Ruby Wax's Blog, page 5

#AskRuby 2 October 2014

Here is this week's #AskRuby - where I answer your questions about my cats. You can get involved by tweeting @rubywax and tagging your question #askruby.

1. @actordavidc : What deal are you on with your cats with regard any work you get them? Irrespective of a contract with their agent?

I get 50% of their salaries plus overseas sales. So far they have brought in nothing but dead birds. I’m sick of it. Do you have any cats with talent you’d like me to manage?

2. @TheKayeCrawford : What do you think the key to self confidence is? By which I mean, the confidence to face society no matter what. Thanks Ruby!

Fake it. Inside most people feel like losers at least the one’s you’ll like. The ones who think they’re hot stuff you don’t want to know. Just imagine everyone on the loo and then nobodies scary.

3. @catcor : Social media means we never personally ask about someones life anymore. We just get snippets from Facebook. Are we losing connections? 

Curiosity seems to be a relic no one asks questions anymore not even on facebook on that you just show what a life of the party you’re having even though your life is crap. 

4. @kingof__fools : Hi Ruby, what is your favourite thing about touring? #askRuby. 

I love meeting people from the audience after the show when I’m book signing. They tell me about their lives which is such a relief as I’m sick of hearing my own voice.

5. @blarcadie : Do you find that medication makes you slower mentally? If not, how? Tried dozens and always process things sloth speed 

How would I know if I’m slower I’m on medication? I don’t think I’m slower, coke addicts ask me where I get my drugs.

On Happiness

One of the problems with the 'H' word is that we can't all agree on what it is or how to hold on to it. 

As humans we all get it free with the package, this ability to sense over 50,000 emotions, and yet there's only about 50 words in our vocabulary to describe them. Of course, there are sensations that don't need to be described to be felt; when you bang your elbow on something hard even if you're in some Amazonian tribe who have to marry each other, you would still feel an "owww". Sadness, too, is fairly universal, the reason for it changes, but we all have the same equipment and therefore all have the sense of salt water dripping out of our ducts.

All of the above, most of us would rather not experience if given a choice. Happiness is the big banana that we're all after and want to keep forever; it's why we face ice and wind and storms to get ourselves a hit. There are not many books written about the feeling of what actually happens when you bang your elbow but billions on happiness.

There's no question when we make it through an emergency we get a pretty positive feeling. Here are but a few:

- You just crossed the Himalayas with no food for two weeks and suddenly see a rabbit.
- After 50 years of searching you found your birth mother and she's rich.
- You've just been told they got it wrong, you haven't got something terminal.

Some of these experiences may be more the "R" word as in 'relief' rather than full on happiness but let's not get into semantics; it's a fantastic zing if you've gone through any of the above.

If you aren't in an emergency situation, happiness is more elusive - we all experience it differently.

I'm always amazed when people say or, even worse - shout, gleefully, "happy birthday". Or worse again, "Happy New Year". What's to be happy about? That time is speeding by? We should send condolence cards that read, "I'm sorry you're wilting and getting closer to death". Again, I'm sure it's just the way I see things so I'm sorry if I've ruined New Years Eve for you. If so, just do your count-down and ignore me.

Of course, we all get a volt of joy when selected for the girl's volley team ( wasn't, but I can imagine - still bitter) or when falling in love and the feeling's mutual. The rub is that however high the hit is, it doesn't last; none of us can keep up that emotional erection forever. Even if you hold onto that feeling long enough to marry some day, you'll eventually look at him/her and think, "What was I thinking?". The day will come when you'll be sitting there, hating the way he/she chews food. I'm not saying it's not worth trying for the the Olympics in high jumping, I'm just saying, and I'm sure you've heard this before, that if you're lucky enough to stand up there with the gold dangling from your neck, no matter how your heart is pumping with joy, a few moments later you're on the downhill descent. From this point onward you'll either break your knees trying for the gold again or be condemned to watch re-runs of your golden moment on DVD when you won the downhill toboggan or whatever, boring your friends to death. We all eventually get that hard, cold reality slap in the face that everything passes. However talented, beautiful, intelligent, virile you are, at some point you will be replaced like an old toaster by the newer model (ex-film stars and ex-models usually like to take up saving cats).

