great expectations

When marriage first hit the scene, people lived to be about 23. "Till death do us part" might have only meant until next winter. It was a safe bet. These days, we're looking at a 50-year dance. And while I can't imagine doing that dance with anyone other than M, I'm a little scared.

It has nothing to do with my feelings for him. It might even be the opposite. Every time I look at his little face, I have an overwhelming urge to squeeze him to death. Literally to death. I fear for the safety of our future children. Still, I've listened to enough Tina Turner to wonder "what's love got to do with it?" 

I doubt that very many people go into marriage expecting it to fail. Yet, overwhelmingly, it does. We're both children of divorce. We've seen how this could end. It doesn't instill a lot of faith in the institution. This is probably why I keep asking myself some variation of the same questions. Is marriage going to change us? Will I be a good wife? Is it possible to remain loyal to one person forever? Should I tell him that I might have been born a boy? (I mean, I wasn't obviously, but just to see how he takes really horrible news. Definitely a no on the last one? Fine.) 

What I'm feeling can't be that uncommon, but no one seems to talk about it. People get engaged and plan their weddings with an exuberance that I reserve for tater tots coming out of the oven. My priorities have always been a bit askew. So instead of throwing myself into venue scouting, I gaze at my ring and hope that we have what it takes to make it through a lifetime together. 

Nonetheless, I did buy a magical 3.1 Phillip Lim dress last week. And it's white, rendering me a total hypocrite. We'll get there. 

i am the wedding grinch

He's perfect. I don't deserve him.

We have dipped our toes into wedding planning. And then we sat down on the edge of the pool and gazed at each other for awhile. We got engaged three months ago. You'd think we'd be further along than having a shared Google doc entitled "wedding." 

I keep telling myself things like, "Everyone moves at their own pace!," "What's the rush?!," "We want something unconventional anyway!," but inertia is a dangerous thing. Have you seen The Four-Year Engagement? In spite of its adorable San Francisco finale, I don't want that to be to us. 

Yet, I feel like I'm supposed to take the reins because I'm the lady. Ladies are supposed to be mega into this shit. The 40 billion dollars that the wedding industry rakes in every year suggests that at least one party is pretty jazzed about centerpieces. Why isn't it me? 

My fear is that my inability to muster enthusiasm for wedding planning means something. That it represents some kind of feminine failure. Worse, that it means I won't be a good wife. If i can't even make a guest list, how are we going to file joint taxes? That doesn't even make sense.  

I think my problem is this: society still stuffs down our throats the notion that a woman has three major life moments - her engagement, her wedding, the birth of her babies. I might have just made those up. My point is, these are built up to be the greatest days of our lives, but what if you're sort of "meh" about that list? That's how I feel. I don't want to be told when I'm supposed to be peaking. I also don't want to ruin all the days up to THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE preparing for it. And what if it turns out not to be the greatest day of your life? Well, I guess you might as well just kill yourself. 

I don't need that kind of pressure. I need a stiff drink.  

behave yourself

Discovering a word that exquisitely captures one of your greatest flaws is extremely liberating. At worst, it encourages you to continue on your self-defeating path because it's gratifying to see yourself in the dictionary. At best, it provides solace, proving that you are not alone in your neuroses. Which, again, sort of makes you shrug your shoulders and think, oh why bother? 

Akrasia is a word derived from an ancient greek term meaning weakness of will. More elegantly and accurately put, it is "a perplexing tendency to know what we should do combined with a persistent reluctance to actually do it." That is me all over, and it's probably you, too. 

Philosophers as early as Plato and modern psychologists have tried to explain why we often do X when we know and believe Y to be better. It seems the best anyone's come up with is that we act on conflicting motivations. In other words, reason and logic are but mathematical equations we choose to ignore.  

The whole world is X-ing when we should be Y-ing, and the worst part is that we know it. We're well aware of our nonsensical X-ing, yet we carry on. It's fascinating. 

I have no lesson to offer here, but doesn't it make you feel just a tiny bit better to know there's a nice Greek word to blame for at least one of your shortcomings?   

things i have lied about

To say that I never lie would be, well, a lie. I just save them for special occasions. Not because I'm especially virtuous, but because I always assume I'll be caught. It's probably because from as early as I can remember, whenever I told a lie, my mom knew instantly.

