Dear self: we are who we are.

Pop, by Carlee 2013

My father inherited his paper collecting / memory hoarding from my grandmother, and I have, in turn, inherited it from him.  Memory hoarding is a McManus legacy.   One major component to memory hoarding is the keeping of papers.  Many kinds of papers.  School papers, news articles, cartoons, bills, and most importantly, letters.  Saving letters is something that a lot of people do, including my father and I.  If ever anyone wants to publish the notes passed back and forth in my high school years, I have them all.  It would likely make a boring and hard to understand book.

Anyway, the point is that when my father comes to stay with me he brings some of his boxes of papers, and occasionally sifts through them, like he did this morning.  What he found was a four page letter I typed to him in the spring of 2006, when I was 22 and still in college.  Attached to it was his hand written response, which neither of us is sure he ever sent to me.  He brought this finding up to me during lunch while we were eating cheeseburgers (if I was concerned about judgments on our health I would say this is a rare occurrence, but the truth is that the cheeseburger thing happens all the time).  He told me he re-read them and laughed and it made him feel happy.  He told me it was interesting the things that we talked about in that correspondence, and how we are still talking about many of those things today.  Before he went to go buy stamps he brought the letters to me and told me I should read them.

Because I'm mostly interested in how great slash terrible of a writer I was, I started with my letter.  I read about three sentences, started to cry, scanned the rest of the letter and cried some more.  Likely this fact surprises no one. I cry often.  We all get it: I have feelings.  But what made me cry on this occasion was the surprise I felt over what was said.  My father was right.  We have the same conversations today that we were having eight years ago.

Not only are we discussing the same things, but my revelations/feelings/struggles/social commentary is almost to-the-letter the same.  The EXACT same, you guys.

--I love Bruce Hornsby and that maybe isn't very cool, but I don't care who knows it.  Bruce Hornsby is great!
--Tried exercising a couple of times.  Maybe I finally like it now.  I think I will start being a person who exercises!
--I don't understand what kind of performer I am, what kind I'm supposed to be, or what kind I want to be.
--Discovering your parents are just regular people who don't have the answers to everything is hard.
--Adulthood is mysterious and weird and hard.
--Death is terrifying and grieving the loss of people you love is hard.
--I can never fall asleep.  Sleeping is hard.
--Trying to spend time by myself and enjoy it. I feel like I'm missing out on things, so it's hard.
--Change is hard, even when it's right.
--Fleetwood Mac and Ryan Adams blah blah blah.
--Dogs.

It's been almost a decade and I am STILL making declarations about how I love Bruce Hornsby.  Still.  Time to put that one to bed.

What was surprising was not only that the subject matter is still relevant, but that the "discoveries" I seem to have as the years go by are essentially the same discovery over and over again.  I am STILL trying to figure out how to enjoy exercising and every time I do it once or twice I'm like "maybe now is the time!".  I am STILL processing that parents are flawed humans just like everyone else and there is no such thing as "having all the answers".  I am still blown away, everyday, by something about growing up.  I am still battling with sleep and hoping for change.  I am still working through the labyrinth of death and loss and mortality and will likely be forever. And on and on and on.  You get it.  I am still obsessed with dogs, y'all.

I suppose I could feel disappointed that I have continued to learn about the same things in new ways over the last decade.  I could feel like my life is a boring mass of the same issues I just can't figure out and NOBODY LIKES RYAN ADAMS ANYMORE, CARLEE.  I could feel like a loser for not moving on yet.

But in fact, I feel a little impressed.  That after all this time I have been on a more focused journey than I realized.  That I have questions and obstacles and passions, and those things are parts of who I am, not just something I invented last week.  That I have changed so much but am still so much the same.  I am who I am but I am different.  That I guess there is a story I am telling with my life, and the memory hoarding proves it.  Also, ancillary bonus, I am a better writer--less enthusiastic but better.

In my father's response was the reflection of the man he is today.  The same passions, questions, obstacles, declarations of purpose, votes of confidence in his daughter.  The same use of exclamation points.  The same genuine expression of who he is that I have never witnessed anywhere else.  Two people being honest with each other and saving it for later, not because it will matter to anyone else but because it's who we are.

And maybe all of this is just to say I guess we are who we are.  We are just in ourselves, whether we realize it or not.  Odds are I came to this conclusion last month, last year, three years ago, and so on.  Which only proves the point that we are always who we are, doing what we do, learning what we need to learn, telling the story we are here to tell, eating cheeseburgers with our fathers.

