I was reading a book the other night on finding inner peace. One of the things it suggested is that I identify the moments in my day that make me happy.

I put the book aside and tried to think of any little things that make me happy, but my pink flannel sheets were so warm and my bed was so comfy that I fell asleep.

The next morning while I was doing that lean over and breathe deeply through your nose thing that brewing coffee requires, I was trying to think of things that make me happy and my cat came in and threw himself against my legs in his excitement to see me. So I picked him up and had a cuddle and got purred at and forgot to go back to thinking of things that make me happy.

When I sat down at the computer I was going to actually physically write down a list of things that make me happy, maybe put it up on my refrigerator or something so I can look at it when I need to. But then I had an idea for a new character in my book, so I wrote three chapters and then hugged myself and then made some hot chocolate. With whipped cream. And a little cocoa powder sprinkled on top because they do stuff like that on the Food Network and it looks cool. And I’m at least as cool as the Food Network, puh-lease. But somewhere during that little party I forgot about the list again.

And then I had an awesome salad for lunch with the best sweet peppers on it I think I’ve ever had. Sweet peppers on salad are what God eats for lunch, by the way.

Right after lunch I got a call from a girlfriend I hadn’t talked to in ages, and by the time we hung up, my sides hurt from laughing. I should have asked her to help me with my list, but I forgot.

So then evening rolled around and I was going to make that list once and for all, but I snuggled up under my big fleecy throw – man I love that thing – on the couch for some laugh-out-loud TV (my current addictions are Big Bang Theory and An Idiot Abroad), and a glass of wine. Then I started nodding off and I had to go to bed so once again… no list of happy moments.

Man, this is so hard…

It was late, dark and cold. I stopped in the nearly deserted restaurant for a cup of coffee and a few moments of downtime. They were sitting at a table across the room, the only other people in the place. They were well into their 60s and had that muted, static feeling of complacency about them, the one that hovers between familiarity and boredom.

She was eating a hamburger and a salad, he was eating a bowl of chili. I could not take my eyes from them. Their movements were mechanical, transferring sustenance from their plates to their bodies, but their eyes never met. Their silence was not companionable, the comfortable kind. Nor was it an awkward silence, where you try to think of something clever to say to get the conversation rolling. This was the stoic silence of endurance, of a couple who knows one another so well that they blend together and never really see each other again. They weren’t giving off feelings of anger. They hadn’t been fighting. What I was picking up were feelings of loneliness. I could sense the heavy, damp feeling of loneliness emanating from both of them, but particularly from her.  Feeling alone when you’re with someone else is so much worse than feeling alone when you’re alone.

I was mesmerized. I moved my hand slightly so that he was blocked from my view. Watching her then, she looked just as though she were alone. I shifted my hand and he was alone. I suppose it may have said something about their interpersonal skills that they also took no notice of me, the only other person in the restaurant, playing some weird game of peek-a-boo with them from across the room. How could they never even look at each other?

They finished their meal, got up and left, walking in single file, still not looking at each other.

They never once said a word.

I’m visiting relatives for the holiday and beneath my cozy perch in a top corner of the house, I can hear the day churning to life. I’m up and writing for awhile before I go down to face the world, and get coffee. And have some coffee. And also… coffee.

In the same tradition that says writers never retire, they also never take a holiday from writing. At least not for very long. I just rewrote the entire beginning of my new book, The Do-Over. While I didn’t feel I could change my protagonist’s background, or any part of the basis of who she is, I did change her goals, the path of her life, and I added in a new friend who is already holding her hand, cheering her on, and kicking her butt when she needs it, like a good friend should.

Interesting. Those are also my New Year’s resolutions.

More later. Right now… coffee.

I haven’t written in awhile.

I’ve written stories for the paper, yes, but I haven’t written here in awhile. My creative writing has fallen by the wayside. I wondered why, but I have a list of excuses ready for anytime I need to pardon myself for slacking off: I’m so busy, I’m tired, there’s a new Warehouse 13 on, it’s a full moon, I have a headache, (insert relevant person’s name here) is driving me crazy, I need to do laundry, I keep thinking it’s Tuesday, I can’t find my glasses, we’re out of coffee.

Several days ago, I realized what the problem really is.

Writing used to be where I’d go to hide out for awhile. My writing was not another thing on my to-do list that needed to be dealt with and crossed off. Writing was a reward, not a chore. And somewhere along the line, the Internet burst onto the scene and one day I looked up from my writing and saw all these other writers crowded around me, each with their own blog, their own website, promoting themselves on Facebook, Mommy blogging,  travel blogging, food blogging, self publishing, plastering news of their book deal everywhere, Tweeting like the season for it is about to run out, clamoring to be heard, searching for their creative identity.

