All apologies

"Our thoughts are the most powerful tools we've got." Jen Sincero, whose work I adore, in You Are a Badass

Here's what happens when I make a mistake, like the one related to this article where I had the quote written three times in my notes correctly, but somehow still wrote "free trade" instead of "fair trade." I apologize, then do what I can to fix it, in this case, letting my editor know and updating my posts about it. But then where I go off the rails is not being able to let it go. In my head, it's not the mistake that's the mistake, it's me who's the mistake. It's all I can think about, and I feel awful for letting down both the publication I'm writing for and the person involved. Then from there I go to: I'm a bad writer, and therefore a bad person, I will never get another assignment from them again, what was I thinking trying to work on such a project, maybe I should just give up on all the other things I'm writing. Okay, maybe not quite that, but I do know that all day, until I finally addressed it directly with my boyfriend when I had to because I was freaking out.

I forget sometimes that mistakes are human, and that when I allow myself, I learn from my mistakes and work as hard as I can not to make the same ones over and over again. Yet there is still that underlying sense that the mistake mars not just whatever it was related to, but that it's this giant black mark on me, that it will stay with me through everything else I do. In this case, it's relatively minor and has now been fixed, but I've made more than my share of mistakes that I've then expanded because I could only see the mistake, taking up more than its fair share of space in my head. I worry it like a loose tooth that always stays on the verge of coming out but never does; it just teeters in that space between almost being gone but holding on.

I'm in the midst of trying to correct/amend/fix a many years long financial mistake and while it's wonderful to be addressing the problem, the fact that it's actually taking many months to even get to the part where I can start digging in to fixing it makes me, once again, feel like a failure, like I will never be rid of this problem and that that means that I shouldn't even bother trying. It's the inertia, and the tying of all my problems into one giant problem that seems to multiply until it overtakes everything else that's the real issue. Because even I'm smart enough to know that it's pretty much guaranteed that I'll keep on making mistakes of one kind or another until I do, but that what I do when faced with them is what matters. I could tell you that I was working too fast or had a cold or any other excuse, but I don't have one. It was an error, and what I can do to avoid such errors in the future is to very minutely go over everything before I turn it in.

If I'd been alone today, I likely would've simply obsessed over this and kept on feeling awful. Instead, I was able to talk to my boyfriend about the various mistakes that feel so overwhelming lately and help make a plan for how to deal with them in the future, how to tackle the ones still pending and, most challenging of all, how to let it go. Sometimes it's much easier for me to see my faults and flaws and fuckups, which feel myriad, than the fact that sometimes I do make mistakes and as long as they are not deliberate or mean-spirited, all I can do is try harder next time, and know that a mistake doesn't negate the other parts of my article or day or life or career.

I hadn't thought of this aspect when I read the chapter in You Are a Badass called "Forgive or Fester," because I was focused on where I have to forgive other people for their flaws rather than hold on to my anger at their misdeeds, but when she writes "Holding onto resentment is like taking poison and waiting for your enemies to die," that can be turned inward just as much as outward. I can't ever expect anyone else to forgive me for my mistakes and imperfections if I don't forgive myself first. The first step she suggests is to "find compassion," and elaborates: "Finding compassion for yourself or someone else who did something so so so so awful is like pulling a bullet out of your arm: You may kick and scream and hate it at first, but, in the long run, it's the only way to start the real healing." I gained a lot of wisdom from her book, but that chapter was perhaps the most eye-opening. It was a wakeup call saying, There is a better way. And now I feel like it's a double gift, because I can apply those actions to myself. I can take responsibility, apologize, recognize that I have no control over what happens after that, and move on and try to be as badass as I can on the next piece, and the next, and the next.

Or as Steve Tobak wrote at Inc.:

Don't wallow in it or lament what could have been. Just pick yourself up, gain whatever wisdom you can from the experience, accept it as the new reality, and go from there. You're still in the band. Play your next note.

Jen Sincero made me do it

I told you how big a fan I am of the forthcoming book You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero, but I wanted to share some ways it's influenced my thinking and actions recently.

1. Thursday night, I had just landed in Toronto, was in the depths of my cold's fogginess, and decided I wanted the kale salad at Lola's Kitchen. Somehow, in my haste, though I said Church Street when entering the taxi, I'd typed "College" on my phone so wound up having to take an extra long cab ride. When I realized we were going in the wrong direction, I lost it. I started crying. I was so mad at myself because I was tired and hungry and sick, and that meant I would miss the Feminist Porn Awards pre-party at Good for Her, which I then thought was a signal that my whole endeavor covering the awards would be a failure. I considered skipping dinner and going straight to the party, but instead, I went to the restaurant and had orange juice and watermelon juice and nachos and purple kale salad and was still a bit delirious when I got to that night's screening, but at a certain point I gave up on the idea of going to the party. I let it go. I realized I had to be in that moment, taking care of myself, in order to be present for the rest of the weekend.

