Identity Crisis

What the heck should I rename this blog???  DanielleNaugler.blogspot.com perhaps?  I don't know... dare I be so bold as to bare my soul to the interwebs and reveal GoldilocksNYC's true identity?! 

This thing is already linked to my DanielleNaugler website, it's also felt on its way to being obsolete for going on two years now.

I have a feeling 2016 will be a year for its re-emergence though.   2016's the year I get published, soooo..... go big or go home?

In the meantime, here's something facebook big-brothered my way this morning: 

The Five Stages of Ghosting Grief

I'm ghosting a guy currently.  Full admission.  I'm also still pseudo/fully entangled with another guy I can imagine ghosting me on a moment's notice.

This is fun, this twentyfirst century dating, isn't it?

Would it help?

Last night I went on a movie date with my 75 year old grandparents to see Bridge of Spies with America's sweetheart, Tom Hanks, and a huge cast of people I didn't recognize other than good old Landry from Friday Night Lights who's making the rounds in major motion pictures this fall.

To say going to see a picture with the two of them was cute would be the understatement of the year.  They are avid movie goers, and very much in love after 55+ years of marriage.  And they were so tickled by the fact that I wanted to spend a random Tuesday night with them.

It was super nice to be out with people who were super excited to spend time with me.

So that's fun.  And the movie was stellar.  Spielberg tells a damn good story.  

Three times (naturally, since it was a joke), the Russian spy character asks Tom Hanks' character whether it would help if he worried. 

And beyond it being a cute gimmick, the question's become my new inspiration for this season of life.  The answer's so reassuring.  Of course it wouldn't.  Worrying will literally never help anyone's cause. 

I'm picking up wisdom like this and like the 4 Agreements below left and right these last few months of being 30.  And life is good.

Just 5 in 2015

is just fine with me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-the-myth-of-quality-time.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur&_r=1

I'm here ;)

Left behind

A guy I know from forever ago, who is in advertising these days and prone to check in with me from time to time, asked me last night where my angst is.

I had "just" been thinking about my lack of angst in December actually.   Last summer, I realized that angst seems like something you grow out of - if you're lucky by the time you graduate high school, more commonly probably by the time you're out of college, and often enough over the course of your twenties.... so when on a fourth or fifth date (save your applause, okay, no fine, go ahead, give me props for getting that far into a courtship - afterall, it'd been a while), anyway, so when on a fourth or fifth date I found myself on around Christmas, the gentleman I was out with referenced his own current angst, I filed the reference under a tab in my mind labeled red flag.

He was almost 40, that fellow.  And he has so much going for him, he's quite a catch.  But yikes, angst that's lingering 10+ years after your quarter-life-crisis must be agonizing and/or at the very least a mindfuck.*

*eloquent.

I told my bud last night that I'd left my angst behind with my mid-twenties.  Because I really think I did.  When I was 27 going on 28.

In hindsight I wish I'd thought to put it on my old taking/leaving list, then maybe I'd have spared the world some final flairs of my dramatics at 28, but I'm not gonna beat myself up about those.  Because the point is, by last summer, when I was pushing 30, I knew my angst was gone for good.

I'm reading "The Happiness Project" and will smugly admit that much of what Gretchen Rubin discovers month to month I already knew or have come to know on my own in the past 9 or 10 years, but tonight I read her June chapter (I'm reading each chapter prior to the calendar year which feels like both a cute and intentional way to approach it), and something she notes stuck with me:

"In a letter to a friend, Flannery O'Connor put this precept another way: 'from 15 - 18 is an age at which one is very sensitive to the sins of others, as I know from recollections of myself.  At that age you don't look for what is hidden.  It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity.'"

No wonder this wise lady's getting a stamp.  She gets it.  And what's there to get is this: get over it.   Hang ups, jealousy, suspicion, insecurity, competitiveness, feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, regret... angst.  These things weigh you down, dampen your spirit and darken your days.  Ain't nobody got time for that.

There's something I heard at the funeral of a dear friend’s grandmother a while back … “Golden hours are one of the few things in this world you get free of charge.  If you had all the money in the world, you couldn’t buy an extra hour.  What will you do with this priceless treasure?  Remember, you must use it as it is given only once.  Once wasted you cannot get it back.”

I've moved now, ohhhhh let's see, 11 times in the last 9 years (having previously lived in one of two homes in Newton, MA for 23 years).  The nomadic lifestyle lends itself to making cuts and learning how to live a minimalistic existence.  Somewhere along the way to fully valuing time I left my bag of angst behind.  And man oh man, do I recommend others do the same.

Well that's like a metaphor...

Oh hey.

Happy 2015 blogosphere, internets, (sister)friends, Romans, countrymen.

Do 30 year olds blog?  Do I?

I'm not sure, but I put "write a blog post" on my syllabus for the first 14 days of April, and in true procrastinator form it's getting to be about that now or never time, so here we are.

And here's what's new:

I've thrice faced rejection in the past month, and that burns.  You know?  Like I'm glass half full kind of girl, I know not getting this, that, and the other thing for the months of June, July and August only mean that that in that time whatever's supposed to happen for me will happen, and I've been auditioning for 25 years now and not reached Disney star or even guest star status, my IMDB page exists, but it's bleak, so like...rejection's been the name of a big portion of my game for a quarter century now, I realize it comes with the territory, and I celebrate the wins when they come that much more fully because I can compare them to the losses, but none the less, this little triumvirate of "try harder next time's" had me walking around with this song from The Wedding Singer in my head and specifically the line: "when life gives you garbage, you use it to cliiiii--iiii--iiiiimb."

Typical.

So then today I woke up in particularly sunny LA, and put on a "spring sweater" I haven't worn since last year and realized I wanted to wear earrings that matched it, and decided when I grabbed the earrings from my jewelry box that I'd also grab the three delicate necklaces that have been sitting entangled there since last April.

I had wanted to wear one of them last year when I went to watch my mom's best friend run the Boston Marathon, so I packed it and these other two when I flew home for easter, and lo, they were a tangled mess by the time I'd landed in Logan, so I didn't get to wear that one then and I haven't been able to wear any of the three for the past year.  Because the tangled mess just felt like it was too much for me to tackle.  It was the sort of clusterfuck you'd bring to a Meisner class to get lost in the action of untangling so you could let your emotion run free when your scene partner burst into the room with their all important want.

And maybe the fact is as simple as I just haven't wanted to let my emotions run free for the past year.  But this morning: voila, my fingers pulled the silver chains apart with ease, and not surprisingly the last pendant to be freed was the one that said "Boston Strong."

Cause "that's like a metaphor."  Another line in that song from the Wedding Singer.

You heard it here first.  GoldilocksNYC will be trading in the sunshine for the idea of settling in (not necessarily settling down) on the other side of the country July 1st.

It's time to go home.  I have everything I need, and nothing that I don't.