Pardon My French

Happy Thursday!

This morning was an especially happy one for me because I was able to drop ALL of our Save The Dates in the mail. You have no idea what a big relief this is to me.

It took weeks of bugging Phil to get all of his contacts finalized, cutting/adding contacts, collecting all of the addresses, editing the guest list addresses for mistakes, ordering labels, printing these labels (don’t get me started…) The project was in my lap for two months and now they’re FINALLY done. Woohoo!

Onward!

In with the new!

Welcome 2013! This is the year that I plan my wedding, get married and finish my novel. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked forward at the year to come with so much anticipation and hope.

In the year 2012, I did many things. Some were more milestone moments than others:

-Read 22 books (many of which were longer than 1,000 pages.)
-Made my first custom-made letter stamp
-Watched a lot of well-made television (”Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad,” “Deadwood,” “American Horror Story: Asylum,” “Supernatural” AGAIN, “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” AGAIN, “Firefly” AGAIN, etc.) which I feel is a good thing. Good writing and interesting characters inspire me.
-Helped Phil promote his first book: “So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide to Time Travel”
-I saw photos of my grandfather for the first time
-I got promoted at work
-Ran the Tinkerbell Half Marathon wearing fairy wings. This was also my first race in my Vibram’s.
-Bought family window stickers for our car
-Discovered my now favorite watering hole: The Good Luck Bar
-Beat my Half Marathon PR in the Hollywood Half Marathon
-Earned new respect for marathon spectators and supporters when I WATCHED my first marathon (The L.A. Marathon)
-Attended the Wanderlust Yoga and music festival in Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe.
-Saw Patti Smith in concert
-Took that RV road trip across America with my family that we’ve always been meaning to take
-Finally got around to hiking to the Forrestral Nature Preserve Sea Caves
-Went to Palm Springs
-Ate a lot of sushi, drank a lot of coffee and ordered a lot of Thai food–NO REGRETS!
-Donated to Planned Parenthood, AIDS Project Los Angeles, The American Red Cross, Equality California, Goodwill.
-I gave a lot of food and personal care items to a lot of homeless people located near my work
-Attended my first (and possibly last) Comic-Con: San Diego Comic-Con 2012! (It was fun, but very exhausting!)
-Did something I should have when we first moved out here: went to the Abbey in West Hollywood
-Fostered a kitten and adopted him.
-Facilitated the introduction of Xander to Kiwi. Very proud to say that they became best friends
-Was part of a Ragner Relay: a team race that lasted two days and one night from Los Angeles to San Diego.
-I turned 25, which I remember is the age that the child version of myself considered to be “old.”
-Gave Phil the best Christmas gift, ever: a pocket watch engraved with his initials and a very special note from me. “Wherever you may go in space and time, I will always be with you.”

I want to be clear that I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions. Sure, there are lots of things I need do and focus on, but I think that if you want to get something done, you should set short-term goals and do what you need to do to achieve them. If you want to see something change, you should set to work changing it right away.

There are plenty of items on my docket for the new year, many of which I mentioned in the intro graphs to this entry: save more, eat less, more running, more reading, more writing, etc. But, above all, I want to stay focused on being a better human being. These graphics, I think, so a good job of summing up the person who I want to be. I regard them as well-stated mantras that I need to keep in mind.

In a photo that was taken of me at work recently, I’m pictured wearing a comfortable plaid shirt, a messy side pony tail and scarcely any make-up.

Yesterday was my mom’s birthday. Because I wanted to watch her open the present I sent from her and my sister, we arranged a Skype date. We decided to take the picture because we realized that both of us were wearing plaid. (She’s a little hard to see, but that’s Court up in the top left corner of that photo. 2,300 miles apart and still sisters!)

To be fair, I didn’t know that someone would snap my photo–and if that was the case, I might have put a little more effort into my appearance. That being said, though, these days I’ve been keeping it pretty casual. Not sweatpants casual–Jesus, no. I just prefer to be comfortable while I do my job.

When I see women on Hollywood wearing high heels or suits, I have to wonder how they do it. It’s been a really hot summer in Los Angeles and there’s just a pair of air conditioning units to keep us cool at work. Walking around outside, even just to lunch, turns me into a sweaty mess of wet clothes and smeared make-up. So I’ve been keeping it simple–less cute and well put-together than I feel during the colder months.

I surprised myself when I looked at this photo, though, and smiled. I didn’t hate what I saw. My smile’s a little forced for the photo (I’m bad at smiling on command), but I still look happy and healthy, even. My hair’s growing–I haven’t dyed it in years– and my skin is glowing. My eyes have some twinkle to them. I’m not a scary monster without any make-up on and, more importantly, I don’t feel compelled to compare myself to other women.

In a way, I feel I’ve come full circle from age 8 to age 24. I am fully confident and sure of myself, like I was as a little girl.

Growing up was tough on me. In junior high I was a sheep, copying the way the people around me looked and acted. I eventually grew out of this before I went to high school, but still, for years had low self-esteem and didn’t feel good about the way I looked. I passively spent a lot of time thinking about how much I didn’t like myself, wishing I could be someone else.

