Cirque du Malaise

For a long time now I’ve been committed to my definition of myself as an introvert. In the introvert versus extrovert game, I know exactly which side I am on. Everything I have ever read about the introvert personality type rings true for me, including that:

1. Introverts need a lot of alone time.
2. Introverts are exhausted by people overload.
3. Introverts have to figure things out internally before they share them externally.
4. Introverts thrive on solitude and creativity.

This latest article on The Creativity Post is no exception. It breaks down some common myths about introversion, like:

I am learning that the introvert to extrovert spectrum is more nuanced than I thought. A coach I work with recently told me that being an introvert versus an extrovert is not a black and white choice. Most of us exist somewhere on the continuum of intro-extroversion and, in fact, from a psychological perspective, it’s most healthy to be somewhere in the middle — needing a certain amount of alone time but also being able to socialize with people.

I used to work for a yoga “master teacher” who got to know my personality very well after spending way too much time on the road together and seeing closely, over time, just exactly how much it clashed with his own. He used to tell me that I was not, as I thought, an introvert, but a “shy extrovert.” That confused me, because actually, I consider myself more of an “outgoing introvert,” meaning that I am an introvert at heart, but at some point in this challenging life I figured out how to make friends and integrate myself into the world. When I worked for said teacher, part of my job was getting up in front of hundreds of people at a time, with a microphone on, and making announcements and things like that. I got to the point where this activity did not even make me nervous, and I am still kind of okay about talking in front of large groups.

But get me to a party, and I will melt down.  My own amateur definition of introvert versus extrovert goes like this:

When someone invites you to a party, do you feel:

1)   Excitement?

2)   Dread?

Me? The latter. I have held countless conversations over the course of this lifetime about why I’m not crazy about parties. And I’ve had countless extroverts try to get to the bottom of “the problem” and fix it. It’s vexing to me that at this point in my life I am still having back-and-forths with more outgoing friends where they try to convince me that I just haven’t been to the right party yet.

My aversion to large unstructured crowd scenes is one of the main reasons I have never had even the slightest inkling of a desire to go to Burning Man and why, every August right around this time, I remember to feel extremely fortunate that I have free will and don’t ever have to go. And, furthermore, since most of my extroverted friends go to Burning Man (love you guys!), the end of August is an incredibly peaceful time in my life when I get even more down time than usual. I really cherish it. For this reason, I actually love and appreciate Burning Man.

Occasionally something goes viral on the internet that really rubs me the wrong way. Which is why I want to talk about Tim Kreider’s “The ‘Busy’ Trap.”  I know my perspective is not going to be popular with my Facebook friends, the great majority of whom posted a link to or quoted this article at least once in the last week. I, too, read the article, because I am a person who struggles with my constant “busyness” and trying to make the best use of my time and fit it all in. I’m forever having to prioritize and relegate and make sure I have a good Work Life Balance and that exercise doesn’t go by the wayside and that I spend enough Time With Friends and also, incidentally, manage to work enough to actually make money. I thought, it’s the New York Times, for God’s sakes; maybe they can teach  me something new.

Like Kreider, I am a freelance writer, so I am responsible for my own time and how I spend it. But unlike Kreider, I haven’t yet cracked the code of how to make a decent living in an incredibly expensive area of the country by working only four to five hours a day, and only when I feel like it. For me — obviously a less evolved person than the author — 8 to 10-hour work days are a sad reality if I want to pay my rent on an hourly consultant’s wages. So there go those leisurely afternoons that Kreider seems to think are the dividing line between good people with their priorities on straight and “busy” people living an obnoxious lie. I don’t have the luxury of blowing off work every time someone calls me and asks me to do something random and fun at 11 in the morning on a weekday (which happens all the time, by the way; I have had to get real good at saying no).

Outside of my obvious bitterness at not being a successful enough writer to work only when I‘m really in the mood (does that ever even happen to writers?), there is something about “The ‘Busy’ Trap” that seems off to me on a much deeper level. It implies that time is only nobly spent when spontaneous and dictated exclusively by free will and compulsive urges.

