The Most Awesomest

Some awesome things are happening this week.

I get to go see Chicago the Musical with my bittiest sister this coming weekend. I was featured in a spotlight article at work. And I got free panties from Victoria’s Secret. Sometimes it’s the little things in life.

The most awesomest, though, was that I received pretty print copies of Quills & Pixels with a published essay of mine very own in it.

I’m in print bitches!

I really thought just finding out that it would be published was the big news. Turns out I was wrong. Seeing words you wrote on real paper that is bound and covered is actually pretty amazing.

It’s not the Best of American Essays of 2013 or The New York Times or anything, but it’s a start. It’s a little peer reviewed publication from UALR, where I graduated last spring. Being featured by my own community has a pretty special feel to it.

I’m a firm believer in celebrating life’s little triumphs. Hell, I celebrate when I clean my desk off. This is more of a bottle of wine and three chocolate cupcakes type celebration with a little bit of dance party thrown in for good measure.

My amazing and deranged friend, Wendy McCloud, is also in the same publication. I won’t go into full details about her, but you will see her featured here as often as I can talk her into it. She’s not only a funny and talented writer, she is also a ballsy, awe-inspiring survivor. She always says that “you can become the person you want to be, not the person you were born to be” and it’s an ideology she accredits with every breath she takes.

This week I'm going to post one of the pieces she had published. She’s a complete show off (dramatic eye roll) and just HAD to have two in there. Despite my resentment, I have to admit that one of them holds an especially important message.

Life is full of surprises, most of them are beyond our control. That doesn’t, however, mean that we are helpless. Our dear Wendy is here to enlighten us as to why we need to worry about something that is completely out of my realm of expertise.

Unfortunately, I won’t be posting her work tonight - but I will be posting it tomorrow. So keep an eye out. You really won’t want to miss this.

“How wild it was, to let it be.”

I saw the movie Wild this past weekend. The book one very dear to my heart. I read it several years ago and have reread it and referenced it more times than I could possibly count.

The first time I read the book, there was something that I absolutely marveled at and I was reminded of it when I saw the movie.

After suffering an enormous loss, the author's life spun out of control. She suddenly became aware of the juxtaposition of what her life looked like and who she felt she really was under all of her pain and grief. She looked in the proverbial mirror and said, “Wow. My life is a fucked up mess and I need to do something about it.”

She was lost. She had broken into 10,000 pieces. She was trapped and paralyzed by her own mistakes, fear, guilt and grief. Then one day, she was standing in a store and saw a book about the Pacific Coast Trail. An answer took hold. She was drawn to it. A gut feeling told her that the PCT would rescue her. 

I don’t like to use the words 'hunch' or 'gut' in this situation. It makes it seem like I’m watching NCIS and Leroy Jethro Gibbs has a gut feeling. It’s the Commander in the galley with an envelope full of Ebola. He’s probably right, but he has to prove it. That isn’t the case here. Cheryl knew. She had prophetic certainty that her salvation was somewhere in that 1100 miles. 

 I think all of the lessons she learned along the way are amazing and invaluable. However, the wonder and awe of this story for me is her decision to go, her complete inexperience, and her tenacity to keep going.

How many of us would have stopped to ask “why”? And then analyze our own idea to death, until we effectively eradicated it as an option? (Just me?) How many of us would have tried to figure out how it would change our lives before we left? How will it make me a better person? Who do I want this journey to make me? How many of us would have disregarded our own intuition without a guarantee of desired results?

Thousands of people set New Year’s resolutions this year. As a whole, we idolize our goal driven ideology. We want qualitative results directly correlated to our effort in order to feel successful. I want to weigh 125 pounds. That means I have to lose 15 pounds. That means I have to do this list of things to get to that point. We almost refuse to start something without knowing what we want the outcome to be.

Back to Cheryl (we are on a first name basis – she just isn’t aware of it).

So she gathered up the things she thought she would need, planned as best as she could, and went. This whole thing didn’t hit me in the book until she was in her hotel room the morning she started the trail and she couldn’t lift her pack.

She’s outdoorsy. And not like I’m outdoorsy. I like to sit outside and drink. She grew up in a tar paper home in Minnesota. She wasn’t by any means pampered. She could make fire and stuff all on her own. But she wasn’t prepared for this. She didn’t train. She took gear with her that was completely useless and didn’t have other items she actually needed. She had no actual hiking experience. The day she left she couldn’t lift the pack she carried for over 90 days and 1100 miles.

