No Filter

One month ago, I lost my job and in that same week, I lost my boyfriend. I got dumped. Twice. Did my ego take a beating? Not really. My reaction to both was hard to explain: I didn't cry, I just hunkered down and wrote and sort of went to my go-to emotional zone that I've employed since my parents died. I just went to another place and pretended I was an entirely different person. In further detail, my mantra for the last several years has been: "All I've got is me." That mantra is me being a badass; untouched by the outside world trying to hurt me, part emotional-deflection (because who wants to really FEEL things...gross) and part victim, if I'm going to be truly honest with myself. I'm a comic book character with a shield and it's my job to be impervious. It's me against the world. There are a LOT of ugly side effects to living this way, let me tell you. I turn inward. I get intense. I have no patience. I have severe social phobias. I get ...

I'm starting to realize the dirty, awful, universal secret that life never in fact plateaus. If it does, then it most likely means that a loved one has removed you from life support in a hospital somewhere. It's inevitable that once you think you've got it all down; got it all wired, someone, some thing  will get pulled away from you. Or at least, that's been my experience so far; 37 years down the line...slow learner. In my defense, Malcolm Gladwell would say that I'm a late bloomer; as was Cezanne, Marina Abramovic, Martha Stewart and J.K. Rowling. So suck it, Universe. 37 year-old blooming flora aside,  the real challenge to getting metaphorically sucker-punched in the stomach, is always how you deal with the aftermath. I've recently made the delightful discovery that these big life changes and losses don't ruffle my feathers nearly as horribly as they used to. I kind of feared that at this point, I would be full-on into a porn rabbit hole, shooting...

To begin, I am 37 years old. I am now officially "old". I'm also a supporter of our country's first amendment and an artist and morally supportive of the arts on a general scale. After the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards and Miley Cyrus' "twerking" tour de force performance, I found myself extraordinarily grumpy. NOT with Miley; not with the sexualization of today's teens and the debate that that performance sparked; but with people in my age range whose comments I saw flying with wild, RAGING abandon all over Facebook about the completely shitty example that this young artist was setting for today's teens and tweens (and...younger!) Ok, well, I got it. I got where that viewpoint came from and especially from parents. But yes, the tried and true and simple statement of "well, if you don't want your kids to watch it, change the fucking channel" seemed to me to be the only respectable answer. To debate whether or not that performance was ...