14 KARAT LIVING

Here in Pdx … (and a little foreward)

May 7th, 2012 | Liz Gold

Well I have arrived for my birthday stay to visit Captain.

I started having an intense panic feeling when I was waiting for the plane. Not quite a full-on attack, as I don’t know what those really feel like but this feeling inside my chest that felt like it was expanding. When I was walking onto the plane I had this thought of, “What would happen if one of the pilots had a heart attack when flying the plane?” It was a weird, out of nowhere thought.
I have the middle seat (which I probably don’t have to say isn’t ideal) and there is an announcement from a flight attendant that the second pilot is MIA, thus making us delayed for our 8:30 PM flight. Another announcement is made moments later – he has called in and a replacement has been found, but it will be at least an hour.
Some people left the plane to do whatever but I just stayed there, sort of annoyed, trying to calm myself down.
When we finally take off I realize the TV doesn’t work. Not just my TV but my whole row’s. And I had just told Superboy how much I was looking forward to watching bad TV while on my way there.
So anyway. I slept a good portion of the time. The sucky thing about not having the TV work is that I couldn’t access the LiveMap and see the progress of going across the country. That’s my favorite part, I gotta say.

But I have arrived and it was great to see Captain all sleepy in his flannel at the airport. It was around 1:30 or so when I got in I think. And then of course I couldn’t sleep.
And I am peeing a lot for some reason. I think it’s the acupuncture.
TMI? Probably. Oh well.
So today we are hanging out and Captain is making bread and I am going to motivate to take a shower and then we are going to run some errands and maybe go to the beach. It’s nice here and only 11:08 AM!
(I’m not doing anything work related today!)
I am happy to be here!

Self-visualization practice

May 4th, 2012 | Liz Gold

Let’s visualize shall we …
(yes I’m back, wow two blog posts in a day, that’s a holy miracle)

So I am going to this brunch described as such:

Here’s the plan: Arrive as who you will be 5 years from now. Dress as you will then (may require psychic fashion prediction). We’ll speak only in the present tense for the entire time, as if it were already 2017 – all our goals have been achieved, all our dreams have come true.

You have created the life you want to live.

Bring props to show everyone what you have accomplished and who you have become. You might play a different role at the party than you typically do or relate to us in new ways. Think big. Think broadly. Who you want to be can pertain to *any* area of your life.

Good idea right?
Perfect for me right now as I get my shit together right? (OK I sort have my shit together, I know I know)

UMMM well it’s a LITTLE scary.

So that is why I am taking this time and space on my Friday night to do this. After all, I feel this great expectation to wear something amazing so having no idea how this will actually manifest in less than 24 hours is starting to stress me out and frankly I don’t need the added stress before a trip to see Captain.

LET ME THINK: 2017. I will be turning 41. FUCK’N HELL

I think this calls for bullets. Oh where did the bullet feature go all of a sudden?
OK procrastinating. At least the toilet paper roll doesn’t need changing. Geesh.

* I am advanced in my martial arts practice. Balance and focus has improved as well as my skill and confidence.
* I am physically active. I run, ride a bike, go for long walks.
* My abscess is gone. My skin is clear, my body is toned and muscularly curvy, I have a lot of energy. Laziness and idleness is a thing of the past.
* I don’t really drink alcohol. If I do drink it’s one glass of something and then I stop.
* My self discipline is tight. I know my limits in regards to weed and eating and alcohol. I still indulge in smoking pot but it is few and far between. I don’t buy it anymore.
* I have a regular meditation practice and have been on at least one 10 day meditation retreat.
* I have created healthy boundaries for myself in regards to other people. I don’t take on commitments right away I think about them first. I don’t lash out or act out of my reactions. I am a more compassionate and empathetic listener. I know my triggers and have figured out a way to get out of them when I am in the midst of them.
* I have a wonderful helpful sharp therapist that I see regularly.
* I participate and share more in group settings.
* My blog is well read and I am invited to fun, glamorous, queer and nonqueer cultural events in New York City and beyond. People contact me to write about them. People like my voice and writing and I am known for it. I have a book deal for work.
* I am totally out in everything I do.
* I have taken classes at FIT for fashion design and created a line for executive and play wear. I also design evening gowns.
* My style has morphed into a more sophisticated bohemian polished look. I buy from boutiques and wear materials such as silk, denim, soft cotton. I wear a lot of blazers and dresses and my hair is long a bit layered and shiny with streams of gray. I have a nice array of leather bags and boots. I wear white without worrying I am going to ruin the piece with a stain of something.
* I have a loft or a brownstone in south Brooklyn, near my dojo. It is well-furnished with some new pieces and old flea market finds. I start to collect art. My home is cockroach and rodent free. I live alone but with plenty of room for lovers and visitors to stay. I have a patio and a backyard. I have a washer and a dryer. I like my neighbors and they like me.
* I have a dog who is always with me. Loyal, kind, laidback and mild mannered. Loves the dog park and is good with other dogs and people. Travels well.
* I am still with Captain. We worked through our dark shit in 2012 and have been enjoying our new found life with each other. We see each other every month for a week. We travel to new places quarterly. We went to southeast Asia in 2013.

