I’ve been watching the gang of hummingbirds that gather on my daughter’s porch in Yosemite, dining on nectar all day long, getting a sugar high on life. They’re smarter than I am. Lately I’ve let work and worry turn me sour, and I’m trying to remember all the sweet things about my life and what I used to like about myself. For instance, I used to be a funny girl, able to laugh at myself and make others laugh, too. I miss that person, so I’m trying to remember to apply the 5-year perspective to situations that I blow out of all proportion: Is [insert crazy-making scenario] really, really likely to make a difference in my life 5 years from now? Usually the answer is an unequivocal “no,” which frees me to deal with it in an entirely more relaxed way and to separate what is worth going to bat for vs what can walk on by. Sweet!

I’m headed to Yosemite tomorrow to visit my younger daughter, who’s the park anthropologist, and I’m looking forward to real hiking instead of the metaphorical kind. 2011, while far from being my annus horribilis, has been a process of gaining a foothold and losing a foothold, over and over, until I feel I’m right back where I started in January. I’ve been disappointed in myself more often than I like to admit and exasperated to tears by the people around me at times. Who am I and why don’t I know what I’m doing?! It’s ironic that I started the year jauntily declaring that 2011 was going to be my year of Change,  but I didn’t stop to think it might be difficult, upsetting and bewildering change! I followed all the good advice I read in blogs and books (The Happiness Project, The Year of Wishful Thinking, Living the Creative Life, etc. ), did my Wildly Improbable Wish list, took workshops, practiced waking up spiritually — and then got kicked in the ass by the Universe, which was wearing steel-capped boots. Not that any of those books and blogs were wrong — they just weren’t right for me. Or maybe they were, but I wanted easy change because I thought I was doing all the right things to attract it. I was a caterpillar curled up waiting for a metamorphosis, a Saturday-afternoon-at-Saks makeover for my life. What I didn’t reckon with was that my year of change would feel more like being locked in an industrial-sized laundromat dryer than emerging from a cocoon with pretty wings. It’s forced me to take a close-up look at myself, my work, my past, my present. To pull myself up only to slide back down again. It’s kind of a relief to recognize it, admit it, lie here at the bottom of the mountain and just stop struggling so much. Who knows — maybe I’ll find another path, one that goes around the mountain instead of straight up and over or find that the whole point of change was in the struggle, not the outcome. The future is a mystery, but even so, I haven’t given up hoping for my own kind of  annus mirabilus along the way.

I’ve been thinking lately about how much of my job revolves around finding new things rather than coming up with new ideas. It’s entertaining, but it makes me nostalgic for the old days when I was married and we were so broke that — well, just take my word for it. We were sooo broke. My husband was low on the totem pole in the Navy, and libraries saved my sanity and gave me a sanctuary from a very bad marriage. But more than that, they were playgrounds for my brain. All I did was read and wonder and do amateur research and go on a 10 year self-education journey. I read indiscriminately, widely and innocently. Classics, bodice rippers, history, biographies — it was one big cultural mash-up, just like my desk and mood board. I want to get that fervor back and reclaim my beginner’s mind. Before Barnes and Noble, I used to hit the library once a month and have an afternoon binge on all the new magazines. Now I just buy them, and it’s not as much fun. I want to learn with some of the same hunger I used to have then, even though “that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead.”  I can’t go back to my original blank-slate state, so it’s an extra challenge to find ways to rekindle that passion for knowledge, innovation, fresh ideas. I stumbled across an interesting blog entry today about Overcoming Creative Block and it gave me some notions to try out. One of the things I want to do is leave the office to walk around streets I usually drive by and take photos. Every day I pass an abandoned store that seems to have some taxidermied animals in the window draped in glitter cloth. Is it a mirage or some weird tableau?! I need to get out of the car and find out, and I need to do more reading outside my comfort zone like I used to do. Because the more you pack into your brain, the greater chance that one of those serendipitous leaps of the imagination will occur, with your mind connecting the dots on its own while you sleep or daydream or wander around. I’m going to put myself back in a school for one — re-educating Nikki.

A friend of my daughter’s called it The Fear when she was in high school even though she couldn’t really explain it.  I call it The Dreads. I think Churchill called it The Black Dog. Moods that stalk you, inducing either general universal anxiety (what if the oil spill creates a dead ocean?) that has no answer or a personal sadness that you just can’t shake. I’ve had it lately, despite the latest/greatest antidepressant my doctor can find and a life that is just so incredibly lucky. We give it these names in order to distance  ourselves from it or cut it down to size, but I think it’s the knowledge of our own mortality and the questioning and questing that goes along with it that dogs us.  That dark shadow is anathema to us, because we are busy being the best we can be, getting empowered, waiting for the Universe to grant our dearest wish, buying stuff to fill up the empty rooms of our soul house. It’s such a tightrope we walk — to love the light with all our might and at the same time, acknowledge the dark that waits for us at the end. And I probably cudgel my brain about it way too much–that’s why I love Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Recipe for Happiness Khaborovsk or Anyplace.”

One grand boulevard with trees
With one grand cafe in sun
With strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful
Man or woman who loves you.

One fine day.

