someone – ok, my sister, only a sister can say things like this – said to me recently that I appear to be a strong woman but am in fact all fucked up.
Kinda true. Kinda not.
True in the sense that I make mistakes. Lots of ‘em. I don’t even really regret them. I might cry about them, I may lick my wounds and steri-strip my cracked heart, but mistakes are part of living life with abandon. I would rather regret action than inaction.
I think this is strength. I am all pulpy vulnerability. I wear my heart out. I’m soft. I admit mistakes, I show my weaknesses, and I interpret all of this as bravery. So what if I slip? So what if I fall? So what if everyone sees?
I’ll just get up tomorrow and do it all again. Hopefully not exactly the same – hopefully the mistakes are new and improved – but mistakes are guaranteed as long as I’m alive.
I don’t save face.
And so that’s why I looked fucked up to my friends and family. Because I fuck up, publicly, and predict more fucking up, on a regular basis, and think that said fuck ups are a function of my commitment to stretching and growing and being happy dammit. All of which means I will screw up and then write about all of it for all of you. Voyeurs. I love you so much. Thank you for reading.
That was the intro. Here’s the story. It’s a good one. Get comfortable. Get a snack.
In the summer, I met a man. I was excited about this man, and although I’m passionate and excitable, I don’t often feel the butterflies and the rush-rush for someone. Usually it takes a long time for someone to become important to me, and for me to really feel it.
(I’ve wondered about butterflies recently, too, when I started dating the no-longer-calling GentlemanCaller. I wondered what it said about us that neither of us were feeling the grand passion thing.)
But I felt it. I was a little giddy over this guy. And since I was feeling it, I followed it.
Bad, bad, bad idea.
He stood me up. He made me cry. He made me contemplate ceilings. He behaved inexplicably. And the more inexplicably badly he behaved, the more I wanted an explanation. It almost became a detective mission: I must know what is wrong with this man. Because something is deeply, obviously fucking wrong with this man.
Eventually – like in a month – I got tired of the drama and withdrew to draw my own conclusions.
But not before I lent him money.
Oh, yes, I lent him money.
(That ringing in my ears is actually not metaphorical at all. It is the sound of all my friends and family blowing up my phone to scream abuse at me for lending a man money.)
And then he didn’t pay me back. Naturally. Because why would he? His game, I’m sure, is about bewitching a woman out of her wallet.
But I didn’t back down. I was like a dog with a bone AND a woman scorned, all at once, which, as you might expect, is a very scary combination.
I dogged him. I called every hour on the hour. I announced that I would come to his office – where he is a very well paid executive – and tell the receptionist and anyone who would listen why I was there.
I was mad (at myself, mostly). I was shameless. It was liberating. I wanted what was mine, no matter how stupidly and easily I parted with it, and I would have it.
And I did. He paid me back. It was like extracting a pint of blood with a spoon and cup, but I eventually – drop by drop – got what was mine.
And today I heard from another woman who heard from as many as thirty women all of whom had the same experience with the same man.
So maybe I am screwing up. Because I don’t know anyone else who gets phone calls from scorned wives and women on a regular basis.
On the upside: really cool, smart, sassy, pretty, overachieving women, all of them. The crappy men I date have excellent taste in women.
_________________________________ If you want to know more about the Very Bad Lying Man, here are the breadcrumbs. Bits of the Very Bad Lying Man fell into these posts while the un-love story was happening:
Most of it was just a long, hard, unglamorous slog. Most of it was planting seeds and wondering if I even knew how to farm. Lots of it involved serious self-doubt. Lots of people disappeared.
And it seems that one seed I planted really took root and not in the garden I expected.
The flower is me. I’m blooming. Suddenly I have faith in myself.
Even right now – in the grey of December, when I have a cold that presents itself as a will to strangle me in my sleep, when I have more projects than time, when my kids are sugared up from too many parties and there are gifts owed and begging to be bought and a bank account begging me to stop – even now, when I am exhausted, faith.
Even in this ebb, I know that I’m so much stronger than I allowed, before.
And this is despite - or maybe because of – the fact that this life I’m living is not my dream.
