you will work so hard.

You will topple your chair without hearing it clatter to the ground,
you will pump your knees,
and you will see only one thing in this world.

All of you will move in the same direction at once,
more quickly and more slowly than ever in your life,
all of you on fire,
none of you caring whether you put on makeup today
or whether you dropped your ATM card down the storm drain this morning
or whether anyone loves you.

There is no effort,
no slap of your feet against the concrete,
no twang in your hamstrings,
no thump in your chest;
nothing of that you can exist where you are.

You have dropped every mask and cloak and box
you have ever hidden or trapped yourself in;
all have burned away as you launched yourself
toward this one thing,
forever toward it,
this one and only thing you can remember ever wanting.

You could sprint right out of your clothes
and you wouldn’t care, not a bit;
you are, in just this one moment, free
of almost everything you have ever learned
or worried about
or been led to believe.

Not just the petty problems, but bigger problems, too,
are gone from you.
Hunger, poverty, war, torture:
you have heard of none of them.
You have rendered them nonexistent
with a power that you had not been able to find
until just now,
when a child picked up her foot to step off a curb.

Out of concern for the potentially dead child,
whom I assure you I have completely made up,
you may not yet have noticed that what I am describing
is not only remarkably easy,
but also wonderful.

So perhaps instead I should tell you,
even if it is a far less illuminating example,
that a baseball is falling from the sky
toward your spot in the bleachers,
and you are rising up to meet it.
You are not breathing with the lungs you don’t have,
and you are unfurling a pair of legs that your mind has disowned,
and you have forgotten how much you weigh,
much less that bayonet of a remark
that your own mother ran through you
just ten minutes prior, when you ordered nachos.

The ball is dropping,
and you are reaching,
and this will never be over,
nor should it ever be over,

because the slap of that ball in your hand is not the climax
but the resolution begun,
at which point the world and its mess
will spring up around you once more,

unwieldy and bittersweet all over again.

The key to peace, I have decided
is not praying,
or thinking,
or sitting still,
or humming,
or chanting,
or lighting candles.

The key to satisfaction, I have discovered
is not a new kitchen countertop
or a new pair of shoes
or a faster car
or–dare I say it?
any given cellular phone.

It is to find within yourself a desire so intense
that it drowns you out and washes you clean,
and yet so simple
that even if you fulfill it,
the result will be nothing more costly
than the back of a child’s shirt clutched in your fist
or a dusty baseball in your hand.

I only know this because

(despite the nonexistence of a potentially dead child,
who, again, I assure you I have completely made up)

all of me is moving in the same direction at once,
more quickly and more slowly than ever in my life,
all of me on fire,
none of me caring whether I put on makeup today
or whether I dropped my ATM card down the storm drain this morning
or whether anyone loves me.

Tell me something.

Not about anyone famous. Not about television shows–monosyllabic, acronymic, or otherwise. Not about anything everyone has read.

Not about what will stick to your thighs, not about the bad thing that you love. Not about bacon, not about wine. Not about how unrepentantly naughty you are or have been, in that incident, with all the cookies. Not about your false guilt or your mock repentance.

Not about how stupid you are. Not about your adorable, flailing impotence in the world that surrounds you. Not about your weakness or flaw made haplessly endearing. Not about what you don’t know how to do. Not about what you can’t do. Not about who you will never be.

Not about everything you haven’t done. Not about impossible goals you set for the pleasure of setting them, for fantasizing about what it would be like, were those goals in any way relevant to your actual future. Not about how you have failed, unless you learned something (in which case, speak, I implore you!).

Not about that feminine brand of ruefulness that has never stopped anyone from committing the same crime again, tomorrow.

Not about where else you are writing. Not about the paid project you are doing. Not about anything a department store or children’s snack company or any other commercial enterprise has compensated you for writing about.

Not about what you bought, unless you truly love it. Not about what I should buy, unless it will change my life. Not about a brooch or a candleholder or a pair of earrings or anything else you never needed to be happy. Not about shoes. Not about dresses.

Not about your bangs. Not about your pores.

Not about how you are right. Not about who wronged you and how. Not about why you are the better half, the better sister, the better mother. Not about why you deserve more. Not about your bad luck or your cursed life. Not about your annoying boss, your crappy co-worker, your evil ex-husband. Not about victimhood. Not about hate. Not about your resentment of these strange responsibilities that have become yours in a way that you do not understand. Not about what you are owed.

Not about pregnancy. Not about labor. Not about diapers. Not about breastfeeding. Not about how much sleep you got. Not about fevers. Not about vomit. Not about teeth bursting through gums.

Not about your pet. Not about what is cute.

Not about your date. Not about your boyfriend. Not about your diamond. Not about your invitations. Not about your dress. Not about your ceremony. Not about your love. Not about your divorce. Not about your custody agreement. Not about your court date. Not about your child support.

Not about your house. Not about your countertops. Not about your patio, your drywall, your fireplace. Not about your Dyson or your Swiffer, not this time.

About what’s left, whatever that is, for you, large or small. About what I could never guess, maybe, or what I don’t know. About your expertise in something odd. About something small, but unusual. About what you’ve learned. About a crazy little piece of poorly known history. About something strange you will never forget, about a memory that falls outside of our collective. About a fact that fascinates you. About a horrible travesty. About a miracle. About a discovery. About a cause. About the world.

About what’s going on. About something you are doing to make things better. About what I can do to help.

About anything, really, as long as it is not everything else.

Later, if you want to, you can do the easy thing. You can mock your little boobs and your big butt. You can mock a celebrity’s anorexia or plastic surgery or cocaine habit. You can joke about how you can’t parallel park. You can drool over material things. You can fret over the furrow slowly emerging between your eyebrows. You can act as if your choice of granite for the kitchen island will make or break your well-being and is the biggest dilemma anyone has ever encountered. I know I certainly will.

But for now, just tell me something new, something much smaller than all of that or much larger than all of that, if you can. Say it here, or say it elsewhere. If you have already said it, or if someone else did, and there is a place I can find it, please tell me where.

I’m sorry to ask. It’s not your job, I know.

But if you would indulge me, I promise to listen closely, and with gratitude.

I don’t know that I’ve ever been as overcome with deja vu as I was when we walked down the jetbridge together, toward our plane. I don’t know how to explain the certainty of that moment, the certainty I have always felt at that moment when we receive our boarding passes and fall into step together, our luggage rolling into alignment behind us to form a rumbling procession, but I will try: it felt less like what we used to do and more like who we had always been. It didn’t feel nostalgic, but it did feel profoundly true. It felt like that little bit of home that you recognize even more readily when you are exploring somewhere else entirely.

This isn’t to say that we don’t experience the occasional culture shock. “I feel like I’m on the wrong side of the bed,” Jeff joked from his side of the room as we were falling asleep; he had always slept on my right, and we had accidentally claimed our beds backward. Likewise, when he is at my elbow, I am embarrassed to admit that I sometimes forget to pay for little things that I’m buying, like my own latte; he was always the one who carried our money.

Mostly, though, we just laugh, because if you don’t insist on getting all schmaltzy about it, it really is sort of funny, the way everything is the same and yet not at all the same, in this foreign country we find ourselves navigating.

Here is the thing I feel strange admitting in a culture hellbent on convincing everyone that divorce is some kind of cultural poison: I love having an ex-husband. It’s a shame I don’t have several more of them, really, in case the first one is too busy to go out to dinner or one of them gets hit by a bus or something, or maybe we just decide we want to play a more complex round of Monopoly than two people can allow for.

