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Happy Birthday to Me, Now Worry About Yourself

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I have been obsessed with (terrified of?) the passing of time for as long as I can remember. But today is my birthday, and I turn 32, and I’ve always thought this age sounded alright. I worked with a guy at the psych ward who, upon turning 27, was like *fist pump* YASS CELEBRATE because apparently that’s the usual cutoff for when Schizophrenia manifests and he now considered himself in the clear.

So maybe I feel like I’m in the clear for some things. Turning 31 was weird, because that’s the age my mom was when I was born– and I was her fifth child. *cue panic attack*

I remember when I was living in a one room efficiency, about to drop out of college (for the first of many times) and freaking out because I was turning 19 and thought this meant I was getting old. A mental ticker ran through my head– you haven’t done anything with yourself yet.

It was around this time I got the weird idea that age 32 was when I’d get my shit together. I’m not sure why– maybe because it’s a mathematically pleasing number, or maybe because it felt so far away that it gave me a pass to muck around for a bit. And believe me, I spent some time wallowing in other people’s dirt. 

To be fair, this mental ticker tape continues to haunt me. I assumed this was normal, but when I talk about it with other people they tell me they don’t function this way. Yet I’m over here like: [Read more…]

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Podcasts for writers who don’t hate themselves

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I’m going to tell you about my favorite writing podcasts in hopes that you tell me about yours and we can live on forever in an endless cycle of good recommendations. Deal? Also, this is your reminder to go and leave reviews for everything you love– books, podcasts, etc. (for the things you hate, please message me directly because hating on things is amongst my very particular set of skills).  

Print Run

Two literary agents (Laura Zats and Erik Hane) discuss all sorts of publishing-related topics you think they’d get in trouble for talking about with people like us. It’s what I would imagine happening if I snuck into a fancy party for bookish people (which they claim they’re never invited to) and lurked about whilst listening to honest conversations about the literary world.

Tone: feisty with notes of curmudgeonliness and a hint of nerd.

Lasting impact: They had a segment where they talked about the ways in which men describe women in literary fiction– often as “bird like” and now I notice it eeeeverywhere.

Episode that sealed my obsession: The one about Amazon. Fascinating.

Alex’s favorite: The one where they lost bets and had to read aloud from 50 Shades.

Need to know: Their mascot is a loon. #HelloLaura is the future.

Brag: I accosted Laura Zats in a hallway at the Writer’s Digest Conference so I could gush over how much I love the podcast AND I AM NOT EVEN A GUSHER I AM SURLY AND UNAFFECTED OKAY [Read more…]

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I’ve had lots of champagne lately

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Fair warning: I’m going to have exactly zero chill about this. Speaking of chill– I bought a bottle of champagne on Sunday, January 28th 2018 and stashed it in the fridge with a stern warning to Alex that it was not to be touched until I’d signed with a literary agent.

This blip of self discipline probably doesn’t sound like an insurmountable life challenge, but Alex and I are the kind of people who can’t buy cases of wine or more than one box of Girl Scout cookies at a time. Life’s short, you gotta treat yo self with lots of Carpe Yolos and such.

But this was a special bottle of champagne– not just because it cost slightly more than the usual $14 I’m willing to spend– but because I was sending my first round of query letters the following day and I needed a mental good faith investment that I might actually be capable of bringing a desired outcome into my life. The next morning I sent five queries via email and over the next couple weeks I got five rejections whilst congealed juice from a baked sweet potato formed a sad sticky puddle near my neglected bottle of champagne.

I was ripe for intervention, so I bought a query critique from Jane Friedman (if you’re a writer, you’ve probably been on her site at least once. She’s full of resources and pretty much a publishing guru). A week later she sent back an edited version of my query, crossing out all the stupid and useless bits (my words, not hers).

Turns out query letters– JUST LIKE LIFE– are immediately improved by removing things that don’t need to be there.

I sent a few more queries before we went to India and Nepal because travel is a built-in distraction from the angst of waiting. This time, there was some interest and I got to experience the fun of sending my book proposal via iPhone via spotty wifi via Jaipur. When we got back to the states, and I recovered from jet lag, I sent another round. Two days later I got a reply to one of the most recent queries I’d sent, asking to schedule a call. The next day I got on the phone and was offered representation. [Read more…]

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My New Motto is “Trust No One, Enjoy Everything”

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Back when I traveled around SE Asia I encountered a pale white woman sitting cross legged in a matching white kaftan that looked like something out of Dr. Strange’s wardrobe. She had a cigarette in one hand and a can of coke in the other and all my fellow backpackers were gathered around, hanging on her every word as she detailed the spiritual experiences she’d had in India. I only lingered long enough to hear this nugget:

“Once you’ve been to India, the temples in Thailand are shit.”