I enrolled in college in 2008. It was the year I turned 30. Everybody asked me why. Why do you want to go back? What are you going to do with your degree? What are you going to major in? I had answers prepared. I knew they were coming. None of them were true. The truth was, that I woke up on the cusp on

turning 30 and thought, “Yep, it’s time for me to do this.” It wasn’t out of urgency. I didn’t feel like I had to. In fact, for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I needed to prove anything to anyone. I just wanted to do it.

After I received my Associates of Arts, I transferred and started pursuing my Bachelor of Liberal Arts. And the questions started again. What are you going to do with that? For starters, I’m going to avoid shooting myself in the head or dropping out, one of which would be the result in me being a business major as suggested. No one appreciated that answer. I decided to major in Liberal Arts. When anyone asked me what I was going to do with it, I would snarkily answer, "teach." If you haven't figured it out yet, molding young minds isn't something I should be employed to do.

One of the concentrations I chose was writing. Another decision I didn’t question.
 
At this point, my thought process wasn’t even in the realm of writing for any other reason than academically. It was something I was decent at. Years prior to this, I loved to write. I had given it up. I didn’t have direction. I didn’t have the tools to help myself improve. I enjoyed it. I loved it. I lacked confidence in it. I had lost hope in it. I let it go.

Enter the esteemed Dr. Charles Anderson. I took Nonfiction Writing without having a clue what it was about and I struggled like hell through it. Not because it was hard, but because Dr. Anderson challenged me in that way that makes you obligated to be better. “I know you can do better, Kristin.” Shit. You mean half-assing this isn’t what you wanted me to do? How terribly inconvenient. I didn’t come close to acing that first class. However, I did improve a little. I started to realize I was better than I had given myself credit for.

So, I took another one of his classes. It was something to do with editing. Enter doom and dread. I had that class with Jennifer and Wendy - who I still depend on for writing advice. Dr. Anderson took to calling us the Terrible Trio. He assured us that he meant this in the best way possible, but the word "terrible" implies otherwise

It was an amazing experience. We learned so much from each other through collaboration and playing with styles in that class. I took three fundamental lessons from that class. (Sorry Dr. A – none of them have to do with tropes) I was passionate about this. I could do this well. Editing is just as much a part of writing as writing.

Dr. Anderson recommended I read a book called Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott. This is also an amazing book that is an essential part of my life. There are certain books that I am so attached to they are literally part of my personal ideology. Bird by Bird, Wild, and Harry Potter make up a massive chunk of this collection. Anyway, my second favorite quote in Bird by Bird is this:

“E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”

I’m quoting Ms. Lamott quoting someone else. I’ve noticed us writers, my friend Cheryl included, love to quote other writers. We love words, both our own and others.

Writing is such an essential part of my life now. I’m not sure how I ever functioned without it. I had no idea when I enrolled that summer that it would lead me to this. Not knowing got me here.

I realize my story and Cheryl’s have very little in common. I suffered no great loss. It’s been YEARS since my last heroine experiment (I’m kidding, Mom). I'm not 26. Cheryl went on a grueling 1100 mile hike. I started a blog.
 
Cheryl started her journey broken, unprepared, and totally unaware of where she would end up. She could have quit a million times over. Her journey revealed her to herself. At the end she says, “It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn't have to know. That is was enough to trust that what I'd done was truth.”

At 30, I started college because I knew I needed to. I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. I wanted to quit AT LEAST a million times over. My journey has revealed so much of myself to me. At the end of it, I still don’t know what my life holds for me in the future. I do know that I have so much more of me than I ever have before, and that is invaluable.   

The moral of the story (both of them) is that you don’t have to have all the answers to accomplish great things. You don’t have to be perfectly prepared to find pieces of yourself along your journey. Deal with the two feet in front of you. Write the shitty first draft. Decide to take the journey. Your destination is just the destination. The two feet in front of you is your journey. Let yourself be revealed. Trust what you do is truth. Nobody has to believe that but you. That is what the journey is about.

It's Been a Whole Year Since I Didn't Become a Better Person

Happy New Year!

I can’t believe it’s 2015. I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I didn’t become a better person. My, how time does fly when you are failing at your goals and resolutions. 

To be fair, I didn’t set any high minded resolutions to be a better person last year. My whole plan for 2014 was to learn a little about myself, survive that, and try some new strategies. I’ve been trying and failing to be a better person for years. I figured it was time to give that up for a bit and just hang out and try a little self-awareness. 

