Was doing a little reading online this afternoon, until it started to feel like I was falling down a hole. So many choices of material, so many people, so many voices. Maybe that’s why people do zen meditation using one word. It’s enough. It says it all. But then you have to pick that one word. And which word? Omm? Life? Love? Sex? Her name? That name I say to myself over and over when I dream and feel her against my skin. We’re back to the password again. Asking for the password. Getting up and asking for the password.
Category: Life in General (Page 4 of 46)
I sat in an upscale coffee bar on Fifth Avenue, drinking a cup of coffee, killing some time before my therapy appointment. I noticed on my iPhone that the establishment had wi-fi, but it required a password. I looked up towards the front counter, where the bearded barista was creating a little foam heart in a latte, and saw a little sign tacked onto the front counter that read “password on receipt.” Ten minutes earlier, when I went to add some milk to my coffee, I tossed my receipt into the swinging door of the metallic garbage receptacle.
The hipster barista had a friendly face, even a nicely-trimmed beard, and he was only a few feet away. The cafe wasn’t crowded, with only two giggly private school girls on line, probably playing hooky during the afternoon. All I had to do was stand up from my plastic chair, go over to the barista at the front counter, smile at him, and say, “Oh, I threw away my receipt. Can I have the password?”
But my mind started playing tricks on me. In quick succession, these are my actual thoughts, “Oh, he seems busy. Nah, why bother. I can just use data rather than wi-fi. I have unlimited data so it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to bother him. Maybe he will have to print out another receipt, and then everyone will have to wait longer for their orders. Maybe the password WASN’T on my receipt, and only given to those who order a pastry or a sandwich, and the barista will have to say — in front of everyone — “I’m sorry, Sir. You only had a cup of coffee. And not even a fancy cup of coffee, just a regular American cup of coffee. You don’t DESERVE the password to the wi-fi.”
I never asked for the password, and I got so pissed at myself for how my thoughts took something incredibly unimportant and escalated it into a battle of wills.
I will be posting something on this blog each day, for the entire month of March.
“Our last meeting was so impactful, that I wrote something about it on my blog,” I told Dr. Nesmith.
“Really? What about?”
“It was about my trip home from our last session. You see, when I was coming to you last time on the train, I noticed this rusty mark on one of the seats. It didn’t mean much to me until I went home, after therapy, and I saw the mark again on the train going back to Queens. I instantly knew that I was in the exact same train, the same subway car even. What are the chances of that? It felt like a Twilight Zone moment, so I wrote a piece connecting what happened in the train with that stuff you were telling me about how therapy helps you see the patterns, and that’s how you begin to change.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Anything else happen this week?”
“Yes!” I replied, taking out a piece of paper from my pocket. “I wrote something down that I wanted to discuss with you.”
“Go ahead.”
“On New Year’s Day, I finally finished watching The Sopranos. It was a big deal to me because I’ve been watching the show for six months now, and I really got into it. Remember, I even decided to go into therapy because of the subplot about Tony Soprano and his therapist.”
“Yes, you told me that story at our first session.”
“Anyway…” I continued, “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the show, but in the second to last episode, Tony’s therapist, played by Lorraine Bracco, is being pressured by HER therapist, played by Peter Bogdonavich, to give up on Tony Soprano’s six years of therapy, because he doesn’t believe that sociopaths are helped through talk therapy. Â He thinks they just use it to rationalize their continued sociopathic behavior. At first, Tony’s therapist is angry at him for suggesting this, because she’s a true believer in talk therapy, but at the end of the episode, she finally accepts that Tony will always be a brutal gangster and never change his ways. She tells him to leave, kicking him out of therapy.”
“I remember that episode.”
“Well, is that a real thing about sociopaths and talk therapy, based on real research, or did the writers just make it up for the show?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never had a sociopath as a patient.”