I too was a “a member of the latchkey generation and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon” while I was growing up. It was the 70s, and there wasn’t a lot of parental  oversight, except for the demand that we spend most of our time outside and out of sight. My brother and I spent many hours in the woods behind our house, exploring, having adventures, getting into all sorts of mischief, and, when all else failed, reading. And reading and reading and reading. This training on keeping myself “busy” — sorry, I know that’s a dirty word now — is probably part of the reason why I am a huuuuuuuuuuuuuge believer in leisure time, reading time, down time, creative time, outside time and personal time. In fact, “down time”  is probably the main theme of this entire blog and was one of the earliest categories I created. I have written about the healing and nurturing power of leisure time again and again and again.

But Kreider seems to equate personal time with making as few plans and commitments as possible. I disagree entirely. I’m a Virgo and a 6 and I like to plan ahead. I often plan my leisure time out far in advance. For instance, I can tell you right now that I’m going to be taking a hike—maybe with some friends, maybe alone— this Sunday from precisely 1-4. Here’s why I know this:

1. If I do not decide ahead of time what I want to do on Sunday, I will wake up Sunday morning and ask myself what I feel like doing, and the answer, always, will be: “Absolutely nothing. Sit on this couch with a hoody on and eat crap and maybe watch some bad television.” This will lead to a major spiral of self-loathing, guaranteed.
2. But if I get up on Sunday morning and insist to myself that the hike, as planned, is going to happen regardless of my current level of drive, then I will go on that hike, and I will have a great time, and I will get some exercise and fresh air and sunshine, and I will be absolutely feel better and happier for it.

There is great freedom in structure.

Another example: every month I take a Creative Hooky Day, where I skip work and do something creative, with and by myself, all day, that I would not normally take the time to do. I go to museums; I visit botanical gardens; I seek out secret coffee shops and work on my memoir. I plan these days out way ahead of time. They are not spontaneous. I organize my life so that I can take these days off without the stress of knowing that a thousand clients are pelting me with emails and expecting a response, STAT. Because my hooky days are planned and organized, they are enjoyable and fulfilling.

The down side of all of my planning and organizing is that I am constantly telling people “Sorry, I'm busy” when they ask me to do things last minute. Often, those plans are to go for a hike by myself, or watch a movie I’ve been wanting to get around to, or go to the library and read magazines in a big cushy chair with a view of the redwoods. And yeah, I could cancel my totally optional plans with myself. BUT I DON’T WANT TO. Kreider points a finger at those who “schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 GPAs make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications.” Uh. I do that. I schedule in time with friends. I am not spontaneous. Really, I am not.  Ever. And I’m okay with it. I don’t have that kind of personality that likes to shift gears quickly. Sue me. Or, just learn to love me that way I am and don’t judge me for it.

I feel like my life is rich with creative time, time spent outside, time with good friends, and that I simultaneously have the time to relax and become absorbed in my workdays as a freelance writer without having to worry about how my time will pan out. I map it out ahead of time; then I relax into it. This works for me.

It might not work for Tim Kreider. And Tim Kreider does, I must say, seem rather blessed in that he appears to be able to make a living without working very much, or have very many other responsibilities. Good for him. Tim, you can have your unstructured leisure time and I will keep being “busy” with my structured, nerdy, inflexible schedule! And never the twain shall meet.

And to my friends: I want to spend time with you, I really do. A week from Tuesday night. And if you acquiesce to make plans with me, I assure you that I will treat our date with reverence! I will cook you dinner! You will have my full attention for the entire time we are together! I will put my iPhone away and be totally present! But you have to… that’s right… make a plan with me.

I’m in a soulless, faux-deco apartment on the boardwalk in Venice. I drove my lesbaru downstate yesterday to pop into a client conference for a few hours. Last night, I slept in a pristine white bed in a perfectly climate controlled room in the Anaheim-Orange Hilton, like a princess, sans pea. But today, after the meeting, I changed course, packed up the car again, and drove west through mind-bending LA traffic to  Venice, where for no particular reason I had decided to rent an apartment on the beach for a few days.

We all know that navigating the highway system in LA is not for sissies. At best it requires stellar senses of both direction and vision (the former I possess, but not, I’m afraid, the latter). LA traffic at its worst can arrest a craven heart. Dead stuck on the 5 yesterday during rush hour, I had to pee in an empty Diet Coke cup in my car (fitting, since the Diet Coke was the essence of the problem; back to whence it came). Today, I experienced PTSD as I drove from Orange/Anaheim/Santa Ana/wherever the hell I was—it doesn’t matter; it’s really all exactly the same over there anyway. 

