Just Give In.

Did you know?

• I'm turning 35 in September.
• I'm typically hopeful, positive, striving for peace and satisfaction.
• I'm also a human being. (This is stunning news to me as I typically walk around assuming I'm some sort of hyper-evolved spiritual superhuman.)

All of these things, plus a sense of futility engendered by the anticipated yet still devastating injustices around the world lately, combined last night at midnight to lay me flat on my bed, arms flopped over the side, my face pressed into the dog-hair-covered comforter, moaning to myself and Chris about how I've completed no projects of note in any of the careers I've ever attempted: acting, theatre production, filmmaking, book writing.

Nothing has come to the fruition I've hoped it would.

(Note: I am aware that this is not technically true. But when you're in the middle of a pity party, facts are irrelevant. Really, they make you feel even worse.)

I've lived long enough to know that when you're feeling this murky, you might as well give in. What you resist persists, especially pitiful feelings of failure and suckitude.

So instead of attempting false cheer, I decided to list 35 people who are better than me. One for each year of my life. It made me laugh at midnight. So let's just go with this, shall we?

LIST OF 35 PEOPLE WHO ARE BETTER THAN ME

1. Wendy Davis.
2. Leticia Van De Putte.
3. Really any of the amazing Democrats involved in fighting the omnibus abortion bill in Texas. Sylvester Turner. José Menendez. Royce West. All of those folks.
4. My son (okay, I'm fine with this one).
5. Younger people.
6. Older people.
7. Henri Cartier-Bresson.
8. Henry Ford.
9. Henry Thomas.
10. That courtesan who famously served herself as the dessert course. I forget her name.
11. People who can remember all the names ever.
12. That eleven-year-old kid who invented a rubber band device that keeps people from leaving their kids in hot cars.
13. Audre Lorde.
14. Tami Taylor. Also she's fictional but that doesn’t matter.
15. JK Rowling.
16. Bryan Adams.
17. Brian Boitano
18. Kate Winslet.
19. Casey Affleck.
20. Forest Whitaker.
21. Anderson Cooper.
22. Aloe Blacc.
23. Tori Amos.
24. Gary Clark, Jr.
25. Kaki King.
26. Glen Hansard.
27. Markéta Irglová.
28. Mark Snow.
29. Helen Grime.
30. Tina Fey.
31. Michelle Obama.
32. Amy Poehler.
33. Eiko Ishioka.
34. K.D. Lang.
35. Amanda Palmer.

There. Now I feel worse. It'll turn into feeling better soon. Maybe by the morning, after the storm passes.

Not Able to Quit

It's not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, 'Read,' but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, 'Don't read, don't think, just write,' and the result could be a mountain of drivel. If you're going to be a writer you'll probably take a lot of wrong turns and then one day just end up writing something you have to write, then getting it better and better just because you want it to be better, and even when you get old and think 'There must be something else people do,' you won't quite be able to quit.

Alice Munro, short story writer

Mutually Exclusive?

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

E.B. White

Posts on the Rally and HB2 hearing: Coming Soon

I haven't written about last Monday's Stand With Texas Women rally yet. Nor last Tuesday's State Affairs Committee hearing on HB 2. Things are moving quickly here in Texas.

This writing won't happen tonight. Tomorrow morning, I wake up early to don my orange "Stand With Texas Women" shirt and hop a bus to the Capitol, where I will be one of many protesters ready to make my presence known -- to the legislators so hell-bent on ignoring their constituents' wishes, to the media, to the women in other states (like Ohio and North Carolina) who are also fighting appalling restrictions on a woman's right to choose.

I'll bring paper. Maybe there will be time to write while I'm there, registering my opposition to the bill and supporting those who will be testifying.

More soon.

Tragedy vs. Comedy

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."

--Mel Brooks