Caterwauling

I say it all the time. you find exactly what you are looking for, wherever you go.

I see love.

Rainbows.

Clouds with big, bold streaks of silver.

Hearts that can be lifted with a smile or filled to overflowing with a hug.

Lips waiting to be kissed by the right person or maybe even the wrong one …

Just for that brief, delicious moment of soul connection we all crave.

Yeah I see darker orbs, too. Quivers filled with daggers. Choices that promise a moment of joy but a night of hurt that they will choose every time.

But I also see the light around them that they snuff out at every available opportunity.

Light through the holes they bore in others.

Put down the drill.

Choose light.

Choose love.

So someone who wants to see good will see you.

January truly was the longest year ever.

Lost amid the corruption and hysteria were three key deaths. Kobe Bryant, Mary Higgins Clark and Elizabeth Wurtzel.

Kobe got the headlines. As he should.

But Elizabeth was me. Is me.

Posting this here because I expect to read it again and again. And to inspire me as I run for my own life.

The Chaotic, Beautiful Larks of Elizabeth Wurtzel

She made a career out of her emotions. In her words …

Elizabeth Wurtzel Confronts Her One-night Stand of a Life

The thing that makes “This is Us” so unbelievably awesome is exactly what I posted about yesterday.

I am still reeling from last night’s episode that took Randall and William to Memphis. And why?

Because the writers leave nothing on the table. They pack every brilliant idea they can find into each episode.

They know the show could be canceled at any moment. (It won’t, thank God — it’s been renewed for the next two years already.)

I cried and laughed and cried and did I mention cried? That’s how you do it. That’s the writer, the producer, the director, the talent, the EVERYTHING coming together.

I really need to sign up for Shonda Rimes’ screenwriting class. I have to. These stories aren’t telling themselves, you know.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you,” as Maya Angelou said.

And mine is killing me with each day that passes with it going untold.

I finally got to see “Money Monster” today. It was masterful. 

It also distracted me from the pile of work I needed to do today because I really needed to do it three weeks ago but it’s been nonstop chaos and I already canceled a vacation so someone else can take theirs and Jesus the tasks never stop. 

I often think about how I probably would have been Vice President of the company I last worked at in D.C. 

I mean I might have been the janitor too. But this whole starting over again every couple of years is for the boids, I tell ya. 

Anyway. I love my field. Not always my place in it. But my current deal with God is to be patient and it will all be worth it someday.

As I watched the movie, which was masterfully written, I thought that’s what I should be doing. Explaining complex things to the masses in an entertaining way. 

I’ve been reading a book in my free time. Just a lovely summer beach read, Judy Blume’s latest. I’m in love with it. It reminds me why I wanted to be a writer. 

She has a massive cast but it’s not hard to follow and it tells a million sides of the same story. Love love love. 

Yeah. I should be writing screenplays. Or something like that. It’s time to get back to that. But hopefully without giving up everything and starting all over again. Although taking a nice week off to write may be harder than going off the grid entirely …

I came across that word in my travels this week. It gave me that magical, tingly, giddy feeling I always used to get when I found the perfect word for a very specific usage.

Understand, I was once a walking thesaurus. Then I met my mortal enemy, Flesch-Kincaid. And I hate that motherfucker.

So now in addition to being a grammar queen and figuring out where the point in the story is and making sure it’s at the top of the page and a great conclusion is at the bottom and then that there’s a super-awesome P.S. after the signature because everyone KNOWS that most orders come from people scrolling through the heart of the story just to get to the epilogue …

I have to take beautiful prose and julienne that shit so that even a fifth grader (or in this case, an eighth grader. Maybe 10th if there are a lot of numbers) can read it.

Funny how a gal who sought a career in wordsmithing would come to loathe sentences (rather, phrases used in place of sentences) so much.

Today I don’t care. I am insouciant. And the word rolls off my tongue. Monday, I will be indifferent or nonchalant or, here’s a thought, no one cares how you feel and I won’t be anything at all.

