an inspired morning

with growing intensity, i've felt a little off. it's nothing serious. life is grand. it's just that i'm a writer and lately? i can't write.

not to be overly dramatic * clears throat * but not being able to write feels about the same as being a fish stuck in a bowl with only a half inch of water in it.

yesterday i had a discussion with a friend about inspiration. "when i can't write," he told me, "i think of Ed Sitting on My Shoulder."

whoa, hold it right there. i said. who's Ed Sitting on Your Shoulder? 

instantly bashful, my friend he'd prefer to explain himself when we were both drinking, but that when he wrote, he knew Ed sat on his shoulder. turns out Ed (short for Editor), was only there to create havoc. Ed made him delete pages of good work. Ed was overly critical. Ed wouldn't let him try different ideas.

i love hearing how other writers deal with the ups and downs of writing.

especially since my own downswing has lasted for the past month (or three). i can blame it on work. in the club industry it would appear no one has a day off. ever. nor are there hours when it's inappropriate to get in touch with someone. hello 11:30 pm Wednesday phone calls. hello late Sunday afternoon texts about gentleman's parties. (on a side thought... how come strippers are strippers, but their customers are "gentleman?" it seems to me if you're a gentleman, you don't pay a woman to grind on your lap...she does it for free. badumpbump.)

ANYWAY the truth is, the no-writing problem isn't work. it's inspiration. or namely the fact that I have none. Ed has full on taken up residency on my writer's block. (yes. i went there.)

i currently have three works-in-progress. they've all been on idle for awhile. sure, i work on them. a little here and there almost every day, but it's been feeling exactly like that. work.

then this morning whilst putting on mascara, i thought: huh, it'd be interesting if... and boop!

i gasped.

i had it. no. it was better than that. i nailed it. inspiration not only struck (as it always always does, silly girl) it lightning bolted. in the next hour and a half i was more productive than i was in the last month and a half. i figured out the entire remaining plot of my favorite WIP. i don't know why it happened today. yes, i'd been devoting a little more time to simply thinking about my work, but why this morning did i have the watershed moment? why had Ed left?

i'm not going to question it. instead, on this Easter Sunday, Agnostic that I am, i'm giving thanks.

maybe my family is celebrating Easter a state's length away, but i'm giving thanks that they've been sending me pictures of eggs all day.

i'm giving thanks that my (for reals) gentleman might be working a double, but he promises chocolate treats later on. thanks that i got my favorite dryer at the busy laundromat that erroneously gives you 20 minutes for 35 cents instead of 8 (mwahahah). thanks that the only work related text i received today was from one of my fave employees wishing me a Happy Easter. (how freakin' cute is that?) and thanks that it smells like beautiful, rainy, fresh spring outside, i'm making fried rice for dinner and plan to eat a ton of it, that Game of Thrones Season 3 premiers tonight and most of all THANK YOU WHOMEVER WHATEVER YOU ARE BUT I'M STICKING WITH CALLING YOU INSPIRATION. my fishbowl fill-eth over. writing is fun again.

also, thanks to you for being you and for reading me. you are a good egg.

too tough cookie will crumble

a great reorganizing is happening in my apartment. whilst reshuffling, dusting, and tossing chipped glassware, i came across an assortment of fortune cookie fortunes. my heart sang. i've always had an affinity for fortunes. what's better than opening food and finding writing?

(no stop right there. for the purposes of this blog, the answer is nothing.)

i used to save old fortunes, until it became horderesque and i threw the collection away (most of them). my first novel idea grew out of a fortune cookie fortune. one christmas i even bought mean fortunes for family stocking stuffers.

i reserved this one for myself. it's funny!

 

i've always felt that fortunes truly relate to the person that cracks them open. i mean you could have picked any from the pile, but you chose that one. and seeing as i can read a fortune in just about anything, it should come as no surprise that when five little slips of paper fell from the top of my cupboard yesterday (told ya. horder) I knew they would be totally relevant to me right this second.

welcome change. check. discontent is the first necessity of progress. you don't have to tell me and by the way, welcome change. fortune has, in fact, been smiling on me helloooo knock me off my feet chef mate and new jobby. an aim in life yaaaawn blahblahblah. yes, yes, sing and rejoice and thank goodness. i already know my aim in life. ima writer.

these were all good and true, but it was like i was being told mayonnaise makes every food better or that i'll hear Beyonce's Love on Top no matter what night it is at the club (i wanted to reference Rack City, but that song is too dirty to hyperlink).

