Happy Feminist

This week, I'm obsessed with documentaries. In all honesty, I don't watch a lot of TV because.....Toddlers and Tiaras. There is more shit than valuable entertainment on television, so I find other ways to entertain myself. A couple of days ago, my computer wasn't picking up an internet signal so I resigned myself to not working or cleaning or running errands or doing anything else productive. Secretly, I needed a break so I clicked on Netflix and looked up a documentary that someone had raved about on Instagram. Notice how I just used two modern day media forms in one sentence, who would ever guess I'm so old? The movie was called Miss Representation and it was a 90 minute class about women's rights, women in the media and how we are creating an unrealistic female ideal . It set me on fire. There were numerous books I put on my to-read list and when my husband called to see if the internet was back up, I angrily spewed a fifteen minute dissertation on how fucked up our society is, how dysfunctional our idea of beauty is and the fact that I may not make dinner for him ever again. If you haven't guessed, I have a tendency to take things to the most dramatic level possible. For a moment, I even contemplated shaving my head just to prove how serious I was about feminism. I really can't be trusted to consume too much information in such a short period of time.

Today after some Christmas shopping, I came home planning to work on my book, but wanting instead to watch another documentary. In order to justify sitting on my ass and accomplishing zilch, I pretended that my computer was frozen, surfed my options on Netflix and stumbled upon one called Happy. It talks about the genetics of happy, the happiest people on the planet, the most unhappy country and people who are happy despite what many would view as an impoverished lifestyle. Now instead of shaving my head, I wanted to volunteer, learn to surf, move to Hawaii, stop buying crap and start talking to my neighbors. See? I'm telling you, be careful what you show me, I'm a chameleon.

So are you happy? Am I happy? Most of the time, I am. There have been times in my life where I have dealt with depression and almost weekly I need a good cry in order to keep waking up in the morning, but I would say that I am a happy person. Here is where I think some people get backed up with the whole happy thing. "Well, you are happy because nothing bad ever happens to you." Wrong. A lot of shitty things have happened to me, some that I am still working through.
"Well, you are just oblivious to all the horrible crap in the world." Nope, not that either. While I don't choose to follow breaking news or tragic events, I'm smart enough to know that they happen and compassionate enough to know that it's not okay when they do. I can't control these things, but what I can control is how I feel about my life.
"Well you have the perfect life, so of course you are happy." Perfect for whom? It works for me, but it may not work for you. Perfect isn't real anyway, it's a perception that we allow ourselves to believe as fact. Being happy doesn't come from "perfection" or big houses or fancy cars. Happy is a combination of many factors, most of which revolve around community, relationships and doing for others. It inspired me to do more to create happiness in my life and reaffirmed the fact that I really want to live on a beach. Hint, hint, husband. :)

The moral of the story is that this week I am a Happy Feminist. Next week, who knows, I could be a Happy Feminist Vegan or a Happy Feminist Vegan Republican (is that a thing?). It all depends on my documentary options and my computer being broken.

I'm Leaving On A Jet Plane...Again.

I'm going to the beach for the third time in three months. I'm starting to think I might be spoiled. The first trip was to Florida, spur of the moment, to make sure my brother was happy and to spend some time reminding him that he deserved to be. The second was a planned cruise to Mexico with my favorite ladies where, instead of leaving the ship at port, we stayed on-board to enjoy the benefits of no lines at the buffet. I saw the beach, but I didn't touch it. This third trip is a complete surprise and I'm scared shitless. I am going to my first writing conference.

I don't even admit to being a writer, except to people I have known for longer than a decade and whom I know read my blog. When strangers or neighbors ask what I do, I him and haw about helping my husband with our small business and staying home with my kids. Oh, and I have a little blog that I write. I have spent my life at jobs where I can share freely what I do because I get a paycheck and in my mind, that makes it real. I'm a massage therapist. I'm an Office Manager. I'm a Barista. I "just" stay home with my kids. That one hasn't produced a paycheck, but no one expects it to, and in most instances I have had a back up job to justify my existence on this planet. Now, I don't. I write for free. I spend hours working on a book that I fear isn't good enough. I spend mornings in my pajamas (like right now) updating my blog and reading about self publishing. That can't be considered a real job, can it? Next week, I will be forced to accept the fact that I am a writer. And I have to market the shit out of myself.

