Red is the color of the coat of the girl I met yesterday on the train. She, Wendy, I later learned, was in the seat in front of me, and neither of us had given a thought to the other’s existence until the train decided to stop.

And start.

And stop.

And start.

And go back to where we’d come from and stop again.

The experience of being thirty minutes behind in our lives brought Wendy and me together in conversation. Wendy had beautiful long hair and nail-straight posture, and then she told me she was in high school. Here I was imagining I’d met a new friend and wondering what startup she must work at, and the girl hasn’t even decided on colleges yet.

But that’s not the thing. The thing was that I’m pretty sure Wendy was about ten times more mature than I. While I worried about the next lull in the conversation (as I do) and wondering if I should turn back to my book, (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), Wendy continued eye contact and nodded and listened and spoke with such elegance and kind humor about the earthquake drills at her high school and her older sister’s days at CalTech and, as I was leaving, wishing me good luck on the book I’m supposed to write.

Red was the color of the sauce that was mixed with our chicken and potatoes at lunch. We cater on Friday’s, and today is Friday. Therefore the transitive property. During lunch I sat next to our new COO and across from Jenny (who was wearing a red sweatshirt) and we talked about the silliness of Twilight and whether or not we should kill the mouse that’s invaded the office.

But the entire time, in the BACK parts of my mind, were questions about the boy and his unusual silence and why he hadn’t responded to my last chat. And I had that nauseous feeling, which made the rice extra satiating.

And later, between the red sauce and the red nails, I learned and decided and remembered that there was nothing to worry about with the boy after all. But it’s always a bit irritating to the self that I can’t remember to remember to begin with.

Next time though. Next time maybe I can just remember to think about the beauty of all things red.

JEANNE sits by herself at a 4-person table. Her bag and papers cover her entire area. Like, not just a little; they’re everywhere.  The rest of the coffee shop is completely crowded and full. ADAM enters with a coffee in his hand, computer bag around his other arm. He looks around, but there are literally no other seats available. He walks up to Jeanne.

ADAM

Hey, sorry to bother you. But can I, uh?

ADAM gestures towards the table. JEANNE removes an earbud and looks up at ADAM.

JEANNE

I’m not a registered voter, and I’ve already given to Planned Parenthood, the Salvation Army, Gay Rights, Women’s Rights, Immigrant Rights, Occupy Rights, Little People Protests, and the Children’s Fitness Club.

ADAM

No, sorry, I just wanted to…

ADAM gestures towards the table again.

JEANNE

I have a boyfriend.

She puts her earbud back in and turns back to her work.

ADAM looks around the coffee shop. There are still no seats! He doesn’t notice AGGRESSIVE OLD LADY at the table next to JEANNE eyeing him. ADAM taps JEANNE on the shoulder.

JEANNE removes the earbud again. Clearly frustrated this time.

JEANNE

I have a boyfriend.

AGGRESSIVE OLD LADY stands up at his table. She looks about 99 and is breathing like any moment may be her last. She’s small and frail with white hair, but her voice is surprisingly loud and sharp.

AGGRESSIVE OLD LADY

She said she doesn’t want to hear from you, pal. What’s your problem?

ADAM loses his posture. He slinks past AGGRESSIVE OLD LADY and almost leaves, but pauses near the door. He turns around and marches back up to AGGRESSIVE OLD LADY. He points his finger in her face.

ADAM

You know what? I’m tired of all this feminist we-stick-together man-hater bullshit. I don’t care if you are about to croak, or if she does give to every charity on the planet. How hard is it to move your stuff so a guy can have a seat huh?

ADAM looks around; he now seems to be speaking to the whole coffee shop.

I don’t care if you’re nine or 99 – a bully is a bully. And this is a public institution, in a land of freedom! I’m trying to write a novel to define our generation, and one of my peers won’t even allow me a seat! Is this what we’ve come to? At the hands of our greedy ancestors?

ADAM gestures towards AGGRESSIVE OLD LADY.

I won’t stand for it! I won’t!

ADAM walks, stone-faced, back to JEANNE’s table. He swipes his arms across the table, knocking all of her papers to the ground.

ADAM

That’s what I think of you, and your self-congratulatory, cliche self-centered hipster, I-give-to-charities-but-won’t-even-give-a-stranger-a-seat, I have a boyfriend attitude.

A deep voice comes from OS.

BAXTER

If you have something to say to my girlfriend, maybe you should say it to me.

ADAM turns around, finger pointed, ready to argue more, and then stops short. Mouth still agape, he slowly lowers his gaze – one foot, two feet, three…

BAXTER is in a wheelchair. Dude has no legs. Other than that, he actually looks pretty buff. He even has a crew cut.

ADAM

I. Uh. Oh.

BAXTER wheels around ADAM to the large empty spot at the table. The coffee shop employees are picking up the papers and putting the back on the table. ADAM shakes his head, shrugs and sits down at a recently vacated seat.

END SCENE

Meh. Not my best work. But considering I woke up 18 hours ago, after about 3 hours of sleep…I’ll give it an easy go.

Sometimes mediocre creativity is actually easier than commentary.

