1,948 Words til 31

I just ordered 2 crepes to be delivered to my place in 60-75 minutes. That's definitely a San Diego thing, in New York it would be 20-35 minutes and I'd still be complaining that it's taking too long for the food to get into my mouth. I only wanted 1 crepe but I had to reach the delivery min so I got a savory and a sweet one. It's alright.

Tonight's the last night I'm 30 so I can eat 2 crepes if I want. Tomorrow starts a year long journey of 10,000 steps a day that I've challenged myself to. I hope I lose 10 pounds. Also being healthier, you know. Thinking back to the night before I turned 30 I can't even remember what I did. Things are blurry in my memory as usual but I know myself pretty well and I know 1 year ago Jen super well, so I'm pretty sure she was feeling like this but a little bit worse. Birthdays have always been so hard for me. Let's start at the beginning.

I lived largely in my own head for my first 14 or so years of life. In middle school I would read at breaks. It's not that I felt like the characters were my friends, like I often hear people say, but for me I didn't need friends because I could get completely lost in the stories. My best friend was my English teacher, Mr. Pfeiler. He totally got me. He was the first person to tell me, at age 12, that I was an old soul. That wasn't the last time I'd hear it. Looking back I was the epitome of angst. So moody and emotional and everything was the end of the world. I was taught pretty early on that this was a character defect. That emotional = weak. "Suck it up" comes to mind. "Get over it." So I hid my emotions inside. Except that doesn't work. I felt so utterly alone, and this was before it was okay, at least in my world, to talk about things that were going on inside me like loneliness and a great fear of everything. I was expected to get over it. Whatever it was. I wasn't a happy adolescent. I was lonely and I was very depressed. And I had been that way for as long as I remembered. "To feel alone is to be alone. That's what it is." (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, one of my favorite books by Jonathan Safron Foer).

When I had my first real break up with Erik von Detten a age 15 and a half I actually wanted to die. I didn't think I would ever get over it. How could he leave me, he said we were going to be together forever!? I actually wrote a "book" about our future reconciliation as adults. It was awful.

I wanted to be a grown up so badly. I fantasized about having my own place and having grown up friends who understood me. All I've ever wanted was for someone to understand me. I wonder, pointlessly, what it would be like for someone like me to have grown up in a time like the present. Would I be encouraged to meditate and breathe when I was anxious and depressed? Because that would have been really helpful. Would my sensitivity and emotional depth not have been looked at as a weakness? It's taken me most of my life to accept and appreciate myself for who I am and to realize that I'm not weak. I am who I am. I am strong as fuck. I can endure. I have endured. My empathy, sympathy, ability to love greatly and without limits are not a weakness but are in fact my super powers. It was a dense and difficult journey for me to realize that but once I did my world expanded and became limitless. I have to remind myself of that limitlessness daily otherwise I get stuck in my own head and things become so small and impossible to deal with.

I've lived a lot of life. I realized that's an ambiguous way to really say nothing, but there's a lot I'm saving for my book. Which will not be ghostwritten, but written painstakingly by my own hand, likely over several years and preferably in a cabin in Maine as well as in buses and on trains and planes all over the world. I digress. I've lived a lot of life. And in a way I feel as though I've just started. Why am I writing like an 89 year old woman who's about to lay in bed for the eternal sleep? I have no idea.

This year I had surgery and my body was broken open and sewn back together again. I had to stay still to heal and that was a challenge. The lesson of patience is given to me over and over again. It doesn't leave you until you learn it. I can still taste the pain in my mouth like the memory of a rotten egg. During those dark hours I learned that the person I was with wasn't right for me. It's times like those that these things become clear. But my eyes were closed and it took me many more months to realize he wasn't for me. Patience. As I healed I started a little project made from love and it turned into a business. But it's not happening fast enough, I'm not good enough at knowing everything right away. Patience.

