Skip to main content

Nothing is easy

This blog used to be about politics.

I think I last visited it in the beginning months of 2010. At that time, life was beginning to take on some very dark, very frightening shades and tones and my obsession with politics; my obsession with myself started to look like distant imprints in a thick fog whenever I glanced behind me. And as a result, looking at those things started to become less and less engaging. Some force was trying to push me forcefully and excruciatingly into adulthood.

I had begun my life in a family of artists and raised with the idea that being a practicing artist was the highest order of professions; being a doctor or a lawyer was bourgeois and banal. I always had the idea from my parents that they just didn't get doing something normal for a living because it was useless to man's aesthetic progress.


I never felt pressure to do anything except to be an exceptional and successful artist. That's a lot. The fact that I couldn't maintain a relationship or wasn't a mother by a certain time, were not the concerns of my parents.
But the only thing I ever wound up becoming a success with was being a drug addict and a quitter. I'm fantastic at those two separate pastimes, without merging them.

I stopped trying. I gave up at some point. I wish I could say that I remember the exact moment that I decided that trying to be a great writer or actor wasn't for me, but I just can't. If I could remember that moment, then maybe I would never have failed. I just became great at unpacking my responsibilities and leaving them behind at each of my stays. I'll take the easiest option always.

 All of it was counter-intuitive to some of my best qualities: loyalty, love, honesty.

But life/the universe/god/you have a way of forcing you to do what's most difficult, if you're not completely committed to killing yourself off.

Without getting too into specifics, frankly, I'm still reeling from the events of the last few years and losing so much. And as I sort of said in the beginning of this ridiculously self-indulgent blog, things that were important to you suddenly become microscopic and stupid. And life doesn't exactly come into focus, but it does become more real.
Shit got real, basically.

And so here I am now. I have a day job that I like with people whom I've kind of fallen in love with, a brother that I love; I have a shitty studio apartment in Koreatown, a cat named Henry and friends that I love. And I also have a constant fear of losing any one of those things. The last few years have taught me only that you can lose anything, anytime. I'm trying to learn to let go of the fear though.

So I'm putting it out there on this blog, that I still don't know the theme to. I guess we'll just figure it out as we go along...?
Sort of how I do everything, anyway.





Comments

  1. You are awesome and I have always loved you. I don't LOVE a lot of people. You may think you are hard on yourself but I see someone who sees themselves clearly, which, clearly, a lot of people don't. Parents can lay a lot of weird shit on you (its hard to remember that it's their shit, not yours-it can be hard to tell the difference)and then they die (go figure!) and then you are left wondering what it all meant and who you are without them. From the outside, when I look at you, I see someone who never stops trying, who never stops hoping and someone who is very, very funny.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Great Depression

It started abruptly on Nov. 9th, at about 4:00 a.m. PST.  I had fallen asleep in front of my laptop, streaming MSNBC, anxiously watching the returns coming in for each state and at some point, I guess when things started looking a little grim, my body gave in to exhaustion.  But like I said: 4:00 a.m., I woke with a start, my laptop still STREAMING/SCREAMING at me, announcing in no uncertain terms, that Donald J. Trump, reality star, professional self-promoter and carnival barker and above all else, world renowned con artist, was elected to be the 45th president of the United States. My mouth formed into an upside down 'U' and I suddenly became the living embodiment of that one emoji you would use to convey shock and dismay.  I stumbled into work later that morning and perhaps a bit childishly, couldn't shake my disbelief that our company didn't have the compassion (for ME) to shut down the office for the day! I mean, we were in the midst of a national trag...

It Must Be Great To Be King

Hi again. Hi, all two readers of mine. How are you? I could be better. Again, Few Readers of Mine might recall that I struggle with some, erm, "Issues". For at least the last eight or nine years I have experienced severe panic attacks, otherwise known as a Panic Disorder. I'm not talking about that girl who sits in the cubicle next to you who accidentally sends an email draft that she wasn't supposed to send and then says, "Omg, I am totally having a panic attack right now!" No. It's not that. It's me standing in the subway station in MacArthur Park, waiting for my train, thinking about literally nothing and then ten seconds later I'm hyperventilating, the world is closing in and things are going black. Like the end of the Looney Tunes cartoon (I guess I'm Porky Pig in this analogy) https://youtu.be/nzZfdWzUrQs   and then it ends with me, losing consciousness on said subway platform. And...That's all folks. This has happened a lot ...

In Defense of Keeping Your Rape Out of the Hands of the Law

I'm going to tell you a story of something that happened to someone I know and obviously, I'm keeping her name out of it. We'll call her "Jane".  Jane met someone who took her on a first date. He was charming. He was very handsome. He seemed verbose and funny and talkative. They never ran out of conversation. Great food, great conversation. An admittedly naive Jane invited this stranger back to her house post-date to watch a little television in her room. That was when her date bound her arms and wrists, pinned her legs with his and raped her.  She doesn't remember every moment of the assault, mostly due to the trauma of it all. But she remembers the pain of her arms and wrists being bound to her headboard, the pain on her legs and the feeling of desperately struggling to get out of the restraints and his grip.  He mercifully used a condom. Small favors I guess. When it was over, he just left. Jane woke the next morning in excruciating pain, u...