“But make believe you did. Would you continue to give talk therapy to this guy, or would you say to him, “You will never change. Even if you are beginning to see the patterns, you will just hide behind your understanding of the patterns, and never change”
“I probably would not kick this person out. I would continue on with therapy, hoping that eventually he would be able to use what we talk about to better his life. Â Sociopath or not.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“This is all interesting, but you’re not a mobster, or a sociopath, are you?”
“No.”
“And you realize that the Sopranos is a TV show.”
“Yes.”
“Yet you choose to spend your time in therapy talking about a TV show rather than yourself, even writing yourself a note to remember to discuss it with me today.”
“Well, that’s not all I’ve discussed with you. Â I did tell you about that story I wrote last week about seeing the patterns on the trains.”
“True. Â But you never said anything about what I was expecting from the story — some insights into your own patterns. Â Did the noticing of the patterns on the train make you think about yourself? Â Everything you mentioned about the patterns was more like general interest, mere fodder for a generic story, than a way for personal growth. Can you tell me anything about your personal patterns — the ones you say are so important to notice?”
“Uh, well. Uh, not really. I mean, I can’t find the right words to describe them yet.”
“But you ARE able to talk a lot about patterns of a character on a TV show. You even spent your first day of your New Year wondering if talk therapy could help a fictional sociopath on TV.”
“You think I’m avoiding stuff…. like a defense mechanism?”
“At least Tony Soprano is a well-defined character. In your story, it sounds like the main thing missing… is you.”
“Are you going to kick me out of therapy now?”
A few weeks ago, I told you a story about this woman who swept the floors in my local McDonalds, and how she hated the staff there, calling them “animals.” I told you how I befriended her and encouraged her to apply for this other job at a supermarket. I told you how she got the job and how we said good-bye one morning, with me giving her a vague promise to visit her someday at her new job.
What I didn’t tell you was that three days later, she was back at McDonald’s, cleaning out the trash receptacle. She couldn’t handle the job. She said the owners were crooked and sold rancid potato salad. The owner’s son yelled at her and called her stupid. So she left the job (or was fired) and was forced to beg the manager of the McDonald’s, a woman she completely despised, to give her the job back, even offering to work longer hours.
In three days, she aged ten years. Disappointment and failure were etched on her face.
It’s taken me two weeks to tell this story — because I was afraid. This story reeks of failure, of a woman accepting her limitations, of weakness, of bitterness. I do not see this story ending well.
I didn’t tell the story because I didn’t want it rubbing off on me, to have YOU associate with me with failure. After all, on the internet, all failure must be banished, like lepers to a solitary island of diseased misfits. The Army of Positiveness has won, not through any violent blitzkrieg, but by steady infiltration.
At first there were those kindly quotes on Twitter, misquoting Eleanor Roosevelt, urging us to never give up on our dreams. Â Soon, these messages appeared on colorful graphics on Pinterest and Instagram. Â Blame was placed on the individual’s own brain, with the difference between success and failure based on how you THINK. Â Much of this advice was true. Scientists have shown that even smiling more often can enhance your mental health. Â But as the positivist movement entered the video stage, the extremes went pushed into obsession, much like those Venezuelan female mannequins that presented “idea” womanhood as having enormous breasts that shoot out like the peaks of Machu Picchu.
Look at you. Sitting there with that dour face. How can you be so lazy when this paraplegic has not “given up” on life, participating in an iron man competition? Sure, you might be having a double mastectomy, but is that an excuse to not dance to a disco song with your medical staff right before surgery in a viral video? And what loser proposes to his girlfriend WITHOUT a flash mob?
It broke my heart to see this woman back in McDonald’s, at the job she hated, with the staff she felt were “animals.” I said, “I’m sorry,” and then finished my coffee. I then wondered if I should even write about this in my blog, fearing that it would affect my reputation. Â After all, you are only as good as the upworthy ones who you keep in your life, not the wrong ones heading for disaster.
Therapist’s Office Over Manhattan’s Only Hooters.
First Contact
“Hello,” I said as I answered my iPhone.