**Update: when my dad came back from his journey to buy stamps he asked "did you get a chance to look at these?".  "Yes," I said, "It's crazy.  I'm writing about it right now." "Isn't that something?" he remarked, "Having the same conversations after all these years? It's like, we are who we are." "That's what my post is called!" "No WAY!!!" he exclaimed.  And then we both laughed, because, well, there it is.

Carlee, by Pop 2013

Dear Carlee: a letter to my 15 year old self

Dear Carlee,

Now you are 30.

The first thing you need to know is that we didn't do it.  

Take a look at the list you've been making of all the things you plan on doing by the time you're an adult--say 30 years old--and try to understand right away that almost none of those things have gotten done.  Really hardly anything.  

I know.  It's disappointing.  You are upset.  And I'm sorry.  But I'm only sorry because it's painful for you and you are feeling hurt.  I am not sorry because I think I did anything wrong or because I have any regrets.  I don't.  

Listen, when you started making these plans for us I know that you really thought it out.  You had the best intentions and I know how confidant you felt that we could do it.  I don't think you were wrong.  A lot of things have happened between then and now, and we never could have planned for them, and being a little farther along than you I have to say that a very large part of life is bending to change, finding yourself, and embracing that the journey is a million little steps in a dozen different directions, not bullet points on a to-do list.  We've been really busy.  We haven't forgotten the goals you set, and we haven't given up, and we haven't decided they don't matter.  Not at all.  Carlee, we are trying to live life on life's terms.  The list you made was made on your terms, and that is a wonderful thing about it--that you were independent and strong enough to know exactly what you wanted and you reaffirmed that for yourself everyday.  I love that about you, I honor that about you.  You made those plans for us when you were safely inside a construct where the future meant nothing but what you imagined it to be, and that list in that time and place was the perfect thing for you to be creating.  But it cannot be our road map.  And I think part of why it is so painful for you to hear that we have not followed your road map is that for the last 15 years I have let that be the control in how we view our success.  And that is my fault.  Carlee, your plans for our success are useful reminders and motivation, but they are not healthy measurements for how well we are doing.  Unfortunately, today I am going to have to burn our list.

So here is some disappointment:

We have not starred in any feature films.  We have not had our own television show.  Sorry, we haven't even had a guest role on a television show.  We don't have anything published.  No one has made our movies, read our stories, or done our plays.  We have not had tours, reading our works for thousands of people whom we have inspired.  We don't have a rap career.  We aren't rich.  We don't own couture shoes or diamonds or a new car.  We aren't even a little well to do.  We don't vacation.  We don't have children.  We aren't married to Leonardo DiCaprio or Ryan Gosling or Matthew Lillard.  We aren't married at all.  We have not won a single award for our performance abilities.  That also means we haven't won an Oscar.  No accolades for writing, either. We aren't a member of a successful theater group.  We aren't on Saturday Night Live.  We have never done stand up comedy.  No one interviews us about our opinions on things.  We do not get VIP seating at shows.  We are not friends with Ani DiFranco.  We have not bought our parents their retirement homes.  We don't own vacation properties or a ranch in Montana.  We don't live in LA with "a little place" in New York.  We have no tangible way to prove we are helping to change the world in a positive way.  

Did I get it all? Have I missed anything? Look over it one more time.  Not one of those things has gotten done by a benchmark you so faithfully believed was far enough away that there was ample time.   So that's some bad news.  On top of which you can add: we still have acne and a jiggly belly, we suck at doing laundry and keeping things tidy, we have debt, we run late, we sleep poorly, we still have a "day job", we live in the city we grew up in, and sometimes we still feel afraid and uncertain.