At no point did I ever say:
gee, when I grow up, I’d love to be a single mom. I’d love to have a list of mistakes that I wish I could un-make. I really hope that I’m the kind of parent about whom a five year announces to her class: Mommy has new panties! And they’re SEE-THROUGH!
(This announcement was followed the next week by show-and-tell, to which my daughter took my new, knee-high black stiletto boots and demonstrated them with great pride. I am The Trashy Mama of room 7. )
Then + Now
Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today – Will Rogers
This week the man I adore told me that to him, rejection is like fuel – and, for the first time, I got it.
It is not fuel, for me, but at least now it doesn’t derail me. Entirely.
I used to cave – or cry – when slights, real or imagined, brushed by me.
I used to start things with great enthusiasm, just to feel something, and then flake.
I used to take on men who were projects just to know I was needed.
Maybe I will do all of these things, again. Maybe I am now, and just haven’t realized it. But I doubt it. I really, really doubt it.
I have always been a writer but I ran away from writing for a long time. I thought writers were poor and lived in attics and garrets or at least basement suites and probably had orange and brown velour sofas from the 70s.
And I just couldn’t do that. So I chased security. I walked away from the man who could take care of himself to cuddle up to the men who couldn’t. If they need me, they won’t leave me.
I stayed safe, in university, for way too long. I chose bureaucracy over self-employment even when my single greatest goal in life is to commute from the bedroom to the kitchen.
I kept taking the next step in a relationship that was fine, because the next step is what you do, and nothing was wrong…but it wasn’t right. And I knew it wasn’t right.
But when you’re in it for a year, two, four, eight, what do you do? Do you leave just because you’re not happy and this is not it? Even though there is no it on the horizon and maybe -tfu tfu tfu, god forbid, may it never happen, etc - there never will be?
I did.
Now/New
That was a risk. Risk doesn’t even come close to describing the rending and tearing and death and grief that is involved in that kind of separation.
I swear to my god and goddess, Josh Hanagarne and Danielle LaPorte, that writing saved me. This blog – and all of you who helped build it – lifted me up and made me brave.
did you know that Cleavage is the name for the division of cells in the earliest stage of an embryo? I’m no biologist, but I think cleavage might just be the moment when developing cells start growing significantly – so without Cleavage, there’s no possibility of eventual life. Deep stuff, no?
The deepest.
November 27, 2009: two guest posts on big blogs. HUGE traffic. MANY copywriting offers. Forgiveness.
November 28: other women, writers, social media mavens, lunch, lentil soup.
And the next week: money. Love, from all corners. Offers. Future. Now. Happy dance. Moondance.
2010: welcome, baby. I will love you up.
_________________________________
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PS – I like it when you follow me on Twitter. I’m @KellyDiels.
Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. ~ Harold Whitman
Pop quiz: what do Chris Rock, Jon Stewart, Wanda Sykes, the Showtime cable hit Californication and Kelly Diels have in common?
Two dudes, two fine ladies, two people of color, one hilarious homosexual and an edgy television show.
Answer: they’re wicked smart. More than killer punch lines, that’s what makes them both funny and worthwhile, which are mutually exclusive attributes.
Put them together and you have a sum in excess of their parts.
I know this is a little weird. Frankly I’ve never seen a guest blog that sucks up to the host quite like this. Kelly’s first impulse is gonna be to toss this, because we all fear the dreaded nametag of self-serving megalomania.
She didn’t know this was coming, I swear.
Then she’s gonna realize that doing what nobody else has the cojones to do can be a good thing. Especially for writers.
Because Kelly Diels is smart. Wicked smart. Anybody with the chops to name her blog Cleavage is gonna get this.
I admit it, she got my attention with that title. Call me shallow, but testosterone is one of the great motivators of the human condition. But when I read her stuff, I not only saw that this blog has nothing to do with breasts – my disappointment lasted only moments — but the upside of the internet.
She made me laugh. She made me think. She made me want to reach out.
Which is what I did. And here I am. You and me, we’d have never met were it not for Kelly Diels being wicked smart.
Which makes Cleavage a success on every level. This is why God created the internet.
And, breasts.
As a blogger, and a newer one at that, I’m pretty amazed by all this community stuff. I’ve realized that it’s no different than walking into a party filled with people you’ve never met.