And suddenly, I was expected to jump into a box too. I was no longer a writer, one who writes for the sheer joy of the written language. I used to sit down with a notebook and a pencil and be surprised at what I ended up with. Some days it was a poem, some days a short story, other days it was the first couple of chapters of a new book, once when I was in high school it was a two-act play, a love story starring Neil Diamond and me. I’m a writer. I wrote.

But now that’s not enough. “I’m a writer,” is unfailingly met with “Oh? What do you write?” I’m expected to give a tidy answer like “fiction.” If I answer honestly that I write whatever the Muse nudges me toward, that sometimes it’s fiction and sometimes it’s non-fiction and other times it’s a screenplay and the other day it was a haiku about all the cat hair on my living room rug, they look at me with pity. Oh, isn’t that a shame. She doesn’t know what she wants to be. In order to be a writer these days, apparently I have to slap a label on my forehead while I’m working. I was so freaked out, so overwhelmed, that suddenly I couldn’t write at all. When did it become about the marketing, and not about the writing?

I was on the phone last night with Chuck Hughes, who is a chef from Montreal. He has a successful TV show on the Cooking Channel and recently participated in the Food Network’s “The Next Iron Chef.” Yet despite his success, he doesn’t wear the title of “Chef” like a diamond-studded name tag, as other TV chefs do. He calls himself a “cook.” While we were talking, I realized that for Chuck, it’s really just about the food.

“I am so tired of all these bloggers and people coming into my restaurant and taking pictures just so they can say they were at my restaurant,” he told me. “They don’t even eat my food! What the f*ck is that about?”

And just like that, the noise, the static, the competing, shouting voices of all the other writers around me fell silent as what he said, as the truth and the simplicity and the beauty of what he said, enveloped me. Despite his rising star, Chuck isn’t about the celebrity of it all. He’s still about the food. He isn’t buttonholed, he isn’t pushed into a corner, he isn’t labeled. One day he’s making sandwiches, the next he’s making kim chee, then you turn around and he’s making individual molten caramel cakes. (Note to Chuck: I need one of those. Stat.)

It’s the same with my writing. It has to be. If I try to put myself into a box, I’ll suffocate. I’m a writer. And wherever that takes me, every day, every moment, I have to follow it. Because I’m a writer. The relief I feel just typing those three words again, unencumbered by anything else, is making me laugh out loud.

I’m a writer!

I’ve decided I want to go to grad school.

Making that decision was the easy part. What’s been harder is admitting that I’ll be 45 when I graduate. I had planned to have my master’s by the time I was 25, and I was going to burst onto the journalism scene and dazzle the world faster than they could say “Who in Barbara Walter’s name is that?”

But you know how it goes. Life happened. Work, marriage, divorce, moving, I had to make the transition from cassettes to CDs, there were just a lot of demands on me. I kept thinking I’d get my master’s someday. Someday. That mythical place in the future that shows its face now and then, just long enough to tease me before it’s gone again, like Brigadoon.

But I cheated on journalism. I started a thing with public relations and it lasted for seven years. And while I don’t exactly regret it, by the time I realized it was journalism I really loved and came crawling back, journalism had changed the locks. I finally convinced it to let me back in, but there is much I don’t recognize anymore. So… back to school with me. Grad school is like marriage counseling for journalism and me. I want to find out how it has changed, and where I fit into the picture now.

So I’m back where I was in 1992, but now I’ll be 45 when I graduate. I’ll admit, that depressed me initially. I had visions of going to my first job interview after grad school and having them mistake me for Helen Thomas. I started putting pictures around of me when I was in my mid 20s, listening to the music I loved back then, trying to recapture that excited feeling of being a young journalist, full of promise and with the world spread out before me, limitless, inviting, exciting.

And then one day I realized… nothing has changed. Not really. Yes, it’s 18 years later than I thought it would be, but when I get that degree and go forward to stake out my place in my chosen field, I’ll still be full of promise, I’ll still have the world spread out before me. Everything limitless, inviting and exciting is still waiting for me. My age doesn’t matter to anyone as much as it matters to me. And at the age when most people are starting to feel burned out on their careers, I’ll just be starting to pick up speed. So while I started out thinking of my middle-agedness as a curse, I’ve come to realize it’s a blessing. I have more to offer the world than I did when I was 25. Or even 35. And my heart – my 42-year-old, world-wise, battle-scarred, stronger-than-ever heart – is happy.

Bring it on.