I arrived at the “Venice Breeze Apartments” around 5.

Conveniently/horrifyingly located right on the Venice Beach boardwalk, there was no place to park for even a moment, so I had to risk double parking (something a Virgo finds anathema) and scramble around trying to find the lockbox, the key, the code and the pass to the parking garage, several blocks down the street in a very narrow one-way alley called “Sunset.” Once I got the car squared away, there was absolutely no chance I was getting back in that thing for at least 24. So, my next mission was to get some healthy, grounding food. And for that, of course, I needed a Whole Foods*, but not to worry, we’re in California, where you can’t throw a duck without hitting a “Whole.”

Unfortunately, what should have been a short walk turned into a grueling 2-hour walkabout because I did not take good notes about where the Whole was (forget what I said above about my sense of direction), and while distracted, I ended up walking about 20 blocks in the wrong direction. I then had to recalibrate and spend another 45 minutes walking across around and about slummy Venice in my super cheap but really cute $3 tiger flip flips from Bangkok. In fact, I felt somewhat like I was back in Bangkok. The smells, for starters: stale pot and questionable barbeque and human urine and booze vomit and summer roses. And the congealing pools of liquid on the streets outside the bars. I could almost feel the germs crawling up my legs past my measly rubber soles. I get kind of drastic when I’m homesick. The blister quickly forming on my foot wasn’t helping.

By the time I finally found the Whole, I was feeling quite desperate for some soothing familiarity. But unfortunately, walking through those organic arches didn't fix my problem. Yesterday, during my 9 ½ hours in the car, I listened to what can arguably be described as “too many” podcasts, and during one of them I heard a story about a guy who was carjacked in the Australian outback and, left for dead, ended up crawling out of a ditch and spending 100-something days lost and starving, evading wild dingos and eating frogs and sipping his own urine, which he caught by peeing in his underwear and then squeezing drops into his mouth in the harsh outback sun. When he finally was rescued by a couple of dingo hunters and brought back to civilization, his first visit to a shopping mall left him so overwhelmed that he went into shock. That’s how I felt—like that guy—when I finally got to the Whole after my long grueling journey through the Venice wasteland. In my overwhelm, I lacked focus. I ended up with only Greek yogurt and some pineapple juice.

Then I had to turn around and walk back to the apartment.

It was twelve blocks. I know it was twelve blocks because that’s what my iPhone GPS said. But it felt more like a hundred. I chugged my pineapple juice and helped time pass by taking a call from my Pops — something I normally wouldn’t do beyond a certain hour on the east coast. (That hour being happy hour.) My Pops entertained me with a story about his own experience on Venice Beach over 40 years ago, when he and a friend hitchhiked across the country on their own sort of walkabout. Their first night in California, they slept on the beach and busked with their guitars, watching the sun set over the Pacific and generally having the time of their young hippie lives.

To be young and free on Venice Beach in the late 60s.  Contrast that with myself, decades later, homesick and anxious and whiny, making my slow crawl back up the long-debauched boardwalk, complaining because my pineapple juice is too heavy and my flip flops are giving me a blister. My, how times have changed.

In my funk, the back of a head caught my eye up ahead on the boardwalk. Black curly hair. A hint of a profile. Brown eyes. Long lashes. And I felt sad. That glimpse of a head reminded me of someone. Someone I used to live with, who once came to LA with me, and who made me incredibly miserable and also very happy. But who always, throughout, made me feel comforted, and safe. Until he didn't, any more. And that’s when I knew it was over.

I felt lost, on the Venice boardwalk, wishing I was more like my Pops four decades ago— carefree and young and full of possibility and desire. But that’s not who I am. I’m a 40-year-old woman who rented a nice apartment with air conditioning and wireless internet and complimentary bath gel. I came here not to follow my dreams but to get away. Only to realize that I’m not away at all. I’m surrounded by artists and misfits just like myself, and junkies and drunks and latter-day hippies, and people whose back of their heads are redolent of someone I once loved and still think about, against my will, sometimes.