So there it is, we spend our lives hunting for something that has a very limited life span, sometimes lasting only seconds (see sex). Whatever that rush of fireworks in the blood is; winning the lottery, making a billion, getting on the volleyball team, there will be a fall. We've known this forever (see Greek tragedy) and yet we never learn.

If we could get it into our heads that a life of chasing the dragon will ultimately exhaust us and as you get older, it's not brain science, you'll eventually lose your grip. We have to remember we are biodegradable and if we push too hard we can bring on early disease or even death (yes, it happens, even to you).

I can't believe I'm saying this, me, who mowed over everyone in my way to grab onto some success, thinking if I get a bite of it I'll be happy. In the pursuit I've tipped into illness many times, got up again but continued to stampede through any obstacle for that moment of elation, which I rarely experience because I'm already worrying who's going to replace me.

So, now I'm finally getting it into my head what some people know already, that the idea is to try sometimes to stay not too high or too low, just balancing on the surfboard so you can ride the waves and not go under.

If we can't even describe happiness accurately, we really have a hard time with contentment. It sounds like you've retired and are smiling benignly in your incontinent pants - it sounds like that but it isn't. The problem is we have to learn to reach contentment. It's not easy and doesn't come to many of us naturally. Maybe it helps living in greenery but for most of us in cities or towns it's hard to stay steady with all that hanging candy tempting us.

I know when you do something for someone else, someone who hasn't asked for help, you get that feeling of warm syrup in your veins but only if you do it privately, not if you're going for that high hit of egotism mistaken for happiness as in, "Look at me, I got Sharon Stone to save Vietnamese pigs at an event at the Ritz I've organised and at the end I'm going to make a speech about pigs that will make you cry and applaud, then take your money".

I think my aim is to maybe try for that not too high, not too low equilibrium. Not all the time. Are you kidding? If I didn't get a big throw your head back druggy high once in awhile it wouldn't be worth getting out of bed. But to just sometimes be able to lightly pull in the reigns when I feel I'm falling into 'give me give me give me' would be worth it all. This is why each day I try to practice a bit of mindfulness, I don't know any other way to be able get that warm calm not too high not too low feeling.

I'm touring the UK talking about mindfulness with my Sane New World show. 

How Much Can We Do Before We Explode?

We do more work than ever before. We were conned into the belief that at the dawn of computers they would do all the boring stuff and free us up to paint landscapes or flower arrange.

Nope.

We are the slaves, they are the slave-drivers. It's back-fired, what happened to making our lives easier?

Nothing is easy. We need to do our own banking. What happened to the bank teller who would help by handing me a piece of paper and telling me how to fill it in and then say, "Have a nice day." I used to want to choke those people for saying it, now I miss it with those little insincere smiles.

Where are all the travel agents of yore? Now I have to find a hotel in Kuala Lumpa (I have to look up how to spell it but I don't have time so screw it).

We have to buy our own plane tickets, find destinations, and look on Tripadvisor for a hotel; even more mentally crippling; a thousand reviews to get through that leave you baffled, from "I couldn't find my suitcase through all the cockroaches" to "Paradise on earth, I could have smelled the sheets for the rest of my life."

Both are describing the same hotel! Who do you believe? How do you know the person writing the review doesn't own the hotel?

Our heads are more scrambled now using a computer than we were when we had to do it all ourselves. No one takes into consideration that a computer can lie to us just like humans do. Just because it's got a lot of bytes doesn't mean it's free from deception.

I'm on the road with my Sane New World tour in September and October  - hope to see you there.

On Stigma

Here's my rant about stigma. I will not shut up until it's abolished. Why should there be one, I ask and ask, since it affects one in four people. That means either it's you or someone you know. Why,when you have a mental disease, is it always considered an act of imagination? Why is it that every organ in your body can get sick and you get sympathy except the brain? When Hamlet says, "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt thaw and resolve itself into a dew!" is has to be one of the most accurate descriptions of depression. If a shrink heard you say that he'd have you on meds in seconds.

