Faking It

I did not see 2014 coming. At all. I was in a bad place at the end of 2013, and then 2014 galloped in and swept me off my feet. It will go down in history as the year I came back to life. I'll never be able to pinpoint what made me say "yes" to this year but it was as simple as going somewhere new, being around new people, letting that change the way I did other things and parts of me I thought I'd never see again, started coming back.  It feels weird. But I might get used to it.   I never thought I did New Year's Resolutions, but I guess I do. Or did. I know a few years ago my resolution was to do things that scare me. Any things. So I went to New York, moved to a new state, cut all my hair off. It was a pretty intense year. I don't remember making one this year, or last year, or for a few years. I did a "totally doable"  bucket list  this summer though (#bossassbitch), and it was crazy fun! Things like "Eat a whole watermelon," t...

Of 2014. Relax. This is the last confession of the year, you guys! As such, I thought I'd reflect and go back to the beginning of 2014 on this glorious Confession Tuesday. The first decision I made in 2014 was to start wearing bangs. Best. Choice. Ever. I love having a fringe! I think it brings more attention to my eyes, which are already my best feature, then a friend of mine told me I sometimes look like Zooey Deschanel which is the best compliment! It's a good hair year for me; I like the bangs, I like what they do for my face and they make me all sassy. But it's not all good. Confession: On the days I don't do my hair, I have a mullet.  If I'm not leaving the house or planning on seeing people, or planning on wearing a hat, I'll just let my hair air dry. It's so long and it's an ordeal to break out the blow dryer and all the accoutrements it takes to get my hairs did. So. If I don't dry my bangs, I end up with this hideous horrible vers...

I'm not really a "collector" kind of person. Some people just collect stuff; comic books, band t-shirts, stamps, coins, action figures, teddy bears, a friend of mine has a dizzying array of yarmulke's attained from an insane amount of Jewish weddings. My Mom collects souvenir spoons. Her Mom started the collection and we've added to it since inheriting it from her. I once stayed at my friend's house in the room where she housed her creepy doll collection (clarification: the dolls themselves were not creepy. The fact that she had so many of them from her childhood and they were all on shelves in that room watching me while I slept, was super creepy). I love the spoon collection and contribute to it when I travel, but I've never really been interested in the history of stamps or coins, or Civil War era hats. I do have a lot of shoes, but that's lifeblood. I have my own personal library including ridiculous  stacks of magazines  that I just can't th...

This year for Christmas, I got my Dad tickets to the Marvel Experience . My sisters and I took him yesterday and spent a few hours with the superheroes. I didn't even know about this until one night when I was watching a hockey game with my Dad and a commercial came on and he said, "I wonder what that would be like?" so I bought tickets and Christmas came early for him. I won't go into much detail about it, but I will tell you from the beginning they started calling us "recruits" and the whole experience was like we were training to be S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. The first part was Level 1 clearance and then after completing some training we'd be allowed to move on to the next level. Confession: These kinds of things give me crazy stupid anxiety. These sorts of simulated activities where you participate in different ways make me so nervous! What if I fail? What if I can't do something and they don't let me keep going? I know I paid for the ticket ...

Life happens online these days. More often than not, the majority of our communication with people exists on social media of some kind, Facebook, Twitter, instagram, etc. and we all participate in our own ways, deciding how much or how little information we put out there. And there exists a very thin veil of norms dictating how we behave when we actually run into people we know from our forays on social media. A few months ago, I was at the theatre where I work, working the box office and watching the show, after which I proceeded to the lobby where the actors form a receiving line to thank people for coming out and watching the show. I knew most everyone, but one new person introduced themselves to me in the worst way possible. They said, "You're Megan, right?" Are you kidding me?! That was how they started. It wasn't preceded by a, "thanks for watching the show" or even a, "hi, my name is..." oh no! They just jumped straight in. Now, I...

When I was a kid we went to IMAX movies on school field trips to watch documentaries about the way the world works, the vastness of the universe, all that, and I was always completely terrified by them. Everyone else loved them, but the only one I liked was the one about volcanoes. The volcanoes documentary scared me, like in a woah, nature is amazing and terrifying way, not to the point where I never want to see a volcano. Fun fact, I was flying somewhere (probably back to Canada to see my family) and the pilot said, "if you look out the windows to the left of the plane you can see Mount St. Helen's." I thought we were right next to it, that sucker is huge! BUT the IMAX. I hated all the other videos! The enormous sharks in my face, the outer space ridiculousness that filled the entire room was so awful and have scarred me for life. Sharks will be another day because that's a doozy of a confession, so for today I'll just say: Confession: I am terrified of outer ...