Therein lies my biggest fear. Meeting other humans who sit at a laptop in their dirty underwear and spill their guts onto paper in the hopes that one day they will get paid to do it. Admitting to them that I am one of their kind and that I am worthy of being part of that secret club. I'm freaked the fuck out. I'm not a salesperson. Ask any of the managers I had at Starbucks. When I had my yearly reviews, the one and only requirement I never hit was promoting the hot item of the quarter.

"We really need you to up-sale these pumpkin loafs."
"No. I'm not a salesperson. If they want it, they can ask for it."
"It doesn't work that way. Part of your job is to promote seasonal items."
"I'm not good at selling things that people don't want."
"You need to get good at it."

And now, I do need to get good at it. There are millions of books, millions of authors and millions of blogs that want your attention. If I ever want to make a living while sitting in my bathrobe, I have to get comfortable with letting people know why mine is the one they should read. I have to learn how to sell myself and I have to learn how to do it within the next 10 days. I may even need to wear a nice blazer and take the bathrobe off.

Beach Living

I was at the beach on Sunday and it reminded me of one particular item on my bucket list, live on the beach in Hawaii for one year. I have told my husband this will happen and at times he is excited, then just a few months later he says something awkward like "Well, I'm going to miss you."

My plan was to wait until my kids have moved out and are capable of buying their own milk. I'm hoping by that point they are also driving places without my assistance and scrubbing the toilet they shit in without me paying them to do so. It's a dream, you see. At that point we would sell our house, purge all the shit we don't need and move to Hawaii. I want to rent a bungalow on the beach and write. That's it. That's the dream. Will my husband work? Don't know, don't care. That's the joy of bucket list items, they don't have to make sense in their infancy. Will we be able to afford it? Don't know, don't care. Does my husband want to go? While I do care about this part, I honestly don't know. He is a Utah boy through and through. He loves winter, skiing, our crazy liquor laws and he has a successful business, that I doubt he would want to relocate for the purpose of validating his neurotic wife's crazy whim. I think my crazy whims are the reason for his high blood pressure, so I completely understand. He has put up with me calling from Hawaii and telling him I found a house to buy, planning a four day Florida vacation one week in advance, and showing up at home with gallons of paint and a really great plan for one room or the other. He's a saint, is what I am getting at.

As I have stated, the details aren't all planned out. My hope is that I will be a paid writer at that point and that I will have throngs of human beings clamoring to read my next novel. The reality may be completely different. I may end up scrubbing toilets at Starbucks again and wishing I would have pursued a degree in veterinary science so I could retire without wondering how to pay for my Depends. My kids may never leave my house and I could end up as a recluse with a 42 year old gamer who smokes weed in my basement and yells at me every day at 5 pm regarding his meal options. I could end up getting stung by a jelly fish during our next beach adventure and swear off bodies of water in any form. In that case, we would be living in exactly the right spot for us. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

My dream to live on a beach has been raging inside me since I attended massage school 17 years ago. My plan was to graduate, be hired by the most prestigious hotel/spa in Maui and live the dream of rubbing tourists' zit ridden backs while learning how to surf. Instead, I was recruited by a spa in Vegas that was a cement slab in the middle of the desert, where the only thing I learned was how to avoid dating guys in bands. It was a great lesson, but I feel I could have picked it up on an island just as easily. I then met my husband, moved back to a land locked state and smothered my beach dream. Problem is, it just won't shut up.

Every time we vacation on the sand, my heart aches to stay and I visualize myself sitting on a deck overlooking the ocean. I want to go barefoot all day long and call my flip flops slippers. I want to grow fruit in my backyard with little to no effort and have the salty breeze ruin every bit of metal on my bungalow. I want to be writing in the morning while my husband has a golf game, after which we we would barbecue fish on our patio and talk about the days when we had kids to keep us entertained. In my mind, it looks like a movie, but in my heart it feels like my future.