Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world. | Pema Chödrön
...
in quotes
MY NEW YORK | spring is a total show-off
in my new york
with the bombings in Boston last week, the manhunt that ensued, the gun legislation that failed to pass, and all the lives lost i am both bewildered and discouraged. it was unfathomable. much of last week was unfathomable.
and yet, as all that was happening, spring erupted in her multi-colored splendor.
and there must be a lesson in that.
if you are a longtime reader you know that i am big fan of cheryl strayed and her dear sugar columns. the refrain she utters column after column, piece after piece, is as follows: every last one of us can do better than give up.
that is my thought for this next week. i can do better than give up. i can choose love and compassion and empathy at every turn. i can practice kindness despite my anger and despite my fear. i can be better than i want to be.
i hope this week is better than last. and i hope we all might find some beauty in the changing of the seasons.
and for inquiring minds...
i write on my photos using a wacom tablet.
and edit with VSCO, afterlight, and
adobe lightroom (when editing anything not taken on my phone).
moving day
photo by molly yeh
it's moving day!
it's finally happened--after years of blogging over at or-so-i-feel.blogspot.com i've moved here to megfee.com (easy enough, right?)!
the hope is that it's a little bit cleaner, a little bit easier to navigate, and a whole lot of fun.
speaking with my mom on the phone yesterday she said, what is the point, what is the over-arching theme of the blog?
to which i responded: how to build a happy life. wait, strike that. not happy--whole. a whole life. which means a little bit of happy and a little bit of sad and quite a bit of dirt under the fingernails. i am still, even in my (cough, late) twenties very much in the construction process. i'm still very much figuring it out and trying and failing and searching. and that's what this is about: day-by-day, the search and the endeavor for wholeness (one whole-fat latte at a time).
so if you're new, welcome. if you've been around for ages, welcome.
the links on the left lead to an updated ABOUT page, as well as a FAVORITE SCRIBBLINGS page, home to some of my all-time-favorite-posts. and if you're visiting new york city (or a resident)--i've collected my favorite places to eat + my favorite things to do (and will continue to add to both).
as an introduction to the new site i'm sharing my new ABOUT page below.
i'm still working out some of the kinks and figuring out what it is that people want to see and what they respond to--so feedback is very welcome.
it should be noted that i did all of this with the help, support, and unbelievable patience of david pearson. i can't tell you how many emails we sent back and forth. i have nothing but good things to say about him and would vociferously recommend him to anyone who asks. {he can be reached at thedavidpearson@gmail.com}
i am so grateful for all the support i've received over the years. truly, so grateful. so without further ado:
I'm Meg: lover of lattes and cobblestone streets and large bodies of water.
(And a baker of damn fine birthday cakes).
Born and bred in Texas, I now happily reside in a sweet, little corner of Brooklyn.
I believe in expensive cheese and honesty. Stemless wine glasses, belly-laughs, and the sort of tears that are big, wet, and careening. I almost always use the oxford comma.
I came to New York at the age of 18 to get my BFA in Drama from the prestigious Juilliard School. And get it I did. Whereupon I learned the first of many of those all-important-life-lessons:
1. What they (whoever "they" might be) say about the best laid plans...well, they've got a point... After four years I didn't feel like an actor. So I started writing. And this blog was born. And the rest is history.
{Actually, the rest is yet to be written which is sort of the point--and what this blog is all about}.
after that first doozy of a life-lesson, the others just rolled in...
2. My mother was right about many things. Including, but not limited to, the importance of concealer.
3. Never trust anything a man says on the first date.
4. Some of life's hardest battles and most important successes are private things, tread on lonely paths.
5. Fake-eyelashes are totally justified on fancy-nights-out. Or whenever. In fact, I might be wearing some now.
6. Diets don't work, counting calories is a small and unhappy way to chart a life, and sugar is hugely responsible for many ills. (I write a fair amount about food and health).
7. You have to fight just as absolutely hard as you can for a thing and then throw it up a to a higher power and trust that what will be, will be.
8. Folk music is my jam. Not everyone's for sure, but mine.
In all seriousness, I am so deeply indebted to anyone who has ever taken the time to come to my blog whether just to peek, write a comment, or even send a note. Your support over the years has both humbled and buoyed me . And for that, there are not words enough.