(Though, I suppose if I had several, I would have to change my plans to get a “#1 Ex-Husband” mug made for Jeff for his birthday, which would be a shame, because I think he’s going to get a kick out of it.)

Sometimes I don’t see him for months, but when I do, he always knows what sorts of restaurants I will like and which movies I’ll want to see. Awhile ago, we stood out in the cold so he could teach me to change my car headlight, and I met him at the coffee shop a few weeks ago to help him write a letter. He kept borrowing my snowboard, so eventually I just gave it to him; we’ve passed our DLP projector back and forth a few times now, depending on which of us is less busy and more in the mood to watch movies. I’ve told him he can have my car when I get around to getting another one (he still has the keys, and has been known to re-park it in the event that he sees a space closer to my door, which is nice except when it makes me feel as if I am going senile), and if/when I sell my book, some of that money (all four dollars of it) will be his, for supporting me as avidly as he did, both emotionally and financially, while I wrote most of it.

I married very well, it turns out. I am even more sure of that now that it’s over.

People tell me that what we claim to be doing is impossible–that we either did not have big enough problems from the outset or that we have not yet moved on romantically. “Oh, just wait until one of you remarries,” they say, because God forbid we all avoid getting ahead of ourselves and just enjoy some good news for once. (He has a girlfriendish who has far more claim to him than I do at this point, and I would totally go to his next wedding, if he would have me. My love life is even more complicated; frankly, Jeff is the simplest and most platonic thing in it.) There must be some reason, they contend, that we have been spared from animosity or estrangement, and obviously it is through no effort of our own. They list all the reasons that most people could not do what we have done, and they question whether our divorce was even necessary in the first place, forcing me to either explain to them in detail all of the awful things that Jeff and I have done to each other or endure the destruction of my credibility.

And you know what? I think people need to stop it, for their own sake. I think they need to stop assuming that it isn’t possible and start finding ways to make it possible, because not only is divorce not going away, but divorce is not even the problem, or at least it doesn’t necessarily have to be. I am not the only one in the history of divorce to feel that way–nor are such positive outcomes reserved for the childless. Jeff’s parents, for instance, used to move in and out of the family home every six months so that their children wouldn’t have to, and they remain friendly to this day. I grew up living up the street from duplex families who had mommies on the first floor and daddies on the second floor.

Can it always be done? Of course not; it takes two (and sometimes more than two, if new girlfriends and boyfriends and wives and husbands are involved). But I do think that, as a society, we need to learn to divorce better, because staying married is sort of like staying abstinent: the best solution is not the best solution at all if it routinely fails to happen, so perhaps we should stop acting as if life has to be so goddamned ideal all the time and start working with what we have.

Should you ever find yourself ending your marriage, I encourage you to draw solace from the manner in which various people console you. Many married people reacted to my situation with horror; what was happening to me was their worst-case scenario, romantically speaking–their monster under the bed. The smartest and coolest divorced people I know, on the other hand, were both more sympathetic and much less alarmed on my behalf. They didn’t say it, because they didn’t want to patronize me or minimize my pain, but if I had paid attention, I would have seen that, deep down, they never had any doubt that I would be fine, if I wanted to be.

Who are you going to listen to: the well-intentioned but inexperienced people who have never been through it and are nearly panicking on your behalf regarding everything miserable you will surely be required to endure, according to their imagined version of how awful divorce must be, or the people who have been there–the ones who reassure you calmly, discuss the situation without theatrics, and treat your eventual healing as a foregone conclusion, as if you are merely suffering one really epic zinger of a scraped knee?

If you have decided to listen to the latter, and you need to hear it one more time, I am ready to pass along that message, because it’s true: divorce happens, and it can’t erase you, and you will be fine, if you want to be.

This whole thing, this entire trip, has been so us. This is us, this exchange of gleeful expressions while we strap ourselves in. This is us, this passing back and forth across the aisle of headphones, powerbars, sweatshirts, and everything else we share as communal property in an unconscious habit ten years in the making. This is us, this tandem head-scratching over coins and rail passes and signs lettered in a foreign language. We stop, we lean in, we contemplate, we figure it out, and we keep going.

“You Are Here,” the maps tell us, and it’s true: we still are.

Well, I didn’t give her my book on May 2. She didn’t break my limbs, mainly because she didn’t have to. I am already pretty much incapacitated, and I don’t think even Danger is one to beat up a cripple. (Usually.)

I managed to stay more or less on schedule up until April, which is kind of amazing in retrospect, since the Word file of my book turned out to be corrupt and I had to type the whole thing again by hand just to edit it. Then I took out a character, added a character, completely revised another character, moved nineteen chapters, deleted twenty thousand words (what? I like adjectives), and essentially reworked the entire storyline. The result was a second draft that is nowhere near as terrible as the first draft, but yet, impossibly, somehow remains the most terrible thing that has ever been written.

So: I hate it infinitely, but somehow, paradoxically, I hate it LESS infinitely than the first version. If my goal was to achieve the impossible with my writing, consider me a success!

At any rate, feeling the teeniest bit encouraged at this somehow mathematically invisible decrease in hatred from one draft to the next, I tried not to let my manuscript’s sheer repugnance deter me from finishing it, and I was getting there. I really was.

I met up with a man off Craigslist in a dark alley in order to purchase his used Macbook just so I could use Scrivener, a truly miraculous writing program that helped me compile all of my notes and outlines and cards and swatches of text into a reasonably neat pile that did not make me feel as if my sanity were trying to burrow through my temples in order to escape my skull entirely. I became a fixture at the local community college, because it had power outlets and silence and vending machines. I plowed through thousands upon thousands of words a day, and no one was more surprised than I was when I realized that I was sort of really doing this. That I was maybe going to finish.

Except, in April, two things happened:

1. I was contracted to oversee the most epic editorial project in history. We’re talking over six hundred Word pages. This project left a ragged, bloody hole in my calendar where my April had been. I would tell you all about it, except I honestly scarcely remember it, except at one point my eyes were so strained that I could see a giant, pulsating rainbow whether my eyes were open or closed. It was sparkly and kind of festive, really, and I don’t know that I would have minded so much if I hadn’t been so concerned that my retinas were … I don’t know, dissolving. I’m not a doctor. The point is that I almost died of retinal gangrene.

2. As if that weren’t bad enough, I stressed so hard on the above project that I actually harmed myself. Have you ever scrunched up your shoulders anxiously for days on end while also typing? Well, I don’t recommend it, because you can only get away with it for so long before you are whimpering when you try to put your hair in a ponytail, your left hand is numb, your left elbow and wrist are on fire, and you need assistance putting on your party hat. I think you will agree that nothing says “geriatric birthday girl” like having someone else slide elastic under your chin for you. The best part is that when people ask, “Oh, did you hurt yourself playing roller derby?” I have to answer, “No … I hurt myself typing.” Hardkore!

Stupidly, I tried to continue–for days after it became apparent that I would be lucky to manage to pull both socks onto my feet, much less think through the pain clearly enough to generate brilliant prose. The level of denial I maintained regarding my injuries is sort of breathtaking in retrospect. I would wake up, let my eyes water into my pillow for an hour while I worked up the nerve to sit up, and then congratulate myself once I had managed to at least swing my feet off the bed, because everyone knows that anyone who can sit up after only an hour of passive crying is a paragon of physical functionality.

Danger would ask how I was, and I would be like, “Great! All I have to do is sleep in a neck brace, and that almost nearly solves a modest portion of the agony! It’s like a new lease on life … in some sort of tenement building, granted, but that will just make my fiction grittier!”