Obviously I longed to achieve such spiritual enlightenment for myself, and now I’ve done it. Alex and I just got back from spending a couple weeks in India and Nepal and you’re not going to believe my transformation. I left the states a wayward and anxious writer and returned as something I never thought I’d be:

An endorser of essential oils.

You can thank New Delhi for it’s pollution and laws against Sudafed, because I was left treating my sinus infection with a bottle of peppermint oil. And you guys, it totally worked. I’m a believer now. I take back almost everything I’ve ever said about people who use essential oils, except not really so please don’t DM me with an offer for $65 bottles of Nettled LilyPad Juice.

Seriously though– beyond the touring and adventure, I think the greatest value to be found in travel is the experience of connecting with people and a culture you otherwise wouldn’t know anything about. Someone asks a basic question, like “why do so many Americans love guns?” and you’re suddenly explaining The American Revolution and the Civil War. Then it’s their turn to explain their beliefs and their history and about 30 seconds in you begin to realize just how much your own culture has made a caricature out of theirs.

Know this: We’re far more alike than we are different, and the things that make us different are worth exploring and seeking to understand. Don’t listen to anyone who tries to convince you of the otherness of a person or place, because they almost certainly stand to benefit from your ignorance. Don’t let them.

It would be impossible to write a single post about everything that happened on this trip. And if you’re one of my Facebook friends/followers then you’re probably begging me not to, because I already wrote almost daily recaps on there. Instead, I’ll just link to what I already wrote– but photos and slightly-ignorant insights don’t do any of this justice, which is why all of you should probably go and see it for yourself.

I have a feeling my site is going to struggle to load all this, but it’s worth it. Here’s a teaser: Tigers, Gurus, Himalayas, and Wily Youths Smushing Colored Powder All Over My Face.

NEW DELHI

https://www.facebook.com/aussa.lorens/posts/2077223002510336 [Read more…]

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America has a gun problem. But it also has a willfully-ignorant human problem.

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I don’t have kids. This is a thing I’ve thought about. Depending on who asks, I’ll usually answer the “why not” question with something glib and vague– like “well, I like being selfish.”

This weeds people out of the discussion because many already assume I’m selfish and are just looking for confirmation. So, here you go. Bye.

But one of my major hesitations is that I’m terrified by the prospect of having a child. I know I’m writing about something I fundamentally can’t understand because I haven’t experienced it, so I’m speculating. But I feel like having a kid is like taking the purest most innocent part of your soul– the part that was there from the beginning, before the cynicism and nihilism and jaded residue built up– and putting it inside a more vulnerable vessel that doesn’t know how to take care of itself without your help. Then, after a short period of time, you start letting that piece of your soul wander off into the world without you. Out into a world where people are interested in destroying it.

I’m not sure I can handle that. So I guess I’m selfish because I don’t want to invite the vulnerability of worrying whether my child– this soul-bound part of myself– is going to die in a violent moment of terror because the country I was born into prioritizes the earnings of the gun industry over the inevitable profit and loss of a few dozen murdered kids every year.

I’m about to travel outside my country. This is a thing I do. Depending on who asks, I’ll usually answer the “why” question with something glib and vague– like “well, I like adventure.”

But the truth is I like seeing how other humans are doing– and have done– Life. And because nothing expands your worldview and exposes the limitations of your mindset, assumptions, and prejudices quite like getting outside the bubble you were born into.

Most of the time my thoughts want to go ZING BANG POW but instead they’re slowed to a crawl, constantly pausing at mental checkpoints to examine the source of my judgment, the belief informing it, where that belief came from, and whether I might be wrong– which I often am. It’s not fun. It’s so much more comforting to be right, so right, the most rightest, shake your fist and roll your eyes and “ugh, people.”

I came from the same world as most of the humans I find myself arguing with on social media. I know this vicious debate thing is a part of our culture but I’m not particularly good at it, and it’s frustrating because it feels like arguing with a past version of myself.

Or with a frog stuck at the bottom of a well who’ll never be convinced the sea exists.

Just this morning someone told me it’s illogical to compare ourselves to Australia because they have “a very different culture.” First of all, what? Second of all, you’re the person advocating we station armed guards outside schools so kids are safe. Guess where else they do that? Nigeria. Because of Boko Haram. That’s your grand vision for America? [Read more…]

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Can we all agree this is the dumbest question ever?

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Alex is one of those fancy people who wears suits and gets invited to events and parties full of impressive humans, while I’m someone who skulks from table to table, hiding behind a curtain of scraggly red hair whilst fisting cheese trays like an undiscovered breed of cave troll.

But every so often a human will decide– for whatever baffling reason– to try and get to know us. This is a terrible idea. Especially if you’re like the woman who zeroed in on us last weekend to ask the dumbest question in the history of the world:  

Boring Human: “So, what do you do?”