It's the only illness where you get - absolutely free with the package - a real sense of shame. I've heard people say, "I know people with real diseases, show me lumps show me X-Rays", and of course you can't so you begin to feel bombarded with self-disgust thinking," I'm not being carpet-bombed, I'm not living in a Township, how dare I, who has everything, be depressed?" Now you're bludgeoned with abusive inner voices but not just one voice, about 100,000 voices. If the Devil had Tourette's that's what it would sound like.

It's an unfortunate word, 'depression', because the illness has nothing to do with feeling sad, sadness is on the human palette. Depression is a whole other beast. It's when your old personality has left town and been replaced by a block of cement with black tar oozing through your veins and mind. This is when you can't decide whether to get a manicure or jump off a cliff. It's all the same. When I was institutionalised I sat on a chair unable to move for three months, frozen in fear. To take a shower was inconceivable. What made it tolerable was while I was inside, I found my tribe - my people. They understood and unlike those who don't suffer, never get bored of you asking if it will ever go away? They can talk medication all hours, day and night; heaven to my ears.

When you have a mental illness you get a double whammy, your brain has gone down and you don't have another brain to make an assessment. If you had a spare brain it could tell you but you don't. I had to ask a friend if I looked insane to her and she said, "Yes". Friends, family and co-workers ask me what should they say if they know someone or are related to someone with depression, I tell them all they can do is love them, don't try to cure them, you can't. And if they refuse to see a professional there's nothing you can do. The worst thing is to say to them, "Perk up." Perk up, oh, I didn't think of that.

Those of us who 'have it', we need to somehow come out of our isolation and find each other. Alcoholics Anonymous have a system where you can call a 'buddy' when you feel you want a drink and they'll talk you down. AA has meeting places on every block - more than there are Starbucks. How did they organise these get-togethers when these people have a drink problem? The gays turned it around during my lifetime, now they're everywhere: politicians, CEOs, Generals, Surgeons, hairdressers... Let's go find where they keep their old rainbow banners, high-heels and tutus that they wore during their parades, put them on and march to the White House with pitch forks screaming, 'WE ARE MENTALLY ILL, WE ARE THE ONE IN FOUR AND PROUD. CHANGE THE LAWS. WE ARE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.' In the UK if you ever write on your CV that you suffer from a mental disorder, I wish you good luck ever landing a job. If you run a company and you've taken off more than six months because of a mental problem, you can be fired. This discrimination should be against the law, just as it is with someone physically disabled. I'll say it again - mental illness is a physical illness. You wouldn't consider going up to someone suffering from Alzheimers to yell, "Come on, get with it, you remember where you left your keys?" Let us shout it from the rooftops until everyone gets the message; depression has and nothing to do with having a bad day or being sad, it's a killer if not taken seriously.

Being Human, or Not

To be human is not in fashion these days.  Successful people like to think of themselves as an extension of their digital hardware, that they are the software like the Wizard of Oz was behind the curtain, playing God. There we are alone in the darkness on a constant drip feed of information either giving it or getting it. Nothing functions unless our fingers are clicking away giving our Facebook or Twitter followers a snippet of our lives or de-friending those we oppose. We're so pumped on this digital Viagra we feel if we go off line for a split nanosecond, the world will grind to a halt. The whole planet is waiting for us to answer the next email and so we spend our lives returning them only to get another one and another one like those horror films where the plants won't stop growing or the zombies won't stop coming. We made machines faster and faster with bytes beyond our dreams so we'd have spare time. Now we spend our lives keeping up with the machines. We wouldn't know what 'spare' was if it hit us in the head. It's as ridiculous as saying you need spare time as saying you need spare oxygen.  