The last 52 weeks have been filled with every imaginable thought and feeling. I had some huge triumphs and some dark, dark days. All in all, I learned some valuable lessons though. Here are ten of my major take aways from this past year: 


1. I actually have my big girl panties on.
 

I did a lot of things by myself this year. I went to movies, saw live music, took road trips, went to art museums and just generally explored the world around me on my own. I even went on vacation on by myself. It was amazing and empowering and taught me that I liked my own company. Sometimes. Sometimes I can be a real pain in the ass. For the first time in my life, I have a relationship with myself. 

2. There are more than fifty shades of grey
 

No, I’m talking about THAT. I’ve learned that there is no black and white. Good and evil are extremes that none of us exist in. We all exist in the in between – the grey area. There are no absolutes. There is no absolute truth. We each exist in our own versions of reality. Learning that I don’t have to fit into everyone else’s reality was liberating. Learning to respect that other people live in their own was liberating. Realizing that I can’t force someone else into mine was frustrating as hell – but valuable. 

3. It’s supposed to hurt. It’s supposed to be hard. 

It hurts because it matters. It hurts because it’s important. Pain is our most powerful teacher when we let it be. It can change us in the most beautiful ways. Life isn’t supposed to be easy. You don’t wake up and climb Everest. We all have our mountains. We can choose to camp at the bottom and stare at the majesty or risk, hurt, and risk breaking our bones and wills to make it to the top. There isn’t an easy way.

4. I’m not broken. I don’t have to be perfect. 

There isn’t something inherently broken in me. I have limitations. I don’t always feel or do or think the things I think I’m supposed to. I don’t have to be what I think everyone wants me to be. My feelings are my own and I don’t have be sorry for them. I make mistakes and I have awesome failures. This is true of my life and my writing. You can always edit a shitty first draft.

5. I get by with a little help from my friends. And family. And therapist. 
 

This year I learned that I can’t do it all by myself – especially not and do it all. I hit this big huge wall. I have vast and varied ambitions. However, they all seem impossible when I struggle to get out of bed. When Robin Williams took his own life this year, I was hit with this huge realization that I wasn’t going to magically get better. I knew at that moment that I couldn’t survive fighting off depression for another 10 or 20 years. I needed help. I needed to allow myself to be helped. 

6. I’m a feminist. 

Feminism is not a bad word. I believe in the power of women. I believe in the power of women to raise up other women. I believe that every person who lives and breathes regardless of gender, race, or sexual orientation should be empowered to live a full and happy life on their own terms. I think this is an especially huge challenge for women. Not because of our lack of capabilities, but because of the tremendous expectations we place on ourselves and have placed upon us by society. I’m a feminist and I’m proud of it. 

7. The arts exist so that we can.
 

Art, music, books, philosophy and psychology are where I get lost and where I get found (that and the internet). Anais Nin said it perfectly, "We do not 'escape' into philosophy, psychology and art -we go there to restore our shattered selves into whole ones." Sometimes we don’t have the words for our own pain. Sometimes love is too big for our own expression. Sometimes we need someone else to ask the questions. Sometimes we don’t have the music our own souls need to dance. It’s out there. Sometimes it takes some digging, but it’s out there.  

8. I can’t control the outcome

This was unexpected news to me. Not good news. I was caught totally unawares by this.  It turns out that I can ask nicely, I can stomp my feet and throw shit, and I can fume silently in a corner and people still aren’t going to do what I want them to. It also doesn’t mean that I don’t have to control my own actions and reactions. I can’t use my lack of control as a valid excuse to be a brat. This lesson is filed under “Being an adult is bullshit sometimes.” 

9. I’m still me

Turns out that all this growing and maturing hasn’t made me less me. It’s made me more me. This kind of pissed me off a little. I wanted a bright new shiny me. I’m not new, bright or shiny. I still cuss too much and I still occasionally throw things that piss me off. I’m ok with that. I’m actually kind of thrilled to learn that I didn’t need a bright, new shiny me. I just needed to brush my hair and add some glitter.  

10. I’m capable. I’m worthy. I’m magical. 

There is a massive difference in self-worth and self-esteem. There have been times in my life that I’ve questioned my own capabilities. There have been countless times that I have questioned my self-worth. I have so far to go, but I have come so far. I don’t believe in living entirely by logic. I believe that there is magic to be found in love and laughter. I believe I’m capable of continuing to grow and learn. I have faith that I’m worth living a life that is rewarding and fulfilling. I believe that if I can continue to grow, do all things with love, and fill my life with laughter, I can still fail, still suck, and still struggle and still live a life full of magical possibilities. 

