All work no play makes Jack a dull boy

I’m exhausted, but I can’t sleep so I’ll write.  The bones in my back are curling over and reaching for the mattress as the still air stings my eyes.  What do I want from me?!  I want something from me, but I can’t put my finger on what exactly.

It’d be nice, in moments like these, to have a pretty love to curl up with.  “In moments like these” being the stand out phrase.  I’ve given up on dating, or at least any active search on my part … for now.

Honestly, a partner person takes a lot of energy.  Energy that is very focused and fueled right now by artistic and spiritual/therapeutic pursuits.  Still, in moments like these, it’d be nice to have a honey to snuggle with.

Cuddling might silence mah’ mind.  Right?  Meh, who knows. Every night it fights against bed time to solve all problems, worries, and wonders.

Alas, only a couple of problems, worries, and wonders were solved yesterday. And such clarity had very little to do with my meandering contemplations. They resulted, I believe, from the dialogue had with the outside world when I participated in a group Think Tank.

I’ve been so obsessed with my book promotion that I haven’t sufficiently fed or nurtured my inner self.  Everything I read, everything I think about has to do with finishing “The Task at Hand.”  “The Task at hand” being promoting my book a.k.a. finishing 50 pages of research on all the phenomenal bloggists and online magazines I’d love to have review it and emailing each one or working for money at the B Job or showing up for people I love when they need me or attempting to complete my written therapy assignments.

After 3 weeks of this routine, I feel hunger pains, the growing dejection of a spirit starved for …

ART.  Other people’s art.  Films, Books, Plays, Music, Blog Posts, and Conversation.

As my friend says, “Vanessa, you can’t be a grown up all the time.”

I lent my grandma When God was A Woman before finishing it because I was so excited about it.  I have to stop doing that!  Gah.  I hate starting a new book before finishing the last one.  I’ve just been stuck, waiting on it and Overworking … When the truth is: I need ART!  Other people’s art.  Films, Books, Plays, Music, Blog Posts, and Conversation.

Although I spent yesterday from 5am – 2pm working on my book promotion, I finally forced myself to take contrary action.  Thank Baby Jesus in da manger!  From yesterday at 2pm until now, I’ve watered my plant Ms. Gloria Estefan isn’t in a Mariachi band, bathed, napped, ate, and participated in a stimulating think tank conversation with a bunch of refreshing, youthful artists where wonderful insights replenished me once again.

Then I came home and prayed/meditated.  After which, I started mulling over all there is TO DO and then a thought ROARED, GROWLED, SCOWLED at me, “YOU NEED TO STOP THINKING ABOUT YOUR TO DOs!” … I needed a book — someone else’s feelings and musings — and BAD.  I knew I needed a book that The Kid not The Adult in me would pick.  A book that isn’t about marketing or film distribution or filmmaker interviews …Gah!

I breathed in deep and accepted that I probably wouldn’t get back When God was a Woman for a while.  I reached over to my unread stack of books and picked Conversations before the end of Time, which strangely resulted being about “exploring new ways of making art that reconnects directly with the world.”  The core discussion of our think tank dialogue!  Yowza.

There’s a remarkable quote in the book that sheds a lot of light on why it is I get so famished and bored inside when I don’t experience enough of other people’s art. Routinely, a starvation will set in that fills my brain with a rage that causes it to throw itself against my skull over and over and over again.  The author writes:

… I was beginning to understand how the shared experience of dialogue allows one to have and maintain one’s own point of view, while at the same time trying to understand and include another’s.  I began to see what was needed was not a monologue … but a dialogue in which I did not necessarily have a program of my own, but would simply create an empty space for whatever specific process was trying to happen.

To quiet one’s mind and embrace the influx of outside ideas proves to be a meditative and intellectually-expanding process.  For me, experiencing other people’s art isn’t leisure, but necessity.  Maybe it’s leisure too, but it’s hard for a me to enjoy the activity if I think of it that way.  Workaholism is one mean old hag!  A Workaholic, according to some free dictionary I found online, is defined as “a person who works compulsively at the expense of other pursuits.”

Ayayayayeee! Lucyeeeee!  Awareness is the first step, Acceptance is the second step, and Action is the third step.

My friend is right.  I can’t be a grown up ALL THE TIME.  I must schedule time for play in order to BROADEN my intellectual, spiritual, and creative understanding and more importantly, my personal joy.  Adult society undervalues Joy immensely.

Therefore I must read, see, and hear some cool stuff ASAP!  Dance too!

Maybe if I do I’ll turn into this:

And stop being this:

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Not at “Ceviche Loco” — Contemplating Birthing & Raising Children

Well, I’ve decided to relax on the “Ceviche Loco” today because it requires driving in rain.  Whereas “Tacos Mexico” is conveniently right next door to my office.  I’m a native Los Angeleno without a proper car defroster and a broken air conditioner, and I hate driving in the rain.  It’s sticky and sweaty and blurry.  You may ask, “why does this chick need an air conditioner in the rain?”  I don’t.  I just wanted to let you know it was broken.