But in spite of all that…we’ve got a plot.

Er. At least a very long gchat conversation in which a plot is described.

Today I’m going to remember what mine is.

What is it – almost halfway through year 24 and HOW many of those tasks for this age have I finished?

1) Run a half marathon and do not die in process. – check

4) Get in control of hair. – meh. maybe…

11) Participate in Nanowrimo. Seriously this year. Seriously. – uh oh

14) Visit best friend in South Korea. – BOUGHT THE TIX!!

18) Return all emails, personal and professional, within 48 hours.  – getting there…

20) Embrace my quirky side. I think she needs daily hugs. – getting much better

24) Work on keeping emotions in check. – doing better

25) Love more. – doing much better; but there’s always room for improvement.

The rest just…have NOT been done yet. Oy.

It’s not ALL bad. There’s only one goal that I can’t really complete. Since uh. It’s almost the end of November, and ugh I did NOT do NaNoWriMo.

As more motivation, I’m guest blogging on Talk Nerdy to Me Lover as the girl who’s trying to achieve too much. We gotta get to this shit. Track down my messes at achieving things. Especially that I now have goal #26 looming: write a screenplay. At least I have help on that one.

This weekend could really have been more productive, since I’m on vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. But there was a big turkey dinner and then hang gliding, and I may be reading a book series intended for teenagers (Why is it that all the interesting plotlines go to the 15 year old age group these days? What’s up with that?)

But tomorrow I’m going to work on the screenplay. So far we’ve got two main characters (I’ll call the Madeline and Henry in this blog). They’re being thrown together for an adventure of the cinematic sort. Except – here’s where we reach MeganFail – I am not-so-shabby at setting up cute, funny banter between Madeline and Henry, or putting them in a funny situation. But far be it from me to give them a plot. That’s where S.R. comes in. S.R. is quite the plotter, and he’s not such a bad writer either. And he also just so happens to know a think or two about the TV & film industry. I also happen to be slightly in love with him, so it all works out.)

By the time I go to sleep tomorrow night, Henry WILL have a purpose.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Anticipation serves only the purpose of helping us bridge the gap between the exact present and the moment we wish were the present. We think about what we will do and say, and what things will look like and how they’ll be. We replay important moments over and over.

Anticipation is like memories of the future.

Anticipation is scary too. What if it doesn’t turn out like I think? What if the beautiful imaginings are replaced by an unexpected hurdle? (And they almost always are). Anticipation sucks, because no matter how many of our own factors we’ve accounted for, it’s impossible to account for all of the factors of others. That’s where it always trips me up. I think – well it’s definitely going to happen this way; the exact path I’m moving would logically take me to this particular conclusion. But dozens, or maybe thousands or maybe millions of others are on their own paths. We bump, and the trajectories change.

When things turn out better than anticipation could have foreseen, it’s one of the most beautiful moments. We love those moments. Futures we never remembered beforehand.

When things turn out worse than anticipation, it’s hurt. It’s wishing we’d never imagined in the first place. Not thinking about it would have been better than imagining what could have been and what will never be.

Maybe we’re not supposed to anticipate after all. In the best case scenario, an even better future than we’ve imagined takes place. But even then, like I said before, we’ll only remember the reality. The hours wasted on not-as-good anticipation will be like time lost.

I’m going to try not to anticipate anything tonight.

You can just tell when someone cares about something. It’s in their voice; it’s in their actions and their manner.

Why is our culture beginning to praise apathy? It’s like, the less you care, the more badass you are. Wow, you must be a really supercool dude if you can manage that nonchalant face all day long and not get riled up for shit.

But do we really want a world full of people who just don’t care?

I do get it a little. Maybe it’s the result of too many bullies. They say that the best way to ward off a bully is to simply not react – pretend it doesn’t matter. So what if you threw my lunchbox in that big puddle? I’m gonna keep walking!

Whether or not that really works, I have no idea. It seems that a lunchbox in a puddle would be just as funny to a 3^rd grader either way.

But I digress.

Eventually little bullies turn into big bullies, and it’s pretty certain that the worst way to get rid of a big bully (read: corrupt politician, asshole boss, insurance companies that refuse to pay) is to ignore them. Saying “so what” to a big bully is a surefire way to encourage them to keep going.

King George III

So again – what the eff is so culturally relevant about not caring? Is it a nice differentiator from the people who care about the wrong things (read: bigots, the girl who cried about homeless kittens )?

Or is it that by numbing ourselves to the opinions of others, we can finally feel free to express who we truly are (queue hippie music) – you sport that sleeve tattoo/new haircut/copy of Twilight in your bag/love of sea turtles. But that’s kind of dumb too. If you have to convince yourself that you don’t care what other people think, then you’re actually probably embarrassed of yourself.

If some girl came up to you on the subway and started laughing and the fact that you, you know, had hair on the top of your head, you wouldn’t spend five minutes convincing yourself not to care. You’d be like “wow that girl is weird.” Which is caring! (And disagreeing, but STILL CARING!).

It has been decided. I cannot think of any logical reason not to care. To care about what you’re wearing or the girl next to you on the bus or how unfair it is that bad things happen to good people. I guess opening yourself up to caring opens you up to more hurt. But I think it opens us up to do a lot of good as well.

