S is for ...

.... Soundtrack.

About a year ago I received some rather horrible news from a close work friend and colleague of mine.  There's no way to sugar coat it, so here goes:  Non - Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  A 42 year old solid guy with 2 young children and a darling wife was now facing life in a tailspin as protocols and plans were being set out for his treatment. 

We all took it pretty hard at the office.  For all the prolonged eyerolling I do about the Type-A personality dudes I'm charged with wrangling, my workmates are pretty all right.  We've worked together so long and seen each other through the highs and lows of life that, at the risk of sounding corny, it's family - lite.  Adding to this of course is the harsh reality of capital C Cancer.  I mean, Jesus Christ, enough with this fucking disease already. 

He was off for awhile.  Calling and emailing to keep in touch, but also to keep his mind off that other thing.  The attitude was unreal - upbeat, positive, cheering us up that all was going to be okay.  After some months, chemo and, as he referred to it, his "Lex Luther do" - it was okay.  He returned to us - slighter in stature but absolutely stronger willed.

A few months after that, then, when he came into my office to tell me that his routine check up had discovered a stubborn node which had not responded to treatment, I was was frozen.  When he quietly broke the news to a few others, they, too, were frozen.  There would be more chemo.  There would be a stem cell transplant.  More drugs.  More pain.  More tears.  He was obviously deflated.  And scared.  It's difficult not to project your own past experience into things like this - after five and a half years I still can't really talk about everything that my Dad and family went through during his second round of chemo - it's just too painful, full of sadness and guilt and regret and anger - but I remember what happened when it was over:  he died.  I wanted things to be different this time, obviously, but what control did I have over anything.  What could I do?  Everyone at work felt the same way - we were devastated.

And this is sort of the thing.  We all felt like we'd been punched in the stomach - how does this happen?  Why does this happen?  What is going to happen?!  In my office, we're all a bunch of action oriented people - we DO, and if we can't do we tell you what YOU should DO.  This is just the way things are around here.  But what when you can't?  When you can't DO anything?  I work with a good many arrogant people but even they know (fine, me included) that we can't cure cancer.  We can't make the drug they give you to fix your cancer less of a killer.  We needed to find a way - in our own hearts and minds - to believe that he was going to be okay.  Whether we sought this out through God or Buddha or that little leprechaun on the box of Lucky Charms, we had to find it somewhere but even this wasn't enough.  Our inate instincts took over:  we needed to DO something.

So when one of my sweet officemates came to me with an idea of a Feel Good Soundtrack, I was all over it.  Everyone in the office was charged with providing me a list of two or three of their go-to feel good songs.  Songs that got them out of funk, got them grooving, got them feeling good, got them thinking of better days.  I was going to then take these songs, put them on an iPod Shuffle and hand it over.  It wouldn't change anything, but it would take his mind off things when he was sitting in that big chair for hours upon hours.  This was the best we could do.  This was good.

The songs came in fast and furious, some more nostalgically personal - feel good, others straight up dance your funk out - feel good, a few bang your head against the wall to forget your not feel-good, but they all meant something to each of us in some way.  I learned a little more about my office mates based on their selections, which was an added bonus.  I learned that iTunes is awesome, I mean, did you know their selection of Japanese pop is simply astounding?  I learned that regardless of how easy a project may seem to be, I will find a way to make it harder because technology never makes sense to me - I had download issues and hard drive issues but I wasn't deterred - this was happening.  I was doing it.  And, in perfect karma timing, my laptop competely busted the day after I finished.  Crazy.

When it was all said and done, there was 4 days worth of music on this Shuffle.  It sat in my office for weeks as we tried to schedule a visit but between his up / down energy levels, appointments and new medicine that made it painful for him to get out of bed and my summer of sick (sinusitus, bronchitis and overall too many germs to visit a guy with a non-existent immune system) this was proving impossible.  I waived the white flag and couriered it off last week.  A day later, I received a phone call and within two minutes we were both in tears.  The email he sent to everyone a day after that had us all in tears.

There's much to be said about the power of music,  but that's an obvious.  There's much to be said about the crummy cards we're often dealt in life, but that's depressing.  All I really want to say, and I realize I'm taking a very long time to say it, is that regardless of how powerless we feel, how hopeless things might be, how insurmountable our struggles are, we can always try.  Try to do something.  Try to make things better.  Try to see life outside ourselves.  Try to do something for someone that may not make sense to us, but will mean the world to them.  We have to take care of each other.  Our Feelgood Soundtrack is not going to cure his cancer.  But if all it can do is take his mind off that fucking cancer - and let him know that our minds are never far from him - I think that's a good thing.

S is for Soundtrack.

Because he always feels good after hearing The Boss.

R is for ...

... Real.

It was bound to happen.  Destined to end.