Some days I sit in meditation and I feel so happy that my lips can't help but turn up in elation. I feel the sea air on my face and my puppy dog snuggles at my feet and I get to lead people in helping others and my community is loving and supportive of my mission and I am happy. But triggers come up. It's my birthday. I've always hated my birthday. Friends voices come into my head, my own voice comes into my head..."let's reframe it. 'I love my birthday.'" Sometimes I just simply cannot, and I sink back down into college Jen where Cat Power and Elliot Smith are the soundtrack and I dreamed of running away from everything. I did run away, and when I got to where I ran I eventually got the itch to leave there too.

A couple days ago, for the first time in about 7 years, I had the urge to get in my car and keep driving. When my depression became too much to bear in 11th grade and I stopped caring about wearing make up and came to school in the sweatshirt I had slept in I used to cut school and drive. I eventually graduated early because high school was easy and I have a genius IQ. I'd usually drive the long winding back roads from Escondido to Del Mar and end at Fletcher Cove, my favorite place. I felt empty. I felt like a void. The ocean seemed like a good place to be to sit with that. I'm grateful I'm not in that place anymore and I've worked really hard to get where I am today. There's fear that I'm going to sink back into that place. It pops up every once in a while like those gophers in the arcade game that you have to hit with that big thing and shove back down quick enough and if you don't you lose. The difference is that now I don't let fear run my life. It creeps in and there's always a choice, in every moment, to choose love over fear. To recognize and say no to the tiny mad idea. To say no to the ego.

Today I choose to live my life completely authentically. I think, before I do something, "Is that really authentic?", and if it's not I have to choose the other thing. It definitely doesn't always work out the way I want it to. Sometimes I completely speak my truth and declare what's in my heart and it absolutely doesn't go how I want it to. But the point is not to have everything go the way I want it to. I'd like to think I'm wise enough to know that I don't always know what's best. Trust. Patience. But if I show up to my life as my authentic self I'll never have regrets. I may get hurt but I'll never wonder what would have happened if only I'd done or said what I felt. It's scary. But I choose not to let fear dictate what I do. So ok, I'm emotional. I'm sensitive. These are not bad things. I feel it all, man, and that's ok with me because like it or not that's who I am. So I'm gonna like it.

I'm a big dork. I like to read and drink tea and stay in my yoga pants all day even if I'm not going to do yoga. I like to be on my couch and I like to be barefoot and I don't like to shower every day and I don't like to go out to clubs because I feel socially awkward and I just wanna hang out one on one with people I love and also in groups of people I love and do simple things like hike and eat food and exciting things like travel and sing karaoke really badly. I value real connection among everything else. I like to cuddle. I want to be with someone, but not just anyone, someone absolutely fucking incredible. Someone who supports me and my vision for my best life and for the world and someone who makes me want to be a better person. So I commit to dating only men who fit that description. I know what a phenomenal partner I am and I will accept nothing less in a man. This is the year that I find him. I think he might already be in my life, but hey, I don't know what I don't know and I admit that.

I want to learn more, I miss school. I miss my involvement in politics and my love of it but I got to a point where it felt so ineffectual to care. All the lines have blurred together and no one is really making a difference the way they should. So I decided to take matters into my own hands, at least in my own corner of the world. And everywhere I go I hope to spread love like golden pixie dust behind me. Or maybe like wildfire of high vibration. I want to travel more, I miss what it feels like to see things and meet people for the first time. I want to spend more time connecting with people and having real conversations. I want to spend more time on my balcony at sunset with a bottle of wine and this incredible person I'm manifesting. I want to grow my business and expand country wide and help millions and millions of the people who need it most. And I want to make enough money so that if I break my phone and have to pay to get it fixed I can still afford groceries. Okay? I want all of this. And I'm going to get it. And if you want to be a part of my journey and want me to be a part of yours that's awesome. What do you want? We can create our dreams together. We can do it by embracing exactly who we are. Who are you?