I’m fascinated by kids’ Halloween costumes these days. I have been watching them as they go trick-or-treating early at the downtown businesses, as they head to school for their class parties, and I’m rather struck by how many are just right out of the box mini replicas of some cartoon-movie dude (yeah, I’m looking at you, Buzz Lightyear).

Where’s the creativity in that?! I’m sure we were more creative when we were kids. I know I was. Check it out:

A paper sack! Pretty good, huh? I created that costume to represent poverty, futility, and masking our true selves behind blatant consumerism beyond our means which will ultimately lead to our national economic downfall. The diaper is just to make it look extra cool.

Ah, now this … this one I worked on for hours and hours. I called it ”A Study in Contrasts.” The pink pants, the yellow coat, the black shoes, the multi-colored mittens, the bright pom-pom, they all worked seamlessly together with the simple black eye mask to create a smoke-and-mirrors effect, causing the lingering question of “Who is Christy really?” in the minds of all who slipped candy into my bag.

I remember this one well. I called it “Vaudeville: A Retrospective.” It was my Silly Putty-based tribute to the great comic geniuses of all time, the simple hilarity of Jimmy Durante, Sid Caesar, Henny Youngman and, judging by those pants, Marcia Brady.

Oh yes, the movie monster classic. Rather than give in to the gender-biased Halloween expectations of the time, which would have dictated Cinderella or Snow White, I opted to show that deep inside, we are all monsters, struggling to be who we are and still be accepted by society’s mores that would sooner have us hide the parts of ourselves that don’t conform. The blue t-shirt sleeves sticking out are just to show that good fashion sense is important no matter what.

Oh yes, my gender-bending, Victor/Victoria years. Keep them guessing! Refuse to be labeled! Shiny silver pants and an eyeliner moustache will show the world that something something something! Yeah!

And finally… wow. I got nothing.

Happy Halloween everybody! Gimme that candy.

I found out today that someone I know from when we were kids has died, and I am grieving from a place I don’t recognize.

The usual sadness that follows losing someone has little bits of other things clinging to it and I’m trying to sort them out, knowing I need to, but not at all sure that I should.

There’s a bond, a very specific kind of bond, between us and people we grew up with. We morph into adulthood, we scatter, we often lose touch, but there’s an invisible thread connecting us. Shared roots, shared secrets, shared bad hair pictures and embarrassing Prom Night moments, who threw up on the floor in second grade, who almost drowned in the lake that one summer. Losing someone snaps that thread in their spot. You may not speak to your childhood friends for years and years, yet you still call them friends. You still think of them as friends. Work friends, gym friends, book group friends come and go. But childhood friends have that title cemented right to them. Like a flower in the frost, the bloom may be withered but the roots keep it alive.

I can’t say that I’m surprised at this death. Not really. He and I reconnected a couple of years ago. He was lost, reaching out after years of avoiding reaching in. He put his hand out and I took it, but I couldn’t hold on. Or maybe he couldn’t. As he drifted away again, I watched him go, feeling the invisible thread straining, praying it wouldn’t break. But with a snap so faint I didn’t even hear it, it broke.

I don’t understand this level of grief I’m feeling. I’m not just grieving his death, or the fact that he  gave up after promising me he wouldn’t. I’m grieving the end of all that he represented to me. Youth, teenaged puppy love, horsing around on the church bus, summer camp memories, letters written in ink and mailed with a stamp, meticulously cut-out school pictures. Losing a childhood friend is losing more than a friend, it’s losing a piece of your history, of your heart.

Goodbye, my friend. I hope you’ve found the peace that eluded you for so long. I’ll hold onto your end of the thread until we meet again.

My friend Bob said to me the other day, “It makes me mad that I can’t draw, because I think I can.”

He stopped me in my tracks, I’ll admit. Partly because Bob is 84. I would kind of think by now he’d have sorted out what he can do and what he can’t.

He told me when he was a child, his teacher had told the class to draw a flower. The children who drew a flower just as the teacher specified, exactly the way that in her mind a flower should look, got an A. Those who didn’t got a D. Bob got a D. His creativity stifled, he has spent the rest of his life thinking he can’t draw.

But somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knows he really can.

One of my favorite quotes is from Picasso: “Every child is born an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” I think of that every time I watch a young child at play. They talk to themselves, they sing, they stage entire scenes with their toys, they wear giant green sunglasses shaped like stars, they will happily explain to you that the purple scribble they drew is a horse on an airplane and just assume you’re not with it enough to figure it out. There is such beauty in how uninhibited we are before the world teaches us to be inhibited. Forget “Dance like no one is watching.” A far better expression would be “Dance like you’re two.”

