Re-Discovering Joy

Everything has shifted.

I write this sitting on the floor of my new room in a more-than-hundred-year-old brownstone on the Upper West Side, literally a stone's throw from Riverside Park.

As soon as I woke up here the first morning, I felt compelled to run. Riverside Park is the ideal place to run on every level I can think of. A former marathoner, I have largely abandoned running since I moved to DC three years ago, sprained my ankle, and became a yoga addict.

But the riverside path calls to me.

In the past, I always ran because I wanted to get more fit, lose weight. Right now, I am the thinnest I can remember being, not for being in great shape but because of the heartache and anxiety the past few months have provided. I've lost my appetite.

Yesterday and today, my first two mornings waking up here, I ran just to run. Just for the feeling of it, the moving freely, the rush.

This past Tuesday, my grandmother, age 93, moved into a nursing home. After a few weeks in the hospital, she had lost much of her mobility. I watched her get winded while walking down the hallway, assisted by a walker and the physical therapist.

She always took such joy in her daily exercise. It was so strange to witness her wanting to stop walking, to sit back down in the wheelchair. She was never one to sit down.

Movement is a gift.

On that same Tuesday, the man I called my boyfriend for the past year and a half boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. Though I've been preparing for the loss for a while, now it is actually here. I'm in New York, and he is gone. I wandered the streets last night, trying to reconcile with my new reality. I found no clarity. Eventually, I went home, and went to sleep.

Then I woke up, and went for a run.

In times of great loss, we can reconnect with the gifts we still have, especially the ones we may have overlooked for a while. I am enjoying the re-discovery of running on a beautiful spring morning. I think, I hope, there will be many other joys to re-discover. And maybe even new joys to uncover.

Now, I'd better get to unpacking.

GO SEAN ROWE!!!

Sean Rowe, a wonderful folk singer/songwriter from my hometown area, is performing on the Jimmy Kimmel show tonight. Like in a few minutes. Like I have the TV on, which I hardly ever do. I've written about Sean before. He's a great musician and a great guy. I used to go to his open mics and shows back in the Albany area. Actually, come to think of it, I first met him because I played a set during one of his shows, way back in the day. And now he's playing on national TV!

I'm kind of bugging out about this. Okay, time to watch.

Beauty Against the Backdrop

Sometimes the bad times are quite beautiful in their own ways. When life is falling apart, when you're losing things, when there's pain, it becomes necessary to hone in on the good things, to focus on them and observe them closely, intensely, in slow motion. To fixate on them. Maybe this is why sometimes the fondest memories are created in the bad times. Normal, everyday joy, set against the backdrop of sustained despair, is euphoric.

And, I am not quite as despondent now as I was a week ago. Perhaps I have settled into the new reality, especially as the details become more concrete. I am still being left, but I understand and accept it as what must happen. As a friend said to me, "Acceptance is letting go of the idea that things could have been different." I see exciting new possibilities on the horizon, of a new job and things I will learn and people I will meet. A new place to live will mean new friends and experiences. I will get to fall in love all over again. (With my track record, probably many times over again, HA!)

I have started to share my situation, my need for help in this moment, with everyone I know. I have already been receiving tremendous support, and am now receiving even more. I feel like I am being held firmly in loving arms, surrounded by a wide circle of people who are not going to let me fall.

I just have to keep climbing.

Ultimately, I need to help myself by taking the necessary actions, going through the process, of looking for and applying for the things that I need. Taking each action, each application, each piece of searching, as part of the process which will ultimately bring me the things I need, and not letting the fact that most of them will result in nothing, make me feel like the process is for nothing.

The same can be said for relationships. Not looking at this failed relationship as anything more than a piece of the process. Perhaps the process of eventually finding a lifelong love. Or at the very least, the process of learning to love, learning about myself. And a reminder that we don't actually get to keep anything this life, especially people.

Through this all, I am finding intense joy in the good things. A nice stretch. A delicious cup of coffee. The way the raindrops look beautiful freckled on the window. The chivalrous gesture of a handsome stranger.

I'm not alone. I have so many people rooting for me.

And Spring is coming.

The Most Effective Beauty Product

Monday evening, I went into Kiehl's, an expensive skin care products store that I have no business buying anything from at this moment in my life. But, I have been noticing lately that my eyes are particularly dark and puffy, and my current products and concealer are not doing all that much to help. I notice the dark circles in the mirror, in photos, and in videos I make of myself performing. I want them to go away.

So, I bought this night repair cream, which is supposed to work its magic overnight, and you wake up with visibly reduced darkness and puffiness. Okay, I thought, let's give it a shot. I slathered it on before going to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning and looked in the mirror, my eyes were PUFFIER and DARKER than they had EVER been. At least, that I can remember.

Then I realized that, the night before, prior to the eye cream application and going to sleep, I had spent an hour on the phone with my boyfriend, who is in the process of moving to San Francisco, without me. I was crying hysterically for a significant part of the conversation.

No amount of eye cream was going to counteract an hour of crying hysterically before bed.

I am so sad to lose this relationship. To lose this person who has been the biggest part of my life for more than a year now. But in that moment, waking up with the puffy dark eyes I had spent money I don't have to counteract, I realized that the current state of the relationship is having a visibly negative impact on my well-being. What I'm sad about losing -- a relationship that brought me joy -- I have already lost. What I have now -- a relationship that is causing me pain -- is necessary to lose, if I am to be happy in my life again.

And there is no beauty product more effective than being happy in your life.

Everything You Ever Have, You Lose

I should know by now not to worry too much about today's problems; they can be ousted in an instant by tomorrow's problems.

My boyfriend is leaving me.