You know how it goes.  You skip through life, blissfully unaware of the horrors of reality until one day this skipping just stops.  Your former exuberate highs are now only depressing lows and the thing you once loved, sought out, needed, wanted and worked so fucking hard for is now just a symbol for the abject hatred formally reserved for Ticketmaster and Veganism.

I hate improv.

I hate how fucking hard it is.  I hate that the process of trying to get better is sucking the life out of me.  I talk too much.  I rely on words too much.  I push too hard in my scenes.  Excuse me?!?  YOU'VE JUST FUCKING DESCRIBED ME AS A PERSON!  WHAT THE FUCK NOW?!?!

So last night, after yet another soul crushing class I decided to stick around for a little jam session, because I figured it would be valuable to actually observe some fun rather than try to create some fun that actually turned to shit.  I stupidly put my name on the jam list and OF COURSE was called up on stage to play around with one my Improv heroes.  So imagine.  You've just basically had trouble playing, what, I don't know, Smoke on the Water on the guitar and before you know it Jimi Hendrix is calling you up for a jam session.  Nice.

My improv hero is awesome.  He does nothing, and is awesome.  He works it, and is awesome.  He's calm and intuitive and completely non-aggressive and so fucking quick and smart.  I mean, really, no pressure.  We were on a date.  On a Zombie Walk.  This is what happens in Improv.  I have no idea what I was doing.  Zombies were dying in front of us.  Helicopters were warning us of the imminent Zombie Apocalypse.  We managed to agree that, as a couple, Romeo & Juliet had a great little run.  This is what happens in Improv.  It was, by my own account, terrible.  I'm not good with too much extra (at this point I'm not good with much of anything but I know for damn sure I can't handle scenes where there is too much action taking away from the who/what/where/why do we care of the main characters - I get too confused and have a hard time committing).  It was too much extra.  I felt like such a fail.  After it's done of course you think of a million zillion different ways you could have played it, which is the worst thing you can do.  As a great teach once yelled to one of my classmates "STOP TELLING ME WHAT YOU WERE GOING TO DO AND JUST FUCKING DO IT", as you can see, there are no do-overs in Improv.

So, what now?  I have real questions: Am I thinking too hard?  Am I stressing too much?  Am I weighing myself down? Am I scared?  What the fuck am I doing?  With no real answers:  Maybe. I guess so.  Um Yeah?  Huh?  I don't know.  

I've lost all sense of instinctual confidence.  I've lost ALL confidence.  What the fuck now?  Am I supposed to quit before I get kicked out?  Is it time to stop deluding myself?  Am I to live my Improv life hugging the back wall?  Is it back to cooking classes?  Fuck, I don't know.    

Shit just got real, yo.

R is for Real.

Q is for ...

... Quake.

Life's full of little tremors.  Little bumps of the oh wells, followed by some hard fought smiles and pick yourself ups and that's okay, some things aren't meant to be, but all in all, life is good.  Tremors, if we take them as minor hiccups, can serve to focus the wandering, and wondering, mind.  A mind easily taken on paths of now- pleasures.

Occasionally, though, these tremors become quakes.  These quakes are seismic, and not because it takes more to move passed them, but because they are simply that cataclysmic, requiring more from us than just a nonchalant shrug and forceful step forward.

A Diagnosis.  A Loss.  A Truth.  An End.

Quakes come in all shapes, but their size is not quite quantifiable.  They are the size of our hearts & our hopes for they are reminders that we are human, but here for a short time.  We try, we try so hard to be so much, but in the end, we are really nothing.

Tremors give you a glimmer of this truth.  Quakes make this truth blinding. 

Q is for Quake.

P is for ...

... Possible.

It's Father's Day today.

I wish for all of you to give your Dads huge break-his-ribs hugs.  And if that's not possible, chat him up on the phone.  And if both those things are simply impossible,  just think about all those times when you could and did.  Then, laugh a bit and cry a bit and have a little moment when you wish the impossible was possible.



P is for Possible.

O is for ...

... organize.

Let's get organized!

Ah, friends, can a battlecry be more inspiring?

We shall get together, work together, defeat our enemies together, figure it out together, clear our clutter together!

Ah, fine, border battles of yore have now been replaced by battles over closet space but you see where I'm going, right - we must get organized!

So, get organized I did.   My organizational spasm had me living through clothes on my dining table, garbage bags in my den and an overall sense of overwhelmed and exasperated for about three weeks (I really dislike stop/start projects, but there was no choice!).  I will confess that I'm not an unorganized person at all, everything is always neat and clean and in its' proper place - before / after photos of my closets & drawers, had I taken them, would have been completely undistinguishable - the issue for me was the actual possibility that my closets & drawers were going to combust or revolt in protest over their 'over-stuffed-ness'. That I was going to combust or revolt in protest of my 'over-squished-ness'.  I simply have a ton of stuff.  I keep things.  I keep buying things.  I don't have space for these things.  Things like, every things, from clothes to towels to undergarments in every colour and sheets and trinkets and maps of foreign cities which I hope to go to again and of course need the same map I used before and random stationary and magazines with one great article that I will never reread to cables and instruction manuals and original boxes and years worth of Christmas Cards and the list goes on and on and on and on. 

