It’s 7:30 pm. I’m the only one in the school building. Eating a bagel I stole from the faculty kitchen while my video edit renders, I feel very much like a student, and am exhibiting strange signs of discipline (in my work; not as a vegan).

“What makes dialogue good dialogue?” I ask students at the start of a playwriting class.

“It’s realistic.” This is almost always the first response.

“What makes it realistic?”

“I don’t know. It’s, like, not perfect, or whatever.”

“Go on.”

“Like, people say something, but they don’t say it right. It’s, like, off.”

“Do people always say what they’re thinking?”

“No.”

“Do they always tell the truth?”

“No. But not always in a bad way. I think sometimes people think they’re telling the truth, but they’re not.”

____________________________________________

When we’re young we’re like amoebas - all flexibility. Then our skulls close fully, and our beliefs harden like cartilage.

A thought about entering relationships: One person can say, “I’m ready for this. I want a healthy, committed relationship.” Another can say, “I’m not looking toward the future. I can’t tell you what I want, because I don’t know what I want. This is fun. But that’s all I can tell you for now.” Sometimes people think they’re telling the truth, but they’re not.

And that’s okay. We think we know what we’re talking about. We intend to be honest. But people looking for nothing might be very much ready for something, and vice versa. 

Nothing about us is actually hardened. It just feels that way. We say what we don’t mean, and we mean what we don’t say. We don’t mean what we say. We try to mean what we’ve said, for consistency’s sake. We say the opposite of what we mean, for self-protection. Sarcasm. We say what someone else means, hoping we come to mean that ourselves. We can’t say what we mean because we’re anxious. We say what we mean, and tomorrow say something different, and mean that, too. 

We’re jumbling idiots. Well-meaning, adorable, kind idiots. Self-deluded and built for simultaneous honesty and dishonesty. I’m not lobbying to let everyone off the hook, but some. Many. Yourself. 

There are purple streaks in my hair (grownup girl sleepover - we decorated tote bags, too) and I’m already done with them.

“I’m done with them,” I said to my friend. “But they’re still here.”

This is why tattoos are out of the question.

Another in a series of positive psychology posts. Let’s talk about feelings.

A more researched and comprehensive post on this topic should follow, but in the meantime, here’s an analogy that helps me explain what anti-depressants do. 

There’s a trail cutting through a dense forest. You’re miles away from the trail, in a section of forest so dense there’s hardly any light coming through. You’ve been crawling around, scraping yourself, and (hello, anxiety) there are animals all around. After a while, you give up on finding the trail. You have no energy left. The days are too long.

Anti-depressants are those metal claws that grab stuffed, neon plush toys from that machine in the bowling alley*. They drop down through the trees, pick you up, and release you onto the trail.

If you stray from the trail, the claw will nudge you back toward it.

Now that you’re back, you can arm yourself with things you never brought with you in the first place, or dropped along the way - that’s what talk therapy is for. Grab a machete. Vegetable seeds. Rain boots. A necklace of flowers. Whatever. You’re equipped. And once you’re equipped, and the path seems straight for a while, you can send the claw back up through the trees, and get off your medication.

You might wander off again, but with all that stuff you’ve acquired, you’ll likely find your own way back this time. Until, perhaps, you’ve gone too far off course again, in which case you might need to enlist that claw.

And some people, no matter how well they equip themselves and prune the trail, can’t stay on that trail without their meds. So they remain on them. And that’s fine, too.

The claw leaves marks. It’s not entirely pleasant receiving the help. But so long as the benefit outweighs the cost, you call down for that sturdy metal thing to plop your ass where it needs to be.

* For this analogy to work, you must ignore the fact that the claw often fails to grip the stuffed animal, or drops it unexpectedly, or tends to hold onto particular head shapes a little more easily than others. It’s a strange science to figure out the right medication for a person, but when something works, it’s far less faulty than your average claw.

For my birthday (long since passed), my roommate is going to make me a painting of this little dude. We took him to the beach today and I nearly imploded when I saw him trot in the sand and cautiously follow me onto the jetty. He slaughters me.

The first in a series of positive psychology posts.

Today I met with the author whom I’ll be assisting for the next few months, doing research and, presumably, various tedious things. (This actually isn’t the crappy job. I’ll get to that.) She asked me where I’ve worked before. I started listing. She stopped me when I got to the Jewish magazine where I worked for two years.