And Danger would be like, “Hey, you know, we’re actually friends, and I probably won’t really break your limbs … and come to think of it, you are the only person who even gives a crap about this book you’re writing, seeing as the rest of us have real problems, so maybe you should just, you know, relax a little,” and I would shriek and try to cover both of my ears at once with my one good hand, because why be rational about things when you can act as if your efforts to write a novel are of crucial importance to the very survival of the human race.

It honestly wasn’t until today that I realized I was being That Person, that staggering heap of failing synapses who is so stubborn that she will wave off any offers of help while she drags herself on her hands and knees across the triathlon finish line, pooping her running briefs a few times for good measure.

Worse, I was being That Person over a book, a freaking NOVEL, that thus far has no agent, much less a real actual deadline of any kind.

I had, in fact, managed to abandon all perspective and completely lose my mind in a way that forced me to participate in my own hobbies against my will.

So I quit. For now.

But believe me, I am still very bitter about it. I’m sure a real novelist could have crossed that finish line even while in the grip of some kind of unexpected coma. Hell, a real novelist could have crossed that finish line POSTHUMOUSLY without even breaking a sweat.

I can still type, obviously, though I have done a lot of this with one hand across oh, I don’t know, nine hours. What I can’t do is have very much fun while writing very complex fiction, and if anything is going to save my book, it’s the fact that most of the time, I was enjoying myself while I wrote it. I’m still in plenty of (slooooowly decreasing) pain, not to mention sick to death of worrying about a self-manufactured failure and then hating myself for being the sort of person who worries about a self-manufactured failure while eyeless orphans on the brink of starvation panhandle the dusty, glass-sharded streets of some war-torn country somewhere.

(NOTE: If you are thinking of writing a book, and you desperately want to be a humble person who does not take yourself too seriously (all while neurotically realizing that anyone who desperately wants to be any sort of person is probably ALREADY taking themselves too seriously, SHIT), you might want to consider the fact that you will find it impossible not to loathe yourself deeply when you find yourself doing things like calling a friend for the sole purpose of wringing your hands over your prologue. You have been warned. Save yourself.)

Where does this leave me? I don’t know. I’m trying to sit around and heal, but it’s hard. I don’t really know how to watch TV, for instance. I tried watching it today, at my parents’ house, and I actually mistook their phone for the remote control. Sadly, it took me a moment of wondering why a remote control would have a Talk button before I figured it out. And then, when I finally found the real remote, I marveled that the television TELLS you what show is on whichever channel you just flipped to. Amazing! Unfortunately, I had never heard of any of these shows, because all the Internet ever talks about are Glee and Lost, and apparently neither of those were on. I guess certain shows only air at certain times, like at the movies? I’m not an expert.

At any rate, a new deadline will be in the works shortly, I am sure, as soon as I have two completely functional arms and have regained my will to live, much less create. For now, though, I find myself a failure–and not for the first time.

But somehow, my familiar surprise at the earth’s continued rotation is brand new all over again.

Honestly: can you believe we get to do this? And to think my molecules could have just wound up in a tree or something. BORING!

Birthdays can be bittersweet, yes, and a little alarming as one realizes that one is slowly becoming a spider-veined fire hazard who will be lucky just to blow out the big number candle in the center of the cake, much less all of them, but really: I’ll take as many of these aptly named happy birthdays as I can get.

Yay for thirty, and forty, and all those other milestones that I hope to reach before I manage to collect like a hundred healthy and happy birthdays like the greedy bastard I am, because holy hell am I having a good time.

I was standing on a curb in Bangkok, just minding my own business, waiting to cross the street, as one does every day without encountering any elephants. But when I turned my head, there he was, inches from my face—either a baby or some sort of mini-elephant, I have no idea, but if you have ever met an elephant unexpectedly, you know that there’s really no mistaking it for anything else. I was too delighted to be very startled; besides, I was so jetlagged that I had probably left any hard-wired startle reflexes back on the other side of the international date line.

He was waiting too, stretching his stubby little elephant toes against the pavement idly. I offered a dollar and asked his owner if I could touch him. (I could, of course; it was Bangkok, where you could probably offer someone a dollar and ask them for a piggyback ride and find yourself jostling along and shouting “giddyup!” merrily only a moment later.)

I reached out and patted him between his long-lashed eyes while he investigated me (to see whether I had any treats in any of my pockets, I’m assuming). He was bristly; for some reason I had anticipated something soft and buttery, akin to a worn-out leather jacket, but the bristles pushed back against my hand, surprising me. Meanwhile, his trunk patted me hello. He was benign, but not bored; I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I think he was probably a pretty good elephant.

I still think of that, all the time—the texture of him under my palm while I stood there in wonder, in the middle of a city, under the streetlamp, amid the crazy Bangkok traffic rushing by around me, with my hand on an elephant.

I’m unpacking right now, unspooling after folding everything away, making myself small, and battening down for several major life changes. I’m realizing that there is no hook in the kitchen for my apron, but that I like waking up to the sound of traffic in the morning. I can’t find a good place for my bathroom organizer, but I actually have room for a real dining table again. I don’t know what it all will look like, yet; right now, it’s not a big picture, just a collection of jubilant realizations and subdued disappointments, with the occasional dash of panic.

It consoles me to know that, just as I did then and have done many times since, I will find the good things. Good things may not be sent to me by some benevolent spirit, and I may not know how to look for them or even what they’re supposed to be. But I can find them anyway, despite myself, while I’m waiting, simply by looking around.

And even through my anxious brain will probably always insist on straining to spontaneously develop psychic abilities, I know for sure that sometimes, life is even better when you never saw it coming.

And then I go out into the world and fuck it all up again, and how.

I write them out because it helps me, because it makes them more solid and strings them all together. I write them out because I am moving to a new place that offers a new chance to lean on them a little harder, to have a little more faith.

It’s not technically spiritual, I guess, but it’s the best I can do. I invite you to take what helps you and leave the rest.

******

With the occasional exception of your close friends, no one wants to hear you complain. If they do, I will bet you ten dollars that it’s usually just to make themselves feel better about how much THEY complain.

There is no point in following through with a goal if it is no longer what you want. What are you trying to prove, and to whom? If some people were more fickle, they might not spend their lives painted into a corner. You are rarely truly painted into a corner as long as you don’t mind getting a little dirty on your way out.

The more you have, the harder any of it is to appreciate. Make your lavish purchases carefully, rarely, and relatively sensibly, and you will discover that “everyday treasure” is not an oxymoron.

It is pointless to sit around and feel appalled at the state of the world. If you have no intention of taking action, you might as well have spent that time enjoying yourself. At least then someone would have benefited. Unless, of course, you are the sort of person who simply enjoys the superior feeling you get from being appalled about everything, in which case, fine, but in that event, any feeling of charitability you’re enjoying is probably unfounded.

Don’t expect anyone else to be nearly as invested in your trials and tribulations as you are. You’re a grownup now. Your dance-recital days are long over.

Those who wrong you are your best teachers. They are walking, talking opportunities for you to become a better person. Also, sometimes? They’re right. (I am paraphrasing wisdom stolen from the Dalai Lama himself. I don’t think he would mind.)

Unless the person in question is a child, you can’t care about someone’s welfare more than they do. I mean, really. That’s just silly.

No one else is responsible for your happiness. If you expect them to be, they will deeply disappoint you eventually, if not frequently.

It could always be worse. It could always be better. But only allow those facts to be relevant to the extent that it actually helps you to make things better, because they are true for everyone.

