Ramblings and musings and whining - Oh My!
Overall, I’m getting pretty sick of everybody asking me “what’s wrong?” all the time. If you haven’t thought to ask me that yourself you probably:
a. Don’t work with me at my day job
b. Aren’t married to me
This time of year always brings its own set of “blahs” with it. My birthday is coming up and while I don’t profess to have the market cornered on birthday phobia and birthday disappointment, I do list it as one of my personal “problems.”
My family has never made a very big deal about birthdays. Let me rephrase that, my family is big about making a big deal out of not making a big deal out of my birthday. (It makes sense if you saw it on a diagram). There are a lot of reasons for this strange ritual, that aren’t worth getting into, but needless to say for the last 8 years or so, I’ve managed to be as far away from my family as possible for my birthday. It was particularly convenient when I was in LA, and somehow the last two years in Florida, I’ve managed to be in rehearsals or some other “important” distraction to keep the folks from going out of their way to make it painfully apparent how obligated they are to rejoice in the fact that I managed to make it another year without dying.
So here I am passing through the halls of 30 like chili on an empty stomach. And of course my parents are pissed that I have decided to run away to the mountains for my birthday and not give them the opportunity to disappoint, destroy and otherwise fuck up my birthday this year. The phone calls vary from anger to tears to confusion and I have managed to maintain a facade of “Oh it’s really no big deal.”
Still, you can’t help but look over your life when you hit one of those “milestone” birthdays. I still feel like I’m 21, I still feel like I should be at the kid’s table, and I still wish that my birthday meant Spring Break was right around the corner.
That’s not to say I still want to be 21, it just means I’m not quite sure what I have done with the last ten years. It’s all kind of blurry. Maybe that’s from a four year period in LA where I was drunk a large portion of the time - but that’s probably a cop out.
Sometimes I wonder if I am where I am today because I didn’t think much about my goals or dreams or shit like that. I just sort of plugged along, did what was fun for me, endured what was important for others and figured fate would take care of the rest. It many ways it seems to have been a good approach. My life is extraordinarily blessed. I have managed to somehow rebel against the pattern of dysfunction in my own family and have a pretty great amalgam of amazing artists and truly good people in my life. Brain chemistry working in my favor - I have the skills I need to be a relatively happy person. Sheer force of will means I can make most situations positive and an inherently strong sense of self means if you haven’t beaten the artist out of me by now - you never will. All in all, I have little to complain about, a lot to be thankful for and a few things I’m not sure I deserved (good and bad) but have managed to collect along the way.
I kinda hate my soul sucking job, I kinda love the artists I get to work with everyday, and I kinda look forward to seeing what the next few years have in store for me.
But if I seem kind of off, I just can’t quite piece together the girl who was driving from Gainesville to LA eight years ago, determined as all hell to get there before March 24th so she could celebrate her birthday in Hollywood. And who ended up alone on March 24th, sitting on a balcony of a crappy apartment with no power trying to watch the next door neighbor’s tv through their window as the Oscars were broadcast.
How did I get from there to here? And what does it all mean?