“The Syrian-Sephardic Jews!” she said. “I know of them.”

So we talked about insular communities and dead-end magazine jobs for a while, and it was comforting to hear how similar her job history was to mine.

That magazine job, where I stayed way too long, was by far the worst job I’ve ever had. Any close contenders (like the cowboy store in the East village where I worked right when I got home from Ecuador) didn’t last longer than a couple of weeks, because I had the right mind to get out (and in the case of that store, they weren’t too eager to keep me around, either - turns out I’m an awful salesperson). But at the time when I worked at this magazine, when I was 21-24, I didn’t know any better. I had my desk and my bamboo plant. I (just) made rent. The Korean deli owners next door loved to chat and when I needed to escape for a minute, I could go there. Or hide in the dank bathroom, where I cried on my first day of work. I knew on that first day that I was miserable, but I thought that’s how it was: you are not happy at work. Home is for happiness. Funny thing is (duh) you can’t be happy at home if you’re not happy at work.

Hating work made me a miserable person to be around. But I had no idea it was my job that made me that way; I thought it was just me. Here I am, 22, with my first job, and I am miserable in the same way that most of my friends are. We gchat during the day, eat dinner and drink wine at night. Brunch on Sundays and pray Monday never comes. Be miserable, spread it, spread it! to the far reaches of your social circle. Leave no friend unturned. Especially not your live-in boyfriend.

I was stuck. The way out, I figured, was a round-the-world trip linked - my boyfriend and I hoped - to interesting research that might receive funding. We fundraised, had meetings, hired an intern, made a web site. I would quit. As soon as we received funding, I would quit. In the meantime I had no energy left to send out resumes: I was thoroughly depressed, and had given up on that. Complete learned helplessness.

When my boyfriend and I broke up after four years together, I finally gained clarity about my job. (Nevermind his saying over and over, “You need to quit that job. It’s making you miserable.” And the unspoken, because he was kind, ”Which is making me miserable. You’re no longer the person I fell in love with.”) Without him there, I could see only what was left: my life and job in Brooklyn, neither of which was working. So I quit. I had no other job - in which case I shouldn’t recommend simply quitting, but, since I am not a professional and this is anecdotal, I will anyhow. If your job is terrible, quit.

To clarify: if you’re the sort of person who’s okay with quitting and following the wind of kharma - which you sense is in your favor - to the next thing, go ahead. If you’re like me, a worrier, a back-up plan is preferable.

Possible backup plans:

• a more pleasant job
• an internship/volunteer opportunity (if you’ve saved or have kind parents)
• graduate school.

This is about restoring yourself to a non-miserable state. If taking out money makes you so worried you’re miserable, these might not be viable options. But perhaps in a few paragraphs you’ll find the benefits outweigh the costs. To wit:

When I quit, I didn’t have a more pleasant job available. I had about $1,500 saved up from two years of work. I have kind parents, but post-teenage years, they don’t give, they loan - which was something to take into account. I had already missed the deadline for graduate school that year. And I wasn’t about to move back in with my parents in order to “start fresh, clear my head, live rent-free until the next job came,” which is in quotes because moving back in with my parents at 24 just wasn’t an option. For other readers, it might very well be an option. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed (which at the time I thought was true). I ended up living at home for half a year when I got back from Ecuador. But for me, I knew that getting over a break-up and making steps toward becoming un-miserable did not include living with my parents.

I researched volunteer opportunities abroad. I found one that looked interesting, in a country where I’d never been, which accepted volunteers who could commit to anywhere from two weeks to three months of work. I had saved enough to get there. (Then I got my wisdom teeth pulled without dental insurance, and had to borrow half from my parents.) It was - and there will be more posts about this - the best decision I’d ever made. The trip, not the wisdom teeth removal.

And what if you don’t have parents kind enough to loan you money? Or you don’t feel like traveling? Or you think you’re too old to escape? Or that escape isn’t real, because you follow yourself everywhere? Or that people who plant trees to get over their problems are ridiculous? (All thoughts I pondered before ultimately deciding that this trip was right for me, and that all the other stuff is a matter of judging myself in light of what other people say, and not what I felt in my gut.) In this case, I would offer the second option that receives equal, if not more amount of scoffing: graduate school.

Graduate school is wonderful for so many reasons.

