I spent today awkwardly trying to get back into my Chicago groove after spending the last seven days in four states. The multiple trips sent me across, through, and over the midwest in planes, trains, and automobiles.
So much movement and non-stop perpetual motion is mostly, usually exciting, but it can be jarring sometimes too. After I’ve landed back home, it takes me a beat to readjust to a normal pace and scene.
Plus, when visiting family and seeing friends, which this past week of travel included, it takes even more effort to get back to normal. The feelings of emotional warmth and change have to settle into their new shape, but it’s as if I’ve pushed bread dough into a pan and expected it to rise immediately. There’s a process of expansion that the new form taking shape refuses to rush, regardless of how much I want it to. I’m adept at adapting, but I forget that sometimes that takes a minute.
Things are different now, just as they always have been.
Time changes everything. But time always takes its, well, time.
After trips like these I need a brain Discombobulation Area, like the one at the airport where you try to put your shoes back on ASAP and wrangle what’s left of your dignity (quickly! quickly!) after a security pat down and wipe off the sweat congealing on your brow from being chewed up and spit out the sticky mouth of TSA.
(Clearly I love flying!)
Despite all this, I love moving around. My favorite thing about traveling is that it gives me perspective. Literally of this beautiful country, but metaphorically too. The security check line may be long, but life is short. Physical journeys, being an outsider looking in, is the antidote when everything feels small and uber-significant.
Because when everything feels small and uber-significant, it’s usually because I feel small and insignificant. Traveling reminds me how grandiose my options are, reminds me my life is big because it is also small, reminds me not to sweat it. In fact, there’s no need to sweat anything except getting to my ride on time.
And visiting friends, family, old stomping grounds? Traveling to them and dropping by for a while reminds me to be completely present in them. To feel all of it. To remember. To pay attention, because this moment * right now * is what I’ll look back on soon. I want to make it count.
Today after my evening run (or, more accurately, jog-walk… travel = treats!), I stretched in the park across from our apartment. As I laid on my back to stretch these American thighs, I turned my head to the side. Eye level was an ant diligently collecting nectar from a dandelion as if it was the most important thing in the world. He climbed all over this supposed weed, through its golden landscape, over its hilly petals.
It made me remember something my dad told me this weekend while I was home. My parents have peonies growing in the space right outside their front door. The peonies are a wonderfully visual choice once their bulbous, bombastic blooms open, but to get there, they need the help of tiny ants like this one in my Chicago park.
“There will be ants on those peony buds,” Dad said. “Go look.”
Sure enough. There were ants crawling all over their green cocooned buds.
“Ants help pull open their shells,” he said.
Sure enough. Google confirmed. The flower releases small amounts of nectar to recruit the intrepid insects into doing some of their work for them.
Would I have missed this seemingly insignificant observation had I not been paying attention? Probably. I’ve missed more while I’m physically at places than I ever have when I’m gone, longing and paying attention.
Listening to stories from my dad. Taking time to do nothing but feel how my cat’s purr sends ripples through my fingers. Holding my niece in a hug that leaves an 8-year-old-child-sized imprint on my heart.
If that’s what travel does for me, gives to me now… The post-travel come down, the emotional discombobulation is worth it. Every time.
Like Vonnegut wrote, “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
As a kid, when a soft spring gently moved aside for its showy sibling summer, like a cloud rolling on to its next destination, we’d pull up the box fans from the basement.
They’d be dusty with skin and sweat from the year before, as well as whatever accumulated on them while they sat on ice for the winter. These reserve soldiers were a sign that summer, finally!, was here. Let the fun begin.
Each bedroom would be curated to hold their rickety form, crunched into a carpet, battled over for the best position of glorious, magical air flow toward one of two kids’ beds. This worked best, meaning a resolution was most peacefully acquired, in the girls’ room when my sister and I got bunk beds and the box fan could spend its season in the sun sitting on the thigh-high vanity we shared. Direct hits for both sleepers.
The sound of a box fan. That constant whir. That restless hum. It’s a lullaby.
Recently, Justin and I got a hyper quiet, new-fangled fancy fan. FIVE TIMES THE AIR FLOW. QUIET QUIET QUIET!