I Woke Up Like This

I woke up at 7 to Derby belting out a shrill whine that let me know she wasn't going to stop until I got myself out of bed and fed her. I'm tired of waking up that way. It can't be good for me. She's been driving me crazy lately. It's been almost 8 years we've spent together and she's lived with me all over the US. But lately all she does is whine, and when I take her to the park to get her energy out she just barks. Am I a bad person because I sort of hate my dog right now?

I woke up so damp by hair was curly. Up until a month ago I had never sweat the bed in my life, now it's a thing. I wake up, I'm damp, my hair is wild and half curly (and not in the good way), Derby is whining at me and the construction noise is 20 floors below but somehow sounds like it's inside my ear drum. Morning meditation can usually erase the shitty way I wake up, but what if I could wake up peacefully, to a sleeping little dog curled into a ball at the foot of the bed, and I wasn't soaking wet... that would definitely be better.

I woke up proud of myself for not eating that pizza in bed when I got home like I wanted to, but as soon as I looked in the mirror I knew that wasn't enough. The chubby skin rounding my face out looked back at me and I was caught face to face with someone I didn't want to deal with. I feel so gross lately I want to be covered head to toe with clothes so no one can see. And more than anything I miss my practice. I miss the feeling of my body stretching deeper into a pose, releasing any tension. I miss taking time out to focus only on my breath and balance. Maybe I should go to Vipassana, except oh wait I think that might kill me. If I'm going to be silent for 10 days I need to be allowed to read and write. I know that's missing the point, but the point for me to is to get things in my overactive mind out of there and to fill it at times with the beautiful words of someone else.

It's still early and I don't want to start my day this irritated, so I'll do one of my favorite little tricks that working from home allows and go back to sleep for a half hour. When I wake up Derby will be sleeping in a little ball and hopefully I won't be sweaty and maybe I'll even get a respite and the construction guys will be breaking for tea. Alright here we go, take 2.

Brunch Club - The Story So Far

I have always had a heart for the homeless. I'm just not the type of person who can walk by someone clearly living on the street and not feel something. After growing up in a suburb of San Diego I lived in New York City for 6 years and I saw homeless people every day. When I first moved there I never ate lunch because as soon as I walked out of the cafe on my way back to work I saw someone who needed the meal more than I did. There were a few particularly sweet homeless men I met that I would continually get hot chocolate and a donut for in the winter time, when it was wet and snowy and freezing. One guy camped out on the corner a couple avenues from my place in Murray Hill and I would sometimes heat up a can of soup and bring it out and sit with him on the curb while he ate. He wasn't a drug addict or a crazy person; he was a father, who spoke with pride and love about his children, with no animosity or blame that they weren't helping him. He had drowned in legal fees while trying to get custody of his children form his ex wife, and that's how he became homeless. 

I continued to help out in the little ways that I could. I always found that the kindness more than the food was what really touched their hearts and added some warmth. The simple act of looking into their eyes and not looking away made all the difference. When I moved back to San Diego I came to Little Italy, on the bay edge of the downtown Gaslamp District. Again I saw homeless people every day. Again I did little things like give them leftovers or make sack lunches from things I had at home. And again I felt the immense gratitude from every one of them. On my birthday, January 30th, 2014, I was walking downtown to my yoga class and noticed all the homeless people lining Broadway. After my class I went into a coffee shop and ordered a bagel for myself to go. I then thought of all the people I would pass by on my walk home and ordered 5 more bagels in separate bags. As I walked home I handed them out and was full of love in my heart with each interaction. But I ran out of bagels way before I ran out of hungry people. 

A couple months later I was feeling particularly sorry for myself after a difficult time with my boyfriend and forced myself to do the only thing I know to pull me out of self pity: a gratitude list. I started my list with a roof over my head and food to eat. This sparked the thought of all the people I passed every day who didn't have either of those. I wanted to pull myself out of my funk by being of service to the people who had less than I did. I knew I could make a couple sack lunches and have a few conversations, but I wanted to do more. I posted an event on Facebook called Brunch Club - Sunday of Service and invited all my local friends I thought might have an interest in giving back. All I said was that I was going to make some lunches to hand out to the homeless and then afterward we could go to brunch. I asked that the friends who came bring a cash donation to help pay for the supplies. I had no idea if anyone would show up or if they would all think I was crazy, but I resolved to do it alone if no one showed up. 

