You find it reassuring. Not because you enjoy looking at stranger boobs, but because you like knowing that there are people out there who aren’t as ashamed of their imperfect bodies as American advertising wants them to be. You like that other people aren’t as burdened with self-consciousness as you are. Maybe one day you’ll stop giving a shit, too.

2. Your tendency to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning can be fixed by getting exercise. Seriously, get some exercise. No, seriously.
Also, your recent heartburn episodes are from a thing you didn’t eat much of in Mexico, and that thing is cheese.

3. White liberal guilt is not a myth. You are white, liberal, AND a former waitress, so you tip all the service people at the resort like crazy. When you’re not tipping like crazy, you’re wondering if the service people are genuinely friendly or if they’re just good at hiding their contempt for all the damn tourists.

You would not be good at hiding your contempt for all the damn tourists.

4. You also spend time speculating about the personal lives of the waiters and waitresses you meet at the resort. Does Silvino have a wife and kids? Where does Arsenio live? When Claudia gets home from work, does she refuse to cook eggs because that’s what she has to do all damn day and if she has to look at another fucking egg she’s going to scream?

5. As your friend Dusty says, the ocean may as well be outer space for how vast and unfamiliar it is. As you say to your sister and brother-in-law when you surface after your first official scuba dive, “There’s a lot of shit down there, you guys.”

6. To do long exposures when it’s pitch dark outside, raise your F-stop really high and turn off the auto focus. Shots with the moon in them will take 20-30 seconds, and shots without the moon in them will take up to 90.  If you can’t find a makeshift tripod, the ground works just fine.

7. Traveling is your psyche’s bread and butter. You are rarely happier, more relaxed, or more inspired. You knew this already, but it’s nice to be reminded.

Dusty: Is it a period piece?

I laughed so hard I nearly spit my beer out into the ocean.

1. A series of circumstances have resulted in my being unemployed. Longtime readers of this site will recall that this is not the first time I’ve ever been unemployed. But it is the first time I’ve become unemployed suddenly after four years at a job. So that’s different.

I spent those four years doing web design work in a pretty traditional office, an office I will now cite as one of the reasons for the absence of posts on this site. Bluishorange is the first result in a Google search for “Alison Headley,” and working in a large conservative office in a position that was not particularly low-profile meant that there were a lot of things I felt I couldn’t talk about. It’s not anyone’s particular fault, and truthfully nobody at work ever mentioned this site to me. But some of my coworkers might have read it, etc etc.

In a way, I sort of felt like I was lying to myself. Or lying about myself, or something like that. As my (awesome) former boss said to me, “Bluishorange is something you’ve had for so long that it’s a part of who you are. To live a life where you can’t do it is wrong somehow.”

And she’s right. I’ve nearly always been able to talk about whatever I want here, and I’m almost sure that that won’t change with whatever I decide to do next.

Almost. What if I become a spy or join the foreign service? Shut up, it could totally happen.

2. I’m currently in Cancun, on a vacation I booked and paid for before said unemployment occurred. It feels weird to be going on vacation from nothing, but I love to travel so I’m not complaining. We’re here for the 30th birthday of a friend who deserves nothing less than to have his milestone celebrated on vacation with a bunch of his friends. Happy birthday, Dusty! Hope your 30th year is much better than mine was.

We got here (where here is an all-inclusive resort-type thing that isn’t usually my style, but again, not complaining) last night just as the sun was setting. On the golf-cart ride to our rooms, we passed these little animals I’d never seen before. They were about the size of Maude, and they looked like some sort of rodent-marsupial-anteater hybrid. The driver told us they were called tejones, which I was able to remember because it rhymes with cojones. I’m going to look those animals up later.

Then late last night after dinner and drinks and some time on the beach, my sister and her husband and I walked past a palm tree, and out of nowhere a coconut fell out of it and hit the ground with a THUD. I thought that only happened in commercials.

In October I became a certified scuba diver, so I’m planning on doing lots of that while we’re here.

