this morning

My apartment is quiet. The sun is flooding in through the kitchen window and the entire world smells like coffee as far as I'm concerned. Every morning I get up and drag myself to the kitchen table. I make a pot of coffee. I crack open my journal. I stare out the window. I write. I reflect. I feel happy. It's my morning ritual. A big blue sky reaches gently down toward the hills, trees and stacks of houses that seem neither congested nor convoluted stand tall to meet it. Sunset Blvd hums below me. At the right angle I can see the Hollywood sign. Every morning I wake up, inhale some coffee, journal out the cluttered dreams and feelings that floated in with the daylight, and I feel thankful. I'd never found much in the way of rituals. I never imagined I'd be sitting here.

My life has always been haphazard, often dependent on someone else's schedule, dictated by someone else's desires. I went years without washing my face before bed because I usually fell asleep on the couch. I hadn't had a steady wake up time in my entire adult life. And now here I am sitting down in the same place at the same time every morning, feeling awake and centered. There's no one coaxing me back to bed. There's no one getting in the way of writing. I am alone and it feels amazing. It's in these early mornings that I realize that I probably can create the life I want. Hop to it, Lollipop.

waste

A few months ago I was strapped for cash. I had $20 to last me a week. I made returns, I sold my bike, I crawled on my hands and knees, scouring my car floor for loose change. I was desperate. I decided it was time to go through the bags in the back of the closet that had haunted for years. Do it. Confront it. You're going to want dinner tonight. I don't want to say that I horde clothing, but the other option is that I'd clearly mismanaged my money and I don't want to say that's the case either. Unfortunately, both are really the case. I pulled out the piles of future money and got to sorting. Some things were picked up in thrift stores, others picked up in my 8 years at Urban Outfitters, all with some story about when or why I'd decided to make any of this mine. A party, a date, a saturday. It made me feel good. I got a discount. It was free.  I figured a few things would sell, a lot would get overlooked, and the rest could get donated. Starving and satisfied with my progress, I schlepped my treasure trove of junk down Ventura Blvd, from one second-hand retailer to the next. I made $6. It was just enough to get me home. I cried my way through rush hour traffic on the 101, eyes fixed on the gas gauge. I was starving. I was pissed. I had poor taste.

Suffice to say I made it home. My best friend took me for a drink and filled up my gas tank. I made it through the week. I made it through lots of weeks. I got paid. I shoved the clothes back into the closet. I hung up the pieces that I couldn't part with and left them flapping there, a constant reminder of how far I'd strayed. Correction, how far I'd come. I felt like a failure, but I was still a far cry away from where I'd been less than a year ago. The funny thing about those three dresses up there is that I bought them in the company of two very important people in my life who were very dear to me and who hurt me in very deep ways. Those dresses remind me of them, of that time, and of who I was when those bright flowers and thigh-hiding lengths grabbed my heart and made my peasant dress dreams seem real. 

It was a Sunday morning and apparently I'd had it off, because I made it to the flea markets Rose Bowl and Hollywood (which I guess was actually pretty special for me at the time). I remember shaking my boyfriend awake before the sun had come up. I texted my roommate, our closest friend, to make sure she was getting up down the hall. I was ready. Do not waste this day. We left, we coffeed, we drove. I remember it was cold and sunny and the grounds were empty. I remember being stoned out of my mind on gold fish edibles at seven in the morning, roaming the grounds, chugging on an iced vanilla latte. I remember being so proud of our finds that we each layered up in our new treasures and made our other roommate take pictures of us in our living room. Her, me, him, arms around each other laughing at how ridiculous we looked. I remember deleting the picture after I found out they were hooking up, annoyed at how happy we'd been, how mistrusting I'd been, how dishonest they'd been. I've let go of a lot of things: hurt, anger, the other half of my vinyl collection that he failed to pack for me when I eventually came back to pick up my things, but not those dresses. I figured one day I'd finally do it and I'd chosen those dresses to take me there. I've just been waiting for the universe to propel me towards it.