But tonight, for some reason, I turned it off and found myself pulling out our own dusty box fan and clunked it to our bedroom. It’s not so much the old-school style breeze I was searching for. It was the sound.
I have a distinct memory of one childhood summer night, sticky with sweat and anticipation. I couldn’t sleep. The next day was our show day at the county fair. The box fan kept me company as I lay wide awake, as restless as that hum, dreaming of the next day.
Maybe that’s why I pulled it out tonight instead of any other. Tomorrow I go home to Ohio.
I’m performing a live lit piece tomorrow at Duly Noted! Come listen to music and storytelling (including my tale of a prank call gone wrong… or deliciously right, depending on how you look at it). The event is freeeeee but we’re taking donations for the Boys & Girls Club of Chicago. Bonus: You can bring your own food or get dinner delivered. All the deets are here. See you soon!
Last week I was very sick courtesy some cute lil germies in my tum courtesy my cute lil nieces and nephews who had the same lil germies in their tums the week before.
It sucked. Especially since I had spent the week before that with a head cold. Sick and tired of being sick and tired, or something like that.
As I lay nausea-stricken on a bed of applesauce-soaked crackers and a mountainous pile of unread emails, I considered how sick I’ve gotten this past year. It feels like it’s been more frequent than ever before? Is that right? Is my immune system caving? Or am I just paying more attention to my body than ever before? Both?
That, of course, rendered me helpless to do nothing but steer down a rabbit hole toward the dimly lit Hall of Fame Of All My Other Major Sicknesses. My 32nd birthday is this week and, with that time marker in sight, I remembered the stomach flu I had had a week before my 29th birthday.
Aw, poor poopy birthday girl!
Between bathroom bouts I made promises to my body to take better care of it as soon as it felt better. I acknowledged my sins against it and recognized that though I don’t put it through the ringer anymore with alcohol, I still fall into some traps that are the opposite of that totally-having-a-moment”idea of self-care, which is ultimately all about slowing down to take better care of your mind and, thus, body.
For example, I don’t eat well and sometimes I don’t eat at all. I’ll get so focused on a task I forget to eat. Or I’ll be weird about what to eat — because I’m trying to be either a) healthier, ironically enough, or b) a guilt-ridden veg and not a health-positive one. And when that happens, I don’t get enough calories that a body I’m making go-go-go all the time needs. I follow the same extreme patterns with sleep. It’s a deadly combination. Or, well, one that leaves me, I think, more vulnerable to catching any cool ass looking germs that fly my way.
This meme making the rounds is too real.
At one point in my sickness boredom last week (you can only spend so much time on Pinterest), I started combing through body positivity apps, of which there seem to be about two, to download on to my phone.
I’ve never gotten too into the body positivity movements. Not because I don’t care. It’s just that one only has so many hours in a day.
But if there’s anything I’ve learned in sober recovery, it’s that help can come from the strangest sources and you have to just go with it. I used to listen to motivational speeches for weight lifters to get myself in a good headspace to go to a brunch sober. Ha!
All these things are tools and, like a castaway trying to make it on a lonely island, you gotta use that shit in whatever way you need to survive. Start thinking of your phone as your Wilson Volleyball, ya dig?
“Stop crying and take some Pepto, biatch!”
I downloaded the free Rise Up app, which is for self-monitoring eating disorder recovery. I know I don’t have an eating disorder, but Rise Up is more about offering friendly reminders to check in with yourself and how you’re thinking about food. I just want to make sure I eat breakfast more often instead of waiting until 2 pm to finally eat something–and Rise Up’s meal tracking helps me do that. The app’s “911” and stress management tools have actually been super helpful as I get nicotine cravings.
I love how technology has made independent recovery like this possible. You can cobble together tools from all over the place, for whatever it is you’re struggling with, from big problems to tiny-tummy-flu-induced self-awareness about something you’d finally like to address.
And the more you do that hodgepodging of skill sets, the more likely you are to find positive coping techniques in the strangest places.
Like… the wrestling ring…
Swoggle vs. Craig Mitchell!
I love watching Chicago’s Freelance Wrestling matches. It’s like watching sweaty, sophisticated choreography but with a lot of grunting and cool intro music. We went to Saturday’s event in Logan Square Auditorium and it didn’t disappoint.
