, learn French once and for all, apply to graduate school.

But let's face it--what's so great about January 1st and why must this be the time to make a change? It's an easy starting point, the beginning of a year, to not only compare ourselves to ourselves one year ago, but also to compare ourselves to each other. We can say, "I did this in 2008," ask "what did YOU do this year?", and then rejoice with eminence and nostalgia when the ball drops again. It's silly and I won't do it.

And then a thought occurred to me--a desperate hope of reason that might be behind this crackpot tradition: If we“improve ourselves" in unison at the new year... maybe... as everyone begins to kick righteous ass at the same time... in the end (it's possible)... we can create this magnificent change as a whole, en mass--a movement, a revolution!... and all be kinder, for example. World peace is within our grasp and I've been too stubborn and foolish to accept it. Ya, well... It's a nice thought and I wish it would happen, people, but let's get real.

In truth, I am in a constant state of “self-improvement.” Endless self-improvement. I demand a regular reflective moment, an annual thrashing plus a few lazy days of self-judgment along the way to dutifully keep myself in check. I have to keep my ego in check, my serious spending in check, my forward movement and goal fluidity in check. Normally, this depressing moment of truth is saved for my birthday, since the New Year has nothing to do with me and I like everything to have to do with ME.

Birthdays in my journal are plagued with the hideous ups and downs of the last year and the expectant, fluttering cherubs of hope and possibility for the coming months. I make an effort to report back to these pages and make note of any advancements, however unoften they're met with success. (Ahem... the examples I gave above were on my list from almost 2 years ago...)

But I've had a few breakthroughs, a few years with one or two substantial goals struck from the list like the tramps they are. A few years ago, I traveled abroad alone for the first time. Before that, I wrote my first television script for broadcast. Another year, I moved across the country. Last year, I swam in the ocean again and quit my job to finally make my own films.

I also did a few things I never expected to do but remembered as milestones in retrospect, like learning the most rudimentary, passable Italian and going to dinner completely alone... a new tradition. I’ve made friends with some very cool and unexpected people, and I've visited places I never thought I had an interest in, like Nicaragua and Sicily.

In fact, it's pretty goddamn fun to write down fleeting fantasies that spring into my gullible mind. Especially the ones that are at first glance completely ridiculous but also from a cruel source of credibility. A look back a year later will usually prove these were the real enchiladas. These triumphs confirm that my soul has not completely wimped-out to the schemes of my brain. I've also found the best stuff takes more than a year to materialize, which is fine, I'm slow, I can live with that.

That being said, I have a few thing I think I can“resolve" to change this year. For the sake of you readers (and for my current jobless situation that needs as many checks as possible,) I'll do it now and you can call them New Year's resolutions or whatever. My birthday hasn't exactly given me the results I've wanted, anyway.

My Current Resolutions:

I want to be nicer. Or something like that. I want to be a little less hostile, anyway...to the poor saps who start up conversations with me at bars and or at the grocery store, or the homeless guy who always waits outside of CVS asking for credit cards, for example. To cheery, commercial holidays and non-recyclers. To things I don't like, basically, and can't bear to deny the satisfaction of letting my big mouth have a say. To networking, crowded happy hours and meeting people. To making passing eye contact with a guy and having the retard think I'm saying,“I want you.” Really, now!

I want to be more open with my friends, let them in more and feel confident enough to let out more of my crazy insides. I want to give them more hugs. I want to tell them stories. Do you know that in the past I've been told,“I like you better when you're drunk"? Yeah, well, that's so not true! Anyway... there's nothing wrong knowing you're most you at the Big Hunt... it's a cool place.

I want to buy less stuff. Seriously, this is a problem. THINGS are costly, they pollute the world... they bog down my free nature and impressionable spirit! This also makes sense, since I don't have money. My insatiable thirst for all things pretty and hip may inevitably prove this daunting. But I'm so dead-set on making a dent in the amount of consumption happening in this world, people, that I'll do it looking like a worn-out floozy if I have to. I hope I have your support.

I want learn how to surf and play the guitar.

I want to obsess more about music. I want to shoot a documentary about day workers who wait at street corners, and their families. I want to live in Cuba. I want to learn Arabic instead of French.

I want to conserve more, waste less, and protest lousy politics.

I want to meditate every day and find some serious tranquility.

I want to stay jobless and make a living. I want to get into grad school. I want to finish my short documentary by July and have a rough draft of a feature film by December.

I think--THINK--I want to dive out of an airplane.

I want to know more about people, suck them in, read their minds and express camaraderie.

I want to read this post a year from now and realized how much I've changed, and still unbelievably find myself the same, as always. Strangely, it's how I'll know I'm on the right track.

A day before New Years, drunk, in the back of a cab. I wondered, "What will the new year bring?" My cab buddy and I hoped it would include a lot of Beirut.