Talking about this awesome thing that you are going to do is not an accomplishment in and of itself. Save your breath and just do something awesome. Then you can talk about it. You’ll look like less of an idiot that way, all while neatly reserving the right to change your mind about writing a book or running a marathon or giving up sugar. If you need accountability, skip the showboating and just tell your good friends of your intentions and ask for their support. (If you do change your mind, good friends can generally be trusted to gauge whether you’re wussing out or simply returning to reality.)

Don’t assume, and don’t take it personally.

Your love for someone does not imply an obligation on their part to do what you want. Nor are you obligated to humor those who love you. You exist in a tribe of passionate people; you could lose your every waking moment to their concern for you if you let yourself.

It’s not okay to spend all of your money now and save nothing for the future. It’s really not. Carrying a balance on your credit card while you continue to spend money on non-necessities is not cute, and it’s not something you can laugh ruefully about as if you are Bridget Jones or Carrie Bradshaw. Both of those characters are fictional for a reason: reality eats people like them alive, the filmed portrayal of which would be considerably less charming or endearing. You? You’re debilitatingly, inescapably nonfictional, so please don’t sell shares of your future welfare in order to buy a new pair of rollerskates. You’re smarter than that. Finance is not rocket science; it’s addition and subtraction, for God’s sake. If you can’t master that, it’s because you prefer not to, and that is some seriously weak shit right there.

Speak on what you care about, without aggression but also without apology. It can be hard, when you know how to be funny, to stop being funny, sometimes, but if you fail to be sincere when it’s warranted, you are selling yourself short. Let them think you’re an uncool blowhard. Maybe you even ARE an uncool blowhard. But caring fiercely is not so terrible, and not much would happen if no one ever did.

Make a bucket list if you like. Want things in life if you like. But understand that the best moments will come unbidden and unexpected; after all, their exciting novelty and breathtaking revelation will be what makes them the best. Don’t plan to the point that you cheat yourself out of genuine discovery.

Do something. Anything. You’ll feel better.

Feedback is one of the most valuable accomplishment tools in the universe. Check your bank balance. Use a stopwatch. Count your words. Feedback is neutral and objective. If you’re afraid of feedback, you’re hiding something.

Practice is the other most valuable accomplishment tool in the universe.

It all comes down to who you know, yes. It all comes down to golden opportunity, yes. So become known to the right people by deserving recognition, and take advantage of golden opportunities by rising to the occasion. I don’t know why you’re complaining that you don’t have a literary agent for a best friend when you wouldn’t have a thing to show them even if you did.

If you love it, tell everyone about it. If you hate it, try to shut up about it. Use your buying/communicating power to promote the things that are good, rather than telling everyone about that awful book they should forget about immediately and not buy. Not only are you promoting it whether you mean to or not, but you have also left the reader no better off, and you have shortchanged the person who DID write a good book or make a good movie. Plus, you aren’t such hot shit yourself, and who’s to say you could have done any better? As the saying goes, “Criticism is like showing up on the battlefield and shooting the wounded.” Criticism is also one of the easiest writing prompts; it requires less talent than almost anything else. Challenge yourself.

It’s great that you consider honesty to be such a virtue, but your secrets belong to you; keep them if you like. If you find yourself forced to lie in order to do so, forgive yourself; you are probably doing it either to allow yourself to speak of another truth or because people are asking questions they had no right to ask. Either way, it was never any of their business.

Having a wild array of options in your life can be overwhelming, but it is also a privilege that relatively few members of the human species have been so lucky to enjoy. Try not to whine about it too much. It makes you sound like an asshole.

It is later than you think—or it will be, faster than you think. And really, what’s the difference? Go.

Say it with me: “I don’t know.” Respect people enough to say it to them, too, when it’s true, which is often. It will not affect their opinion of you the way your overacademic inner child expects. (P.S. Tell your inner child that “gifted” is just an adjective that someone just totally made up in like, the 1600s. It’s not, you know, a blood type. Good grief.)

When in doubt, wait a while. When in yet more doubt, just flip a damn coin or something. It’s not that likely that there is only one right option. (If you’re convinced that one option is your happy ending and one equals CERTAIN DEATH, you’re probably wrong, no matter what the Choose Your Own Adventure books taught you.) In contrast, it is VERY likely that if you don’t learn to simply make a decision and commit to it for the time being, you will probably lose your mind.

Keep your eyes on your own work. You have plenty to do.

I’ve enjoyed more social activity this year than … well, ever, honestly. And you guys, it’s FASCINATING. Some women are flat-out rejected. Some blend in effortlessly. Most are somewhere in between. But the driving forces behind the outcome are always the same, and not even really that difficult to grasp … OR SO YOU WOULD THINK. But no, the same mistakes happen over and over again, and the longer I observe all of it, the more I marvel at the human capacity to make everything a hell of a lot more difficult than it has to be.

And … well, I really hate to throw gender stereotypes out there, so forgive me for the next sentence: social difficulty may be a human tendency, but it often takes a group of women to turn it into a real art form. I’m not saying that to bash women. My group of friends is full of the most amazing people I have ever encountered, regardless of gender. Not every woman is the limping emotional mess I’m about to describe. In fact, I dearly hope NO woman is the limping emotional mess I’m about to describe.

But I think that a lot of us will recognize a glimmer of ourselves in the contents of this post, here and there. I know that a few of these items hit painfully close to home for me, or at least they used to. I’m better now, mainly because it’s been hard to observe and learn from these women without feeling a strong desire to stop making a total jackass out of myself.

This manifesto, and oh Lord is it ever a manifesto and four billion words and counting (YOU WERE WARNED), has been a long time coming. I like doing a “hey, please stop being such a social moron” post around BlogHer season, just because it’s … you know … TIMELY. But I’m not really writing about BlogHer, which only makes up a few days out of a much, much longer year—a year that is hopefully a happy one that offers a lot of love and joy. (Of course, it’s hard to experience love and joy when your insecurities are eating you alive, but I’ll get to that.) I’m writing about general principles that play out everywhere, including in a roller derby league.

All the same, I’m going to present this in the BlogHer context. Mainly because I’ve seen posts lately bashing BlogHer, as always seems to be obligatory for some reason. In these posts, bloggers announce that they are SO NOT GOING to BlogHer because BlogHer is SO HIGH SCHOOL (now there’s a dead horsey of a cliche that everyone could really stand to stop beating with a crowbar, eh?) and who needs THOSE PEOPLE, and you know what? That’s total bullshit.

Your attitude, quite frankly, sucks. No one is asking you to go, no one is asking you to care, and the fact that you feel it’s necessary to publicly shun that conference, along with an entire population of women you have never met, tells me a lot more about you than it does about the conference—most notably, that you’re insecure and scared and apparently very comfortable with the habit of rejecting people before they could dare do the same.

I have said this so many times, but I don’t at all mind saying it again: Life is only like high school if you act like you are in high school. This includes taking everything personally, interpreting a lack of attention as outright rejection, carefully adhering to the very fashion and beauty standards that you claim to find shallow, and seeking the friendship of the very sort of people you claim to despise. For someone who thinks popularity is a farce, you certainly seem to crave it; for someone who thinks looks shouldn’t matter, you’re eyeing your shoe collection pretty carefully.

