why does everything need a title

“F IT! WE’LL DO IT LIVE!”

At 33, I’m in my Jesus year right now and the only semi remarkable thing I have done all year was finally purchase renter’s insurance.

I’ve decided that this place has now turned into my little therapeutic corner in the world, where if I want to talk about how limburger cheese is so very delicious, I will. Or if I want to talk about how Donald Trump is the sole reason I changed my mind and am now staunchly AGAINST Twitter getting an edit button, I will. Continue reading or don’t. This is mainly for my great grandchildren to read their once amazing matriarch's written words and how she may or may not have also sharted a little sometime in her Jesus year (KIDDING…OR AM I?)

I’m just going to stream of consciousness it today. Maybe once I’m done I’ll read it back, tighten it up and make this thing flow like poetry or maybe I’ll just keep it as is and have it read like multiple people from all over have just added whatever they want, wherever they wanted. TBD.

So this is what’s going on in my life... my creativity level is abysmal. I was talking to a friend and she told me to not think about creating anything for a month. Not a problem, because I haven’t thought about creating anything in months. (She also suggested taking a hike or reading a book, I countered with going on an African Safari) I can’t figure what I want to create or how I want to create it and that makes me want to literally crawl out of my skin. The only way I have been able to feel like I have the slightest creative release lately is by getting tattoos. I walked into a shop last week and walked out with two new ones, and yet, still an insatiable feeling. And if I’m being honest, there’s a 60% chance I will be going back in this weekend.

The two most important things for me in life, well you know besides like my mom, clean drinking water, friends, caller ID, God, and always wearing clean underwear in case of an accident (except if you are 33 and sharted in your own living room…JUST KIDDING... OR AM I?) are becoming the person I want to become and being creative. The thing that is laying between me and those two goals is what THE WAR OF ART calls resistance or simply put … FEAR. 

Fear overpowers my passion.

I probably had the biggest epiphany of my life a few weeks ago.  I was sitting in my living room literally talking out loud... TO MYSELF... I promise there were no invisible people or other people’s voices in my head! When I was done, I looked around and was like “OMG, nobody heard that?!” Like, you guys…it should have been a TED talk. Well maybe not a TED talk, it actually only really helped me. So I guess... maybe a TED talk... but just to myself and without a headset. And I’ll be honest with you…fear has always been a huge part of my actions or non-actions, words or non-words, basically my living self. I had never ever really sought to find where that fear manifested from until my living room TED talk. I’ll be honest again… my fear stems from an abandonment issue I never even knew I had and also unbeknownst to me, overflowed into many aspects of my life.

I’ve said this many a times before and I’ll say it again, I’m not the person I want to be yet. I don’t 100% know who that person is, maybe I never will, but as of right now I don’t even feel close to being her. And because of that, marriage and kids is literally probably so far down my list of importance right now that it’s like above visiting Florida, but below being able to afford to commission a Morley painting. Do I sometimes think “Yeah it’d be cool to have a boyfriend to play Dutch oven wars with*?” Sure… Or do my ovaries ache every time I see a puppy playing with a baby moose or an actual baby laughing at paper ripping? Of course. I just know I’m not at the place I want to be mentally or emotionally with/for someone. I know that’s not how life works, so it’s not like I would shut down a Tinder match if I’m aimlessly swiping around and he happened to write he hates avocado in his bio because I’m not the person I want to be yet (P.S. if you’re on a dating app, WRITE A BIO) I’m just not actively searching.**

  

*He’d be the one farting. I don’t fart. I just shart. KIDDING! OR AM I?

** I just really needed to put this outlook on dating blurb in because there is someone in my life who every time I see, looks at my left hand and goes “Really? Still nothing yet?” and it makes me want to punch a pillow…and then light it on fire. Basically I was too young at 18 to have decide what I had to do with the rest of my life and I’m too young at 33 to decide who I want to spend the next 2/3rds of my life with.

OK. Back to my epiphany and creativity and becoming the person I want to become.

