anxiety

I think my life is maybe just a Paulie Shore movie.

Hi. I have been quite absent from this blog and I have no excuse. Well, moving across 3 states over the summer. That’s an excuse. Also, I’m lazy.

As you may or may not know, I’m writing a book. I’m not sure how much I plan on talking about it yet because I don’t want to jinx it, and I’m battling that voice that is very loudly yelling at me that I’m a fraud and nobody likes me. That’s a fun demon with which to co-pilot this trainwreck. So I’m trying to overcome that voice by writing really bad blog posts. I’m sure that won’t make it all worse. Like at all.

So, a couple of months ago, I moved away from the love of my life, Los Angeles back to my hometown of Denver. It’s a bit of a lot of baggage to unpack. I went from feeling like Link (Brendan Fraser) in Encino Man where I’m the weird but super loved new guy to being Crawl (Paulie Shore) in Son-in-Law when he falls in pig poops at the farm and everyone hates him and he’s barely wearing pants. It has been a good move and my family seems to love it and it will be a great thing for our future. However, no matter how many movies, holiday-themed or not I’ve seen on this subject of moving home, I wasn’t prepared.  Sweet Home Alabama taught me nothing.

While there are a LOT of things (people) I’m glad to be away from, there is SOOOOO much more that hurts my heart to have left. Like a bunch of my favorite people. And I’m struggling to get my creativity back. I feel like I’ve fallen back into a vacuum.

Los Angeles has this reputation of being a vacuous wasteland of plastic beauty, soul-less egos, debauchery, and drugs, and gang members harassing old ladies. And while that does all exist, it is a city so rich in personality and friendships, and lost people and found people. And everyone you meet has something they want to share. And they want to support you in your nonsense and you want to support theirs. And they all hug hello. And whether sincere or not, everybody wants to be your friend and share a bottle or 7 of wine with you over gossip and dreams.

I don’t know if I’m going to find that here. People in Colorado are very polite yet reserved and no one wants none of my antics.

And I am, once again, an outsider looking in.

My oldest son came home from school the other day and says, “Kids just don’t think I’m that funny here,” and then he shrugged and went upstairs to play Fortnite.

God, kid I KNOW, RIGHT?

I sound very dramatic. I realize this. I’m going to go have a glass of wine by myself and try to get back to writing the book.

And in case you were wondering, sobbing it out on the internet didn’t shut the mean voice up at all.

And I do love living in Colorado. I’m just going to drop in weird on everybody like Mork from Ork and make them love me.

Maybe this is the same mentality I need to conjure when I’m writing.

Nanu Nanu.

Book Club: The Final Countdown

 

The day before Book Club.

I was given 3 or so MONTHS to finish this book. The meeting had been put off and put off, but it was finally here. The day ahead glared at me like an evil witch, judging me for my sins. D-day. Do you know how far I was into this book, the day before the book club meeting, that I had had MONTHS to read???? Page 94. I officially made it to page 94. In 3 months. ACTUALLY, more like 4. FOUR months. If I did my math right, I would like you all to know that that is 30 pages on average a month. If you break that even further down, you sexy mathematicians, you will get one page. A day. Average.

So I planned on doing what any of us would have done, I cheated. I googled for spoilers, I read endings. I am a book club failure.

I was pretty sure I could fool everyone, though and I intended to try. I was going to go down in a blaze of glory. All or nothing. Lying to these nice people who let me into their group and their homes as I ate their pastries with confidence, commonly defined as “Of-COURSE-I’ve-read-this-book”-edence, blueberry scone crumbs clinging to the corner of my lying lips.

Look, in college I was an English Major, you think I haven’t faked this kind of thing before??  And by “English Major” I mean, “don’t look too deep into that because you’ll find I was inexplicably labelled a ‘Speech Major’ and I was too scared to go talk to anyone to get it changed. So I just made it all up as I went and then refused to completely graduate so I didn’t have to deal with it all and now here I am writing my bad-grammar blogs for free on the internet.”

So cheating and lying my way through this book club meeting like a snake oil salesman was the grand plan. And it would’ve worked too if it weren’t for that meddling Anxiety!  Because when Anxiety found out about it, she jolted me awake at 3am with judgements, panic, and an idea! Who cares about sleep, we Research! We can’t do it any other way. We’ll be kicked out of Book Club!! Several hours, and coffees, and pages, and post-it notes later, I was done.

And that’s how I finished a 306 page book. In 3 or so months. Actually more like 4. I read an entire book in almost 4 months and had to come and brag about it online.

Anyway, the next book has been chosen. I have about 6 weeks. What’s the over/under on whether I finish? One day I’m finally going to get my life together and you guys are going to be blown away.