I see you all the time, and you never make it in my group—or clique, as you so scathingly might prefer to call it. (For some reason, groups of friends are verboten these days, apparently.) You stagger away, stung and confused, convinced that we’re all just a big bunch of meanies who didn’t think your hair looked nice enough. Because believing that is easier than taking responsibility for the way you act. Believing that is easier than forgiving yourself for letting your feelings dictate your actions. Believing that is easier than taking a hard look around and realizing that maybe it’s your own damned fault.

If you are that person or have ever even kind of resembled that person, this list is for you.

Reasons that you think people do not like you:

Your shoes are from Payless.

You don’t network with the right people.

You haven’t had a BMI in the supposed “normal” range since Clinton was president.

You have bad teeth.

Your hair is a frizzy mess.

You don’t come from the right family.

Your eyebrows aren’t waxed.

You aren’t popular enough to interest anyone.

Everything in your wardrobe came from Target.

They think they’re too good for you.

Actual reasons that people do not like you:

You are invisible. Simply put, you cannot make new friends when you are hiding behind a potted plant and refusing to speak to anyone. This seems obvious … but, well, you would be surprised. New girl shows up! New girl lurks in corner and never speaks to anyone! New girl disappears, making sure to condemn everyone on her way out! At which point everyone has the same thought: “Who is this angry stranger?”

You require an engraved invitation to go to any event or join any conversation. At an event like BlogHer or anywhere else, you’re going to need to empower yourself as a grown woman who decides where she wants to go and when, because no one has that kind of time. I’ve even extended ACTUAL “hey, you should come along with us!” invitations and later found out that I didn’t seem to really MEAN it. Look, it’s an invitation, not a reading from Shakespeare, so it’s time to better acquaint yourself with a handy tool I like to call “face value.”

You refuse to be treated like an equal because you do not believe that you are an equal. I can’t treat you as an equal when you keep insisting that I am so much better than you are. Modesty is charming, yes, but you’ve been on that “aw shucks!” theme for about forty-five minutes, and I was really hoping we could move on to actually getting to know each other better at some point. Lavish flattery sounds nice but is actually pretty awkward, and I would hope that you don’t think so little of me that you imagine I would ever require you to suck up that hard just to gain my friendship.

You make them work so hard to prove that they really and truly like you that they ultimately stop liking you … seeing as you are displaying the dreaded needy-stubborn combination. So difficult to convince, yet so WILLING to let me try again anyway! No thanks. I’d rather not be negated into exhaustion every time I attempt to offer you a compliment. “Thank you” works much better. We’ve all flubbed that one a time or two, but if you’re especially, uh, PERSISTENT about deflecting any sort of praise or positive attention, I will get tired and I will give up on you.

You cannot stop pointing out the very thing that you think no one should care about. Welcome to backwardsville, where the woman who thinks no one should care that she looks fat in those pants cannot stop talking about how fat she looks in her pants. Even if you do look fat in those pants (METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING), it would likely be a nonissue if you could somehow stop insisting on making it into one.

You harp on all the ways that you have been shortchanged socially and offer no one the benefit of the doubt, giving another blogger the evil eye while you explain that she TOTALLY, like, ignored you at dinner even though you were looking right at her, scaring people away with your frightening cocktail of paranoia and grudgery. I am quite frankly terrified to be friends with you, lest I someday suffer from an eyelid twitch that is somehow translated into the world’s most heartless put-down. I routinely find myself nothing less than astonished at the drama you can manufacture from a four-second interaction in which someone failed to fully acknowledge how fantastic you are.

Your feelings of rejection and unpopularity turn into overaggression regarding who you are and what you stand for. You’re like a one-person gay pride parade over there, except without the fun and the Mardi Gras beads. You’re here to let EVERYONE know that you are YOU, and you are a CHRISTIAN who is also LIBERAL and VEGETARIAN but then again also PRO-LIFE and that is great except we were actually not talking about any of that before you puffed out your chest and blurted it out and used your body language to dare anyone to have a problem with it. We were, in fact, talking about stuffed mushrooms. Can’t you just talk about stuffed mushrooms? They’re quite delicious, and also, must you be so combative? It’s spoiling my appetite and that’s a terrible shame, what with the aforementioned mushrooms.

Your insecurity about yourself has driven you to insult them or make them uncomfortable with backhanded compliments: “Whatever, someone as pretty as you has no right to complain! HA! HA!” “You always look so perfect—do you have stock in J. Crew or something? HA! HA!” “You’re SOOO skinny! I hate you! Eat a sandwich already! HA! HA!” Um, yeah. You stop that right this INSTANT. If you cannot trust yourself to deliver a sincere compliment without serving up a side of thinly veiled bile along with it, just don’t discuss physical appearance at all.

You do not have a Reset button. Oh, we have all been that person, the one who cannot seem to shut up, the one who must press onward even when it is painfully clear that everyone is uncomfortable. Insecurity can make you say odd things. It can make you tell someone that you hate her because she is so pretty, or babble on and on about the size of someone’s butt until she is slowly backing away. It can make you tease someone about something in a way that really falls flat. We’ve all been there, and everyone is pretty forgiving, as long as you don’t make the tragic mistake of grimly REDOUBLING your efforts just to prove that you aren’t doing anything weird. You ARE doing something weird and the best possible strategy would be to take a few sips of your drink and let someone else talk until the urge passes or you’ve thought of a better subject. I know the pain of being the Girl Who Could Not Reset and it is a bad place to be about six hours later, when your brain will force you to relive the scene in excruciating detail. When you catch yourself in the moment, forgive yourself, correct your trajectory, and MOVE ON, for all our sakes. Preferably to a topic that doesn’t make you sound so envious or shallow.

You are a coward, a liar, or both. A joke should just a be joke. As in, not at all true. If you think making a joke about how someone is acting like a camera whore is really the best way to tell your friend that she’s embarrassing herself, you need to learn to either address the situation directly or live and let live (may I recommend the latter? It’s just less work, is all). If I do not feel I can trust you to know your jokes from your insults, and if I cannot tell whether to believe you when you say something is not a problem, I am not interested. I can’t tell you how many times in the last year I’ve heard some misguided soul say something like, “Oh, it’s really no big deal, BUT …” If it’s no big deal, why have you mentioned it eight times to six different people? Step up or let it go, and if you’re going to talk about it, talk about it to the one person who should have been allowed the courtesy of hearing about it first. If you aren’t sorry, don’t say you are. If it isn’t over, don’t say that it is. I will respect you for saying that you need time to think. I will not respect you for apologizing when you don’t mean it, then bringing the incident up again at every opportunity or sulking about it to anyone who will listen. It teaches me that you cannot be trusted to mean what you say. No thanks.

Conversely, if someone insults you in that wussy “This actually is not a joke, unless you realize it’s not a joke and call me on it, in which case I intend to backpedal and blame YOU for overreacting to some good old-fashioned teasing!” sort of way that we’re all so very familiar with, be smart enough not to get dragged down with them. Just look at them and say, “That sounded like one of those jokes that isn’t really a joke.” They will shut up or the two of you will argue, but either way, it’s vastly preferable to taking little bitch slaps at each other all day. (Unless you enjoy that sort of thing, and I guess some people do.)

You like to ride the escalator all the way to the nuclear level. If someone is mad at you, why, you’re even MADDER at them, so there! I’ve met women who respond to a tap on the shoulder with a bazooka blast and then seem confused about why no one wants to go anywhere near them. (Hint: It’s because they’re nuts.) If someone approaches you with a problem, appreciate their courage and at least try to listen to them. Because, hey, they could have handled the way you would have instead, which is even worse. You don’t have to be a doormat, but if they say they’re a little concerned with something, there’s absolutely no reason to take it up a notch. I know it’s an instinct, and we’ve all been there, but if you decide to fight fire with plutonium, it’s not going to end well for anyone. Which is fine, I guess, if you would rather win than have any friends.

