intellectual properties

offbeat home: cleaning out your closets and advancing your style

oh hey! look! i have a guestpost on Offbeat Home today!

Cleaning out the closet: looking at the concept of age appropriate clothing

plea to a muse (Yoga for Writers workshop report)

The thing I always wonder, on all those websites and in all those books and in all those workshops and speeches, the ones tell you to stop right now, to make your life the life you want and how to make your dreams come true one step at a time, that it’s hard but you can do it, is this:

What if you don’t know what your dream is?

–ohheygreat

DING DING DING DING DING

follow your bliss.  do what you love, love what you do. etc etc etc.

sure, if you’ve been dancing ballet since you were 4 or always dreamed of writing a novel or reeeeally love woodworking,  i can see how this kind of advice is useful for people who have passions. real passions.  things they dedicate themselves to. things they lose sleep over, get up at dawn for, give up everything else for, cash out their 401ks to fund.

i am now 35 years old and after attempts at various endeavors in business and the arts, i still have no idea what my “bliss” is, which makes it difficult to follow.

last sunday morning, i attended a 3-hour Yoga for Writers (Y4W) workshop with one of my longtime favorite irreverent SF columnists, Mark Morford (so much so that i’ve had a blog category devoted to him since 2004. god i’m such a fangirl.) Mark is also a yoga instructor, and after many years of regarding them separately in his life, he recently learned that combining them is double the pleasure, double the fun. so when i saw the workshop announcement i thought hey! i’ve been doing lots of yoga and writing for over a decade too! so i should go -  this is for me! maybe this will unlock some of my confusion around what AM i doing with my life??

prior to, my mind had totally been occupied with all the Occupy stuff all week. endless reading about economics and tax models and discussions about consensus and active democracy and rights and all kinds of dense things.  so i hadn’t really thought much beforehand about the workshop or what i was going to work on, writing wise. so i was a little mentally exhausted and a little unprepared.

in the opening minutes of the workshop, Mark talked about reasons why we might all be there, as writers, and how the physical and mental practice of yoga can be used as a tool to unblock our creative energy and really let go of our egos in order to write freely, fluidly.  and i immediately recoiled, because, as far as i can tell, i don’t have that problem. i’ve never really had ‘writers block’.  in fact,  i have the opposite problem: SO MUCH TO SAY SO LITTLE TIME.  i wasn’t quite sure how to reframe what he was talking about to fit that problem, and so i was like “oh, shit.  this workshop is not for me.”

and then he talked about how so many writers live too much in their heads and neglect their bodies, these pale weaklings who never leave their basements and spend days in their sweatpants. um, also not me.  see: the 2+ hours of exercise i get most days, and all the dancing i do.  i am WELL AWARE of how much body movement affects my mind: my best blog posts are written while biking/dancing/yoga-ing.

so what was i doing there?? i started to fret.

the thing is, i am trying to figure out WHY i write. and whether i should be trying to channel it into something more productive than blog posts and facebook screeds. the idea of “monetizing” my blog has always caused me to wince, and writing under deadlines for someone else’s umbrella also seems painful. to date, my writing has been purely CATHARTIC. and i have always been happy with that.  it gets things out of my head. and occasionally, someone else tells me that they appreciate it too, that something i wrote really resonated, or they were glad i wrote about something they were too scared to say.  and that has always been enough.

but right now i am going through what some might consider a “transition” phase in my life, and one of the ideas embedded in that is i am considering *gasp* graduate school.  and one of the programs i have been looking at is Writing focused.  so, this means i really do need to consider the question:  do i want to be a Writer, and how?

and so it was that i found myself in a writing workshop, not so much trying to be a better writer as trying to figure out What The Hell I Was Doing There.

one of the pieces that Mark handed out was this, from Teachings of Rumi:

There is one thing in this world that you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there’s nothing to worry about; but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life.

It’s as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task, and you perform a hundred other services, but not the one he sent you to do. So human beings come to this world to do particular work. That work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you don’t do it, it’s as though a priceless Indian sword were used to slice rotten meat. It’s a golden bowl being used to cook turnips, when one filing from the bowl could buy a hundred suitable pots. It’s a knife of the finest tempering nailed into a wall to hang things on.

You say, “But look, I’m using the dagger. It’s not lying idle.” Do you hear how ludicrous that sounds? For a penny, an iron nail could be bought to serve the purpose. You say, “But I spend my energies on lofty enterprises. I study jurisprudence and philosophy and logic and astronomy and medicine and all the rest.” But consider why you do those things. They are all branches of yourself.

Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments. If you don’t, you will be exactly like the man who takes a precious dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his dipper gourd. You’ll be wasting valuable keenness and foolishly ignoring your dignity and your purpose.

and my God if that didn’t make me immediately anxious and depressed. IT’S TRUE. I AM DOING A THOUSAND THINGS BUT NOT THE ONE THING.  FUCK. WHAT IS IT???

in the end, i still don’t really know. when i walked out, i felt like the balance was definitely tipped more in favor of Yoga than Writing in terms of things i am really into doing right now. would the workshop have been different for me if it were framed as Writing for Yogis instead of Yoga for Writers?  maybe.

anyway, i have no conclusions, but in the spirit of the workshop, letting go of your ego and not caring what anyone thinks about what you write and letting it just come out, here are the (mostly unedited) things i wrote in the workshop for the 3 writing sessions we did in between bouts of yoga. i’m not too personally impressed with them, but here you go:

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summer 2011: warm-up

for years i wondered if my blogging was a result of actually having something to say, or just something to do while sitting at a desk job for 8 hours a day. well, these past few months i’ve not been sitting at my desk job all day every day (shifted to working part time as needed), and i think the lack of posts here answers that question.  it turns out when i’m not stuck spending hours a day in front of a computer i do other things, like read the New Yorker and go for walks, and don’t just sit in front of my laptop. so that is the explanation for lack of posts.  it’s not because i haven’t been doing anything or reading the news or have commentary.  i’m just not as inclined to sit down and write about much if i’m not already at the computer.

moving on: last weekend was super fun. we went to see 2 live shows – Ezra Furman and the Harpoons (with Tristen opening) on thursday night and The Black Angels (with Sleepy Sun opening) on friday. Ezra was great, but he was sick and i think it showed.  always a good show though with great energy from the whole band.  i highly recommend their albums if you love singer/songwriters.  while i dig indie rock, dark and twisted psychedelic rock is higher up there on the list of things that my brain soaks up and rolls around in and enjoys. local SF band Sleepy Sun was a great surprise for an opening, and The Black Angels did not disappoint with their wall of sound. it was a challenge to keep my mind from wandering into the purple haze, but the crowd push from the mosh pit jolted me back every few minutes (who moshes at a psychrock concert? i thought we all just stood around with our eyes closed? people who grew up at gilman street, i’m guessing). + i love falling in love with the people on stage for a minute and that is why i love live music.

a string of birthday parties on saturday, then sunday we went for a hike up our favorite trail in Berkeley and cooked dinner and watched the Babies documentary with friends. while it was fun to watch and beautifully shot, i was slightly underwhelmed by this film. the small controversy when the film came out about whether it was appropriate for children to watch (some mommies thought seeing other babies pooping/peeing/breastfeeding was TMI for their own little ones) was much more interesting to me than the film itself.

and now we are gearing up for spring/summer.  with my new free time – the first summer i’ve had since 1998 that i’m not working full time all season – i have A LOT OF PLANS.  we shall see how many of them come to pass.

things that are for sure:

–Spring Training, this sunday in Joaquin Miller park in Oakland (if the world doesn’t end on Saturday!), because if your summer is a marathon of camping (disco or regular), mountain climbing, all-night escapades, road trips, festivals, and full days of drinking in the park with work days in between, you need to warm up so you don’t hurt yourself. this is a free all day picnic-party. the illustrious obi-j closes the show, but we’ll be there all day.

–spending a long weekend floating on a houseboat flotilla in the Sacramento river in June – i have lived in this state for 12 summers and i almost never get to swim. the Pacific is cold and surly no matter when, and the rivers and lakes are all a drive away. growing up in Michigan with a freshwater pond and/or river every 100 yards, this really makes me crazy sometimes.

–PRICELESS. July 1-4 up in Belden Town.  the best disco campout in the High Sierras for the 6th year in a row.

–Phish in Tahoe August 9 with a hiking/camping weekend beforehand. summer in lake tahoe + phish = guaranteed awesome.

the things that are definite maybe:

–New York City.  sometime before July 31, because i NEED to get to the Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Met.

