Full Blast

I would like to state for the record something very, very uninteresting: I have absolutely nothing to blog about anymore, and that’s why this space remains old and musty.

These are the things I have been doing with my time: renovating a bathroom, working in a library, writing a new book, reading, occasionally watching clips from old episodes of 30 Rock on YouTube, playing with my kids, and talking to my husband.

I use most of my creative energy now talking in puppet voices to the boys in the morning. (My left hand is named Monsieur Frere and my right hand is his wife, simply known as Madame. He likes to say, “You hurt my heart,” where heart is pronounced “hot,” and this, for some reason, makes the boys crack up laughing. That is fine with me.)

I use the rest on my new book. I really like my new book, even though it is a hot mess. Lost and Found was great fun to write, but New Book is like me, ripped up in tiny little pieces. It’s much funnier, and it’s much sadder. My working draft is almost finished and ready to be read, and then I will have to spend another few weeks to few months making it more…well, just more.

Here is a thing that I learned recently, not just from writing my book, but just from being alive: I was always afraid of what people thought of me. I mean, anxiety-ridden, crazy afraid. Like, “That person probably thinks I’m ugly,” and “I know so and so hates me.” I was self-conscious.

For instance: if I was listening to an annoyingly bubbly pop song (fine, it’s  ”Call Me Maybe” and YES I LOVE IT AND I ALWAYS WILL), I would make sure my windows were rolled up, because what if someone on the street heard me? THE HORROR. I went back to wearing jeans instead of big poofy skirts because I didn’t want people having opinions about my clothes. I didn’t decorate my house because what if I decorated it in the wrong way?

Lost and Found is a good book. I think I did well in writing it and making it enjoyable and there is tons of me in there. The insecure parts of me, especially. (So that would be most of me.) It was me proving to other people, “Look, I can do this.” New Book is me saying something else entirely. It is just being. 

And that’s what I’ve been doing, too. Just being. It’s a bit difficult to explain, but I’ll just say: I am done second-guessing myself. I am ready to paint walls in bright colors (which might be the wrong colors) and keep the windows rolled down even as Carly Rae sings her heart out as the hipsters walk by and hear my musical tastes. I am ready to wear my knee socks with the hearts all over them, even if people look at me, and my bright yellow tights with my polka dot shoes. I’ve been dressing crazier lately, and one mom said to me, “You’re so confident.” I’m ready to be looked at and judged. That’s a lot for a wallflower.

I’ve always loved this blog because I’ve been me the whole time here. You don’t see the quiet and shy me, the wallflower. You don’t see my crazy nervous habits or how my shoulders slouch. I am not usually me in social settings. I’m not even me with my kids. I keep busy so I don’t have to be anybody at all. It’s a lot safer that way. But you. You see me exactly how I am in my head. I think, now, everyone else is seeing that version of me, too.

It’s exploding all over the place. I painted my bathroom bright yellow. I put non-generic art on the wall. I talked about how pulp fiction is good for the soul to my students. I forgave myself for not knowing the answers the whole time, and for being afraid to make mistakes. I still have bad days (I might be having one right now, which might be why I’m writing this as a reminder to myself). I do. But the good days are so much bigger and brighter and full of me-ness. I am just…I feel like my whole life has been me on a dimmer switch, and all of a sudden someone turned me full-blast.

That’s why I have nothing to blog about lately. I’ve been using all that energy being me everywhere, all over the place. It’s…well, it’s amazing.

So, I don’t know what to do with this place, now that I’m becoming less of nothing, more of something. I don’t want to let go, because I don’t know what I’d do without you. You are some of the realest friends I’ve never met, precisely because you don’t see the outer me. So this isn’t my declaration to stop blogging. I want to keep this space forever, or, more realistically, until the zombie apocalypse.

This is my declaration of, “Thank you for helping me. But now what?”

I bought this print from Emily McDowell’s etsy store recently, and I’m going to hang it near the front door, so I can read it every single day.

So, now what? I think it’s going to be something amazing. Thanks for being with me, always.