I’m pretty sure the Thunder Bunch drugged the kids last night. No constant stomping, vase-rolling or glass-dropping that would rouse the dead. Win. 

I did hear them as I left the house today. But it was more annoying listening to residents’ unleashed dogs going after humans and their leashed dogs last night. 

Huge kerfuffle with “Amber” and her attractive asshole owner. Per usual. It’s a shame all the cute, single guys are either mean to their dogs or lax in taking care of them. 

When this “toodaloo Thundercunt” countdown ends, I plan to start a new, positive one. I don’t care to do NaNoWriMo anymore … all the cool writers and writers’ groups were up North. But I can manage a positive post a day for 30 days. Right?

There was a moment on this week’s episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” that will live in my head for quite some time.

Our beloved Miranda Bailey, constantly trapped at her computer to stare at boring research about genomes that kept her out of the operating room she loves so much, got pulled into a surgery she didn’t have time to perform.

(Insert “staring at numbers” and “doing the writing she loves so much,” and guess who we’re talking about.)

Meanwhile I’ve been cursing a writing project in very much the same way.

The surgery gave Bailey a brilliant breakthrough idea that would catapult her research from the point where she was stuck.

I … haven’t quite gotten that inspiration.

Writing has become that thing I used to do. Like a high school football or cheerleading star looks back after 20 or 40 years and fondly recalls when it all seemed so important and yet so effortless with the benefit of youth on our side.

I tried to think about my book characters for the series I started writing 25 years ago. And I wondered if I should just have a mental funeral for them. I have come to hate writing that much.

But I’m not sure how to define myself without it. In fact, I’m not certain how to define myself at all these days.

I think of my mom and what makes her special. She will always say that I was the best thing she ever did with her life. I imagine most parents feel that way. What makes my mom special is that she makes everything more-beautiful.

She’s artistic and creative and kind and caring. She can match a shade of blue bought in a dress in Pittsburgh with the perfect matching blue shoes in Virginia and a blue hair accessory found on a random trip to the Florida Keys.

She can, for under $35, pull together an entire house in lime greens and magentas and purples and turquoises to make it look like an Easter spread from a high-end magazine.

She can, after everyone else has tried to trample my soul, reinflate it with a, “Well, you’re happy inside and they aren’t. And you look skinny, too. Fuck everyone else.”

And so on.

But I’m the only one who sees all that.

And I wonder if, whatever makes me special — whatever that is — will ever be visible to anyone but my mom and my cat. And whether I’ll have my Bailey-like inspiration and finally, finally do something the world is going to appreciate.

Maybe I just need to stop caring about what the world thinks. And that will be the jumping-off point I’ve missed up till now …

Didn’t sleep. Cat kept me up all night, just howling. No idea why. And I think I’m starting to get sick. At least, my head feels like it’s full of cotton, wrapped around a lead weight. So, ask me how much I’m looking forward to getting through this day!

I find myself fluctuating every day between “Holy shit, do I rock” and “Holy shit, other people are doing better work AND in less time.”

And after I had that epiphany yesterday about, when you have balance, nothing feels like a chore … well, I started itemizing my passions during the long morning commute.

(Seriously, the less time I have with my thoughts, the better. This is getting to be a dangerous habit.)

I’ve always said I wanted to write a book. Well, I’ve written bunches of them. My new goal is to publish a book I’ve written. And not one of the ones I already have. Those were just to keep me out of trouble or occupied.

But what about?

My passion really revolves around office dynamics. Well, the interpersonal dynamics of colleagues, anyway. From supervisory approaches to teambuilding to accountability to leveraging friendships into making the workdays something special. Work is not to be dreaded or tolerated. Job-hopping is not the answer. Of course, neither is staying in the wrong environment.

Anyway, I dig this stuff. And that’s why I have often dug my grave via this blog. Because I’m not the only one who notices this stuff … I just feel like I have a passion for well-taken-care-of people being happier, healthier and more-productive overall.

My fear is that, other than my sarcasm, I don’t have a unique take on it. And that’s why I’ve never sat down to outline it. I have a working title that would work with a sarcastic tone. But I don’t love it. And therefore I’ve never started writing it.