Recently, another person very dear to my heart found his way back into my life. In the month that I've been wading in the tide pools of the jobless sea, he's the first person to ask me about my etsy shop day dream. I remembered then that it was one of the first things I'd really ever told him about myself. He remembered and I felt all at once touched that someone, anyone, he of all people, knew and cared enough to ask, but also ashamed that, seven months into an oddly passionate fling and two months removed from the falling out, and I was standing in the same place he had found me. So I did it. I've been sitting idle wondering what on earth I want to do. I've been ignoring it, but it's time to get my head out of my ass. I can't keep worrying about money or time or failures. That's who I was back then, back at the flea market, back at the apartment, back with them. That's not who I am anymore. The funny thing about thrifting is the ability to recall the day, the time, the place, the people that surrounds any given moment. Finding a memory in a piece of fabric is a magically human endeavor. Those three dresses have been whispering the same thing every day since I woke up that Sunday morning. Do not waste this day. Thanks for reminding me, dresses.

big questions, short answers

Today I bought a planner because I thought I had some idea of what I wanted to write about.  I was confident enough that planning ahead sounded not only logical, but rather delightful. So here I am. It's Monday, but what does that mean now that I am (f)unemployed? Does it mean anything? I feel like it should, and before I delve too deeply into the idea of time as a construct imposed on humanity by modern society to appease the masses, here's what I figure: the rest of the world is still functioning at it's normal frequency, people working, commuting, and picking up a pay check. I'm living on the outskirts, floating freeform through the minutes, hours, days, and there's nothing but outside pressures to enforce a normal daily life for me. It's a different world, the 9-5, and I admit it has been a long time since I lived that sort of lifestyle. Actually, I've never just had a 9-5-Monday-to-Friday-nights-weekends-and-holidays-off kind of life. Even when I had a "regular" job I was still putting in hours at a second job during nights and weekends. This is the longest gap in employment I've had since I was sixteen. From junior year of high school until March 17th of this year I had never not been employed. What do I do if I don't have work? What do I talk about? Complain about? What do I say when I go to a party and I don't know that many people and they don't know me and they ask me what I do?  What do I say? What could I say? And what about on dates? Do I tell them that I'm unemployed?  Do I say I was fired or that I'm just "in between jobs" or do I lie? And what does my lack of a job say about me? Does it even matter? Should it even mater? I have so many questions, but they all lead me to one thought: what do I want to say?

I understand it's a loaded and rather trite question to ask yourself when you're only 3 posts deep into an alarmingly self-indulgent blog, so let me set the scene. You're at a party. You're making jokes. You're feeling hot. You're charming the pants off of every be-speckled man with a beard and then some uninventive ass hat drops the "oh, so what do you do?" line and assaults the flow of conversation. Everyone goes around. Oh, I'm a waitress, but I'm really an actress. Oh, cool, I work in production, but I just wrote this really awesome short. We're filming this weekend.  Oh, me? I do really important work, watch me name drop. Really?  Do you know Name Bomb? You think the party gods have smiled upon you, that the circle has ignored you and for once you are eternally grateful. But then one kind and misguided soul notices that societal burn, making eye contact as she says it: What about you? Everyone waits for you to answer so that they can feign interest and go back to talking about themselves. You truly wish that they could. Your friends already know your plight. They know how, when, why it happened. They've heard the story. They don't need to hear it again. Strangers and the uninitiated don't need to hear it in the first place. If you say you're unemployed you get the "Oh. Well what do you want to do?" What are you looking for?" "What are you waiting for?" They spout off Pinterest-worthy mantras for finding your life's calling and ask open ended questions like you don't already wake up with a thousand questions marks screaming a hole in your sleepy brain every damn day. If you say that you're in between jobs people have the urge to ask you why you don't have a job. How come you aren't working? Are you tired? Are you sick? Are you lazy? Are you looking for something better? Are you just fucking bored of it all? And then you're back at "So if you could do anything in the whole wide world, what would you do?" and the whole conversation has been hijacked by the subject of you and your hopes and dreams and failures. It's all too much because you can't help but say "I just don't know."