Simply put, you fight dirty. Believe it or not, “Well, you’re UGLY and everyone has been making fun of your stupid new piercing behind your back for WEEKS!” is really not the most useful discussion tool. Also, I’m going to hazard a guess and say that it has nothing to do with the actual issue that had been under discussion before you decided to deploy Operation Heart Stab. I am very sad to say that I’ve met fifty-year-olds who still have not grasped this.

Other reasons people do not like you:

They simply have no idea who you are, and all of those pointed glances in your direction were actually aimed at the broken coffee machine. I wonder how often this has happened. Judging from how often some people have mistaken some blank, distracted glance of mine for utter distaste, I imagine the Insecure Misunderstanding Index (IMI) is pretty heartbreaking.

They’re busy. Or perhaps they just missed the “Everyone In The Whole World Must Be Friends With Each Other” memo. While such a system sounds nice at first, you have to admit it would be a little exhausting, following the entire blogosphere on Twitter, even if you believe that each and every person is deserving of such acknowledgment.

They are nursing their own rampant insecurities and wondering why YOU haven’t talked to THEM yet, you big conceited jerk. (Again: so pitifully and unnecessarily common.)

They are unfair, judgmental assholes. Not only are you crazy to be interested in a friendship with someone like that, but you’re also irrational to care what they think, as the opinion of an unfair, judgmental asshole should not logically be worth much.

The two of you simply aren’t a good match. Earth-shattering, I know, but not a personal insult unless you choose to make it into one. Also, I hate to have to point it out, but perhaps one reason they do not feel that they are a good match for you is that you are acting as if you are thirteen and they are in fact thirty-five. Even your best behavior may not magically bridge the gap between the two of you, but pouting most certainly isn’t going to. Besides, I’ll never understand why someone who is VERY into parenting so desperately wants acceptance from someone who is very NOT into parenting, and so on. You don’t have the same interests. You don’t want to talk about the same things. It’s okay.

Well, it’s okay unless you’re actually deeply insecure about how much you talk about your kids, at which point you will get angry every time someone validates those deep-rooted feelings by not acting interested. My advice is to find someone who actually would logically be interested in the first place, then talk to them. You might be thinking “duh,” but people miss that first step all the time, then get hurt feelings because the white supremacist they just met doesn’t feel like discussing civil rights. What on earth did you expect?

So, basically, the real reason people do not like you is that

your insecurity is so toxic and wearisome that they flee your very presence. Simply put, you’re the one who can’t escape high school, and damnedest part is that you think it’s everyone else.

At its best, friendship is Darwinian: natural selection, baby. And it really would be, if people would stop sabotaging the process by wearing clothes they never wear, saying things they never say, and doing things they never do. RELAX, would you? If you weren’t so afraid of rejection, you would likely encounter it a lot less often … seeing as you would seem much more SANE without all the insecurity.

Your feelings are not an excuse; you are an adult, and you should and must know better, or you deserve what you get. So, hey, maybe natural selection has been working just fine all along.

Last year, I went to BlogHer in my Aeropostale polo shirts and my years-old Gap pants, and I didn’t have any trouble. Mostly because I no doubt managed to ward off anyone lame enough to care what I was wearing. I made all kinds of new friends that I cherish to this day, none of whom gave two shits whether I had, in fact, accidentally worn the same polo shirt I’d worn the year before. (Oops.) Really, the only times I felt stressed or upset were the times when I decided to be a total douchebag over whether my hair was frizzing. I got over it, of course, and just yanked it up in a bun. You will be surprised to learn that this sloppy, unfashionable hairstyle did not prompt anyone to throw eggs at me or beat me up in gym class. I have some theories on how I managed to escape such a fate, and all of them involve NO ONE GIVING A CRAP.

This year, I plan to do it all again, and frankly, the only reason the twin polos, Gap pants, and Croc shoes won’t be making an appearance is that San Francisco is kind of cold in July. Instead, I’ll be runway-ready in exciting ensembles that include $10 tees from Threadless and anything long-sleeved that was on the sale rack at Delia’s. I’m packing the one nice black shirt I own and even a few $7 sweaters I got two years ago at Famous Barr, so it’s going to be like Milan all over again, and quite frankly I’m not even sure you can keep up.

Sure, I’ll wear makeup and do my hair, because I always wear makeup and do my hair. That, too, is just who I am, mostly because I have my own insecurities just like anyone else, and it has nothing to do with you unless you decide it does. You may think some people are prettier or thinner or smarter or more fashionable than you. Certain self-esteem programs will patiently explain to you that this is all in your head, but because I respect you enough to tell you the truth, I am here to tell you that some people ARE in fact prettier or thinner or smarter or more fashionable than you. In fact, now that you mention it, entire ARMIES of people are prettier and thinner and smarter and more fashionable than you! If this keeps you awake at night, I would suggest that, ten or twenty years after you received your high-school diploma, you finally teach your ego to cope with this fact—which, incidentally, is true for damn near everyone.

Of course, if you’d rather stay in high school forever instead, I have no doubt that there’s a shallow, whiny table in that cafeteria just for you. Just keep looking and acting like you belong there with the rest of the insecure gang, and it’ll take care of itself. It always does.

We’ve all been in that place. (Sometimes I still visit, and let me tell you, it’s hell getting back through customs.) But it’s up to each of us to get ourselves out. It’s not anyone else’s problem. It’s yours. And when you decide you’re ready to graduate from this high school you keep going on about, the rest of us will be waiting at BlogHer, and at work, and at derby practice.

It’s not college, but there IS beer, and fun, and a whole lot of memories that you’re missing out on every time you decide to announce that you are both too good and not good enough for us.

I’m lucky I have a passion for eating, or I would have starved to death pretty much as soon as feeding me became my responsibility. I can see the tombstone engraving now:

The kitchen was all the way over there, and I just couldn’t be bothered.

–Jen the Trephinist, 1980-1998

When I am not passionate (see: statistics class), I can barely stay awake. I learn nothing. I am bored and stupid and whiny and I dislike myself almost as much as the people trying to teach me poker or football or knitting are learning to dislike me. I shift in my seat, I sigh, I prop my chin up on my hand. When told to roll a pair of dice and add up the dots, I moan theatrically and lay my head down on the table, because counting dots is soooo hard and soooo pointless and oh my God who even caaaaaaares. Needless to say, you probably shouldn’t invite me to Game Night.

When I was in school, ADD diagnoses had not yet become all the rage, so instead I was just lazy—bright, yes, and capable, yes, but going nowhere. I mean, despite the fact that I had already completed the unabridged Les Miserables of my own volition in SIXTH GRADE, turning the pages in morbid fascination as I realized that people used to like sell their own front teeth and build their own barricades in the streets and shit, I got a D in English my freshman year of high school because I couldn’t be bothered to compose Captain Obvious essays about the oh-so-implicit themes in Lord of the Flies. I mean, we all get what that book’s about, right? Right? Must we be so tiresome as to insult one another’s intelligence by beating the topic into the ground?

Unfortunately, my English teacher took exception to my logic, and my parents REALLY REALLY took exception to my logic, which is how I found myself spending the next three years flipping through My Antonia and groaning over the computer keyboard while my parents jingled the car keys over my head. (Turns out I had a passion for being able to go places by myself.)

