How do we prevent our issues from the past from dominating the discourse and our thought patterns in the present and future?  Sometimes there are lessons that get served up over and over and over again until you’re ready to not only learn them but radically course-correct your life according to that lesson.

“Lesson! Yes, I hear you and am in service to you, and I will change everything to show you that you have been learned. OOOOMMMM.”

Here are some lessons I’m learning the hard way:

1. Set boundaries. When you get used to people crossing your boundaries over and over again, it affects your self-esteem and overall sense of self. You are telling yourself and others that you don’t matter, that you have no right to ask more of the universe and people. It’s not okay for people to make you feel bad even if they didn’t mean it. Either communicate or walk away. Don’t go down the path of “maybe if…” Or, “I don’t she meant it that way.” Or, “maybe he’s having a bad day.” I love to give people many chances and rationalize away their bad behavior – it’s like a specialty of mine. People don’t change unless they truly want to and recognize it at a deeper level. Earlier this week, someone really nice said to me, “I think I may have crossed the line.” Boundaries at work! No one has ever said that to me before. And I had to walk away even though I didn’t want to, out of respect for myself. I hope this will become an instinctive habit rather than a conscious and painful undertaking over time. It’s hard to see the death of possibilities, but “sometimes, soooo-metimes you just have to walk away,” as Ben Harper would say.Assume good intentions but be prepared to take appropriate action.

Continue reading 10 lessons I’m learning →

I woke up this weekend in a 2-3-drink level mild hangover funk. Both days. I rolled out of bed for yoga and then rolled back into it to stare at the ceiling, my favorite activity. I’m not going to diminish the fact that I was having a mini-existential crisis, wondering if my future was in LA and processing the fact that I’d left my job, my home, my friends and community, and my old self behind. I was alone. I wondered if anyone other than me would save me. “Is there anyone there?” I asked. Negatory, I concluded. There is no God. Just a Gracelette. Damn.

My cure for this was not more cowbell. It was a focaccia pesto vegetarian panini and french fries outside Bistro Figaro.

I shuffled in a black and blue romper that is way too short for me to wear anywhere other than the beach and in a neighborhood where I know no one. It was breezy and sunny, projected to be in the 90s. I imagined myself on Sundays at Le Monde in Morningside Heights Manhattan, sitting outside on wicker-ish chairs reading the New York Times, except that I was reading a sky blue paperback copy of “Popular Lyric Writing 10” while typing notes in my iPhone. The man on the shared wicker bench to my left looked artsy and seemed a bit gruff to the waiter, who delivered and took away the check. Why does he have to be like that, I wondered. Continue reading Voice in my head = man next to me at the bistro →

Taking the train 8 hours from DC to Boston getting in at 1am was not the best thing I’ve ever done, but it also wasn’t the worst. I met my friend Lee, and we went to a Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square called Hong Kong. I ate a quadruple stack of scallion pancakes (plus #1), and a fried tofu dish – totaling an additional 1500-2000 calories at least to my count for the day. Well, it was past midnight, so I do wonder which day I would allocate that too. Either way, it’s not good. So far, 1 point in favor and against Boston.

The next day was mostly spent in a coffee shop with me thinking about business and book ideas. It was a day of dampness and dreaming.

Day 3 was the day I met Ezra for lunch and coffee at Algiers in Harvard Square. We hadn’t seen each other in 20 years, but we had an extremely pleasant conversation about love, life, aspirations, and reflections on the days of middle school and high school. For some moments, we talked about Gabe, our friend / my boyfriend of sorts who had died 20 years ago… I held back some tears and explained that I sometimes felt that he was watching me. Continue reading Boston had one plus (ok, two) →

1. Writing songs and performing them while sweating in front of a room of accomplished songwriters.
2. Writing about your life and foibles in a blog.
3. Telling everyone about your Amazon interview, even though it is highly possible that you won’t get the job, further confirmation of loser status.
4. Signing up to lead a project for a non-profit in politics that you’re on the board of when you don’t know shit about politics.
5. Cold-calling apparel manufacturers to see if they will let you come for a factory visit as market research for a startup in a space you know very little about.
6. Emailing people you haven’t seen in 20 years to organize meeting up with them in DC later this week.
7. Oh, and my most favorite most mortifying moment of my day – hanging a note on the building door of a guy you met while doing laundry and exchanged all of a few sentences with and whom you later saw in a coffee shop and ignored / hid from. Why yes, I’m a crazy psycho-bitch stalker. Thanks for asking. Now I can’t leave my apartment. Great.

Yup, these are some things I did today.

Oh yeah, and then there’s real vulnerability, which I’m not even close to touching yet…

When I was 16, I visited LA for the first time. I was supposed to be enrolled in a summer program at UCLA studying chemistry of all things, but I think I went to class three times max. This explains my middling performance in AP chemistry, which I took when I returned to school that fall. I think my mind exploded at the concept of mole and never recovered from then.

That summer was an expansive one in many respects. My best friend was a rebellious girl from Miami named Julie. She has a tough girl vibe but came from a prominent and wealthy family. She was stunningly beautiful with short, spiky, dyed black hair and soulful light-light blue eyes. Her normal attire included striped button-down shirts, chokers, and long shorts with a chain hanging off on one side. There was the remnant of a gunshot scar on one of her upper arms. I’m not sure I ever got the full story on that. She was way too cool to be in my program. Continue reading Butterfly tattoo →

Sometimes, and often, when you say no to something, what it really means is saying yes to something else, even if that something else hasn’t been defined yet. It is about leaving things open for the possibility of good rather than filling it with mediocre.

The hard thing though is identifying the good. There isn’t really a foolproof “process” for doing that other than being self-aware enough to know when things feel right and going with that instead of listening to the voice of reason that might push you towards things that seem like good opportunities.

So do the research. Check and cross-check. And then, once all is said and done, go with what feels right. It’s the only thing that’s ever worked for me. Everything that looks good but feels bad ends up looking bad at some point too.