“Hello. This is Steve Goldman. You left me a message.”
“Oh hello. Thanks for calling. Yes. I was recommended to you and I was interested in making an appointment.”
“Of course. May I ask who recommended me to you?”
“Yes. Oh. Uh, wait. Can you hold on for a second? I’ve put you on the speakerphone of my iPhone for a second while I go to Facebook. This is embarrassing. You see, I’ve known the person who recommended you for six years, but I never knew her real name, only her online name, NewYorkMamaS. You know how it is online. But I knew you would be asking for her name, so she messaged me yesterday on Facebook with her real name, but now I’ve completely forgot it. It’s something that starts with a “S.” I know she needs to remain anonymous because of her work, but she told me her real name anyway, which was nice of her — although I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone else other than you.”
“It doesn’t really matter.”
“No, no, I’ll get it. One more second. I’m on Facebook. It’s just slow. It’s this new update to the Facebook app that’s slowing it down. All the advertisements. It slows things down. Everything has to be ruined with advertisements and monetization. Whatever happened to REAL talking with a friend, one on one? Maybe that’s what intrigues me about therapy. Of course, even in therapy, I would be paying you, so that is monetization too. But that’s different. I suppose it’s the world we live in. Aha, here it is –Shana Danbury is her name! So funny, knowing so much about a person via online life — about her family, her dreams, even the brand of vibrator that she uses, but not her real name! By the way, you do know Shana Danbury, right? She was your patient? Is she normal? I don’t really know her. Ha Ha! That’s only a joke.”
On my iPhone, I could hear him scribbling notes.
Second Contact
“I’ve always wanted to go into therapy. I mean, I did once go to a therapist with my ex-wife, but it was HER therapist, and it didn’t exactly work out the way I hoped, because we ended up just fighting over who the therapist liked better, so that was a bust. But now I’m taking action on my own, which is a big deal, because I sometimes have a problem taking action.”
“And what made you finally take the step to call a therapist on your own?” asked my new therapist.
“You want to know the truth? Of course you want to know the truth,” I continued. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you know how everyone is catching up on old TV series on Netflix and places like that? So, I’ve been watching the Sopranos over the last two months. I’m now on Season Five. It’s a pretty intense experience. And there’s this big subplot where Tony Soprano goes to this female therapist –”
“Yes, I’ve seen the show.”
“Anyway, it’s like I relate to Tony Soprano in many ways. Like if only I was Italian instead of Jewish, lived in New Jersey instead of Queens, and grew up in a mobster family instead of whatever the hell my parents did. Frankly, my father would be a terrible mobster. Just too nice and not aggressive enough. I’d probably be a bad mobster, too. Maybe my mother could be a mobster’s wife, but it would probably make her too anxious if she knew he was out there beating up people. But back to the point. I noticed that Tony Soprano made a lot of changes in his life by going into therapy, so I figured if it was good for him, why not me?”
“You do realize that the Sopranos is a fictional TV show?”
“Of course. But I also write a lot. And I’ve always believed that there is a fine line between the fictional and the real. And to be honest, my final two choices as therapist was between you and a female therapist, but I decided to go with you because you’re a man, and I didn’t want to be like Tony Soprano, thinking what it would be like to fuck his female therapist so much because that would be a waste of my therapy time, since we only have an hour. Or fifty minutes. Why do therapist only give you fifty minutes, anyway? Shouldn’t it be an actual hour? It’s a bit of a rip-off if I might be so brave to say.”
My therapist didn’t answer, but he certainly took a lot of notes.
If you know me, you know how hard it was for me to put up that revolving banner advertisement that was on my sidebar for the last two months. It was a good experience though, because it forced me to go I beyond my comfort zone.
The last straw that broke the camel’s back, like they say, is that after I pressed publish on my last post, a gentle tale titled “My Friend in McDonald’s, I immediately saw my own advertising server hawking back at me a personalized ad from Ronald McDonald himself, “Hey there, wouldn’t you enjoy having a juicy Quarter Pounder with Cheese right now?!”