A couple days later I went to the local discount market and got 50 bottles of water, fixin's for pb&js, granola bars, and toothbrushes. 6 people showed up at my door and we put together the bags. The night before I sat up late writing 50 notes. On one side I chose a quote of inspiration or a message from my heart and on the other I wrote the address for a shelter where they could go for a meal. My friends and I packed up the bags and went to hand them out. They went quickly. There were more people than bags. But the folks were grateful. They said thank you. They joked with us, smiled at us. As I was getting back into my car there was a man sitting on the floor in front of a building lit up with bright mosaic tiles shining in the sun. He pulled out the sandwich and as he read the note I had written a smile overtook his face. My heart grew 2 sizes that day. My friends and I then shared a brunch table and broke bread together as a little family, happy with the small difference we had just made. 

A month later I made a similar invite along with new Facebook and Instagram accounts for Brunch Club. Word had spread and 39 people showed up this time; my condo had never been so full. Some of the people I had never even met before. That day we were able to make 150 bags. In addition to the notes, water, food and toothbrushes this time we added socks and wet wipes to each bag, items often requested by those living on the streets. Again the most amazing part of the day was the interactions we had with the people we served. The stories they told us, the gratitude they displayed. A 17 year old kid broke down in tears telling us that he was so scared to die. He told us that every member of his family and every friend he had ever had had died on the street. He told us that he just wanted to make it to his 18th birthday. Our group is not based in religion, rather in kindness, love, human decency and service, but this kid asked us to pray for him and so we got in a circle around him and my friend Branko said a prayer. It was a moment I will never forget. Writing about it now my eyes are welling up with tears. I haven't seen that kid since but I think about him all the time. A veteran who told us he felt forgotten and thrown away by the country he served also came to tears while thanking us for our kindness. Whether he wanted it or not I gave him a big sweaty hug. 

The third month we were 60 strong, fed 201 and again were able to add more useful items. Dentists donated whole dental kits with toothpaste, toothbrushes, and floss. My dad donated 100 socks and t shirts. Nature Valley donated 100 granola bars. We met at Mission Brewery, who just gave us the use of their space. As Brunch Club expands with more volunteers and we are able to serve more people, I'm mindful to remember that at the heart of our mission is to be of service to those members of our society that need it the most. I want to do more work to help people transition out of homelessness and get their lives back on track to where they want to be, working with some great organizations who are already doing this kind of work. I want to do as much as I can for San Diego, which has the third largest homeless population in the country and the first largest population of homeless veterans. But at the end of the day, I want to feed people who are hungry and I want to look them in the eyes and tell them they are worthy when they have forgotten it. And that's what Brunch Club does.

If you want to volunteer click the link above to be a part of our facebook community. If you want to make a donation to help further our mission, please do so at our fundraising page here. To vote for us to win a 10k grant click here. Thank you! 

100 Days of Gratitude - DAY 100

It is day 100. I think when I started this project, 100 days ago, I was sitting right here on the far left corner of my bed typing on this laptop. What has changed? Well, the color of my room, for one. It used to be pink and now it's purple. Most notably my body has healed. I went from barely being able to move without pain to an acrobatic yoga class last week. I still don't have a "job", but I am doing things each day that I feel good about. Brunch Club was born and with the help of my amazing community I have been able to positively impact lives. I have made some really great new friends and my circle has expanded. I have started to facilitate a women's circle in my home and it's been wonderful. I have gone through this journey with my great aunt Edie, who has also done 100 days of gratitude. I have met one of my heroes, Gabrielle Bernstein. I have grown closer to my niece. I have forgiven and let go of some people. I have cried of a broken heart. I have been euphoric in joy over love. I have been sick, healthy, happy, sad, and everything in between. I have lived 100 days of life and in each one found at least 10 things to be grateful for. And I'm grateful to you all for taking this journey with me. Thank you.

photo cred

I am grateful...