2. Last year, an incident occurred in which I was asked to not attend an event. That's all you need to know for the purposes of this post, because what I want to talk about is my reaction. I was hurt, angry and upset, but instead of standing up for myself, I caved. I thought, This person is right, and I will do what is being asked, even though it went against my core values. Even though I didn't have any respect for that person before that moment and certainly didn't afterward. But because I caved, because I assumed that if that was being asked of me that that is what I deserved, I lost out. The upside is that, after I spent much too long agonizing about the unfairness of this situation, I realized that this didn't mean I didn't belong in that world at all, and that if I wanted to belong, all I had to do was invite myself. It's a free country, after all. So I did, and you know what? Just by virtue of showing up, I have been educated, enlightened and entertained by that world. I've gotten so much back from simply showing up, and all of it has served to validate me that I don't need anyone's permission, and that anyone who would seek to exclude me isn't someone I should waste even a millisecond on. So I stopped, and my life has been so much freer, mentally and in other ways, since I stopped caring. Putting my energy into the wrong places and people is a way to zap me of my strength, and I need every last ounce of it. This idea of letting go of your past to be a better person in the present and future is a key one in the book, and one I keep having to reapply and remind myself of its total truth.

3. I was at the coat check at the Feminist Porn Awards, and the cost was $2 Canadian. Someone in front of me only had U.S. currency and they were going to let her pay with that, but I had a $5 Canadian bill, so I just paid for her (and tipped the extra $1). I'm not saying this was a revolutionary act, but it made me feel good, and hopefully made her feel good, and it was inspired by reading Sincero and realizing that I can take action at this very moment to get to where I want to be. Not every action is huge and grand, but each is a building block, like weight lifting, where the smaller actions gradually come together and create a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

4. I am a creature of habit and love routines, which so often become ingrained to the point that when life throws up an obstacle I freak out. Like last night, when I went to get on the J train at JFK and found it closed for the weekend. I'm still recovering from a cold and pretty exhausted and was cursing myself and the MTA and wondering if I should turn around and take a cab. Instead, I got on the E train and discovered that I could take it to the G train, which is also near my home, and I got there in probably the same amount of time my normal route would've taken. I only let myself freak out for a few second, I didn't cry or throw a tantrum or feel like the world was against me. I just thought, so this is what it's like to be back in NYC, and got on the train, and had a seat the whole time, on both trains.

5. Today it was stating succinctly, and fully believing, "I can't afford travel unless I have a paid speaking gig attached to it." Because it's not just that the times I've done that I've wasted money; it's that I've put myself out as someone who doesn't deserve to get paid, and that means that gigs can get canceled at the drop of a hat, because there's no contract, because I haven't put it out into the universe that I'm a businesswoman and, while a creative soul, I need to make a living if I'm going to continue doing the work that I do. It means that when I spend money in ways that don't either further my business or add something as valuable as their price to my personal life, I am selling myself short, thereby enabling others to do so, because I haven't demanded more. This switch in thinking about money is going to be a long slot, but is one I am realizing that, if I ever want to be a parent, I need to enact immediately. Not just because I don't want to set a horrible precedent for my children around money, I want to be able to raise them in a way that affords me the time and energy to take care of them to the best of my abilities.

"You must have seen a different play" - some thoughts on opinions, difference, and what makes the world so beautiful

Last weekend, I went to a matinee of Tanya Barfield's play The Call at Playwrights Horizons. The crowd was, by my estimate, made up for 90% people over 60, with most of them closer to 70 or above. Judging from the chatter I heard, most had also seen the other play showing there now, Annie Baker's The Flick (elevator consensus: too long—I misread when it was playing so won't get a chance to see it this time around). Anyway, after the play was over, the woman sitting next to me turned to me and asked what I thought. "I liked it," I said. "You must have seen a different play," she said. She didn't say it in a mean or rude way, more a baffled way. I can't remember if she stayed for the Q&A with Barfield afterward, but that helped illuminate some aspects of the play for me. Now, I did like it, but learning that it's being rewritten with every performance also made me wonder what the final product might look like. It brought up some powerful issues about fertility, adoption, race, community, neighborliness, compassion, empathy, family. I thought it was definitely worth the $30, but probably my biggest revelation wasn't about the play itself but what my seat neighbor said to me.

Because isn't that what makes the world go round, ultimately? That we are all here on the same earth but can be in the very same space and experience things so utterly differently. This weekend I also watched Eyes Wide Shut, which I was expecting based on everything I'd heard to be a sexy movie. I was hoping to get some writing inspiration. Instead, I fear I will dream about the creepy masks. I kept falling asleep on and off and was grouchy, hopefully in an adorable way, though I am probably kidding myself on that front. My boyfriend kept saying we should watch the rest in the morning but I insisted on keeping it on, so I missed a few key plot points, but the next morning we talked about the movie, about how Kubrick died before the final edits, about its issues with the ratings board, about what the lack of actual sex in a movie ostensibly about desire meant.