Maybe if I was making $10,000 a month in advertising, I could compromise more, but for the $2 a month I was receiving for my banner, it felt humiliating.
But it was a good experience, like a teenage virgin having awkward sex for the first time and getting it over with.
This entire preamble is an anxious introduction to telling you that I am going to sell prints of my photos.
My Photo Store is Open for Business.
I’m going to start slow, because I’m a newbie at this. Â So, to begin, I’m just going to offer seven photos taken in New York City. Â Imagine it is a limited edition selection available just for my closest friends. Â I tested each photo myself to make sure they printed well, so I feel confident that they will look good as 8″x 8″ prints, despite their humble origins as iphone photos.
If you want a print of a another photo in my instagram gallery, just contact me. Â I will test it to make sure it prints well. Â As I test other photos, I will add new photos for sale.
For now, I’m going to charge $20, no tax. I’ll make the print at a local lab, using the best resolution digital image, then mail you the print in a sturdy envelope. I’ll use the profit to either buy a nicer winter coat, or buy drinks for some chick at a bar and then try to go to bed with her. It all depends on how many prints I sell.
I know I’m not a big time photographer, so for added value, I will sign the back of the photo for you, and even include a personal message if you ask politely.
Email me if there are any problems with the shopping card or dealing with Paypal.
Again, my photo store is here.
Thank you for you inspiring me to do this, and giving me the confidence to believe in myself.
She’s in her late thirties, a soft face, and a crooked smile. Â She’s curvy in a feminine way, her cropped hair hidden under a utilitarian cap reminiscent of those hairnets worn by school lunch ladies from the 1970s. Â I don’t know her name. She’s from Central or South America, but I’m not sure if its El Savador or Peru. Â She has a strong accent and speaks quietly, meekly, although I have a feeling that underneath her obsequiousness is a woman of strength and dignity. I imagine a noble heritage somewhere in the past. Â I see her every day. Â She is the woman who cleans up in my local McDonald’s, sweeping, mopping, and cleaning the trays. Â She has a crush on me.
I have had so many crushes on women through the years, from girls in high school to married bloggers online, that it’s surprising how blind I’ve been to it when the tables are turned.
My relationship with this woman started one morning when I was sitting at my usual table, my laptop in front of me, using McDonald’s free wi-fi.
“You working on school work?” she asked, as she swept up some salty french fries playing hide-and-seek under the brown and orange cheap plastic fast-food style table.
I looked up and saw her for the first time.
“No, just regular work,” I said, lying, of course. I was on Facebook.
“I need to buy one of these things if I ever go back to school.”
“Yeah, they’re pretty useful. And they are getting cheaper. Wait until November when the sales come out.” I said, giving her what seemed like solid practical advice.
A few days later, I was back at the table, drinking a cup of coffee, writing in a composition notebook. Â It was my old school way of preventing myself from going on Facebook.
As I wrote some bad dialogue for a mediocre screenplay, the woman came over again, and looked over my shoulder. Â She laughed at my penmanship.
“Yeah, I know. I have the worst handwriting.”
“Let me ask you. In English, which are the twelve months, in order of them happening. Â I need to know this for planning something”
“January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, Novemeber, and ends in December, after Christmas.”
“Yes, yes. Â Will I remember this?”
“You want me to write it down for you?”
“Please.”
I started to scribble down the months when I could feel her getting tense behind me. Â She was gripping the top of the seat. Â I looked up. Â At the front counter, the franchise manager, a heavy-set Indian woman in a poor-fitting mud-brown jumpsuit, was giving my “friend” a dirty look.
“I must leave. They are looking at me. They’re animals.”
Weeks passed. Â My friend was always there when I showed up for my coffee, sweeping up or cleaning with a mop. Â On some days, when I was busy, I would try to ignore her, not looking up from my notebook, wanting my space. Â But she always found her way to my table.
