On Motivation

Some writers suffer from writer’s block. I suffer from motivation block.

Motivation, more than inspiration, is a slippery business for me. I’m never really lacking in inspiration (I think being fairly easy to please has something to do with that. That and a crappy memory which means I can watch something I love over and over and still experience the same tremors of surprise and joy that I did the first time, or at least shades of them. Bruce Willis has been dead this whole time? You guys, this is CRAZY). I enjoy the work of others more than a lot of people and so it’s fairly easy to be inspired.  I find motivation far more difficult to grasp with two hands.

The grand, overarching motivation of “This is what I want to do” sometimes just isn’t enough. The carrot of “If I succeed in this, I can quit my other jobs and just focus on this” isn’t TANGIBLE enough to be effective. It could take years for this to come true. It might not ever happen- I might always have other jobs that I enjoy less, that frustrate me, to pay the bills and keep me independent.  I’ve come to terms with that. I have to or I will go insane.

The “I need to escape my real life with creative work” motivation worked in high school and a bit in college but, truthfully, my adult life is pretty great- I make all the rules here. I have full control over where I live and who I spend my time with. I eat great food, I have an awesome dog, I’m close to my family, I have awesome friends, I get to travel, Parks and Recreation was not canceled- not really a lot to escape right now. Which is GOOD. I don’t think it should be necessary to move into a dungeon and flagellate myself just so I have a reason to write. Some writers may disagree (which is why we all drink whiskey and moan a lot, in case you were wondering) but I’m not going to miserable, not even for “art.”  I refuse.

I bring this up now because motivation for finishing Book 2 had escaped me completely. I’ve been swallowed up by my real life- deadlines, personal stuff, friend stuff, other projects- and I let it slip away. For a month. A MONTH. When I saw the date of my last batch of notes, I swallowed hard. Not good. Really not good. I pledged to get back to work because I found that last date so disheartening. And in the course of going back to work, I made a little discovery:

Monday- I woke up early and got back to work. And I felt good. Really good. Better than I had in weeks. But I didn’t realize how good until Tuesday.

Tuesday- my least favorite day of the week, I found myself unable to get out of bed. And I went to day job without having written at all- I was a surly mess all day, a tangled mess of anxiety and ick.

This morning, I slapped the alarm when it went off at 5:20am and I had the same old internal debate I always have: Should I? I should. But what if? And then I could? But no. That won’t work. But? No. But if? No. I have to? I have to. If I don’t do it this morning, I won’t get it done.  So I got up. It never feels like a small victory, not ever. It feels like I just won a marathon, winning that debate.  This morning, I won. I worked. It felt good. I feel good now, as I type this.

And then it struck me- my motivation. I found it and it’s so simple, I feel like I just got smacked in the face with a frying pan. It’s the same one you use to eat well, to go to the gym, to call your mother first, to pay your bills on time. When I do this, I feel good. When I don’t, I feel bad.  That’s it.

Suddenly, my motivation isn’t intangible at all- it’s the simplest answer to the most basic of questions: Do you want to feel good or bad? And I have always, always been good at answering that question.

When I don’t work in the morning, you can see it on my face the rest of the day. You hear it in my voice. I am heavier on those days, weightier, and I look it. What’s worse is that I feel that heaviness everywhere but especially on my heart. It’s bigger than guilt or shame, more complex and uneven and more… awful. I am failing myself on those days- pure and simple. And there is a cost, an actual, physical cost.

And there is just simply no excuse good enough, or big enough, for feeling that way. None. Not when I can help it. Not when the solution is staring me in the face at 5:20 in the morning, thin red lights blinking against blue.

Kate

Kate is graduating from med school today. We’ve been friends for 15 years and she’s spent almost all of those 15 years in the pursuit of this one goal. College. Grad school. Med school. Next is her residency and then a fellowship and then we’re home free. I say we because it’s been 15 years, you guys. If you think I’m facing her big moment and not feeling an insane amount of pride and a rush of love that is threatening to swallow the states of Illinois AND Louisiana, you crazy.

Congrats, Kate girl. May I suggest this as your new ringtone?

Here’s What Happened

Liz and Adam got married. I went to New Orleans. Work is nuts (in a good way? But not really. And yet I am still that unemployed girl from 2008 who feels grateful to just have a job so there we are- stress intertwined with guilt). Book No. 2 has stalled and it’s making me grind my teeth. The problem with being accountable for yourself is that when things start to go off the rails, there is only one person to blame. Hi, hello.

Last night I went to the gym and ran at full speed (my full speed is the average runner’s jog by the way. Me:  I’m flying. Machine: You’re really not.) because I needed it. It felt really, really good which is unusual because unlike 3/4ths of my family, I find almost no pleasure in exercise. I find it dull and the only way for it to not be dull, it seems, is for you to physically push yourself to places of extreme exhaustion and mental hardship and then be proud that you survived? I can’t even write that sentence with any conviction. I much prefer a 5 mile walk in a beautiful place to a 2 mile run during which my heart feels like it’s about to burst out of my chest. A 5 mile walk where there is a promise of cheese at the end. And yet last night I wanted to run so I ran.

