Collidescope: Starting Here

What is this blog? I had drafted what I thought was a pretty great description wrapped in metaphors about cookie dough and kids’ feet in a karate class, but I’ve been getting feedback from my professional superiors and hostile cab drivers that I might have a go at being a little more direct. So, maintaining a few signature metaphors, I’ll start this blog with what aspires to be. It’s not really about my heritage, but that’s where I will begin….

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Genetics have blessed me from both sides of my family with all-consuming worry. Our family’s accounting genes gave me a nod and moved on like the shadow of death at Passover. Each of my cousins is now working in financial management, whereas, by comparison, my banking system consisted of squirreling $1s around my room like an undercover stripper until I was 26. But the worry genes – those were neatly gift-wrapped into a disproportionately large bust and bestowed graciously upon me at a very young age; accompanied by whispered reminders to be wary of cancer, depression, Lyme’s disease, low-flying planes, STDs, motorcycles, matches, rat pee, identity theft, the collapse of the social security system, burglars and pick-pockets, climate change, the collapse of the honey bee, death of loved ones, change in general, flying, falling, falling whilst flying, not being enough, being too much, religious salvation, and botulism.

I started therapy when I was nine after I began to wear the skin away from my hands from washing them so frequently as a pact with God to keep our dog alive. The therapy helped with my hands (actually, I think it was more my mom’s remedy of latex gloves and duct tape), but it didn’t really fix what was going on in my head. I continued to struggle with anxiety and OCD into my youth, and dipped my toes into depression every year or so just to check the temperature.

I don’t actually remember the pivotal switch in college. Somewhere in that who-am-I search bubble, I realized that I had a choice in how to respond to those whispers of fear. I didn’t have to bind myself into the safe decisions defined by them, however incapacitated I may feel. I didn’t heal my aforementioned state of mind by any means, but I began to push back. The most obvious manifestation of this was traveling. I started by studying abroad – moving my who-am-I search bubble to Argentina for a semester. And then I realized that I could live abroad, and moved to Mexico after college for a time. Leaps like these were accompanied by wracking, heaving, anxiety attacks – multiples of them. But that’s how I knew that I was doing something necessary for myself. Thus began my checks and balances system of managing my all-consuming worry and fear. But like any system, it definitely still has its glitches.

This space is where I want this blog to live: that glitchy check on reality. It will serve as a reminder that we can’t really argue with what is, but we have complete control over how we interpret it (unless of course, there’s a language barrier and you’re confusing the words for “spank” and “switch”, or “jump” and “fart”, in which case you don’t have much control over the interpretation. But that sort of comes with the territory of living abroad). We can see the challenges of social security and climate change and be overwhelmed, which is often my gut response. I used to think of myself as a super hero when I’d fight my parents about recycling strategies or organize trash pickups. Now I hear about the Amazon burning with interminable flames, the endless violent cycle of rocks and rockets, and the sea turtles with straws up their noses, and I want to give the world the finger and crawl under my bed with a good book. The same holds true for my writing. I have often found the blank page more innately beautiful than a used one; its unblemished potential more alluring than putting the pen to paper for fear of messing up. In the winter, I often stand teetering at the doorway the morning after a snowstorm because I can’t decide whether play in the fresh powder or to avoid smudging a perfect picture.

I am constantly checking the way that I naturally interpret my reality – is it coming from a lens of fear? Humor? What, whom, or which version of that whom, is at the center of the narrative? It is really a melding of perspectives – a collision of scopes, if you will (or if I will, I guess).

I know that I cannot be the only one asking these questions. I am not the only one who is traveling the world or pushing outward on the squishy circumference of my search bubble as a “screw you” to the former confines I set for myself. I am not the only one constantly questioning my interpretation of reality. I am creating this blog for my own expression, and hopefully as a space for fellow dreamers and artists and learners who are trying to do justice to the page, to their parents, to the millennial generation told that we can be and do anything to which we aspire. To the directionless social activists peeking through the cracks of their fingers over their eyes at the news and the world around them and wondering if/why we all take life too seriously. To the ones who are washing their hands making deals with God. To anyone hovering in the in-between, cupping their potential and ready to splash it out into the world – but a little worried about getting wet.

I realized that for too long I have been deferring to the blank page, holding it as a paragon to which any attempt of its utility would be a shortfall simply sullying perfection. This is an attempt to blot the page with something worthwhile in and of itself; to laud the mess; then make it even better. My hope is that this funny, floppy endeavor helps others to appreciate the perfection, and then to step outside and play in the snow (or maybe throw snowballs at the flames).