And the less spare time you have the higher your social rating. Very few people will answer the question, "Are you busy?" With, "No." It would take a very brave person to admit they have an open slot in their calendar. Busy people would move away as if you had an infectious disease, faster than if you had Ebola. In this culture you're supposed to say, "Am I busy, are you kidding? I'm so busy I've had three heart attacks and I'm life support." Just watch how successful and popular you'll get if you have no time for anything or anyone.  

It's obvious our next step in evolution is that we become a cyborg where gradually our flesh will be replaced by silicon chips and steel pincers for fingers but hundreds of them to do all the multi-tasking we'll be forced to do. Then we'll be perfect, no physical or mental flaws, only a shiny silver carcass that says, 'Apple' where our hearts used to be. 

But for now we're just in the early stages of foreplay with our machines, we haven't been penetrated by them yet. We used to think of people who were alone talking to themselves insane, now it's a sign you're so important because people need you even when you're just walking. They need you because you are the source of all knowledge, a walking Wikipedia. 

Ok, so that's what not being human is  - which is sadly the predicament we're in today. To be human is to be able to say, "I screwed up. I don't know what I'm doing. I am scared. I'm lost." We are not made to know everything and do everything; to work a hundred hours a day, have 14 children, run a house, have a dog, know how to make a cupcake and jog at four in the morning.  These people are held up as role models; they should be burnt at the stake. We should admire people who can just stay in bed. We should say, "Wow, this guy can afford spare time, let's give him a knighthood." In truth when we meet someone who seems perfect, secretly we can't wait for their demise. If someone is flawed I know I am immediately drawn to him knowing he's like me underneath. Animals know what they're doing, they migrate thousands of miles to lay an egg and then come back again for some more random sex the same distance; no one complains. We, who don't have to swim, fly or canter a thousand miles, are dropping from exhaustion for no other reason than keeping up with the next guy who's keeping up with the next guy who's heading toward a full nervous breakdown and then nobody speaks to him again because he showed a flaw.  To be human is to stand up and claim your weakness. If you do that others around you will feel compassion and empathy, (little used features) and that's how the world will recover from its inhuman diseases of greed and narcissism - where a human being these days can actually believe he deserves over a £million in bonuses which defines the Frankensteins so many have turned into.here to edit.

Brian Cox and Me

In Edinburgh, not having a depression, no, this is a feeling and when you have a feeling you don't have depression. With depression you feel nothing, dead, frozen inhuman. There is no reason for this sadness; I'm doing my show, it's full, I don't forget my lines so all's good on that front. One of my adages is that it's not worth mentally hunting around for why you're sad; your body gives you information, your mind scrambles for an explanation, usually wrong because we've only got few thousands words and over 50,000 feelings. It's like translating Spanish and you only have the word "Tapas."

What happened to me is not the reason for my mood but I'm sure it contributed. My first night here I was invited to a dinner mainly for scientists who are up here doing a radio show. I'm placed next to Brain Cox and something inside me wilts because I know I am sitting next to a superior being and he will soon find out I'm a two-celled worm. I am next to someone who knows what happened to make the big bang, he sees atoms and electrons and even knows what they are. He doesn't think about things that I, a mere mortal does, like whether or not there is food on my teeth, and death. To me he is greater than any rock star squared.

You could say this is my imagination - and I know it is - but it's all I've got. This is my trigger, if I'm near someone that smart, I tailspin into the interior pre-recorded CD made in childhood that goes something like this, "You're a total idiot and people will find out that you're an idiot." (It's repeated many times). It was an early recording from around the time I came in last in my class in finger painting at nursery school. I also did not get into the swing of potty training till way after the time it was considered chic.

