Life

May 2012

Let's review. Over Thanksgiving weekend, after taking nine flights in four months (including some long-haul international ones) my longtime dislike of flying turned into a full on, panic attack fueled phobia of flying. Fun times y'all. SUPER fun times for my husband when I couldn't get on our connecting flight in Phoenix, and we were going to Albuquerque. (Good came out of this even in the short term, by the way, least you think that good things do not grow from bad. We had a spur of the moment road trip over Thanksgiving. I took a round-the-whole-country book tour sponsored by Amtrak. I'd never give those things back in a million years.)

And then, also, I was finally "working on" or really, life was "working on me," helping me to tackle and start to solve my anxiety condition. (Onset: Quitting theatre and moving to San Francisco. Conclusion: Writing and publishing a book, having it do well. Take Away: Go figure.) But the one huge anxiety monster I had yet to wrestle was my enormous fear of flying. Damn it.

I joke a lot that I married David because, on some core level, he was always the person that could keep me driving forward. I am very good at seeing what I should probably do next (say: start a blog, write a book, take fear of flying training). And then I'm spectacularly bad at figuring out what the first step is and taking it. Why? Because once you take the first step, you're actually going to have to do something about it, so it's way easier to not figure it out. David has always been phenomenally good at wandering off, researching the first step for me, and then helping me do it. Always. He did this for me when we were platonic best friends, and he does it for me now after seven plus years together. Who set up the first blogger blog for APW? (David.) Who put in the first email to an agent we knew on the book? (David.) Who signed me up for a Fear of Flying course? (David.) Now, I don't say that to discount my own ambition and hard work in any way. Once the first step is taken, I then climb the mountain on my own (with cheering from the sidelines). But that first step. Help on the first step is worth its weight in gold. Look for that, always. Notice it. Value it.

So, after Thanksgiving's total melt down mid-air, David signed me up for a Fear of Flying Course, which, I frankly would have done just about anything to avoid. We enrolled in a course that involved eleven DVDs worth of training on everything from the psychology of fear, to how flying actually works, to visualization. And then I did a phone counseling session. And then I had to fly. Continue reading On Overcoming Fear of Flying

Posted in: Life, Marriage, Meg's Thoughts | 93 Comments »

May 2012

Reclaiming Wife: Moving (Forward)

This Saturday, I stood alone in our empty apartment. The movers and my husband had gone downstairs, and it was just me, the sunlight, and the dust. I stood in the apartment that was where we'd moved in together the first time (after moving across the country with everything we owned, combined for the first time, in a Ryder truck), where we'd come home the afternoon after getting engaged, where we'd woken up the day after our wedding. It was the apartment where we'd struggled with soul-sucking employment, law school, with unemployment, and where I'd written my first book. Echoing through my head was Edna St. Vincent Millay's line, "... but the rain/ Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh/ Upon the glass and listen for reply."

The ghosts coming out of those walls were painful, in a sometimes-you-don't-realize-how-hard-it-was-till-it's-over way. I was transfixed. Frozen to the floor. Listening. Then my husband came back and grabbed my hand and told me it was time to go. I hugged him, and we looked around, touched the walls where we'd spent half a decade of our lives. And then slowly, painfully, we walked out the door. We have the apartment for another week, and we'd talked about going back to do a final sweep up, but after the latch clicked shut, I said, "I can't go back. I can't leave again."

It's amazing how hard it is to change, even when you know you need to. Even when you know what you're headed for is probably much better. Even when the whispering ghosts are full of anxiety, misdirected dreams, and sadness. Still, they ask you to stay, to stay forever, and it's so hard to go.

We left. We visited the beach first, and then drove across the city, across the bridge, and thirty minutes later were at our new house (house!). It was fifteen degrees warmer, and we had a garden, a basement, and a house big enough that we could no longer chat away while in different rooms.

Then everyone left me alone again, sitting cross-legged in the new empty house, and for the first time in awhile, I felt real hope springing up. Hope, of course, mixed with fear. What ghosts would haunt us here? Happy ones? It was impossible to know. But that night, with all the boxes out of the truck, I felt rather surprisingly at home... perhaps more at home than I'd ever felt in San Francisco. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Moving (Forward)

Posted in: Life, Meg's Thoughts, Reclaiming Wife | 55 Comments »

Apr 2012

Entrepreneurship: After The Big

Today's my birthday. It's a quiet sort of birthday, a bit of an anticlimactic one after months of heady and exhausting action. And instead of going out to a bar with friends, or a fancy dinner like we might normally do, we're sneaking away for a few stolen hours of quiet in the mountains. It's been interesting to remind myself that this is good too. It's a different kind of good than getting drunk with fifteen of my dearest on juleps in New York City when I turned 24, or fancy dinner where we talked about the big year to come last year. But it's still damn good. Quietly good. Which is about where my life is right now.