Despite my parents’ shrewd ministrations, I still got a D in PE class my senior year, even though I weighed under a hundred pounds and could run a mile in less than six minutes. This happened because I found real bowling to be unappealingly intricate, and thus insisted on perfecting the Granny Throw instead, which was less effective but far more amusing. Luckily, at that point, my parents were just happy I had somehow managed to graduate with a B average and get into a decent college, so the incident passed by without comment.

That lazy label, though. It stuck with me for years, because when my teachers said it, I believed them. And when anyone I was in a relationship with said it, I believed them too. I believed them because somehow, it had escaped my notice that when I am passionate, I can learn. I can concentrate. I can focus with a singularity of purpose typically found only in moths plink-plink-plinking against lightbulbs, longing for the filament that eludes them even as they bask in it.

Except I am not a moth. I am a human, right down to my cerebrum and my opposable thumbs, and that means that I am going to GET that motherfucking filament and I am going to make it my bitch.

For instance, as a small child, I decided that my fondest wish was to dig a hole to China, where everyone wore funny clothes and walked upside down. My mother, never one to discourage me but also somewhat familiar with my Moth Mode and therefore concerned that I would dig a hole deep enough to hit a buried cable and electrocute myself or God knows what (and also admittedly somewhat worried that her backyard would not look as nice once I had graced it with an impromptu mine shaft), told me that I was absolutely welcome to dig my hole to China—as long as I did it with a fruit spoon.

That’s right: she handed me a FRUIT SPOON, with helpfully corrugated tip, and graciously wished me the best of luck in my efforts to reach Peking.

Naturally, I did what any rational person would do, and snatched it out of her hand like FINE, BITCH, and marched myself right out into the yard to show that woman who’s boss. And then I dug for hours with that goddamned fruit spoon, crouching all day in the blazing midsummer heat until there were blisters on my hands and she finally just took it away again, like, “Okay, psycho, if you aren’t going to take the hint and give up, then I’m going to pretend I suddenly really need this fruit spoon for something else, like this awesome fruit cocktail we’re going to eat out of this can, because it’s the 1980s and that’s just how we roll.”

Yeah. I was totally lazy. This trait was so clearly demonstrated throughout my childhood, like when I designed and tested several homemade parachutes (active ingredients: twine, garbage bags) by jumping repeatedly off the low end of the roof of our house until I almost broke my ankle and my mother once again found some creative way to suggest that perhaps this particular project had run its course.

More recently, this past Christmas, I thought it might be a fun idea to make a coffee-table book for my boyfriend, depicting the various online interactions involved in my stalking of him. Sure, I could assemble the pages in Photoshop and then have the book printed … OR I could lend it a whimsical quality by printing out all the photographs and Google chats, then assemble each page on a black refrigerator using alphabet letters and thematic retro magnets that I had purchased for the occasion after combing through the magnet selections of no fewer than three separate gift stores, and THEN set up a tripod and photograph the front of the refrigerator thirty SEPARATE TIMES after I had composed each page, and THEN tweak all of it in Photoshop before assembling it into a Shutterfly book.

Of course, when I reviewed the photos, the clarity was not to my liking. No problem! I simply dropped digital versions of the photos on top of the photographed versions (carefully drawing feathered selections AROUND the magnets sitting on TOP of the photographed photos, of course, to preserve them), then scanned the face of each magnet on my parents’ scanner in order to repeat that process with each magnet.

Also, I suppose it’s worth noting that I had taped off a 12×12 square on the fridge first, because the coffee-table book was 12×12 and it was important to me that everything be life-size, as it would be on a refrigerator. Plus, you know, it’s important to make sure the photographed type doesn’t come out too small in the final product. Ahem.

And then I got worried about page spreads not corresponding nicely with one another, so I also had the presence of mind to make a spacer page in order to ensure that I could have the spreads I wanted:

Yeah. Hi. Did I mention that I did all of this in two days?

Oh man. Sooooo lazy.

I have told you all of this to explain why, with only about a week’s notice, I’m moving back to the small hometown I swore I never wanted to live in again. Based only on three fuzzy cell-phone pictures, I rented an apartment over the phone while pacing the floor in Los Angeles, and I just saw it for the first time yesterday. I completely adore it … which is good news, seeing as I will be living in it NINE DAYS FROM NOW, HA HA HA HA.

“But you were talking about moving to Portland,” you’re saying. “But you said you wanted to live somewhere that is vegan-friendly with public transportation!”

Oh, I know. I know, because I’ve had this conversation thousands of times throughout my life. It usually goes like this:

Me: I’m moving back to my hometown!
Other Person: What? I thought you were moving to New Zealand.
Me: Oh, that. No. New plan.
Other Person: But … you had so thoroughly researched the neighborhoods of Wellington.
Me: I know, I know. But that was before I knew about this other thing!
Other Person: You drew a comparison chart outlining the pros and cons of Wellington vs. Auckland.
Me: Oh. You remember that.
Other Person: You were going to have a llama.
Me: Well, there’s no sense dwelling on the past now that—
Other Person: The llama’s name was going to be Daisy, you said. Daisy the llama.
Me: Don’t be difficult.

What can I say? Moth Mode trumps all. (Also, this gig is relatively short term, so I’m still visiting Portland in May and could very well live there by the end of the year, if I like what I see.)

So … why? Why would I move somewhere that lacks a Trader Joe’s, has a tiny childfree population, and thinks that fish tacos are totally vegetarian?

Well, I’ve got two words for you: roller derby.

“But wait,” you say. “How can a town that doesn’t even have a Trader Joe’s have ROLLER DERBY?”

And the answer to your question is, “It doesn’t.”

But it will, if I have anything to say about it.

We had our first practice on Tuesday night. I doubt that any of my old teachers would have guessed that their lazy former student would be willing to embark on a twenty-hour blitz across three time zones just to be there. I slept in the Los Angeles airport on Monday night just to make sure I wouldn’t miss my 6 a.m. flight, then flew through Denver to Chicago, where I spent my three-hour layover typing up notes, then flew to my hometown with just enough time left to run into my parents’ house, print up my notes, stick them on a clipboard, grab my skate bag, and run out the door. After leading practice, I drove home, added my instructional notes to our Facebook discussion board, then climbed into a bed for the first time in more than thirty-six hours and curled up with the cat to snag some sleep before I had to roll back out of bed the next morning to pick up the keys to my new apartment (and oh, also, lay eyes on it for the first time).

I have two more practices to run before I drive back to St. Louis to walk into the home I will by then have left spontaneously abandoned for over three weeks, so that I can spend the subsequent week packing for the caravan that’s showing up to retrieve me on the thirteenth. I can start packing just as soon as I’m done running my last recreational derby game in St. Louis (in a recreational division of the league that I started in order to provide beginners and derby retirees with somewhere to play).

Before I do any of that, of course, I have a giant editorial deadline to make on Monday, a new apartment to clean, and a track to build. I’m sure my former math teachers would be surprised to know that I just willingly spent my time memorizing the dimensions of a standard Women’s Flat Track Derby Association track. A derby track, if you were wondering, is 88 feet long, with the curves radiating from points each 17.5 feet from the 44-foot center mark, swinging in inner and outer arcs that are 12.5 feet and 26.5 feet from those points, respectively, though you do offset each of the outer arcs a foot to the left of the center line (if you are standing at the center line and orienting yourself toward the curve each time).

In other words: PLINK-PLINK-PLINK, BITCHES.

And to think I never even managed to learn to apply the FOIL method properly, despite hours of tutoring. I’m not sure why. I’m guessing it’s because I was lazy.