The wedding was a lot of fun, with so many people I love in one place that I was constantly overwhelmed, and emotional on a number of levels- it’s never not going to be emotional when someone you love like a sister takes a step like that. It might even be more emotional because this is a person you have chosen (in a long friendship, you choose multiple times too) to love like a sister, which means your presence at that moment in time feels even more like a weird, random gift. I wasn’t expecting the fall out after the wedding but, in typical fashion, my mother was. She called me on Tuesday afterwards and asked me if I was all right. I oddly wasn’t, though the melancholy wasn’t something I could put my finger on. She said, “Sometimes you feel sad after something like this is over. Let down but you don’t really know why.”

If ever you wondered why my new book is about a family of highly intuitive females…

New Orleans was… perfect. Kate is unlike my other friends in that she and I are exactly alike in ways that I do not share with my other pals. I am much quieter with her than I am with others and, god, it’s so nice. Some people just make you feel so peaceful. The whole weekend was chock full of things I wanted to do, in a place where I wanted to be and with someone whose company I had deeply missed over the last two years since I’d seen her. I came home and instead of feeling tired, I felt very still inside. If anyone is thinking of taking a spa vacation, they should go visit a quiet, lovely friend instead. And they should go to a place where the food is so good, they’ll make themselves sick trying to eat it all. Not that I did that or anything.

The new blog is humming, with a few minor hiccups. Tastespotting keeps rejecting our submissions for some reason and I still can’t determine if my Food/Fiction idea was a smart one or one of those ideas that sound really good but in practice just doesn’t work. We’ll see. The posts are super fun to write, which is an excellent start. Also, Nicole and I made this dessert yesterday during lunch? Sweet Jesus on a cracker it was delicious. Dorie knows what she’s doing, you guys.

I have no good ending to this post.

Some Kitchen Stories (new blog!)

This is a new project I’ve been working on with my buddy/co-worker Nicole. She’s an amazing photographer and designer (see: header of this blog) and has been sweet enough to provide me with some of her work in the past- first as art for my kitchen and then photos of recipes I used in the cookbook I made for my mom and a few friends last Christmas.

She’s always looking for new food subjects to photograph and since she lives so close to the office, we came up with an idea:

- Meet at her apartment once or twice a week.

- Cook something delicious.

- She takes the pictures.

- I write something up and post them.

I knew immediately that I didn’t want to go the traditional route of food blogging- mostly because there are so many people out there who already do it far better than I ever could (just check out our Sources/Inspiration list on the new blog to find them). I wanted to do something fun- something that played more to my strengths just like Nicole did with hers. Her boyfriend Mike, an amazing illustrator, was generous enough to do the header and the background for us. Nicole and Mike have been working on the design for a while but it’s ready! It’s finally ready!

Each post is written as an excerpt of a story. It’s kind of like flipping through a novel and reading a scene. The recipe is slipped into the scene somewhere- sometimes it’ll be the focus, other times it will just be in the background.

And… I’m super excited about this- there will be one recurring storyline. Every once in a while, we’ll check back in on “Smitty & The Girl” to find out what’s the latest in a small (fictional) Cliffwood diner named Smitty’s. Missed a few episodes? Just click on “Smitty & The Girl” in the main nav to get caught up!

If we got the recipe from a blog, we’ll cite the blog and talk a little bit about why you should read that blog (because love begets love) as well as our own.

We hope you like it! Visit http://somekitchenstories.com/.

The strangest times

This morning I was on the train, reading a magazine when I came over an article about an Italian grandmother. I read this line, “Alda peeling fresh figs from her own trees for dessert” and stopped.

All I could see for a few seconds was my own grandmother’s hands at her kitchen table in Brooklyn, peeling an orange and discarding the peel. I could see her hands so clearly- I think I’d know them anywhere.

Sadness can just hit you at the strangest times. I wanted to call my mother or text her, wanted to tell her what I just saw, what I felt. I experienced that tug-of-war between wanting her to know what had happened, that I thought of her mother and missed her so much in the span of a few short seconds that the ache hasn’t really gone away all morning, and not wanting to make her sad, not wishing to push my sadness onto her if she woke up today feeling better than she did yesterday and the day before that.

Well, that was. Well.

I had all these lofty PLANS. I kept making excuses. Here is a short list of things I needed/wanted to do before I starting selling my novel online:

- Finish Book 2

- Pay my brother to design a cover for it

- Pay my brother more money to design a super sweet map of the amusement park that would be displayed on the first two pages of the book (because it is a known fact that books that come with maps are awesome)

- Change everything about it. Revise everything until it no longer resembles the 400 page behemoth you see before you.

