Then, during my process of adding commas and correcting misspellings, I go about diluting strong opinions that slipped in. I soften rough edges. I add very balanced and diplomatic explanations of comments that could be perceived as me being for or against something. I take out parts that seem sarcastic, harsh, angry and/or mean, and replace them with things that make me sound nice, cute, and likeable, so that everyone will like me.

Predictably, what all this watering down does, is weaken my writing. So then, with my stomach twisted into knots, I proceed to go over the piece again and drain the water, adding back what I took out, strengthening my opinions and sharpening up the edges. Because really, I’m not writing to hide who I am behind balanced, diplomatic, couldn’t-possibly-offend-anyone-ever-for-all-time diluted words, and to worry about what other people I may or may not know think of me. I’m writing to show who I am, really. To express what I think and feel. And to actually say something. Which is, a lot of the time, pretty terrifying.

So once my writing is returned to it’s straight up version, I take a deep breath. And then I click Publish.

Until Friday morning. When I was leaving my apartment I ran into my neighbor who told me that our local Key Food was sold out of water. Then at work, I started seeing pictures of the storm system and how big it was, and heard that it was “the size of Arizona.” And my co-worker who is from Florida told me that the reason you need gallons of water is so you can flush the toilet if your water supply goes out. So I made plans to do some hurricane preparation shopping after work.

First, I stopped at the Duane Reade near my office, assuming that Manhattan stores would be better stocked than the ones in Brooklyn. They still had plenty of water, but they were already sold out of flashlight batteries. Then I headed home to Brooklyn to get rain boots. Another co-worker had pointed out, “If there’s a hurricane, boots aren’t going to help you,” but I was more thinking that if the streets remained flooded afterwards, I didn’t want to be stranded in my apartment for days with nothing more waterproof than Converse.

I was hoping that the bigger Key Food farther away from where I lived wouldn’t be sold out like the one near me, so that was my next stop. But when I arrived, Hurricane Irene seemed like even more serious of a threat. I got the last grocery cart, which two people then tried to wrestle away from me. The bread shelf was totally empty. There was no more skim milk. And they, too, were sold out of batteries. I got non-perishable food and the Glade candle that smelled the least bad and stood on line, when a voice came over the loudspeaker, “Cashiers, thanks for rocking it today! It’s been busy and you’ve been doing a great job, and we’re gonna keep it going ’til the break of dawn!” which united all the customers in laughter, who had only moments before been trying to steal grocery carts from each other (me). Trudging home, I sustained hurricane injuries 24 hours before the storm was due to hit from carrying heavy grocery bags so much farther than usual: a muscle that felt pulled in my left arm, and big bruises on both legs where the bags hit with every step.

The only thing I hadn’t been able to find was batteries, and when I got to my building, a neighbor I’d never seen before was in the lobby. Like a battery angel, she asked me if I needed some, and gave me her extras.

My last stop was Starbucks to get decaf coffee beans ground because I did not want to go through forced withdrawal during a natural disaster. Since they were going to be closed for two days they were giving away tons of free food, and I got enough reduced-fat coffee cake to last a week.

On Saturday, my uncle called to say that he wasn’t worried about me surviving the storm, he was worried about me surviving Starbucks being closed for the weekend. Then I made one last trip to a (non-corporate) coffee shop, and hunkered down for the duration.

Despite my plans to watch the Netflix I’ve had out for eight months and organize my finances (perhaps cancelling Netflix would be a sound financial decision), I got sucked into watching six hours of hurricane coverage. The last news I saw at 11pm before going to sleep was to brace for the storm which would arrive overnight, the worst would hit between 8am and 10am, and it was slow-moving so it would be over us all day. When I woke up in the morning, it was all over.

Hurricane Irene was a lot like I remember Hurricane Gloria: a lot of hype, watching hours of hurricane coverage on the news with my family (though this time I was watching it while on the phone with them), and then it passed without much fanfare. After Hurricane Gloria, I walked around my yard taking pictures of fallen tree branches for my fifth grade photography class, and today I walked around my neighborhood taking pictures of fallen tree branches for my blog. After Hurricane Gloria was over I went to the birthday party of a girl in my class, and today I ventured out to find an open coffee shop (which I did!), and without subway service to Manhattan, went to a Brooklyn post-hurricane yoga class that was much-needed, since I’m still sore from carrying hurricane supplies and sitting in front of the TV for so many hours.

Today I have more canned food on my shelves than I would care to eat, a really stinky Glade candle smelling up my apartment, enough water to flush a toilet, and I have to put my AC back in, because I figured that having it in was like having your window open during a hurricane. But I’m from Westchester and I heard from my Dad that the Hudson River overflowed and there is a lot of damage in his town, not to mention all the other places that were severely impacted. So while I don’t know how long I can eat canned tuna and I’m questioning the practicality of my radio battery purchase, I’m thankful that I was prepared but didn’t need to be, and only faced minor inconvenience and not major devastation.