One thing you should know about my mom: the woman makes Sherlock look like he runs a detective agency for babies. I'm not sure if she actually has super powers or she secretly works for the FBI, but it's scary what she can unearth with barely a squinted-eye glance in your direction. Maybe it's a mom thing. 

When I started 4th grade, I decided I was ready to shave my legs. She disagreed. I understand now why she said no (because what kind of demonic Lolita needs to shave her legs at nine?!), but at the time I thought she was being completely unreasonable. So I did what any clever child of divorce would do. I shaved my legs at my dad's house and wore pants at my mom's. Boom. Flawless plan. 

She sniffed me out in less than a week. 

I guess the fact that I'd stopped bugging the shit out of her with gym class sob stories and coupons for Nair set off her Spidey sense, because she got me one Sunday night when my dad dropped me off. She didn't even wait for him to leave. She just casually brushed her hand against my leg as he put me down from a hug. 

"Did you shave your legs?," she asked

"What?! No!"

"Then what happened to your leg hair?"

"You know, that is a good question."

"Don't you dare lie to me."

"I'm not!"

My dad was not at all prepared for this. I still let him pick me up for hugs, for god's sake. That I'd wanted to shave my legs was shocking news to him. And now I was a liar. It took them approximately 30 seconds to agree on my punishment. I would have no friends or phone for a week and I'd write them each a letter of apology on why it was wrong to lie. I found out it had to be a two unique letters when I tried to get my dad to drive me to the library so I could photocopy the first one. They ran a tight ship. 

However, I might note that I did get to keep shaving my legs. They said it was because, "We weren't punishing you for shaving your legs. It was that you lied about it." That lesson has stuck with me ever since. Okay, not ever since. It took awhile to sink in, but as I grew up, I got it. The lie magnifies the crime. Even now that I live 3000 miles away, I think of those letters I had to write when I'm tempted to bend the truth a little.

Of course, I still sometimes make up unnecessarily elaborate excuses for why I'm unavailable because it hurts people's feelings to say you'd rather read than hang out with them. Though I think this gets into some sticky white lie territory. Or maybe I'm acting out. 

we will not be going to the chapel

In high school, I fantasized about having a murder mystery wedding in a castle with Weezer as the cover band. I'm not kidding. Weezer was in their heyday back then. I figured they'd be just washed up enough to be ready to accept wedding gigs by the time I was getting married. Blasphemy, I know. Anyway, I've moved past that. Now I'd like Chromeo to DJ our wedding and I don't want it to resemble the game Clue.

If M had his druthers, we'd go to City Hall next week and make it official without any fanfare at all. I'm not far behind him, but I think we would regret it if we didn't celebrate with our nearest and dearest. In other words, our moms would be sad. So we're having a party. What kind of party, you ask? Well I'm not sure, but I've thought about it enough to come to terms with the fact that Chromeo will probably not be there. That's fine. I've been waiting my whole life to make the ultimate wedding playlist.

In order for us all to maintain realistic expectations, here are a few other things that our wedding will probably not feature:

a big white dress

As a good friend put it, I'm "more 'suck my wang' than Vera Wang." It's true. If this is going to be my sartorial apex, I want to wear Tom Ford. Or Jason Wu. Or Chloe. As a regular human being, you don't have a lot of opportunities to buy the designer dress of your dreams. This is my moment. I'm not squandering it on a something I can never wear again. 

