megfowler.com

Yes, yes… Facebook.

If you’re not on it, you probably have a good reason not to be on it (as in PLEASE WILL EVERYONE JUST SHUT UP ABOUT THE DAMN WEBSITE AND GET BACK TO SENDING YOUTUBE LINKS), or you’ve decided that you’re too old or too reclusive to be interested in reconnecting with your entire personal history.

I honestly can’t believe some of the people I’ve come across on this little networking site… people that I wouldn’t have crossed paths with in a jillion years, had I not clicked through the friends lists of friends of friends (and he told two friends, and she told two friends, and so on, and so on…)

It’s pretty magical. I love knowing what people are up to. And overall, here are the top three things they are up to:

1. Getting married.
2. Having babies.
3. Going to grad school

Now, this isn’t EVERYONE, mind you. These are just the people who a) used to go to college or camp with me; or b) are within five years of my age.

This could easily leave me feeling a little behind. Well, not really. I haven’t felt anyone’s behind all day, let alone a little one.

But it’s strange to see all the wedding photos and the baby photos and say things to myself like,

“THAT’S who you married? That’s AWESOME.”
“Your child looks exactly like you.”
“Wow, you put a photo of the birth on the internet?”

and my favourite…

“You went to Saskatchewan for your honeymoon?”

(Not that I wouldn’t do the SAME THING.

Regina is for lovers.)

And the curiosity isn’t one-way, either. People send me messages every day asking what I’m up to, if I’ve “found someone” (like he’s hiding behind trees or shelves of clothing in stores, just waiting for me to notice a flash of movement and slip a ring on his finger) or if I’m “happy.”

Well, yes, I’m happy.

Granted, I’m happier when I have coffee in my system, happier when I’m dancing, happier when there are plans for sushi, happier when words are coming properly through my fingers onto the page, happier when my friends and family are happy, happier when my hair isn’t frizzed out like a Brillo pad with Vancouver humidity. But yeah, happy. Generally.

That doesn’t mean things are perfect or ideal, or that I don’t have entire bucketfuls of growing to do (I’m going for 5′6″!), or that I wouldn’t mind spotting some cute boy hiding behind the clearance rack at Banana Republic.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t feel a twinge of something when I see pictures of dear friends looking about to pop with impending parenthood.

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to go back and get my Masters in somethingorother more applicable to my life’s vocation than, say, A Comparative Study of Pre-War Germany and Post-Cold War Russia, With Consideration Given to Alternate Theories of Commerce.

That doesn’t mean I don’t wish I’d gotten John Legend tickets before they’d sold out.

It just means I’m on my way.

But how do you express that in a Facebook status bar, in 30 words or less, or through a small collection of photos that don’t have wedding cakes or scrunchy new baby faces or house renos in them?

I guess you can’t. And that’s fine.

I don’t need to be in the same place that everyone else is in to feel some sort of progress in my world.

I went through that angst in my twenties — that odd sensation when you realize your mother has made wedding dresses for half your friends and you’ve emceed more weddings than you remember attending and you’ve bought new sheets and towels for everyone you know except yourself.

In fact, your towels and sheets suck. Why do your sheets and towels suck?

Now, in my thirties, I think… well, Girl? You better just get over it. Even when it’s hard, just keep walking.

And get your own damn towels.

My plan might take shape a little differently and on a slightly less accelerated timeline than other people I know, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to be less content or satisfied in the end. In fact, all this waiting is giving me a chance to learn to communicate effectively, to figure out what I REALLY want, to become slightly less dependent on caffeine for personality development, to work out my health issues, and most of all, to finish the Wedding Ideas Scrapbook I’ve been working on for 15 years.

I’M KIDDING.

I DON’T HAVE ONE OF THOSE.

PEOPLE WITH PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES DON’T NEED SCRAPBOOKS.

STILL KIDDING.

No, all I know regarding my wedding is the following:

1. No cake
2. No long speeches
3. Outside
4. Quick ceremony
5. Long party
6. Even longer honeymoon

Oh yes… and the groom? I’m going to love him like the whole world depended on it.

Because it will.

What with him being a superhero or secret agent.

Or, you know, an accountant.

I don’t really care.

So here is to you, Facebook, for bringing me back to old friends, for making me think through my own priorities, and for making me frustrated that I can’t express my marital status as having a complicated relationship with Justin Timberlake.

Because it IS complicated.

He just doesn’t know it yet.

I beat Meg Ryan!

Why so quiet?

1. I wonder if anyone else has ever cut their shoulder open with an earring? And where did my neck go?

2. Passport, passport, passport. Must get. Now. And the first person to say ANYTHING doomsday-ish about getting a passport in Vancouver at this point gets a smack in the head. That includes you, Darren. I can get to Malta to do it, if need be. No, wait, I can’t. Passport! NOT A WORD.

3. Yesterday, my nails looked fine. Polish perfect. Today? Chip/peel explosion. Horrible. I look like a first grader trying out Tinkerbell Bo-Po for the first time.

4. I’m slowly realizing that it’s possible to pull your hair back too hard.

5. Croissant. Croissant. Croissant.

6. Why does my phone get SO smudgy? Every time I pull it out of my purse, I think I must be walking around with the dirtiest hands on the planet, yet I’m OCD and tend to wash them too often. So what gives? Is it the hand lotion? Am I overproducing evil little microbes? WHAT?

7. How DOES the Dow Jones work?

8. I am SO THRILLED at the sunshine outside. SOOO gorgeous. And our window plants in my department (Lola, Mary Catherine, Trevor, Alejandro, Roberto) seem to like it, too. Also? I feed them coffee every day. You should SEE how they grow. I wish it worked like that for me. I’ve stalled out at 5′5″, and that’s still not tall enough to not twirl around like a mobile when I have to hold the upper bar on the commuter bus. That sentence just made me want to kick my own ass.

