Category Archives: travel

i would’ve had us swerving through those streets

Posted on by

I read a lot, but I also watch a lot of TV. I have TV on while I work, while I clean, while I sew and make jewelry, and sometimes I like to put Netflix on my laptop on the edge of the sink while I’m in the bathtub.

I watch newly-released shows and shows I haven’t seen before, but mostly I watch things I’ve already seen. Give me a line from the X-Files and I can tell you which episode it was, which season that episode was in, and possibly even who wrote it. I can quote nearly entire episodes of Bob’s Burgers or early Simpsons. Sometimes things I say out loud are lines from TV shows that pop out of my mouth without my even realizing it.

My TV-watching used to bother me. A whole lot. I used to beat myself up for the habit, because I was better than that, or I should be writing instead, or successful people don’t watch TV. But mostly I’ve come to terms with it. As I’ve said before, it allows me to not think so much about my own life, and that’s good for my mental state.

Also TV shows are stories, and I love stories in whatever form they take. A well-done television show has plot and character development and themes and subtext to rival plenty of good movies and books. My old English-major habits die hard, and I usually examine the TV I watch as if I were writing a college paper on it.

***

There is a phrase that I use only in my own head, that I don’t usually tell anyone about. It’s “now is now and it’ll never be now again.” I wish I knew when it first came to me, but as far as I can recall it’s always been there. I say it in my mind when I want to capture and remember specific moments from my life, moments when I am particularly happy or content or when I’m doing something cool I’ve never done before. I say it to myself and I see

a little Texas valley in the winter, as two close friends and I look out over it on horseback

the sunset out the driver’s side window on a highway in Austin, this song on the stereo, a freshly-pressed plaid shirt

late afternoon light reflecting off the frozen Charles River

a red neon sign in Manhattan that blinks CO FF EE over and over, as I’m sitting on a bench talking with a friend

a specific little mailbox on a narrow street in Onset, MA

wooden posts submerged underwater as I glide past in a kayak

watching the sun set over Lake Somerville from the back of a crowded pickup truck

sitting at a sushi bar with friends, bouncing in my seat because the food is so delicious

streetlights mirrored in wet city pavement at night, walking too fast across the street

snow falling on the windshield of my old black Acura

I replay these and other moments in my head when I’m feeling depressed or bored or missing someone. Or sometimes they just pop up unannounced, and it’s like I’m there all over again. Now is now.

But those moments make me a little sad, too, and that’s the second part of the phrase: it’ll never be now again. Sometimes I re-watch my favorite episodes of a TV show over and over again, noticing little things about them that I hadn’t seen before: a billboard in the background, a character’s facial expression, a line I didn’t remember.

I have a freakishly good memory, but I still can’t examine my mental snapshots that way: try as I might to picture what color my horse was or what I was wearing or what street we were on or what the house behind the mailbox looked like, I can’t.

And I know that life can’t always be Good Times, otherwise the Good Times would become just Times, but it still frustrates me that I can’t rewind and watch the best parts of my life over and over again for new details. When I believed in God as a child, I used to say that in my version of heaven, I’d be allowed to sit in front of a TV in the clouds and watch my life unfold all over again on the screen, my finger hovering just over the fast-forward and rewind buttons on the remote.

I have plenty of things to look forward to in my life, of course: upcoming travels, pretty sunsets, seeing friends, watching my nephew learn to walk and talk. But sometimes I’m sitting in an airport or in traffic or on my sofa having normal Times and I think, why can’t now be now again?

(P.S. I made a public Twitter account, so you can follow me there if you like.
P.P.S. Post title is from here.)

you poured one more highball then I had to go before my heart overflowed — on depression and making things

Posted on by

I went to XOXOfest again this year. Like last year, I didn’t go to the conference portion, just the festival part, but I still have some things to say about it. All the other pieces you’ll read about XOXO will mostly be about the conference talks, and you’re probably wondering, how can she write anything about a conference she didn’t attend?

Because that conference/festival is stacked full of smart people doing wonderful creative things for a living that they love, and I talked with a lot of them.

I talked with them while wearing clothing and accessories I made for myself, clothing and accessories I’ve spent years learning how to make. At this point I’m good enough at sewing that I never make anything from a sewing pattern I haven’t self-drafted or altered to fit me. I can look at a sewing pattern and see exactly where it won’t do what I want, or exactly where it won’t fit properly on my body, and if I can’t find the right sewing pattern to buy I will just make one myself. And of course I’ve been making jewelry professionally and personally for ten years.