and then ooh there it was: The care and sensitivity you show towards others will return to you.

um. hi.

so i know i've mentioned this before, but my new job entails managing. know me is to know i'm a people person. so managing is all well and good until you encounter a problem where warm and sunny doesn't carry you through. the toughest call is not necessarily when to be tough, but how to go about enacting toughness.

the other night, i was no-nice-about-it tough with someone. it was late. they were being absurd. and tough tough felt right for the situation. i was a little conflicted about it later, tho honestly? telling someone what i thought and what they could do about it and there's the door? it felt great.

the very next day, in my real non-manager life, i went to a friend with good news, caught her on a bad day, and was treated to a similar dressing down. even prior to the fortune cookie, i felt like the care and sensitivity I showed someone else, came immediately back and bit me. so what's the moral?

be good to people. and when the situation calls for tough, be fair and thoughtful with it. maybe the snazzy comebacks make for a great scene in a movie (which, btw, no one is writing corrie), but they're not at all fun to experience when they come back around.

and now, back to singing and rejoicing...

existing in suck-dom

failure.

we all try to avoid it, no? i mean, what's worse? other than a both ends stomach flu, broken hearts, and i dunno, audits.

this past week? i failed big time.

i did this event at the club. it was supposed to be a joint effort until the person the effort was jointed with made a swift exit. suddenly, it was a corrie effort. now granted, i've rallied a neighborhood to revitalize, i've convinced a bunch of jaded servers to chip in for a restaurant owner's christmas gift (never again), but all that is nothing in comparison with organizing a NYC nightlife event.

and accordingly? i SUCKED.

the week leading up to the event was pure stress. would people come? had i bought that? called them? taken such and such into consideration? no, no and um, holy crap, i didn't even think of that, no! repeatedly, i was told it was okay to cancel the event as, clearly, it was going to tank. (it is an extreme gift of generosity that my club allowed me to proceed knowing this. i really am a lucky girl.)

and fail the event did. by club standards? hugely.

the one mollifying factor was that every person at the event (all four of them) had a terrific time. the room didn't look that bad, and i kept thinking, wow, i know we're losing gobs of money right now - because of me - but this is perhaps one of the coolest things i've ever seen. (helloooo all female drumming corp)

so what am i saying?

don't fail. don't try to make that contact. don't take that new class. don't apply for or accept that job you aren't quite qualified for. take my word for it, failure frickin' sucks.

stay safe. because before you get good at new tasks, usually you're awful at them first. so let someone else sweat it. let them lose the sleep and feel so stressed out they can't form proper sentences. let someone else have the stories and the experiences.

but then be prepared to let them have the successes that might come out of it. allow them the fierce pride that comes from knowing that they tried. and that because they did, their backbone is just a teeny bit stronger. that because they failed, they possess a bit more of a "why the hell not" attitude about that next unconquerable task. risk letting them, not you, see the coolest thing in the world. (helloooo your version of an all female drumming corp).

you know. no pressure. the choice is yours: fail or don't. life goes on either way. got that? either way. you're right back here tomorrow.

i dunno. let me know what you decide. most likely, i'll be over here in the: damn, girl, what were you thinking? camp.

that's amore

yes, i pilfered this pic from FB. and i'd do it again.

love.

i've been thinking about it a lot lately. (and by lately i mean the last five years.) i've seen people in it. out of it. out of it and looking for it again. looking for it period. in it for a long ass time and so maybe not in it anymore, but hanging onto the idea of it.

the whole thing kind of gets you thinking: love ain't anything.

that being said, this year, i have a real valentine (not that you don't count, Mama, but you know what i mean). naturally, i acted like a bear. you can chalk it up to a lot of things, lack of sleep, a stressful profession (make that two stressful professions. boy do i looooove being a writer.) my a.m. crankiness got me wondering why, almost instantly, do we treat the people we're so grateful to have so unkindly?

on a cold day a week back, and i mean so cold it made you want to yell at someone what the hell kind of cold, i stopped at the bank. in the ATM lobby a withered, smelled to high heaven, old as Jesus man hovered, shaking and zoned out. whilst on line inside the bank, a woman announced, "excuse me, did you know there is a... and i can't remember what word she used derelict? homeless? actually i think it was "gentleman"... there is a gentleman loitering in the ATM lobby. the only reason i'm in line right now is because i didn't feel comfortable using the ATM with him in there."