9. I need to create a budget and get my ass organized. Well, not my actual ass. It defies organization. But trying to set budgets generally makes me squirrelly. I have no trouble keeping track of what’s in my bank account, and I never bounce cheques or anything like that, but I need to save/allot/prioritize/plan. Anyone know of a good book/system/piece of software that works on a Mac?

10. My eyebrows grow like a teenage boy. Nothing nothing nothing AN INCH nothing nothing TWO INCHES nothing. Meh. How do you keep up with that? I’m a devoted shaper/plucker, but they seem to want to rumble with me. Not that my eyebrows actually grow two inches long. But you know what I mean.

Because who doesn’t like a fluffy and useless moment now and then?

I mean, that IS why you come here, isn’t it?

My mom DID stop sending out the cheques, right?

(Yes, “cheques”.)

Just for the hell of it, tell me:

1. Do you read any celebrity blogs, websites or magazines, or do those things make you want to claw at your own eyeballs and eat a spoonful of Comet?

2. If yes, are you embarrassed or proud? And were you aware that I consistently misspell “embarrassed”?

3. Why do you think our culture is so obsessed with celebrity? Have we always been? Have you always been?

4. Do your friends feel the same way about celebrities that you do?

5. Do you use any celebrities as style inspirations? If so, which ones?

6. Do you have any desire to be famous?

7. Do you like tiny dogs?

8. Do you believe that wealth and fame are justification enough for the press printing anything they want about celebrities?

9. Have you ever had an odd brush with celebrity?

10. If you could steal any celebrity’s life and make it your own (not that I have any clue how you’d do that, but hey… go with it), who would you spend a day being?

I mean, REALLY.

I have these giant sunglasses on that take up half my face. I like wearing them because they make me feel as though I have a small gazebo built around my head, all primed for a tray of lemonade and an afternoon nap.

Sadly, this never occurs.

What DOES occur is incredible pressure behind my ears when I push the sunglasses back on my head after entering my home or a building. The arms press in hard behind my lobes and steadily create a sort of low-grade headache.

Do I think to take them off?

No.

Do I think to buy a pair that doesn’t do acutorture?

No.

I just keep on wearing my Personal Gazebo ™ and suffering as soon as I step indoors and adjust their position.

Maybe this is why all the starlets are slowly going insane. Or quickly, as the case may be.

Maybe this is why they don’t eat, or why they date Brody Jenner, or why they shave their heads, or why they forget to put on underwear, or why they let Rachel Zoe dress them, or why they wear high-waisted pants.

It’s a theory.

Me?

I just drink more coffee and go, “Ow. Ow! What IS that?”

Why don’t I listen to Jamiroquai anymore?

Why don’t I eat lemons anymore?

Why don’t I wear skirts anymore?

Why don’t I buy lipstick anymore?

I often think I’d be more normal and orderly if I had a pet or a child, but instead I have a laptop, and he seems to need me just about as often.

I love macadamia nuts, cashews and pistachios, but I hardly ever eat them. I think of them as the “expensive nuts.”

Why do people insist on trying to turn into crosswalks when there are clearly people there? I don’t mean getting into position. I mean, I have to WALK AROUND YOU to cross the street. GET OUT OF MY WAY.

I think that I want a fancy washer and drier more than I want a fancy anything else.

I am wearing a ring that keeps getting in the way of my typing speed, but I keep it on nonetheless.

I had a dream last night that I owned a large house. Each floor of my large house had a “water room” of a different kind: one floor had a waterfall; one floor had a lap pool; one floor had a hot tub; one floor had a fountain. When I would try and sleep, the noise of all my different water rooms kept me awake. But in order to relax again, I would go spend time in one of the rooms. The irony of this does not escape me.

I now own four plants at work that I have not killed.

How does one begin to build a shoe collection? I feel it must be time, but I have no idea where to begin. I have excellent taste in shoes, I just can’t commit.

Hey, girl.

How are you? I feel like we haven’t talked much lately.

I can tell you’re thinking about a lot of stuff, but it seems that you’re keeping it close for now.

And while that’s cool, I just wanted to check in to make sure you were moving forward, and not stuck in some sort of Meg-shaped holding pattern.

You can get like that, you know.

Stuck.

On thoughts, on people, on regrets, on worries, on ideas, on memories.

I don’t really understand why you do it, other than the fact that you tend to relive mistakes until they’re burned into your brain deeply enough to terrify you into not making them the next time.

Then you make them again.

Because that’s you, honey.

You like to create some sort of wacky consistency in your life by reintroducing the same damn stress into your world over and over.

Procrastinate? YES! Skip doctor’s appointments? YES! Put off difficult conversations? YES! Deny yourself experiences you’ve been longing to have? YES! Worry about how other people will react? YES! Hesitate on big moves? YES!

It’s the craziest thing.

You dance and sing and caffeinate and spin through life with a grin, but the whole damn time, you’re frozen on the inside, waiting to be confident enough to act on stuff that actually matters. Stuff that might actually change your life.

I watch you do it. It hurts me sometimes, actually.

Why don’t you want to be the same girl all the way through?

Why don’t you want to be as confident about making a plan and sticking to it as you are about bursting into song on a street corner?

Don’t let your heart break because you feel the need to pretend that this is enough. Or that you’re satisfied with halfway.

GET the enough. GET the more. Stop worrying about it and do it.

Then come tell me about it.

Because it’s been a while.

And I miss you.

Love,

Meg