- Die and wait for a relative to mournfully publish it for me when I am no longer alive to feel the shame of its failure and rejection by the masses

And then today. Today is one of Those Days. I woke up and there was snow on the ground. I walked to the bus and it was cold and blustery with a rain/snow combination that, come LATE APRIL, would make Pollyanna herself cut a bitch.  Work has been a torrent of frustration. My dietary lunch was sad and unfulfilling. I watched one of the Twilight movies last night. I’ve been carrying around the news that someone I love is sick again (this list of complaints is obviously not written in order of importance btw, though those Twilight movies are really, really, really bad).

I was sitting here at my desk, grinding my teeth into a fine, delicious powder that I could then re-eat (I checked Weight Watchers and stress-teeth-powder is only 2 points. SCORE!), when my boss came up and left a package on my desk.

Book.

Hello, my book.

There are few things that can match this feeling, seeing something you created out of thin air! with your mind grapes! in actual, tangible form. Sure, it’s not as REAL and PRETTY as a book in Barnes & Noble but holy shit, I am in love with it. I keep dropping my hand to touch it while I’m working, afraid it might run away, like when I got my Mini Cooper in LA and I kept turning around to stare at it once I’d leave it parked somewhere, like if I turned around really fast, it would disappear in a red-and-white puff of smoke.

I put this picture up on Facebook and then I just… I don’t know what happened. I logged back into Lulu, stuck a price on the book and made it public. MADE IT PUBLIC. What’s happening here? How did this? What? My book, in its raw, ugly-cover form, is now available for PURCHASE. You can BUY IT. Or download it! For a mere $2! And read it at work while you’re pretending to read official work documents! Right? Isn’t that crazy? It’s CRAZY.

I’m still going to edit it- I have a pile of notes from some lovely, wonderful readers and my book club is going to read it, ugh, and hopefully I’ll have even more actionable notes for a Second Edition. God, I love all these WORDS. I LOVE THEM.

The Secret Ones is available for purchase here. Makes for a lovely housewarming gift.

The Secret Ones

Sheila Monroe just left her son at an amusement park. On purpose. But don’t worry-  she has her reasons…

Paperback: $14.99

Henrietta Lacks

So, we finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (aka “White People Are The Worst“) for book club- it’s an astounding book.  Really. Every human being should read it. It just reinforced how little I actually know about… well, everything.

There are giant markers in the book- about race, about science, about the progress of medicine but what’s stayed with me is the mentality of medical researchers. The brilliant, forward-thinking medical researchers and about that moment when a researcher decides that the Results justify the Means.

I remember when I was a volunteer at Cedar Sinai Hospital, standing in the maternity ward. The nurses run the maternity ward, were buzzing around, all business and I remember a med student (or maybe a resident) standing there one day. He looked epically young, a Doogie Howser sort, I remember thinking, but what struck me most was his attitude- the way he talked to the nurses. I wasn’t a big fan of the nurses there- they were coarse and unfriendly with the volunteers (not that I expected too much but sometimes there was hostility simmering toward us that I found a little baffling) but this guy’s attitude toward them made me want to rally them up and lead a charge (something that involved throwing a lot of empty syringes at his head- the plan was unformed at best). The size of his ego was incredible to me. He spoke to them as if they were idiots and he was in charge (when I knew for a fact that he wasn’t).

Obviously, to lump that guy in with the hordes of smart, dedicated and wonderful doctors out there would be ludicrous. I guess I’m just saying that when you’re in a very small class of people with this level of specialized knowledge, how much ego do you need to see it through and make a difference- and how much more do you need to inject unknowing patients with cancer cells to test their reactions without their knowledge- because the advancement of cancer research is Very Important and because those patients, according to you, could not be trusted to separate the words “injecting you with cancer cells” and the actual negligible risks of getting cancer as a result. Though you would never inject yourself with those cells because, as you say when you’re interviewed by an award-winning science journalist, you’re just far too important to the cause.

 

 

Bikram Yoga Explained in Real Time

On train to studio: This is so exciting! I love going to an exercise class in the city! I feel like a plucky single-girl heroine of a middling to awful romantic comedy. Yay! Oops, I just hit a homeless man with my yoga mat. Dammit.

Arriving at studio: WHOA THAT IS THE SMELL OF FEET. FEET AND ASS SMELL JUST HIT ME IN THE FACE. Can’t….gasp….breathe.

Signed in, on way to locker room: FEET FEET FEET FEET FEET. Oh God, I’m sweating already and I’m not even in the room yet. Stupid sweaty, Italian genes. I’m built for pasta and siestas, not hot-box torture sessions.

Locker room: BOOBS BOOBS BOOBS Naked Conversation BOOBS

Into room to claim a spot with yoga mat, towel and water: Must get near open window. FEET SMELL INTENSIFIED.