• Almost anyone can do it. You take out a loan. If you’re smart (not book smart; just thougtful) you’ll go somewhere inexpensive, or fully funded.
• You get to study something you love for 2-5 years.
• You’ll form a community.
• You’ll probably be closer to getting a pleasant job than you were before.
• You’ll make connections.
• You’ll meet people who are interested in the same things that you are, which makes you feel confident: you’re not the only one who cares about _____, and you’re not the only ____ at all. You’re who you are, and that’s great.
• At the end of it, you’ll be great/expert at something. More confidence. More future pleasant jobs. Perhaps a future pleasant partner, too.
•  It’s an excuse to move to a new place. Any place you want. And not have to commit for more than a few years, if that’s your jam (it’s mine).
• Time to take on jobs that don’t pay - internships, etc. - but will lead you toward something greater post-graduation.

Grad school will set me back something like $30-35k. What it’s gotten me, though, to name just a few things: the best group of friends I’ve ever had; knowledge of basically every field of writing, and film, and final cut pro, and publishing, and editing; several jobs that I love: film production assistant, creative writing teacher, dog walker/pet-sitter, author’s assistant, bar tender, tutor, actor (I can’t act, but I never say no), and possible back-up singer; a varied body of work, and a mentor; and, most importantly, hope. Grad school gave me hope. Naysayers will want to talk to me in five years when I’m paying back my loans. That is fair. But I suspect that in order to write my monthly checks to the government, I’ll be working at a job I enjoy.

My older doctor sister can call me “crunchy” all she wants, and my parents can say, “This is nice, honey, but what are you going to do for money?” But I know (and I suspect they know, too) that what I’m doing now is the best possible thing for me.

And now I’m off to the bar, because my graduate school is in the middle of nowhere, and that’s what we do. But to share our loves, and, less often, our miseries.

If there’s one thing I’m pretty knowledgeable about, it’s waging war on depression and all that comes with it. Which is why, even though advice is so off-putting, I’m going to put this out there.

It’s wonderful to hear about happiness from people who are happy, and who have been, for most of their lives, fairly positive. When I need insight, I go to one particular friend who’s extremely happy and positive. He’s a bit older, and in a different phase of life than I am - and that’s part of why it works. He’s been down. Way down. Now he’s up. If he’d always been up, I’m not sure that I, in my particular brand of me-ness, at this particular moment, would gain from his insight. 

And why am I writing this right now? I’ve had a similar conversation with a couple of friends this past week. Both are males who seem to believe there’s a pride in dealing with things on their own. And that’s such bullshit. I hate that they’ve been brought up to feel that way, and I hate that they’ve wasted years not seeking the right kind of help because of it.

When your depression is crippling, you need to foster an opposing force. Everything good and helpful in the world: gather it. And because you probably don’t want to, and don’t have the energy to, it’s that much harder. It’s hellish and impossible. I know. But it’s not pruning a bonszai: it’s crawling on your knees and finding seeds to plant. It’s dragging yourself, messy, smelly, and ravaged, to pick up one seed, and stick it in the ground.

At 27, I’ve been dealing with this for something like 12 years. As a writer, I’m wincing at my words, here. Normally I use these experiences for “real” writing. Make it fiction, or fancy it up in a creative nonfiction essay, or stick two beautiful actors in front of a camera to deliver a sweet and altered version of one particular way in which a parent fails her child. Writing it in blog form feels cheap and cheesy. But I’m going to do it anyway. 

I’m a huge proponent of therapy, yoga, meditation, a healthy diet, and a community. But it’s not that simple, because you have to find the right therapist, the right form of exercise/hobby to take you away from your thoughts and worries. The right diet. The right job or (let’s face it) graduate program. The right amount of contact with your family. The right mood-regulating apps for your iPod/phone. The right mood-regulating drugs. (I have lots of thoughts about this. Some people need medication for this. I resent people who are staunchly against medication because I suspect they can’t relate to needing it themselves, and so judge others for being on it.) The right books, the right music. The right friend - one if you’re lucky, more if you’re luckier - to talk to. The right time to wake up and go to sleep. The right amount of alone time, and the right amount of people-time. There’s so much. I am going to talk about so much of it. Probably starting with therapy. But tomorrow. This is enough for now.

Today I opened a can of lentil soup with one of those rudimentary can openers, the kind that work almost like an opposite bottle opener. I was at school, and that’s all there was to use, because months earlier I broke the regular can opener, and didn’t replace it because I would always forget, until I had to open a can of soup.

