Bread is the Answer

Last night I baked bread for the first time.

It was garlic rosemary pull-apart bread, and I’m quite smug about the way it turned out.

I kneaded the dough like I’ve watched every single episode of The Great British Bake-Off (which I have) and knew exactly what I was doing (which I don’t).

Bread baking is something I’ve been wanting to try for a long time but since I haven’t had an oven in five years, opportunities have been thin on the ground. After moving into a house equipped with more than a dorm fridge and a hot plate (garden cottages are magical but not if you want to engage in cooking anything more complex than soup), it took me precisely 25 days to get my first batch of bread in the oven.

Yes, I am terribly proud of myself. Doing things just because they’re fun, just because I want to, is something I’ve gotten noticeably bad at recently. Baking some bread turned out to be a solid way to shift that particular tide.

Bonus: kneading dough is quite satisfying.

Creative people are happiest when they’re making things, and I’m a big fan of having hobbies that you don’t have to be good at, that you can play with just because you want to, just because it’s fun. It alleviates the stress of being a wild perfectionist of doing a creative thing that you’re being paid for or building a business around. I really want to type “ugh” or “stupid bills” here, but I’m spending a reasonable portion of my time re-wiring myself around money and that seems like a step in the wrong direction.

If money is reading this, I love you! Let’s hang out! I have a very nice bank account for you to stay in.

My usual methods for cultivating the child-like wonder that soothes my soul are brightly colored converse, a weird obsession with giraffes, and a willingness to utilize empty swing sets to the best of my ability. But I have plenty of giraffes and hot pink shoes, and there aren’t any public playgrounds nearby.

(However, the new house could definitely support both a foster giraffe and a swing set. There are already plans for a goat train and a cat-copter so the kitties can better chase hummingbirds.) (Maybe lack of childlike shenanigans aren’t my problem.)

So, bread baking. Next on my list is singing lessons. Not because I’m good at singing, but because I want to sing. I want to take my Not Great Singing and make it Better Singing. I want to see what progress I can make, when I’m not already good at something. Like most people, I tend to gravitate toward the things I have some talent at, because the ego enjoys nothing better than being good at things.

But I know that creative endeavors fuel more creative endeavors (please note my first blog post in six weeks!) and so I am stating this here and now so I don’t forget again:

Making things is fun. You are happiest when you are making things. Make more things. If you can’t make the thing you were planning to make, make another thing, until the first thing shakes loose.

When all else fails, bake yourself garlic rosemary bread in a place where you can walk out into the garden and pluck rosemary straight from a bush in the ground, which is apparently where rosemary comes from.

Back to the World

I've been in a very galactic headspace for the past four years.

Talking to unicorns and dragons, archangels and ascended masters, playing in all sorts of dimensions - and then coming hope and napping a lot. I'd take people on dragon rides and ask Mother Mary for advice on their behalf. Chakras, crystals, sage, mystic otherworldly adventures - you name the California neo-hippie cliche and I was all over it.

Whether you want to call it channeling or divine guidance or just Amber Was All Up In Her Crazy Imagination and Holy Whoa Look What Came Out, it was a lot of fun.

But I'm finding myself returning to earth now. Wanting to ground all those divine downloads into my real ass life. Wanting to be a part of the world again, even as I observe what the world appears to be doing these days.

But it's like having inter-dimensional jet lag. I don't always know how to reconcile where I've been with where I am with where I'm going.

So I have to go back to all that stuff I downloaded from the ether and integrate it into practice - in a way I was always too exhausted to do when I was making a daily trip up the dimensions. I want to make the channeled wisdom more concrete, blend my human self in my divine self, and help others do the same.

I don't know what that looks like, but it seems I have to start with all the things I already know how to do and trust that to lead me where I want to go. Which means I guess I have to start a goddamn meditation practice? Which likely involves reframing discipline so it doesn't sound like a dirty word-slash-terrible idea and rather That Thing That Will Help Me Pull Possibilities Out Of The Ether And Into Reality.