3. At the moment I’m sitting on the balcony of my hotel room, watching the sun rise over the Caribbean. It’s 5:30 a.m., and I’ve been awake since 4 despite having gone to bed at midnight. This is a new thing I do these days. Ariel calls it the freelancer’s alarm clock, where you wake up suddenly in the dark, thinking about money. I might call it the money alarm instead, since I’m not currently a freelancer per se, and “money alarm” sounds cooler.

At any rate, I wake up every day by 6 or 7 a.m., regardless of what time I went to bed, and despite not having anywhere to be in the morning. Maybe I’m getting old, maybe I’m in the final stages of becoming my father. I don’t know. It kind of sucks.

But I think it’ll be to my advantage here. I came out to the balcony at 4:30, took some long exposures of the waves crashing on the beach in the dark, and now that the sun’s up I’m going to go for a walk. Not many people will be up, so I can pretend I’m not surrounded by a bunch of entitled American vacationers like myself. Maybe the tejones will be out.

I’ll see you later.

A bunch of us had a sort of memorial party for him at SXSW in March, which I think was good for everyone.  It doesn’t solve the problem of how we’re all going to deal with Brad’s absence this March and the Marches after that, but still. It helped.

At 20×2 in March they paid tribute to Brad by showing this video from 2005, in which Brad answers the question, “What’s the word?” Even if you’re not the video-watching sort, you should watch this one.

Brad Graham – What’s The Word 20×2 v.5.0 from 20×2 on Vimeo.

I’m not a big fan of new year’s resolutions, either. I’m firmly in the, “If you want to start doing something or not doing something, just fucking start already” camp. But I like the idea of a year having a theme of sorts.

My plan to quit allowing my fear of failure to own me has been going relatively well, but I’ve got a related problem. When it comes to things I want to achieve, I always think I’m not good enough to achieve them. I think that someone else would do it better, or someone else will do it first. Or when I look at the things others have done, I think, “They did that, but I never could.”

So my theme for this year is going to be, “Why not me?” Whenever I start to think that I won’t be good enough to achieve X or Y or I don’t have the right stuff to do something well, I’m going to stop and ask myself, “Why not me? Why can’t I be the person who does it?”

Because I already know the answer to that question. The answer is that there’s no reason why it can’t be me. It absolutely CAN be me! The perfect person to get something done is the one who does it, and does it well. And if I want to, I can be that person.

Thanks, Brad.

Ooh, this is an easy one! I’m in a book club with some friends, and in January it’s my turn to host! The way we do it is, whoever picks the next book* hosts the next gathering at their house. A few weeks ago we met at Stephie’s house to discuss the book she chose, so next time we’ll meet at my house to discuss mine.**

The book club gatherings are pretty casual, and mine will be no exception. Lately we’ve started having book club on Friday nights and including dinner, so I’m going to make something. While there’s really no NEED for me to make no-cook one-handed appetizers, I’ve been meaning to try Helen Jane’s recipes for those, so maybe I’ll do that. My place is pretty small, so we can’t all sit at a table; that can be reason enough for skewered things! Plus I like the idea of people showing up to find that all the food is on sticks.

Decor-wise, I’m just going to make sure the place is clean! Maybe if I have time I’ll try some of the decorating ideas on my craft site. Also there will be drinks–some I’ll have, some that people will bring. It should be fun! I like book club.

*Actually each person suggests a few books, and the rest of the club narrows it down to one that most everyone can agree on. So far we’ve read a really wide variety of books, which was the intent.

**My pick was The Imperfectonists, by Tom Rachman.

I’ve got a personal dream I’m working towards right now! But I’m afraid to tell you what it is because I’ll feel super dumb if it doesn’t work out. So I guess the second question I’m going to answer instead is, “What would happen if you told the internet about it?

Fear of failure has been a pretty serious thing in my life. It’s why I almost always take the easiest path, it’s why I never try anything new unless the stakes are really low. But I’ve been attempting to get over that this year, and I have plans to barrel through the fear in 2011 too. Still, though, I’m afraid that if I tell the internet, it’ll jinx it. Well, I don’t believe in jinxing. I do believe that if I tell the internet, I’ll feel dumb if it doesn’t end up happening.