I guess I’m ready to start growing again. My latest load of tasks have given me a broader knowledge base, but I was already at the top of my game before I took them on. I need to break past that glass ceiling instead of just getting wider, kind of like my ass is from parking it at a desk chair and then in a car seat all day.

I guess no time like the present to start an outline …

I was actually up part of the night wondering whether to delete my last post. I don’t like that side of me. I don’t like how one person I’ve never met (and someone I’d be so fucking nice to in person if we ever met, it would sicken even me) can rile me like that.

It’s funny how we attach certain things to people we don’t know or don’t know well. It’s easier that way, really, than to go to someone you do know very well and say what’s on your mind. Especially if you’ve said it and still feel like you haven’t been heard.

Anyway, it’s weird how this shit kicks back on me. Usually once a month. And consulting my calendar, yeah, it’s a few days from unleashing-the-floodgates territory. Like fucking clockwork, I get this weird flare-up that makes me react to actual wrongs by going off the rails about long-ago ones because I can’t do a damn thing (yet) about the situations that ARE in front of me.

Longtime readers know I cuss like there’s no tomorrow in my writings and conversation, although I’ve toned that down substantially over the past couple of years. F-bombs have always been my bullets. I never met a C-word I didn’t embrace and over-use. I got in trouble with my high-school “boyfriend” (the is-it-or-isn’t-it relationship thing started early) because we used to swear a lot. Of course, both of our families told the teacher to go fuck herself and leave us alone. 😉

Anyway, what y’all may find ironic or even funny is that I keep a paper journal. I write a paragraph or a page every single day. And here’s the funny part … I write it to God.

That kind of cuts down on the snark a little, and certainly the swearing!

The journal is just as cryptic as this, but I think if I could explain to you some of the facts, it would help from a perspective factor. And because I’ve never been one for sharing details much beyond my perception of things, well, you have to rely upon how I see the world to understand where I’m coming from.

That’s all I can give you, most of the time. I may not be able to share context, but I love that most of you trust and respect me enough to say, well, if that’s how she’s reacting, she probably has a pretty fucking good reason for feeling that way. And believe me, I love you for it more than you will ever know. 🙂

Anyway, I have a post that has been in draft mode for a while that I want to share that, well, I’m glad I didn’t. Watchers of “The Bachelor” would get it — how you find someone who loves you but you’re never the only one. And when he chooses, he never chooses you but nine times out of 10 he will wish he had. Meanwhile you feel like shit when you could have felt special.

Normally this doesn’t bother me. After all, by rights, I’ve been “on the show” about four times in my life. Still looking for that great love but I’ll die trying. In the meantime, I always have other things going on. But I don’t talk about those. I don’t know why. I honestly don’t. I guess because the ones that cause me to be profound (and slightly psychotically imbalanced) make for the best prose.

My industry has killed my love of writing. This blog is all I have left. Of course I’m going to go for what tickles and tortures my soul.

I wrote something yesterday that made me so proud and yet I can’t share a word of it. Because it was a brand-new insight into an old problem I thought I’d left behind in 2012. I closed my journal and smiled, so happy with my genius little mind. And I thanked God for that stunning moment of clarity.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that I SHOULD delete my “Imma cut a bitch” type of posts. But you know what? If any man ISN’T flattered that I would have done anything for him at one point in my life, he ain’t passionate enough for me. I’m still looking for the man who will throw me up against a wall and have his way with me and I don’t think I can suffer through anyone who would do anything less.

Sure I’m kind of a lazy fuck these days, but those of you who have seen me be “in” it, know when I’m “in” it. And there’s nothing like it from what I hear. 😉

Oh, boys, what some of you have missed out on. How you’ve done it so willingly, however, will baffle me till the day I die.

If I can write half a sentence novel this month, I’ll call it a victory. Happy writing to those of you who are participating in NaNoWriMo this year. Inspiration came my way yesteday and I ain’t wasting it. …