It's strange, because the beginning of the year was so huge that I'm still getting used to trudging through the period of quiet after the (lovely) storm. When I got home from the book tour, of course I knew I needed to sleep for a week, and then catch up for, well, about a month. But then I had plans and projects! I figured I'd be back on my feet in five seconds, ready to knock out the next thing. (Have I mentioned that my work life tends to be lived at full tilt, in a super productive, never resting enough, mode?) Well, it turns out not so fast. First, life had other things in store. We were moving. I had business problems I had to solve. Nothing was going to happen right this second, APPARENTLY. The spring shaped up to be a very Slow And Steady Wins The Race around here, (which is not the kind of season that I'm naturally good at).

But then there was also my mind. It turns out it wasn't ready to dive into something big again right away. I would give it jobs to do, and it would just sit and stare and the screen, tapping its toe, thinking about nothing in particular.

I want to say that all this was easy for me, and I sorted it out right away, and I have a pat and wise solution for times when you are going through the same thing. But I've got nothing. (Literally nothing. I just had to pull myself back from staring out the window a second ago.) Continue reading Entrepreneurship: After The Big

Posted in: Entrepreneurship, Life, Meg's Thoughts, Uncategorized | 90 Comments »

Apr 2012

On Not Having It All (At Once)

We're moving. Not, mind you, moving very far. We're moving 18 miles and across a body of water, but we are moving out of our very first apartment together.

It goes something like this. When I got home from my book tour in February, I was ready for a change. Specifically, I thought it would be a very good idea to pack up everything we owned and move back to Brooklyn immediately, because I missed it, and because I was 110% sure that I couldn't take another goddamn summer of not seeing the sun for three months running. David thought this was a slightly less good idea. He had a job he said (details), he didn't miss Brooklyn with quite the consuming passion that I did, and he'd really gotten used to the non-horrible winters and relative nearness of family in California. I pouted (obviously). He suggested we try Oakland, the Brooklyn of the West and see how a 20-mile move worked for us before we tried a 3,000-mile move.

Ok FINE, HUSBAND.

So, of course, we spent the last two months looking for apartments, every single weekend. First, let me just mention that the rental market in the Bay Area is currently completely out of control. The city is being swept with Facebook money and one-billion-dollar Instagram deals (and sadly has become virtually unrecognizable when compared to the city of my childhood... and noticeably different than the city we moved to five years ago). And East Bay is being swept by foreclosures and speculators, which in turn have whipped the rental market into a frenzy. So even though we were ostensibly moving to the part of the Bay Area where we could get more space (because I also needed a damn desk, no more working on the kitchen table for me), we looked at more than our fair share of cramped basement apartments and two bedrooms where the second bedroom was actually a corner of the living room (surprise!), that all cost way more than our current, spacious, lovely, one bedroom. (Also, argument: if you take my one bedroom, and put a wall up to divide the bedroom into two, I'm probably not going to want to pay you $500 more a month.) And then. Just about the time I decided I didn't care anymore, and I could work on a kitchen table forever, we found our house.

That's right. I said HOUSE. (And no, we're not buying.) Suddenly, we stumbled on a free standing, lovely little house, with a front and back garden, in exactly the neighborhood we wanted to be in... for the same price as all those depressing tiny basement apartments. And then by some miracle, we got it. So we're moving early next month, and we'll have a vegetable garden, sun, rosebushes, and be closer to restaurants and cafes (and downtown San Francisco) than we currently are.

I'll tell you how it goes, because right now, I have no idea.

But here is what I do have a grip on: the last five years. I move very rarely. This will be the third home I've lived in since graduating college 10 years ago, because when I move, I stay put. So moving is always a huge opportunity for psychic cleaning for me. I go through all the scraps of paper I've collected while living in a home. I glance at notes I've scribbled down (unsurprisingly I keep a lot of notebooks). And this year, I decided to take on The Picture Project. Since this is the first home I've lived in only owning a digital camera, I suddenly realized that we have five years of unprinted pictures. So, since we signed the lease on the new home, I've been gathering them up from hard drives, cell phones, and social messaging sites. I've been uploading them, and getting ready to print them and make scrapbooks.