Hello, everyone, I am clueless and lost and far too self-conscious to tell you all about what and when and why I want to do anything because I do not know. It's so very nice to meet you, too.

Let's be real, though. I don't like it anymore than when I had to say I was a retail manager (not that there is anything wrong with that. I think everyone should have to work at least a year in retail in order to understand how to be a conscious consumer, hard worker, and not an asshole. The world would be a better place). I just never liked how the words fell out of my mouth.  It made me frown and slump my shoulders. "I'm a retail manager. No big deal." I always capped it with some kind of irony, which was my way of stating that I well knew my job was lame, even though it really wasn't (discounts, flexible schedule, health benefits, vacation pay - it was a decent gig if not completely uninspiring to me). At least now that I'm "in between jobs" I report it with some kind of enthusiasm. There's a least some hope in my tone, though the hope is starting to wain as of late. Still, the fact remains that I was no more proud of myself when I had a job than I am now that I am without one. I don't want to admit that I place my self worth in any sort of title or career, but I do. It's hard not to define yourself by what you spend most of your time toiling over. Forty or more hours a week were dedicated to managing a team of people, a sales floor, a pretty successful department. I was always reluctant to define myself by those terms, but I did it anyway. I'm doing it now. That's my problem. In my quest to find a paycheck I am inadvertently searching for definition. What am I? Who am I? I don't even know. Part of me doesn't want to know.  What if I don't like it? What if I cant find it? What if I am nothing? It's all so daunting.

I've been paralyzed by these questions and my own lack of answers. I understand that I am more than a job, but the past month has seen little initiative on my part to reverse my joblessness. Alarm bells are beginning to sound. Things keep swirling in my head and the good news is that the same ideas keep resurfacing. I'm honing in on what exactly I want to do and how to do it, which is a relief, but it's not exactly feasible, not exactly realistic, and not exactly a fully-formed plan. I'll spare the details for now, but I'm going to indulge myself here and put it out into the universe. I want my own shop filled with beautiful vintage treasures picked with love from all around the country, nay, the world. I want to be my own boss, my own buyer, my own creative director, my own curator. I want to buy and sell and trade vintage clothing, vintage housewares, vintage splendor. I want to spend hours looking in dark corners and hidden spaces for dusty nostalgia. I want to pull thoughts and feelings and memories out of the lost and forgotten pages of american consumerism and resurrect, reignite, redefine those intangible notions.

What do I want to do?
Seek treasure.

Where do I want to go?
Everywhere.

What do I want to be?
A storyteller.

creationism

a celestial speck on the cusp of galactic presence

burst into existence

spew out the dust of oblivion
unite with the universe 
here I am

dream (a little dream of me)

The other night I had the worst nightmare I can remember.  Scarier than the reoccurring ones from my childhood in which my house was engulfed in flames and all the doors were somehow locked.  More frightening than being relentlessly chased by the Sesame Street's Yip Yips while navigating said reoccurring house fires. It even tops the dreams in which I find myself running around an unfamiliar campus, on a time crunch, during finals, to pass a class I was somehow unaware of for an entire semester in order to reclaim my college degree, even though I graduated nearly 7 years ago. I suppose it's helpful to mention that I am an avid and vivid dreamer. The moment my eyes shut my mind runs a muck. It's not uncommon for a dream to start with a talking snail, build up to a boxing match with a certain ex-friend, and end with a decision to either kill my zombie-bitten lover or love him as he is, even after he's turned (which usually means one last hot kiss and then it's bye bye and bang bang before day break). And although the above mentioned recounts probably speak more to my mistrusting and anxiety-ridden temperament than my wild imagination, the point is that unsettling dreams do not freak me out.