One of my favorite things is growing as a person. I never know if people on the outside can tell, but I can tell how I’ve changed and that’s all what matters, right? (PFFFTT HAHAHAHAHA)  I’ve always known I have had abandonment issues. I’m terrified of people I care about leaving me, I’m terrified of starting to care for a person and them leaving me. I would always say it goes back to my birth mom being like “peace out” (thank you) or my dad dying when I was a kid, or my mom telling me since I was like 7 that she feels like she “only has two years left.” Sure they all play into it but I have never given credit where credit was due.

I have thought about my birth father, I don’t…maybe 5, okay I’ll go big and say 10 times in my entire life? He’s the one where this fear of abandonment really started. It’s kind of the worst kind of abandonment, right? Like you’re a baby and a person is just like “Nah, not about this. Lates.” You literally haven’t done ANYTHING but be born for someone to leave. So imagine what that’s like once you can walk and talk and wipe your own butt from front to back? Apparently subconsciously, you have it locked in your brain that if someone can leave you with you doing nothing to cause it, it’s probably so much easier for people to leave you because you did something.

You have these staples in your life and for me it seems only logical to be fearful if you change too much that they could quite possibly not like the person you’ve become and be like, “Payce, I’m out.” 

I feel like I need to put out a disclaimer that I’m pretty positive no one in my life would be over it and over me if I were to say, sell all my earthly belongings (my TVs, my guitar and my microwave) leave America and live in a yurt for a year in a country where people live in yurts. Even so, that fear is still fully embedded in me.

This then leaks into my creativity. I feel like I’m on a tightrope right now of where I was/am and where I want to go but once again, if I go somewhere so off from what people are used to… its BUH BYE (not really I KNOW it’s the fear talking but I’m just saying guys. Geez). Also not sure exactly where it is I want to go, I just know I can't stay fully where I was/am. Last also, a side realization I had a few months ago was that to a degree, I am a perfectionist, which I still don’t really understand, because if you look at my desk, my car, my bedroom, my living room, the clothing that sleeps next to me in bed every night…it screams anything but. Clearly I was under the impression that being a perfectionist meant you were neat. Nope. Procrastination is one of the signs of perfectionism. Actually it was one of the 8 signs I had from an article titled “9 Signs You May Be a Perfectionist”… having an idea and putting it off and putting it off until I forget it, think of something else, or decide its dumb, which actually means I'm scared to do it because I know it won't come out perfect is classic me (as are the other 7 signs that I’m still working through) I just always thought it was because I was lazy (it’s probably a little bit of that too, tbh)

OMG THIS IS SOOOOOO LONG. 

I think what this whole 40 page manifesto was leading up to was for me to say I’m working on me and I’m working on my creativity and whatever I end up producing may be very different and not Chandra-like* from what I’ve done … but technically I guess it will be Chandra-like because that’ll be the Chandra I am at that moment… but what I make could also be old Chandra-like too. I do know that the one constant will be that I'll always incorporate comedy into it somehow.

*aka Cho-like

I was talking to someone the other day and they are getting their Masters in creative writing and I was like “Oh cool. What’s your favorite genre to write?” They were like “I don’t have a favorite, I don’t want to be pigeon-holed.” And then I responded “So there’s not like one genre that you like, like just a little bit more than like the others?” They responded “No.” and then I throat punched him. JUST KIDDING... OR AM I? At first I was like that’s so weird how can you not lean towards one, then I thought about it more and thought about what a great asset that is. What also came to mind was how mad I get when people ask me my favorite color, like… WHY DO I NEED TO HAVE A FAVORITE COLOR?!

I’ve always enjoyed what I wrote or what I shot, but 98% of the time it was always in the back of mind that it also had to be something I thought other people would like. I might start doing stuff that I REALLY like and only 1% of people will like.  So bear with if I say, do or make weird things, or make normal things or make no things. It’s not a breakdown. You’ll know when I have a breakdown. Also… 

DON’T LEAVE ME.

Okay I’m leaving.

Lates.

P.S. I don't understand commas

P.P.S. This is super long so I stayed stream of consciousness. Hope this comes off like Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and not Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.

Tales of a Fourth > Ramona Quimby

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