I’m thinking of taking up smoking. I think I’ll make it my new year’s resolution, in fact. Since I am completely unable to ever follow through with any my resolutions (still no slippers), I’m probably safe from all the badness those irritating commercials warn me about.

Smoking is appealing to my rebellious side, I suppose. And is a sign that the stubborn teenager inside of me is having issues with independence and control and having my own way. And that the cranky adult in me is saying, fuck it, I’ll do what I want.

Maybe it’s backlash for P. criticizing my Big Mac choices and being all disappointed every time I don’t make it to the gym. Fine, then, says my inner voice. See how you like this smoke!

I’ve never been a smoker, although if I’m with the right people, I might sneak a puff or two when I’ve been drinking a little too much. I used to go out with this group of girls (who I haven’t seen now in a really long time now) and we always ended up smoking somehow. For a while, we switched to cigars. And believe me, cigars do nothing to minimize the goldschlager hangover. Not that that stopped us.

I smoked for two weeks in high school, but it was during the summer and just too hot to inhale hot smoke. I may have been a rebel, but I still wanted my comfort.

More evidence of my nefarious behavior is in the title of this post. That’s right. I’m listening to Nick Carter’s CD. Although I realize that the title alone may not have given it away, since I was likely one of about five people who actually bought said CD. Nick Carter is terrible, right? Like not just his music, or that he was in the Backstreet Boys, or that he dated Paris Hilton, and now has a reality show with his brother, or writes songs with lyrics like “To all my girls in the USA; Ya got a fine thing goin’ on” or that he clearly was trying so hard to be the new Bryan Adams with that album, but all of those things and more. And yet, I still was crushing on him a bit when his album came out, even though his age made me feel a little dirty. I’m pretty sure he was over 21 by then though.

I’m not big on regretting things. Life is life. You live for a while and then you, well, don’t, and when you’re dead, does it matter that you got a tattoo?

My mom was always telling me I was going to regret things, but then I never regretted any of them, so maybe that caused me to lose my trust in the whole regret theory. For instance:

• shaving my legs - once I started, I could never stop; I would hate it, etc. Whatever mom. What I would regret is not having smooth legs.
• cutting my hair - I wasn’t allowed to cut my hair when I was growing up. I think this was because my mom wanted long hair, but her hair just didn’t grow long. So, she always said that when we got old enough to appreciate it, we would want long hair and would regret if we had cut it. My hair was straight down my back right up until high school. I was FINALLY allowed to cut it then. And I did. No, I have never not once ever regretted it. Ever.
• having premarital sex -I don’t have to explain this one, right? But my mom has this whole spiel about how sex creates this emotional bond (that part can be true) and that once you have sex with someone you are bonded to them FOR LIFE and you will never be able to get over them or move on and your life will be completely screwed up FOREVER (that part, probably not so much true necessarily).

Things I have always wanted to do but have never done:

• Get a tattoo
• Pose for Playboy
• Be a stripper

It’s far too late for me to pose for Playboy, and I no longer really want to work as a stripper, but I did buy a book a while back on how to dance like one. Surely it’s not too late for that. I would probably get a tattoo if brilliant inspiration about what to get would strike me.

The older I get, the more I think, fuck it. So what if this scares me. So what if this doesn’t follow all the rules. Maybe I’m getting selfish. Or maybe just becoming more aware of my own mortality. But I think back to everything I didn’t try when I was younger and I wish I had more of this perspective then. Not that I’m saying I should have kept smoking. But if I had taken up stripping in my younger days, I bet I would be a kick ass dancer now.

I never grew up anywhere.

We moved just about every year to places that I’ll never have the need or the inclination to go back to. Whenever anyone asks where I’m from, I say with no hesitation and no second thoughts: southern California. It is the one place I remember from when I was very little, from the entire time I was growing up, and still go back to now. It’s the only place that feels like home to me.

I had this game growing up. I’d try to think of the thing I’d had the longest, the place I’d lived longer than any place else. I now live in this house longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. I’ve now owned this car longer than I’ve lived anywhere. And on like that. And southern California always won, hands down, as the place I’d known the longest.

This weekend, I was driving to my sister’s house from the Long Beach airport, thinking — hey, this is the town where I was born. I got off the 91 at Harbor and drove by the building where I had my first job after college, and by the bar where we used to hang out after work. And later, when we went to Fashion Island, we drove by the apartments I lived in with my boyfriend when I first moved to Newport Beach.

It all feels like home to me. No place has ever felt like home, not like this.

What feels like home more than anything else at all is the ocean. All I have to do is look at it and I feel a peace I can get no other way.

This time, I nearly didn’t get to see the ocean. But I was so close. I couldn’t not see it. I ignored the people in the car with me and drove over the bridge to Balboa Island, the closest water I could think of on short notice. I headed to one of the piers, walked over to a bench and watched the water. The sun was just setting and the colors danced as the boats floated by. The ferris wheel was lit up in the distance. P. hates Balboa Island and my mom, well, is just generally crazy to be around, but I was in my own bubble of peace, watching the water.

It was painful to move away, back in 1995. It’s not that I regret it. I try not to regret much of anything, really. I certainly wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t moved. Maybe my life would be better; maybe it would be worse. It would absolutely be different. But those last few times just before I moved that I drove down Superior over that hill and saw the ocean unfold in front of me, my heart ached, just a little.