Conquering fear of failure? Going okay. Conquering fear of feeling dumb in front of the internet? Not going okay. Eh, I can live with it.

Day 13: Have you ever just quit something… without regret?

Yes! I had a professional blogging gig once, about the paranormal. It was interesting when I started, but two posts a week about something I didn’t believe in began to get tedious. Posts were due on Friday mornings, so I spent every Thursday night doing lots of procrastinating and bitching and moaning, and a little bit of writing. The only original post ideas I had were things I’d heard about here in Texas, which was fine, but then the head of the site told my fellow bloggers and me that we were writing too many things about Texas. After that I had no ideas.

When our contracts were up and we were each asked whether or not we wanted to continue, I barely wasted half a second before saying no thanks, and then I spent the next two Thursday nights telling everyone how great it was to NOT WRITE ABOUT THE PARANORMAL!!!!!!

Note: I have nothing bad to say about anyone I worked with or for at that site; it was just a bad fit subject-wise, and I should have realized that beforehand.

Day 14: Did you like to read as a child? Do you read more or less now?

Oh, I read like the wind. I taught myself to read at an early age, so once I hit elementary school I was reading ahead of everyone else. The teacher had to give me a special pass to the sections of the library for the older grades so I could pick books from there. I’ve heard friends talk about feeling singled out or ostracized when this happened to them as kids, and I definitely felt that in other aspects of my childhood.

But the reading pass made me feel special. While all my other classmates were at their desks, I’d walk down the hall and give the librarian my pass. Then I’d go back to the 5th grade shelves and choose whatever books I wanted. The library was always deserted when I went, so I could sit down on the floor and look through the books in silence. It was neat.

At some point my mother realized she could use my love of reading to her advantage. Anytime I was bothering her, she’d say, “Why don’t you go read a book or something?” When I figured out that that was her clever way of dismissing me, I started saying, “I don’t want to!” even if I did. What a brat I was.

(Okay, obviously I’m not doing all of these, so we can go ahead and get that out of the way. So far I’ve been fine picking and choosing which ones inspire me, and I’ll continue to do that.)

I remember doing a ton of reading and writing as a child. Even in elementary school I spent lots of time in my room writing silly poems. My sister and I also did a lot of drawing, I think–we had this card table that we kept by the fireplace in the living room, and we’d always draw there.  And after church every Sunday my parents would take us to the local bookstore where we’d stock up on Baby-Sitters Club or whatever for the month.

My mom was always buying art & craft supplies. We had all sorts of finger paints and poster paints and play-dough and stuff. And I think that’s what we did when friends came over. I remember making things with friends a lot. Oh, and board games–tons and tons of board games.

I think it’s obvious how all this reflects who I am today–cerebral, creative, and unlikely to be found outdoors!

I’m pretty good at forgiving people who ask for it.  Someone says they’re sorry and means it, I’m all about saying, I appreciate that, it’s cool, we’re all good. I grew up in a family where we’d admit when we were wrong, or if we didn’t think we were wrong, we’d say, I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I’m sorry I did.

And that’s why I have trouble with people who don’t apologize for things, who think that to say they’re sorry is to admit weakness. If you hurt me but don’t tell me you’re sorry in some small way, how do I know you care about my feelings? How do I know you’ll try not to hurt me again?

So. I don’t carry a lot of grudges, and the ones I do carry fade after a few years. That guy I broke up with in 2002 that I wished had never existed? I hardly ever think about him. The friend with whom I had a falling-out in 1998? Eh. It’s been so long, I never see or interact with them in any way, so it’s easy to let that shit go.

There’s one grudge I still hold, though, against an old ex who lied to me, became sort of yell-y when I discovered the lies, and then began breaking into my email account several times a day to check for who knows what (thank you, Gmail Last Account Activity feature for allowing me to find out about this!). Try as I might, I can’t forgive on this one. I just can’t. Any advice?

Most of those boxes are labeled with what’s inside, and this area is even more organized now than when this photo was taken. So, I didn’t do yesterday’s Radvent.)

Radvent day 3: Write a letter of love to yourself to read in one year.