So there I was, hair-raised because the guy sitting next to me is (I have not gone on spell check which I usually have to every two words) a motecular genicist, astro physist, evolutionary something particale physisit, neruimmunionpiginy, quantum electrocardiologist with some string thrown in, he's beautiful and looks ten years old. At first I try to pull out something from the empty space called my brain; I give it my best shot. I say, tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, "If there are infinite parallel universes meaning there are zillions of me's, how am I able to put food in my mouth with one fork?" He actually didn't look at me as if I was a dead bug I think he may have thought I knew something he didn't so he responded with something about fractals and particles, that I can exist here but also there. I laughed and said of course I know that and then began to sing show tunes from "Annie Get Your Gun" because Robin Ince, another genius on the other side of me, told me Brian liked those songs. I could tell Brian was confused but amused and then his wife phoned and among other things said she was thrilled I was next to her husband and told him to take a selfie. We pose for the photo and I don't want his head to touch mine in case I pass my idiocy into his.

Thank God I happened to have one of those small blow up Pilates balls in my bag so I put it to my mouth and blew it up for the shot. Brian held up a candle representing the sun or Lady Macbeth, I'm not sure. Anyway after the ice breaker we were fine. He told me about how nothing much happened on the earth for 3.7 billion years and then about 600,000 years ago when there was finally enough oxygen, a cell filled with mitochondria (I nodded as if I knew) from some piece of fungi started to breath in oxygen while another cell breathed out methane (I'm sure I got that wrong) and so complexity began and then he went all the way up to how us was formed. I had no cards to play because I knew I was that cell breathing oxygen but not much more.

I do have some features; I'm a good listener and can be extremely funny when I'm not nervous. So now he's included some older guy across from us in into the conversation about some LE173 gene that they found which determined how far that complex cell would migrate from central Africa to Egypt and the guy says how many of these LE438's could get that far? He asks me what I do and out of my mouth before I can pull the brakes out comes, "Model/actress". He laughs, I don't know why, and I'm thinking this guy is a mortal like me just listening to the Master speak but then Brain or Brian tells me this is the world's leading cosmologist. I shrivel. Carlos Frenk (look him up on You Tube, I did and almost choked to death). I didn't even understand his opening line, then holding up a squiggle on a piece of paper he told us in the language of math (which I do not speak) to take fluctuating space and multiply it by time. That was later, when I go home - but now, in the restaurant, he tells me that he was on a plane and was asked what he did, he said cosmologist and the person said, "Do you think I need a face lift?" I didn't think that was funny because that's what I would have asked. Then it gets worse he asks me where I think he comes from. I'm sweating. I say Hungary, no Brazil, to help me he tells me it's 29th latitude and 36 longitude so then I give up saying, "Ok you must be Mexican" and yes, that's what he is. Bingo. I then start to show off asking what town and I reel off Spanish names some of them are in Argentina but by now he thinks I'm funny so I'm riding high on my stupidity. At the end of the night I think I got a D for effort. I went home and, as I said, Youtubed Carlos Frenk all night until the electricity ran out and I woke up knowing nothing, nothing. This re-telling of my evening is not about wanting your pity; this is just a sharing of the inner landscape of my mind or whatever's in there. Thanks.

I'm in Edinburgh with my Sane New World Tour this week and I'll be touring the UK this Autumn. You can find full details here.

Under Siege

I feel under siege, everything feels like an emergency from the fear we're on the cusp of a World War to the fact I missed my dentist appointment and he's going to charge me for it. Why am I so strung out?

I'm sure in the past I wasn't this panicked. Back then when kids played in the yard, dad came home, put on his slippers while Spot the dog brought him the papers and Mom was cooking up a meatloaf that couldn't be beat. Maybe back then we were all in our right minds. But now there's no time to stop and smell the meatloaf - the busy-ness is too busy, frazzling us all.

These days if mom is making a meatloaf, she's furious because she just got back from the office after working 12 hours straight plugged into her computer, a slave to her inbox. The more she answers, the more they breed into the thousands and now she has to cook a meatloaf? There is no rest. Where the hell is her husband? Why can't he do it? After dinner she reads that the meatloaf will eventually clog your veins with fat and kill you. On top of this new scare story she is already worrying that the kids are on ketamine or cutting themselves because of the pressure of getting into Oxford by the time they're 13. In this world our innocent little brains are never at rest from wave after wave of shock and horror. If you sit down at the TV what will you see? I'm not talking about some vampire death orgy TV show where everyone's necks get sucked out by the first ad break. That's a great show and really no different from old West shootouts we used to watch as kids.