* I was talking to Vanessa while I walked to the Whole (and by talking, I mean texting) and we agreed that while Whole Foods is pretty overrated and, under normal circumstances, it’s best to find a local natural food market or, even better, farmers market, when traveling it’s a different matter. Any of you who have been really, really psyched to stumble upon a Starbucks in a third world country know exactly what I’m talking about. When I’m out of my element, there’s something so soothing about Whole Foods. I relish the opportunity to find comfort and solace in the familiar aisles of overpriced raw cacao nibs.

I saw one of my favorite writers, Augusten Burroughs, at a book signing the other night.  His latest book is called This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike. I obviously would be reading this book even if a nobody from nowhere wrote it, just based on the title alone. But because Augusten wrote it, I am all over it. It’s a self-help book for people, like me, who hate self-help books and don’t like being bossed around.

Augusten was one of the first writers to take his harrowing, nightmare-of-social-services childhood and turn it into a funny, irreverent story (and make zillions off it, touché) with  Running With Scissors. This was inspiring to me, and because the book takes place in Northampton, Mass, which is basically where I grew up, I related to it even more. I don’t think it’s dramatic to say that Augusten Burroughs is a literary hero of mine.

So, meeting him was exciting. And, like all exciting moments in my life, I panicked and shut down. In fact, after he did his book reading, I tried to sneak out the back door, but fortunately/unfortunately, my friend Leslie was there to force me to stand in line and have him sign my book. Here’s how it went, more or less:

Augusten: Hi

Me: Hi (looks down at shoe)

Augusten: What’s your name?

Me: Joslyn

Augusten: I’m sorry?

Leslie (standing off to side): Her name is Joslyn.

Leslie: You and Joslyn have something in common.

Augusten stares at me patiently while I turn beet red and break out in panic hives.

Augusten: What is it?

Me: We both grew up in the same part of Western Mass.

Augusten: No way! That’s so awesome! What town did you grow up in?

Me: (still avoiding eye contact) Ashfield. You probably haven’t heard of it.

Augusten: Of course I have. That’s so great!

Me: (takes book and shuffles away awkwardly)

There is something about standing in line to get a book signed by an author who I worship that makes me very, very nervous. The same exact thing happened to me when I had Miranda July sign my copy of It Chooses You and when I had Salman Rushdie sign my copy of Luka and the Fire of Life.

But listening to author talks is one of my favorite pastimes, along with going to Porchlight storytelling night and hanging out at the library. And Augusten was one of my favorites so far. At one point, a clueless audience member raised her hand and asked Augusten, “Are you happy?”

He was nonplussed. He looked at her with the deadpan eyes (which are different from the dead eyes, and quite different from the Marin County Glassy Eyes she herself was sporting). “Happy?” He said, “You know, I am often interested, or curious, or engaged, or stimulated. And yes, sometimes I am happy.” But, he went on to say, for him, “happy” is not an abiding state of being as much as it is an EMOTION. And emotions, as we all know, are fleeting.

Here in California, when someone says to you “Are you happy?” they are not asking a question about your current transient emotional state; they are making a demand on your ability to see life through shiny, rose-colored glasses all the time. There is only one correct answer to the question “Are you happy?” and if you don’t get it right, well, there is something deeply, deeply wrong with you. Personally, I cringe when people ask me this question. Like Augusten, I would never describe myself as “happy” in a blanket statement sort of way. Sometimes I feel happiness, yes. Particularly when I am cuddled under my red sleeping bag late at night with a delicious, elaborate dessert I spent an hour making for just myself, or when out on my mountain breathing fresh air, or while reading a really good passage from a book, or when completely absorbed in a scene from a riveting movie. Sometimes I feel happy when my cat deigns to honor me with her presence in my lap and actually purr for a second. I feel happy when someone gives me flowers (or lottery tickets; thanks, Leigh). I feel happy when something blooms in my garden.

Equally, if not more of the time, I feel other things like: bored, gloomy, melancholic, despondent, ragey, sorrowful, self-pitying, anxious or complainy. I also, like Augusten, often feels things in the range of fascinated, engaged or fixated. Sometimes, I actually feel nothing at all.

But “happy” is not a word I would use to describe my life as an abiding state. “Happy” is an emotion. Anyone who tells you that they are “happy” as a general, sweeping statement is lying.  Or lobotomized.

On my brother’s infallible recommendation, I watched a documentary the other night called Note By Note: The Making of Steinway L1037. It’s about the factory in Queens where they make Steinway pianos — the Cadillacs of the piano world.