Someone told me that in her XOXO talk this year, Erin McKean said that it’s really important for her to do something creative that she never has to show anyone. Most XOXO attendees know McKean from Wordnik, but I know her from her sewing blog, A Dress A Day, which I’ve been reading almost since its inception. She was, of course, referring to her sewing as the creative thing she doesn’t have to show anyone. She can throw out a dress muslin that doesn’t work, or she can take apart a piece she doesn’t like and correct her mistakes, or make it into something else entirely.

This is part of what sewing and jewelry-making represent for me as well. My fabric scraps bin is full of clothing parts that weren’t successful, my bulletin board is tangled with jewelry prototypes I’m not satisfied with, and I even have a little drawer labeled “failed experiments.” I didn’t start doing any crafts at all until 2004, but now I don’t know how I ever lived without them as part of my identity.

peoplegettinghi“Why haven’t you finished that book you were writing about your road trip?” a friend asked me at XOXOfest. We were sitting on the patio at another friend’s AirB&B, and I had just come down from climbing a huge ladder in the yard because I could (more on that later).

“Do you really want to know? I have a serious answer,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Because living with depression and anxiety means that I can’t be a person who examines my life in that kind of detail. That road trip was a very emotional time for me, and it’s hard for me to function if I look at it too closely.”

You want to know how I function? I keep the TV on in the background. I make things out of fabric and metal. I read crafting blogs and good novels (but not too good or they’ll make me sad) and overly-deep online think pieces about TV. I avoid certain types of music. While I make things I keep episodes of “Bob’s Burgers” or “The X-Files” on a loop.

I exercise. Hard.

I sleep a lot.

I stay in the shallow end.

This routine is what makes me okay. This routine forms the covering on my nerves that keeps them from getting too raw.

At XOXOFest John Roderick and Sean Nelson did a show where they played a lot of their old Long Winters material. The Long Winters is/was one of my favorite bands, and I’ve always been disappointed that they haven’t put out an album in so long. I arrived at the show 20 minutes early to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

They opened with Carparts, and I cried. It wasn’t a balls-out sobbing, ugly kind of crying, but it was there. I hadn’t listened to that song in years, because it makes me think of one day of my road trip, of driving alone through falling snow from Rapid City to Mount Rushmore the day before Easter, and thinking about someone specific. Roderick and Nelson do such beautiful harmonies, and that plus seeing live music for the first time in forever plus being smacked in the face with that memory, and I was a goner.

They closed with a cover of “The Only Living Boy In New York,” and I cried again. Then I cried the day after I got home from XOXO. Then I cried again yesterday. My sleeping and exercise and carefully crafted non-thinking were not in place in Portland, and my nerves went raw.

I don’t really make things to show other people anymore, at least not on the internet. I make things to sell people, and I make gifts, and “hey, check out this dress I’m wearing! I made it!” is technically showing other people, I guess, but that’s not what I mean.

What I mean is that I used to make things for people to read, but I don’t know how to keep doing that without destroying myself.

Like I said, at XOXOfest I was surrounded by people who make things for other people, and it made me wish I still did. It made me miss that feeling of having said something out loud that I think is true, and hoping that someone else will think it’s true too.

I’ve said before that I feel like not writing in public is like lying to myself in some way, and I still think that’s true too.

Yesterday someone I don’t know said something on Twitter like, I don’t know why @bluishorange isn’t crushing it in a master’s creative writing program right now (I am paraphrasing because it was a nice thing to say and I don’t want anyone to go looking for the specific Tweet; if you find it please don’t say anything to them). My Twitter account is private, so I never get mentioned by people I don’t know. I had Twitter open in a tab, so the @bluishorange mention popped up right there in the window, and seeing it felt like my heart had dropped out of my body.

Why aren’t I out there crushing it in a master’s creative writing program right now? Why aren’t I making stuff for other people to see like my friends at XOXO?

I have had other people say things to me similar to that tweet. The best one was, “You don’t have any reason to have as much self-doubt as you do.” The second-worst one was, “Man, when I first read your blog I thought you were going to be a super famous writer.” The worst one of all was when someone came up to me in a coffeehouse in Austin and said, “Hey, didn’t you used to be bluishorange?”