That’s a moment that defines you, by the way.
You’re initially drawn to the person who, at a glance, radiates positive energy. An essence of cool, but on the warm side (a bit paradoxical, I realize). It’s not just a smile or the way they laugh, it’s a sense of confidence that says hey, come on over here, let’s have some fun. Let’s connect.
And then, when you get closer, you sense that what makes it work is a deeper take on the world than a pithy bon mot.
(Go ahead, look it up, I’ll wait.)
You’ve seen those types at this party, too. Usually a guy – women are by nature much cooler and smarter than we are – a bit on the smug side, betting the farm on their wit, often at someone else’s expense. Sucking all the air out of the room.
Kelly doesn’t do that. She doesn’t take, she gives. You can’t read her blog without getting something, a small gift from her to you.
The very essence of blogging.
Kelly has much to teach us as she entertains and enlightens with her brilliant talent. She models what any writer strives for – an instant connection, wrapped in a grin, inviting you to think.
Now if Chris Rock would just return my emails.
___________
Larry Brooks is the guy behind Storyfix.com, an instructional site for novelists and screenwriters and anyone else who wants to know what makes writing work beyond the words themselves.
there is something someone can say to me that absolutely disarms me. these words are like burrowing creatures in a prairie – they make me their own. they inhabit me. they sound like love.
I can’t find the words, she says silently
haltingly, the ones she can
spaced as though said by a girl
between purse searches and scans
of an expectant room.
So we must find another way.
What words tie me to you?
What letters like loose threads unravel?
The sound of the streetscape
quiets in comparison to the way
everything you’ve ever said,
everything I never want you to say,
echoes in my heart and in my head.
I’d like to know my words were a shadow
trailing you like some staying stray
you take home.
I sleep with a dog these days.
I start out with the whole bed, all the blankets
and both pillows but still
awaken naked on the edge, next to
a rumply soft head on the half-shred of a pillow
she allots me. My expanionist spaniel.
This dog is not much comfort, she doesn’t sleep
softly, protectively. She twitches, she moans.
She dreams, I assume, of a rabbit.
I dream too, she must assume, of you.
On the flight to Las Vegas, Heather, my sassalicious/salacious friend who likes to front like she’s tough, cracked and cried and gushed about how much she loves her husband. To be fair, she’s terrified of flying and was flying (high!) under the influence of two Ativans and three vodka cranberries.
Please note: very very bad combination. Do not try this at home, or anywhere. It gets messy. Heather knocked my laptop off the seat tray and then knocked her drink into my purse and later knocked boots with her camera in the airport bathroom. To summarize: inadvisable.
I digress. This is part three of my Las Vegas trilogy. Las Vegas is all about money and sex and I’ve mused about the meaning of those things already. So now let’s talk about the place – other than Las Vegas – where money and sex unite and ignite: marriage.
Kelly: Do you get butterflies about Tyler? Or is he like an old shoe? Heather: What kind of shoe are we talking about? Be specific. Kelly: I don’t know. He’s your shoe. Heather: Yeah, I do. Last time he went away…when he came back, I got the butterflies. Kelly: Like your stomach flipped over? Heather: I had been alone with the kids for three and half days/years. I was REALLY happy to see him. Kelly: If Tyler wasn’t your husband, would he be one of your best friends? Heather: If he talked more, or at all, sure…you know, we did the long distance thing before we got together. So I guess we were friends first. Kelly: How did you talk on the phone if he doesn’t talk? Heather: He talked then. He worked hard. We talked for hours and hours on the phone. That’s why we had sex on the first date. It was all that talking. Kelly: Can I write that you had sex on the first date in my blog? Does your mother read my blog? Heather: Is it in Canadian Living? My mother only reads Canadian Living. Kelly: We should be fine.
I asked Heather this because she’s my sister from another mother except she’s a reformed tramp. (Reformed in the sense that she only slings it in one direction now because she’s happily married and them’s the rules, usually.) I ask Heather because she’s like me and she’s got what I want. But I ask other people these questions because I wonder – eternally, constantly, with every breath – if passion is a sprint, a marathon, or a long slow walk that keeps rockin’ fifty years later in twin rockers on the porch.