“I’m so glad to see you!” she would say.
I always had a brief conversation with her. Â She seemed lonely, and her job was thankless. She hated her it, not the menial labor, but the way the others treated her. Â I never asked for the details, but she always called the rest of the staff by the ominous sounding description — “animals.” Â Â I knew nothing of her personal life — if she was married, had kids. Nothing. Â She was just the woman who cleaned up at McDonald’s. Â Â Still, I was impressed with her. She did her job with commitment and pride. She kept the McDonald’s spotless. Â But I could tell that she thought that she was better, that there was something work out there more in line with her poise and self-respect.
In September, she approached my table with excitement, but with a strong sense of indecision.
“There’s a job as an assistant checker at Key Food in Howard Beach. Do you think I should apply? I hate being here. Such animals.”
“Sure. You should try. If that’s what you want.”
“What if I don’t get the job? What will I do?”
“Just try your best. I have confidence in you.”
“Please let God hear you. Â And then you will come there to buy your food!”
“Sure. Maybe.” I said, knowing that Howard Beach is nowhere near where I live.
As many of you know, I recently took a trip to Paris. Â Today was the first day I returned to my McDonald’s. Â It’s been almost a month since I stepped inside.
As I passed under the familiar golden arches, I felt a wave of depression, remembering how just a week ago, I was sipping espressos in a quaint cafe on the Left Bank, Â where Sartre and Hemingway once flirted with beautiful women. And now I was back in the land of the $1.00 sausage burrito.
“It’s you!” said my cleaning friend, waltzing over to me the second I walked in, as if she was waiting for me. Â She smiled, a larger grin than usual, revealing a missing back tooth.
“I’ve missed you,” she said, cleaning off the dirty brown trays sitting on the trash receptacles. “I’m glad you’ve come back. I’ll be with you right after I finish!”
I ordered a cup of coffee, and sat in the corner. Â There was a new Happy Meal being advertised on a poster to my right. Â My friend approached, cheerful in an understated way.
“I got the job!” she said. “The job as the assistant checker.”
“Congratulations! That’s great!” I said, shaking her hand, authentically happy for her.
“This is my last day here. I can’t wait to leave these animals.”
“I’m so glad for you.”
“Yes, yes. Â I start on Tuesday. Â Everyone at Key Food is so nice. Â I hope I don’t disappoint them.”
“You’ll be good. Â I know it. Â I see how hard you work here. They are LUCKY to have you there.”
“Thank you,” she said, leaning in closer. “And will I see you there? Â Will you come to shop at the store?”
“I don’t know. I’ll try. It is far away.”
“Please come.”
At the front counter, a frazzled mother with two yapping kids, dropped her orange juice from her tray, and it splattered onto the floor in an orange-colored mess. The store manager snapped her fingers at my friend.
“I have to go,” said my friend.
“Good luck in your new job.” I said. Â “You’re going to be terrific.”
“Thank you. I hope to see you there buying your food. Â I really do.”
She paused for a second staring at me, as if she wanted to ask my name. But she never did.
“Thanks for driving me to the airport,” said Jonathan.
“No problem,” replied his friend, Bobby. “It’s too bad that you’re going on this business trip to Paris alone. Â I hear it’s a romantic place.”
“Oh, I’m not going alone.”
“You’re not.”
“Physically, maybe, But mentally, I’m going on a tour bus filled with the women in my life.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, first, there’s my wife. Â She’s mad at me because she’s stuck home dealing with Junior’s soccer schedule while I’m going to France.”
“OK, I can see that.”
“There’s also my ex-wife who called me last week, pissed that we never went to Paris during our marriage, and only honeymooned in Napa. Â “Maybe things could have been different if I wasn’t so cheap back then,” she said.””
“That’s cold.”
“And then there’s Natalie.”
“You’re girlfriend from the office?”