Between Here and There

An excerpt from my holiday season, at the National Christmas Tree fiasco on the Mall: “Do you see the size of those 'yule logs' burning in the fire pit, they must be redwoods!”

At the moment, I'm dealing with holiday coma. It's a mixture of having painfully over eaten, the mightiest stress hangover EVER and red-and-green blitzed-out delirium. This is my pathetic way of excusing the lack of posts in the past month, though I've said it all before.

The truth is, I've written at least two drafts of posts that were each triggered in reaction to severe holiday stress, and well, each time it's come to 'publish post', I haven't been able to bring myself to press the orange button for the terror of their sheer hostility. I imagined happy Christmas people dressed in Christmas tree pins and wearing Santa clause hats reading my posts and wishing I was never born.

This is not my favorite time of the year, so instead of scandalizing you with my rants and frustrations, I will simply keep my mouth shut and hope you had a nice holiday.

Maybe once in the safety zone of a new year, when all things cheery are forgotten, I'll publish my posts and we can, in retrospect, realize we all dislike the holidays, in joyous togetherness.

Back "home"?

the cat and I would take our breakfast outside today.

it's funny... how one person can live very different lives, depending on the surroundings. I have two - three, if you count this blog - and maybe more.

gliding into your new/old self again after a brief adjustment period - in those desperate moments when current friends, possessions and cityscapes are missed - can be confusing as hell and feel right simultaneously.

where do I belong? can I miss and hate a place at the same time?

I took a trip home this week--a term split between two cities (well, one is actually more a town than a city). I travel a full day to get to my parent's house, out in the middle of nowhere.

I say "middle of nowhere" in comparative terms. compared to where I live now, compared to my other home-city, because middle of nowhere can accurately and quickly communicate this to you people who live in cities, like me. My family wouldn't think it's middle of nowhere and I never thought so growing up; and I didn't feel that while I was there this week, loving every minute of it.

what does this mean? I have no freaking idea. just something I was thinking about, now that I'm back.

The Dilema: Do I get a manicure?

I really need a manicure.

Budgeting my every cent, glamor is being forced into the back seat of an already cheap ride. My nails look like broken glass, my cuticles are shredded and my hands feel like sand paper. If you only knew the things I've had to do lately, good lord, you would be horrified. Mortified. A woman's nails can tell a lot about her goings-on and mine say I've been slummin'.

A few of you out there, I dare say MEN, may incredulously gasp at my little admittance here. After all, how can a girl without a job can be so concerned with something as trivial as a manicure? When it comes to things like money spent on female beauty - even from your girl with a steady - you'd rather not know how much is spent to put the package together, am I right?

But there are a few things to understand, if you'll allow me to say so. First of all, you love it. You love how pretty a girl looks when everything is neat and tidy and primped. You feel she is not only beautiful but organized and successful. It's nice for you, admit it. But it's not really about you. It's about how it makes us feel. Conviction can be painted on with Shanghai Nights nail polish and matching Channel lipstick. A thrilling nerve can come from taming the unruly hair day by crafting and sculpting every follicle, like an artist with malleable clay, into exactly what we want. Charging into the dark recesses of life... applying for a new job or pitching an idea... you'd be amazed what a supreme manicure can do to even the battlefield. It's more a way of adapting to one's surroundings, like a gecko who must hide from his predator, than an indulgence in many cases, actually, okay? Well, so long as you have the dough.

Moving on to the pressing matter is: what to do now that I don't have the dough. In this state, my argument above wanes into an almost ridiculous perspective, considering the exchange rate for beauty is about a week's worth of lunch. I accepted this tumultuous path of joblessness to develop my freakin' craft and by reminding myself that I am goddamn tough enough to totally handle the lapse of a steady paycheck. These little things I adore - manicures, shoes, lip gloss - are easy to give up. They don't matter.

Do they?

I encounter the philosophical question everyone considers but can't accept or admit. Can money can make me happy?

It can be argued that, although money in itself does not make a person happy, it's what a person uses and sometimes what a person needs to get to their places of HAPPINESS. I no doubt need money to get to my places of happiness: traveling, filming, writing... wearing Wang and Choo.

The existentialist says that money doesn't exist any more than a manicure exists, but that we have made it what it is, and what it's worth. Is the worth of a manicure really what I have made it out to be? The experience of traveling can be worth the "money"... but colored nails?

In other words, my manicure dreams are bullshit.

My attachment is metaphysical, an association, nothing more than a chemical endorphin sent to my puny, needy brain. I can get over it at any point if I chose to and accept it because I can live without the brief, one-week pleasure it provides.

And so I will. For a while, anyways....

Because I don't mean to say that beautification doesn't have it's place in my world. Unless I become a Buddhist monk and brilliantly chose to live entirely outside of society, then the vice of creating an outside shell to help me move through this crazy world is valid. I think so, anyway. Not everyone believes this, of course, but it's who I am, it's in my bones. I have to accept my fate.

Another fate has moved higher up the list for now, that's all.