And because love and marriage are everywhere in Las Vegas.
The couple in the row behind us kissed all the way from Bellingham to Las Vegas. In Vegas, there were sex cards galore…and brides. I saw a bride kick a cowboy straight in the shins.
In my head, I cheered on the shin-kicking bride. (I’m a terrible pacifist.) Earlier, that same cowboy was insistently and persistently friendly with me while I tried to have a drink with my colleague and his wife. Cowboy desperately wanted me to meet his friend. He told me his friend had “mustache rights”. This meant nothing to me, but it meant something to my co-worker who got very, very upset.
After Cowboy left, I was brought up to speed on the meaning of mustache rights.
It is not a good pick up line.
Sometimes this human mating game is perplexing and other times just plain unfathomable. Thirty-sex years into it, I’m still figuring out the rules and I like them less and less the more I learn. And one thing that I have learned for sure is that love doesn’t play by the rules – hence our need to make them. We think codes and lines and boundaries and laws will keep us safe. But love is an outlaw.
And oh, how I love love.
Cowboy’s attempt to play drunken wingman for his mustachioed friend interrupted a great love story. My coworker and his wife were telling me how they met and married.
They were high school sweethearts who broke up when he went off to college. He graduated, got married and stayed married for twenty-four years. He got divorced and got married again for twenty-four months.
In the wake of his second divorce, he signed up at Classmates.com. A week later, he had a message from his former sweetheart, saying “I don’t know if you remember me…I’m married and living in Florida.”
He wrote back and told her about his life, his divorce, and his pending trip to Florida, asking “Can I take you and your husband to dinner? I’d love to catch up.”
She wrote back “Funny you should mention your divorce…I’m in the middle of a divorce, myself.”
He called her, and when she picked up the phone and it was like they had never stopped talking.
He went to Florida to see her. He started going to Florida every six weeks. Then every four. Then every two. Then he was out of airmiles and free trips and told her that it was time for them to live in the same place. She quit her job and moved to Washington, DC with him.
And then they got married – in Vegas – on January 1, 2003. Every year since then they end and start the year in Las Vegas, the place where they ended their days apart and started their life together.
My big, burly friend – who, a few days earlier at a company dinner introduced me to filet mignon and the Manhattan (steak and bourbon. I like ‘em. Who knew?) and explained to me in abrupt, gruff detail the meaning of Cowboy’s mustache rights – then leaned over to me and said, “I bet you didn ‘t know I was so sensitive, did you?
No I didn’t . But now I do. And I’m so glad I do.
This story – this long, interrupted, lost and found love story – ran honey through my veins.
It could be straight from the pages of Lost and Found Lovers. In a study of 1001 participants, Dr. Nancy Kalish found that lovers who reunite later in life end up staying together (78%) and have an astonishingly low divorce rate of 1.5% compared to the national average of 51%.
That seems to me to be good odds for a gamble, and better odds than most. When it comes to my heart, I like to know my numbers.
Months ago, I wrote that there is research correlating the length, success and happiness of marriages to length of courtship – but not in the way you might expect. The longer the courtship, the shorter the marriage. A courtship longer than thirty-one months predicts divorce within one to four years. Couples who marry in haste - nine to eighteen months after starting a relationship - make it past the seven year mark and report very high levels of marital happiness.
So – don’t trust me, trust Ted Huston, PhD. I’m just wondering about butterflies and new relationship energy and the recipe for happily ever after. So I ask around. I look around. I get around. I poke around in books and libraries and make queries with my bff, Google. And what I’ve noticed is that the happily loved-up people I know seem to have a couple of things in common: it was passion, right away and they liked each other. Like, really really like each other, like spending time together, enjoy each other’s company, and laugh a lot. They hang out. They would be friends even if they weren’t lovers. But they have to be lovers because of all that passion.
__________________________________
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I’m all about The Sex but Las Vegas is making me feel like a prude. And confused.
Sure, sex is a great recreational activity. It can have bows and tassels and feathers and giggles. It can also be a spiritual experience and a source of reverence. It is also an industry. I know this is not news. I knew it. But now I really, really know it.