“Yeah. Â She won’t sext with me anymore because I’ve ruined her ultimate fantasy of the two of us walking by the Seine at night, side by side, as the voice of Edith Piaf surrounds us like a warm Givenchy coat.”
“Surely she can understand that this is a business trip.”
“And now there is Ellie.”
“Who’s Ellie?”
“She’s my next door neighbor. Â Divorced. Â She put a note under my windshield wiper last night saying that if I brought her along to Paris and took her to this five star Michelin-rated restaurant she read about in the New York Times she would give me the best blowjob of my life.”
“That would be an expensive blowjob. Â Is she worth it?”
“Uh… probably. Â But I’m there for BUSINESS, not pleasure.”
“Damn, this is getting to be one crowded tour bus.”
“There’s more.  At six o’clock this morning, my mother called, reminding me to bring a hat, because she checked the temperature in France online, and it’s suppose to be brisk when I go up the Eiffel Tower.”
“Yeah. Apparently you aren’t going alone.”
“Paris seems to have some sort of meaning for women. Â I don’t quite get it. Â I’m just excited to go there and see where they chopped off the head of Robespierre.”
“Exactly! Â So jealous!”
I approach the beginning of this Paris travel journal in a fog of self-doubt. After all, on my Facebook stream today, there are FIVE other online friends visiting Paris right now. Â How can I approach MY trip as “special” when international travel is as common today as a bunch of high school kids from New Jersey driving into “the city” to party on a Saturday night.
Is there anything new that I can offer to you, the reader? A fresh vision of an ancient city? Probably not. Â My instagram feed will be filled with the usual shots of cute-looking cafes and cliched views of the Eiffel Tower.
Who am I  to write about a city that has already been glorified and praised by countless poets, artists, and philosophers?  I’m a nobody.   This week’s top box office movie, Warner Brother’s Prisoners, grossed $11,270,000.  My blog’s first month profits from the banner ad in my sidebar – $2.16.
But what I lack in self-confident, I gain in self-delusion. Reality holds little sway in my universe. Â I don’t need to worry about the Paris of Hemingway, Voltaire, or my online friends already there on holiday. Â I can only tell the story that I can see, and in my tale, the city of Paris is already the least interesting character.
Paris will be beautiful, exhausting, fun, frustrating, and disappointing.  But Paris is only a backdrop.  It could just as easily be Boise.  First and foremost, a story needs characters.  That’s what is interesting to me.
And so we begin. Â The flight is Friday. Â Tomorrow I will start to pack. Â The plot — three characters, unlikely travel mates, each hurting emotionally and spiritually, looking for answers, but don’t yet know the questions.
In case someone reads this post two years from now and doesn’t remember the name Diana Nyad — she is an American endurance swimmer, and today, at age 64, she became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the help of a shark tank.
It was Nyad’s fifth try to complete the approximately 110-mile swim. She tried three times in 2011 and 2012. She had also tried in 1978.
Her last attempt was cut short amid boat trouble, storms, unfavorable currents and jellyfish stings that left her face puffy and swollen.
“I am about to swim my last 2 miles in the ocean,” Nyad told her 35-member team from the water, according to her website. “This is a lifelong dream of mine and I’m very very glad to be with you.”
I learned about her success on Facebook. My timeline was filled with supportive responses to her amazing feat.
“Diana Nyad is my hero.”
“This just proves what I tell my children. If you try hard enough, you can succeed in anything.”
“I hope to be like her when I get older — accomplishing greatness in MY sixties!”
++++
“What do you think of the woman who swam from Cuba to Florida?” I asked my mother at lunch.
My mother wasn’t following the story. She was watching a Labor Day Perry Mason marathon on the Hallmark Channel.
“What woman? I haven’t been following it.”
“Her name is Diana Nyad. And she’s sixty four years old!”
“That’s great. Amazing. Was she trying to escape?”
“Escape? Escape from what?”
“Escape from Cuba for asylum? Is that why she was swimming to Florida?”