This movie was sincerely one of the most moving and riveting things I have ever seen. The filmmaker chose, at random, a grand piano whose birth and fate was tracked from the logging mill in Alaska where the wood was born to its final destination in Carnegie Hall. The process of making a Steinway takes almost a year, and is an intricate and elaborate affair. Steinway is one of the last piano companies to survive the falling-out-of-favor of pianos, and they still make every single piano entirely by hand in the exact same way they did a hundred years ago. The piano is an incredibly complex instrument with many parts, and every single part is created and attached by hand. Each person who works in the factory has exactly one job — a job they do perfectly and over and over.

There’s a guy who’s spent the last 40 years of his life hand-chiseling divets into the part that holds the pin that holds the piano wire.  Someone else hand-shapes each key. Another person strings it.There are three different people who tune the piano in different ways. The thing spends a month just being tuned. Every inch of it — even the parts you’ll never see — is perfectly handcrafted and designed.

Every person that works in that factory has reverence for their job and the artwork they are creating. The love and care and perfection and artistry that goes into each piano is breathtaking. That’s why Steinways are so expensive and why they are considered the best concert and parlor pianos in the world. Each piano, because it’s made by hand, has its own sound and its own disposition. So musicians are very particular about which one they play.

Back in the day, everyone had a piano in their parlor. But now, it seems, only the very rich and classical-inclined bother. So the piano business is sort of a dying art. However, it’s a rarified art that should not be allowed to go extinct. That would be a very sad day indeed.

I don’t play piano, although I once thought I could.

When I was little, my mom, who worked nights as a waitress, one day brought home a piano. My Great Aunt Beatrice was a one-room-schoolteacher in rural Vermont, and I think it was through these school connections that my mom got her hands on a free piano that no one wanted anymore.

It was really not a great piano. It was an upright, and it had been painted sea foam green. It was never tuned. It was ugly, and no one in my house even knew how to play piano (although my mother once did, rumor has it — she is probably going to read this and protest that she still does, in theory).

I took a mild interest in this piano for a period of time. I learned to play the requisite Chopsticks and maybe a few Christmas carols. I liked the idea of being able to play the piano. But, like many things in my life, rather than actually do the thing, I read about it instead. When I should have been practicing, I would curl up in a corner with the enormous hardcover collection of books about classical composers that my mother had also brought home one day. I became riveted by stories of Chopin and Mozart and Beethoven. I was stoked when that movie Amadeus came out, because I already knew the debaucherous story by the time I was ten.

I never really did learn to play that piano, and neither did Elia. Eventually it turned into another flat surface for us to pile books on. I think that piano is probably still in my mom’s foyer. It’s never been tuned, as far as I know, and the thing probably hasn’t been played in 20 years. But I will say this: I still love Classical music, and particularly when it's heavy on the piano.

When I watched Note By Note last night, I felt sad for the old piano languishing away in my mom's "parlor." But it made me realize how much my mom prioritized creativity in her children. Which, as far as I am concerned, is the singular most important thing a parent can do.

Oh and if you are into parlor pianos and things old people do that are super cool, please check out the new creative project I just launched with Leslie Munday: Elderchic!

Memory is the enemy of wonder, which
abides nowhere but in the present.

Michael Pollan

I read an article in Wired Magazine the other day called “The New Science of Forgetting,” about how scientists are working on a technique that will basically enable us to Eternal Sunshine bad memories from our brains. This has all sorts of applications for PTSD and people who have been subjected to horrible traumas and abuse, but of course I read it from a personal and self-absorbed standpoint. I certainly have some memories I’d like to vanquish, and I’ve been waiting for someone to invent that machine ever since I first saw the movie.

Alas, the memory erasing technique they are hard at work on doesn't actually erase your memories as much as it does render them powerless by zapping them of their emotional charge. Something about proteins compounds and neuron networks. I don’t know.

What I did find interesting about the article was the description of how our brains actually form memories in the first place. They’ve done all sorts of research to prove that most of our memories are not static, and they are actually not necessarily wholly or even mostly accurate and true. Our memories are informed by our feelings about our memories (Marshall Rosenberg would have a field day with this) and we constantly reinvent our memories every single time we remember them. Different parts of our brain collaborate to keep a memory intact, aided by the use of savvy proteins, and each time you recall something, it takes on a new shape based on the random circumstances of your remembering moment.