Sweating Out the Inner Mean Girl

I joined a gym last week. For the first time in nine years.

It’s one of those gyms where you go to a class and sweat in tandem with a whole bunch of other people while hooked up to a monitor so you can obsessively watch your heart rate ascend and descend.

Watching my heart rate move into the orange zone and then not give up when I normally would in order to keep it there is one of my better addictions.

One of the unintended consequences of draining myself dry was that I had no energy to do the things that would’ve given me more energy - namely, working out, eating well, and not being mean to myself.

I’m nailing the working out portion of the equation. Yes, that was a bit smug but I have enough gross gym clothes in my laundry basket to merit a wee bit of smug and I take my wins where I can get them.

I ate two whole vegetables yesterday so that nutrition thing is creeping into reality.

But the Not Being Mean To Myself plan remains elusive.

Being mean to myself is a fall-back reaction, a trigger tactic so ingrained that it takes me hours to realize I’m even doing it. It’s the bastard step-child of shame, anger turned inward, and is absolutely no bueno.

Weirdly, I feel like I HAVE to do it. Like, if I’m kind to myself I’ll get lazy. Or if I’m loving to myself, the entire world will implode. Wounding? Trauma? The human condition? Who knows. All I know is that I’d like my inner mean girl to chill the F out.

If I could solve one thing in the world it would be Humans Being Mean to Themselves.

(I’m pretty sure that if we solved Humans Being Mean to Themselves that would also solve Humans Being Mean to Others, and that seems an efficient use of time.)

My current solution is, when I notice that I’m being mean to myself, to stop whatever I’m doing and try to focus on my breath, focus on dropping all my thoughts into my heart. If I feel better and that catches the spin cycle of internal mean girl, I am free to continue on with my day.

If it doesn’t work, then I stop whatever I’m doing and do something soothing. Take a nap or a shower or go for a drive. I’ll tap into my wiser self - the quiet bit below my own private Regina George - and ask for help. Then I do whatever that voice says.

This actually works fairly well, but will kill an afternoon, after I’ve done all that resting and driving and meditating. Which is why I work for myself, so that I can halt the Being Mean To Myself Spin Cycle without getting fired.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is catch that mean voice in the act, because we’re so used to it being mean inside our heads that we just accept it as normal or as fact.

One of the best ways to catch that voice in the act is to simply pay attention to how you feel in those thoughts. Am I feeling better? That’s probably my wise self voice. Am I feeling worse? That’s Cady Haron after she learned to use lip gloss.

I’m old enough to have gone through a number of I Exercise and then I Don’t and then I Start Exercising Again cycles. So I know that when I start clearing my body out, whether it’s with kale or lots o’ sweating, old feelings and thoughts will rise to the surface. Saying hello before they melt into the atmosphere.

So I like to think that I’m sweating out my inner mean girl, that she’s rising to the top of my consciousness as I watch my heart rate climb to frankly dangerous levels while my feet frantically try to keep up with the moving belt below me. Like, if I give my inner mean girl a hockey stick she can leave her aggression on the field instead of dressing it in pink.

Filling the Cup

I was shopping tipsy with a friend at Scarlet Sage on Thursday. There was a pitcher of post-birthday mimosas at lunch, which makes right after lunch the best time to go places where money can be spent.

We took the whole day to do whatever we wanted, whatever sounded fun, and called it our Fill The Cup Day - something I highly suggest to all people, especially the ones who are feeling drained or burned out. So there was yoga and tea and birthday lunch and poking through a witchy San Francisco apothecary.

As we pored over candles and oils and tarot cards, I picked up a tincture for grief and a broken heart. And I realized that, for the first time in eight years, I didn’t need something like that.

It was a big moment for me.