Writing is scary.

I have a compulsion to be nice, an obsession with people liking me. I’m afraid of hurting people in my writing. I often find myself trying to take care of and protect them, with my words. Or I just don’t write those stories.

These are some things I’m afraid of, in my writing:

I’m afraid of hurting my family. I’m afraid of hurting my exes. Of hurting their girlfriends and wives, their ex-girlfriends and ex-wives. I’m afraid of hurting men who have hurt me. I’m afraid co-workers or bosses will read some personal detail about me that will make me  uncomfortable, squirm at the water cooler, look down in the cafeteria. That they’ll read something that will adversely affect my review, even though I don’t get reviewed at my job. I’m afraid that an imagined future employer will Google me and decide not to hire me, because I’m a flawed human being who struggles, and my flaws and struggles are Google-able. I’m afraid I’ll hurt friends, acquaintances, people I don’t like, and people I can’t stand.

But recently, I’ve been asking myself, What would I write if I wasn’t afraid? And the answer is: A lot. The countless stories that are crouching in corners, I’d write them if I didn’t have to navigate my fears, take care of this person, protect that one.

If I wasn’t afraid, I wouldn’t try to hurt people with my writing. I wouldn’t write in ways that criticized and blamed. I’d just…tell the truth. I’d be who I am and tell my stories, honestly and openly, vulnerable, flawed, and struggling. I’d write some things that would make people want to come closer, and other things that would make them want to look away. I’d take ownership of my life and my experiences. I wouldn’t try to take care of everyone else. I wouldn’t apologize, and I wouldn’t hide. I’d write it all. If I wasn’t afraid.

And recently, I’ve been thinking, I don’t want to be afraid anymore.

What are you afraid of? What would you write if you weren’t afraid?

“I Was Diagnosed with OCD”

Please check it out!

“What’s it about?” he asked.

“My ex is really, really successful,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, nodding, “I’m so sorry.”

Read all about it in my Frisky article, “How I Finally Stopped Comparing Myself To My Ex”!

A few months ago, I wrote a post about fighting the ball, you know, the one that you want to curl up in when it feels like life is just not going your way, that calls to you when everything is falling apart.  And when I wrote it, I was fresh off a victory against the ball; I did not succumb to it, I did not give up on myself or my dreams, and I kept moving forward.

Well, it turns out that the battle against the ball is far from a one time endeavor.  And it also turns out that the ball had some victories of its own in December and January (traditionally difficult months to fight the ball, see:  self-diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder).  Disappointments pummeled me back into ball formation.  My self-esteem has holes in it, where rejection can seep in and take root.  And then I believe in the disappointment and rejection, and lose my belief in myself.

And then there’s the thing about getting your hopes up.  People sometimes say that it’s better not to get your hopes up, because then the pain of disappointment will be even greater.  And people say this for a reason – it’s true.  There have been many times when I’ve dared to be hopeful, only to wind up being even more painfully disappointed, and the ball, which has been hanging out quietly in the background, maybe getting a soda at the refreshment stand or texting some friends, is instantly ready to step back into the ring swinging.

But here’s the other thing about hope – I don’t want to lose it.  I don’t want to stop hoping in order to protect myself from pain, in an attempt to shield myself from future run-ins with that ball.  Because that would mean becoming cynical and numbed out, and I refuse to live that way.  And besides, without hope, curled up in a ball could become a permanent destination.

I’ve been reminded over the past few months that fighting the ball is an ongoing battle.  It slowed me down in December and January.  But it did not stop me.  It knocked me down.  But I got up again.  It’s never gonna keep me down.

A few weeks ago I was at Starbucks and the barista asked the guy on line behind me how he was doing and he said, “Another day, another dream destroyed.”  I can relate.  It is staggering how much belief in yourself is required, in the face of how many people do not believe in you, and the countless disappointments and rejections.  How much I have to keep digging deeper and deeper to find more reserves of belief, more slivers of hope, when all signs point to curling up in that ball and giving up.  And this might seem obvious but it is rarely my default mode so I have to repeatedly remind myself -  at times like these it is helpful to reach out to the people who do believe in you!  So I dig deep, and I reach out.

The ball might have been ahead in the past two months, but I am back on my feet and pulling into the lead again.  And the fight is making me stronger.

I saw this tweet the last week of 2010 and my first thought was, Great.  Another 3,153,600 seconds of struggle.  Can’t wait! But that was shortly followed by relief.  Because it described something so real:  a year of ups and downs, goods and bads, struggle and progress.  A year of a whole-wide range of experiences.

