The Lost Years

Life is not fair. That is what I keep thinking to myself as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. I have not written a blog for a while. We are renovating our house to move back in after our tenants destroyed it and I have been busy painting walls.

But, it just struck me how hard I have had to work for everything I have achieved. Even this writing, it does not come easy and I have had to work and work at it. I let my writing go for many years while I was in undergraduate at UCR and law school at USC, trying to get done by thirty. I finished by the skin of my teeth after spending my early twenties just waitressing to survive and muddling my way through junior college.

After graduating from law school, my life was supposed to start, but I took a large law firm job in Houston and my life floundered for three years. What I had worked so hard for meant nothing.  Most days, I cried in the shower before work. I didn't find myself again for many years. But even in Houston, I wrote looking out my high rise window. Faltering words at first. Then later, narrative poems poured out of me like water that had a fiery aftertaste.

I call those years the lost years. They were my most fertile lost years. I never thought of having a baby. I was too busy. I mollified myself with my paycheck.  Bought a lot of stuff I didn't need.

There were many good times. In 2006, I took the California Bar and moved to San Francisco where Adrian was in dental school. We had a great apartment and a great life, when he wasn't at school and I wasn't working. I flew back to Houston often in my new job at another big firm. I hated staying in hotels so my insomnia got worse. I jumped to a smaller firm and the hours were even worse. All I did was revolve my life around deadlines and work.

Then my dad died and everything changed. I realized that art was happiness. Family and love was the panacea to life. And, I made a change.

Now, here and now, my life is very different. I take as many days off as I can. I try and live life for my art. The baby making goal ended in heartache, but I refuse to give up on my dream of a child, if not a baby.  It will happen somehow, someway.

I have worked so hard for everything in my life that I know persistence matters.  Prayer matters.  And in the end, I know that I matter.  These words matter.

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High Hopes

I have learned a lot these past couple weeks. I have learned to let things go and forgive. Resentment and anger is toxic and only impedes. I do not want to get too specific, but I have realized one thing for sure, I care what people think too much. In the end, we need to love ourselves more than other's opinions of us. And I have realized that I am fabulous dammit. I may be kooky and a little clumsy (ok maybe more than a little), but I am definitely talented, super empathetic and a very good friend.

I have also learned that if you practice love, forgiveness and kindness, it comes back to you. If, on the other hand, you are negative about others, that also comes back on you. That old childhood taunt, I am rubber you are glue, whatever you say bounces off and comes back on you, is too true.

My point is that life is too short to be mad or resentful. We are all just ants in a farm running through our day, but I want to be that ant that moves a rubber tree plant. Cause I've got high hopes.  High in the sky, apple pie hopes.

What are my hopes for this next year? I would like to finish writing and editing my memoir. And apply for a screen writing fellowship (ugh I need to write a spec script...). Get an agent. And get in shape. And start the process to adopt a child. Those are the things I am putting out there in the universe. My aspirations.

Like I said, high hopes.