Laying down on mat and waiting for class to begin: This isn’t… so… bad…. unconscious for 10 minutes….

Instructor walks in: Must… stand… up.

10 minutes in: This is horrible. Why did I come back here? My arms are so tired. I can’t keep them up over my head this long. No, YOU push, Donagey!

20 minutes in: Yeah, I know, lady. I’m trying to do the move but my hands are dripping with sweat- is there some kind of magic way to hold your foot for 30 seconds without your hands springing apart because of gravity and LOGIC? If there is, please, share it with me.

21.5 minutes: Ugh. I hate this move. I hate this move the most.

22 minutes: Yesssss, I rock at this move. It doesn’t really make sense because I’m heavier than all you skinny, sopping wet bitches but I can stand on one leg and you can’t- HELL YEAH I CAN. Omg, the girl next to me just toppled over. She looks like a praying mantis in a windstorm. Ha ha ha. Oh crap, my laughing at her is making me shake. Hold steady, steady- kick and KICK. I can totally do yoga. I’m a genius. An athletic genius.

24 minutes: Hold it. Hoooooolddddd, ugh I hate this so much. How can they keep their feet planted? I am sweating everywhere, foot keeps slipping. Do these people have scale-like grips on their body or something?

30 minutes: They’re kidding right? Balance on one leg and then sit down, all without my hands? Can a human being do this? This isn’t exercise, this is bragging while sweating. Oh wait, I guess that’s just “exercising.”

35 minutes: YES. Lay down. I love this. Ow, ow, ow except my back hurts. My back really, really hurts. “Let the floor hold you” my ass. How about let the floor pay $150 a month for waterboarding sessions at a place that smells like a pedicurist’s hell cave.

40 minutes: Yes. Yes. Thank you for proving that this is called “Wind Removing Pose” for a reason, Hairy Dude in the Back. May I recommend renaming it “Chorus of Organic Farts Pose”?

45 minutes: “Put my hands under my body while I’m face down on my stomach.” My Catholic school would not be happy about this pose.

55 minutes: KICK MY FEET UP WHERE? This is crazy. Oh my god, I have no strength whatsover. I am the weakest human being alive. I am a mouse’s sneeze.

60 minutes: Airplane. Wheeeeeee- uggggghhhh this hurts. And-plop- back down, yes, let’s just stay here. And sleep- dammit! I don’t want to get up, nooooo.

65 minutes: I’m going to throw up.

70 minutes: I’m definitely going to throw up. I’m not even really DOING anything and it feels like a samurai just slashed my stomach with his sword. He smells like feet. Am I crying? I can’t tell if I’m crying or sweating? Are tears coming out of my arms?

75 minutes: I did not throw up. It’s a miracle. A yoga miracle. “Eventually, you’ll be able to put your forehead to your toes.” I’ll just schedule that rib-removing surgery for next week, good to know.

82 minutes: Don’t pretend like you invented this move. I’ve been doing this move since before you were born.

85 minutes: I cannot believe I’ve been in this room for this long. I could’ve seen a movie instead of doing this. A Matthew McConghey movie would be less painful than this.

90 minutes: This exhale-only breathing is stupid. Whatever, I’ll just fake it. If she says something to me, I will punch her with my sweaty fist. And then I’ll fall on her crying. It won’t be pretty for anybody.

91 minutes: IT’S OVER. I’M ALIVE.

92 minutes: I’M ALIVE. FEET.

POPSICLES. This is seriously the most delicious thing I have ever

eaten. GIVE ME ALL THE POPSICLES. COLORS. I CAN SEE

COLORS.

Locker Room: BOOBS WHO CARES WE SURVIVED BOOBS FEET BOOBS

Aaaaaand scene.

 

No Kidding

Despite spending more than double what it cost to make Diary of a Wimpy Kid just to advertise Sucker Punch, the ladies somewhat predictably passed on the film. Audiences at Zach Snyder’s movie were nearly two-thirds male (64 percent) and decidedly young (three-fourths were under 35). Worse, the crowd was heavy on comic-book aficionados, rather than regular folks, on whom studio films live and die. Via Vulture

Zach, honey- representing that weird overlap between comic book nerd AND a regular lady in the desirable movie-going demographic, let me save you some trouble for next time- when girls imagine themselves as kick-ass warriors, they don’t really imagine that they’re dressed like baby-faced, school-girl themed stripper with weaponry.

 

Higher and Higher

Far too many of my friends are sad these days- either from loneliness or job woes or job stress or a combination of all three. Since I’m on a buzz this morning from starting My Life in France (seriously, every morning should have the soundtrack of Julia Child’s voice attached to it), can I just say IT’S FRIDAY, Y’ALL and leave you with this:

This video is so weird. But the sentiment stands.