* My business, Rhino Girl Media, is flourishing. After the book deal with the accounting folks and the high profile technology company’s corporate responsibility guide, I started getting a stream of well-paying, loyal clients. My earnings have doubled since my corporate job at SourceMedia and I am well on my way to doubling that. I have multiple streams of income.
* I am writing a relationship column for Elle Magazine regularly. That alone pays my rent.
* I see my parents frequently and travel down to Florida to visit them and the Shanes. I cultivate a really nice relationship with my cousin’s wife. It is unexpected.
* I drive a vintage Mercedes station wagon. I bought it in Portland in 2013 and drove it cross country for the first time with Captain.
* I am still with kole. He has a girlfriend and we are friends. We are more sexual and he is a significant part of my life. He starts calling me by my first name as well as Boss.
* I take up tennis.
* I play the electric guitar in a band of queers and I am the lead singer. It is totally on the side but has a avant garde queer following with the random cisguy in attendance.
* It is easy for me to meet lovers and I have a regular genderqueer/butch lover in New York who I see and is also poly with a long distance lover. This person has a young child.
* I cultivate a closer relationship with my brother.
* I have a wonderful circle of femme and other queer friends that are like family – in New York and Portland Oregon and beyond.
* Portland Oregon becomes like a second home to me as Captain is able to expand his house and I spend more time there because there is more space.
* I have gone to England with my mom. We visit her cousins.
* I have my own friends in Portland and things I do while I am there.
* I take the time to learn to cook – real, organic, healthy foods for myself.

Wow. All very realistic and very doable. What a great exercise.

When duty calls*

May 4th, 2012 | Liz Gold

I got a call from the restaurant that one of the girls didn’t show up. She regularly doesn’t show up. I wonder how much longer this will go on until D. fires her. Oh well, anyway. I am mostly packed and organized. Not for B’s party tomorrow where we have to act and dress like ourselves five years from now. I have images and glimpses but I’m not sure how to illustrate that or talk like that during brunch. I will probably have two hours in me after karate before I will need to leave and meditate.

Anyway. I don’t mind going in. It’s nice to be needed and called upon and it’s some extra money.

*Ha ha just kidding. I was halfway out the door when K. calls and tells me they found someone to come in to bartend so I don’t have to come in after all! Well OK. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. See ya tomorrow!

