Nothing Much to Say in Detroit.

An aptly-named vin.

I recently received 130 emails notifying me that my blog was being spammed by some spambot selling presumably fake and/or stolen Michael Kors purses. Or was it Michael Cores? Whatever the case, it brought my attention over and over again to this neglected blog. Each *ping* of an email received was another tap on the shoulder saying, "Hello. You have a blog. Why don't you write in it?"

But as is the case with most writer's block, the moment I feel as though I must post in my blog, my mind goes completely blank. Even once trivial thoughts and ideas begin to emerge, I immediately dismiss them as "not good enough" or "already posted as status updates on Facebook."

I bought these today. I'm putting them here now in order to add color.

I've been thinking I would post while I'm in Paris. I mean, if you can't come up with writing material in Paris, what the hell kind of lame excuse for a writer are you, anyway? I'll have nothing but time over the course of six days in the most wonderful city in the world. I'll bring my big camera and take real photographs. I'll post them artfully with witty quips about Parisians. It will be wonderful.

This is my cat Obi-Wan Kenobi. He used to be feral too.

But what can I post about Detroit? I've had three jobs in the past six months. After working in the same ad agency for seven years, I left. That was momentous enough. But then I left the new job after 12 weeks for a new, new job. All this newness and change has been quite exhausting. It hasn't left me with much energy or inspiration to write. Besides, I'm terrible at change. I've also been horribly homesick for agency life. It's like being in the creative department of an ad agency allows you to go completely feral and I've been trying to get domesticated at these new jobs. I want to drink beer at work and swear at my co-workers. I miss having remote controlled helicopters buzzing over my head. I miss rock bands and cappuccino machines. I miss all the beards and tattoos. My god, I even miss leggings as pants, if only to mock them with my work partner. So yes. I'm a little homesick and dealing with change and all of that leaves me creatively challenged.

These are paper cats. I made them. I'm not sure why either.

Paris. Paris is when I'll have something to write about that is interesting and beautiful. Profundity will pour out of me like a heavy cab and creativity will spread across my brain like fois gras. I'll sit where Hemingway and Fitzgerald once sat and fantasize about never coming back to the bourgeois Etats-Unis.

I'll write then. When I have those kind of thoughts. Readable thoughts. Dreamer's thoughts. Thoughts that will take you away from wherever it is you're sitting right now, reading this, wishing you were somewhere else.

Bisous.

XXOO.

The Destructive Power of Change

When I was getting my teaching certificate, an Education professor told me that in order for students to learn, they had to go from a place of discomfort to comfort.

Think about that for a moment.

Most of us are perfectly content to stay right where we are, thank you very much. We want to believe what we believe, think what we think and stay where we are. Changing our thoughts and minds is upsetting. If we’ve believed that the earth is flat and someone comes along and says it’s round, we’re bound to be confused. Our worldview has literally been disrupted.

Now we are uncomfortable and agitated. We need to right ourselves again. Perhaps we go to Google and see if we can confirm what we already believed, or discover more evidence for this new information. Or we need to talk about it. Process it. And once we’ve read enough, researched enough, and/or talked to enough people and processed our feelings about this new information, we either accept or reject it. We either learn something new or stay where we are. But in order to learn, we have to go through this discomfort.

It’s what I did in my classroom with my students. An English teacher challenges you about what you read. An English teacher asks questions, teases out thoughts and responses, pushes you to consider something you may not have seen or challenges your interpretation. This can be a jarring experience. Students can rebel, argue or just be plain confused. But no matter where the students wind up, a good teacher is disruptive. A good teacher will challenge the students and make them uncomfortable.

In order to learn, we must change. We must go from a state of discomfort (confusion, fear, pain) to a place of comfort (understanding, acceptance, enlightenment). I’d even go so far as to say that change is not only difficult, it's ugly.

Consider the butterfly. We talk about the caterpillar transforming into the beautiful butterfly. But what about the process of metamorphosis itself? Isn’t it ugly? Isn’t it disturbing? Just look at the word “pupa.” That is one ugly word. Consider the process of shedding one’s cocoon or skin. Molting? It’s the stuff of horror films. Whether it be humanoids encased in jellied eggs in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Jeff Goldblum’s face erupting into greasy insect skin in The Fly, metamorphosis is one ugly process.

It makes sense. In order to change from one thing into another, the prior self must be destroyed. Yes it is replaced with something far more beautiful and evolved, but the process of change itself can be violent and unpleasant.

I think it’s the main reason people avoid therapy. To change your inner self, to undergo the metamorphosis of the psyche requires addressing the ugly stuff that’s buried within that nice cocoon you’ve built. You’ve got to rip it apart. Chew your way out from within. Destroy everything you’ve known in order to be reborn.

Change is hard. We say those three little words as if it makes it easier. As though it’s easily summed up. Heck, I’ve used that phrase myself to help cope with it. For instance I’ve recently changed jobs. I knew it would be hard, but I didn’t know it would be this hard. Yes, it is good for me. Yes, I was stagnating after staying in the same place for seven years. But damn, it’s really hard! I wake up from anxiety dreams where everyone at a meeting speaks a foreign language or speaks so softly I can’t hear them. I grind my teeth at night and my jaw aches. It’s only my second week at the new gig, so it’s not the end of the world.

But I didn’t expect it to be quite this hard.

I’m also in therapy and I’m working on a memoir with a writing coach. Those are acts of transformation. And they are harder than I thought they would be. Facing the truth about what I’ve been through and who I've become is incredibly difficult. We bury our pain for a reason. And I’m one to pull my finger away from anger as though I’ve touched something hot.

But you can’t look at where you’ve been and what you’ve become—and not have to cope with whatever it is you were hiding from in the first place. In my case it's anger. I don't like to be angry and I don't like conflict. I'd rather shove it all deep within my belly and not deal with it. If you're familiar with that strategy of dealing with trauma, you'll know that it's not particularly effective. When you bury all the hurt and anger of being abused and neglected as a child, that sort of pain festers. You haven't eliminated it at all. Instead, you've let it metastasize within you and it will consume you. It will make you sick. If you root it out and deal with it in the light of day, no matter how painful that process, you've at least got a shot at healing. At transforming even.

And all of this is ugly. It is destructive. And it makes it difficult to write here. It makes it difficult to cope with the aftermath of writing about my eating disorder on the Huffington Post. When all you have ever done is work to hide such things, it is indeed difficult to reveal them.

It’s ugly.

It’s destructive.

And yet I want to fly.