14 KARAT LIVING

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Here and there

October 20th, 2008 | Liz Gold

I’m here in Tuscon covering a meeting of the American Institute of CPAs … and I have to say, even though I’ve been up since 3:30AM yesterday, it ain’t half bad. There’s an ease to this trip that I haven’t had before, I’m not overzealously taking notes, not trying to quote everybody I talk with, just allowing myself to be here. I should go to bed, even though it’s 9:52PM, 12:50 EST, but I’m not tired. I came from a cocktail reception, where I was talking to the CEO, some random council members, and the incoming chair …

We’re out in the middle of the desert. Not much happening. A resort, pretty, cacti all around, I have a lovely room with a balcony. So what that it overlooks a parking lot. I don’t have to walk a mile to the conference rooms. The goal is to get up at 6AM and head to the gym. That will be my coffee for the day.

I dyed my hair black and I believe that has changed my attitude. It’s kind of pornographic now, my hair. With the bangs. I kind of want to do myself. (more so than usual) ha.

Tomorrow is a stacked day, then I’m back to NY Tuesday. These trips are always a whirlwind … Sage’s conference is in Denver in November, then shortly after I go to Maine for Thanksgiving. Guess, traveling is on the agenda.

I’ve been listening to the same songs over and over again. Pandora is responsible:

Take Me Out: Franz Ferdinand
Mr. Brightside: The Killers
Honesty: Kaskade
Ce Jeu: Yelle
New Soul: Yael Naim
Hang me up to Dry: Cold War Kids
Fly Robin Fly: Silver Convention
Body Language/Interpretation: Booka Shade
Let’s Groove: Earth, Wind & Fire

Getting back online

October 14th, 2008 | Liz Gold

My nutritionalist told me I should revamp my blog.

A little over a month ago, when I first started seeing her, she told me to write down goals I wanted to accomplish over the six month program. She said it could be nonfood related. So I did. One of those goals was to revamp my blog and get it to be where I wanted it to be.

Since I listen to pretty much everything my nutritionalist, let’s call her C., says, except for eating 87 percent cacao organic chocolate bars (shit tastes like crunching aspirin), here I am, in an attempt to accomplish yet another goal.

I’ve been missing in action on purpose. I needed some privacy while I figured some shit out. I was frustrated with the blogging program (still am) … bored with my writing. Tearing my hair out in confusion and hurt from personal relationships. Lonely. Looking for love (ah, well, maybe just romantic attention, in all the wrong places). Creatively stunted. It was time to get to the root. I woke up one day and realized I’m here in NYC living a dream, but not living my dream. What was I going to do about it?

Food and body stuff is big for me. I’ve been working out for almost two years, five times a week. Hard, high intensity workouts. And while you can see muscle on my body, I am sick of looking at jiggle on my thighs and the extra junk in my trunk. Aside from that, I was ready to take on more physical activity. I would be charged up just as my group fitness classes were coming to a close. I needed to upp the ante. However, you can exercise until you wear the rubber sole of your sneakers off, but if you’re stuffing your face all day, getting White Castle as a 2AM snack after a drinking binge, you might want to deal with that. As my spin instructor Derek says, just because you work out hard doesn’t mean you can just eat whatever you want.

Damn. The truth fucking hurts.

So I started Googling nutritionalists. I’ve got some spare time at work, while in the cube, face direct into a computer screen. I’m not going anywhere except the bathroom and the break room. I had a friend once, S., who was going to help me with this. But apparently I needed an objective opinion. While a roommate’s watchful eye would probably discourage me from rummaging through the cabinets for something salty or sweet depending on what craving was turned on, ultimately, it seems I didn’t want that. Discipline and will power had to come from me on my own terms. In other words, I didn’t want to be monitored.

I found C., who is actually a holistic health practitioner, and went for a consultation. I told her I wanted to lose weight (that is hard for me to admit, folks, because for the most part I am fine with my body) and that I had digestive issues that I needed to work out (running to the bathroom right after lunch every day was concerning me). She listened, made some initial suggestions and then I handed her my tax return money. I could wait on buying a new computer.

But, ha, signing up with a nutritionalist is for real. You’re looking at your shit. I told her how much coffee I drank (two cups in the morning, one in the afternoon, if I wasn’t drinking a Diet Coke to stay awake) and she told me I had a caffeine addiction.

What? Who me? No!

I told her how much alcohol I drank: 10 to 12 drinks a week (which is probably high, but not out of the ballpark) and how I could hardly hold 1.5 beers before having to spend half a night in the bathroom. I told her what I was eating for breakfast and she told me I needed to eat more to get me through my workouts. She told me to eat more greens and gave me a binder full of recipes to try.

So I switched to green tea, which now, today, I don’t even drink. I kicked caffeine. I don’t drink Diet Coke. As Suzy, a kick ass veteran waitress at Sapporo in Portland used to say, “women don’t realize that shit will make you fat.” I started eating yogurt parfaits for breakfast, a bowl of whole fat yogurt, berries and Ezekiel granola. And surprise, my workouts improved. And yes, I stopped drinking beer.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t escape a voice that told me to start running.

I’m like, what?

All I can think of is hellish high school days trudging around the gymnasium trying to run a mile. Pathetic is the word I would use to describe it. But I’ve sworn to myself that I would follow my intuition. I tell C. about this in my first session and she tells me I’ve got to be careful. You need the right shoes, you need to have good form, you have to be trained.

I’m like, to run? Geez.

I’m walking back to Sunset Park from her home office in Prospect Heights, go down this random street and look up. Jack Rabbit Sports is offering a Beginning Running Class.

Well, then. Imagine that.

