Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Where We're At

My life is basically on fire right now: between 24/7 childcare duties, part-time work that is just a weensy bit unboundaried, being evicted, househunting, the snowstorm, a baby who is learning how to walk/unlearning how to sleep, and also the general day-to-day grind of it being almost, but not quite, the end of winter...I am tired. I think I'm actually doing okay, emotionally, right now, but I'm also looking forward to having my midlife crisis/breakdown sometime in the next 18 months. Once we get unpacked, of course.

Anyway, because this blog is my neglected friend who still loves me despite the fact that I never call and never write, and when I do show I'm all disheveled and distracted, I'm here to write a very haphazard list of things that are sustaining me, or non-mom things I'm thinking about, through this tire-fire of a financial quarter.

1. Soma chocolate. I keep some gingerbread toffee from Christmastime beside my bed, and every now and then I remember it's there, and I eat two glorious bites. (Don't be fooled into thinking I'm some sort of chocolate aesthete, though. I mainline a Cadbury's bar every other day. "Why can't I lose this baby weight?" It's a mystery, truly.)

2. The New Yorker. My ability to read any kind of book is basically nonexistent right now, so I lean heavily on The New Yorker to make me feel smart. Their arts writing in particular is such a luscious, nourishing slice of heaven—last year's profile of Michael Heizer, the recent profile of Catherine Opie, even the interview with Jack White (in which he talks about the talismanic power of three in his creative practice); all are helping me stumble forward in my own self-conception as an artist. I realize that this sounds self-indulgent at best and insane at worst, but after a decade of saying "I want my spaces to look this way, I want my clothes to tell this story," I'm starting to realize that I can recast all that as being in service to a larger through-line in life, and that feels pretty delicious.

3. I'm currently running a March Madness-style poll on my Facebook page, in which I attempt to goad my friends into narrowing a list of 32 films down into the Ultimate Feel-Good Movie. It's so much fun.

4. The third Baby Dance Party is coming up this weekend, and I'm getting a new phone from my earnings. Lord knows I've made my poor Galaxy Nexus suffer long enough. I will miss you, little friend. Remember that one time someone posted a picture of a spider on Twitter and it scared me so bad I dropped you on the bathroom floor and cracked your poor screen? And instead of replacing it or feeling bad, I then just thought of it as being "a reason not to take my phone if I got mugged"? That was very silly. Also, your camera was terrible.

5. I am feeling all these feelings about my body, which is basically: Okay, now I am a fat mom, so what am I going to to about it? Because right now, in this season of my life, I don't have the time or the space to work out. Normally, I exercise at home, but it's hard to do on a hardwood floor that creaks like a fucking horror movie all day long, because just breathing weird from two rooms over will wake this baby up, so forget about a floor that makes it sound like a pile of lumber falling off the side of a boat. And the snow and the cold make it very unappealing to do long summer-style walks. And I eat chocolate all the time. And muffins. And brownies. And I'm not exactly mad at it, but I am just very aware that the longer this shape and weight lingers, the tougher it will be to dispense of it. And I'm just so body-tired all the time. My back hurts. My wrists hurt. I am not in dance- or yoga-shape. I am unbendy. It's shitty, because two years ago I was in the best damn shape of my entire life, and I knew it, but I took it for granted. I can get it back. And now? I am...not. And I can't figure out which reserves to draw from to make the changes, because it feels like all my reserves are tapped.

6. Building on #2, Abstract, on Netflix, has been so inspiring and cool. I love how confident all these designers are; like, they show up, and they do their jobs—well, because they're at the top of their game—and they're pretty humble but not falsely so, and the stories that they tell are just astounding. I need a push, a change, a new direction. I love being a mom and being a writer, but I want to change the shape of the world. So: How?