Because growing up is overrated. It's been recently pointed out to me, by multiple people whose opinions of me vary from highly favorable (dare I say love) to strong dislike (frankly disgust may be the word), that I'm an adult.  The people who like me think I've got it pretty together. One of these Confession Tuesdays I might talk about how long it takes me to fully do a load of laundry (this includes washing, drying, folding, putting away, btw) and just undo all those good feelings.  The person who disapproves of me told me I was pathetic for doing the things I'm doing now. Specifically, things like run around with all these new friends I have who are a bit younger. True, some are 18, but some are 22, 24, some are my age, some are older. My friend who pulled me into this wonderfully weird world full of younger people, has had similar things said to her by those who think they're experts because they do more grown up things like have babies, ...

I have lived in two different apartments since first moving out on my own. And in very different locations, the first in downtown Phoenix, the other in El Paso, Texas. I get all moved in, which is always a multiple day ordeal of lugging boxes, fighting with delivery truck people, so much crying (I've never moved and not cried for some reason), and my parents helping unpack lots of stuff so that it will begin to feel like home sooner, but finally everything is there and I am officially moved in. So I spend my first night and without fail, the next morning there is a dead bird on my balcony. Confession: I think I've been cheating death. I mean, that can't be good. It has to be a bad omen of some kind. It makes no sense! And I'm 1 for 1 with bad stuff happening in those places so I don't even know if it's really a bad thing or what. I did some research on symbolism and one site I read said that seeing birds, even dead ones, isn't so much a sign of actua...

I love the whole Christmas season. I love hearing the same songs again and again. Drinking hot chocolate, red, green, silver, bells, pie, presents, Frosty, all of the things. I especially love holiday movies; they play constantly in my kitchen while I bake batch after batch of cookies, cheesecakes, and booze. Every Christmas movie has some kind of lesson so I thought I'd share a few takeaways from some of my favorites (this list is far from exhaustive). 1. Life is too short for "hellos." ( Elf ) Nothing makes me laugh quite like when Buddy answers his fathers' professional work phone by saying, "Buddy the Elf what's your favorite color?" Every time a phone rings I want to answer it that way. Sometimes I do. 2. Uncles can be the worst. ( Home Alone and Home Alone 2) Seriously, Uncle Frank is such a jackass! Granted, no one should snoop on another person in the shower, but who calls an eight-year old a jerk?! My Mom would never have let eithe...

This little confession section of mine has taken off! It's been one month since I started posting these and I did not expect people to take to it like this. I know everyone has weird thoughts, but I didn't expect my friends to look forward to "Confession Tuesday" or to ask me in a covert way, "so what's the confession topic going to be this week?" while I'm trying to work. I seriously thought no one would even read it. But you did! And do! You are! So in honor of that first post , I'll do a part 2 of that topic. Confession: I have really weird thoughts. I'm afraid of leaving someone (anyone) without resolving a fight because I'm convinced they'll die before I see them again. I'm afraid our last memories of each other will be awful. I'm not perfect, but I try very hard to only say the things I mean. I try to leave every person like I'll never see them again. I'm wicked honest, but I try to say productive thing...

At our end of year banquet in high school we had a slide show of the seniors with superlatives. All the things our classmates thought of us, saw us doing and being in the future. Mine was, "Most Likely to Cry During this Slideshow." They were right. I was crying at that very moment. I'm very in touch with my emotions. They've always sat right at the surface. Until a few years ago. Life changed and I cried a lot for a few weeks. Then I realized it wasn't helping anything. Not only was it doing me no good, it was preventing me from living my life. I couldn't leave my house because I was afraid I'd start to cry. Sometimes it would be happening without me realizing it. It was dark times, that's true, but I'd had enough. I decided I wouldn't cry anymore. And I didn't. For a whole year. Nothing broke me. Nothing. Even truly tragic things. I was inhuman. I've given myself a few allowances since then, now that I've got a better grip...

I love a podcast. Every night for a few years when I was a kid, I listened to a radio show called Adventures in Odyssey . It was a family friendly show about a town called Odyssey where a man named Whit owns an ice cream emporium and the characters revolve in and out of each others lives solving problems and learning valuable lessons. It was my favorite thing as a kid and I would look forward to it every day. Since that show, there hasn't really been anything like that to replace it in my life. Recently, however, the world of podcasts has been introduced to me. A few years ago, my sister suggested I listen to Welcome to Night Vale , and I immediately fell in love with how strange and bizarre the stories are. The podcast is presented in the form of a radio show where the host, Cecil Baldwin, relays the strange events in the town of Night Vale. The writing on that show is incredible and Cecil's obsession with Carl had me on the edge of my seat! I also love being exposed to ne...

