We Tell Ourselves Stories...It's All in the Tone

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” Joan Didion. Also, the magnificent author, in my opinion, of the book “The Year of Magical Thinking.”

It’s entertaining, a bit, to have been told so much to “stop thinking” and yet have one of my most favorite books have the word “thinking” right there in the title.

I don’t necessarily like to think; I’m just good at it. I was a philosophy minor because, like episodes of “Seinfeld” I have never seen, I could sit and talk for hours about absolutely nothing. 

Everyone is always saying:

Stop thinking.

Live in the now.

Trust your gut.

Do what’s right.

It will pass.

Usually, at this point, I tell you some story about something that happened recently or I recall from the past. Instead, I’ll tell you a story with only half-truths. Because, well, when you tell stories, who knows what’s actually true and what’s not, right? We’re all listeners hearing things with blind faith. We faithfully listen and just have to believe that the three mile walk to school in the snow was true, and then feel guilty when we whine about having to stand on the corner and wait for the bus. 

In June 2005, I sat down to start writing what I thought might be a short story, at best. Fitting my very-thinking personality, I called it “The Philosopher” and the first chapter I called “The Quest.” We tell ourselves stories in order to live, and also, I believe, to make sense of what it is, and how, exactly, we are already living. 

“The Philosopher” opened the blinds on the third floor and looked down at the busy streets below, crowded with children, dirty vehicles and an ever-present sense of urgency.

It was Monday morning.

Just hours earlier, Alma Gant sat alone in a room lit only by candlelight, hunched over at a desk staring at one, single blank sheet of yellow legal paper. Hours went by as the clock ticked precisely in the background, hinting at the truth of the very temporal beings humans are. Driven by that ticking clock, Alma raced to get a word, any word, on that page.

“Words, without words I am nothing. Or am I someone without a thing to say? Without words I have no expression. When you have no expression, you have no reason. No heart. My blank slate disgusts me. The empty page of paper; it may be nothing because it is not alive. Is it even yellow at all? I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t invent colors, but I can invent my words. I can put words on paper. I can, because I am.” 

Returning to the moment, alarms could be heard going off, car horns were honking and children pounded their feet to the pavement in search of education, something new and different from what was behind closed doors at home.

Alma got up, went back to that once dark and poorly lit room, and stared down at that lonely piece of paper. At a glance, there were the words written just hours ago. They would define a lifetime that had yet to be lived.

Tuesday would be different - if not for the different cars passing by - but for the new direction her life would take. 

My eighth grade Language Arts and Social Studies teacher would have us write daily, for at least an hour. She called mine “stream of consciousness” writing. Here I am, nearly twenty years later, and I still sit down and write whatever flows from my mind, through my arms, to my fingers, and to the keys... as these words appear before me. 

Remember, we tell ourselves stories. But, we also can write new ones, too. Looking back at that story I wrote in 2005, I imagined the character almost trapped in a library. But, it could be anything. One change of tone, and that entire story could be comedy. 


Remember that episode of the “Golden Girls” where Blanche has writer’s block? For as deep thinking and analytical as I am, this clip is always playing in the back of my head:

We Need Not Take Everything So Seriously (Part 1)

Maybe, if I just keep chasing them around in circles they’ll want to be my friend.

At least, that’s what I thought. 

I was in the third grade and I was new to my hometown and my school. I didn’t know anyone. Friends didn’t come by me easily because I didn’t talk to anyone. I was too shy and too afraid of what they would think if I did speak. 

When I moved to Southern California it was between my second and third grade year. I honestly didn’t believe that my friends, or the people I believed were my friends, didn’t live near me anymore. 

“Mommy, when are they going to take their masks off?” I asked my Mom about a year after the move. I was referring to my new friends who weren’t anything like the friends I had left behind, but I was certain they’d show their faces soon. Oh, the amazing imagination of a child! 

Then, I started to meet people. Popular people. Pretty people. Mostly, they reminded me of my old friends.

This is probably when the me that I am now first started to emerge. I remember going to some Scholastic book sale in the library and a girl didn’t have any money. I did. So, I let her go around the store and buy whatever she wanted. At the end of the little book outing, I spent $80.00 of my allowance money. I never got it paid back. 

That was my first lesson in realizing that your friends can’t be bought. I didn’t feel the joy in giving then. I felt let down. 

That same year, I remember trying to be friends with a girl that I thought was a lot like me. She was studious, and quiet, and seemed reserved, but friendly. I couldn’t figure her out, though. 

I called a family friend on the phone, who used to be my babysitter. She would call me, “Little Annie Petersen.” And, still calls me that to this day (makes being a 30-something feel like being a 3-year-old-something sometimes, but a fantastic thing none-the-less). 

“Listen, Annie,” she said. “You need not take everything so seriously.” 

To be continued... 

I Kind of Get the Whole Comedian Thing...

Here’s a pickle. I like to laugh, and I like it when I am enjoying a conversation with someone and we’re laughing. 