So for instance, if you are reminiscing about your first kiss, and as you are taking a mental stroll down memory lane, you get crashed into by a truck, guess what? Next time you think about your first kiss, you’re not gonna have such fond feelings about it. No; there will be an ominous sense in the back of your mind that there is something not-quite-right associated with your first kiss. And before long, your memory factory has segued that good dream into a bad dream. This is an extreme and extremely novice translation (probably you should just read the actual article and not take my word for it), but I had long suspected that a lot of my memories were not, in fact, memories, but stories my mind had constructed based on memory seeds. And in fact, that’s exactly how “memories” are formed. They aren’t really about what actually happened, but how your mind translated it and which elements it decided were important to store.

Once again, science proves to me that creativity is really what makes the world go round.

I was talking to a friend who needed help editing a paper. She said she was having a hard time getting the wordcount down to fit the requirements of her assignment. I said, hand it over, because if there is one thing I am good at, it’s throwing away words.

Other things I am good at:

1. Cleaning out closets (my own or yours)
2. Giving things away that I actually really like just because someone else said “hey that’s nice”
3. Washing glasses before you were done drinking that thing
4. Not finishing my food
5. Breaking up with boyfriends

Hmm. I am sensing a pattern here. One might say that I have a fear of commitment, but actually, that’s not it. I have a fear of garbage (see #5). I’ve always had a thing about not wanting to accumulate too much stuff. I like to know that the amount of stuff I have is manageable. I live in a very small cottage with hardly any storage. My closet (my one single closet) holds less clothes than most of my friends have in the trunk of their car. When I buy a new pair of shoes, I have to get rid of an old pair.

It’s not that I’m not materialistic. I am. I love things.

It’s more that I’m fickle. I like to think of it as “Buddhist.” I try not to get too attached.

Along those lines, I have an ambivalent relationship with the concept of owning books. On the one hand, I am a writer who gets paid for writing, so it would seem reasonable that I would believe in supporting other writers by buying their books. On the other hand, my extreme aversion to accumulating things (and to excess in general) has led me to a philosophy of sharing books.

I used to collect books as a testament to my readerly accomplishments. For many years I lugged boxes and boxes of books around every time I moved. After about my 4^th cross-country move, I finally took a cold hard look at my collection of books and what it stood for. Did it stand for my convictions about reading and supporting writers? Did it stand for my adoration of storytelling? Or was it simply an ego-based testament to my reading accomplishments?

The truth is, I rarely read a book twice, and if I do, it’s decades later. There are too many books to read and this life is too short. (There are exceptions to this rule, as there are to every rule.) Also, I really like to support the library system.

In the end, I got rid of all my books. Except, you know, my Chronicles of Narnia and my Little Prince and my Maggie B and my Julia Cameron books and a few others. I ran into an old friend yesterday, and we had this very same conversation about books. He said that he always keeps his books, and has shelves and shelves of them. He said: “Books are treasures.”

That they are, my friends. That they are. But for me, they are treasures whose energy I love to pass along.

I have never been a morning person and getting up early has always been a struggle for me. In fact, getting up, period, has always been a struggle for me. I like to clock about 9 hours of sleep a night and if I don’t, I generally feel like murder all day. Except between 9pm and midnight, when I always feel completely alert and pretty much fantastic, no matter what.

It’s not uncommon for me to stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning reading or writing or watching mindless sitcoms, but luckily for me I work for myself and don’t have to set an alarm. Not setting an alarm is a way of life I am quite devoted to, in fact. You might say it’s a personal philosophy. I think the world would be a better place and we would all be better people if we were abiding by our own natural sleep rhythms. For me, that means I don’t generally wake up before 9 in the morning, and sometimes later, depending on the time of year and how enthralling the book is that I am currently reading until the wee hours. (Which, right now, is the new Steve Jobs bio and yeah, it’s a good one.)

Occasionally I will make the mistake of having a soda at the movies — like I did when I saw the incredible Steampunk (thanks, Maynard) masterpiece Hugo the other night — and then I’ll have an even harder time getting up because of the sugar hangover.