I’ll admit that some of my sadness with regards to not crushing it in a master’s creative writing program or being a super famous writer or being bluishorange anymore has to do with missed opportunity. This site used to be awfully popular, and it isn’t anymore. The landscape of the web has changed, and so have I, and most of that isn’t my fault. But I don’t always remember that. What if staying in the shallow end means I’ve missed my chance to say things to a larger audience?

I’m told that a lot of the XOXO conference talks were about making things through bouts of depression, anxiety and uncertainty. I suppose maybe watching those talks online will help me some, but mostly I just want to ask those people, “Yeah, but how do you DO that?”

I’ve been wondering how I can combine my crafting skills with my desire to make things for other people and have those things say something I think is true, but I don’t know if that idea exists.

Over the past several months I’ve been taking trapeze lessons and doing circuit training, and I’m fitter and stronger than I’ve ever been in my life. I climbed the ladder in that yard because it was fun, and also because I knew it was something I would do that nobody else would. If I can’t be a strong person who writes, at least I can be a strong person who climbs things and does flips.

failing or not failing at projects

Posted on by

So hey, you know what we’ve never talked about? That book I’m supposed to write.

Do you remember the book in question? The one where bluishorange readers contributed money for me to take a road trip all the way around the country and write a book about it? And I took the money and used it to go on the road trip in 2007 but haven’t finished the book? Yeah, that one.

I’ve written about 1/3 of the book. I think if you calculate it by word, that’s something like ten words every day for the last six years. Obviously that’s not what I’ve been doing, but that is a very, very slow average writing time. Suffice it to say, it isn’t going very well.

Or it wasn’t, anyway. For a long time I assumed that I’d never finish it; that’d I’d totally failed. Then two things happened.

1) I read Wild, by Cheryl Strayed. Reading that amazing book upset me at first, because it’s basically the exact book I pictured myself writing, only better. But then I thought, hey, if she can write a book about a trip she took years earlier, then maybe I can, too.

2) I went to XOXO. You guys, that place was filled with people who were doing projects, who had started projects and stopped them, who had projects they were supposed to be working on, whose projects consumed most of their waking time. Projects, projects, projects all over the place.

These people were brilliant and amazing. Brilliant and amazing people often intimidate me, but these brilliant and amazing people seemed to think I was okay. Some of them even might have thought I was brilliant and amazing, too. If they can work on their projects and/or abandon them and come back to them later, who’s to say I can’t do the same thing?

I felt really guilty about The Book Situation for a long time. I took money from people in exchange for something I never did! I don’t even know some of those people anymore. What must they think of me? But I’ve decided that “something I never did” isn’t an accurate way to describe the book. I’d rather describe it as “something I haven’t completed yet.”

Because I will do it! I will. If a kooky lady who changed her last name to Strayed can do it, then so can I. It might take me a long time, but I’m going to do it.

I’m telling you all this now because…I have a Kickstarter. I’ve started my own line of sustainable jewelry, and I’m trying to raise money to expand my business to include wholesale customers.

I was so, so reluctant to post about it here, because I knew that some of my more long-term readers would see it and think, hey, didn’t she ask for money before? She did, you guys. She asked for money to go on a road trip, she took the trip, it was two of the best months of her life, and she’s still not finished with the book.

I am going to finish the book, but I am also going to have a successful jewelry business! I am making jewelry from recycled or sustainable materials, and I’m using recycled packaging and marketing materials, too. You can read all about it on my Kickstarter page, where there’s more information and a lovely video that my sister Megan made.

Megan is a genius.  All I did was write a script and give it to Megan, and then she made all sorts of notes on it about which parts would be talking head and which parts would be B-roll. When she said B-roll I almost fainted, I was so impressed. We shot it and then she edited the whole thing together and set it to music. When she gave it to me for feedback, it was perfect. I didn’t even need her to change anything! Sometimes I’m surprised that the two of us came from the same parents.

Anyway, I’m telling you about this because I do need more backers, and it would be kind of a waste not to post about it here. This is a totally different project from the book, but I understand if you helped me out before and you’re feeling a bit burned.

But if you are not feeling burned, I’d appreciate some help. This is a project I’m really excited about, that I really believe in. The rewards are pretty good, too! They’ll make super Christmas gifts if jewelry’s not your thing.

Thanks, readers! ILY.