#reverb10 – December 26

December 26 – Soul Food What did you eat this year that you will never forget? What went into your mouth & touched your soul? (Author: Elise Marie Collins)

Chicken livers.  The first time.  A friend in my choir invited me to join she and her friends at Southern Accent after a performance.  I’d never been before and I was skeptical when everyone raved about how I needed to try the chicken livers.  “Liver” and “good” are terms I generally consider mutually exclusive.  But not this time.  They were to die for.  To.  Die.  For.  The first time.

I have dinner with three of my girlfriends two or three times a year and I thought, we’ve got to go back to Southern Accent and have those chicken livers.  I suspect they were garnished differently than they were on my first try, though I can’t be sure of it, but they just didn’t speak to me this time around.  This is not to say that you shouldn’t go to Southern Accent–the restaurant is fantastic and the food is great.  You should even try the chicken livers at least once.  But I just wasn’t bowled over this time.  I didn’t even finish them.

This reminds of me the first time I had ceviche.  I nearly fell down.  I thought an atomic bomb had gone off in my mouth, it was so good.  And every time I’ve had it afterward, it’s been good, but not as good as the first time.  Creme brulee has also been a case of diminishing returns.  Dark chocolate with almonds has slowly become ho hum.

It’s dawned on me that novel foods lose their novelty as soon as you’ve had them and then they just become regular foods that cost you more.   Soul foods though–they are the ones you can eat over and over and over again, and while they’re never a culinary atomic bomb, they do soothe your soul.

My soul foods are much more mundane:  that one brand of caprese sausage that I have to have in my fridge at all costs; 4-year old cheddar; movie theatre popcorn; A&W Baby burgers with cheese; french toast; bacon, eggs and home fries; BLTs; chicken souvlaki on a pita; grilled cheese sandwiches on white with bacon; perogies and bacon with sour cream; a good Caesar salad with real anchovies and lots of garlic; my own chili; heart-burn inducing Domino’s pizza; the chicken club at Ace Bakery; Max’s Market chicken enchilladas and bean dip; kalbi beef ribs; vermicelli and pork at my favorite Pho restaurant; cherry pie; frozen President’s Choice spanakopita; my sister’s Christmas turkey, stuffing and roasted vegetables (which I will enjoy two to three times daily for the next week–oh how I love leftovers).

I could go on and on and on and on.  These are not the foods that bowl me over the first time I have them or ever, for that matter.  But they are the ones that make me fat because they absolutely do soothe my soul.  It’s nearly impossible for me to eat any of these things in moderation because of the sheer dopamine dump they cause in my brain.  I mellow right out and feel a sense of calm and happiness that kind of makes everything seem OK.  These are foods that touch my soul any day of the year.

#reverb10 – December 25

December 25 – Photo – a present to yourself Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. Share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you. (Author: Tracey Clark)

So this was taken at my birthday dinner earlier this year and I can’t be sure, but I think it was taken by my sister.  But the picture was a ruse.  One of the girls had pointed out someone interesting in the restaurant and she wanted the rest of us to get a look without being obvious.  So my sister took the picture of us to sort of divert attention from our gawking.

What I like about this picture is that I love my lips in it.  I’ve had a long, love/hate relationship with my lips.  I grew up being the only minority in my school for years at a time and one thing that I came to be ashamed of really quickly were my lips.  One of my siblings used to constantly tell me to make them look smaller by basically tucking them in my mouth.

It took me until well into my late twenties to have any appreciation for my lips at all.  And the fact that I can look at my lips in a picture for which I did not pose and really like them a lot, gives me hope that I can learn to love the rest of me that way too.

Merry Christmas!

#reverb10 – December 24

December 24 Prompt – Everything’s OK What was the best moment that could serve as proof that everything is going to be alright? And how will you incorporate that discovery into the year ahead? (Author: Kate Inglis)

For some reason I’m staying up stupid late to catch up on all these prompts.  Right now it seems really important to not have to think about reverberations of any kind again until Boxing Day.  Don’t ask me why this is important–it just is.

