speakeasy: a tale of passwords

well past the days of prohibition, we are still mired in passwords. i have them for almost everything--of course it would have been nice as i was setting them up if i had made them all the same, alas...i have come to learn that i don't usually do things the easy way...

i am confronted with that most charming part of myself, often, and recently in a guest post i wrote that was featured on the Simply Solo (read it here) blog, i revisited a time in my life where i felt like i was met with doing things the easy way in a dark alley. i made it out unscathed, living to tell the story, but the one thing is: the story is hard to tell. there is a happy ending and all, but that's not why it's hard to tell. it's complicated, personal, not everyone wins, not everything goes drifting off into the sunset, and it wraps around so many lives that it's overwhelming to organize in any truly satisfying way. but it is cathartic to be brave and write it anyway, despite the audience, despite my own fears, and  despite the heavy lifting. writing can be a full disclosure practice. not every word is easy on your fingers. we are afraid of revealing, afraid of what our/the audience will think, what will they say? will i be understood, is it ok to write this or that?

we are never perfect. that's hard to swallow, even as ridiculous as it is to think we could be, we aren't, ever. or perhaps i should speak for myself. i am so not perfect. at a lunch meeting last week i got out of my chair as we were saying goodbye. i had hung my oversized bag that carries too much on the back and as i got up from the table, the sudden shift of weight flung my chair backwards into another patron. he grimaced and said he wouldn't sue--i thanked him for his kindness, and then dropped my huge scarf on the ground and bumped into someone else as i was picking it up. let's just say if it were a scene in a movie it may have been sort of cute or functioned in a less obtuse way. it wasn't, it was my real life. i was meeting a new client, discussing plans for some immediate and future projects. i was friendly, professional, and articulate all the way up until that moment where i would have loved an invisible cloak or some magic glasses that could have made me disappear. basically, after the chair fiasco, i looked like a lunatic who might live out of her bag.

i guess what i am trying to say is, our behavior is always relative to someone or something else, or subject to interpretation or maybe even gravity. the way we look, how we cook, create, write, speak, think, laugh, everything has another version that may or may not be slightly better, but never perfect. and then of course, there is good old fashioned slapstick, where slamming your head into something is the perfect way to tell a joke.

and as we go careening toward the holidays things inevitably get crowded and pushy, and behavior gets even more desperate. on my way home last night i saw four car accidents, one looked serious, someone was definitely, very hurt. i can't stop thinking to myself how out of control we get this time of year. me, personally, my emotions have gone completely richter. as i grow a small business, plan a wedding, and confront the big ideas of my future, i would rather be napping. it may seem lightweight to you, but there is so much more i am not saying. and that's the thing, we speak in code, saving our passwords just for our own privacy, never revealing what our real feelings are. instead, we avoid hurting others, showing too much, saying the wrong thing, and on and on. we like to appear together, all buttoned up, "nothing to see here," that sort of thing. and while it may be more convenient, and certainly polite, is all that smoke and mirrors necessary?

meanwhile you turn on the news and the world is at war, there is tremendous suffering, and the human condition has gone digital.

but this is the thing, while never completely perfect, everything is always moving along. last week i couldn't get my mind un(Occupy-d), and still there, things keep moving despite the rate at which we must face our own dailyness, without any naps.

i am still worried about polar bears and pakistan, i am not immune to the obsession i have with doing things right, or the fact that three of my dearest friends have moved pretty far away, how i have my own business now that needs more attention than i sometimes have to give, or the fact that i'm getting married in eight months and i've got some broken family stuff that needs fixing and i don't know where to begin. i am extremely grateful for it all. in this time of thanking, i am humbled by how fortunate i am to have all that i do, to know and love who i do, to feel as much as i do, and to have the opportunity to share all of it when i can.