Chapter 81: What You Are

I woke up this morning only slightly later than planned. 7:40am instead of 7:30am. I woke in a pretty good mood and was excited to get back into my morning workout routine. The workout was a little intense this morning. I’m not sure if it was the fact that I went two days without doing it or because I was a bit overtired or what exactly, but I had to really push for it this morning. It helped, though, that we had an excellent soundtrack to workout to. “The Fame” by Lady Gaga, which I think was actually a better workout soundtrack than “The Fame Monster.” I think “The Fame,” for the most part, has a more even beat to it and even when it slows down a bit early on, like on “Paparazzi” and “Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)” it is still upbeat and quick enough to move to. I need to throw together some sort of workout playlist that is all fast-paced and moves a little more evenly than most albums do. Either way, though, I got a good workout and worked up a major sweat from it. Afterwards, I sat down to a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats with Peaches, which was pretty delicious and filling. Then I took a long-ish shower and put on makeup for the day. I packed up my bag for the day and included a Curves meal replacement bar, and headed off for work.

When I arrived at work I pulled out the “Crying At The Disco” drawing I have been working on and tried to sort out where exactly it had gone wrong. Over the weekend I had tried a few different things with it to improve it, but none of it worked out. It hit me at work that the body of the woman at the center of the drawing was a little off. Her proportions were off in a lot of places. Still, I was also having a little trouble figuring out the placement of the other people, the dancers at the disco. By the end of the day I had not completed the drawing, but I have the main outline done. Now it is just a matter of adding details. I still feel kind of funny about it, but I think it is shaping up nicely and will be a good addition to the collection I am submitting to the t-shirt company. We’ll see, though. I spent most of today working on this between calls and didn’t really talk to my co-workers much at all. Before work this morning I had stumbled upon my horoscope on Twitter that read: "Your mind is buzzing with original ideas, but you're wise to keep them to yourself today because you may not be able to explain yourself very well. Instead of trying to convince anyone that your plan really could work, just quietly concentrate on making it happen. Once you have some positive results to show for your efforts, others will be more likely to roll up their sleeves and jump in to support you." I really took that advice to heart, not just in reference to today but in general. It is absolutely true that my mind is buzzing with original ideas right now, but I kind of feel like I shouldn’t be running around talking about them. There are a few different reasons for this. As the horoscope says, I may not be able to explain myself well and that would create doubt in other people’s minds about my ability to accomplish these goals. Other people’s doubts about these goals would then be put out into the Universe and could cause opposition towards my completion of them. I also understand that everybody has some sort of agenda, and the more I talk about my ideas the more I leave myself open to criticism, for whatever reasons one may have for criticizing me, and other people’s criticism is of no service to me. It can only create doubt in my own mind. For these reasons, I stayed kind of tight-lipped at work today. I have stayed kind of tight-lipped at work a lot lately. It just seems like there is so much negativity in that place and the more I talk to the people around me, the more I am contributing to it. I want to be a part of the solution, not part of the problem… and believe me, it’s a problem.

I was feeling pretty hungry by the time my lunch break came and I was feeling some doubt that the meal replacement bar would help that at all. I was completely wrong about that, though. I ate that very small bar and didn’t feel hungry again until it was almost time to get off. When I got home after work I decided to just eat a small snack to hold me over until later when I was ready to make dinner in time for my Mom to get home. I ate a kiwi and a little bit of yogurt. It was a small snack, but it was very fulfilling. Plus, it was a healthy snack item instead of something fatty. I feel like today I ALMOST found the perfect eating routine: Small breakfast, tiny lunch, small snack, then the part that made it ALMOST perfect, a large dinner. This evening I taught myself something I had always kind of wanted to know: How to make spaghetti. It was extremely simple. I didn’t do anything fancy, so hold your applause. The sauce was Ragu. Basically, all I did was brown some meat and boil some noodles. Still, I had never done it before and never realized how simple it actually is. It was delicious, too. So delicious, in fact, that I wound up eating way more than I should have and am now feeling kind of sick because of it. Lesson learned, I suppose. I am going to try to repeat this process tomorrow, although I don’t know how that is going to go. My good friend/team lead at work was planning to make Chicken & Rice for dinner tonight and said that she was going to bring me some for lunch tomorrow. Luckily, that isn’t really an overly fattening or unhealthy meal. It also sounds obscenely delicious from her description of it, so I won’t resist. That should make for a good lunch. It will definitely be better than a meal replacement bar. I suppose it doesn’t entirely matter WHAT I eat, just that I eat a small portion for breakfast, a small portion for lunch, a small snack and then dinner. I know they say it is unhealthy to eat later in the evening, but due to my Mom’s schedule I don’t really have much of a choice but to eat dinner late. Besides, I am not really on an actual diet – I am just trying to make a change to my relationship with food and the way that I eat. I’m not going to get overly focused on the details of the times that I eat, or really what I eat, just the portions of it. Basically, I just need to eat when I feel hungry and only eat enough to satisfy that hunger. It’s a pretty simple concept, and I managed to carry it out pretty well today. Now it’s just a matter of doing that every day. I think I can pull this off.