Me: *looks at Alex*

Alex: “We do a lot of things.”

Me: “I think she wants to know how we make money.”

Alex: *makes very generic statement about who signs paycheques*

Boring Human: “How interesting!”

Me: “It’s probably the least interesting thing.”

Boring Human: “So how long have you been doing that?”

Alex: “Making money? Since college.”

Me: “It’s how we pay for things.”

Can we please stop asking this question? Because it’s awkward and I’m old now, so I’m no longer interested in shouldering the burden of others’ regrets when they’ve asked a dumb question. Yes, I have a job and guess what– unless you’re matching what they pay me to act normal for 40 hours a week then all bets are off for this conversation.

But of course she didn’t get the clue, so I decided to do my submissive wife thing and look at Alex to answer every question on my behalf.

Boring Human: “So where do you two live?”

Me: *looks at Alex*

Alex: “We live in Denver.”

Boring Human, not getting the point: “Sure, but what area?”

Me: *looks at Alex*

Alex: “South.”

I wanted to steeple my fingers and ask this lady what her goals were for the conversation. [Read more…]

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I spent $1.25 on a stick because this is who I am now

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Last weekend Alex was sick with what he calls “The Gwyneth Paltrow Diet” aka the trots. When he finally felt a bit better we decided to get out of the house for some low key fun, not realizing we were about to enter– and win– the Bougie Olympics.

We went to Stanley Marketplace aka a gentrified aircraft factory that now houses restaurants and shops that cater to people with very very very specific tastes. Like only serving biscuit based entrees or threadbare t-shirts on clearance for $90. To be fair, I was totally into it. Sometimes you just need to drink beer out of a mason jar while two nineteen year old girls in the next booth discuss their meditation practice.  

After our biscuit dinner we perused the shops. Confession: I like buying woo woo stuff just as much as I like making fun of it (which is A LOT) so when Alex held up a little glass jar full of playground wood chips and said “this costs $39” I was like “let me take a closer look.”

Apparently these wood chips were slivers of holy wood that bring good fortune when burned– if you’ve read any of my travel stories then you know I’ll buy almost anything that combines fire and good fortune. But $39 seemed a bit steep and honestly I’m not sure I need an entire jar of good fortune because life’s traumas and misfortunes are how stories are born and I wouldn’t want to jeopardize that.  

But guess what. [Read more…]

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New Years Day will always remind me of the worst thing

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aussa lorens sexual assault

I know it’s cliche and basic but I’m hopelessly beholden to the charm of a New Year and the promise it brings. There’s nothing I want to believe in more than fresh starts and renewed thoughts of who I might become. I live for dividing lines of Before and After and love that striking clock, like ta da! Clean slate, if you want it.

But New Years also reminds me of something else. Another night, years ago, when the clock struck midnight and there was no Auld Lang Syne or tolerable thought beyond the noise of a train passing near The Hovel. I focused so thoroughly on that sound, as though it were a portkey that could lift me up and out of a room where something was happening that I couldn’t stop.

When it was over, all I wanted to know was what time it was– before or after midnight? A trail of bruises was forming all over my body, but if it was before midnight then I could push them back into the previous year, like something to leave behind and sweep under the rug as before.

I’m pretty sure it was after midnight, though. Because from that point on I’d crossed a new line into a darker sort of after that I’d never fully escape. Not really.

I think people imagine sexual assault victims as looking over their shoulder in an alley or stuffed into the back of a murder van, which is fair. But for me, I was in my own $450/month “house” with my dog in the backyard and my cell phone in the other room.

My friend Sars texted me about an hour afterwards. She was jet-lagged from a delayed flight and knew I’d still be awake.

“Apparently a volcano erupted in The Philippines,” she wrote. “It threw the whole flight off. Can I stop by?”

I wadded my ruined clothing into a ball and shoved it in the corner of my closet, a lie already forming on my lips.

“Sure,” I texted. “Come over.”

I’d showered by the time she got there and I wouldn’t go to the hospital for a few more days. By then the truth had transformed itself into something far more palatable. The sort of thing you can convince yourself to live with– at least for a little while. [Read more…]

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I’ve officially left my mark on the internet

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I have fairly simple goals for this earth-dwelling life. I’d like to experience everything that interests me, see the entire world and how other humans live in it, and basically do whatever I want almost all the time. But sometimes the world gives you an accomplishment you didn’t foresee wanting, though clearly couldn’t have lived without once it happens.

Such as having a really successful tweet.

Yes, I know, most of my professional colleagues are like “I got published in such and such fancy journal” or “I just got a grant for one miiiiillion dollars,” and all my writer friends are like “check out this kickass byline” and “my book topped the NYT bestsellers list” but I’m like HOLD MY BEER because this thing got like 2k retweets, and many of them from heroes like Jessica Valenti, Margaret Cho, and Amanda Seales. 