painfully embarrassed, we all ignored the woman. consider that every person in line had averted their gaze from the old man on their way in - this man that was near collapse. but frickin' telling on him? that was just unconscionable. one guy mumbled what we all were thinking: "lady, it's cold outside."

but irrationally scared yuppie mom had spoken.

on my way out, a teller was urging the old man to move on whilst another bank patron yelled at him that he'd better get out of there 'cause the po-po were coming. (um. where do i live again?).  the old man shook and mumbled. my boo and i ran.

maybe love ain't nothing.

surely, it's the fit of you and another person. it's the snuggling. the long looks. that bursting feeling. the angst. but, hopefully, love extends outside our own little nest to not busting a homeless dude for trying to stay warm. hopefully, love is bringing your coworkers snacks, showing up for a friend's event when no other friend does (thanks Ellen dear), hugging someone tight that you've only met for the second time.

trust me. brown bear that i am, i know it's hard being good to the people that we love the best, let alone to perfect strangers. but we gotta reserve a little love for others, too. when you think about it, our supply is as unlimited as we want it to be. so why be stingy with it?

after all, maybe love ain't nothing. maybe it's everything.

and we all deserve a piece.

and yes, i also pilfered this pic from FB.
to read this adorable dog's story, visit
the Big Fluffy Dog Rescue page

adios con amor

this is me.

 

i'm having a momentous moment. can't you tell?

the new restaurant where i worked is currently blowing up the NYC food scene. that's right. worked. last week, i quit. it wasn't the place. all the people in it were amazing. fun. supportive. vivacious. the work was insanely stressful. the food was ridiculously delicious. the person making it even more so. (ooh la la.) in the few months i'd been there, i made fast friends, felt comfortable and at home.

good by end of night deliciousness in a bowl.

but I'M DONE! no more scripty special telling. no more fetching people things. i fully committed to the club and they to me, which means last night i had a very serious conversation about the appropriate shoe choice for someone dancing on the bar. i couldn't ask for a better fit.

still, the other night, i saw one of my coworkers from my previous restaurant at the grocery store and after we gave our umpteenth hug goodbye with promises to get together next week, a huge wave of nostalgia slammed into me. i had moved on, but it felt almost like the opposite. everything about that old life had become stale, from the same walk to work, to the same conversations i kept having with the guys in the kitchen. but i'd loved that sameness for 5 years. and now it was over. having left my newest restaurant, it really really is over.

i texted a friend about it and her response was, "well, it's all just a flash in the pan, isn't it?"

touche. life. it's here. until it isn't.

in a testament to how terrific the people were at my last gig, the Chef de Cuisine, made me an omakase for my last meal.

omakase translates in Japanese to "i'll leave it to you"(sez wikipedia). when up to my CDC, he chose to feed me the entire sushi menu, along with some kind of scallop, rice, and spicy mayo broiled in a half scallop shell ridiculousness.

 

this is sea urchin. and after a hate hate relationship,
i've decided okay, yes, it is delicious, kind of.

sadly, i don't have a picture of the scallop shell concoction. but i do have this photo from the evening. it was taken by the TimeOut NY photographer.

someone please tell me to stand up straight more often.

she knew she was capturing images of a hot new restaurant, but she didn't know she was capturing a photo that on the very small scale of my life was even more momentous.

goodbye Chez. goodbye that Corrie.

hellooooo dancing on bars.

yes!

depicting self

so this post has been haunting me for the past few weeks. i've written different intros. they fizzled out. i became absorbed in club stuff. i wrote another intro. i took a nap. the post went un-posted.

even now, i'm struggling to find the words and thread of these thoughts, but i'm pushing through, because a. i actually have a few hours of free time today. and b. the this post i'm talking about (you know, this one) is all about self.

this past week, my uber-extraordinaire agent asked me to write up a few blurbs about my works in progress. while both mysteries of sorts, on the surface, the manuscripts are night and day books. teen high school drama vs. period piece bizarreness. but when i thought about the main characters, it was obvious i'd written about two people who were very much trying to figure themselves out.

and when i thought about that, i realized all the books i've written to date have had that same theme.

now, i'm not trying to get all deep. every novel is about characters trying to sort out their shite. still, why was i obsessed with it? the common thought is write about what you know. and even though i don't at all endorse that saying (seriously), clearly girlfriend is infatuated with introspection.

so i did what anyone would do upon having these (not at all) deep thoughts. i Google imaged myself.