On not smoking pot (today) and other random things in my head

May 3rd, 2012 | Liz Gold

I really really want to smoke pot this morning.
I’m in my pajamas and finished off the thai food from last night’s bday dinner with Superboy. The window is open and it’s cool and cloudy, verging on some rain. I need to get out of the house and go for a walk. Badly.
But I want to puff down. I will try to control the urge.
Not that I think it’s a bad thing or I shouldn’t or I will fail myself if I do, but there’s been something good about me being sober lately. And smoking as I have learned the last time I indulged in a bender is that it irritates my abscess that I am trying to heal.
So.
Here I am writing. Last night when I was eating dinner something sort of miraculous happened. I stopped eating when I was satisfied, well OK maybe when I was on the verge of full. I didn’t even finish the whole cupcake I was given (which was super rich and from Sprinkles). I didn’t realize this until later in the evening, but I just stopped and actually LEFT FOOD. I guess I do do this sometimes but it just stood out for me for some reason last night.
So anyway. I’m gearing up for a trip out west to visit Captain and I am excited. The suitcase is down, the cash from the subletter is on my desk and my toes are pretty fresh from the pedicure I got last week. I’m ready to see him for sure, ready to do some serious thrifting, ready for sex, ready for the lushness that is the northwest this time of year and ready for my bday, even though a week ago I wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear. I guess that’s why they say what a difference a day makes.

Not like anything has changed, really. I still have a need for more paying work but I have to believe it will come. I think I have to do more work on my part to get really really clear on what I am looking for and what I want to manifest. I feel murky about this and that’s probably why the universe hasn’t provided (OK let’s be clear the universe has provided in terms of bringing what I need to pay my bills and rent, however, I am talking about abundance here and easy flow. Opportunities come but for some reason they don’t stick. And yes, I am looking at my role in this, too). Plus, I think in general I could probably be doing more planning, strategizing, outreach, just general work … but I feel like I’m walking down a dark tunnel with no headlamp here. I guess the light doesn’t necessarily come from the head but inside, and that’s the light that has to guide me. OH YEAH REALIZATION WHILE WRITING SO THIS IS WHY PEOPLE DO THIS.
Superboy last night said something smart in response to me saying I just have to write in the blog everyday now. He said it will form into something. IT WILL FORM INTO SOMETHING. If I just apply myself and do it long enough and get through the urge to change the toilet paper roll the minute I sit down to write.
It’s probably too why I want to smoke. It’s such a lovely lovely distraction. I don’t put it in the category of self sabotage, as Justin Timberlake says, “Some people are just better high.” I agree. I know it’s controversial and against recovery programs but I agree.
So.
I’m going to take a shower and go for a walk.
Maybe I’ll try to find a little something something for Captain.
Maybe I’ll take a few photos.
Maybe I’ll listen to some music.
Maybe not.

OH YEAH. So the GO! Awards I felt guilty guilty guilty about? Turns out my boss had extra tickets and nobody went. PHEW. For me it was about just not holding up to my agreement of going and bailing which is typically what I do when I have to face a fear or get lazy … so I was more upset with myself than anything else, but I was still worried about upsetting her in some way. CODEPENDENT. NO MORE.

xo

Feeling guilty guilty guilty

May 2nd, 2012 | Liz Gold

So today’s post was supposed to be on the GO! Nightlife Awards.

I was planning to go – the day before my boss at the queer restaurant texted me asking if I wanted a couple of tickets to attend. I was like, “sure” … so I asked my friend N, if she wanted to go and she said yes. It was going to have to be late, after karate, because you know, I’m going to PDX on Sunday and will be out a week and in general I don’t like to miss class if I am in town. It’s just not something I do. So I was planning to be there around 10.

I get out of karate and N, texts me and says she is just too slammed to go with her new company launch. So I am stuck. Fuck. Do I go alone? Do I see if I can get someone else to go with me? For once no one is around. I try, E, no word back. The other girl from work I was going to meet there is tired from a day of marching and a week of fucking and is in bed eating oreos pretty unconcerned with ditching the tickets. So I try to motivate and psych myself up to go. By myself. To Hells Kitchen. And it’s not a straight subway ride away. And it’s late. And I want to wear heels.

I probably don’t need to tell you the rest of this story. I talked myself out it, way easier than I talked myself into going. Into going by myself, taking some photos, staying for an hour, sipping seltzer, looking at the well-dressed lezzies and going home via cab. Instead I listened to DK’s extended audioscope for May and went to bed.

I felt guilty last night, like I did not follow through on my boss’ generosity and my commitment to go (I guess it was a commitment if I said yes) and like I failed myself because here I am trying to write this thing into a new atmosphere and cover these types of events and all it took was a little motivation and confidence on my end and I probably would have had a good time.