I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything. | F. Scott Fitzgerald
it takes a long time
it's been a strange and wonky stretch of time, these last few months.
good and bad and a little unbearable and at times, heaven.
a stretch of time in which i've felt both deeply mired in the muck and as though i'm hurtling, lightening speed, into the great unknown.
i have this very vivid memory of being twelve years old and climbing up to the see the delicate arch in utah and how that trek went on forever. i never thought we'd get there. the land was so flat and so brown and so long before me and the sun was high overhead and i couldn't imagine an end. and then, just when i thought i couldn't go any further, we curved round a huge stone wall and there it was.
and i was breathless. it took my breath away.
that thing, that arch, that magnificent sliver made by mother nature's careful hands.
few times in my life have i seen something so beautiful--the sort of thing that people marvel at even in photos, but photos will never do justice.
it was so much more than my small mind could have ever conceived.
it was sometime between late december and middle of january that i realized the eating disorder was done.
just like that, gone.
i shouldn't say just like that--it was an arduous and often impossible journey. but the moment of its departure went unnoticed.
t.s. elliot got it right: not with a bang but a whimper.
there's that phrase: you'll struggle with this for the rest of your life. and oh how i loathed that phrase and fought against that phrase and worked to make that phrase obsolete.
but here, on the other side, i've come to realize it's not the eating disorder i may struggle with the rest of my life, but all the other things that i emptied into it.
fear and anxiety and a propensity to get sad. startlingly deep emotional reactions that overwhelm and unnerve. lack of confidence. questions of worth.
and with the eating disorder said and done those things are now illuminated with stark clarity. and a whole new journey begins. and it's just as hard and i'm sure it'll be just as good...
but what the hell.
you know?
because no one prepared me for this.
in fact each time i face something that i thought would be easier without an eating disorder and it's not--well, each time there is disappointment and dare i say, a little heartache.
each time feels like a small loss.
i came through the other side and it's a whole new set of struggles. or well, the struggles that were always there, but now there's no pretending.
there is only honesty--ruthless and brutal honesty. and a little floundering.
someone left a comment the other day saying, when are you not sad. not with a question mark though, just a period.
and all i could do was laugh because she has a point and imagine how i feel living it? i know, i really, really know.
ba-hambug. (and a little laughter along the way).
but just the other day natalie said something that made me a take a quick breath, oh! of course!
it takes a long time for an exceptional person to be made.
isn't that perfect? it takes a long time for an exceptional person to be made.
and natalie and i, we both want to be exceptional. and so yes, it may take a little bit longer.
and the flip side of that? an easy path does not make for exceptional people.
exceptional people are forged by the hard and the difficult and the sad.
which is to say the hard and the difficult and the sad are all great gifts.
and perhaps this may be simplistic, but makes it all a bit more bearable--provides perspective.
it took a long time for that delicate arch to be made.
and it took a long time for me to reach it at the age of twelve.
but good lord was it worth the wait.
it takes a long time for an exceptional person to be made. indeed.
things i wish someone had told me a really long while ago
in finding love
1. on that moment someone says to you it'll come when you least expect it:
(or, another favorite, when you stop looking).
these expressions are the equivalent of someone saying it'll be in the last place you look, when you've lost something.
which is to say, correct. but also asinine.
of course it's the last place you look. which might also be the first, and how can both those things be true? it might also be the second place you look or the four-hundred-and-sixty-third place. there's no telling.
2. when someone asks why you didn't like a particular man who had great affection for you, your response need be nothing more than a simple because.
because. period.
one word.
that response is wholly enough. affection given freely (which is the only way it can be given) does not mean you must reward it or reciprocate it. hell, you don't even have to be flattered by it.
but if that word alone does not suffice, how about this: because i didn't.
because because.
because i didn't like his laugh and i didn't like his smell. because at the end of our third date my only thought was please don't let this man kiss me, please don't let him touch me. the body knows. it always knows. and it'll tell you. but you have to listen.
a man's affection (or rather, any romantic partner's affection) is a starting point. a fork in the road. the absolute minimum of what must be expected. and if you choose to walk in the other direction, so be it. a man's affection is not a life raft, nor is it a fainting couch on which to collapse. to accept or not is your choice. and you need not explain that to anyone.
3. sometimes you just need someone to pass the lonely with.
and that is okay.
affection can be real and true and good and going absolutely nowhere.
some men will highlight your loneliness. draw attention to it, make it worse. their hand on your knee a distancing thing. and some men will raze that loneliness with a single glance. these are the men who will reveal themselves as home in the span of a night--in the length of time it takes to drink a glass of wine. these are the men who you will move mountains for--they are rare and remarkable and between the two of you a sort of alchemy takes flight.
and then there are the men who you want to kiss--the men you want to adore, but will never fall in love with. so kiss them. and go to breakfast with them. let them buy you dinner. take them to the movies and ruin summers with them.
people speak in directives about love. love entirely or not at all. take the whole of it or none of it. nothing in between.
but the thing is, sometimes the in-between is really good. it is something-else-entirely and sometimes something-else-entirely is entirely right. for a time, it is entirely right. rich and fertile practice ground. a meaningful passing of the time.
sometimes something-else is the comfort of a man’s arm wrapped around you—the immediacy of its warmth and touch, but nothing else. it is not home and it is not the promise of home. but it is nonetheless healing and restorative. and it is your choice.
and that's okay.
man, i wish someone had told me it was okay a good long while ago.
you do not have to live your life according to the prevailing opinions about love and making a life. you have only to be ruthlessly honest with yourself about what it is you want and what it is you'll accept one-day-at-a-time.