I was with two of my coworkers, staying out too late and having too much to drink, and a cab was called to take us to another bar. We were in a town called Mill Valley. It’s about 20 minutes north of they City and about 1000 miles away. Grass and trees and sidewalks on only one side of the road and only a single bar in town. Weirdness.

Our driver was an old Italian man named Bill. I think I asked ‘Bill what?’ ‘Water Bill, electric bill, cable bill,’ he said and we laughed.

Bill asked us if we liked opera. Sure?

So at midnight in Mill Valley, CA, I was in the back seat of a Scion, windows rolled down, on the back roads, going 60 miles per hour on back roads listening to:
Spente Le Stelle (yomanda Radio Edit)
Those are the moments when time stops. Parenthesis moments. They’re the ones that exist outside of time. I wasn’t just myself – I was a million people at once. Or a million experiences at once. I was at the highlight of something, and nothing else mattered.

I have to remember to for the moments that remind me  of the beauty of existence. I think they’re the ones that carry me through the rest of life.

And then there was Friday, when I saw California.

I know that sounds silly. I’ve lived here for almost a year. But I don’t think, now, that it’s possible to really understand California until you’ve been on Highway 1.

It’s the best scenery I’ve experienced since the day on the train heading to the south of France, almost four years ago.

Oh, and Ferrari’s were involved. Check out the website if you want to know more. Details are boring.

Let’s skip Saturday.

Because I’d rather think about Sunday

I can’t talk about Sunday. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But Sunday was the highlight of all of it.

Sunday brought so many of my stories full circle, and then it pushed them around again. It will be interesting to see where it all ends up.

So this is my city:

As is this:

And this:

And this:

I took these the other day at the farmer’s market at the Embarcadero. Now for the sappy part: I really feel like San Francisco is becoming my home. I’m not all the way there yet. It’s still an odd place. Super hard to get to the western parts of the City, and I still haven’t really ever been to the Marina. Or Cow Hollow. Or any of those northernly places. I should go just so I can have gone.

But the point is, I’m getting there.

1) Run a half marathon and do not die in process.

2) Go to Disneyland.

3) Cure sleepytime teeth grinding.

4) Get in control of hair.

5) Get in control of love of cheese.

6) Get in control of cat.

7) Learn some basic photography skills.

8 ) Learn some basic cooking skills.

9) Read Infinite Jest. Cover to cover and everything in between.

10) Finish ten short stories.

11) Participate in Nanowrimo. Seriously this year. Seriously.

12) Blog more than 1x/month.

13) Floss more. (I’m gross, I know).

14) Visit best friend in South Korea.

15) Start going to yoga classes.

16) Worry less. (Now quite sure how I’ll measure this. I mean, I don’t exactly keep an excel spreadsheet of all of my worries…though…that would be a rather interesting personal project.)

17) Make an excel spreadsheet of all life worries so I can see how silly most of them are.

18) Return all emails, personal and professional, within 48 hours. (Dear Matthew Kerchmar, wherever you are in life, that email you sent me back in February asking about life and living in San Francisco, well you may be happy to know that even though I still haven’t responded, it’s been sitting in my priority inbox for the past four months. I just can’t allow myself to delete it, but I feel like the window for response time has now passed, so your email remains “marked as unread,” in inbox limbo forevermore…)

19) Go to more SF networking events. Gah…networking…blarrrrg.

(aside – isn’t this song just beautiful?

/aside)

20) Embrace my quirky side. I think she needs daily hugs.

21) Keep in better touch with my little brother. (Hey Bud!)

22) Make more silly faces. (Everyone likes silly faces.)

23) Walk San Francisco. Like…all of it. See all of it. And take pics too! (See goal 7)

24) Work on keeping emotions in check.

25) Love more.

So today, Sunday, I’m thinking about my birthday. It’s coming up. And just like last year I’m trying to think of all the things I should do to become a better human being and move forward in the world as the most amazing possible 24-year-old I can be. For the rest of you, it may be January 1, or Lent, or an acid trip or something, but for me, it’s something about the birthday that almost makes me feel justified in the kind of self questioning soul searching “who am I meant to beeeeeeee?” stuff that I actually do all year round.

Last year I was obsessed with getting to California. But this year, since there’s not some HUGE goal that’s over-shadowing everything else, I’m instead surrounded my a million tiny messes that I’d like to fix before June 15. Or at least get on the way to fixing, or figure out, or something.

Maybe part of my problem is that I spend too much time thinking about myself to begin with. But at the same time, while I occupy my own head quite well, I’m much less adept at concerning myself with the detections of my physical self, and I think that gets me into trouble sometimes. A goal to be more sensing? After all this time I spend secretly gloating on my intuitive nature?? But maybe it would help me spill less coffee and say less awkward things (or fewer awkward things? or both??).

A list would be a bit self-indulgent for a public blog (not that this blog isn’t TOTALLY self-indulgent already), but instead I’d like to know – reader friend person (I SEE you on google analytics!!), how in the heck do you prioritize self-improvement?