And here is what I've realized, looking at countless pictures of our faces: the last five years have been difficult. Yes, the last year and a half has been damn good (if insane, stressful, and packed full). Yes, getting married and honeymooning was a high point. Yes, starting this blog was one of the big gifts of my life. But all in: it's been a tough five years. You can see it in my face, in almost every picture (except the more recent ones). I'm struggling, and in a very different way than my flat-broke-and-struggling-twenties. Continue reading On Not Having It All (At Once)

Posted in: Life, Meg's Thoughts | 231 Comments »

Mar 2012

Happy Birthday APW!

Dear APW,
You are four today. Four whole years old. You're one of the best projects I've ever taken on. You've made me some of the best friends I've ever had, helped me figure out what I really wanted to do with my life, and showed me that I can write. (And thank you for the book). I'm so glad I took the leap when I heard the first whispers of an idea, and so glad I kept following my heart about you.

Love,
Meg

P.S. You're growing up, and not a baby anymore (though, I guess you'll always be my baby). But age four is my spirit animal, so I think it's going to be a good year.

Photo: Emily Sterne Photography (APW Sponsor)

Posted in: Entrepreneurship, Life, Meg's Thoughts | 33 Comments »

Mar 2012

Worry About the Artichokes…

So, earlier this week we all fell in love with Zen's quote about, well, life. It's too genius to sum up, so I'm just going to remind you all right here:

"I'm going to come out and say it: You don't actually have to enjoy your wedding. It's fine if for one reason or another—family or financial pressures—you view it as something you just have to get over with. There will be other parties to throw. And you're going to achieve your ultimate goal—to be married to your partner—whether or not you managed to get enough artichokes to hold your place-cards, and whether or not you get a feeling of transcendence when you pronounce your vows.

I'm not saying both things are equally irrelevant—obviously transcendence is nice if you can get it—but let's be realistic here. Artichokes you can buy; transcendence you've just got to wait for. If you've got to worry about something, choose the artichokes every time."

When we published that, it was like the staff could hear the collective sigh of relief from around the APW globe. Sure, a bunch of you realized that they'd been let off the hook for their wedding, but even more of you pointed out that this was potentially the best LIFE advice ever. I suggested that we all get it as a tattoo (even though I'm not a tattoo person), but then someone else pointed out that coordinated T-shirts might be easier. But while the rest of us were staring dumbfounded in front of our computers because we'd just been punched in the face with some enlightened sh*t, the lovely Lucy, who you know in the comment section as YouLoveLucy (and trust me, you're about to find out that you really do love her, the APW team already met her and loved her in Atlanta) was busy making the new APW uniform.

YEAHHHHHH. I will be buying it, and tearing out the neck and wearing it to the gym, for certain sure. So y'all, married or not, engaged or not, a woman or not, should scurry off and buy one right now (and then wear it regularly until someone asks you what the heck it means and you BLOW THEIR MINDS with the answer). Whatever money is made is all Lucy's, and girlfriend DESERVES that.

But, in the meantime, we have also have a favor to ask from everyone else!

The APW staff decided we really would, in an ideal world, like to produce some DIY hair & makeup tutorials. I mean, I did my own hair and makeup for the wedding, and I know some of the rest of you will to. So, we want to bring on an APW approved hair & makeup guru to teach us easy day-of beauty secrets. If any of you have recommendations for sane hair & makeup professionals in the Bay Area (WHY don't we have someone in the directory?) we'd love it if you could send them our way! We'll work with them in DIY projects, and then tell those of you who just want to hire someone already all about them (because, uh, the wedding beauty industry can be terrifying). They can e-mail Maddie at maddie@apracticalwedding for more info. And also! New Yorkers who are looking to hire someone sane to do your makeup? Remember NYC Faces. If only they were in the Bay Area, we'd be set.

T-Shirt Design by: Lucy Guest, Makeup Photo by: Kandise Brown of Hibou Photo (APW Sponsor)

This post includes Sponsors, who are a key part of supporting APW. For more information, see our Directory page for Hibou Photo.

Posted in: Life, Wedding Undergraduates | 40 Comments »