It's for his work, which softens the blow on my ego, but not my heart. Tech people go to San Francisco to start companies. New York made sense in the beginning, but things change quickly when you're working with technology. I hear that Bloomberg has a "Silicon Alley" initiative--trying to make NYC a desirable place for tech entrepreneurs. Whatever it is, it is apparently not worth missing out on an opportunity to get in with the cool kids in Palo Alto and Mountain View.

And neither am I.

I mean, I'm not saying I should be. Part of what attracted me to this person was his passion, his myopic focus on building a successful company. I've never dated someone with so much drive. And it's not even about money, although I'm sure he will make plenty of that--what motivates him is changing the world.

Tech entrepreneurs are changing the world, for sure. For example, thanks to the tech startups, I have an album coming out this year. I've always had my music, but my Blogspot blog and Facebook account helped me to raise money through Kickstarter, which, due to technological advances in home recording which has lowered the cost of high-quality production, was enough to pay a talented music producer to help put my songs together.

Yes, it's been a spiritual journey. Yes, it was through my yoga practice that I realized my true calling. But, it was technology that allowed me to place the call.

Back to my relationship. We met at a bar in the East Village last November. By April, I had moved into his apartment. In September, we signed a one-year lease on a place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As I type this, from said apartment, he is in San Francisco, looking for his next apartment.

We have a good relationship, I think. Or at least, I thought we did. It's loving and sweet and we get along and rarely even bicker. We have good times and have helped each other through a mutually tumultuous year as we both pursued our dreams here in NYC.

The plan was to stay in NYC. But the company investors say, come to San Francisco. So, off he goes.

Mostly, I think I'm in denial. I don't know what the heck I am going to do, and I'm trying to figure it out. But there's part of me that doesn't even care what I do, in this moment, because I'm just so sad about losing my partner, my love. I just heard a 1960s song by the Marvelettes called "Destination Anywhere" in which the singer relays a story of going to the train station, and telling the ticket agent she doesn't care where she's going, because "my baby don't love me no more."

I feel that right now.

The apartment is a mess and I just stare at it. I have to force myself to eat; preparing food seems like too much of a hassle, and I'm not hungry. Yoga, my sanity, seems like too much effort. When I force myself to go, I am weak on my mat.

Sadness is great for the songs. I've already written two songs, inspired by this impending loss.

In the moment, I would rather not have the songs or the sadness. But maybe someday I will appreciate them.

Days turn to nights, the plates in the earth shift without our even seeing, the whole world changes in the blink of an eye. Hold on if you can, or better yet, don't hold on. Let go. Wherever the storm lands you, there will be people to love, and people who love you.

Might as well enjoy the storm.

Why I Stopped Pulling Out my Gray Hair

I'm not really sure, to tell you the truth.

I've been pulling them out since the first time I noticed having them. I was 20 then. So it's been 11 years.

Here's the thing: I don't really even have that many gray hairs, at this point. Which is why pulling them out seemed like the simplest mechanism for getting rid of them. I don't want to have them visible, but I don't want to dye my hair yet. And there is something kind of fun and satisfying about the yank. So long, sucker!

But, all this time, in the back of my mind, I'm doing this and knowing that it is an unsustainable solution to a growing, literally growing, problem. Because they grow back. And they grow in numbers. And eventually, if I keep doing this, I'm going to be plucking out my entire head of hair, and that's obviously not the intended result.

And when I see gray hairs on other people, I find it sexy, in a way, that they wear them. Because they're not trying to defy themselves.

My New Year's resolution was to do a daily meditation practice, which has been mostly a failure.

For some reason, starting with New Year's Day, I stopped pulling out my gray hairs. I didn't articulate this in any way. It wasn't my official resolution. I just did it. It's been a month now. You can see them growing out of my head no matter how I comb my hair. They're an inch long, at least.

I don't really care.

I was going to have to stop pulling them out eventually, right?

Is There a Space Between?

I came to New York with enough hope to classify me as deluded.

But I read The Secret. Visualize the life you want, and it will come to be. So I visualized my life. I was touring with my band. I was recording an album. I was living in New York City.

Fast forward a year and a half. I'm living in New York City. I'm recording an album. I'm not touring with my band, yet. 

I was convinced that if I just moved to NYC and gave it my all, I could make a living as a singer/songwriter here. Instead, I've made my living by some fortunate circumstances largely unrelated to music, that are not sustainable, and that I don't feel good about. I'm not even breaking even on my musical ventures, let alone making enough to support myself.

Where do I go from here? Do I just keep visualizing and believing?

And why am I so despondent about it? I know so many people, hundreds of people, talented people, that have not made it to "doing this for a living" status. In fact, I'm not even sure where I get off feeling like I deserve to do this for a living, when so many others have paid more dues than I and still don't.

And I know so many stories--Jonathan Larson, who wrote Rent, comes immediately to mind--of people who toiled in their creative pursuits for 10+ years before getting anywhere. He had the poor fortune to die right as he was about to break through into the wild success which became of Rent.

Larson died from a rare, undiagnosed, genetic medical condition. A simple procedure could have saved his life. I only wonder if it was his starving artist lifestyle that kept him from the routine medical care that might have diagnosed him and prevented his death.

No way to prove it, but it's a distinct possibility.

Maybe we do just live and die for our art. Perhaps scrambling through this existence to nurture the art and bring it to life is our only purpose. Even if it kills us.

I imagine Larson wouldn't have given up everything he did to make Rent successful, even knowing that it would lead to his early death.

Then again, there's no way to ask him.

And maybe there's a space in between? Somewhere between suffering for something and just surfing through life? A balance between sacrificing everything for your art and enjoying your precious, short time on earth?

Honestly, if you really want to be successful in art, I'm not sure there is.