I wonder how we let those self-doubts creep in. I wonder if we do it to ourselves, or if society does it to us in the form of a teacher who criticizes our flower so we never draw again and the next thing we know we’re 84 and telling the story to the blabbermouth writer next to us.

Bob is one of the lucky ones. His teacher may have squashed his creativity, but somewhere deep inside, he knows she was wrong. He thinks he can draw. I think he can too.

What could you do, if you didn’t think you couldn’t? Can you?

After almost 15 years of doing other things, some of which I’m proud of, I’ve come home to journalism.

This is where I started in 1989, right out of college, and it’s where I spent most of my working life. It’s good to be back. As my fingers were skidding over the keyboard today while my brain was going over possible sources I could call for the story I was working on, I would have gone so far as to say it was exhilirating to be back. I can’t remember why I ever left.

I keep hearing people say how much journalism has changed. I disagree. The vehicle of journalism has changed incredibly since I started in the business. The internet, digital pictures, hyperlinks and URLs, none of that existed, and the idea of a 24-hour news cycle would have driven me to drink. More.

But journalism itself hasn’t changed, because people haven’t changed. And I’m comforted and rattled by that fact in equal measure. All the changes in the world, all the advances, and what it all comes down to is that everyone wants to be heard, and also left alone. It’s the paradox that keeps on giving.

I edit letters to the editor where people clamor to make themselves heard about school taxes, political candidates, potholes in the road. We all want to be heard, we all want to feel like we have a voice. It’s the same force that drives us to overshare on Facebook and Twitter. Interestingly, this changing world that now gives us more of a voice is the same one that gives everyone else a voice, so we end up feeling like we’re jumping up and down on the back row of a crushing crowd, waving our arms above our heads and shouting ourselves hoarse.

Yet we go to our towns and request higher fences around our homes, bigger yards to separate us from our neighbors, hey don’t build those new homes there, I need my space! We want to be heard, we just don’t want to have to listen.

And I’m in a unique position as I sit here at my computer, listening to the shouts, the pleas, the conversations, the rants, the questions. I listen without making any comments, without expressing judgement or my opinion (who am I, FOX?) but smiling quietly to myself as I realize that the things that separate us are the very things that make us the same.

Yes, it’s good to be back.

I will be honest… I am really struggling with the makeunder. I even thought about just stopping the experiment and not saying anything in the hopes that everyone would just forget about it, but no sooner had I thought that than I got four, FOUR, e-mail over the course of an hour, all asking, “Hey, how come you haven’t written about the makeunder in awhile?” I never get away with anything around here.

It’s hard, this experiment. I have so much trouble not putting on any makeup at all before I go out. There are days when I put it on, go out, and halfway through my day I think, “Oh crap. I put makeup on.” It’s now become a habit. Think about that. Frightening.

I have begun to notice the cosmetics on other people. I study women’s eye makeup. I notice who is and who isn’t wearing nail polish. Oh, and apparently some men now get their nails done. Nice that we couldn’t keep our obsession with the world of pharmaceutical beauty to ourselves. I study lips for signs of collagen, I study eyes for signs of botox, I can tell who obsessively bleaches their teeth because of their faintly blue-tinged skim-milk smile. I’ve become the weird lady who looks at everyone just a bit too long.

I’ve also become more hyper-aware of commercials that urge me, almost to the point of demanding it, that I pack myself into slimming jeans, reverse the signs of aging, indulge myself in a new rich haircolor… have you seen the ads for the serum that grows eyelashes? I actually found myself thinking, “Wow, if I put that stuff on my lashes, I’d look better without makeup.” Seriously.

But getting back to the makeunder… 

In truth, I still prefer the way my eyes look with a little mascara and eyeshadow. I try to go without sometimes. When I’m at home I don’t wear any, and maybe half the time I go out, I don’t. It’s hard to get past that wanting to look good, wanting to be noticed, wanting the tacit approval of a peer group that probably doesn’t even really notice.

On the plus side, I have come to realize that my ever-expanding gray patch of hair is actually kind of sexy. I was at a party a couple of weeks ago, and the women were talking about getting their hair colored, and I finally said, “I decided to just go gray.” And one of them said, “Yeah, well, it looks GOOD on you. It wouldn’t look that good on me.” I’m flattered. I also disagree. I’m finding that my gray hair compliments my skin tone incredibly well. The other day I had no makeup on at all and Guy came home and said I was “glowing.” Someone at work asked me if I’d gotten a facial as my skin looked so good.

Maybe… just maybe… nature knows more than we give her credit for?