This sounded so much better than trying to make 2011 THE BEST YEAR OF ALL-TIME!!!  I’ve seen a lot of talking/tweeting/Facebooking about making this year THE GREATEST YEAR OF YOUR LIFE!  And full disclosure:  I may have once written a post that mentioned having a big year.  But I’m over it.  Now the mere thought of trying to have a big amazing year just makes me want to take a nap.  Until December.  Why does this year have to be FABULOUS and BIG and THE BEST?  Why can’t it just be regular and real and experience-filled?

For many years, I read and did the goal-setting exercises in the book Your Best Year Yet! where you wind up with a plan for your year (to make it the best one yet!) that includes your top ten goals.  In the past, I enjoyed a lot of things about this process.  But I had no desire whatsoever to do it this year, or to make any kind of BIG resolutions.

Last year, as I always do, I typed up my ten Best Year Yet! goals in pretty fonts and cheerful colors, and posted them on my bulletin board.  In September, I looked at them, and realized that I had only achieved one sub-point each on three goals thus far.  Goals that had A LOT of sub-points, so one on each was not statistically significant.  Since I was not on track with my goal-achieving for the first 3/4 of 2010, that meant that I’d have to make it my best October-December yet!  Instead I ripped my bright and cheery goals off my bulletin board and stuffed them in a file folder.  In the back of my file cabinet where the sun don’t shine.

I will come clean and say that I sat down a few weeks ago with my notebook and wrote out a few goals.  In black pen.  No pretty fonts or bright colors.  These goals are very small.  They are micro-goals.  Things I can do every week.  I am thinking of them as non-oppressive goals.  Doing them won’t make me have the BIGGEST, BEST, MOST AMAZING YEAR EVER!!!  But not doing them won’t make me feel like an abject failure.  And hopefully they will do what goals at their best do – give me direction and focus and spark enthusiasm.  As someone who loves a hearty To Do list, they will give me something to write down on my list and check off, week after week.  When I read them over, I felt excited and enthusiastic and not oppressed, which is a good sign that I am on the right track.

This post is not meant to be a criticism of that book.  The problem I have is with a society that constantly bombards us with messages that we and our years and our lives have to be BIG, BETTER, THE BEST, which leads to feelings that anything less, anything regular and simple and ordinary, doesn’t matter, doesn’t measure up, doesn’t even count.

Looking back at 2010, I had a year of…experiences.  Some joyful, some painful, and a lot of in-between.  In her book The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown writes, “Sometimes we miss out on the bursts of joy because we’re too busy chasing down extraordinary moments.”  2011 doesn’t need to be my BEST YEAR OF ALL-TIME FOREVER AND EVER!  I just want it to be a year of experiences.  I hope to have more good days than bad.  I hope to experience more moments of contentment and peace than of depression and anxiety.  I hope to be able to spend time doing things I love, feeling engaged, excited, and enthusiastic.  I hope for curiosity, learning, healing, and growth.  I hope for connectedness and community.  And I hope to let go of chasing down brightly colored extraordinary moments, so that I can be blissful surprised by bursts of joy in the most ordinary of moments.

I don’t like the holidays.  And I’m glad they’re over.  I feel sort of Grinch-y saying this.  Especially since I was the person in high school who, on the holidays – Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Arbor Day, whatever! – dressed in the official holiday colors, and drew some sort of symbol of whatever holiday it was on my class notes all day.  And there was a girl in my grade who wore all black on purpose, in protest of the holidays, and I thought she was jaded, at 15-years-old.  Maybe I’m the one who’s jaded now, at 35.

But here’s the thing.  Somehow, the holidays have changed and morphed and warped.  As far as I can tell, they are supposed to be a time of sharing love and spreading joy.  But something happened.  Something went wrong.  And now it feels like a time of keeping anxiety at bay and warding off loneliness.

This year, as Thanksgiving approached, I started to feel the pressure, stress, and sadness that tend to descend at that time of year.  So my friend and I decided we would get to work on redefining the holidays.  We might not be in time for this year, but we could certainly start thinking about how we’d like to spend the holidays next year, in ways that would be less painful, and possibly even be able to muster up some joy and love in the true spirit of the holidays.

Then, Christmas was around the bend.  I’m Jewish, so growing up, Christmas was a day of not being able to call my Christmas-celebrating friends, with nothing do but listen to Christmas songs on all the radio stations (mostly religious-sounding songs, occasionally punctuated by “Last Christmas” by Wham, or “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer”), and watch endless Claymation.  I didn’t know about Chinese food and a movie until I was in my late-20′s.

As an adult, I don’t celebrate Chanukah anymore, and I don’t celebrate Christmas, so I am left ritual-less on Christmas Eve (I now know to see a movie on Christmas Day).  And then as soon as Christmas passed, New Year’s was here, and with it, the pressure to make some kind of MOST FUN EVER plan to RING IN THE NEW YEAR!  I don’t like to drink or spend excessive amounts of money, which seems to be what this holiday has morphed into, and I was feeling resentful that I had to do something FUN and AMAZING because it was a holiday. I just wanted to do something regular, that I’d enjoy.

