Thank Goodness.

We did an exercise in memoir class last night about things we remember and I was reminded of a very traumatic occurrence in my childhood, which I am still attempting to unravel. The annual physical fitness test.

Does anyone else remember this? I'd get to P.E. class in elementary school and the coach would ruin the entire day (and the ones after) by announcing that--get excited!--it was physical fitness test week! I would try to forget about this annual event all year and then one day it was sprung on me, out of nowhere, typically when I was feeling like everything was going so well, and them BAM!

I didn't know much about the tests, just that they were mandatory and that kids allllll around the country were doing them, our coach said, as if that was supposed to make me feel better. These tests were devised by the President, I assumed, as the official title of this week-of-fun was "The President's Challenge," and consisted of the following: having someone hold down your feet while you struggled to do as many sit-ups as possible in 60 seconds, running the mile, doing pull-ups (or the coach would lift you up to the monkey bars and you would just hang there holding your chin above the bars for as long as possible if you were like me and couldn't actually do a pull-up). I can't remember if there were any more tests, I must have blocked them out.

All I know is that I never got the point of any of this. Some of my classmates did. I remember Lauren speeding through sit-ups, doing 63 one year while I had only attempted 25 (and only 20 "counted" my coach said because I didn't get all the way up on some of them. Thanks.). Donald's mile was 6.5 minutes, while I trudged to the finish line in 14, huffing and puffing with Jenn or Ciji or Alana, our cheeks red, our legs exhausted.

It wasn't like I was out of shape. I did ballet four times a week. I ran around outside. I swam. But I could not perform these tests to save my life. While the seasoned elementary school athletes got mini-trophies and fancy blue ribbons for their performances, all I got was a red "participation" patch with an eagle on it. I stuck these in a drawer somewhere.

Today, I still run a 14-minute mile. And when I say run, loyal readers know I can only "run" for about two minute max consecutively. I do crunches, not sit-ups. I'm not an athlete. And part of me equates this to the spirit-crushing forced exertion of the physical fitness test. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Of all the traumatic experiences of my young life--getting busted stuffing my bra, the fiasco on the Washington D.C. trip, the unrequited crushes--the physical fitness test might just be the one I am most happy to leave behind. Thank goodness. Now, time to go eat a cookie.

Maybe, Maybe, Maybe

So...maybe being an optimist is okay after all.

In fact, maybe being an optimist is actually braver. When I hope for the best, I take a pretty scary risk. Someone might actually disappoint me. I might actually get hurt or feel something unpleasant. But maybe that's just part of life. Besides, being a sucker for love and romance (oh, yes, I conceal it well, I'm about 90% mush under these thick scales), I have always believed in the adage that it's better to have loved than lost, than, well, you know the rest.

Yesterday I was ready to throw in the towel on optimism all together. Who needs it? It is much safer to always see the glass half-empty. It's easy to complain, to commiserate. But is it as fulfilling? Perhaps getting the stars when you wanted the moon isn't so bad. If you don't shoot for anything at all, you're left empty-handed. I'll take the stars, thank you.

Maybe optimism itself isn't the problem, I am. I'm too scared, too worried, too anxious, too (I hate to admit) insecure to believe someone will amaze me. Maybe by closing myself off, I don't give anyone a chance to even try.

Maybe it's not that I have to stop "wearing my wishbone where my backbone outta be." Maybe it's that I need to nurture my wishbone and my backbone at the same time. Who said they had to be mutually exclusive anyway?

"A Victim of My Own Optimism"

Like millions of American women, I have fallen in love with Elizabeth Gilbert, after being the last one of us on earth to finally get around to reading her book, Eat, Pray, Love.

I love Liz ("Liss," as the old guy in Bali calls her, and yes, I am on a first-name, nickname base with this woman) for purely narcissistic reasons--she's me. Sure, I'm not blond, nor a famous writer (working on it), nor divorced, nor formerly suicidal, nor at a point in my life where I could take a whole year just to, well, eat, pray, and love, but Liz and I both have the same problem. Yet, while she seems to have solved hers, having found an older Brazilian lover, I'm over here flailing around in a void.

I've always considered myself an optimist. I’m quite cheerful. I'm peppy. I earned the nickname of "Energizer Bunny" in college due to these qualities. But being an optimist comes with a burden of disappointment. If you shoot for the moon, you'll land among the stars, the phrase goes. But I never understood what good that did me when I wanted wanted the moon.

Liz says in the India section of her book that she has been a "victim of my own optimism," which describes me perfectly. Finding myself disappointed easily, I tried pessimism out for a while. Low expectations rewarded me with happy surprises when situations, people, or even I exceeded the squat benchmarks I’d set. Everything good that happened in my life, I examined, tore down, looked for the thunderclouds about to strike. I called this being honest with myself, being realistic.

