Happy 3rd Podcast-aversary to Me!
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May 21st, 2020
Dear Ones,
Right around the time I started horizontal with lila, I realized that I didn’t have a FELT experience of success. Whenever I achieved a thing, it lost its luster. I hardly noticed it; I just set my sights on something else. Something “higher.”
In 2015, I published my very first article. The piece, “You Call it a Sex House; I Call it Home,” wound up in print in a publication I used to read when I was in my early 20s! It’s called BUST. And it’s still a badass, unapologetic, fun, feisty, feminist print magazine.
The day I got the hard copy in the mail, I brought the manila envelope into my room at the Villa, and closed the door. I sat, ceremoniously, in my special floral armchair and carefully drew the magazine from its hand-addressed manila envelope, and flipped through, page by page (yes I am aware there is such a thing as an index) and finally, I opened the magazine to my page and I felt….. nothing.
It was like Morales in A Chorus Line.
A Chorus Line (1985) – Nothing Scene (3/8) | Movieclips
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I thought it was because I published the article under a pseudonym (Anna Bella, if you’re curious — a twist on both of my grandma’s names put together).
But that wasn’t it.
It was because I was unpracticed in FEELING CELEBRATION.
As a perfectionist, I couldn’t celebrate anything, because nothing was ever good enough. In the immortal words of Anne Lamott, from her autobiographical writing book bird by bird, “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. It will keep you cramped and insane your entire life.” And it was, and it had been.
For the past week, I’ve been doing a meditation / visualization / business / prosperity challenge, and one of the first things I journaled, right before the experience began was:
When I shared this with one of my closest friends, she told me her mom used to say, “You’ve got champagne tastes on a beer bottle budget.” Yeah. That’s me alright.
I am also well-acquainted with the cousin of expensive tastes: HIGH HIGH aspirations. Which I had and have. And nothing short of them seemed like any success at all.
The result was: I didn’t celebrate. I couldn’t celebrate. I didn’t know how. I couldn’t feel it. None of it felt like celebration in my body. When did my inability to celebrate begin? I’m not exactly sure. I’m sure I was able to celebrate as a child. I can’t remember much of middle school. But I suspect it was after high school, when I stopped receiving all the accolades and awards.
When I won our little high school Oscars, the Marley awards, twice, with my one-woman show (once for Best Actress & once for Best Senior Project), I’m pretty sure I felt that. I know I felt it when I won the Eikon award (given to one graduating senior from each major at my arts high school). I gave the Commencement speech that same night. I remember standing at that podium, shimmering, weeping, shaking, and sharing the award with my nemesis, Frank, whose presence always pushed me to work harder, to do better (always had the hots for him too, but that’s neither here nor there. Or is it?).
I think I felt it senior year of high school, when I earned the acting scholarship from the local theatre, and freshman year of college, when I won the Young Playwrights Inc. competition with a one-girl show I began on the high school bus and completed behind the hostess stand at the steakhouse where I had my first summer job.
I remember jubilance. A leap in the air. A Great Yes.
Then I started getting rejection after rejection after rejection, first in acting school, then later in the acting world.
So in 2015, shortly after BUST article was published, I made a decision to celebrate all of my successes, no matter how big or small I deemed them to be. No matter the size, or volume, or genre of success.
About a year into podcasting, so right around May 2018, I joined Patreon, and decided I would do an elaborate HAPPY DANCE whenever I got the news that I had a new patron, no matter where I was (on the subway, at the gym, in Cha Cha Matcha, on the street).
In August 2019, I started making an individual Happy Dance video for each new patron, so they could see the celebration they hath wrought! This meant that I Happy Danced for their patronage Twice — once when I got the message, and again when I found a lovely backdrop and had a fabulous outfit on. 😉
The Happy Dance gives me chills sometimes, brain tingles other times. I do it for long enough that I bypass self-consciousness and get into the felt experience, and it always, always elevates my mood. I think this is why I’m able to feel chills when I do the 5-breath food gratitude meditation before I eat now, and why I feel chills when I do Jolie Dawn’s Prosperity Garden meditations in the Dare to Prosper Challenge.
Happy Dance: The Adorable One YokoMatcha
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Miami, FL August 2019
I am succeeding at rewiring my nervous system for celebration and joy!!!
I take any excuse to celebrate, and also I don’t need an excuse.
For the past two years, I have celebrated the anniversary of horizontal by doing a photo shoot in New York with The Confetti Project and my friend Tiana, amongst other things (dinner out, a birthday cake with proper candles, balloons, a recording with as many former guests and patrons as I could get together on the 2nd year anniversary, including Steve, Jillian, Kristi Ann, & 6 others).
This year I was planning to return home to Brooklyn in time for my 3 year podcast-aversary. But it didn’t feel safe to go back to New York in March. I don’t know when it will. If it will. So I stayed here in Bali.
And while I am tremendously, viscerally grateful to be here in Ubud, on my podcast-aversary, I felt quite a Sad for being so so far from the people I want to celebrate this victory with. So I didn’t expect to cry in this video… but it is part and parcel of the celebration. In my celebration, I carry the heartbreak of being so so far from most of the people I love the most in the world.
Instead of The Confetti Project, I folded around 30 paper cranes from shiny origami paper I found at the supermarket, and made my own confetti, by hand, over the course of several weeks (while binge-watching “Call the Midwife” for uplifting feels).
Instead of with my beloveds, I celebrate alone, across the world. But I celebrate. I celebrate nonetheless. Because I am wired for celebration and joy.
I’d love it if you’d celebrate with me.
Big Love,
Lila
P.S. If you believe in my work, here are some ways you can empower me to make the world a more intimate place:
- Become a patron of the horizontal arts. $7 a month give you access to all the part twos (or threes and fours!) going back to the beginning. + Happy Dance.
- Follow me on Instagram and heart a bunch of my posts.
- Join my upcoming “How to Connect” course, or purchase the horizontal experience audio time capsule (we’ll record with your grandparents before they pass, or commemorative your romantic relationship, or celebrate your best friendship, or co-create an aural document of your heart).