WHEN MY PETS DIE
That sure was a lucky pet. Now another animal gets to be a very lucky pet!

WHEN I HATE MY JOB
Remember when you were a receptionist and old paunchy bald men just naturally assumed you were stupid and tried to get you to have sex with them and forced you to endure appalling comments about your pretty little face because you desperately needed that $12 an hour they were paying you to use your advanced journalism training to do all of their critical correspondence for them? And when they found out you liked to read, they would say, “What, like … romance novels?” even though you had just fashioned an original proposal for them that included words like “detriment” and “feasible”? And you had to just swallow the anger because you needed groceries badly enough that you were willing to endure their sleazy comments that you would be even more beautiful if you were willing to let them make you smile, and you might feel a little less stressed if you were getting “the right kind of exercise”? Yeah. Let me just point out that you now work at home in your pajamas with a cat in your lap, sipping your tea and watching snow fall outside, for a much better wage. What were you just bitching about, again? You had to edit a particularly tricky paragraph on operant conditioning? Oh. Yeah. Tragic.

WHEN I WANT TO STAB MY EX IN THE FACE
Proportionally speaking, you want to stab him in the face exactly as often now as you did when you were together.

WHEN I MARVEL NOSTALGICALLY AT HOW GREAT MY EX IS, USUALLY WHEN HE IS 800 MILES AWAY AND I REALIZE I NEED TO CHANGE THE CAR HEADLIGHT
Okay, just a minute ago you wanted to stab him in the face. I mean really.

WHEN I AM AFRAID TO DIE
The bad news that you are afraid of is the bad news that you will never get, seeing as you will be too dead for the reception of news.

WHEN I AM STILL AFRAID TO DIE
You were great at not existing. You made it look effortless. You have spent more time not existing than you have doing pretty much anything else. You have literal millennia of experience on your nonexistence resume.

WHEN I AM STILL YET AFRAID TO DIE
I cannot emphasize enough the extent to which you’re wasting your time with this. You should probably just think about something else.

WHEN I AM TERRIFIED THAT MY BOOK WON’T APPEAL TO VERY MANY PEOPLE
Books far more horrible than anything you would ever admit to writing have enjoyed more widespread commercial success than you could ever hope for, so it’s not like the stakes were that high to begin with. You might as well just write what you want to. Maybe, if you are phenomenally, phenomenally lucky, it will be just one person’s favorite book for just a moment. Wouldn’t that be nice?

WHEN I AM TERRIFIED TO EVEN LOOK AT MY BOOK AND MY TYPING IS LITERALLY PARALYZED AND OH MY GODDDD
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.” –Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

WHEN I AM CONVINCED MY BOOK WILL NEVER BE PUBLISHED
You will be lucky to even finish it, hot shot, so you’re sounding pretty obnoxious right now.

NO, SERIOUSLY, WHAT IF IT DOESN’T GET PUBLISHED?
Oh for God’s sake. Technology today is so amazing that you could publish it on Amazon for $0.99 and anyone with a Kindle or even a computer could read it for a dollar. No one is going to make you sell it out of the back of your car while wearing a sandwich board or anything. Do you even have any real problems? Ever? Is there a place more namby-pamby than the First World? Is there a Zero-th World? You live there.

WHEN I AM WORRIED I MIGHT BE MAKING THE WRONG LIFE DECISION
You have made like four thousand decisions and always felt happy that you chose whatever you chose, because you get so excited about everything that only five minutes have passed before your giant decision is reaffirmed in your mind by some other tiny pleasant circumstance. “If I hadn’t gotten divorced right when I did, I would never have found this bouncy ball on the courthouse sidewalk!” You think that can’t happen? What if it were one of those big clear bouncy balls full of glittery blue turbulence they sell at the bookstore? Those ones that you cradle fondly every time you are there while you lament your possession of a life that could not in any way make good use of a bouncy ball of glittery blue turbulence? Yeah. That’s what I thought.

WHEN I AM INJUSTIFIABLY HESITANT
Just do it.

WHEN I AM BAD AT SOMETHING
With very, very few exceptions, it is not possible to be good at something without being bad at it first.

WHEN I FEAR SOME INNER LACK OF APTITUDE
Practice has been scientifically isolated as being far and away the largest factor in accomplishment.

WHEN I FEEL STUPID
You can’t feel stupid unless you just managed to learn something. Congratulations!

WHEN I DECIDE THAT I AM FAT AND UGLY
If you could get a fresh new genetic roll of the dice, right now, under the condition that you had to take whatever random DNA you wound up with, would you? No? Then you lucked out. Shut up.

WHEN I AM HURT OR ANGRY
Very few people roll out of bed every morning and say, “Today I’m really going to try to suck on purpose.” It is really not very likely that you know any of them.

WHEN I AM AFRAID
You’re okay. (repeat)

WHEN I AM SAD
Without this, happiness, gratitude, and empathy would all be impossible. Look at you, industriously setting useful emotional benchmarks for convenient comparison purposes.

WHEN I BECOME CONVINCED THAT NO ONE REALLY CARES ABOUT ME
Go read it. Again. Come on, go read it. You’ll feel better.

WHEN I AM STRICKEN BY THE NOTION THAT I WILL BECOME LONELY AND DEPRESSED WHEN I AM ELDERLY BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS BABIES AND FAMILIES AND I DON’T
Your favorite thing to do is curl up with the cat and read a book. You routinely turn down exciting social engagements on the weekends just to do this. Your idea of an exciting time involves a bowl of mashed potatoes, a cup of tea, and a space heater. You have galloping social anxiety and have frequently wished a pill existed that could make you go deaf for the day. You haven’t spoken to a human being for four days and you didn’t even notice until I pointed it out. You have made elderliness into a lifestyle choice. Technically, everyone was born to get old, but you? You really were.

WHEN I BECOME CONVINCED THAT WHOEVER I’M DATING IS THE LAST STOP ON THE LOVE TRAIN AND NO ONE ELSE WILL EVER BE INTERESTED
Never once has this proven to be a problem. Should your luck ever run out, that will be an exciting opportunity to do all the things you always sort of wanted to do but were too considerate to force your significant others to suffer through, like enduring the adjustment phase of the No-Poo method or joining the Peace Corps or living in a yurt.

WHEN I AM WISHING I HAD A PONY OR A BOAT OR A MACBOOK AIR WITH A SOLID-STATE HARD DRIVE
You have more amenities and luxuries at your fingertips than kings and queens used to. Two words: indoor plumbing.

WHEN MY FLESH IS TRYING TO CRAWL OFF MY BODY AND I AM AFRAID OF SOMETHING BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Wait … when was the last time you brushed your hair and put on some mascara and went outside? It’s called fresh air. People go get some of it sometimes. There’s like a whole figure of speech about it. Maybe you’ve encountered that. Also, it might help to gather some confirmation from someone other than your pets that you are actually visible.

WHEN IT’S GOOD, WHICH IS AT LEAST LIKE NINETY PERCENT OF THE TIME
How on earth are you getting away with this? Enjoy the crap out of it!

WHEN IT’S BAD
Think of it as an opportunity to shave off a transparently thin sliver of karmic debt from the mounting pile of it you have accrued over your middle-class existence. This makes it at least marginally less likely that the universe will eventually spot the error on its spreadsheet that made your life so easy in the first place and then correct its mistake by dropping an anvil on your head.

WHEN IT’S REALLY, REALLY BAD
This too shall pass.

——-
Participant(s):
Blue Yon Belly
Moose
Torpid Trifling