–Burning Man. we have tickets. but if something a better use of time/money comes up (like a trip abroad this fall?), this could get bumped.

in the meantime, i plan to continue spending my days biking around town, going to yoga/keeping up the workout routines, and window shopping. and….that’s about it.

summer 2011: are we ready?

constructive dialogue

obviously, this blog is public, and comments are allowed.  anyone who can spell my name correctly can find this blog and read all about my life. i also have a pretty open policy about who i “friend” on facebook.  i know a lot of people who don’t friend their old high school classmates, or their cousins, or their in-laws, or their coworkers/bosses/professional contacts.  totally understandable.  but i have been staunch in my philosophy of totally open communication with this. i am not sure why.

there have been a few unfortunate incidences where people were offended or hurt, and i learned the hard way not to write about other people very much. especially people in your family. but not write about politics or social issues?  i am not going to avoid that.  in fact,  i encourage dissent/disagreement/discussion. how else do we learn about or from each other or the world?

so this post on online disagreement by helen jane really hit me:

Back a few years ago, before we had access to everyone we ever knew and all of their ideas, disagreement had a different place. Yes, there were still the same people who thrived on debate. Those people who relished sparring and matching wits. But for the most part, we kept our opinions private. Especially opinions concerning religion, politics, child-rearing and lifestyle.

Disagreements with these big topics were handled privately, rarely.

But now, in this digital age, we share our thrill about an election on Facebook and people come out of every nook and corner of your past to tell you how wrong you are and make you defend it.

Sure, there’s something to be said about the broadening of ideas and input being a good thing, but emotionally? I’m not prepared for this. We haven’t been properly trained in critical thinking in a way that allows us to separate disagreement with an idea from rejection of us.

When people we like or respect disagree with us, it still feels crappy.

i had to stop for a minute and think about how i struggle with this.  i do.  and i find that for myself, doing one of the tactics she goes on to talk about, “agree a little”, for me often becomes acquiescence.  i end up saying “oh, ok. you’re probably more right than i am”,  because 1. by this point i am usually tired of the argument and 2. i don’t want the person to be angry with me/ruin the relationship. so i “let them be right”.

overall, that’s not the worst thing to do sometimes.  but if it leaves you feeling like you didn’t stand up for yourself, over and over again, it is.

h.t. ariel

2/15/01 – 2/15/11: 10 years of autobiography (my life is a Beatles song)

february 15th was the 10 year anniversary of this blog (first post). (my blog is older than dooce! but oh so less profitable……)

i think my writing has improved considerably, but this hasn’t really become anything other than what it’s always been.  and that’s fine with me. it warms my heart when other people say they like/read my blog, even though the amount of content has dropped off due to a lot more of my commentary going through twitter and gReader, but i still actually feel a little sad when people i assume to be my friends (or my PARENTS) don’t read this, because while those other outlets are more interactive, this is where i write the things i really want to remember. the personal stuff.

on a larger scale, thinking about me in 2001 vs. me in 2011 is on the one hand pleasant (still sticking to my guns on ethics/lifestyle, no major life calamities have occurred, i’m happy and healthy person) and on the other hand sort of depressing.  i am living almost the same life now as i was 10 years ago.  same city. same partner. SAME JOB.

also: i turn 35 this year. shouldn’t i have done something by now? i don’t mean marriage/house/kids/grad school/standard metrics of growth.  i mean….. something **ME**.  something more than what i’ve done. some boundaries pushed. something of ME to show.  something that FEELS substantial. but what is that?  GAH. i don’t know. that’s what drives me crazy (and i’m sure i’ve driven some of my friends crazy going around and around about it too). i haven’t accomplished anything really personally noteworthy yet and i feel like i’ve already “settled down” not just without meaning to but in fact, actively working against. how does that happen?

this post took me a couple of weeks to write because of all the things going on and also because it just sounded repetitive and whiny (eh, still does). but i spent a lot of time thinking about it – this 10 year period – and when i really thought about it, one significant change is that 10 years ago, i worried a lot about being pretty enough.  i’m (sort of) done with that. now i worry a lot about being smart enough.

also:  the realization that knowing who you are and knowing what you want to be are TWO VERY DIFFERENT THINGS. now that i think i have a fairly good grip on the former, the latter is really starting to make me angsty. (yes, i know that this is a Beatles song, ORANGE.)

in general, things are feeling really purgatorial here in my life. February has been rough for me emotionally, and i have some spirits dwelling in me that need to be exorcised. March 2011 is going to involve some exorcisms. some will be gentle. others might hurt. the rest of 2011 then needs to involve something that feels substantial. i really don’t want to delve more into that right now.  just know that i think about it all the time, and whatever happens, this blog is where it will be recorded. because this is my autobiography.

