“Hey, girl, it’s been awhile! What’ve you been up to?”
As I pack up my carry-on for a long overdue East Coast adventure, I can already feel this question lingering in the humidity-ridden air. Furthermore, I can already see myself greeting it with the weathered air of a flustered Diane Keaton in…well, pretty much every movie that she’s been in since 1995. But with less hats.
See, the thing is, I’ve been up to many days of back-breaking stillness. I’ve been up to multiple weeks of stomach churning anxiety. I’ve been up to months upon months of creative stagnation. In short: I’ve been up to a year of feeling not quite like me.
As you can imagine, this isn’t a popular answer to give and it’s one that can hide very well between the clean cut borders of an idyllic Instagram layout. But as a former “represser” of emotions, I now believe that I have an obligation to myself to acknowledge the hard times when they’re hard. So, without further ado, this is the abridged version of what I’ve been “up to”:
In August of last year, I took on a project as head director/editor/multiple hat-wearer and, honestly, felt pretty damn proud of myself. It was a small, intimate video project that would only be seen by a handful of people but, if successful, would be my largest producing endeavor to date. While I started off feeling downright empowered by my newfound boss lady status, the glow of creative pregnancy faded faster than my over-the-counter “Born Red” hair dye. See, I had imagined myself as a sleek, no nonsense Miranda Priestly type - a businesswoman who gets shit done and looks fabulous while doing so. In actuality, I looked like a sleep-deprived pantsless troll woman, who rarely emerged from her dark cave except to refill her ironic "Good Vibes Only” mug with her fourth round of stale coffee. It was a dark existence. I became obsessed with achieving a level of perfection that a) didn’t exist and b) was never asked of me. I felt endlessly guilty for feeling burdened by the story of someone else’s real third-world trauma. I was the “Yes And-er” who became a “No, But-er” because I chose to put all other artistic endeavors on the back burner until I could finish what I started. I made so many poor decisions right from the get go and was so irrationally set on making this group collaboration a one-woman show, that I dug my own grave well beyond six feet. Fuck, I made it all the way to China at the rate that I was digging. A year later, I am relieved to say that I finally did finish the project. While they absolutely adored it, I found myself still feeling strangely unfulfilled. Don’t get me wrong; I learned a lot from working on that project, but I think the greatest take-away was, unfortunately, that I never care to do that again.
On a personal front, this was also the year that brought up a lot of health scares. While I myself have miraculously remained unscathed, my close friends and family have all taken turns experiencing real medical emergencies, like some demented game of “who’s-in-trouble-now?” whack-a-mole. I’ve always been one to joke about my own mortality, which is a feature of my personality that has been making Thanksgiving dinners uncomfortable since 2004. The joke, however, hit a little too close to home too many times this year, and I found myself legitimately unsettled as I watched several people that I love go through legitimate pain. And, frankly, my general unhappiness this year in light of my friends’ actual suffering made me feel even guiltier than I was already feeling. As of right now, this hellish arcade game has seemingly been unplugged and the moles have returned back to the comfort of their respective holes. My only hope is that they stay there.
…
Throughout my life, I’ve gone through extended periods of feeling like I’m finally on the right track to knowing what I’m doing as an adult…which are then immediately followed by a bout of chicken-with-its-head-cut-off-which-direction-is-the-sky? levels of doubt. This switch happens with such frequency that I’m really starting to wonder if my soul is bored by the very concept of prolonged stability. But while I don’t know much in this world, here’s what I DO know:
My crazy friends are, ironically, the only reason I’ve retained any sanity - specifically my #twatlyfe friends (yes, this is the name of our never-ending text thread and yes, this does represent us). They have been the Rapunzel to my Mother Gothel, except instead of letting me brush their hair while I sing a creepy Botox-infused lullaby, all I need to do is hang out with them for twenty minutes before I feel fully revitalized. In a town that is notoriously riddled with self-serving phonies, I am happy to say that they are the real deal and I think the world of them (But don’t ever tell them that. I have a cold-blooded reputation to uphold).
This year, I got into what was possibly the best shape of my life and capped off months of hard work with a dream photo shoot by friend and photographer Daniel J. Sliwa. I don’t know if it was because I was dressing up as sexy Jurassic Park characters, but it was the first time in a long while that I truly felt like me. So if you’ve ever wondered “Hey, what would Dr. Grant look like as a woman?” (because, let’s face it, we all have), then keep your eyes open for updates to my Gallery section.
My family just got a little bit bigger - by 6 lbs 13 oz., to be exact. My sister just had her second child and the very thought of getting to spend a whole week staring into that tiny, hopeful, fresh baby face is enough to give me peace that we are all going to be okay.
In the wise words of the always-sexual Jeff Goldblum: “Life, uh…finds a way.” Yes, this has been the Year of Not Really Me, but I’m not worried, because I know that that just means that this coming year I have no other choice than to be better than I was before.