who i am. today.

i love coffee. i love the smell. desperately, i love it. 

i like waking up early in the morning. when the world is new all over again.

and i take cabs way more often than i should.

i'm constantly losing things--my patience included.

i don't know how to flirt. well, not with anyone i actually like. 

and i do not want to date an actor. because i know that it's hard, i don't need to talk about it. or hear about it. or smile, sympathetically. 

i've yet to turn in my taxes to my father. instead i stress about it. it's july. taxes are due in april. correction, were due. by the time i hand them over, i'm going have to begin again, for this year.

i still don't know how to cook. 

and i still panic about opening my checking account.

i fantasize about going to graduate school. and fulfilling the college experience (or some version of it). but i have yet to buy the gre study guide from the bookstore. 

i fantasize about anonymity in a city where familiar faces are a regular attraction, but friends are harder to come by.

i complain. much too often. i think it's my standby. if i'm uncomfortable, or there's a lull in the conversation--i'll start to complain. note to self: change this. immediately.

more often than not i'll sleep with the covers pulled all the way up--covering my head completely. i think it makes me feel safe. 

i've given up soda. turns out all that fake sugar really is bad for you. 

now i drink seltzer water. with lemon. 

and i'm falling in love with soy ice cream. 

and challah bread. yes, this good catholic girl loves challah bread. it reminds me of potato rolls. remember those? 

i can't seem to keep my room clean. or throw anything away. 

i panic about little things. like flirting (see above). 

and i can't keep my mouth shut. or play pretend when i need to.

but the flowers outside my window are in full bloom and i'm feeling closer to them than i have in a very, very long time.

this is just to say...

I'm feeling impossibly happy today.

Of course. "Life is impossible." Of course. But how lucky we are to get a crack at it.

I'm drinking chocolate milk out of the mug my father gave me for my birthday that reads, 

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. -Thoreau

And I'm eating Cool Whip out of my hand. 

And I'm so impossibly thankful to know you all. 

the little things. the human things.

tonight i caught a subway attendant cringe when a young woman just barely missed the train.

his response was so unbelievably human. 

and it made my heart swell.

post-secret follow up

I thought the end of Ned would be like getting hit by a dump truck, in the best possible way.

It would be a moment--one, single moment--that would knock me on my ass (or damn near kill me {as long as we're going with the dump truck metaphor}) and literally change my life forever. That was the best-case-scenario--that was what I prayed for. 

I'm starting to think it's not going to be anything like that. I'm starting to think it's happening now. And will take a very, very long time. A life, if you will. But it will not be my life--it will simply be one part of it. The end of Ned is a gradual coming to--an ascent into consciousness, the compilation of countless near-obvious realizations.

And I'm starting to think that this whole Ned thing...well, maybe there's a reason it's happened--happening.

For those of you who've read The Time Traveler's Wife, do you remember the scene where (bear with me I've loaned the book out so I have to paraphrase) Clare at twenty has just begun dating Henry. And they're at some club and she wanders off to go to the bathroom and runs into Henry of the future (the Henry she's known all her life--the Henry she grew up with) and she says to him, I miss you, I wish you were the one who was here right now--I don't know this other person. And in return he says, but who you are--this time you spend with the twenty-eight year old Henry is what makes me who I am today--the man you do love so much. I need you Clare. Do you remember this part? I'm absolutely butchering the poetry of it all but I'm just trying to make a point. 

Well, for better of for worse Ned is shaping me. He has made me who I am today. And he is creating the woman my Henry will one day fall in love with. Yes, there was a time when Ned made me unbelievably selfish, unbelievably unreliable and unbelievably unkind. But that time has passed. And for the first time in my life I'm beginning to think that I am, actually, quite strong. 

Now, let's be clear, I am not romanticizing Ned. Ned is bad. Very, very bad. I wouldn't wish Ned on anyone. Ned robbed me of whole years of my life--countless would-be memories. But I am making the choice to be thankful for how I am now responding to 

So, remember this post? Well, my post-secret really was what was written on the card, but there was more--I promised you more and I never delivered on it.

Well, okay, here goes:

About a month ago I decided to stop acting. Not for a long. Just a year. Maybe two. I was having a near impossible time reconciling Ned with the audition process. And I knew as long as Ned is an ever present force in the room with me, I'll never be able to give it a proper go. And I want to give acting a proper go. But I need acting to be my decision. I need to come to it when I am ready--not simply because it's the next step on some pre-prescribed path.

I think I scared my parents. I think they're afraid I won't go back. What I tried to explain to them is I will. That in my gut I believe this is actually the best decision I can make for the future.

And so now I have a year to fail brilliantly and make impossible mistakes. And all I want to do is travel. I have nothing tying me down, so what better time is there?

So I'm looking into teaching English abroad and while I've surreptitiously gathered information from a few of you (thanks girls!), if anyone else cares to weigh in on the subject...well, by all means.

Phew, now that I've gotten all of that out of my system, maybe words will come a bit easier now.

 

quote found at this little blog

which i've just discovered and

am falling in love with

blond or brunette?

glancing through the new issue of in style i came across the 2009 sexy poll, in which the following question was asked:

what's sexier:

blond or brunet? 

and the winner? 

well, with a whopping 78%, we brunets took the prize.

whoa nelly, one giant step for brunette bombshells everywhere

and then one terrifying second where i thought maybe i'd been spelling brunet incorrectly all this time.

i gotta go calm down. this is a lot to take in.

ps: i do not smoke.

nor should you.

it's bad. and causes cancer.