Ah, fuck, do you see the problem?!  I'm a high end hoarder with compulsive buying disease! 

I had to clear my place of the no longer useful and take an inventory of what was actually in these closets and drawers, so I could put my brain on notice:  stop buying stuff!  You don't need more stuff!  I conducted a very trying self - interrogation with, um, myself during this process: How many sets of sheets does one person need - you only have one bed!!?!  Are you REALLY going to refer to this instruction manual when your TV doesn't work?!  How many pairs of pants that no longer fit do you need in your closet?!  So, this box that your sunglasses came in, you're keeping it why?!  I was not very sympathetic with me.  Things were tossed, others donated, some recyled.  In the end, I STILL HAVE A TON OF STUFF, but I'd like to think that now the ton of stuff I have is useful and necessary (yes, even my 14 white Tshirts because they are all different in their own special way).  I hope not to have a minor melt down in six months time when I'm looking for a purse and discover a purse that I forgot I actually owned (true story. very embarrassing. but sort of like shopping without spending money?.).  I hope to become the city's greatest philanthropist with all the money I now have because I'm not spending all my money ON STUFF.  I hope to be more sensible (but not with shoes.  this isn't a draconian regime of suffering and utter non-spending people.).  Most of all, though, I hope to continue this trend of keeping what's important and discarding what's not, both on the insides and outsides of my overstuffed life.

Ah, for now I see, could this be what being organized is all about? 

N is for ...

... novel.

Whatcha reading lovebugs?  Anything good?  Anything juicy?  Anything recommendable?

Me?  I'm reading something very, very good.  Not necessarily juicy.  I am pretty sure it's not  recommendable in an enjoyable read kind of way. 

You see, The Fault in Our Stars, written by John Green, is the story of a sixteen-year-old cancer patient named Hazel, who is forced by her parents to attend a support group, where she subsequently meets and falls in love with the seventeen-year-old Augustus Waters, an ex-basketball player and amputee.

With respect, this is no Harlequin romance.

The book came to me highly recommended with requisite disclaimers - it's not easy, but it's worth it; you will cry but you'll be fine - from someone whose on my same book train.  That said, I didn't love The Night Circus (I'm sorry, E!  I just wanted it to end!) but we can't hold this one flub against her.   In truth, if E could stand the emotional weight of The Fault in Our Stars, I could too dammit! so here we are 150 pages in and I'm scared to go on.

I don't want to know how this story is going to play out because I'm thinking it's not good.  Right now, I'm at a sweet spot.  These kids are getting to know each other and they're so adorable in their insecurities and mutual crushing.  They're doing all the cute things you do, regardless of how old you are, when you meet someone you like but are sort of scared to admit you like them.  I want to freeze them right there forever.  Hazel is far more pragmatic than I am - she knows this can't last.  She's in tune to her own reality and is pushing Augustus away.  NO!  What are you doing you dumbdumb!?  He really likes you!! 

Adding to my reluctance in dealing with fictional realities, is the fact that I know this book is going to be a Stage 5 Weeper.  I've already gotten a little misty.  I have no issue with that at all (quite honestly, at this moment, I'd much rather cry over some fake people's love lives than my own pathetic one thank you very much), but as I do most of my reading on the subway these days I'm not looking forward to wailing on the TTC.  While I try to balance.  And not miss my stop. (Confession:  I am the nerdy girl who reads library books on the subway - look, I pay taxes and want to get something tangible out of them! - and missed her stop a few times while reading and also reads while walking on occasion.  Please don't point and laugh if you ever see me.)  It's sort of embarrassing.  But.  You need to ride your shit out (Literally and Figuratively!) so I suppose I will cross that bridge when I come to it.  You have been warned.

So that takes us back to the actual matter at hand.  What will happen to Hazel & Augustus?  I DON'T KNOW!  I DON'T WANT TO KNOW!  TELL ME!  I mean, did we know what was going to happen to Dexter & Emma?!  (Oh my God, I can't even.)  Or Henry & Clare?  Or Anyone & Anyone?  I mean, really? Do you know what's going to happen to you?!  How can we know unless we come to know?  We need to go through it to live it and learn it.  We need to see how it all plays out.  That, lovebugs, is straight from my own personal handbook of Life Skills 202. 