I’d buy Indian summer and keep it all to myself. When it’s dryer-lint humid in South Carolina and so hot that dogs won’t put their paws down on the sidewalk, I’d have my yard air-conditioned.  I’d downsize my boobs and raise them up so I wouldn’t need a bra in summer. No more underwires. In fact, I’d stop wearing underwear at all — if you’re rich you don’t have to be respectable. I’d hire someone to exercise for me so I wouldn’t have to sweat. I’d never sweat again! I’d put a ceiling fan in my car to move the a/c around. As we all know, it’s easier for a camel than a rich man to go through the eye of a needle (I always wondered why either would be forced to do that–wasn’t there a side road they could have taken?), but sometimes it’s nice to dream, to want, to imagine. I can almost feel the shock of cold water that suspends my breath as I slip into that pool, the weightlessness, the lifting of  a burden off my shoulders and the lift of water wings replacing them. But, dear Guardian Angel,  since I’m not rich and there’s no pool waiting for me at home, I’d be happy just to have an automatic ice maker/dispenser on my refrigerator door someday.

I’ve been having a completely nonproductive, unintellectual weekend and loving it. Friday after work, I went to the restaurant across the street from the office and had 1 1/2 glasses of Chardonnay, talk to the bartender (who I love because he warned me to stay away from a guy I met there), and write in my journal. I can’t say that anything memorable comes out of those writing sessions but the stress of a week of work gradually fades away as I brainstorm with myself, draw, and make to-do lists for the next week. I had dinner with friends and came home and read a poorly written historical novel. Thank god for the bad historical novel writers who keep me company in my insomnia. Today, I again did nothing useful except go to the post office and take vitamins. I brushed my teeth and put on a bra before leaving the house, so I think I get some points for that. Then I spent several hours playing MahJong online, reading Vanity Fair and listening to the rain. So here’s the thing — given that “our ground time here is limited,” as Maxine Kumin noted in a poem, shouldn’t I be making stuff, thinking big thoughts or taking flying lessons? Yes, I think I should, and I wish I’d spent more time doing that over the course of my life instead of reading People and going to T.J. Maxx. But I love the “wasting” of time, too, so I’m caught up in a familiar existential dilemma. And now that I’ve finished reading VF, I’ll get right back to Buddha’s Brain…soon. After all,tomorrow is another day, as Scarlett said to Sartre.

Today, I had to get the oil changed in my car. It was 95 degrees and I’m sure even hotter down in that oil-change pit. As I was talking with one of the guys who works there, I realized all over again how undeservedly lucky I am. My big preoccupation today was my continuing battle with insomnia, not a minimum-wage job in a sweaty shop. Not oil ground into my skin so deeply that I can never completely scrub it away. Not customers who expect me to screw them over or avoid looking directly in my eyes–just get my car finished so I can get on with my important life. I thought about it all day. So what if I can’t sleep — it might be unhealthy but it gives me more time to be aware of being alive, to be thankful for the Tempurpedic mattress I was able to afford, to be cozy and content with a book in bed. And even though I might get The Dreads in the middle of the night, I’m learning how to breathe through them and know that in the morning I’ll have a job to get up for and work I love when I get there. Some of my family are struggling in this recession, not only to make a living but also to find that trail of breadcrumbs that will bring them safely home. I saw that lostness in other faces today and vowed to value what I often take for granted. And to scatter more breadcrumbs.

It’s the birth anniversary of Frida Kahlo…patron saint of this website, so I had my high school portrait photoshopped in her honor. She wasn’t classically beautiful — after all, how many fashion magazines celebrate the unibrow and faint mustache? — and yet she was riveting because of her talent and her deep personailty. To me, she’s every woman who might decide to be an ugly duckling, who creates despite or because of her suffering, who has the capacity for big love even if it’s not predictable or traditional. Recently I was flagellating myself in retrospect because all the men I’ve been involved with were just plain wrong for me. And yet, and yet …. sometimes there’s a soul  mate you can’t live with in the usual two-car garage, PTA way, but who you will never forget and never regret. Why try to discount it or write it off as “dysfunctional?” Why not accept that he or she birthed a part of you that otherwise would have died or lain dormant? That’s what Frida means to me — the potential realized, the wildness recognized, the life unapologized.

1. Scorpions in my shoes…it could happen.

2. What did I say about the Brazilian wax at the barbecue when I was a little drunk?

3. How can I make more money?

4. Where is that bracelet I lost last year? And my red glasses? I should get up and look for them again.

5. Why did I buy/open/eat the ice cream?

6. My dirt yard is so hillbilly. I need sod right away. How can I make more money?

7. Why isn’t my sleeping pill working? What if my doctor gave me a placebo?

8. What if I have sleep apnea and have to wear a Hannibal Lector  mask?

9. Why don’t I have any grownup clothes? Why do I have a princess bed? What possessed me? My whole life is badly, sadly decorated.

10. Do they give prescriptions for medical marijuana brownies to treat insomnia? I wish I hadn’t eaten all the ice cream.

When I was in spinning class recently, I felt like I was working hard enough to generate enough energy to run a hair dryer or a lamp. Or maybe even recharge the battery on my cell phone. A little whimsy to keep me from whimpering in pain.  And then I  thought how it would be even better if I could send the energy I was generating out to people I know who are in trouble. I visualized neon electrical ribbons flowing out and recharging them with the power to change their lives, to get up every day and go out into a world that is beating them down, to generate more faith in themselves. My energy would simply be overflowing into their lives from afar, but without the onus of rescue, enabling, codependency, guilt or the fireworks that result when I try to intervene or control. When I was spinning that day, I was doing good things for my body, but I was also thinking of the ones I love, willing them to keep pedaling, keep breathing, keep trying, keep safe.