That discussion meant a lot to me. I realized that most of my cultural consumption is of books; I have always been and probably always will be a bookworm. If I could change one thing about my reading habits it's that I'd like to read faster so I could read more. But because not everyone I know is as voracious a reader as I am, or reading the same things, I don't often get to have in-depth discussions about books. Maybe I should seek out a book club when I move. I found in both the theater talkback and our two-person movie critique that what I saw, and how I processed it, are just one part of the puzzle. That the watching and contemplating don't end when the movie or play ends.

Most of all, that we are all living on the same planet, sometimes in the same spaces, sometimes doing and seeing the same things, but that doesn't mean we come out of those equations the same. To me that's what makes the magic of connecting with people in a genuine way so magical—it doesn't happen with everyone. Just because, say, my friend is friends with someone, doesn't mean I'll get along with them. Just because you think someone's sexy doesn't mean I will. And that's not only okay, that's wonderful news because then we have things to discuss and ponder and maybe even, like my neighbor, shake our heads over. It made me realize that in my work I can't cater to anyone or expect everyone, or maybe even anyone, to like it. I just need to make sure I like it and, in the case of work I'm selling, make sure my editor(s) like it. And make sure it's something I can be proud of. And in the case of me, I also can start to edge away from the viciousness of my innate people pleasing ways. Pleasing everyone is a game I'm bound to lose, and maybe even pleasing anyone. Certainly trying to please anyone at my own expense. It's a fool's errand and I don't even know how much of my life I've spent playing and being that fool because it mattered so much to me. I thought that's who I was: what other people saw. I thought I should rewrite myself, redo myself, remove myself, hate myself, in accordance with their opinions.

What's funny is that Barfield told us she's been revising her play, 15-20 pages, approximately, with each performance. But not, I didn't get the impression, because other people didn't like it. Because, to perhaps stretch this metaphor, she got the call, in her own head. She listened, closely, minutely, and watched, and was free to experiment and change and try. I'm reading a book, You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, now that's blowing my mind, cracking it open, the kind of book that feels like it was written specifically to me because it's so true. It's not out another month or so, and I will be covering it way more extensively, but since it's so eerily spot on in so many areas of my life, including this post, I will share that author Jen Sincero advises us to "become aware of what you're gaining from your stories" and goes on to write: "We pretty much don't ever do anything that we don't benefit from in some way, be it in a healthy way or an unhealthy way. If you're perpetuating something dismal in your life because of some dopey story, there's definitely something about it that you're getting off on." Bingo! I know her book isn't literally written just for me, but that was me for so long it was eerie to read. I'm trying to live a different kind of life these days, to apply a better awareness of myself to my behavior, to not automatically believe that when someone else thinks something, they're right, by virtue of being them.

That's a lot easier than it sounds. My first, instantaneous, gut reaction will probably always be to believe that the woman next to me (literally her, and iterations of her) is right. It's much easier to be a follower than a leader. It's much easier to let everyone else be "right" than fight, internally and externally, for your opinions. It's much easier to assume everyone else is better educated and more knowledgeable so their opinions deserve more weight. But I'm over the false promise of "easy." That got me precisely nowhere with my life. I'm ready to tackle hard, to tackle discussion, debate, nuance. I'm ready to tell myself a new story, which might just be that I'm a badass. Tonight I'm covering and presenting an award at The Feminist Porn Awards. The latter happened by what also feels like magic, but really, was just a result of being me, the me who left law school with no safety net and didn't "decide to become an erotica writer" but, looking back, it seems, got a call to do so. The me that doesn't even watch all that much porn but feels a kinship with this community; the me that watched a short film set in New York and felt at home seeing a little bit of my home reflected back on the screen, even though I'm in another city, another country. There was a time when things like that would happen and I'd want to demur, and sometimes did. You don't want me, you want someone better/smarter/prettier/more organized/more perfect. I couldn't accept the wonders and miracles and happy surprises because I was so deep into my story about how wretched I was. When no one seemed to believe I was that wretched, I'd do things to make them see it. See? Now do you believe me? Look at all these fuckups, piled up like a car wreck, each one more catastrophic than the next. Now don't you think I'm wretched? But to echo what pretty much every self-help or spiritual book I've ever read says: No. I'm not wretched. I'm a person who's flawed and has made a lot of mistakes, but when I stop reminding myself of my wretchedness, I can appreciate glorious weeks like this one. I can accept those gifts from the universe given simply by being myself, that same flawed person, but one who accepts her flaws and doesn't let them sabotage her purpose.

It's also helped me realize that if my job is just to be me, I don't need to convince or beg or hope or wish anyone else thinks I'm a badass or a good writer or a good person or a good anything. Not my friends or family or boyfriend or exes or potential employers or my local baristas or strangers or God. Letting go of wanting everyone to like me is like peeling off layers of flaky skin after a sunburn; it doesn't hurt, exactly, since they shed and shed and shed. It's just that there are so many layers, a seemingly endless amount. When you want certain things for an entire lifetime, learning to unwant them is, yes, hard. But worth it, so so worth it. I can't wait to sit next to everyone and everyone and watch different plays. Together.