*disclaimer: truth be told, i Google imaged myself at least a week in advance of the WIP excercise to make sure there weren't any boogery images of me out there, but for the purpose of this blog post, first i had the deep thoughts, then i did the funny search.*

now, i know we've all Googled ourselves. but have you ever Google imaged yourself? i found a world of Corrie Wachob that i never knew existed.

i mean, i knew this was me:

hiiiii bangs.

and i know some blondies are hard to tell apart, but um, last time i checked, this wasn't me:

and yes please, but for real? not in a million years:

while i was scrolling, i kept thinking, what if this isn't random, but it's a cosmic, techie, fortune telling, horoscopy kind of thing that is depicting the true me. while the mega amount of hair model images is a debatable equation (i mean, Dear Google i haven't washed my hair in a week and these knots ain't going nowhere), the fact that i love dancing in big groups in sweaty gyms is not a debatable equation.

and i do tend to do crazy, spontaneous...tumbling routines?

okay, maybe not so much. but scrolling through, i kept making happy gasping noises. smattered amidst the tiny head shots of smiley people who i don't know at all and mean nothing to me:

were images of people that mean the world to me. my sis has an amazing web presence. but to my knowledge, we aren't linked through it. so it's like Google just knows that any image representation of Corrie Wachob isn't complete without some representation of her family.

you all know my sis is an
amazing artist, si?

likewise, inserted between all the Etsy-esque drawings of birds, Google placed pics of a big sum of the sum of my parts -- photos of sum of the terrific friends that i've been blessed with along the way.

senor jared.

senorita ellen

senorina amy

and how google attached me to my wonderful
friend anna, i have no idea. this is a super old
photo of her, right around when we first met. weird.

so the point in all this? exactly. now you see why the blog post kept going un posted.

but as my life has done a wonderful, whirlwind 180 in the span of a few short weeks, you can't help thinking about what that all means, and what you all mean, and you can't help feeling so frickin' lucky. to the point that you see all those random tiny headshots of smiling asian ladies under your name and you think, they must be there because life is so awesome.

and by you i mean me. but according to Google images, you are me. especially if you're this guy:

corrie wachob, she's a cheetah.
oh god, phonetically it sounds like, cheat-ah.
not true! okay, that one time...no, what?
i mean, corrie wachob, she's fast.
pfft. forget the cat analogies.
this is why i like dogs.

and that's a wrap.

doing without

there's no nice way to say it.

blogger is being a dick.

it won't let me post pictures. so imagine my annoyance when yesterday i decided to crack open the fortune cookie that's been sitting on my kitchen counter for over a week convinced that it was my perfect fortune for right that second and the cookie said: One door closes and another opens, and I laughed out loud because it was so perfectly true and i thought, i'll post a picture of the fortune on my blog with a quirky one sentence line referencing Reading Rainbow and once again...BLOGGER WOULDN'T LET ME.

like i said, dick.

(okay. agreed. the language isn't at all appropriate for a YA market, but come on, 50 percent of us have them, and another 15 percent of us is (are?) one, so censors - tranquilo).

being the emotionally mature woman that i am, i know that every bump in the road is a personal affront against me, so naturally, last night my mind wandered to all the reasons blogger wouldn't post my pictures: maybe even blogger has something against my $45 a month cheapy smart phone and it was giving me a lesson in you get what you pay for. (when does bigger is better not apply? when it's talking about pixels) or maybe blogger is holding a grudge because i chose to keep the tacky wallpaper background for my blog and never upgraded to, i dunno, post-modern white.

but onward! like cream in coffee, who needs pictures on a blog? (um.... wait, i'm also out of cream?!) it works just as well without.

and now, my week in (non-pictorial) review.

maybe it's not a good thing to tell your hairdresser, screw it. let's use bleach on those roots and really lighten them up!! on the other hand, i always did want to have cartoon character yellow hair:

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yum yum...what's that you're eating? why it's an ice cream cone of sushi:

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guess where i might be going this weekend? one word, weeeeeeee:

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okay. fine. blogging doesn't work as well without pictures. not at all. just as my cup of coffee right now is really, very disgusting without cream. but that doesn't change the fact that my fortune cookie was true. when one door closes, as is my case these past few weeks, about a THOUSAND open. and life becomes so wonderful, you don't even give a darn when web platforms that are supposed to be simplifying your life and making you accessible to the world, decide instead to act like a dickhead.

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yup. that's how she ended that one.