But there is good news:

We have friends--actually enough people like us that there are friends we go for years without seeing but still love very much.  We are decent looking (for a while there in our mid twenties we were not feeling so certain it would work out this well).  We have dogs.  TWO dogs.  Remember how voraciously we anticipated the day we could get a dog? We went to college and it was the one we wanted and we graduated.  Our voice is in a museum.  We sing in front of other people and sometimes they seem to really like it.  We have a career, ok? We HAVE a career.  It doesn't look the way you thought it would, but I've worked really hard at it and I'm proud of it so I'd appreciate if you didn't judge our progress on that too harshly.  We are a working actor.  What you didn't quite know yet was how much "working" and how little glamour was involved.  We've kept writing and we are trying to figure that out but it's a lot harder to navigate than "writing then publishing" something, so it's taking some time.  We are healthy.  Actually, the healthiest we've ever been.  We have a healthy relationship.  The kind that you were always really hoping for but feared didn't exist?  We have that.  And he's really good looking and funny, so don't worry.  We also love ourself.  I know you don't want to hear about how hard that was to work through and you think it's a little embarrassing to share, but I have done a lot of work to get us to a place of actually enjoying who we are and believing we are ok, so just take a moment and appreciate that.  We bought a house.  We bought it with our non-celebrity handsome-man-partner and we make payments on it every month.  We have health insurance.  We have a job where we have responsibility and we feel fulfilled.  We own just a ton of clothes (more than even you imagined).  

And the best news of all:

It gets better.  We feel inspired and touched and moved all of the time.  We can openly admit that we are sensitive and that is ok--great, even.  We don't feel quite so overwhelmed by the pressure to always do the right thing.  We are available  to other people in a way not even you knew was possible because now we are also available to ourself.  We accept rejection as a daily part of what we have chosen to do, and not as a measurement of our worth.  We take more chances.  We treat ourself kindly; with compassion; with forgiveness.  We spend time alone.  We help other people and we allow them to help us.  We are a lot happier now, doing a million little steps in a dozen directions, than you are at 15 feeling so overwhelmed and anxious by all the things you are supposed to achieve.  We are excited to get older, and to see what happens next.

Let me leave you with this: Life is not a movie.  I've tried--like, really tried--and it just doesn't go that way.  Life is unceremonious change and disappointment and surprise and changing your mind and crying on the bus and trusting yourself and being present and unfiltered joy and weddings and funerals and babies being born and always learning.  Life is a journey.  You know that Dan Eldon book you are obsessed with?  The one that says "the journey is the destination"? That's true.  We are doing it right now.  We are doing it, Carlee.

So.  I know you are determined.  And I love you.  Stay determined.  I know I will.

It's been really wonderful getting to know you.  

I'm making a new list.  And it's full of things you don't really understand yet.  But when you get here, you will.

Love,

Carlee

Dear Growing Pains and Some Kind of Destiny

*Edit: I wrote this about six weeks ago.  The moment has passed, but it's still important.*

following my destiny all the way to portland

My horoscope rocked me the way something does when it tells you exactly what you are thinking.  It said things are changing.  And I knew that.  And I know that.

Things are changing.  And a lot of those changes I can see and they are healthy and small and tangible.  And some things are changing and I don't know what they are or how deep inside me they are or if they are about me at all.  I feel like I am stuck in the middle of a stoned moment, where I am super high and I am slumped, slack-jawed in awe of the whole mystery and beauty and tragedy of life.  But I'm not stoned.  I don't do that.  That isn't what's happening.  What's happening is that I am totally sober, standing, slouched, slack-jawed in awe of some sort of bigger mystery that I can't understand or put a name to except that it's just life and that I am simultaneously being blown away and swallowed up by LIFE.  This is a weird trip.
Tonight, while wandering through my job, I surmised it thus: It's like life is a jigsaw puzzle, and we are each just a tiny piece in this giant thing.  And sometimes you have to think about what kind of piece you want to be.
That is not the best simile of my career, I can say for certain, but it is truly the only way I can explain to someone what the hell is happening right now.  I feel like a minuscule puzzle piece and I am thinking about what kind of piece to be.  Or what kind of piece I am, and weather or not I like that.  Maybe I should do a fucking puzzle right now.  Maybe that would level me out.

I find myself saying a lot lately "I wish that what I wanted in life was to be a mother.  Because then it would feel so much easier to reach my goals and feel happy with my success."  Being a parent is something that I understand the path to get to.  It's a perceptible job that takes certain requirements and produces really concrete results.  The same could be said for many other jobs in the world.  Police officer, teacher (why couldn't I have just wanted to be a teacher?!?!!), plumber.  You go through the process of obtaining credentials and licenses for your position, then you get the position, then you spend your life working hard at being really good at it.   It's a thing that has safety and predictability and a universal point where you can breathe a sigh of relief and assure yourself "yes.  I do this now.".  So lately I find myself longing for a career in life that has that concrete sigh of relief in it somewhere.  Because lately I am really feeling how high the chances are I may never get to do that.  My career comes with no universal benchmarks, points of plateau, safety zones, or tangible mile markers.  My career is a sloppy, desperate, compromising, always about to change, one-million K race.