I’m not naïve enough to think that any industry based in physicality, especially pro wrestling, isn’t without pressures to conform to a certain body standard. But there’s certainly some atypical beauty about something that’s part theater, part sport — it just wouldn’t be as fun if everyone looked the same.
The Freelance lineup last weekend included bodies of all shapes, sizes, abilities and genders. Watching Gregory Allen, AKA Iron Curtain, AKA an awesome wrestler who also has cerebral palsy, dominate in the ring was magic. Cleveland, Ohio, represent!
But the best part is that they’re all running around in their skivvies. And if not their skivvies, super tight pants, brah. It’s excellent eye candy, sure, but I appreciate that so many bodies are on full display, in all their glory, without that being the main issue.
We didn’t have to take a moment to pause about how brave some of them were being for bearing all nearly 300 pounds of themselves. We paused for how brave they were for willingly flippity-belly-flopping onto a hard surface.
The main issue is some made up, stupidly delicious story line. (And, for fair-weathered fans like me, if Stevie Fierce is wearing a shirt or not.)
And that’s it.
In wrestling, the body love doesn’t necessarily rely on what that body looks like. It matters what it can do.
And how strong it can handle the blows thrown at it.
Join me and eight other You’re Being Ridiculous storytellers at Winnetka’s The Book Stall, an independent bookstore located on Chicago’s north shore (a block away from the UP-North Winnetka Metra station, so no excuses).
High five to The Book Stall for regularly presenting a variety of book-related and author events. Recent guests include some girl crush mainstays, like Tavi Gevinson and The HRC.
I’ll be telling a story about the time I terrified a strapping young farmhand after my grandmother’s funeral! Sound like a downer?
Neeeeigggh!
And there’s, like any good story, a cat involved.
Tickets are here ($12) and spaces are limited so save your seat today! Here’s the list of all the performers:
Ellen Barish
Mike Blumberg
Claire Zulkey & Steve Delahoyde
Sherry & Steve Fine
Elizabeth Gomez
Jackie Mantey
Jeremy Owens
There are many sad, tragic and/or ironic endings bespotting the relatively short history of pop music. But one that, ahem, flies under the radar is the story of Otis Redding’s death.
It came a mere days after he recorded what would be his most famous hit, “Sittin’ On The Dock of The Bay.”
A stormy night. A plane crash. Dead at 26 years old.
It’s so sad to me that he didn’t get to see how soothing this song would be to so many people. It’s a hit, sure, but it is my favorite kind — a sad song wrapped in a melody that makes you feel good, that reminds you why you keep going.
I’ve been thinking about this story lately. Mostly because I am amazed at how young Otis Redding was when he died. It makes me worry that I’m not doing enough. Accomplishing enough. Am I wasting my time on things that may not really matter? I worry that I spent my twenties to fast. I know I didn’t, technically, but I worry about it as I start to settle in a new, greater sense of self-awareness.
“Where have I been this whole time?” I wonder. “Because I finally feel like I have arrived in this body, this life.”
While the back of my brain was gnawing on this yesterday,”Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay” came on my playlist. At first my anxiety deepened because, damn, he died right after he recorded his most famous song — a song about wasting time! How many people have missed their opportunities like that because of timing?
Mmmm… That song though… I couldn’t stay in a state of panic too long if I tried… Not with Otis crooning his cathartic beachy blues…
I could look at this the other way, I thought: It’s a miracle he even recorded this song when death was so close. So many things nipped on the heels of people like Otis, but he made it, even if things were cut short. Every moment is a miracle, really. Whether we spend it sitting by the bay or knee deep in dream making. Worrying about it all is the ultimate waste.
After all, this is my first Valentine’s Day as a wife, something I became after walking down the aisle to another Otis song. However it all turns out, I have a lot of moments to be thankful for.
Here are the details and where to get tickets for my appearance with You’re Being Ridiculous at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 27. I hope you make it out to some of these other events throughout the weekend too.
You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll fume. You’ll hate life and love it in the same breath. Basically, you’ll experience the daily ~*emotional roller*~ coaster experienced by all your creative friends! See you soon.