Yet, I spend so much time overanalyzing, as someone put it, the only way to laugh is to just not think. 

“Did you buy the wine,” said my friend, as we got back to our hotel room on my recent trip to Hawaii. 

“No, I thought you bought the wine.”

“Well, I can’t find it,” she said. Then I reached into my bag and pulled out the perfume I had bought for a friend, and myself, and some lotions, too. I smelled each one of them. Every time I smell perfume I immediately think of Natalie Wood, thanks to a story my Dad has told hundreds of times, and then a friend of mine who once wanted to make perfume for a living. My mind starts to wander and then...

“I bought the wine!” my friend shouts from somewhere deep into her bag, laughing. I walk over to her side of the room and sure enough, she’s holding the bottle of Pineapple wine. We just started laughing. It was the most mundane moment ever, but to us, it was completely hilarious.

I suppose this is a spin-off of that whole nothingness notion I wrote about last.

The point is, I understand why comedians are funny. The whole “walk a mile in my shoes” thing isn’t really what it’s about. It’s about leaping yourself out of the situation you’re in and looking at it as an outsider. 

I completely laugh aloud when I watch “Chelsea Lately.” I’ve seen her comedic routine twice in person, and have rolled over laughing. It’s the kind of comedy that I’d never let my children listen to (I don’t have children, but if I did), and the kind I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I do like. Yet, I just get it. Chelsea Handler makes perfect sense.

As I write this, I recognize that it’s not my place to be the funny one. You have No Shopping Liz and OhNoaG for that. I philosophize publicly. However, when you get to know me, we’ll be laughing. Perhaps, even, as my closest friends know, you’ll get to hear what they affectionately call (or so I believe), “Annie noises.” 

In fact, I went to San Diego in September and my best friend picked me up from the airport. I wasn’t in the car more than thirty seconds when she said, “yay, Annie noises!”

So, if you’re looking for the nugget to put on your bulletin board (Liz, this is for you), then the point is that you can’t laugh at anyone else, until you can laugh at yourself. Then, of course, you can laugh at anything. 

Point retracted. It’s not that everything is funny, it’s just that we own our reactions to everything. If it’s funny to us, we know why. If it’s hurting someone else, they know why. (But, we all don't know everything.) So, laugh with respect to those who may be humbly hurt. It’s a lesson I’m learning every day.... 

p.s. As I write this, I chat online on Facebook with an ex from 2003. He says, “lol. You’re funny.” I wasn’t even trying. 

Good news. 

My Wine Corks Tell A Story

I make most things in the kitchen.

On Thanksgiving, I made my first turkey.
What I would like to make is a creative project. For more than a year I have been saving wine corks. My boyfriend* and I enjoy going wine tasting and joined several wine clubs over the years.

Each cork has a memory, a story, or something else.

The project I want to undertake includes taking those corks and cutting them to frame a memory, a photograph, or two. Maybe I could make one for someone else, as a gift, and practice giving, that way. As a bonus, I could include a bottle of wine.

What is the last thing you made? Or better yet, what is the last thing you created?

Visit www.reverb10.com

This post is part of Reverb10, a project to reflect on the year before it ends.


*Ex-boyfriend as of December 12, 2010


UPDATED: DECEMBER 20, 2010

I'm Wearing My Astronaut Shoes

“Today, I’m wearing my astronaut shoes.”

When I was entering first grade, my Mom was a teacher at my elementary school. I attended Badger Mountain Elementary School in Richland, Washington. My Dad was a newspaper editor at The Tri-City Herald. 

I took the bus to school. It was Dad’s responsibility to make sure I got my shoes and socks on real tight before walking to the bus stop. 

He would show me how to tie the knot and ask, “What kind of shoes are you wearing today?”

“Daddy, these are princess shoes!”

Or, maybe, “These are my astronaut shoes.” 

My Dad instilled in me at the very beginning of my explorative years that even if something was in my imagination, I could attain it as a goal or as a career or even a hobby. 

Imagination turns into dreams and dreams turned into stories.

Years later, in middle school and high school, while living in Southern California, Dad would drive me to school. I would proceed to tell him my dreams, my literal dreams from the night before, and my interpretations of them. 

“Daddy, I dream in color,” I would say. “There’s a regular cast, you know, like a sitcom, and sometimes there are guest stars.” Sometimes, there would be credits. 

As a 30-something, I still have an imagination, and I still have dreams. At this moment, the dreams I refer to are the ones in which date back to those early imaginative moments of being a princess, a construction worker was one, and an astronaut.

Each one of those childlike dreams involve something that unites all of us, the desire to create, the desire to learn, and the desire to really enjoy everything that we’re doing. 

These days my dreams are more universal and goal-oriented. Whether it is to write a screenplay, produce a documentary, volunteer for a charity, own a winery, or to just raise a wonderful family, they are my dreams. 

Dreams. 

They are about exploring unpaved paths, uneven roads, and in more profound moments, unjustified injustice. 

Today, I am wearing my astronaut shoes. What shoes are you wearing?