On the strip there are people in bright coloured hoodies that say “Girls Direct” handing out business cards for escorts. The cards have naked women on them. These cards are everywhere, on every corner and scattered on the sidewalks. These cards freak me out. The whole thing freaks me out. I’m not even talking about the sex work. I’m thinking about the people handling and handing out the cards. There are women, who probably don’t have work papers, and who probably work all day at some low-paying job, who stand on corners at night – cold nights – and hand out sex cards advertising women for sale. This makes me sad.
I’m not sure if sex work, per se, makes me sad. It kind of does, because I exhalt sex. I wish it could be like that for everyone. I wonder about strippers and sex workers and porn stars – male and female – and wonder if all sex becomes a job for them. Off duty, do they still have loving, incandescent, transcendant sex? Or does it become boring and a chore and the thing you do for work? In other words, work.
So the sex cards and the newspaper boxes filled with catalogs of naked women have made the usually invisible sex work visible to me. And the money. The Las Vegas strip is all about the naked hustle. I liked it yesterday but today I’m overwhelmed.
Today has been weird. Today I was by myself which might have made me look like a stray or possibly prey. It brought out the predators. Some were just harmless, awkward, embarassing pick ups. Some were deeply unflattering drunken approaches. The worst was when I was walking just off the strip. A guy slowed down, pulled over, turned on the interior light and rolled down the passenger window. I thought he was going to ask me for directions. But then I realized that he had pulled up his shirt and was twirling his nipple.
What is that? Is that about sex? Is that really a pick up and does he really think that has a chance of success? Or is the thrill in the scary?
this is my second vacation this year. my second in four months. my second in five years.
when I go on vacation - vacate my usual routine – the truths about my life emerge. They stand up. They streak down the street and shimmy naked across the stage.
this is appropriate. I am in Las Vegas, which might be the official world capital of shimmying. (My people!) Our plane rejoined the earth in the evening and the city lit up the Nevada sky. It shimmered. It knocked me out. Long ago, my visit to the Vatican made me angry. The accretion of wealth in the hands of the few and the selfless selfish made me seethe through the Sistine chapel. My visit to Las Vegas – with its worship of the quick buck and its fake Venice and copied ceiling murals and faux Paris and wannabe New York – has me dazzled. There is something pure about pure money love. It is primal and visceral and naked when it is naked. I respect naked. That’s the truth.
and as I sit on the balcony of my gorgeous suite surveying the incandescent strip, I’m thinking about money and vacations and luxury.
vacations teach me about luxury. they teach me about essentials and sometimes the two are one.
once I had two babies less than two. when I gave myself permission to fantasize, my fantasy was this: to check into a hotel with a great bed and soft sheets and cable – oh cable – and sleep for eight hours, uninterrupted. mmmmmmmmmm.
and this vacation echoes and underlines that the reality of that fantasy. the most essential luxury in my life - besides love – is to sleep until I wake. unprompted. rested.
That’s my guest post on ProBlogger today. So, for those of you who hopped from there to here desperate to feast your eyeballs on my own personal blog disclosure policy, I’m re-posting it, below.
I wrote in ProBlogger that the need to write a disclosure policy is actually an opportunity, and a potentially income-generating one, at that. It forces you to articulate your vision around money and then it lights a fire that makes you want to burn it up. (I’m talking about igniting your effort. Not money. If you feel the need to set your bills on fire, please just mail them to me.)
And…this is true. I revamped my site and wrote this disclosure policy in November. In November, I started making money. A really nice amount of it. Hallelujah!
Money. My Disclosure Policy. Confessions of a Poorly (Barely) Paid but Shamelessly Aspirational Blogger.
Love is light. God is Love. Intuition is Queen. Cash is King. – Danielle LaPorte
Disclosure. It is now the rule in the US (but I live in Canada so nya nya nya nya) and it is a common dilemma.
As bloggers gain influence, they grow opportunities to profit from their blogs. (Indeed, isn’t that the point?)
Then they have to ‘confess‘ that they’re getting freebies or sponsorships or risk getting called out on it which (apparently) results in a loss of credibility.
I’m dispensing with credibility from the drop.
Buy Me. Please.