I'm talking about the news. If God forbid you accidentally hit a news channel, you will be invited to see, in close up, not just a report there's been a plane crash but the camera goes right into the homes, up the stairs, into the bathrooms of the victims' relatives for a close up as they cry into the lens and plead to their dead loved ones. It seems to have become really important that we don't just hear about a disaster, we have to be close enough to smell it. Now the camera has to film the corpses then pan up into a close up of a wailing mother.

Finally, we snap back to the newscaster with smiling teeth on top of an exposed cleavage the length of the Nile giving us "What a tragedy, the victims suffered ninth degree burns and some limbs were found 3,000 miles away from the wreckage. A dog was heard barking and that's the news for tonight, see you tomorrow morning where we'll chose the final entrée for pie of the week." You are left shaken and mortified from seeing all the suffering and your little brain registers that pain as if it happened to your own children.

We all have mirror neurons that pick up other people's suffering, this is why everyone cries at the same time in a cinema. If you don't believe me, just try sitting in front of the screen of Toy Story turn around and watch what the audience does when the girl cowboy sings. Wonderfully, frustratingly, terrifyingly, we're all in this together. The madness will continue until we realise we have to stop looking, turn off the TV, burn the newspapers when there's some hope, privacy and only watch things we can do something about rather than sit helpless watching the disasters unfold.

I'm on tour again this autumn with Sane New World - my guide to keeping sane in a busy world. You can also catch me in Edinburgh at the Assembly Rooms 1 - 7 August. Full details are over here.

On Getting Old

One thing I really will never recover from is the realization that I am an adult as in a grown up person. I never thought this would happen. I only realized when one day I was called 'ma'am' instead of 'miss'.

When exactly did this 'ma'am' transformation happen, what was the giveaway? Getting old is something that happens to other people, not me. I know at one point I saw visible evidence of aging (dark circles) around the eye area and almost immediately had them hoiked. Wrinkles can be de-wrinkled in minutes thanks to the miracle of dermatology and so as far as my constant battle with aging I believe I am winning, on the outside anyway, I can't speak for my insides. Several hundred birthdays ago I was slightly drunk during my speech and asked all my 'then' friends "What happened to all of you? You look so old have I been in a coma?" Some of them are no longer speaking to me. I then fell forward into my chocolate cake and had to be lifted out by the hair.

Clearly I'm in complete denial. Recently a woman told me she had three adult children and I responded with incredulous disbelief, "You have three kids?" It was my girlfriend who pointed out, so did I. It seems other people know how to act like thing called a grown up. Having coffee mornings where they don't digress from the topic of 'the children.' I know women in their 40s still blathering about how long their delivery took. Get over it! Exchanging phone numbers for kids party entertainers who in the spirit of wackiness pull live rabbits out of their pants. My idea of hell are those cocktail parties my parents used to have where you stand holding a drink and make small talk about absolutely nothing. I never know how or when you're supposed to end one conversation and then move on and start again. I wish we could be as honest as when we were kids and just blurt, "I want to go home I don't like you."

Dress-wise I go for the 14-16 year old range. I borrowed my daughter's thong - I can no longer find it. I'm going to need miners to go in there and dig it out. My look is Nikes and skinny jeans even though my stomach hangs over the top like a tutu made of flesh. My behind is on permanent display but at least I don't have to look at it. If I'm this deluded now imagine when I really hit the skids, I'll be the one wearing my incontinence pads at a jaunty angle and body surfing on my Zimmer frame. Wish me luck.

I'm on the road again this Autumn, and in Edinburgh this summer. You can find details here!

Alone Amongst Many

I don't know when it started but I've recently noticed when I'm talking to someone they don't ask me one question, not one. I don't even want to talk about me but for God's sake I'm sitting in front of them aren't they embarrassed that they're taking up all the airtime? I exist, I am not just a mirror to reflect them back to themselves nor part of some sound-check. I find I'm suddenly cast in the role of 'interviewer' filling in the blank spaces when they're done with their answer and expecting the next question. Do I look like I'm interested in the fact their kid can't figure out what he wants to do for a living at age eight or that the builders put the sink in upside down?