This is not just laziness or petulance on my part. It’s my genetic legacy. The other day I called my dad at 9:30pm East Coast time and asked him what he was up to. He sounded groggy and out of it. I thought I might have woken him up. And I had. “I’m napping,” he said grumpily. That’s right, napping. When pressed, he elaborated that he generally naps in the late evening and then gets up and starts painting. “Jos,” he said, “You know I get my best painting done between midnight and 3am."

My dad is retired and recently managed to finally shake his horrible evil coldhearted wife of the last 25 years, so he can afford not to set an alarm or bother to care what society at large thinks about what time it is appropriate to get up in the morning. In this way, he is my hero.

Roughly 15-17 times a week, someone tries to convince me that I should really get up earlier so that I can better accommodate their schedule. My exception-less refusal is just one of the many reasons I'm starting to suspect that I will always be alone. But as long as I can sleep in, I'm fine with that. Oh, and before you start to suspect that I'm a nihilist, here's my Christmas tree:

I was recently dismayed to find out that I weigh 20 pounds more than I did 2 years ago and 30 more than my ideal, target weight (which is: the weight I have to be at for my awesome collection of size 6 hand-me-down jeans to actually fit). I had a mild nervous breakdown for a few days. Okay, not mild.

Then, because at this point in my life I’ve learned the hard way that no secret angel is ever going to come fix all my problems for me, it became sadly obvious that I only had one choice: DIET.

I have never been a dieter, ever, although I have tried every smart and wholesome eating system this side of the Sierras. I’ve done all manner of juice/wheatgrass/colonic cleanses/protocols, and they have never worked for me. All they ever do is whack out my blood sugar and send my entire system into the sort of distress that inevitably leads to horrific rebound binge eating and emotional trauma. (And if you are thinking of recommending that ONE AMAZING CLEANSE I have never tried, save your breath.)

I’ve also gone the route of more gentle and holistic eating protocols, such as the 3-month elimination plan that my acupuncturist Caylie See put me on last winter. That actually made me feel fantastic and helped me with a lot of things, but, unfortunately, it did not make me lose weight, even though I stopped drinking, eating sugar, eating dairy, gluten, stopped enjoying everything, basically, for three months. (And I have to note here that the goal of the program was NOT to lose weight, so it’s no fault of Caylie’s. She’s truly incredible at what she does.)

Here’s the thing — the women in my family get fat.

I’m from a long lineage of matronly women. The Westcott/Bangs/Hamilton women, they start out reeeaaaallly skinny and then swing to the opposite side of the pendulum over a long lifetime of having babies and being enduring, stoic New England sorts. I thought I might evade this pattern, since I am woefully childless and moved to California, but it turns out that it doesn’t matter. It’s hardwired.

As a kid, I was emaciated and actually anorexic for a while, and my mom and grandmother were also wispy little waifs when they were young. It’s when we get older that things predictably slide. Now, my mom is in pretty fine form these days, mostly because she owns a restaurant and so (ironically) doesn’t eat because she’s too busy running around being mad at her employees all the time. She also doesn't have blood sugar issues. She’s one of those annoying people who “forgets” to eat food and maybe eats one meal a day, maybe. And she is a jogger. Me, not so much. I wake up starving and get hungrier, crankier, and fainter from there. If I go too long without eating, I become palpably murderous. And as for jogging, no.

I know that technically it’s unhealthy to starve yourself, but here’s a dirty little secret that all women know and most holistic consultants don’t want you to find out: it’s the only real way to lose weight.

So I have come up with my own eating plan that is my shining salvation and only hope. Fingers crossed.

The Small Bowl Diet^TM is basically an artistic expression-meets-portion control eating plan.

Here’s how it works. First, you make a really cute, small bowl in pottery class. This is your one and only Small Bowl^TM. Now, you can eat whatever you want (except evil sugar, of course) as long as it fits in Small Bowl^TM. When you eat out of the bowl, you always take a moment first to admire how good you are at pottery. This is essentially a distraction from the fact that you are eating a concentration camp amount of food.

You wait until the point that you are absolutely starving, and then you wait just a little longer, for good measure, and then you eat ONE Small Bowl^TM of food. You eat it slowly, as if torturing and punishing yourself for being fat, and when that’s gone, that’s it. You should still be hungry when you’re done with the one Small Bowl^TM. If you’re not, you overfilled it or you need a smaller Small Bowl^TM. The key is to always be at least slightly hungry.