I came about my Life Skills Handbook completely accidentally, after someone told me something that was just so doomsday:  "I fear the end before the beginning."  I'm not going to go into the details of how this came about, suffice to say it wasn't pleasant and in the end, after some really good and some really bad he was completely right to fear the end because the end sucked large.  Unfortunately, we didn't really have much of a middle, which made the end - in my mind anyway - even worse.  It was all for nothing.  I thought, then, and reaffirm now, that fearing the end before the beginning is actually an anti-life skill because where's the actual living?  It's a massive holding pattern where you wait for someone to cajole or talk you into something while you resist and think.  You are stuck.  It is very hard being that other person.  Resisting the urge to scream "Just fucking go for it!"  Let's see how it plays out! We are not working off a script!"  all the time.  And that's when you're not walking on the eggshells of saying and doing something that may be construed as the wrong thing.  Spoiler alert:  I am not an eggshell type of person.  Enter Life Skills 202, where We See How Things Play Out. In case you are wondering, there are only two levels in my Life Skills Handbook.  Life Skills 101 is where you learn things like putting your pants on before your shoes.  It's a work in progress.

So, here I am.  At an impasse with The Fault in Our Stars because I don't want to see how things are going to play out.  I am failing at my own handbook with fake people.  Dear Lord.  Get a grip, Olga, you little wimp.  You're tougher than this.  You're better than this.  ALL THIS.  AND THAT.  Even amidst periods of monumental self - doubt and insecurity you know you were better than that (I only know this thanks to my boo).  I'm trudging forward.  And honest to God, Hazel better trudge too.  We need to see  how it all plays out - for Hazel & Augustus & Olga.  It's not really a novel idea, lovebugs, it's just a life skill.  ;)

N is for Novel.

M is for ...

... Memory.

Not quite a year ago I was hit with some pretty crushing disappointment.  While I somewhat remember what it felt like, I don't exactly because how can you?  You can't live with that everyday, you have to let it go and move - sideways, that ways, anyways - ideally, you want to move forward but it really doesn't matter what ways - you just need to move.

Because I write about things now, I reopened my gift of instant recall to take me back to how I felt at that time.  I wanted to relive my memory of how it felt to really FAIL. (http://curiousyetdelicious.blogspot.ca/2012/08/fail.html)

That was absolutely me.  I was sad and disappointed and handled this sadness & disappointment in typical fashion:  I cloaked it in defensive humour and tried to forget about it.  In truth, my audition wasn't that great.  I had so much to learn.  So, I put my head down and went to work.  I lost some confidence along the way, I also lost some of the fun.  I didn't give up.  I wondered what I was doing.  I questioned my motives, my supposed talent and desire.  I sulked.  I almost quit.  Many times.  But I didn't give up.  I liked this too much.  And slowly, along the way, I sort of got my groove back.

Armed with words of wisdom and encouragement, the best of which was "Who gives a fuck, just do it." Last Thursday, I put myself in that room again.  Facing that panel which this time was stacked with four previous teachers.  I mean, really?  The Ghosts of Christmas Past meets American Idol?  All I really wanted was for the general consensus to be an overall "huh. she's getting better."  Really.  That was it.  I'm serious!  Acknowledgement of improvement is the Holy Grail of compliments for me!  Worst case scenario, I didn't want them all to think "wow.  she's really wasting her time."  But you can't think of any of that when it's your turn.  You need to check all your bullshit at the door, clear your head, trust your instincts and be THERE for your scene partner.  Even if your scene partner decides to be a guy with Tourette's.  (I'm sorry.  This was mean and I was really pissed and quite frankly, dude, you are not auditioning for Juilliard.  Tourette's is not an offer. You. Fucking. Jerk. Ah, that felt better.).  You also have to come up with some ideas and show you can make that pan sizzle.  In the end, I was happy.  It wasn't perfect, but in the grand scheme of things I felt pretty good.  Walking out of that room, I thought - no joke - okay, if I don't get it this time it's okay.  I gave 'er.

Well, of course my little Improv Fairytale reaches its epic finale with me getting in.  I got the call yesterday and when I hung up the phone I sat in my office and cried.  I was laughing and crying and my awesome Con Grad co-worker who is now a kick ass broker on Bay Street almost jumped over my desk to congratulate me and and now I know exactly what it will feel like to have Jon Hamm propose to me -  I was so fucking happy you have no idea.  I'm still so fucking happy you have no idea.  Why?  Because it's a big deal?  Well, yeah, I guess.  But more so because I didn't let my big fail get me down.  I didn't recoil into my cave of rejection, quit Improv and take up Zumba.  I stuck with it and it paid off.  It's the beginning of a long hard road of hard work, but it paid off.  I have a start and the knowledge that sometimes things work out. Sometimes you get what you want.  Even me.  Sometimes even I get what I want.  I don't want to forget how I felt last year, though.  I want to savour the memory of failure so I can remind myself that it's not the end.  It only means as much as we let it.  Pick yourself up.  Dust yourself off and GO.  Fucking GO.


M is for Memory.