"here comes the bride" 

The thought of walking down an aisle while everyone looks at me is nauseating. And since it's MY BIG DAY, I can have whatever I want. That's how this works, isn't it? That's what I thought. Well, we'd like to keep the ceremony portion of the evening to an absolute minimum. No wedding march. No bouquet that someone else will need to hold while we exchange our vows. No la-di-da. And I don't need to be "given away," thankyouverymuch.

bridesmaids 

Bridesmaids, the movie, was hysterical. But it had a $32 million budget, Kristen Wiig and projectile vomiting. We can't top that. And as mentioned, this thing's going to be short and sweet. We'd rather our friends just come and dance their asses off, wearing whatever they like.

cocktail hour followed by dinner 

We want everyone drinking from beginning to end. There will be no time for sitting down and making awkward conversation with whomever we've chosen to seat you next to. We promise to have food, but it will be bite-sized and passed around by disarmingly attractive people. Or midgets. We haven't decided yet.  

cake 

WTF! No cake?! Then you're not coming? Good. Because we're trying to keep it under 75 people. Actually, there might be cake, but it won't be white or tiered or iced in fondant. In fact, it might be pie. We'll let you know on the invitations so you can decide whether or not to attend. 

Listen, I know I sound like the wedding grinch. It's just that, well, we're paying for this ourselves and all we want is to celebrate with our friends and family in a way that feels meaningful to us without dissolving our savings. The fact that it won't involve a bridal party or a white dress or many of the traditional trappings isn't a dig to everyone who has had those things. They're just not us. We hope you'll still come and celebrate us becoming a little family. Did I mention the open bar?

breaking up is hard to do

Photo: Mario Testino

Ending a friendship is tricky business. If you go with the slow fizzle, you risk that your attempts to dodge her invitations will be mistaken as legitimate unavailability, setting in motion a perpetual cycle of guilt. Or you can sit her down and tell her how the traits you once found so endearing now make you cringe, inevitably hurting her feelings and painting you in a terrible light.

When you end a romantic relationship, you can make a pretty clean break. You can give the ol' "I'm too busy for a relationship right now." Or the "I'm not in a place in my life where I can commit to one person." You can even say, "I no longer find you attractive and want to explore the options that my good looks afford me." These do not work with friendships. Mostly due to the assumption that you can never have too many friends. I disagree. 

There are only a finite number of hours in every day. I am at work for at least eight of them. I'm sleeping for another 8-9 (I'm not kidding; I'd take naps if I could). That's roughly 17 hours already gone. Tack on lollygagging and eating and I'm nearly booked up. If you're not M (who I happen to find endlessly entertaining) or someone pretty fucking spectacular, it's hard for me to justify moving things around to spend my very limited time wishing I were somewhere else.

A friend in college once said to me that he always felt special being my friend because I dislike so many other people. That makes me sound like a misanthrope. I'm not. It's just that only have so much to give. I'd rather give a whole lot to those I truly care about than engage in countless shallow relationships. He did also finish by saying, "It's nice to feel like I was singled out." 

That's how I hope all of my friends feel. Because I think you're tops. If you're not sure I feel this way about you, well, I've probably been trying to find a socially acceptable way to end things for awhile now.

awaiting disaster

Image: The Book of Bunny Suicides

It makes me uncomfortable when things are going well for too long. And at the moment I truly don't have any legitimate complaints. Nauseating, right? Of course, I assume this means that something terrible is about to happen. Isn't that how it works? We're each allowed a finite amount of happiness and once the supply is depleted, we're destined to live out our days in a sea of turmoil and adult acne. No? Well, that's what I'm afraid of.

More likely, it will be this irrational fear that eventually undoes my happiness. The ultimate in self-defeating, self-fulfilling prophecies. So how can I keep that from happening? Research in Positive Psychology has shown that we can retrain our brains, literally rewiring our neural pathways, to be happier. In one of my favorite TED talks, Harvard psychologist Shawn Achor says, "It's the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality." In other words, it's not our external world that determines our happiness, but how we perceive it. "When we're happy, our brains are more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient and productive." The key to happiness is not success. It's the other way around. But how do we get there? According to Achor, there are five simple steps:

1. journaling (about one positive experience everyday)
2. gratitudes (three, everyday)
3. random acts of kindness
4. exercise 
5. meditation

Could it really be that easy? I guess if you actually manage to do them. I wouldn't know. As it turns out, it's extraordinarily hard to create new positive habits. Bad habits? No problem. But the things that may actually make you a better person are hard work. Another one of the many paradoxes of the human experience. Positive habits take 21 consecutive days to establish. I made it three. And then a whole week. After that, well, you know, things come up.