So yesterday’s prompt.  I’ve been thinking for a while now that I wanted to bust my way down from weekly sessions with my therapist to biweekly appointments.  I even put this in my list of 11 things I wanted to do in 2011.  Well, I managed to fit it into 2010.  I gathered up my courage after a weekend of risks taken, and told her what I thought.  And it was fine.  It was more than fine.  She’d been thinking the same thing.

I know I’m the employer when it comes to therapy; I’m the one in charge.  But it doesn’t make it any easier for me to stop thinking of my therapist as the authority in the situation.  So it was scary and risky for me to bring this up.  It turned out be so easy though, that I thought to myself “maybe there are a lot more risks that are this easy in the end; maybe there are a lot of goals that aren’t as difficult to achieve as I think they are.”

I don’t fundamentally believe that it’ll all be OK.  I’m really, really scared that it won’t be, in fact.  But I will keep trying to at least act like it will be, taking the necessary risks and chances that might lead me to that belief.

#reverb10 – December 23

December 23 – New Name Let’s meet again, for the first time. If you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why? (Author: Becca Wilcott)

Am I allowed to admit a little #reverb10 exhaustion?  Can I say that seeing all those future tools attached to each prompt from here on in is actually just overwhelming for me?  Is it kosher for me to say that reading all those different ways and means of planning the next year of my life (seemingly to death) just makes me tired?  Or am I just supposed to blame it on having so many late nights this week?

The last prompt didn’t exactly speak to me but I worked it through anyway.  And I suppose it was a cool writing exercise but it was information I kind of already had so…I dunno.  It didn’t do a lot for me.  And as for today’s prompt, I have no desire to move through life with another name.  It took me a long time to accept the one I have and now it’s an integral part of me.  I have no wish to entertain the idea of being someone else.  I’m trying to get comfortable with being me.

And then there are these future tools.  I’ve just watched part of the video that is the December 25th future tool, featuring Mike Dooley and I’m just bugged.  I think it’s such an arrogant and out of touch idea that we can just think our preferred existence into being.  It utterly silences the legitimate suffering of so many people.  And I don’t say that as an excuse for my own lack of achievement–I think that’s mostly about my fear and unwillingness to risk one thing for another.  But to pretend that there are not people who simply have fewer options, who suffer not because they won’t think their fucking way out of it, but because they are not in position to actually change their circumstances on their own, is just wrong.  It denies the existence of people who are in a certain place entirely because of the actions of others.  And frankly Jesus (for fuck sakes it’s Jesus Christ, not JC) didn’t say life was easy or that we just had to think our way into what we wanted.  He said the way was narrow and he said we should bring our burdens to him because the assumption was that we had them.  He said our great reward would be in heaven–not here on earth.  While there are shared ideas, conflating the teachings of Buddha and Jesus and Plato as if they are completely the same is both idiotic and incorrect.

This way of thinking also begs the question–does this dude actually think all the good that comes into our lives is because of our own influence?  That no one has ever been lucky?  What an amazing lack of humility.

So in closing, I’m annoyed by Mike Dooley and I’m sticking with my name.

#reverb10 – December 22

December 22 – Travel How did you travel in 2010? How and/or where would you like to travel next year? (Author: Tara Hunt)

*How* did I travel is such an apt question.  The first trip I took this year was utterly hit and miss.  This was my third trip to Cuba so I knew the drill by now:  the food is going to be bad, bring your own toilet paper, change plenty of money for tips, and then just lay back and enjoy the sun.  But we got unlucky and and picked a resort with breathtakingly bad service.  When we got on the plane to come home we were thrilled to hear the Canadian pilot apologize for the weather.  Thrilled to hear someone take responsibility for something even if it was something that person had no control over (I love Canadians).

I seriously wonder if I’ll ever set foot in Cuba again.  That one bad experience seemed to somehow nullify the two reasonable ones I had before it.

That was April.  In August I took a 2 hour bus ride to north-ish Ontario and stayed at a B&B for two days.  It was almost beyond words how wonderful those two days were.  I read and slept.  I swam in the lake which was tranquil and warm (unlike frigid Lake Ontario at that time of year).  I ate enormous breakfasts and shared comfortable silences with the proprietor (and then forced her to watch Fringe with me).  It’s been a long time since I’ve come back from any time away so relaxed.  It was the first time in a long while that a vacation had it’s intended result.