There’s this scene in Office Space where the guy asks what his neighbor would do with a million dollars. The idea being that maybe that’s what you should really be doing with your life. For me, there’s no question. There’s never been a question for as long as I can remember. I’d have a house overlooking the ocean, and I would write. When I was younger, I’d plan it all out in my head — did I want a house on a cliff or on the beach? I defintely wanted a wraparound porch, so I could go out early in the morning, sit in a chair with a blanket and coffee, watch the water and write. What could be better than that?

I try not to think of that dream much anymore. The older me doesn’t quite believe as much as the younger me did that anything is possible.

But this weekend, I had my moment of peace and maybe it’ll last me for a while.

I didn’t get anywhere near enough time with my grandparents this weekend. I never do, and I could tell that they were sad for me to leave. Just being in their house is comforting. The house I’ve always known.

I worry I don’t see my niece enough for her to remember me. When I was a kid, we went back to southern California a couple of times a year and it just wasn’t often enough for me to really know my aunts and uncles. I’m trying to see her more often than that. She’s only two and I had last seen her in October, but so far, she does remember me. This weekend, she would call me from across the house by name, or at least using the shortened version of my name that I’m not sure how she picked up, since my sister doesn’t even call me that. She’d call and call and when I came to find her, she’d pat the spot next to her and hand me a book.

I bought her books that were too old for her this year for Christmas, thinking she would grow into them, and she seems to like them already. She sometimes likes you to read to her, but what she likes even more is to hand you a book to read while she reads another. I can’t help but think that she’s taking after me, since that’s one of my favorite things too.

I don’t know if I’ll ever live in Southern California again, the only place that feels like home. It wouldn’t be all peaceful, of course. I try very hard to avoid getting sucked into family drama and that’s much easier when I live far away. It’s even hard to be down there for a few days without feeling a sadness in my heart.

But I don’t like being away too long, especially from the ocean, and the peace of it.

1. I work too much. Why do I do it? Is it that I care more about work than anything else around me? Surely I don’t like work more than I like my friends and my relationships and doing things that I want, like writing and exploring the world. Can it be that when looking at all the ways I could spend my time, I would rather do things that mostly people don’t do unless someone pays them? Tom Peters posted this a while back:
   

   ALL THERE IS. Damn it! I keep forgetting this! Leaving it out of presentations! Namely, a PP slide that simply reads : You = Your Calendar. THIS IS MY #1 BELIEF ABOUT MANAGEMENT. Or: “You can’t bullshit your calendar.” Or: “Your calendar knows … do you?” All we have is our time. The way we distribute it is our “strategic plan,” our “vision,” our “values.” Period. So how’d you spend your precious time today? Tell me, and I’ll tell you what you actually care about—it’s simple and unerring.

   I get the idea here. It’s not a startling new concept. You can say you care about a lot of things, but what do you actually spend your time on? But sometimes, what you spend your time on doesn’t reflect what you care about most. It says that you’re disorganized or too busy to prioritize correctly or your time gets pre-empted a lot. And sometimes, it is a bit true. I do like my work and it doesn’t really seem like work to me and I also like liking my work. It’s somewhat of a circular situation: I don’t want to go back to a job I don’t like (even though that would mean I’d have a lot more time), but being in a job I do like means that I like to do it a lot, at the expense of the rest.

2. I like bad music.
3. I can be a disorganized mess. When I read through my archives here, I see a recurring theme. I can’t get organized. I keep thinking that if I buy just one more self-help book, I’ll break through. But it hasn’t happened yet.
4. I like potatoes way too much. I could eat potatoes at every meal. Often, I do.
5. I like being independent. I don’t like being told what to do and I don’t like not having control. I’m more a leader than a follower. Which is fine in leading-type situations, but not so great in team and relationship-stype situations. I actually do very well with collaboration, but deep down, if you don’t agree with me, I mostly think that you’re wrong. I try to be open-minded and take in all the facts before making decisions, but once I’ve made a decision, it’s difficult for me to be swayed another direction. I’m judgemental and stubborn and probably not as flexible as I like to think I am.
6. I make a terrible mess in the kitchen. When I’m cooking, I use every bowl and utensil I own and ingredients end up everywhere and the place becomes a disaster zone. I clean everything up after, though.
7. I’m not virtuous.
8. I get distracted easily. I’m a power multi-tasker and it’s difficult for me to concentrate on doing just one thing at a time. So, if I’m stuck doing one thing, I get bored. But if I’m doing too many things at once, I tend to wander off and forget about some of them. Possibly this contributes to my organization problem. At work, for instance, I’m constantly opening new tabs in my browser, and I need to do something with all of them, but at the end of the day, I find that I’ve managed to forget about half of them. It’s a problem.
9. I can get really bitchy sometimes. And mean. I amaze myself with my own meanness. I’m mostly a very nice person, but then I hit my limit and the bitchiness takes over. It’s not pretty.
10. I get depressed when I fail.
11. I can’t sing at all. So much so that P. won’t let me sing around him. Even when I’m in the car and shouldn’t everyone get to sing in the car?
12. I make a lot of lists.