And after all, as I said, I'm already pretty happy. I don't want to overdo it. But when things do inevitably go to shit, at least I'll have something to buoy me on trips to the drugstore to buy Retin-A and cat litter.

technology for atheists

I went to SXSW a few weeks ago. As a writer, I didn't really have any business being there, but I like the internet and my company was paying for it because I'd made a compelling argument about needing inspiration. Which was true. You try writing funny things about cleaning products 40 hours a week. So, like most things everyone says is amazing and/or you beg to attend, it was disappointing.

I should clarify. I didn't stay for the cool music portion. I was in Austin exclusively for SXSW Interactive where it was seemingly acceptable to begin a conversation with, "So, do you have a start-up?" "No asshole, I don't have a start-up, and neither do you. But let's go see a cyborg anthropologist talk about how our smartphones are our external brains and in 50 years we won't be able to remember anything on our own." That was pretty much the whole scene in a nutshell.

Of course I'm exaggerating. There were some fantastic speakers and I learned a lot, but I certainly didn't leave thinking, "I can't wait to get home and start using highlight to stalk everyone who crosses my path," or "Gosh I feel uplifted by the direction society's moving in." Because I don't. I left feeling exhausted by everyone else's enthusiasm. I had a nerd hangover.

Yet there I was 48 hours later, sitting in a lecture hall at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco, listening to another speaker. But not just any speaker, Alain de Botton, whose work I've admired since I picked up On Love four years ago. Oh, why am i being coy? I adore him. His writing is genius, insightful and funny. As it turns out, in person he's even better. 

He was speaking about his new book, Religion for Atheists, which asks us to put aside the most circuitous debate in history--is there a god?--and discover religion without the deities. The world's religions can teach us wonderful lessons, like how to better educate, build a sense of community, make our relationships last, inspire travel or connect with the natural world. So why not take the "best bits" of each one and find a better way to live? Well, because that's not what you're supposed to do. I'm just not sure who decided that.

As i sat there, I couldn't help but note the stark contrast between what he was saying and what I kept hearing in Austin. Life isn't getting any easier because we have fifteen ways to connect and share with people we vaguely know. Western society is, on the whole, more depressed than ever. Yet we focus so much on the advancement of technology while our humanity problems continue to loom large. Technology isn't the answer to everything. The answer is in how we live our lives. How we love. How we treat other people. If anything can teach us how to do those things better, we should embrace it. And I guess whether you believe in a god or not is largely irrelevant, isn't it?

*I can call him Alain now because we've met** in person.

** it was thrilling.

it won't write itself

Photo: Vogue Italia

In order to call yourself a writer, you have to write. A lot. And I do, but mostly as a copywriter for method and various freelance clients. That means the majority of my work revolves around finding the cleverest way to describe laundry detergent or a new web app. I thoroughly enjoy my job, but it often leaves me with very little to give to my own creative endeavors. At least this is the excuse I use for why i'm not further along on the book I started writing over two years ago.

Which brings me to The Things I Tell Myself, not only the dreary theme of my internal monologue, but the title of the book I continue to stress out about, yet not complete. Part of the problem is that I'm what some might call lazy. I dilly-dally. I get distracted. I drink wine. But if I'm honest with myself, and you, my real hang-up is the fear that it's going to suck. I dilly-dally because if I put fingers to keyboard and what comes out is an utter disappointment, then I am an utter disappointment. Talk about cutting yourself some slack.

Last year M printed out a copy of my outline and made it into a makeshift book to inspire me. It currently sits on a tiny writing desk at the top of our stairs, mocking me every morning in my flurry to get out the door and on every trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It's a constant reminder of what I could be doing if I were a different kind of person. The kind of person who finishes things she starts, even if the finished product isn't perfect.

I was recently editing an article that one of our founders wrote about starting method and he began it by saying that he had no exceptional talents other than "unbridled motivation." It's not often you hear someone admit such a thing. It made me realize that this is the difference between those who succeed and those who write blog posts about their hopes for success. I'd rather be the former, but what if i can never summon the drive it takes? I guess we'll have to wait and see. 

My use of the word "wait" here probably doesn't bode well.