Dear Alison,

I know you know this, but you need to remember it: you are not supposed to be doing anything in particular with your life. Take care of your physical and mental health and your responsibilities, and make enough money to support yourself, and that’s it. You’re not supposed to do anything else. If you want to spend your free time working on something, that’s cool. If you want to spend your free time knitting while watching the same episodes of Better Off Ted over and over again, that’s cool too. Do not beat yourself up for it.  You are doing fine, and there’s nothing wrong with you.

You’re making a lot of plans for the upcoming year, and of course I don’t know how they’ve turned out. But regardless of how they’ve turned out, you need to remember how it felt to have something to plan for, something to look forward to, something to work towards. It’s a really exciting feeling, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the success or failure of whatever the plan is. Don’t forget it.

This year you have been avoiding letting your fear of failure stop you from trying things. That hasn’t paid off in a tangible sense yet, but it’s helped you to think of yourself as a person who deserves good things. You try your best, and it doesn’t work out, but hey, your best was much better than you thought you could do. Try again next time!

Anyway, keep that up too. And be nice to your mom.

-A

What I will say is this: I’m not even remotely the same person who started this site in February of 2000. I was 21 years old, living in a tiny Houston apartment, and working full-time as a web designer, totally unaware that the dot-com bubble would burst in just a few short months. When it did, I went back to college, majored in English, and became obsessed with the personal web, all of which informed lots, if not most, of my writing on this site.

I still live in an apartment, and I’m a web designer again, but that’s where the similarities end (oh, and my hair remains awesome). A few months ago, an online friend (acquaintance? person I know? you get it) of mine** wrote this on his private site:

All those words, nearly forgotten and willfully unremembered, that I find from time to time in email searches and old misnamed text files, they read like lies, because I no longer believe in the world they describe. I no longer believe that I ever believed in it, only that I wanted to, and tried, and failed. It’s just a muscle that moves blood for a while. There is nothing to break.

Replace “email searches and old misnamed text files” with “my bluishorange archives,” and you’ve got exactly how I feel about this site. I’m not comfortable with reading my old writing, nor am I comfortable with exploring the depths of my own psyche the way I used to. It’s too difficult, too painful, too something.

But make no mistake, I’m not filled with regret or anything. I’m not going to say, “Oh, I had such high hopes for myself!” or “What happened to me?” Things are fine here. It’s just that reading my old writing is like watching a documentary about a problem that doesn’t exist anymore–clearly this person feels very strongly about these things, but, uh, what?

Eh, maybe I’ll appreciate having 2700 essays about my 20′s when I’m old.

Anyhow, thanks to my friend/online acquaintance/fellow internet road warrior Ariel, I’ve found this journal project called Radvent. Each day in December*** there’s a writing prompt, and I’m going to see if I can follow them this month (cue laugh track). I could use some reminders that things in my life are better now, MUCH, better, than they used to be, and I think this might help. Here’s the first prompt:

What were you doing five years ago today? As the holiday season began? Where were you? Who were you with? What did you want? What did you have?

Oh, things were not good in late 2005. I was unemployed, kind of depressed, and making my living selling jewelry and vintage clothes on the internet and doing contract web work. I’d just moved to Austin and hadn’t met many people yet, so I rarely left the apartment I shared with my boyfriend at the time. Besides him, Maude was my best friend. Here she is post-Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ house in 2005:

Maude is a most excellent friend, but I definitely needed (and wanted!) to get out more and meet people. I was, however, too busy berating myself for not being more awesome.

The bright side of 2005: it was when I really started to get into sewing. Said boyfriend got me a vintage sewing machine for my birthday that year, and I taught myself all kinds of things pretty quickly. So, when I was at home all day and all night for weeks on end, at least I had something to do.

*I will tell you that I do lots of posting on my tumblr these days, as well as over on my craft site, I Could Make That.

**Hey online friend person, do you want me to credit you for writing that? Didn’t know if I should since it’s on a private site.

***You know how I feel about religion (and, consequently, Advent), but whatevs; we can focus on the Rad part instead.

(Hey, look, the 10th-anniversary-of-Bluishorange post I did in February hasn’t fallen off the main page yet!)