Then, you once again wait until you are out of your mind, chew-your-own-arm-off starving, and you wait the requisite little-bit-longer, and then you maybe accidentally murder someone, and then you eat another Small Bowl^TM.  Don’t go overboard.

Again. The key is to be basically starving all the time.

Oh — and a fucklot of exercise. You can’t forget that part. Basically, if you want to lose weight, you have to get on board with your genetic legacy and mimic the amount of physical activity your forbearers used to get. So in my case, the same amount of exercise as if I was chopping firewood and lugging water uphill from the river on black ice, 15 hours a day. That’s how much exercise my aging metabolism demands for me to stay at my “peak weight,” and even then, it’s a losing battle, since my genes think that a faux pregnant belly is a good thing — gets us through the long, cold, sedentary New England pilgrim winters, after all.

Unfortunately, my genes and my jeans are at odds, and if me and Small Bowl^TM have anything to do with it, the jeans are gonna win.

I'm on the first leg of my flight home from Thailand, via Tokyo on All Nipon Air, where I just made my way through an 8:30a.m. Japanese 3-course dinner served in cute little lacquer boxes full of delicious but mostly unidentifiable processed cubes of things. I ate the ones I was sure were not mushrooms or flaccid boiled egg. The highlight was the banana poppyseed ice-cream ball. Those kooky Japanese chefs.

The Japanese elevate everything to an art form, including cooking, eating, and being a flight attendant. The Chinese, on the other hand, plan their menus as if Hannibal Lecter’s cousin is coming to dinner.

Disclaimer here: I am a very picky eater. I’m not adventurous in the culinary terrain, unlike my mom, who ordered a Peruvian delicacy — baked guinea pig— when we traveled together to the Sacred Valley a few years ago. Judith is a chef and a restaurant owner, so I think she’d want me to point out here that I did not inherent my food pickiness from her. I get it from my father, who, at the age of 62, I introduced to burritos just last year. “Can’t I just stick with tacos?”

On my last night in Bangkok, on the 36th floor of the Chatrium, I ate alone at the hotel's fancy Chinese restaurant overlooking the gray river that winds through the endless city. The menu was an exquisite read — an ornothologist's dream, really — until I realized that it was actually a list of FOOD OPTIONS. I laughed/gagged at the "roasted whole pigeon," but I stopped laughing when I gamely perused the dessert selections and contemplated ordering something with the sublime name "Bird's Nest." I thought, I bet it's some sort of an elaborate drizzled sugar confection, maybe with an egg in it just to be maudlin. Just to be sure, I googled it, and THANK GOD I did because it turns out that "Bird’s Nest" is exactly what it sounds like: a bird's nest.

A swallow's nest, to be precise. A certain kind of swallow that is rare and special, and so it's a luxury of the upper class to get their hands on one of these nests, soak it in water for a bit, and then bathe it in coconut milk. I can only imagine that it tastes sort of like shredded wheat, but with a more fibrous quality that makes it an excellent intestinal stimulant. I might have been intrigued and brave enough to try it, until I read the fine print, which informed me that swallow's nests are comprised primarily of swallow's spit. Yes, their saliva.

I have to point out here that I think my cat Budapest might be Chinese, as once she came home with an entire birds nest (and a few little tiny just-born baby birds, whoopsie) hanging out of her mouth like, no big thang.

I shared the Bird's Nest menu item with my friends. Tom, who is Taiwanese and grew up eating Chinese Food, said, "It sounds gross, but it’s super tasty!  It was once of my faves! Like sharkfin soup, it is a Chinese delicacy.  Unfortunately, the birds are not happy, and they face extinction, so I stopped eating it recently.”

Then Vanessa told me that she actually tried Bird’s Nest, in Singapore. I have a vague recollection of Vanessa going to Singapore but I have to admit that I didn't retain this tidbit about her culinary courage. Although I love hearing about Vanessa's life — which is much more globally glamorous than my own — flying to Singapore for a few days and eating local delicacies is something I just expect from her. Vanessa is a jet setter and she’s cool.

I'm not like that. I'm like this: just before I wrote this blog post, I spent an hour here on the plane meticulously planning my exercise schedule for the remainder of 2011 in my iPad calendar. Knowing exactly what to expect is how I relax.

And on that note, so happy to be home!