I’m not even kidding. I’m a writer. That’s how I make my living. This blog is based on my writing and so we should all assume that I’m using it to try to make the aforementioned (and largely) imaginary living.
At the moment, I’m not doing that terribly well or at all. But John Chow is making about ten livings for himself and he has an audacious disclosure policy:
I make money from every post I put on this blog. If I’m not making money from every blog post, then it was an oversight on my part and it will be corrected soon.
Every link on this blog is a paid link. If it is not a paid link, then it was an oversight on my part and it will become a paid link soon.
Every product I write about on this blog, I get for free. If I didn’t get it for free, then there was a miss-communication with the company that sent it and I will be billing them for the cost so the product becomes free.
I make money from every tweet I send out on Twitter. If I didn’t make money on the tweet, then it was an oversight on my part and it will be corrected soon.
If you email me, all of the information in your email is mine to do with as I please, such as exploit for financial profit, use as blackmail, or quote on my blog.
The T-shirts you see me wear at trade shows. I get paid to wear them. If I didn’t get paid to wear them, then it was an oversight on my part and it will be corrected soon.
If something on the Net is making a lot of money, you can bet I will be in on it. If I’m not in on it, then it was an oversight on my part and it will be corrected soon.
Just because I get paid to blog, tweet, wear T-shirts, etc. does NOT mean I will give you or your company a positive review, blog post or endorsement. As a matter of fact, chances are pretty high that I might slam you.
There’s more. At the end of his gleeful nose-rubbing post, John Chow sends a shout out to the two sponsors of his disclosure policy. That’s right. He even made money from his disclosure policy.
Genius. GENIUS. Who is John Chow, by the way, and is he single? Because I want a piece of that.
Pity the Foolish Blogger (ME) Who Has Nothing to Disclose
I like John Chow’s approach to money: get some.
And he is getting some (yes, we’re talking about money, people). Apparently he makes $40K a month. I wasn’t kidding about him making ten livings. I like his style – and his numbers.
Number of PORN t-shirts sold: 5 (three were to me. I don’t think I understand business)
Average salary per hour: I’m not very good at negative numbers.
And you know what all of that means? That I’m doing a really, really bad job of being an online innerpreneur, and I should shake off the shame and go after money with sharklike intensity and focus. Or marry John Chow.
I choose the shark because there’s no conflict between money and art. Money funds art and like Amanda Fucking Palmer – but without the gothy legitimate badassishness and rebellyion – I’m not afraid to take your money in exchange for some hot shit writing and maybe, once in a while, a lil’ heartfelt and hard-learned wisdom.
I think the age-old money/art tension stems from the knotty idea that the quality, and the purity, of your work will suffer if it is massaged by money.
Let’s unkink that thought.
Poverty depletes my mojo and scares off my muse. Broke makes me frantic. When the bills are hungry, they consume most of my available brain power. My work can only improve with pay.
So, in the best interests of all of us, my art and my hungry kids (they’re not really hungry, don’t call the officials) I’d best get to getting a business plan and sources of revenue and maybe even advertisers. Because the daycare needs to be paid every month and so does the light bill and I’m not even in coffee money yet and what about the imaginary backyard swimming pool? A girl has goals.
Maybe LinkedIn is a bad example. I can’t be bothered with LinkedIn.
Let’s talk about something I would bother with and in fact get hot and bothered about: my new copywriting gig.
I Hereby Promise to Make Money AND Kiss Some Ass. Of Course. Maybe Even Yours.
Once upon a time, I wrote a piece in which I linked repeatedly to a writer whose company and blog I liked. I liked her style, I wanted her to know it, she was oh-so-quotable and I was copping her language, and so I kissed her ass with linkage.
Link love is called that for a reason.
And she followed me on twitter, and messaged me and we talked on the phone and it was mad love all around and now I’m subcontracting for her.
In the internet marketing world, there’s a lot of talk about converting readers into buyers. That bit of linky-love was ass-kissing that converted to cash. It might therefore be reasonable to assume – a la John Chow – that with every link I am either kissing someone’s hiney or getting paid. Or kissing someone’s ass to get paid. Or just kissing ass because I like it.
Do I have to disclose my ass-kissing, too? ‘Cuz that would be a looooooong list.
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