“No. She wasn’t swimming to escape. She was swimming because she is a long distance swimmer and this was her lifelong dream! She never gave up.”
“Her lifelong dream was to swim from Cuba to Florida?”
“Yes.”
“That’s crazy. Couldn’t she just take a boat?”
++++
3PM, Labor Day
I’m in my bed. Thinking about swimming from Cuba to Florida. There are vibrations going up and down my body, as if a thousand electric toothbrushes are powered up and pressing against my skin at once, shaking my nerves.
There is something about Diana Nyad’s accomplishment — the fact that she never gave up, even for a goal that my own mother saw as rather unnecessary — that has brought me close to a nervous breakdown.
++++
3:30PM, Labor Day
Maybe I was being a little over dramatic before. I’m fine. I can be a bit of a drama queen. Everything’s fine.
++++
4:00PM, Labor Day
I’m sitting at my laptop. I’m feeling better. Not sure what happened before. But let me tell you — during the last couple of weeks, I have been acting very strangely, more so than usual. It’s as if my body is sending my brain a message. Or more likely, the other way around.
++++
4:30PM, Labor Day
In the 1960s, there was a popular therapy technique called “flooding.” It was used on patients with various phobias. A woman scared of elevators, for instance, would be forced into a closed elevator to confront her darkest fears until she would pass out from hypertension, but then, miraculously, from that day on, she would be able to take elevators without a problem. While the method seems primitive and cruel today, it was also quite effective.
During the last two weeks, I have been flooding myself, almost as if I want to fix every leaky valve in my brain before the start of Rosh Hashanah. While none of my personal little goals have been as dramatic as swimming a shark-infested ocean, they have been dangerous to me in that they forced me to swim into the dark waters of myself.
Two weeks ago, I submitted a screenplay that I had been working on for three years.
My thoughts at the time: (Is it any good? What if it isn’t any good? What if he doesn’t like it? What if it was better in that draft from two months ago? Why did I take that friend’s stupid advice of changing the “priest” character when it was way better before? Why am I so weak and compromise so easily?)
Last week, I placed a banner ad in my sidebar of my blog.
My thoughts at the time: (Am I being a hypocrite after everything I’ve ever said against monetization? Is it even worth if for such little money? How will my readers take it? Will they see me as too needy? Did I lose face with myself? Why do I feel nausea when I see the ad on my personal blog? Should I tell everyone to use an ad blocker so they don’t have to see the ad when the read my blog? Why WOULD I tell everyone to use an ad blocker so they don’t see the ad — isn’t that the point?!)
This weekend, while most of my friends enjoyed the last weekend of the summer swimming in lakes or hiking mountains, I stayed home, with an eye on a new prize — putting a few of my instagram photos for sale on my blog as prints.
My thoughts at the time — and now: (How much should I charge? Will I look like I am extorting friends? What if I charge too little and my real photographer friends feel like I am degrading the art of photography? Do I deserve to even make any money on an iphone photo? Who am I fooling? What if someone feels obligated to buy one, and they don’t really want to? What if someone buys one and then in a month they start a Kickstarter campaign for their own project, and I feel obligated to donate to it?)
Today, as a sixty-four year old woman finished achieved greatness in the water, my body, as a reaction to my own thought process over the last two weeks — gave up.
“This is not normal,” I told myself while lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling. “You have anxiety.”
I can hear some of my friends laughing.
“Dude, I could have told you this YEARS ago.”
I hate when people call me “dude.”
Why am I suddenly so obsessed with this idea of “feeling the fear and doing it anyway.” Why am I pushing myself? What am I trying to push myself to do? Would anyone care about Diana Nyad if she failed again, and decided it was time to give up? Why is she a hero? What did she do? Is she a nice person? What do I need to prove to others? To myself? Do I want to be the second person to swim from Cuba to Florida? Wouldn’t it better to just take a boat?
I exhaust myself.
Social Media