So, my aunt’s friend is visiting from Mexico with her 12-year old son and I gave them a ride to the local mall this morning.  They were going through the regular mother-child banter.  He’s got a cold, she wants him to put on the extra sweater.  He says he’s hot and doesn’t need the extra sweater because he’s “FINE.”

The back and forth of  “put on your sweater, I don’t want you to get sicker” and “I’m hot.  I don’t want to.  I’m FINE” continues for about 15 minutes.  Honestly, I wasn’t annoyed or irritated in the least.  I actually found it quite endearing … like when I watch mother lionesses on “Animal Planet” teaching their lion cubs how to survive in the wild.

I got to thinking again — as I have this year more than any year before — about “having children.”  I’m 27-years old and a growing number of my female friends are either getting pregnant, getting engaged and talking about pregnancy, or hurting over the fact that they aren’t pregnant because they want to be a mommy “sooooo bad.”

I really enjoy living in a neighborhood with lots of families.  It’s refreshing and invigorating to watch parents play with, teach, and love their little thems.  I like kids too.  They’re prime proof that Nature is ONE SMART MOTHER.  Kids are the cutest, most adorable, funny, inquisitive, endearing useless little pieces of life on earth.  They’re completely co-dependent on another for survival and do nothing but swallow the energy, knowledge, attention, and money of those they depend on.

Yet we’d die for them and sacrifice our last piece of bread if it came down to choosing between feeding our hungry mouths or theirs.

Many of these baby-wanting women in my life also yearn to carry a mooching, growing, draining tadpole-ish creature in their belly for 9 months.  A parasitic specimen, which will mercilessly feed off their body’s nutrients, throw their hormones out of wack, stretch their body to uncomfortable proportions, and finally, force them to endure the potentially fatal adventure of pushing a fully formed human being out of their vaginas in what has been described as pain SO bad it’s “worse than sitting on a hot iron cow-brander and spinning.”  Or something like that…

Lesbians, Straight & Bi-Sexual women, those with booming mula-making careers and taxing minimum-wage 9 to 5-ers, are similarly going through this HARDCORE “I want to have a baby soooo bad” phase.  I honestly don’t know much about men’s need to procreate since I don’t hang with that many and when I do we rarely talk about “babies” or “raising a child.”  We tend to banter more about art projects and the real hoebags/housewives of new jersey.  I mainly hang out with gay men — Bears, Cubs, and Otters to be exact. I’m not saying they don’t want babies and BAD, they just haven’t talked about it much with me.

So I’m sitting in the car with this woman and her child FEELING the unconditional love between them.  They bicker over his sweater.  Essentially over his health and care, and I wonder to myself…AGAIN…

Do I want to bring a baby into this world or raise a child (whether I give birth to it or not)?

Reactively, the base of my gut releases a claw that grabs onto blood cells and rushes throughout me in a thick dark red stream, speeding up my heart beat. It explodes at the tip of my spinal cord spreading, like electricity, through the metropolitan cities of my mind. Finally, it cools and solidifies into these three words: HELL-FUCKING-NO

HELL-FUCKING-NO I don’t want to give birth or raise children! … But why?  WHY? I like families.  I like kids.  I think mother-child relationships are beautiful and priceless.

Why then has my biological clock been dipped in acid?

What killed my need to mother? Maybe painful childhood trauma?  Maybe the fact that I grew up the elder sister/substitute father figure? … BUT I know plenty of people with much more putrid rancid childhoods than mine who were responsible for too many siblings and scatter-brain drug-addicted parents at too young an age who STILL really want to have kids.

The deep silent abyss of my belly thanks God every day that I am not “with child.”

People speak about “having kids” so lightly — like it’s a Wii game or a holiday movie with a definitive beginning, middle, and end.  In my experience, parenting children is anything but that.

You’re conditioning another human being with your every word and action.  You’re responsible for keeping this little person alive, healthy, and sane … so that maybe one day they won’t turn into yet another terrible whiplash upon the back of humanity.  You’re responsible for loving and helping your child unconditionally — even if they’re born with unmanageable frightening ailments like aspergers, paranoid schizophrenia, a passion for football, or conservative values.  To top it off, you never EVER stop raising your kids.  18 – Shmayteen!  Adults are more lost, require more wisdom and guidance, than children do!

It’s ultimately a toss of the dice how nature and nurture mix to create the human being you’re raising.  He could turn out to be Mussolini or Paul Newman?  She could turn out to be Octomom or Rosa Parks?

Seems like a lot of unnecessary pressure to me.  I think I’ll pass on giving birth to and/or raising a child in this life.

I’d enjoy playing “coooky aunt” to the kids a whole lot more: Cooookster gets to joke, laugh, and run around eating candy while wearing a crab hat.

Then when the kids start getting cranky because they’re tired, Aunty Vanessa gets to hug them goodbye, drive home wearing the crab hat because it’s mine, and pray that those cute little munchkins don’t grow up to be racist serial-killing prostitutes who steals senior citizens’ retirement funds — from the comfiness of my warm silent peaceful bed.

I must say: Props to all the moms out there!!!!  Being a mom is a harrowing selfless task.  Thanks for keeping the human species alive, ladies…

Because I REALLY don’t want to do it!