Faking It

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...