I didn’t spend a lot of money or effort to go there.  It was less impressive than getting on a plane and setting down in a tropical environment.  But *how* I traveled on that trip was the way I always want to travel.  With peace and calm.  In this coming year I don’t want to travel to hustle and bustle and bright lights and big city.  Take me, instead, to peace and quiet and stillness.

#reverb10 – December 21

December 21 – Future Self. Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (Bonus: Write a note to yourself 10 years ago. What would you tell your younger self?) (Author: Jenny Blake)

A brief message from me in five years, to me now:

Do not, do not, DO NOT keep doing things that make you unhappy because they are comfortable and familiar.

Do make as many mistakes as you have to in order to find your bliss, and don’t sweat those mistakes.  You don’t know what you don’t know until you know it.

Hang in there with the hard stuff–it will get easier.  It will start to become second nature if you give it a chance to take root.  You’ve allowed long experiments with things you hate, so be prepared to allow as much time for the things that might make you happy to work out.

Don’t settle.  Settling is time taken up with something that’s a 6/10 when a 9/10 is out there waiting for you.  Trust that the better thing is out there.  Remember the lesson of the Mirage* bar.

An even briefer message from me now to me 10 years ago:

Stop.  Stop what you are doing immediately.  Get out.  Don’t do it anymore.  Get as far away from this place as you can and start over.  Go find a new job, new friends, new everything.  This is the scariest prospect ever but it will be the best decision you’ll ever make.

Where the hell was I when I needed me 10 years ago?

*The lesson of the Mirage bar is this:  I have a friend who has long loved the Aero candy bar.  But he’d never had a Mirage bar.  He’d never even heard of it.  Then he had one and realized he liked it even more than the Aero.  The lesson we took from it, is that a lot of the time you’re not even aware of the thing that’s out there that could make you happier–but you have to be willing to try something new to ever find that out.  You have to be willing to maybe let go of what you have now to get what makes you really happy.

#reverb10 – December 20

December 20 – Beyond Avoidance What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?) (Author: Jake Nickell)

Being a person who is, by nature, risk averse, the shorter question might be what did I actually *not* avoid doing this past year?  It seems there were innumerable opportunities to take on things that I avoided instead.  But there are three biguns that I regret the most:  not getting a new job, not writing with a purpose, and not living more mindfully.

If you’ve known me for more than 6 or 7 years you’ve heard me bitch about my job at least once.  Probably several times.  Things have been especially trying in the past three years and almost unbearable in the past six months (though ironically it’s in this time that I’ve gotten along best with my co-workers–perceived assholery on the part of management has a way of fostering unity). It’s been pretty clear to me for a long time that this job was just not cutting it, and yet, I’m cruising into my 13th year with the company.  It horrifies me that I haven’t made a change and yet the situation persists.  I apply for jobs and sometimes I apply for a whole boat load of them and then I get discouraged at the lack of response and stop looking.  I revert to simply lamenting.

Then there’s the writing.  I’ve made little forays but I never seem to hunker down and just keep writing.  I allowed one comment from one person about a piece I wrote earlier this year to knock the wind out of my sails so effectively that I’ve barely written anything of substance since.

And then there’s living more mindfully.  I’ve been on Weight Watchers enough times to know now that I need to deal with the root of my compulsive overeating if I want to put a stop to it permanently.  And when I’m dealing with my emotional state, I don’t overeat.  There’s no reason to.  But when I get lazy, and instead of sitting through the hard work of facing whatever is eating me, choose to eat my way through it, it never gets fixed.  There are plenty of other reasons to get my emotional house in order, but that’s the most obvious one.

I think what bites about these three things is that it’s not like I’ve made no effort towards them.  I’ve just not made enough of an effort.  I can’t pretend that it’s a lack of time–I have enough of it.  I know I have an issue with switching gears too quickly when something isn’t yielding the results I want–so there’s impatience.  But then there’s just, I guess, the total fear that nothing will come of my efforts, rendering them pretty pointless.  There is the risk that these things won’t work out and it’s the lack of a guarantee that holds me back.  But at this point, I just don’t think I have the luxury of holding out for guarantees anymore.  Ultimately I have to risk real, spectacular failure, in return for just the possibility of success.