A few weeks ago, Justin and I went out to a show with some friends, but first we hit up Replay, a bar in Lincoln Park that has nostalgia on tap. Retro arcade games, pinball machines and Skee-Ball tourneys await after you’ve grabbed a drink at the bar.
I don’t drink anymore, but I can still appreciate reading a loaded menu of throwback craft cocktails spiked with a pun. Try, for example, the Salt-N-Pepa: House made strawberry and jalapeño infused tequila and lime with a chili lime salt rim.
Justin, earning the pinball wiz-ard title (you’re not the only one who can do puns here, barkeep), had to pee out his nostalgia cocktails an unusual amount of times. So we’d put our KISS pinball competition on pause, and I’d saddle up to a table and watch the video playing on the big screen while I waited.
They show old music videos, action flicks, Christmas movies. I hope old TRL episodes make the rotation. Remember when you had to wait for TRL to come on to watch a music video? Dark ages.
This night, though, they were showing WWE footage from the late ‘90s/ early Aughts, particularly matches that featured The Rock as a buffed and polished 20-something.
Uh waaaay back! (You think that fanny is nice, wait until you see what the one in back is packing.)
I chewed on my straw and tried to figure out what was bothering me about this imagery—beyond Jake the Snake’s super amazing man tights and desperate flopping. (I like to think of older era Jake the Snake more as Jake the Lovable Lost Sea Turtle.)
Something was off here. Something I needed to notice.
This happens to me sometimes. My visual intuition knows something is different and I can’t leave until I figure out what it is. I blame all those “Spot the Difference” game on menus I played as a kid, back before parents had, you know, cell phones to distract us.
I once spent a dumb amount of time in front of a black and white photograph at a tractor machinery museum trying to figure out what about it, exactly, was scratching the back of my mind. The photo showed a row of stern looking men in suits sitting in a dusty office. They were the executive leaders of some machinery factory in the early half of last century. Looking. Scanning. Taking in their creviced faces with mine, a mere century and a few inches away.
I caught it eventually: Despite their fancy mustaches and serious-looking jackets, they were all wearing beaten up boots, covered in dirt and dust. Quite different from the imagery of CEOs and executive leadership you see today. You don’t expect to see genuine evidence of their presence in the actual plants like their workers.
I knew it was something similar with this wrestling match. It was something other than the glitter and spandex and jacked bodies.
Boom.
There it was: In the audience.
Every single person in the stands was watching with rapt attention. These people were actually watching what was going on in front of them! In real time!
I watched for a cell phone in front of someone’s face. I watched for a smartphone hoisted in the air to snap a photo. I looked for a head down, typing on a tiny screen. But while I watched them, they watched the action in the ring. The whole time. Their whole selves invested in just one thing.
IT WAS SO BIZZARE. It was almost too intimate. I kind of felt like I needed to look away.
During another Justin pee break, I watched two burly wrestlers body slam past the ropes and throw themselves into the audience. Dear GoogleGod! Can you imagine if something like this happened today? No one would actually be watching the action right in front of them. Instead it’d be seen, witnessed, through the screen of their smartphone. But during this late ’90s romp, not a cell phone was in sight. It was charming, actually, to see the crowd physically interact with the wrestlers, undistracted. They patted their guy on the back, yelled at their foe. The closest it got to anything like you’d see now was one woman in mom jeans squaring up to take a flash photo on a film camera.
Guys, this was barely 20 years ago!
I watched in shock. Compare this scene to that of Kendrick Lamar’s recent halftime performance at the National Championship. So many people were on their cell phones, they looked bored. The camera operators eventually stopped panning to the audience because it kind of looked bad when you’re going for a jubilant reaction shot to see someone typing on their phone, likely sharing a photo of themselves or Kendrick on stage.
It’s no wonder some performers and musicians have started barring cell phones from their performances.
Oy. And this not a post meant to judge these people. I AM these people. I do the exact same thing. That’s why watching people *not* doing this felt so foreign to me. That’s why watching people *not* doing this was more fascinating than The Rock twirling a man in underpants above his head.
I bought the dress I wore to the New Year’s Eve polka party we attended SPECIFICALLY because I thought it would look hot in an Instagram photo. It did. But… maaaaan, is that who I am now?
