30 Before 31

September 11, 2018 No Comments

About five years ago, I started an annual tradition of making a list of goals to accomplish by my next birthday. I prefer this to resolutions (for New Years I pick a word I want the year to embody as opposed to a list of things), because I feel like there’s less universal pressure and I tailor it more to my age than the year itself.

Each year the number of goals correlates to how old I am – IE: 25 things to do by 26, 26 before 27, and so forth. If you’re interested, you can see 25, 26 & 27 HERE. (I realize I’m going to have to cap the number at some point, because anything more than 30 already seems excessive, so we’ll see…)

I love checking in throughout the year with a reminder of things I want to accomplish, then being able to look back and see what was important to me and how I’ve grown and changed. In the wake of my recent birthday, Im sharing this year’s list of goals with you, accompanied by how I did in terms of accomplishing them.

PERSONAL

Birthday Suit

August 30, 2018 No Comments

My birthday is in exactly five days and, right on cue, the annual feelings of melancholy, anxiety and introspection are sinking in. I’m not the kind of person who doesn’t like acknowledging my birthday – lets be honest, I’m a glutton for most any kind of attention – but the event always tends to bring out a bit of unease. And nothing brings this existential angst to the forefront more than the act of finding the perfect birthday outfit.

The outfit that sets the tone for the new year, the one you look back on and immediately remember who you were at that moment in time.

PERSONAL

Tarreyn 3.0

August 10, 2018 No Comments

Earlier this week TBVS Inc. announced the official launch of the latest update in their line of Personality Operating Systems: Tarreyn 3.0.

A generally accessible and well-liked identity OS program, T3.0 is available to most users in Southern California who can offer it friendship and decent red wine. Below is a further look at what the system has to offer.

About: Tarreyn 3.0 is the third major OS release developed by CEO Tarreyn Van Slyke since the original TBVS founders lost exclusive control of the personality advancements in the early 1990s. The successor to Tarreyn 2.9, T3.0 was announced by Van Slyke to approximately 0-50 people anywhere in her vicinity during the spring of 2018. (Exact dates of the initial statement are unclear as Van Slyke is permanently talking.)

FEELINGS

Unpacking Loss

August 4, 2018 No Comments

I dreamt of my mom two nights ago in a way I’ve never seen her. She was in a hospital bed, sick again – but she didn’t look it. Her hair was short, but not the white, post-treatment pixie. It was softer around her face and was the dark black it had been through my childhood. Lying awake and tear stained at 4am thinking back, I knew I’d seen her look that way, but had no memory of it. As a few minutes passed, I realized where I knew it from – her, in a hospital bed, with that style of hair – that’s how she looked when I was born. (This is supplanted in my brain from the included photograph, I obviously don’t have a genius infant memory.)

In the dream we were lying in her hospital bed together, the way we did at the beginning of my life and at the end of hers.

She was surrounded by thousands of yellow flowers, and there was a smudge of yellow paint across her left cheek. We were just lying there together talking about everything and nothing. About how much she was going to miss me, what would I wear for my birthday in a month, a poem she’d written recently.

The dream ended abruptly the way they usually do: by crying myself into consciousness, and as the soft haze of yellow and safety evaporated, there was a tangible loss of heat. The warmth of snuggling up next to her had physically slipped into the cold dark air.

There are several different kinds of grief dreams that I’ve encountered over the last year. Three distinct and separate types – all shrill and visceral in their own ways.

There are the reminders.

FEELINGS

Letting Perfect Be The Enemy Of Good

July 30, 2018 No Comments

I am a specific breed of person who speaks in idioms.

If a friend is having a bad day, I’ll tell them without a pinch of irony ‘you can’t get to the rainbow without a little rain.’ When someone asks for my opinion (and often when they don’t) on negotiating in any area from the bedroom to the boardroom, I’ll most likely respond ‘If you don’t ask, the answer is no.’ A favorite in the current rotation that falls out of my mouth daily – as I hustle in the entertainment industry – is: ‘comparison is the thief of joy.’

My intense and abiding love for the self-improvement section is a larger topic for another time, deeply entrenched in my ongoing campaign to mitigate the Cathy comic stigma surrounding it. But, regardless of the habit’s origins or evolution, one phrase has stuck with me more than any other for the last decade: ‘Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.’

It has been, for me, the greatest motivator of anything else I’ve ever read or been told. It alleviates the stress while simultaneously leaving no room for not trying.