Though it’s been years since I’ve felt this way, looking at this particular plain Jane photo, I realize how long of a journey it was before I could really embrace and love who I am.

(A hat tip to my amazing bosses) I’m wearing what I want (tees, jeans and sandals) and I don’t fuss over how my hair looks. I’m like the little girl I once was: running around doing my own things, writing as fast as I can, trying to fit every moment and every word in.

It’s a good feeling.

I don’t make New Years Resolutions anymore. It’s mostly because based on what I’ve seen, the words just don’t hold any meaning to people.

It marks a time to become a better person by volunteering more, starting that diet you’ll never stick to or breaking some bad habit. But, a week goes by and there’s no difference between this year and the last.

A friend of mine recently said that he doesn’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions because if a person really wants to change, he or she shouldn’t wait around until this designated time of year–and I have to agree. Nothing ever gets done that way.

Not only that, but a few years ago, I heard some Backstreet Boy say that his New Years Resolution was to “go green by not littering.” I wish I could say that I was making this up. That alone made me abandon my New Years Resolution tradition.

While I don’t and won’t make New Years Resolutions, I think it’s hard to not take a long hard look at myself when one year ends and another begins.

This year the verdict is: I need to get my shit together.

As time has passed, my reasons for deciding whether to blog or not to blog has changed. My old Livejournal account and my very first blog chronicled the day-to-day of the majority of my adolescence. The entries, I now realize, were interesting to no one other than a few close friends and myself as they were essentially very detailed logs of what happened during my daily life. Sometimes, I would even blog multiple times a day.

My blogs are still a statement of who I am, but they don’t pop up as often as they used to. This, I feel, is a problem. I feel it’s more important than ever to be keeping blogs on a daily basis. I want to become a better writer, the very best that I can be. To do that, I have to write every single day, no matter how I’m feeling or what’s going on. No excuses.

In an effort to write every single day, but not talk about myself, I’m going to use my blog as a platform for my various writing prompts.
But, it still won’t have a particular theme. My blog is just my blog. It’s just a place for me to express myself, whether it be personal or just a means to get some words out of me. Its the official place for me to put the things I’m working on, whether it be the collection of memoir-based essays I’m documenting, or some fiction that happens to pop into my brain.

And that, is that.

It was by a strange chain of events that I came to be mentored by a Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist.

Earlier this year, I came upon a writing contest called “The Coffee Shop Chronicles” while looking for writing gigs on Craigslist. My story could be featured in anthology the publishers were assembling and the winner could earn a gift card to their favorite coffee shop. The rules were simple: be creative, keep it short, and the story should have something to do with coffee.

I sat down at my computer and started writing. I didn’t stop for several hours and came up with a story that wasn’t short enough to be eligible for the contest. I posted it to my blog, considered the entire writing experience an inspiration and then put the whole thing to bed.

The very next day I woke up to a comment from a man named Thorn Sully of A Word With You Press, Publishers and Purveyors of Fine Stories. He was thrilled that his contest was able to inspire me, agreed that my story was a bit long, but posted it to his blog, anyway. It turns out that Thorn is a very kind human being who has a lot of passion for words. As I am always inspired by people who love what they do, We stayed in touch via email and I kept up with his blog.

Some months later, I found out that the creative team had decided to be bend the rules a little bit and publish my story in the anthology “The Coffee Shop Chronicles Vol. 1: Oh The Places I Have Bean” anyway. I was thrilled, as I have never been published before.

A Word With You Press isn’t just a publishing house, however. They also offer workshops and seminars. And I recently attended one of these workshops.

I drove out to their headquarters in Oceanside, California, which is about an hour and a half outside of Los Angeles to attend a workshop put on by Jonathan Freedman. Freedman won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his series of editorials that urged the passage of the first major immigration reform act in 34 years. (These were published in The Tribune in San Diego, Calif.) I was pretty excited to attend as I had first read his work during college and it struck a cord with me. It’s one of those pieces of writing that every time you pick it up, doesn’t matter how many times you’ve read it, you have to read it all the way through. That’s how good it is.

Freedman’s career hasn’t been rooted exclusively in editorial writing, however. He has also worked as a foreign correspondent, written novels, books meant to inspire social change and children’s books.

I have been trying to will my pen to write fiction for some time, but because the world of journalism and fiction exist on opposite ends of the universe, this is something that doesn’t necessarily come easy to me. I saw this as the most perfect venue to bridge my passions– with someone who is an expert in both media.

At first I was very intimidated by Jonathan, but he was actually very warm and receptive to what I had to say. I ended up picking his brain, asking him questions about his voice and how he had come to develop his eye for detail. We ended up talking about my own journalism project, Perfect Stranger L.A. and he seemed genuinely impressed. Later, he offered to be my mentor to help guide me toward success. I, of course, was speechless.

I have never before had any professional in the field take an interest in my work.

I’ve always felt very jealous upon hearing friends and colleagues talk about the great contacts that they have made in their designated fields. Networking is something that I have never excelled at. I can wander up to any stranger and ask them about their day in the life, but I have a very difficult time putting myself up on a pedestal and explaining to people why I am worth their time.

I’m just happy that I can now say that I have at least made some beginning steps in the right direction.