I never turn my phone off. I check my email 24/7. This is a choice I’ve made after a lot of thought—a choice that makes my freelance worklife possible, a freelance life that comes with a LOT of freedom—but how many people do not have this luxury? I can feel the difference of personal attention I get electronically—or lack there of—since I joined Facebook 13 years ago. (Yes, 13 years ago. They sent me a Faceversary notification the fall day it happened.)
Yikes. Untag.
People I email are so slammed with added responsibility, expectations and, ironically, emails, they don’t respond as quickly or as diligently as they used to. Just writing emails for others is now, literally, a full time job you can get out of college. It’s no wonder direct mail (read: mail mail aka paper mail aka snail mail) is making a comeback. I, too, am more likely to trust and actually read paper mail than the seemingly worthless junk that shows up in my Gmail “Promotions” folder. Deleting it before I even read the subject line feels like an accomplishment.
I’m 100% pro technology. It can equalize our society in ways never possible before. Hell, it already has! But we have to take personal responsibility for how we let it affect our own lives. There is a social media mental health crisis looming and we’re responsible for protecting ourselves while it goes down.
Does your opinion matter if it’s not liked a hundred times on Twitter?
Does one really run if said run is not recorded during run into a running app?
Does the patriarchy truly fall if no one hears it in the streets at a Women’s March?
Speaking of the Women’s March, I didn’t attend this year because I had a nasty head cold and wave of the blues, but I did try to spend my time doing something more productive than posting photos and fighting about it on Facebook, which was super tempting.
Instead, I worked on a short story that I originally started from the viewpoint of a female character… then changed to the male character’s point of view… then changed back again to being told by the female character. That’s because I realized my own internalized misogyny in thinking that a male’s POV on a subject was more believable than a female’s instead of trusting my gut.
Saturday, I also read a great article in the February issue of Writer’s Digest about how to subvert your characters that are actually really destructive romantic tropes, like the Manic Pixie Dream Girl or the Sensitive Intelligent Alpha Male. This is where I think our power in making change lies—in our everyday actions and internal examinations beyond the screen. As a feminist writer, I can change how a little girl or boy thinks romance, consent or dating works, just through a story. I have more power to change the world there than on a Facebook post trying to get likes.
TLDR: I feel totally drained by social media. Scrolling through Facebook feels emotionally violent, right? The news is all alarming. No one is listening to each other. We’re too quick to break each other down, rather than the opposing argument. I don’t long for the late ’90s or the mom jeans or the film cameras. But I do think there’s something beautiful about not being on your phone all the time — visually and intra- and interpersonally beautiful.
I really want to put an effort into taking more time off my phone this year. Time to to put my cell phone away. Time spent IRL, paying attention to just one thing.
Join me won’t you?
I think we could all make this world a better place if we gave ourselves more time to stop and smell, well, what The Rock is cooking.
I know your newborn nubbers be but as bitty and tender as an earlobe, but please pause that Little Drummer Boy mixtape and see to this, my latest request.
Please, oh heavens, please… do not let this little throat tickle and creeping-up cough be the first sands of many to tinkle through the hourglass of time to be spent recovering from a cold. Bedridden, miserable and relentlessly unproductive/ therefore unAmerican (destined to be older you’s least admired trait, OK?).
May the golden nectar of this Airborne dissolved in tap water have the healing power of a Eucharist washed down with wine on your fave day. May this shimmering orange liquid ensconced in a DayQuil pill behold the power of holy water disinfectant.
Through the marble gates where your cousin goddesses reside, babble to them my wish to be as whole and bright as their Supermoon. Turn on that otherworldly, childish charm to which they so easily succumb and convince them to grant your wish, widdle baby savior of the world!
Next, spirit up to St. Blaise and, like, just humor his conspiracy theories. You don’t have to stay long; I know your swaddled clothes always stink when you leave. When he hits the holy pipe for the third time and the clock strikes three and he starts talking about aliens, ask him to send healing waves down to my earthly throat and lungs, his specialty. (Also, if possible, the burner number to reach “his guy.”)
Finally, coo to your mother, who always knows how to make everything better when the world feels shitty–from the chicken noodle soup to the tea with honey to you, young prince.