#reverb10 – December 19

December 19 – Healing. What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011? (Author: Leonie Allan)

I’m still working at facing grief head on and healing through the searing but thorough pain that my therapist tells me will do the job.  Instead, I have waited for the slow drip of time to heal me in all things.  I’ve waited for the scar tissue that only time can provide, to cover over the biggest hurts with its tough, protective coating.

In the coming year I’m hoping that I’ll stop feeling so invisible; that the sense of being sort of translucent and unseen will stop feeling so chronic.  I’d like to grieve this feeling that has been with me for so long, having finally recognized it for what it is–and then I’d like to be done with it.  I’d like to have a “Sister, thou art healed!” moment and move on to some other pain already.

#reverb10 – December 18

December 18 – Try What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did / didn’t go for it? (Author: Kaileen Elise)

I’m going to answer the second question first.  One of the things wanted to try and I really went for this past year was recording a demo.  Here’s what I remember most vividly about the experience:

• rehearsing for weeks and weeks and weeks
• having massive fights with both of the musicians I tried to work with and the sheer amount of emotional drama around both of these people
• not budgeting enough money for the project and feeling utter dismay at what I did pay in the end
• realizing I’d bitten off more than I could chew or even properly get into my mouth
• having the musician who did help out basically declare the effort sub-par in the end
• the anti-climax of finishing the demo and really having absolutely nothing come of it apart from the accolades of people who already love me

I could easily regret the entire experience of doing the demo.  It was a huge drain emotionally and it was no drop in the bucket financially either.  I certainly learned why people tackle one song at a time in the recording process unless they are absolute pros or they are backed by a label.  I’m neither a pro nor was anyone else championing this cause.  But despite all the negatives, it was a massive learning experience.

The biggest lesson that I learned, is that there has to be follow through.  I got to the end of recording the demo and I think I was just so tired, and my plans afterward were so unclear, that things sort of ended there.  The drive and the motivation that got me through the recording process died off in the face of such vague plans for the actual finished product.  And so the demo has basically sat, fallow and useless, for about nine months.

So to answer the first question in the prompt:  this year I’d like to try following through.  I’d like to not have so many abortive experiences; something far too familiar to me.  For example:  get the demo done but have it produce none of the results I was looking for; write a short story but never make suggested edits or ever try to get it published; buy the supplies for a really cool visual art project and never actually do it; blog, but do so haphazardly and never market said blog.  I just have to try my hand at finishing something this year.  Going whole hog on any one thing.

Some of my problem is just lack of real planning.  I have ideas but I don’t think about the end goal all the time and so I get about half way into a project and lose the plot because it was never written in the first place.  I think I also get frightened that whatever project I”m working on is a waste of time and suddenly get swayed by the idea that there’s something else I need to be doing–so I switch gears.  The end result is that nothing gets finished–there is never a sense of accomplishment.  In addition, I never really know what’s working and what isn’t, because there’s never an end product to evaluate.

And it’s no small feat to start 20 projects, even if none of them ever get done.  It still takes time and energy and emotional output to keep starting things, so it’s not like I’m at least living a life of happy sloth.  I’m working my tail off to get almost nowhere.

I’m in danger of not following through as we speak.  I have many ideas in my head because I really want to see some things change in the coming year, but not a lot of concrete plans.  I haven’t settled on one or two tasks or focused on one or two goals.  So that’s what I’m going to do–I’m going to decide on a goal, plan the hell out of it and follow through.

#reverb10 – December 17

December 17 – Lesson Learned What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward? (Author: Tara Weaver)

I can be fearless.  Or at least I can fake it.  I have long felt that I was trapped by my fear of the unknown; my fear of instability.  I’ve realized this year that I can live a life that isn’t entirely driven by these things.   I’ve realized that it’s not nearly as scary as I thought it would be on the other side.  Going forward I will keep working on letting my desires, rather than my fears, motivate my decisions and actions.