� not the lady Travis Bickle, here.

100% YES to that, and 100% FUCK YOU if you think you have a better idea of how I ought to be living. I mean, if it�s not a contradiction in terms for me to be saying the second part while I�m still loving and valuing. Above everything else, one must love and value oneself.

Last night at the haircutter�s I was flipping through the April issue of Lucky � I trip out on how it calls itself "a magazine about shopping"; what have we become that the popular-culture aboutness of shopping is not only a valid philosophical proposition but something we take for granted? � and I saw a feature on style icon, maverick fiction writer, cultural commentator and oh by the way Stephen Malkmus�s girlfriend Heather Larimer. Our Heather, who reports that she never leaves the house without her Furla handbag and Juicy Couture hoodie and that she owns over 60 pairs of shoes, of which two favorite pairs are Ferragamo heels and Tony Lama cowboy boots, touts Portland, Oregon as "a place where you can be creative without running out of money." Forget the aboutness of shopping, somebody should take a look at the aboutness of Heather Larimer. My hairdresser, David, is going back to school, and he is starting with an art history survey, so of course I am very excited for him. I got about an inch and a half hacked off the bottom and am closer to a bob than I have been in well over two years. The bangs are short, really short, and I am equal parts blasted dumbstruck that no one has noticed and paranoid that they have indeed noticed but don�t have anything nice to say so they are keeping their mouths shut tight. It�s a haircut that would not be out of place on Leslie Caron or Jean Seberg � there�s something French-ingenue-ish about the effect � and although I like it, I remain unconvinced that it�s right for me. Something about the hair being so determinedly off the face, bangs cut short and the rest of it pretty much behind my ears, is not my style, my eyebrows and lips seem absurdly exaggerated and my face too fleshy and I�m afraid the Crocodile glasses, my daily standby, are wrong. Or maybe I just think I�m ugly today.

Steve has a theory that people only criticize you about things they�re sure you�re secure about. I do not think I agree with him. Do you? I�m going to ask Number Two tonight. There were a few homeworky things I told her I�d look into that I didn�t do. Did I mention that on Monday I wrote a to-do list and over the course of the day knocked off every single one? I am scraping the rust off those old contact points and making them work again. But the things I said I�d do suddenly felt like jumping in with two feet and rocks in my pocket, they essentially amounted to the of drawing penciled lines between myself and Possible Careers, and even thinking about that made me anxious and led me to the calm-down state and process of mind that eventually engendered my Yes Maybe No lists, and aren�t those good? I think Number Two will approve of my revisions to the spec. I will show her the lists. This, at least for a spell � and, ha, at least today � seems like a better, less fraught and potentially hostile place to be. I think I need to get my brain around the possibility of hostility before the rest of me would have to keep facing it.

Sunday night I made broccoli, because you know I am all about the fruits and vegetables these days, stir-fried with ginger and fermented black beans and then finished off with chili oil and sesame oil and a little yuppie salt. It was tasty but nothing to write home about � until today, when I had the last of it for lunch. I ate it at room temp because I brought it in a container that I know is leakproof but is not microwaveable (after yesterday�s debacle with the vinaigrette, a girl�s got priorities) and forgot to put it in the refrigerator when I arrived, and oh my god it was wonderful. The beans had gotten fatter on the broccoli juice and oil and the broccoli had leached some of the beans� flavor out of them, and it was, like, the apotheosis of the ho-hum item I�d made on Sunday night. I enjoyed every mouthful, feeling both proud of my accidental masterpiece and humbled, as if the food had asserted itself, gently, over my unthinking plans for it and had become what the dish was meant to be all along. Dare I suggest that there�s a lesson in there?

This too.

What�s so wrong with saying that your life is not what you want it to be right now and you are not exactly sure what it�s going to take to make it better but you are going to try to figure it out? Personally I think that kicks ass, because saying it is not easy to do, and if I ever met anyone else who was saying it, matter-of-factly and without self-pity, I would buy that righteous motherfucker a drink. If it�s OK to say that at age 16 or 22 or whatever, at what timepoint does that statement become a thing you should be ashamed of and the expected rejoinder to your I don�t want to be blah blah blah become a punishing But you *are*? I feel like if I�m willing to step up and admit that I�ve been spinning my wheels and doing the opposite of getting self-actualized, to acknowledge that the (ick) career path I�m on is deeply unsatisfying, to spend money to un-fuck my intellectual chi, to maybe knock myself down and start over again at apparent zero, then I and this whole hypothetical (ick) process deserve to be taken seriously. Also: I knew a guy once, a friend of a friend, who had been out of college for years, working at whatever jobs and in his spare time nurturing personal interests, and by and by his interests led him to people who shared them, one of whom offered to help get him into a Ph.D. program that would allow him to make his favorite thing his life�s work, which he didn�t even know as possible all those years he was working. The idea was mouthwatering to him but he was terrified of ripping up his life by the roots and starting over again (and why do we have to see it like that, why can it not be a continuation, a shifted trajectory, a story that changes?) and he said to a pal of his: "I can�t do this. It will take me at least five years, and in five years I�ll be 43." And the friend said: "Yes, and if you don�t do it, in five years you will have no Ph.D. and you will still be 43."

Who knows, maybe I�m being na�ve and it is not possible to satisfy all my list items. Maybe the best I can expect, since after all I have a B.A. in English and that is what I *am*, is a health-insured flextime job and "content" in my title, in an office with a high concentration of smartass types, writing some kind of stuff that doesn�t make me want to slit my wrists. And maybe that would not be so bad. No, that would not be bad in the slightest. But if that is maybe not the best I can expect, don�t I have a responsibility to myself to find out what might be instead?

P.S. Steve just sent e-mail and used the word "convivializing." Gaga, I tell you, I'm gaga.