And it is tiring and terrifying.  Most people in my career have "jobs" to supplement their careers FOREVER.  Until they die or are too old to work.  Are you kidding me? Forever?  I like being a bartender and I love my job, but having a job and a career 7 days a week exhausts me.  I feel like I can never take a break.  Like I've never earned one.  And truthfully, I haven't in a way.  Until my career IS my job there is a lot of work to be done.  I can't stop.  And while I am very proud of my accomplishments to date I cannot say that the things I have achieved in my "career" warrent, for me, any sort of pee-break or reprieve from the work.  I just haven't done very much.  And I know, if we want to get really honest, that what I actually accomplish day-to-day does not at all measure up to the amount of pressure I put on myself.  I haven't done very much in general, and I don't do as much as I could moment to moment.  And I don't know why.  That has me very confused.  I feel like I am wasting my own time and giving myself ulcers for no reason.  That's stupid.

Here's the thing: my entire life I have known what I wanted to do.  My entire life.  Since I was too young to know what a career was.  I have never once in the almost 30 years I have been alive changed my mind about what I had to do with my life.  And that's a lot of pressure to put on a person.

Right now I really don't know the difference between following my destiny, and being an adult idiot who is rigidly chasing the daydreams of a 3 year old.  What's the difference?  Is this my destiny or have I been too stubborn to allow myself to come up with new dreams? What the fuck is destiny anyway?  Are you there God, it's me, the plot to a 90's coming of age Rosie O'Donell movie.

I have always wanted to do the same things in my life.  Be a performer, a writer, and to help people.  I always thought that meant that I wanted to be an actor and a writer and that I would help people with the power of my art.  (Intermission for laughter)  But what I am, right now, today, is a person who does radio commercials, writes a blog no one reads, and gives advice to drunk people sitting at my bar.  My dad thinks I am a huge success but he's the only one! Shhh!  No one tell him!

So, this all begs the question: what's my perception of success?  Well, this is the part where things get really messy for me, because in weaving my intricate life dreams I felt that to be successful and, thereby, happy, I had to be famous.  Success equaled fame, and fame meant reaching as many people as possible. Yes, reaching them with the healing power of my art. Thousands, maybe millions of people.  Why?  I don't know.  It just always felt like the right thing.  Success, fame and happiness are all pretty much the same thing and achieving them was the only way to fulfill my life's purpose.  No problem.  Totally doable.  PSYCHE.  What a boner.  I really set myself up there.  Even as a more adjusted adult I can look at the goal of being a popular performer/writer as a nice thing to dream for but not the "thing" to work toward and yet I can't change my mind about it.  It's what I want.  Plenty of people in my field build manageable relationships with their crafts that don't pit them against ultimate success on a daily basis.  But not me.  No.  I have to find myself weeping while I stuff a bag of tea into a pot on Thursday night to realize my dreams are wearing me the fuck out.  If I'm not Philip Seymour Hoffman, I'm a failure.  That's a healthy way to live.

Everyday that I'm not doing something important and helpful and amazing I feel like I'm failing.  And so I can never congratulate myself for being a good friend, a hard worker, or a talented person and just relax about if for a minute. I can never sit back and trust that by the end of the year maybe my commercial will lead to a bit part in a movie somewhere (barfing while laughing) because I know I'm working really hard.  Or that I'll try to publish something I've written and maybe it will work.  Or that therapists will ask me to come speak at their conventions because I love talking to people about their feelings SO much. It just isn't like that for me.  It's hard to trust in something that is so uncertain. But if it's my destiny and I really believe that then it shouldn't be hard to keep blithely plugging away at it.  And if it's not my destiny, and I don't like the kind of puzzle piece I'm being right now, then I should decide to be a different kind of puzzle piece.  Wait.  What are we even talking about anymore?

And that's about where I'm at.  I don't even know how to think about what I'm thinking about.
I am not where I want to be in my life.  That will either change if I keep working at what I have started, or I decide to do something else.  But something has to change.  I feel that things are changing.  I just don't know what or how.  I only hope one day I can look back to my 3 year old self and tell her everything turned out just fine.

came back, time for a nap