Kharma tore my thumb today. Is it the case for everyone that, right before you accidentally hurt yourself, you know you’re about to hurt yourself? You think, “You’re opening this nose ring with a pair of pliers. Why don’t you just punch yourself in the eye and skip the added trouble?” Or, “Pulling back the top of this jagged-edged can with your thumb is pretty stu—” Oh, there it is. 

These are my first stitches. Every time I’ve cut myself before, I refused to get them, let my wound heal in whatever lop-sided manner it pleased. The scar on my inner thigh from a tree fall is in the shape of an exclamation point, both a warning and a celebration. The night of that fall, I experienced a moment of pure and absolute joy. I’m not sure whether the rush of adrenaline lasted until that point, but something about the throbbing limb and the fear of what came next brought me right to the moment. The same thing happened today, in the hospital. I’d never been cared for in a hospital; I’d only went to visit my sister, often, and friends. The PA had me bend my finger through the pain, to check whether I’d hit the tendon. She pressed her thumb into mine and I pressed back. She numbed it - by far the worst part - and had to root around the wound to get the needle in. When I looked down the pad she placed beneath my hand was soaked in blood. The nurse who gave me the tetanus shot talked to me about her daughter while the PA stitched. It was a slow afternoon there. Her son is about to marry a wealthy Indian woman, and she told her daughter to pick out any dress she wanted to wear to the wedding, and she would pay for it. Maybe there will be a single, wealthy Indian man there. Wouldn’t that be something. Her daughter is nice, and wears the same type of clothes that I wear. She worked in a toxic environment, where her boss reminded her daily he could replace her in minutes, but now she has a new job. The change will be good for her. She turns thirty next month.

Before I cracked into that can of lentil soup this afternoon, I was fighting sleep in class. Acting for Writers. We were discussing A Streetcar Named Desire. The night before, reading the play, I feared that I would become Blanche, and dreamed accordingly. A good laceration will make you come to. It’s good to remember how much blood you have. I think about the bus rides I took a couple of years ago when I was traveling around Ecuador and Colombia, when the drivers took the cliffside turns far too fast. Once we tipped over, caught by the tall rock on the side of the road. I don’t want to glorify frivolously risking lives, but I was awake all the time, then, and I remember everything. 

Quiet Quiz: Are You an Introvert or an Extrovert?
Excerpted from: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain

To find out where you fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum, answer each question True or False, choosing the one that applies to you more often than not.

1. ______ I prefer one-on-one conversations to group activities.

2. ______ I often prefer to express myself in writing.

3. ______ I enjoy solitude.

4. ______ I seem to care about wealth, fame, and status less than my peers.

5. ______ I dislike small talk, but I enjoy talking in depth about topics that matter to me.

6. ______ People tell me that I’m a good listener.

7. ______ I’m not a big risk-taker.

8. ______ I enjoy work that allows me to “dive in” with few interruptions.

9. ______ I like to celebrate birthdays on a small scale, with only one or two close friends or family members.

10. ______ People describe me as “soft-spoken” or “mellow.”

11. ______ I prefer not to show or discuss my work with others until it’s finished.

12. ______ I dislike conflict.

13. ______ I do my best work on my own.

14. ______I tend to think before I speak.

15.______ I feel drained after being out and about, even if I’ve enjoyed myself.

16. ______I often let calls go through to voice mail.

17. ______If you had to choose, I’d prefer a weekend with absolutely nothing to do to one with too many things scheduled.

18. ______ I don’t enjoy multitasking.

19. ______ I can concentrate easily

20. ______ In classroom situations, I prefer lectures to seminars.

The more often you answered True, the more introverted you are. This is an informal quiz, not a scientifically validated personality test. The questions were formulated based on characteristics of introversion often accepted by contemporary researchers.

Flo, my dear friend who was eaten by Texas recently, sent me one of those “post ten things about yourself and ask your friends to do the same” messages. As I’m waiting for my laundry to dry - and also, because I’ve already blown through every episode of How I Met Your Mother streaming on Netflix - I figured there were worse ways to spend my time. 

1. I’m a vegetarian. I started when I was 20, after watching a few too many documentaries. Lately, I’ve been eating vegan - mostly raw, unprocessed food. Only I don’t often talk about it, because I don’t like the “why don’t you eat _____?” conversation. 

