Guess what? You can’t have all the shit you want at the same time. You can have all the shit you want over the course of a lifetime, but you can’t have it all at once.
Related note to self: FUCKING RELAX ALREADY
Like, okay, I want to write a book of short personal essays. I really want to do this, and I’d even go so far as to classify it as one of my BLFs (Big Life Fives – the five things I know I need to accomplish in order to feel that I’ve done what I’m meant to do), and yet I’m not making any progress at all toward this goal.
You have no idea how much time and energy I’ve wasted giving myself a hard time about the fact that I’m not working on my essays. If each of those wasted hours could magically be turned into an essay, I’d have a full fucking set of encyclopedias to show you.
So, I’m not working on the book of essays. But, despite what I’ve accused myself of in my head, I now realize that the reasons I’m not working on the essays do not include my being a) a giant failure, b) a worse writer than people who misspell “girl” in Craigslist Missed Connection ads, or c) lazy as fuck.
I’m not working on the essays because even though they are important to me in the long-run, they aren’t all that important to me right now. I’m obsessed with the idea of completing a book of essays, but I’m more obsessed with completing a half marathon and building Shatterboxx, so those are the things that are taking priority.
And that’s what balance is, I think. It’s not the ability to do all the things at once, it’s the ability to recognize the few things you’re the most obsessed with at any given time, focus on those, and let it be okay that other things are getting temporarily neglected.
I know that there will be a time in the future when Shatterboxx requires less fanatical attention, and that’s when I’ll work on my book. There will then be a time after I’ve completed the book when I’ll move onto whatever my next obsession is, and work passionately on that. To me, that’s balance: knowing when to take six big steps in one direction, as opposed to trying to take one tiny step in six different directions.
While thinking about balance this week, and about my book of essays, I remembered a writing exercise I made myself do about a year ago where I wrote the first sentence of each of the thirteen essays I wanted to write. I just re-read them today, and even though I won’t be working on them for a while, I feel like publishing them here is as good of a first step as any toward completing the book (even if the next step doesn’t happen for months, or even years).
And so, I leave you with thirteen first sentences that will someday be thirteen full essays. Or, thirteen first sentences that will be entirely scraped for thirteen new first sentences to thirteen different essays. Because that’s the other thing about goals: they change over time and you have to fucking relax about that, too.
**
Chapter 1
If you ask her now, my mother will probably tell you that teaching me the word “vagina” at such an early age was a horrible, life altering mistake.
Chapter 2
“We need to discuss all the kissing,” my 5th grade principal said sternly.
Chapter 3
During the spring before my 11th birthday, my boyfriend passed me a note in math class that suggested we have a baby.
Chapter 4
My first experience with masturbation took place on a hotel cot in Dusseldorf, and at the time I was sure that whatever my body was experiencing would only work in Germany.
Chapter 5
I was 14 the summer we moved from London to Los Angeles, and making friends with the kids on my street would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t shown them how I had glued a piece of my peeled, sunburned skin to the corner of the collage I was making on my front lawn.
Chapter 6
When you get accepted into a summer program for high school students at the University of Michigan, you never assume that you’ll wind up with a roommate who slowly steals every single pair of underwear you own.
Chapter 7
I started babysitting when I was 15 years old, an age at which I was entirely unprepared to sit down with two grown adults and tell them that while they were at the movies, their son had tried to go down on their daughter.
Chapter 8
During my senior year of high school I realized that each time I got drunk, a small animal died.
Chapter 9
When I tell the story of the time I hooked up with a gay guy in the utility closet of my freshman dorm room, I usually preface the story by saying that it was “an accident.”
Chapter 10
If you need to drink two entire bottles of wine before getting into the shower with a guy, you probably shouldn’t be getting into the shower with him in the first place.
Chapter 11
Three months after my 21st birthday, I purposefully peed my pants in a New York City taxi cab.
Chapter 12
As he shut the front door and started down the stairs of his 5th floor walk up, I knew I had between 9 and 11 minutes to shave my vagina before he returned from the corner store with more beer.
Chapter 13
The goal of having sex in all 50 states started as a joke.
Posted in: a life less bullshit, the vagina monoblogs, writing, yo
{ 38 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve slowly but surely started to work on mine, but you’re right: it’s not the actual most important thing in the world. RIGHT NOW. Also? Your sentences > my sentences. Also, I need to hear all of these stories. Also, I miss you. ALSO ALSO ALSO. Love. Bye.
You better believe I’ll be purchasing this book. Unless these ideas are scrapped and it turns into, like, Necrophilia with Nicole! or something. Then no thank you.
Cannot wait for the next installment of sentences!! You are brillz, which my phone kept trying the change to grills and that doesn’t make sense at all.
#4. Oh geez. Amazing.
Pretty sure I texted my bff after my first and said “I THINK I DID IT RIGHT THIS TIME!”
wait, how do I not know the story of Chapter 11?
I would definitely buy this book.
I don’t know many things, but I do know that you, my dear, have the potential to be the next Chelsea Handler. Only better.
such wise words. relax. the easiet word to say, the hardest word to do.
trademark that shit.
this is THE book.
I love all of this, and especially relate to the part about balance being reorganizing your priorities vs. doing all of the things at once. #parallellives
I MUST read all of these stories.