[Read more…]

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So I ran into my (former) a-hole boss at Whole Foods last week

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It wasn’t even a dark and stormy night– it was just the night we were supposed to eat whatever Hello Fresh meal we’d replaced with picheezitsa earlier in the week. But by the time Alex got home I was waiting in the doorway, ready to pounce and writhing with desire because there was only one thing I wanted in that moment:

Uniekass Robusto gouda from Whole Foods.

I’ll skip the next 25 minutes of seemingly inconsequential decisions– turning right on red, tying my shoe, pausing for a sneeze– but the evidence shows clear malicious intent on the part of the universe, because within five paces of entering Whole Foods I locked eyes on none other than My (former) Asshole Boss. 

I stopped dead in my tracks and bent my knees as though I could suddenly be like “adios, bitches!” then sprout wings, blast through the ceiling, and soar to freedom.

But he’d already spotted me. I was in his thrall and like a heat seeking missile he headed straight for us. And we all know why. Because this was the moment he’d been waiting for and the opportunity to have what he’d asked for a thousand times. He was finally going to meet the object of his obsession.

Alex.

Everything went slo-mo. Clouds covered the moon and birds stopped singing as I looked at Alex with terror, telepathically communicating a single word: “RUN”

But it was too late. My (former) Asshole Boss sauntered over with a huge grin on his face and held his hand out to Alex.

“I’ve heard so much about you.”

Except he hasn’t. I don’t talk about my personal life at work– especially not with my bosses. This was always a source of professional tension because apparently I’m the only married woman in the entire world who doesn’t complain about her husband. And why would I, when Alex is clearly a god among men? He doesn’t pander (one of my least favorite human qualities) or make any effort to disguise his disinterest in foul humans, which meant he stood there with the most “die in a fire” facial expression I’ve ever seen. His body was angled so far in the opposite direction that he almost looked double jointed.

But My (former) Asshole Boss was never one to pick up on social cues. Here’s what anyone with a soul would’ve realized: It’s Friday night, I’m wearing a hoodie that unsuccessfully conceals my lack of a bra, and all I want to do is spend $45 on cheese so I can go home to my couch. [Read more…]

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This is why a restraining order is more than “just a piece of paper”

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I wrote an essay for Scary Mommy last week, titled It’s Easier To Buy a Gun Than Get a Restraining Order, and That’s The Problem. They have incredible reach due to their 3.5 million Facebook followers so I fully expected the dregs of society to crawl outta their momma’s basements and cheeto-pound their keyboards in fits of rage because women aren’t supposed to do things like speak. But that’s not what happened. Instead, I had to read– over and over– this same stupid sentence:  

“A restraining order is just a piece of paper.”

Where did this broken record of victim-blaming garbage even come from? It’s one of those Actually Not True ideas that’s seeped its way into our collective consciousness, like the belief that Napoleon was short (false) or you can’t touch a baby bird or its mom will reject it (also false).

And that wasn’t even the point of my article. It was saying yes, previous domestic violence convictions often signal an increased likelihood of committing a large act of violence (like a public shooting) but the number of men who actually abuse women is mammoth compared to the number who are convicted for it, which means we should make it harder for people to get ahold of guns, because just screening (often without success) for previous domestic violations is clearly not enough to identify people with a propensity for going into a public place and killing as many people as possible.

Yet somehow everyone decided this was a great time to go YEEHAW get yerself a gun cuz the gubment ain’t gon protect you with a piece of paper.

Humans: Please, go on the internet. It is called the World Wide Web for a reason, and with it you can clue yourself into what appears to be a little known fact: the United States does not exist in a vacuum. This isn’t Planet ‘Murica where everything beyond our borders is a mysterious wasteland. There are dozens of other developed countries you can compare statistics with. Statistics are part of maths, and the maths don’t lie– they let us do things like walk around on the moon.

But here I am complaining about broken records, and I’m becoming one: because there isn’t a single person who will read this who hasn’t heard the exact same arguments before. So clearly there’s a reason you don’t want to believe it. Maybe you should just skip the next part and go to my FAQ, I wrote them for people just like you.  

Here’s the thing. I get that if someone decides to hurt you, “damn the consequences,” it won’t matter whether you have a restraining order against them. THAT IS LITERALLY WHY I BOUGHT A GUN, HUMANS. But please, for the love of God, don’t tell a woman who is being abused that it isn’t worth her trouble to seek legal protection. I shouldn’t have to strap up like I’m living in a war zone just because our country is full of fragile ego’d people who are terrified of facing their own insignificance by not being able to carry their very own “but I could kill you if I wanted” trump card.

And don’t try to to tell me, someone who benefited from getting a restraining order, that it wasn’t worth it. Here’s why it’s more than just a piece of paper: [Read more…]

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