1. That I kept the commitment to myself to complete this 100 days of recording my gratitude.
2. To each person that has come into my life during this time, like Adam, who came over tonight with medicine because he knew I was feeling sick, and took me to Whole Foods to get groceries because he knew I had nothing in the house. Like Viviana and Lisa who I didn't know until a couple months ago and now bring so much love into my life.
3. For Derby Blue, who probably got the most shout outs on all these lists. Who has been a loyal and loving furry friend to me for 7.5 years. 
4. To my inner guide, my higher power, the spirit guiding me constantly. 
5. For friends who have continued to be a source of joy, love, and support in my life. For Aliah, who I am so grateful to be able to grow with along our respective paths even though we are so far apart. For Kellie, who has been an awesome companion to live with and learn with. 
6. For the vast knowledge held by the universe and the access to it. For all the books and articles I've read and the information I have learned, day after day. That because of this and constant new experiences I am able to learn and expand my mind every day.
7. For the love and support of my family, and connections I've been able to create again, like with my cousin who I hadn't seen in years. For his sobriety and his doing so well. For each moment I get to spend with my niece and nephew. For hugs from my mom and smiles from my dad. 
8. For Brunch Club, everyone involved in it and their generosity with time, money, and hearts. For everything it has done for each person involved in any way and for everyone willing to help. 
9. For Jamie. In loving him I have learned about forgiveness, and letting go, and what I really want in a partner. For the way I feel when he looks at me. 
10. For love. Whether I feel it from Earl, the homeless guy who sleeps by the bank near my house, or in long loving hugs from Kellie or Jamie or in Adam coming over to bring me medicine, I feel love in all the ways it is offered and there is nothing more warming, more beautiful, or that gives me more life than love. For that and everyone who brings it I am eternally grateful.   

100 Days of Gratitude - Day 99

I am grateful...

1. To sleep in. Really in.
2. That the first thing I saw this morning was a message from a loved one.
3. That soon I will be getting a paycheck.
4. To spend time with Kellie.
5. For fair food and rides and photo booth fun.
6. For Derby Blue.
7. That Lisa is home and I get to see her soon.
8. That all my siblings who went sky diving today are safe and unharmed.
9. That I won the coin toss and didn't have to drive to the fair.
10. For a nice phone call with Adam

photo cred

100 Days of Gratitude - Day 98

I am grateful...

1. For such an amazing morning full of love and happiness.
2. For a mid morning nap.
3. To see a beautiful friend at the Farmer's Market and give her hugs and kisses.
4. For an hour catching up with Kellie while laying out in the sun.
5. That Kellie is happy for my happiness.
6. That Derby is such a good, sweet girl.
7. For texts all day that let me know I was loved and thought about.
8. For the great people that I worked a wedding with who made it run smoothly.
9. For great clients that are so in love. Couples like them make my job a pleasure. 
10. For Pablo Fernandez, who is awesome, and who I am very excited to do good work with.  

100 Days of Gratitude - Day 97

I am grateful...

1. That I got to celebrate my cousin's birthday at a fun breakfast with him and my brother. 
2. That on his birthday he is 86 days sober and doing great. I am so proud of him.
3. That my brother gave me a box of shoes for Soles4Souls.
4. For time to do a little yoga after breakfast and before my afternoon meeting.
5. For a fairly quick and easy meeting with good clients.
6. For something to look forward to all day. 
7. For the consideration of someone telling me in advance that they were running late.
8. For a great surprise date with someone very special to me.
9. For a first time acro yoga class, how fun!
10. For a truly beautiful night and the person who orchestrated it.