i’m a flexifeminist

speaking of hyperbolic publications, i have been quoted over at Jezebel.com on the subject of flexisexuality:

As for the word “flexisexual” itself, it’s also not new, despite the Mail’s headline (“the new word for the women who refuse to play it straight”). If we want to get liberal with our definitions (flexilingual), blogger Amy LeBlanc wrote a post dropping “flexisexual” back in March 2004, using the word as a potential synonym for a metrosexual vegetarian who ate free-range and organic meat (“flexitarian”). More relevantly, our friend the Urban Dictionary lists several like-minded definitions of flexisexual dating back to March 2008, when an anonymous Noah Webster-type defined it as a “straight, heterosexual person who flirts with gay homosexual people. Usually seen at clubs, part of the hipster scene.” A few months later followed a new definition: “a girl that is bisexual only on weekends.” Finally, a third person chimed in with, “a person of flexible sexual orientation.”

the piece then goes on, predictably, to discuss how the term degrades women.

.::.

semi-related, on the subject of what i perceive as an issue with having feminism as a focus point for a revenue generating website, namely whether or not that sometimes taints your ability to stick to a positive “empowerment” message and not resort to making things up/exaggerating for hits: Feministing vs. Jezebel:

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well, i missed a day of National Blog Posting Month because i went to tahoe and it turned out we didn’t have internet in the cabin, and since i don’t have a smart phone….all i could do was twitter via txt. i set up some other posts to post on thursday and friday, which i know is still cheating, but then saturday i hadn’t scheduled anything and so, no post.  i was thinking that it’s a little ridiculous to schedule NaBloPoMo for the month during which a large percentatge of amercians travel, but whatevs.

maybe just happy

one of my favorite bloggers just quit, for reasons that i think most longtime bloggers can relate to, mostly about readers not being nice to someone who is sharing themselves honestly and feeling overexposed.

i often get asked “how many people read your blog?” and i think people are a little surprised when i tell them i don’t know and i don’t care.  i don’t write this for other people. i think about other people when i write, mostly in that i do not write negatively or oversharingly about 3 things: 1. my relationship with jay 2. family issues 3. work. and yes, sometimes i find this limiting, when one or more of those things is consuming my life/thoughts and yet i cannot write about it here. but i don’t write this for attention.

i started this blog almost 10 years ago mostly because i was bored, and because i have almost always had a journal. i do have a faint hope now and then that all this writing will lead somewhere – at the very least, to being a better writer. but i’m not even sure that has happened, and i think it’s now obvious that i also haven’t actively done anything to make something come of this. i won the fashion blogger award last year and then did not take up any of the offers for fashion writing that came to me afterward.  why not? i just wasn’t inclined. which, frankly, surprised me. i thought that was what i was doing?

or maybe i didn’t/don’t have enough confidence in myself to believe i could/can do it.

part of the reason i decided to do this National Blog Posting Month challenge was to see if i would enjoy posting again every day if given a motivation. but here, on day 17, i’m kinda tired of it, and after the month is over i think it’ll go back to being sporadic, mostly photos, and links to things and less autobiographical. i do cherish this as an archive of my life, but that doesn’t necessarily have to include commentary to be functional.

so when i read posts like kate’s, about how she’s giving up, i wonder if and when i ever will. just stop. mostly because i feel like a lot of the personal things i write on this blog end up being self-deprecation, and maybe not healthy. or, at least, it’s starting to feel that way.

as kate said:

my writing here has been narcissistic, and selfish, and fired-up, and navel gazing.

and sometimes it’s been pretty damn good. i’ve been really proud of some of it. and it’s helped a few people. more than i would have imagined. because sharing is healthy and important until it’s not.

right now this all feels a little shallow, and i would like to find some sort of focus or intention for my writing that feels productive and positive, and not like selfish venting.  but maybe that’s over my head.

doppels

i am sooooooooo super glad that i bought my domain name a long time ago, and also that i signed up for twitter before other people who share my name. there seems to be some confusion lately, as some other amy leblanc is publishing and tweeting stuff and tweets and search hits regarding her are coming to me. i just want to make it crysTAL clear that this is not me.  i do not have another website where i write “paranormal romance”/erotica/softcore pulp fiction involving “sexy wolves and witches”.

NaBloPoMo

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is way too out of my league – but National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) isn’t!  so yeah -  i’m going to write 1 post per day for the next 30 days to try to reignite my passion for posting.  if you think my blog was trite and rote before, just wait! (i hope i’m kidding.)