This year I hope to learn how to use the force, find the secret ingredient to the perfect polyjuice potion, and figure out how the hell you make those pretty little wings with eyeliner. That last one just escapes me completely and I’m pretty good with make-up. I’m not sure I will get to all of those, but I’m going to do my best. 

A couple months ago, we were sitting in the living room and my twelve year old son rolled in talking about something he was totally clueless about. Well, you know, as a parent, you always have to prove you are a badass and make them realize they don’t know anything. So I asked him a semi-hard but not impossible question regarding his newfound topic and he answered with something totally unrelated. Like if I had asked what kind of sandwich he wanted for lunch, he said, ‘basketball’ or something like that.  Aha! Triumph. I have proven I am smarter than the 12 year old. I didn’t get much time to gloat before he looks at me, laughs, and says, “Welp, I did the best I could. That’s all Jesus asks us to do. I’m going to play.” 

I’d just been put in my place by a tween. I’m not really qualified to argue with Jesus. Do the best you can. It was enough in 2014. It will be enough this year, too.

Welcome! Eat. Drink. Be inappropriate.

I used to have this other little blog called Gemini Rants. There was nothing at all was wrong with it, save the fact that I never actually posted anything on it.  Gemini Rants started as one thing and turned into another and ended up being all over the place. I stopped, started, restarted… it was messy. While this is an apt representation of my life in general, I really felt like it was time to start fresh. I wanted my blog to have a name, a look, and a personality that reflected both myself and my writing a little more clearly than Gemini Rants. 

Hence, Cake. Wine. Chaos. I assure you that the name befits my life to absolute perfection. The look is a work in progress (ahem, Ashley). The personality is a mix of funny vulnerability, off beat perception, and overwhelming sarcasm.

I will start posting later this week, but I wanted to introduce the blog and myself before I overwhelmed you with hilarity and brilliance.

The purpose of my writing is twofold.

First of all, it’s therapeutic.

Flannery O’Conner said, “I write because I don’t know what I think, until I read what I say.”

I write because I have to. I write because telling stories, especially my own, gives me perspective on them. I write to learn from my mistakes and to recognize my small victories. I write to survive.

Secondly, I want it to have meaning to people who need it. I once had a writing teacher tell me that my style of writing didn’t “befit the tone of an educated woman.” (There is a very close writing friend of mine snorting as she reads this) I’m actually very thankful for this piece of criticism. It helped me define my audience. I could give a shit less if calling myself a badass doesn’t sound educated as long as there is a mom, or a writer, or any other individual out there that reads it and realizes that they are capable of being a badass in their own right.  

I’m a self-admitted hot mess. Everyone’s life bounces out of the normal range of disarray at some point in time. Mine just happens to do so with brutal continuity. I’m a practiced veteran at celebrating miniscule victories and having epic meltdowns. I have spent years of my life attempting to be a happier and saner person, only to find out that I will never be both at the same time. I’ve been schooled by my own mayhem and the experience has been powerful, devastating, and full of absolute absurdity.

I’m here to remind you that don’t have to have it all together in order to make it through the day, the week, or the rest of your life. It’s perfectly acceptable, and even encouraged, to just allow yourself to suck sometimes. I am a working, writing and drinking mom who manages to fail at as much as I succeed at. I refuse to be defined by any of those roles, successes or failures. Between my quirky disposition and my charmingly insane friends and family, I have stories to tell, lessons learned, and shit to be pissed off about.

I do not claim to have all the answers. I’ve searched in a million different places for them. I can give you books to read and places to go. Drinks to mix and food to eat. Ways to find yourself on the internet and get lost in the mall. In the end, I always end up doing whatever the hell I want to and I would expect nothing less from anyone reading this blog. I won’t offer you promises to solve any of life’s messy problems. I will tell you that I’m prolific and honest. I’m opinionated and snarky. My stories are about my journey surviving life, finding myself, and befriending failure. I offer them for your entertainment and inspiration, as well as keeping me on this side of involuntary confinement.

I eat cake to celebrate milestones and to cope with failure. I drink wine when I’m happy - I drink a lot more of it when I’m sad. My life is constant and ridiculous chaos. It’s a viciously entertaining and flippantly fun ride and all I can do is laugh, learn and take my medication. 

I eat. I drink. I say inappropriate things. I revel in all the madness and the mischief I can manage to get myself into. I love my kids, my family and my friends. I laugh whenever possible. I cry when I need to. I take a deep breath and do it all over again. Welcome to Cake. Wine. Chaos. I’m really glad you’re here.