My 30s were basically one big grief cycle. Breakup, getting fired, dad dying, breakup, miscarriage, breakup, breakup, breakup. Most of those grief cycles took between six months and two years. That’s a decade, right there.

I got a reading last week and she said a few things that really resonated, aside from “You’re too sensitive to do energy healing, stop.” (Which I’ve finally done, after resisting for seven months.) She said, “People want to work with you because you understand pain on a very deep level.”

“Understanding pain on a deep level” is really not the thing I wanted to put on my resume. It was a long and expensive lesson and it does nothing for my ego. She also said, “You’re self-worth has taken a beating lately” and - after all the grief and sinking self-worth - my ego could really use a boost. Instead of being pan-fried and served on a bed of wilting spinach heart break.

I’m finally out of that extended grief cycle - and it feels like the next decade will be a lot more fun than the previous. But shift like that asks a lot. Big change, moving through fear, and a fair amount of uncertainty.

Which involves creativity and bravery and doing things differently and training my brain to approach life in a more positive way again - and I’m worried that my well of bravery is empty.

But it’s not. There’s plenty of energy and creativity in there - and it feels good to be directing it at me and my life, rather than pouring it into everyone else. But many more Fill The Cup Days will be required.

Visual representation of our Cup Filling Day, missing only mimosas, yoga studio, and new pink nails.

Catsby, Take the Wheel

Last week, we went to Mendocino to celebrate my 41st birthday.

Celebrating my birthday translated to eating lots of s’mores ice cream and wandering past Wild West-era buildings, cheerfully postulating about all the murders that probably happened there, like the morbid waffle cone-slurping ghost hunters we are.

But there were also things like fancy birthday dinners, massages, and the biggest bath tub I’ve ever had the pleasure of sitting in, courtesy of a hotel built in the 1880s that was definitely haunted. I also got to open a lot of birthday presents that delighted my hippie little heart. (Crystals and things you can set on fire featured prominently.)

Lately, I’ve been at loose ends. I know my work is changing, but I don’t yet know how. All I know is I can’t keep doing things the same way, which means I’ve torched all sources of income without knowing what’s next.

Doing it this way is recommended by no one.

Whenever we talk about it, I say something like “All I want to do is write books and blog about my adventures.” Which leads him to ask, “What have you written lately?” Which forces me to reply, “Nothing.”

My excuses for not doing what I want to do are legion. Even legendary. Usually revolving around money.

I can’t blog about Mendocino because money. (Lies.)

I can’t write a book without knowing what I’m doing next (meaning, know where money is coming from). (Lies.)

Not doing things because of money or lack of confidence has been my excuse since the dawn of time. Or at least the dawn of Sentient Me. I didn’t take the Rolling Stone internship in 1999 because I felt like I needed something that would pay me so I could afford my text books. I didn’t apply for the semester-long writing workshop with Mary Gordon because I was scared I couldn’t write fiction.

Twenty years later, those same excuses are still cropping up with alarming regularity. Which is just embarrassing at this point.

So it’s time to write.

Because it’s fun. Because writing has always been my desire. Because I’m always happiest when I’m writing regularly.

As focus is one of my biggest challenges (I have seven projects I really want to do) (SEVEN), I’m asking for the perfect project to catch my attention and imagination.

Because money always trips me up, I’m asking that the more I write, the more money shows up in ways that feel good and even fun.

Hey, it’s always good to ask for what you want.

In the mean time, I’M GONNA BLOG MY ADVENTURES (sorta) by telling you that Mendocino is a solid choice for a nice weekend of ice cream and coastline and bookstore cats. In case you’re feeling the need for a getaway adventure.

If you go, eat a waffle cone at Frankie’s (I like s’mores ice cream, he likes ginger), stare at the water, buy a book at Gallery Bookshop & Winkles, make sure to pet Catsby while you’re there (I couldn’t catch him), and let your soul drink in the coast of California.

Here’s to adventures and doing what we really want to do without letting our excuses grab the wheel.