I hadn't planned on making Tuesday "confession" day. But it happened that way for two weeks in a row and now people can't live without it. And by people, I mean Devon.  And by live without, I mean he may actually riot. He's a new friend, I'm not really sure what he's about.  I just posted, literally almost two hours ago, but it wasn't a traditional confession and he got on Facebook demanding a confession and went as far as to challenge me, knowing full well I couldn't resist. So. The challenge extended is thus: "Awkward nicknames parents or friends or other had for you." Challenge accepted. Confession: I have no nicknames. When I was born my Dad called me Peanut and that lasted while I was Peanut-sized, but he never called me that growing up. I was Megan. I am Megan. That's it. And it's always struck me as strange because my entire life was filled with stories of people my Mom and her siblings grew up with. G...

“We're actors in our lives, pretendin' to be who we want people to think we are.”  ~Simone Elkeles, Perfect Chemistry One of the biggest reasons I never stuck with performance after high school, aside from the insane competition of it all, is that I have horrible, crippling stage fright. But it seems to be selective. When I teach, I'm all set. I've taught everything from 300 person lectures at Uni to a class of two third graders. I crack jokes, call on people, I turn my back on middle school kids, and have never been intimidated or sweaty or anything. Because I have something they don't. The answers to the exam questions. They need me. I know the subjects I teach inside and out. I pour myself into my lessons, and I speak honestly with people when they ask questions or want to talk about specific legal cases or books I've read, authors I love. I'm never more exhausted than after a full day of teaching. It is physically and emotionally draining if y...

I don't want to brag, even though this is my blog, but I remember my sisters and cousins being more confused about things as kids than I was. I am pretty smart, but all kids have things they misinterpret or don't understand because they're new here. For example, one year I went bowling with friends for my birthday and my sister was upset because she was sure she wouldn't get the same size bowl as everyone else. Adorable, right? The only thing I can really remember not understanding as a kid, that I understand now as an adult, is a doozy. I still can't believe it took me so long to make sense of this. Quite literally, years. Anyway... When I was a kid, my Grandma had a friend; Mr. Sam. We loved Mr. Sam and Grandma O'Connor. They were such good friends. He gave us lots of presents, and he worked at the apartment complex where she lived which was convenient because he could just take a break to see us when we'd come by. He always made sure there were lo...

Today is my sister's birthday. She's 26 years old and she's going to save the world, or at least prevent a lot of forest fires. Or help the forests regrow. No, what she does is study the bugs in an area after there's a fire and she watches all of them to see if they make the trees grow back. No. She's going to save the world. One forest at a time and it's not up to me to explain her magical methods. Erin got a bit of a raw deal when she was born into our family. Our Mom is the youngest of 4. The year she was pregnant with me, the oldest child in our family, her sister and 2 sister in-laws were all pregnant. My 3 cousins were born in the same year, and me the following; they were the youngest of their siblings. 2 years after I was born we got Erin, then 17 months later came Kelly. Kelly is the baby. Of our immediate AND extended family. I had cousins my age, Kelly had everyone's adoration (she made up a game called "Big Kids Cool" where we j...

I've been thinking about adding some kind of "confession section" to this blog, even though the entire thing is kind of a confessional. I mean, isn't it? I try and figure life out and in the process confess, through embarrassing true stories, that I'm basically flailing through life. Well. We'll give it the old college try. Confession: I have really weird thoughts. When I moved into my first apartment I was afraid to sit on the floor because I thought if my downstairs neighbor shot himself, the bullet would come through the ceiling and kill me. Even now, it takes me about 2 weeks, maybe 3, to get comfortable sitting on the floor in a new apartment. What do you think? Short confessions like so, every week? Leave a comment if you like it and let me know what kinds of weird things you think about.

One thing I've never been able to do, not one time in my entire life, is know when to leave the party. This is a key aspect of being a successful adult and I fail. I fail every time and will until the end of time. I have no sense of when to leave the party. There are two ways to interpret that phrase. 1) I never know when to give up or quit something like a job, friendship, t.v. show, anything that's run its course. Or 2) I actually don't know when to leave an actual event. For the sake of clarity, I'll be talking about the second one. When do you leave a party? The advice I've heard most often is to trust your instincts and common sense. Apparently, I am devoid of both. How embarrassing. There are three options for leaving a party. Just like Goldilocks, you can either leave too early and be that guy, leave at the exact right time, or leave way to late and regret everything. I'm sure you can guess which I am. Yes. Typically, it's 4 a.m. and I'm e...