Then, something changed and I started with the damn optimism again. And with dating, optimism is the worst. I want men to be wonderful. I want them to amaze me. I believe they can ascend whatever red flags or major emotional blockage I've detected in them, because, after all, I also see the greatness the lies beneath. My expectations shoot sky-high—not in the form of hurdles I set forth for a guy, I don’t come off as overbearing or demanding. Instead, I stupidly believe that the man in question already has reached my expectations, that he already is wonderful, forgetting reality and myself.

As Liz says in her book, I, “fall in love more times that I can count with the highest potential of a man.” This potential just needs time to unfurl.

In typical martyr form, I decide it is my job to unfurl the man in question, to lift a man’s burdens from him so he can grow into the amazing person I know is lurking underneath his aloofness or anxiety or whatever. Like Liz, I tend to lose myself in men, forgetting that perhaps not every guy I find myself infatuated with even has potential. Maybe it’s my own insecurity or perhaps I don’t have a strong sense of myself so I try to uncover someone else’s, but I’m not sure either of those are it exactly. I do know that Liz described me when she described herself: “If I love you I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts, I will protect your from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities you’ve never actually cultivated…until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover this energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.”

Awesome. Thankfully, as I live and read and learn, I am discovering so much about myself and the way my mind works. I can catch patterns like this one before I am divorced, suicidal, and in my 30s. Now, I must move forward in my life as a more careful optimist, carrying the wariness of a pessimist with me as I navigate single life. As Liz’s friend Richard from Texas says to her in the India ashram, I gotta stop wearing my wishbone where my backbone outta be. That’s my new mantra.

Thinly-Veiled Fiction

*Just a little something I found from Janet Fitch's class last semester. Our assignment was to write a really long sentence. Here's what I came up with:


The phone refused to ring no matter how long I stared at it, the almost iridescent rounded square buttons remained dim, which made me wonder if I’d made the wrong impression, and if so what I should about it, but rather than think about being rational (let alone smart), like maybe he should worry about how he came off last night during that miserable conversation that keeps reverberating within each nerve-fiber of my brain, even though I do realize I am over-analyzing everything as usual and will likely make myself sick of it, which is a stupid habit of mine I can’t seems to break, part of me would rather be here, with my heart vibrating, hoping for the possibility of his name, in blocked, digitized letters on my pea-green Nokia screen, with my intestines unraveling then clenching as I scrape the side of my thumb with my fingernail, shredding off flecks of flesh until the pain comes, the raw pink underneath spreading and revealing that my fingerprints go deeper than I thought in finely dotted lines as the skin peels over the front side of my thumb, making a ridge between old and new, which means I should cancel my manicure tomorrow so the lady doesn’t chastise me for picking, rather than stop now and end the spiky pain of nail-on-new-pinkness, besides I like the way it calms me, and now I see I can take the pain, which I am going to have to get used to if I’m going to remain a prisoner to my cell phone, to him, all the while morphing into a person I never dreamed I would turn into--needy, caring--as I sacrifice my time for his schedule and whims, and although it makes my vital organs throb, my thumbs magenta and torn, a look I have found is not really attractive when one goes to parties can’t get away with wearing mittens as accessories, I can’t stop.

No Means No. Ok? OK?!

Some guys don't understand the simplest concepts. It's not due to stupidity, just plain old-fashioned stubbornness. Selfishness might be closer.

Take the guy who asked a girl out consistently for five or so years, to whom the girl never said yes. This only heightened this guy's incessant AIM messages bearing the random "hey," his proddings of "we should hang out sometime." Despite her consistent no's, he persisted. Red flag, much?

We're taught that guys are supposed to chase us, to basically pester us and wear us down until we finally give in and say yes. We're told that this is merely playing hard to get. That our behavior in fact lures men to us. Because men like challenges.

What I now see from the aforementioned scenario wasn't some kind of chivalrous persistence. The dude was simply not listening. She said no. She doesn't want to go out with you. Back the fuck off.

I'm a little frustrated today, hence the swearing, which I try not to do in my writing and in conversation. But I just got a seemingly well-intentioned voicemail from the person with whom I agreed to not speak, see, etc for three months. He was thinking of me and wants to go grab a cup of coffee.

Thinking of me? Really? Seems more like, as was the case with a guy who doesn't understand the word no, he is just thinking of himself. He wants to see me. He wants to get together. But what about what I want? What I need? What I asked for?

And perhaps I shouldn't be frustrated. Instead, I should be grateful. After all, the reason I am not speaking to this person is because I'd discovered our relationship was (surprise, surprise!) pretty much all about what he wanted. So, in a way, his proposition to break our three-month break only validates my decision for instigating one in the first place. I guess what I should say to him, if anything, since there is no way in hell I'm calling him back, is merely this: Thank you.