It started mid-September. The goal is to run Prospect Park which is 3.4 miles. We’ve run three so far. It’s amazing. Twice a week. Above and beyond my workouts, which I have changed up, too. And, I walk to the park which is two miles each way from my house. As I told my London Darling, J-Wo, if this doesn’t make my thighs go away, I have no idea what will.

Of course to feed myself all the healthy and organic food I can eat, I joined Brooklyn’s largest Food Coop, which happens to be in Park Slope. I went through orientation, paid my $125 membership and investment fee. And I’ve already worked two shifts, which is mandatory for members. Every four weeks, every individual in a household has to do a 2.75 hour shift. I escort people to their cars or their apartments with their carts of groceries, so I can bring them back to the store. One day I covered a shift for someone and was trained to cashier. I had a blast working with a high school physics teacher who told me he had never had a $600 cart pass through his register in the four years he’s been a member. Just lucky I guess.

Since taking the emphasis off of trying to meet people to ease my loneliness and putting it on this foundational change I am building, I have felt so much better. I’ve been a lot more comfortable with my solitude. And suddenly, I am not alone anymore. I see a difference in the people I am meeting, I am more willing to share my time, I have more confidence, my clothes fit nicer, I generally have a more optimistic outlook and I feel like I am taking the necessary steps to continue on this transformation. I realized tonight, thanks to C., that the goals I have accomplished in the past month need to be acknowledged. That just because I want to see the results faster, and that I do get stressed and frustrated about life and whatever I think is lacking, they are happening. And I know, the long-lasting changes I want to make start here.

I stopped caffeine. Lowered the alcohol intake. Have been consuming way less sugar. And as the final frontier, I am not buying weed for a while. I realized I was spending $200 a month on marijuana. I would spend a morning off drinking ice coffee and smoking pot. Lots of pot. And I wonder why my world wasn’t expanding in the way I wanted. This, my friends, is my greatest challenge, as many of you know, how much I adore the grass. But I had an epiphany tonight. I ended two relationships that consumed my heart and mind upon moving here and a year into my life in NYC, I am free of those. I am getting rid of my dependencies on food and caffeine and drugs, and eating organic. It’s no wonder a shift is taking place and my writing is changing, as well as my desires. There’s nothing suppressing them anymore. It’s a scary and beautiful thing.

I am finally getting clear.

I realize this site needs to take a new turn. I’ve got a lot of personal stuff going on and I need to write about it. That’s what I do, I’m a writer. Except, I’ve always written for others. My current job almost turned me off from writing and journalism all together. But thanks to a handful of you, who have reached out to me, asking me what has happened to the blog, where I’ve been, and those of you who have reminded me of my goal of revamping this site, I am back. I want to write about the crazy interactions I have, the people I meet randomly, the intense loneliness I sometimes feel, my sexuality which is undefinable, and the crazy shit I am constantly reading about online. I just want to write whatever. Some of it may be raunchy. If it is, and you don’t like it, tell me. I probably won’t stop, but I need you.

Toshi Reagon rocks Lincoln Center

August 21st, 2008 | Liz Gold

At Damrosch Park Bandshell, outside Lincoln Center, funk and blues songwriter Toshi Reagon got together with her band the Big Lovely and her mom, Bernice Johnson Reagon, to belt out some tunes and share the love.

August 10th, 2008 | Liz Gold

Saturday night was like a secret snapshot into the love soul of JD Samson and Sia … Samson (the electronic leg of the now defunct feminist band, Le Tigre) was DJing at U.N.I.T.Y. a 90s dance party that rotates in Brooklyn with his cohort Lauren Flax … this time they were at Southpaw in Park Slope, and were playing those ripe old dance tunes that everybody knows and can’t help but belt out … strangely the scene on Saturday seemed to be a mostly hetero crowd (Park Slope lesbos sadly, did NOT rightfully represent)… still, that didn’t matter … Samson mixed it smooth and anything but straight, seamlessly gliding “Bust A Move” into the build-up of “Vogue.” Dancing around the stage, his fun-loving attitude was obvious. When he played, “C’mon N’ Ride the Train” and the crowd started to congo around the dance floor, he took out his phone (which he had been texting with) and started snapping away, obviously amused.
Perhaps he was texting pop singer Sia Furler, who showed up a tad later, in an extra large Vanilla Ice t-shirt rolled at the sleeves, covering extra short jean shorts … she stood at the side of the stage, dancing and smiling at Samson, who would serenade her, microphone in hand… she in turn, would sing back, and affectionately dance and wriggle up to him…Who knew the Counting Crows “Mr. Jones” or Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” could be a show of romance? Who knew just how adorably unpretentious Samson and Sia could be? THEY were the show. Unassuming and natural, genuinely an electric current of creative love and mutual respect. A vast majority of the audience had no idea, continued grinding and taking photos of themselves to Facebook the experience…
Ah, to be young and in love …

Hey Hey Hey wood!

July 31st, 2008 | Liz Gold

 

Crazy shit (or an update)

July 28th, 2008 | Liz Gold

So I’ve been busy. I recently had a realization that was instrumental to a turning point. It finally dawned on me that I want to be in NYC alone. Free. I knew this. Childhood visions. Yet I still allowed myself to get carried away in possibility, in love, in partnership. My spiritual intelligence is way smarter than I give it get credit for. I just ignored it because I wanted what I wanted and the other options were great.
In the meantime I’ve been healing and getting myself back to my state of juicy, circa 1998. except of course I’m not really back. You can never go back. It’s the feeling of self love. Of being okay with myself, as is, by myself. Doing cool shit. People come and go a lot in this life. They can have their opinions of me, but only one matters: mine.
Seriousness aside, I’ve been having fun, yo! I have finally come out of my townhouse cave to mix n mingle. And let me tell you, I’ve missed it. I’ve been digging the warmth that comes with openness. Smiles really do work.

What’s the message here?

July 28th, 2008 | Liz Gold