But there I go again always heading to the negative. Oh, it’s a far walk. Oh I just got these new heels and what if they start hurting while on my way there. What if I get there and have no one to talk with? What if it’s just loud and obnoxious scenester lesbians dancing to Lady Gaga. Blah blah blah …

I think it’s more than just lack of motivation, I think it’s just fear. I let fear win too often, I give into negativity and negative thinking and language too much and it affects my quality of life. I am sorry that I did not go because I wanted to, I just was scared to go by myself and instead just checked out of the option of stepping up.

Thanks to my boss for the offer and I hope she doesn’t think less of me for not going when I said I would. I do hate to disappoint. But I have to let it go and chalk it up to yet another experience of learning.

Sister Spit, fuck yeah

May 1st, 2012 | Liz Gold

Sometimes you make a spontaneous decision and it turns out alright. For instance, I decided to go to the final night of Sister Spit, which happened to be in Brooklyn, downtown Brooklyn at that, at a raw performance space called The Issue Project Room at 110 Livingston. So. I met a friend there, we were early so we got tea. Then we went in and man oh man, tons of queer eye candy with the best and worst hair you have ever seen. I immediately see someone that could probably be my doppledanger if I were about 15 pounds less and had more ink, but she’s wearing some sort of zoo patterned Hawaiian shirt that is rolled at the sleeves. It turns out it’s Cassie J. Sneider who later ended up reading this fucking hilarious account that included growing up in Lake Ronkonkowa Long Island and a radio antenna and zoo animals and family. Fucking brilliant. She gave me a postcard of herself in lingerie eating mayonnaise.

There were a lot of other artists performing who were fantastical too, like Brontez Purnell who talked about shit (yes the shit that comes out of your ass) in this fucking utterly disgusting and dirty way and who just didn’t give a shit (ha). Loved him though dirty. Wow. Eileen Myles stopped by and read, Boston accent ever so present. But before her girlfriend Leopoldine Core read a dark piece that I couldn’t really follow and then Justin Vivian Bond came up and read from her book and talked about ADD and Adderol and having a lover at 11. The whole thing was just inspiring and brilliant and oh yeah I can’t forget Erin Markey and her huge mouth and doll with cut out genitals – she could be a Valley Girl you know a bitchy girl from high school who dates the captain of the football team by the way she looks but she’s not (well fuck maybe she is) but she’s queer and fabulous and had such a good voice! And Kit Yan. Fuck couldn’t even keep up with his hot and sexy and hot and sexy fucking account of being with a man for the first time wearing some sort of western shirt that had tractors and other heavy machinery …… so yeah. Then the four of us (my friends not the performers just want to be clear) went to some French place on Court street and had some food, had some talk and went home. YES.

Resistance and more resistance

April 30th, 2012 | Liz Gold

Well hello there.
It’s funny. The moment I get the page set up to write a post I think of three things I need to do and lift my ass from the chair to go do it: make the bed, plug the phone in, take a shower. Meanwhile I have been sitting here for hours, answering emails, listening to an online radio show, reading horoscopes. Interesting, yes. Productive? Not really.
My only job right now is to write in this blog everyday. To just write something. Anything. About the rampant cockroach issue in my apartment (it’s gross and makes me want to move into a crisp, white, condo somewhere where everything is very new). I realize this is my job and I can’t seem to make myself do it. I guess I am needing to build some healthy habits around writing and just letting my fingers go to work. I just have to sit and let the muse (hopefully, gratefully) light my way as Steven Pressfield (sort of) says (I paraphrased).

I am so challenged right now to just let go and write even though I don’t even know what I am writing anymore. People write in their blogs everyday, run online publications without a bat of an eye. Have tumblrs with multiple notes and reposts and whathaveyou and me, I have a hard time writing a cohesive post. I guess maybe this all starts with a change of attitude.
This is for me. For more productivity. For my fulfillment. For my passion.
And since I am going into a birthday year, it’s probably high time I make a priority.
Who knows what will come out?
Everyday.
I have a date with myself.