Because I've made a promise to myself: I'm done dating people who pretend to care about my needs but really only do so when our needs are compatible. If I'm going to be in a long-term relationship with anybody, I'm not going to settle for, say, being expected to treat my boyfriend as the most important aspect of my life, but then get placed as 4th or 5th on his totem pole of priorities. I'm not some trophy girlfriend, someone who'll hang onto your arm and your every word. If I'm going to give up my newfound freedom, it sure as hell better be worth it.

I Wore WHAT?!

My best friend Jenn reminded me via bbm today about a certain pair of bell-bottom polyester pants I had in middle school, which I bought at the vintage store behind my house in Simi Valley. They were bright green, with semi-darker-bright-green dots on them. I used to wear them to school. Just like it was normal with a random t-shirt and shoes. As if my pants weren't blindly neon. After being reminded of that, I started thinking about some of the other fashion monstrosities I committed in my youth. Here are the highlights:

1) FUBU Tennis Shoes. In case you are not aware, FUBU is an acronym which stands for "for you, by you." The two pairs--electric blue and eye-watering pink vinyl--of shoes I used to wear were neither. I only bought them because the boy I liked at the time thought he was black.

2) Baby Phat Baby-T. Piggybacking on that last, I had a sweet light pink, ultra-tight t-shirt with a light blue cat silhouette on it, which I am sure made me look super hardcore (the braces helped too), especially when worn with the aforementioned shoes. Oh, the things I did for boys...

3) Super-bell Jeans. Did anyone else have a pair of these? In like 8th grade, bell bottoms came back in style and for some reason, I felt the need to go to the extreme. These jeans were super-tight in the hips and thighs, and then, right below the knee, just went ape-shit-crazy. They swooped out in huge denim triangles to about a foot wide at the bottom (they must have covered my shoes). Very cool.

I'm sure there were more fashion no-no's in my repertoire as an early-teen/high-schooler, but those three stick out to me the most (four if we include those green pants, but I would rather just pretend they never happened). For some reason, I was given the superlative of "Trendy" in my 8th grade year book for my efforts. (Though, everyone got an accolade--it was that type of school--which included seemingly completely made up ones like "Apologetic" and "Caring and Loving Towards Horses.") No matter what, I suppose it was kind of whoever doled out the titles to support my wacky sense of style. I was certainly much braver then than I am now.

Only Freshmen

Tomorrow (er, today--why can't I go to sleep at a decent hour anymore?), I begin my fourth semester as a college instructor. But I'm not just any university intellectual, oh no: I teach Writing 140.

For those who didn't go to USC, Writing 140 is the bane of freshman existence. As the so-labeled "hardest G.E. requirement," as well as the class in which, "everyone gets a C," no one really wants to take it. But take it they must.

Yet, who could blame these dissenters? Every three weeks, my students have to write a critically analytical, interesting, and nearly perfect paper in order to even dream of getting an A in my class.

Although the class I teach carries such a bad rap, typically when I tell people what I teach, the fact that I teach freshman is more harped on than anything else. Freshman are so young. So underdeveloped intellectually. So...high school. Well. I just wanted to take a moment, before I meet a fresh batch of first-years tomorrow afternoon, to proclaim that I in fact love teaching freshmen. Seriously.

Somehow, I have been given the gift to get my education paid for and teach a college class before I've hit the quarter-century mark. While some of my fellow teachers say they prefer the Writing 340 course, which is typically filled with juniors, I wouldn't trade 140 for anything, at least right now.

Because I don't just teach a G.E. or how to write kick-ass papers. I'm also a counselor, a career adviser, a cheerleader, and a stand-up comedian (hey, if I laugh at my own jokes, it counts). I get the unique opportunity to introduce new students not only to a school I absolutely love, but I get to induct them into the club of critical thinking. I get to see their faces light up the when they say something really, really smart in class. Or when they figure out how to perfectly arrange their paragraphs. I get to read crappy thesis statements the first week of class and watch them transform into pretty amazing by the end of the semester. Truly, there is nothing more rewarding.

There's a bigger layer to this as well. I get to watch these kids grow up from fresh-out-of-high-school to full-on-collegiate. I get to experience what it's like to come to my university for the very first time all over again. Teaching these freshmen helps me appreciate my own education, and also drives me to give my students their money's worth.

So, Class, I don't know you yet, but I'm incredibly excited to meet you. And don't worry, I'm only mean and scary the first week or so. Soon enough I'll bust out the bad jokes and we'll spend the minutes just before class gossiping about Britney Spears. Pinky swear.