I want to hold up a sign that says, "Gaza Strip, you idiot, get real." When did everyone lose his or her curiosity? I count how many times they use the word 'me' and if it's ten out of ten, I delete them from my contacts list. The only time I don't mind a monologue is either when someone's being hilarious or when someone needs to talk about something deeply problematic even if I never met them before. I got in a random taxi a few days ago and the driver asked me to sign a book. I thought it was his. It turned out to be my book (I'd never seen it without the jacket). He then tells me it's good I got in his cab (like that was planned) because he always wanted to talk to me. For the next hour he unloaded how he felt, his mind in a thick fog accompanied by screaming abusive voices in his head and what did I think was wrong with him? He then got lost and was driving in circles (luckily he turned off the meter). I asked him if he's was on medication, he told me he wanted to try and get better without them. I said that he had severe depression, it's not his imagination he is really ill with something he can't wilfully snap out of. His attitude to drugs was like finding out he has cancer and he's passing on the chemo. Now, I call that a great conversation; it was real and had a point. I hope I helped, I know I woke him up from his delusion.

On the other end of the spectrum, I had a dinner party last week where I invited a few famous people I knew from when I did my interview shows. Many of them suffer from something I call 'movie star disease.' They live in their own time zone so when invited to dinner at seven they either come in at eleven with no apology or not at all. When they do finally arrive it's expected that non-famous people shut up mid sentence to give full attention and look enthralled. On the hierarchy of famous (though I worked in television and may be considered famous by some) I am protoplasm. In these relationships it's implicit that I am the interviewer and I know that's the deal so no surprises. I'm ashamed to admit that probably like other 'non-fames' when faced with an A-lister, I slightly go into that nervous, heart pumping arousal, turning myself inside out to amuse. I'm sure it's a throw back to when I was a looser in High School and when the Prom Queen deemed to look at me I'd start metaphorically tap dancing until exhausted to get her approval, I never did. One of the great pleasures in my life is now knowing that the Prom Queen is ensconced in re-hab. I think I'm happier with taxi drivers.

Noticing Is Half The Battle

Every morning I drag myself from sleep (it's so hard especially when I've been starring in my own dream and I've been a hit) to sitting up on my pillow to do 20 minutes of mindfulness.

Every morning I think why am I doing this because when I look in at my thoughts it's never a pretty sight?

In the beginning of the sitting, I usually hunt around for something that pisses me off because I'm addicted to anger and it feels so familiar when I get that wild, fire in my veins.

This morning I found my victim in the first few moments to stoke my fury.

Some friend of a friend came to my house a few nights ago and spilled wine all over my carpet.

Not a tiny splatter, she swamped it, covering a three foot area.

How you do that, I do not know? I start to fuel up with that old well-known feeling; rage.

As I sit there, every cell of my body is itching to reach for the computer to write a vitriolic email informing her she has to pay for the stain removal or I will either sue or kill her.

I try to focus on my breath but I'm so stuck in my habit, my mind drags me back to the girl and the stain and my need to eliminate her.

Just as I think it's over I find myself reaching for the phone to scream and rant at her.

I pull my focus back to the sensation of breathing.

Eventually I feel the anger subside and my need to murder pass, not completely, it fluctuates in intensity, it comes and goes, sometimes harsh then light, then gone.

Now I have a choice, I can either fuel it some more or let it go.

It's usually at this point, I get angry with myself for having these impulses so I now I get caught in the thoughts of how bad I am as a person and at doing mindfulness.

The thing that eventually makes me stay there for 20 minutes of war going on in my head is knowing even if I can't remove the thoughts of stains in my head then the very act of noticing is good enough.

The point isn't to try and clear my mind or to forgive the stain-maker but to just notice I'm stuck and usually when you notice you become unstuck.