Because I.  Don’t like.  The holidays.  And usually I pretend I do.  Or I keep quiet that I don’t.  But this year, I was very vocal with my holiday un-cheer.  I complained at Starbucks about the incessant Christmas music.  I told friends, family, and people I just met that I couldn’t wait for the holidays to be over.  And it felt good not to pretend.

So why are the holidays so un-cheerful?  There is the pressure, stress, obligations, expense.  There is the feeling that everyone else is having this ideal holiday, sitting in a circle in front of a crackling fireplace, drinking hot cocoa, singing “Kumbaya” as Uncle John strums a guitar, surrounded by mountains of opened gifts, none of which have to be returned because they are all PERFECT, all the while enveloped in holiday warmth, joy, and love.  This.  Is obviously not true (though I do have an Uncle Jon who plays guitar, but my family hasn’t done the sitting-in-a-circle-campfire-Kumbaya thing in over 20 years).  But it often feels like everyone else is reveling in holiday joy, anyway.  While you are alone, listening to Counting Crows’ “A Long December” on repeat.  In the dark.  I’m just saying.  That could happen.

Many people I know struggle through the holidays, which, instead of fostering warm, fuzzy feelings of belonging, intensifies painful feelings of isolation and loneliness.  A holiday is just one day and then it’s over, but as the holidays approach, I batten down the hatches and come up with coping strategies to just make it through the season.  But this year, as I was more vocal with my holiday bahumbug-ing, I heard more and more from people who felt the same way.  Which fortifies me in my mission to go beyond coping strategies next year, and redefine the holidays altogether so they can be more than just something to survive and emerge on the other side of January relieved to not have to go through that for another eleven months.  So that I can actually enjoy them, and wrap myself in my own definition of holiday cheer.

The holidays are over.  And I’m relieved.  I didn’t wind up having THE MOST FUN AND AMAZING HOLIDAY EVER! And I didn’t necessary feel enveloped in joy and love the whole time.  But I did feel like that in moments, and flashes.  I celebrated in simple ways that were meaningful to me, and which made me feel peaceful, and that, is very, very good.

Luckily, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Presidents’ Day do not bring with them this kind of baggage, so I have some respite from the holiday blues.  And eleven months to redefine the holidays for 2011.  And the good news is, if there are a lot people who feel lonely during the holidays (and, I think there just might be), then we really don’t have to feel so alone.

Last week I wrote a post about being wild, and included lists of times I was wild on the outside and inside.  And in writing these lists, I felt reconnected with those wild times in my life and parts of myself.  Often I feel like my experience of life has become dulled, muted, and tamed.  I can get into ruts that last weeks or months or even years, where I am numb and sleepwalking through my days, or worrying and white-knuckling it through my days, or just plain trying to make it through the day.  I keep quiet or play it safe or get all into self-hate.  And in these times, I have complete and total wild child amnesia.  I don’t remember how strong, courageous, free, bold, and downright badass I’ve been at times in my life.  Many, many times, when I’ve taken risks and rebelled and been wide awake, alert, and wild.

Lots of things can numb us out to our own wildness:  Routine.  An unfulfilling job.  Anxiety and worries.  Being hard on ourselves by doling out self-criticism and heaping on self-hate.  The expectations.  All those obligations.  That list goes on and on.  And then there are all those strict disciplinarians – inside ourselves, outside ourselves, remembered, and imagined – keeping watch and reigning us in should we get too feisty.

But luckily, there is a simple cure for wild child amnesia:  writing your own wild list.  Because in the remembering, and in the writing, you can feel that energy again, of your own badass boldness.  And reconnecting with these times in your life and this part of yourself may make you smile.  It could wake you up out of a daze and nudge you out of that rut.  And it just might give you some wild ideas…

So here’s an assignment, should you choose to accept it.  Take out your notebook and pen.  (Hand-writing your list will let you get more unruly and wild than if you neatly type it up.  You can even scribble in the margins, and write outside the lines!)  Turn on some music.  Maybe you have a wild theme song.  One of my favorites is “Teenage Dream” by Katy Perry, and I also like to rock out to songs that remind me of my wild days.  Like hip-hop from the early-90′s.   Lauryn Hill circa 1998, D’Angelo in 2000, Justin Timberlake and Gavin DeGraw and The Black Eyed Eyed Peas in 2003, and R&B tunes that were on the radio in the summer of 2005.

So now you have your music.  Maybe you wanna crank it up and dance around a little.  Then sit down, kick back, and write your wild list.  Start it with Times in my life I was wild… and see what adventures it takes you on…

I’d love to hear how it goes.  What are your wild theme songs?  Did writing your list make you smile?  Could you really feel it?  How did it feel?  Get any ideas?