Resolution Number One

I have an addiction.

It's a vice that kills my brain cells, takes up my precious time, and ultimately leaves me unfulfilled. Yes, I am talking about only one thing: celebrity gossip.

People.com, UsMagazine.com, Perez, Pink is the New Blog, Superficial, Jossip, Yahoo OMG, these are the sites I frequent instead of writing (or staring at a blank word doc). Jennifer, Paris, Angelina, Katie, Victoria, Penelope, Nicole, these are the women whose lives I watch unfold, instead of working on my own career. Who wore what to the event last night? Who is dating who? Is so-and-so pregnant?

Does it matter?

When I worked for People, it mattered greatly. I was paid to scan these sites, to click on the links hourly looking for updates, glimmers of gossip, inside into, leads to check out.

But now that I'm not compelled to know the ages of Heidi Klum's three children (Leni, Henry, and Johan--I'm telling you, this affliction is out of control), I need to pull away. I'm quitting cold turkey.

Gossip magazines and websites fulfill certain needs we have--to feel in the loop, to fantasize about ideal lifestyles, to escape. They affirm that we can be just a beautiful as these Hollywood femmes, with the right tools and tricks, while also showing us that even the beautiful fall hard (Heather Locklear is good recent example of this). Yet, if I turn to my writing, I can escape, I can fantasize, I can create a world of my own. I can feel good about myself without buying $100 an ounce face cream. Or take pride in my own life instead of feeling better about my short-comings after reading about Tara Reid's decision to go to rehab. (Though, hers was a very necessary step in reclaiming the broken pieces of her D-list career.)

It's not going to be easy, but I've already taken the first step: deleted the gossip site links from my Firefox tool bar. I know I'll miss my pals Victoria and Katie the most. But I can do without them. I've gone about three days. Staying strong.

Apple Picking

Good news--I am finally moving out of my parents' house. It's been roughly a year and a half since I left New York City and resolved to save money by living with my mom and stepdad and, in packing up, I am finding scraps of the past that continue to amuse/amaze me.

I love going through old notebooks (diaries are even better) and now that I am on a new path of self-discovery (new year's resolution, more on this to come later this week), I am patching together memories, past desires, and actions to understand where I am now, and why.

To digress, my writing is shifting to focus a great deal on this new chapter of my life, and I do apologize for the repetition, but besides wondering the next time I will get to eat guacamole or if Chuck and Blair will ever get together, how to navigate (survive) single life is really all I think about.

So, tonight I was going through a notebook from college I must have used during executive board sorority meetings ("Row etiquette: No making out/groping on dance floor, no flashing. ever."). Aside from the sorority stuff, it also contained some musings on my then sorta-single-completely-confusing relationship situation. I was generally obsessed with one guy in particular that year, who I admit I still sometimes think about, which is another issue I am sure will be part of my 2009 "finding myself" plan.

I found a piece of advice I'd jotted down, a "point to consider," as I called it: "Don't let one bad apple spoil your appetite forever--yet--don't allow your appetite to forget what a good apple tastes like." I elaborated that, "just because the next guy is better than the last jerk-off you dated, that doesn't mean he's good--he is just less bad."

Clearly, I was not only disappointed in the aforementioned guy I was infatuated with that year, but I worried that I only fell for the guy I "replaced" him with because he was less of a jerk, not because he was a good guy. (Considering the replacement was a dude I met in a club in Cancun, I think I was onto something.)

My attitude about men and dating was truly dysfunctional. I held on to a guy who was indifferent about me, thinking I could change him. Yet, instead of being mad at myself for being an idiot and not moving on, I labeled the guy a jerk. The problem wasn't all him, it was also my presumption that the guy should change for me. That he even could.

To be completely honest, I didn't even know what I wanted him to change into. I had no idea what I wanted in a man. Except that I wanted to feel butterflies every time I saw him. And given that I didn't meet any men in college--just boys--this was expected I guess. But how could I expect a guy to meet my expectations when I didn't have any? The problem thickens...

Now I've got lists going of the "yes" qualities and "no" qualities of what I want in a man. They range from superficial (Yes: has control over body hair, likes dogs, boxer briefs preferable; No: mandarin collars, man-purses, nose-picking), to more serious (Yes: supportive of writing career, pays own rent, stands up for himself and others; No: criticizing me in public, obsession with celebrity, unpredictable anger). Overall, the lists represent the best (and worst) of the men I have encountered in my life.

They're my lists and I'm sticking to 'em--realistically. I'll take my scrawled advice as a reminder to really recognize when I am taking a bite of a good apple and have the common sense to toss away the rotten ones. Or at least not expect the rotten ones to suddenly regenerate.

I'm doing pretty well so far. I don't expect perfect. Just a good apple.