My Mom got home this evening just as the spaghetti finished and we sat down to a couple re-runs of “Glee,” (which I have now dubbed “Gleeruns.”) It was nice because I think we both just needed to sit down and stare at something old and familiar and decompress from the day. We didn’t talk about anything of any importance, mainly discussing how good the spaghetti was and how much we both love Lea Michele. I don’t know how to explain it exactly but it was nice to spend a little brainless time together just enjoying something separate from our own lives. I love moments like that. I wouldn’t want them to be predominant or anything, but they are certainly enjoyable when they do come. I feel like most people kind of forget about the fact that just as much as you need time to be connected to the world and the events of your day-to-day life, your job, your friends and your family, you also need time to be completely disconnected from it and just relax and have fun and not think about or talk about anything of any importance. I really think that it is important to allow yourself a little time to not be productive, and even more to not feel any guilt for that. Oftentimes, my Mom and I will have times like these on the weekend and then she will beat herself up because she didn’t get anything accomplished and I always try to tell her how foolish that is. You may not have gotten any of the things you had planned accomplished, but you accomplished something much greater: Clearing your head. That is just as important as any household chore. Hopefully she’ll figure that out one of these days.

It is 12:15am and I am ready for bed, but before I go there was one last thing that I wanted to discuss here. This evening, in my post-work Twitter check, I found a link from one of my favorite artists of all-time, Jewel. It was a link to a blog post on her official website that started off with her referencing one of my favorite songs off of her debut album, “Pieces Of You.” The song is called “Painters,” and it was about, in her words, “an artist who wanted to paint themselves a lovely world.” This blog post goes on to discuss how she has kind of made it her mission to make her life her greatest work of art. That is something I had never really thought much about, honestly, but it makes perfect sense. If you dedicate your life to creating art, as she has and as I strive to every day, why wouldn’t you try to create a life as great, if not greater, than the rest of what you create? In a lot ways, I think this may be the fatal flaw for so many artists out there – they make great art, but neglect their lives. I have long believed that the two couldn’t really go hand-in-hand, but more and more lately I realize how ridiculous that idea is. I can’t imagine how living a great life would make your art suffer yet so many people allow making great art to make their lives suffer. There is no need for this. Jewel is an amazing example of that. I feel like her living a great life has only improved her art. I hope to have a life like that at some point myself. This blog also tells a beautiful story about an art teacher that Jewel had in high school who gave all of her students a stone to carve, and explained to them that what the stone was meant to be was already there and that it isn’t the job of the artist to create something of it, but to chip away what is covering what it already is underneath. This relates to every single one of us. We allow society to place so much onto us that we wind up like those stones, with all these other elements covering up what we already are. Maybe it is our job, as the artists creating our own lives, to chip away those elements, those things that we are not, to get down to what we really are. Our low self-esteem, our trust issues, our childhoods, our pain, our issues, our dramas – none of those things are what we are. We need to find ways to get past them all and discover what we really are underneath it all. Attached to this blog was a brand new song that will be included on her next album, recorded on her laptop in acoustic form, called “What You Are” that discusses these topics beautifully. “A star is a star, it doesn’t have to try to shine, water will fall, a bird just knows how to fly, you don’t have to tell a flower how to bloom or light how to fill up a room, you already are what you are, and what you are is perfect.” It’s so simple, yet such a powerful statement. This is yet another reason why I consider Jewel one of the greatest songwriters of our generation. She is amazing. I only hope to be a fragment of the artist that she is one day.

For now, though, it is time for my beauty rest so I will be able to wake up in the morning and try the whole routine again. I am reminded of an episode of “The L Word,” when Jennifer Beals’ character is begging Marlee Matlin’s character not to tell her girlfriend something she has found out that isn’t actually true. Long story, but Marlee Matlin’s character says something that has stuck with me ever since: “Every day we wake up and we try to be better than we were the day before, it’s the execution that is the problem… but we still try.” I am trying.