2. All my favorite jobs so far have been teaching jobs. Today my SAT student wrote in her essay, “So lots of different people can change the world, whether it’s Superman or a simple black guy.” She’s from Brazil, and she meant to say “…or a regular human with strong oratory skills,” as in Martin Luther King, Jr. 

3. When I fold my laundry, I often imagine people I’ve loved folding their laundry. 

4. Celebrities who share my birthday: Edgar Allen Poe and Stephanie from Full House.

5. I surprised myself this year - now, if I go a few days without doing yoga, I feel like I’m missing something. 

6. No New Year’s resolutions, just two things I’ll remind myself when I need to: love yourself/be kind to yourself, and live in the moment. 

7. I love that everyone, similar as we are, has a unique story to tell. I think, though, that the Internet encourages people to tell too many stories. This led to a break from facebook, which has been going strong for a few months. If anyone asks why I’m not on there, I feel like I’m being too open by saying, “Because I don’t want to compare myself to other people, and that’s exactly what facebook encourages me to do,” so I say, “I’m so much more productive without it.” That is a lie, because there’s still Netflix.

8. If an idea for an ending of something I’m writing comes to me before I reach the end, I almost never use that ending. It’s almost superstitious the way I’ll throw it out as a possibility. But maybe it’s logical - the first thing that comes to mind is the easiest, and least surprising.

9. This week, my dog peed on both my roommate’s beds. I laughed. Yesterday, he peed on my bed.

10. Last semester, one student insisted she was uninteresting, bad at everything, and had no hobbies or talents. “I watch TV,” she said. ”Okay,” I said. “Me too. What do you like about it?” She told me her parents were never home, and when they were home, it was worse than when they weren’t, so she preferred the company of television shows. “And I guess I taught my dad to read,” she said. “I’d bring home my schoolwork and do it with him.”

She was angry, mean to the other kids in the class, so panicked she’d hide away in her room (it was a week-long retreat). You could see how inward she faced: her head down toward her feet, her chest in. She wanted to coil but our bodies can’t coil. 

In the end we got a one-act play out of her. I have no idea what she thought of the experience, whether she knew how much I saw myself in her.

My friend Emily made a short film today. Our job was to look at our hands as though we were tripping.

My dad likes to talk about four things. Dogs, the Yankees, cars, and money—in order of their safety of mention. He and my mom run a dog rescue, which means in addition to the nine or so animals they own, there are five to ten foster dogs coming in and out at all times. Because of this, you can stay on that first topic for an exceptionally long time. Just don’t ask about Delilah’s hip surgery, or Maggie’s collapsed trachea, because then you spill over into topic number four, and that, of course, is the topic you work actively all evening to avoid. You might notice that the cost of Delilah’s new hip equals precisely the amount of debt you’ve accumulated with your dad, money which he expects back in full—and which reserves him the right to veto any trips you might take, and any bicycles you might consider buying. My mother has a notebook titled, “What Dani Owes.” It’s blue and filling up. What Dani Owes is my dad’s favorite subtopic of his favorite topic, Money. You ask about the Yankees. They lost. You ask about Shelby, Lucy, that new one, the pug/pekingese mix. Delilah. Anyone. Zubi.

“Zubi’s dead,” he says. 

“Of course,” I say. “What I meant was, how are you doing without her?”

“Not well,” he says. “How’s the car? You still running it on no oil?”

“I filled the oil.”

“That’s my car,” he says, as if I’ve forgotten.

“Would you like it back?”

“Keep talking like that and you can walk the 70 miles home,” he says.

If my mother’s not there to step in with, “Did you see that church on the corner? That giant, tacky cross? There should be a town ordinance against that thing,” then we’ll likely crawl along the trenches we built when I was two, or whenever it was I began to speak. I’ll wind up in the corner of whatever room we’re in. His pointer will punctuate every third word against my temple. If he lands on “worthless” I’ll risk what comes next to remind him I’m an investment, worth at least $15,000 by now, which’ll buy his dogs two gastric torsion corrections, six urinary tract reconstructions, and three cataract removals. He’s the Dog Whisperer. He’s never laid a hand on any of them.

* I can’t post this without adding: I love my dad to bits. This is written in the conditional for a reason - in my adult not-living-with-him years, we get along quite well. No more pointing and yelling. As long as we don’t talk about money.