Sound advice. And I’d argue that each of these sentences is their own story. You’re a great writer.
Let me know where to pre-order (I’ll wait 50 years for delivery).
Oh my gosh, I seriously want to hear the rest of those stories. Particularly 7, 9, and 11.
Umm I almost threw up from Chapter 7, and Chapter 12 I’ve so been there.
PS you better sign a copy of this shizz when you get published. Also I miss your face. Also hi Kelsey! Also YAY OCTOBER VISIT!!
Oh. Em. Gee. Pretty sure I would buy that book whenever it came out. Those are killer first sentences that are hilarious and give just enough bait to reel you in.
Isn’t it strange how your priorities change at any given time?
JEALOUSIES. MASSIVE ONES. STOP WITH ALL THE TALENT.
I LOVE YOU, GRIL.
I’ll be first in line for this book. A.) Because you’re awesome and B.) Because I actually just spit coffee laughing at the opener to chapter 7.
Oh MAN! I can’t wait for these essays. Each one was so crazy and hilarious. Good luck!
This will be my favorite book ever.
I can’t wait to read these stories, and based on just those sentences alone, I think we should be best friends. I’ll braid your hair and you can paint my nails, and we’ll watch chick flicks and talk boys, bueno, si?
Wow. Those are some awesome first sentences. And they definitely have made me want to read your book. I hope you find time to get to it at some point. I know all about delays.
Ok, so while I fully agree and support the idea of balance in life and focusing on what’s important in the now and not stressing about things you want for your future I also CANNOT WAIT for this book of essays, judging by those opening sentences and what I’ve read on your blog so far! So… I guess what I’m saying is DO IT NOW…no wait, that’s not what I’m saying… what I want to say is that you can at least know that when you DO get around to it, you will already have an eagerly-awaiting audience ready to storm the bookstores and interwebs.
Also, I think the idea of writing out each first sentences is brilliant. From the little bit of writing I’ve done I feel that sometimes just thinking about getting started can be stressful and suddenly the project/essay/story you’re trying to write seems like an overwhelmingly enormous/impossible task… so I think that taking just a small step such as a first sentence really helps your head get into it and makes it seem doable to write. Hm I guess maybe this is what all my elementary through high school teachers were always trying to tell me about the importance of writing outlines. Good thing I listened (no, I didn’t).
i seriously just giggled at every one of those first sentences. whenever your book happens i will gladly be a reader.
…I can’t even deal with you right now.
Ummm you need an email notification list set up pronto so that in 37 years when this book made of awesome finally comes out, we can be made aware of it and hand you our dolla dolla bills!!!
you’re such a tease.
i want to buy it noooooooooooooooooooow.
I am sure I am not the first to say I WILL BUY THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR BOOK. Really, the one that intrigues me to most is the intentional peeing of pants, as I spend my life trying not.to do thay very thing.
Also, I swear I will try and wean myself of saying this EVERY comment and every post, BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW MY FEELINGS?!?! But yes, I consider myself a failure because I am 24 and haven’t published a book of poems or started a dance company or gotten a professorship or started a restaurant.
But…I am 24!!! Thank you for reminding me!
Love this. Not only do I really, really want to read that book, but I think you’re exactly right – you can’t do all the things all at one time. And that’s okay.
Thirteen is my favorite number and you, my dear, are my favorite blogger. The time will come and it will be perfect and we’ll all be waiting
You have an amazing start!!! I will wait patiently for the rest! In the meantime, I hear there is a company (or probably more likely, more than one company) that will put your blog posts into a bound book. You can pick and choose which ones you want in the book. I know your goal is something different in terms of a book but if it doesn’t take too much time and effort on your end, you should totally make a book out of shit you have already written until you have time to do the other one!
CRYING AT THIS ONE:
“I started babysitting when I was 15 years old, an age at which I was entirely unprepared to sit down with two grown adults and tell them that while they were at the movies, their son had tried to go down on their daughter.”
WHAT THA FUCKKKKKK?!?
I will buy your book. I will even splurge and buy the hardcopy. You are amazing.
So I’m really excited about this book, even if I’m a little disturbed by the chapter that deals with you telling parents about their son going down on their daughter. I’ll be waiting for it eagerly even if it doesn’t come out until 10 years from now.
Yup. Every single person here has said exactly what I was thinking – I want to buy your book so hard. In the words of Barney Stinson, “I want to take it behind the bleachers and get it pregnant.” And I’ve only read the first 13 potential sentences.
No matter when you DO do it, it’s going to rock.
As for your other point – hells yes. When we’re young, we have this huge ‘life list’ or goals we want to accomplish and don’t realize we don’t have to do them all rightthissecond. So we (and by “we” I mean “me”) start and stop a lot of things. Books, projects, jobs, travel plans… I find myself so overwhelmed sometimes with all things things I want to do that I never even properly start one.
Anyway, yeah. I can relate.
1) I needed this so I could recognize it in my own obsessions,
AND
2) I can’t wait for this book to come out.
Whenever it’s ready, I’ll read that shit.
chapter 7 just scarred me for life.
I may or may not have become a little obsessed with reading all your posts since I unfortunately just discovered this blog. I also may or may not waste hours at work reading aforementioned posts. And they’re all so effing great. Nothing better than silently laughing in my office trying to avoid weird looks from my co-workers.