I start to think a lot of things...

and i forgot the pasta water again.

One thing about me is that I love to start projects.  I get super excited about the initial budding idea.  I make plans and look at resources and envision a final product that will throttle me into success and admiration. I start to wonder if I am operating from my ego.  I start to wonder if I even know what ego is apart from the buzz word that it has become.  I contemplate the likelihood that every decision I’ve ever made has been ego motivated and then I wonder if that is a bad thing. 

I start every sentence with I because I am only thinking about myself in relation to this world and then I wonder if I am a narcissist.  Another buzz word.  Another bad thing that of course I must be because the internet said so.  Then I start to wonder if it is my OCD that is making me wonder if I am operating from my ego because OCD has a consistent pattern of taking everything I care about and illegitimizing it.  OCD likes to take my plans and my ideas and show me all the ways they can’t work because of all the things I am and all the things I need to be, but am not.  I start to wonder if I will ever be able to think in a way that isn’t layered and layered with hidden meaning. 

“What if I am like this when I’m 85?”  I ask my husband after I go round and round in circles about whether or not it is a good idea to say no to a job that falls on a day that I am unavailable.  “You’re overthinking it,” he says.  

Of course I am.  But I am thinking in the only way that comes natural to me.  I am thinking in hypotheticals and I am full of guilt and shame because I can’t know if my answer is the right one.  I am in my kitchen trying to make dinner and instead of watching the water boil I am envisioning myself as an old woman, grayed and wrinkled and still scared shitless of everything I can’t know but I can imagine.  I start to wonder.  There it is again.  The sentences that start with I and the wondering that never ends.  I start to wonder if I will always be this way.  

My latest project is starting on the heels of another uncompleted one.  I could tell you what it is but I don’t want to because I know that if I do the pressure to complete it will override any natural desire I have to finish it.  The pressure to be who I say I am, who I say I want to be, will become more important than my instinct for joy and alignment.  I am a series of decisions made to impress and satisfy other people.  When I step back and think about what it is that I want, I am startled by the fact that my desire is not to have my name in lights and my face on billboards and my work praised, because that is what I want.  Isn’t it?  Instead, I come up with something much simpler.  So simple that I question it and think it must be wrong, that I must be wrong.  There’s the OCD, again.

So I take deep breaths and imagine a life where I throw all my ambition out the window.  It can be enough, right, to raise my babies and fuck my husband in the house that I cleaned while they were away?  That can be enough for someone and maybe it can be enough for me.  I picture myself in a black house dress, happily vacuuming to the Gipsy Kings and I wonder if I could bamboleo my way to oblivion, forgetting that I ever used to want more.  I wonder if I could stop comparing myself to the women who do more.  I start to think that maybe those women who do more might also be wondering about the women who do less and then I remember that they said they would be bored.  I remind myself that I shouldn’t compare.  When I remember to check on the water I see that it has boiled down and I realize that I never started that project that I was so excited about. 

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If you spend any time at all thinking about how weird actors might be in real life, watch Barry.

But maybe skip if you don’t like people killing each other. The show is about a hit man with PTSD from the military who decides to take acting classes. It’s written, directed and produced by Bill Hader, who also stars in the show as it’s titular character, Barry. I watched all 4 seasons and while I loved the first two seasons, it gets a little too dark for me in season 3 and by season 4 I’ve lost all interest in Barry. The best part about the show is getting a satirical behind the scenes look at actors. I always think they must be super cool and hip but in irl most of them are grown up theater kids. Just take from that what you want. Anyway, I think you should watch the show because a lot of it ends up being about love. And Noho Hank. Watch it for this guy.

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Now that the semester is done, these posts will start to come with a lot more regularity. Thank you to the paid subscribers who stuck with me as my letters dwindled. And sorry for making you guys wait so long!