It started out so ordinarily, yet something was immediately amiss.  I have this dream house, for lack of a better term, which exists solely in - you guessed it - my dreams. It always comes into play at some point in the night no matter what kind of hallucinations my brain decides to spit out.  It's old and worn, warm and familiar, but ever so heavy, haunted by the sick and hidden sorrows that lay in the depths of my psyche, hovering in the pink and golden shadows like a sad memory. It's a dark place, but it's a safe place. This was not the house in which I found myself upon waking. This new house was old, stark, not without charm, but entirely void of familiarity.  Wooden beams, white walls, mid-century furniture, stained glass windows.  If I were awake I'd be swooning, and yet as I looked around my new old home I was beginning to feel uneasy. I felt the urge to leave almost as suddenly as I had found myself in this space to begin with and so I turned to exit. That's when the door slammed shut in my face.  I went ice cold and so did the room and that's when I began to scream, only I couldn't. I could feel the strain in my throat, the terror in my soul, the hands pulling at me as I tried to escape, but I didn't make a sound and I realized that no one could hear me. No one could save me. That's when something hit me over the head and knocked me out.

I woke up in my bed, relieved to find it was all a dream. I still felt uneasy and so went in search of anyone to protect me from nothing.  I found my parents and my best friend sitting at the kitchen table downstairs.  I told them all about my scuffle with the dream ghost and they each vowed to take shifts ever after so that I would never have to be alone again. However, they all needed to go to the store immediately. Without me.  And so I found myself alone again, sitting on my bed, in my room, admiring the clean white walls and the dark wooden beams and the sunlight pouring in through colored glass. I was once again filled with cold fear when it finally occurred to me that this was not my room and I was not safe. I wasn't even awake.  I jumped from my bed towards the door in an effort to outrun whatever was coming for me, but instead the door slammed shut. I hit the door and then that beautiful hardwood floor.

My eyes shot open.  This time I was actually awake. I sat frozen in sweat and attempted to confirm my consciousness, which is hard enough to to do without having just inceptioned yourself. I wrapped myself in covers, logged what I could remember of my dream as proof of my coherence, and allowed the sweet expletives of Stirling Archer to lull me back to sleep. Unfortunately it was all a ruse, because when I opened my eyes again I was right back on the floor, like my waking life was just some cruel commercial break. I looked up and, although I saw nothing, I knew something was coming for me. I screamed. Awesome. I could scream again, and so I did.  More shrill or blood-curdling screams had never fallen past my lips, though just like last time, I knew no one could hear me. I picked myself up off the ground and lunged for the door.  Something pulled at me, but not before I reached the knob.  The nothingness threw me back, which in turn threw the door open, and then I was free.  I could hear screaming, but I wasn't sure if it was me or my pursuer as I stumbled over broken floor boards and down a narrow stairway towards the front door. It was already open, ready and waiting for me to escape the clutches of the invisible force at my heels.

Once outside I slammed the door shut, but that wasn't enough. Over and over I slammed the door in anger, open. Slam. In frustration, open. Slam. In hatred, open - and then something caught the other side of that door.  I slammed it one last time, good and hard, and I began to sob.  The knob broke off in my hand. I stared at it for a moment in confusion.  Even in my dream I remember thinking "what the fuck does this mean?" "Who cares.  Just run."  I threw the knob at the door, turned, and ran, crying and terrified, but curiosity guided my eyes back up to my bedroom window as I passed the old house.  A final chill pulsed through me as I saw lace curtains part behind those beautiful windows, as if on their own, but where I thought a ghost might linger a figure instead appeared, all at once glaring and smiling and cold. I kept running as the figure stared me down and I have never felt so much fear as I did in that moment, staring up at myself.

I haven't been able to shake the dream.  I've retold it to anyone that will listen. What does it mean? No one can give me a straight answer. Hell, I can't even give me a straight answer.  From what I can gather, there are doors opening and closing, a fear of the unknown, a resurgence of self-reliance, and, most confusing, a fear of myself. And so here I am, I'm two weeks into unemployment, trying to unravel a days-old nightmare, like I'm trying to solve a murder mystery. I haven't the faintest idea what to do or what will happen next for me, I have an exorbitant amount of self-confidence tethered to a complete lack of self-assuredness, and an ever-diminishing savings account. I have been given the opportunity to live out the very dreams I have spent 7 years envisioning while folding shirts and counting money and hating customers. I have no idea in which direction I am supposed to head next, but I know it can't be worse than where I've already been. I am terrified, but I am free.