Dirty Ponytails and Mint Leaves

I’m in San Francisco this weekend, and it makes me wonder: Why don’t I live in San Francisco? I’m in a café sitting on a ratted couch while a lady in a tie-dyed shirt strums a guitar. The place is packed with patrons straight out of Reality Bites. There are a few dogs, lots of laptops, and plenty of fancy coffee brewed one cup at a time. The tables are communal, and strangers make eyes at one another while pretending to study. All the furniture is from the Salvation Army and as dirty as the baristas’ ponytails. I can’t help feeling that I really fit in here. Not that I’m dirty. It’s just that everyone fits in here. Nobody’s propped against the wall asking ‘Who the hell are you?’ with their eyes like they do at my favorite café in Venice. Nobody in here is wearing make-up. And people are actually reading books and not scripts.

It is so refreshing to eavesdrop on people who aren’t talking about The Bachelor and their recent failed audition. Although, that’s not fair. They could very well be talking about that here, but I can’t tell because the tie-dyed lady is going to town on her vocal chords with her rendition of “On Broadway.”

I’m clapping and tearing up at the beauty of her ability to just do what she loves in a cafe all day without the anxiety of making money from it. I’m imagining a life here, a Victorian walk-up down the street with wood floors and lots of windows. The parties I’d have. The books I’d write from this very cafe. The dirty ponytail I’d wear. The cool hipster glasses I’d get.

Uh oh.
I just saw a barista pull a mint leaf from a real plant and put it in a tea. Maybe this place is actually too hip for me.

It seems like I do this with every place I visit. It’s so much more fun to imagine how great life could be if only I moved. If only I had more money. If only I could get a better job. If only I lived in Bali or Laos or Mumbai. If only. Everywhere I go I imagine a life there that would be so perfect and so much better than whatever setup I have at home. I compare.
But I think my goal is to be happy with what I already have. Imagine that.

For most of my life that’s been a scary thought. That would be settling. That would be deciding that what I have is enough. And how could a shitty apartment with a popcorn ceiling be enough? How could adult acne and a job I don’t want and a coffee addiction be enough?
Fear!
I’ve finally realized that I’m always waiting for the calm to come. Waiting, waiting, waiting. As soon as I have my dream house and my dream job and a relationship all sorted out, THEN I can settle down to the thought that I am enough.
But how long is that going to take? If I keep waiting, I’ll finally feel whole right about the time my tits are rounding the corner to my knees.

Instead, I have to trust the process. If I know I’m on the right path, then every part about it is enough. We don’t buy puzzles already put together. We buy them because the act of putting them together is fun. (When I say ‘we,’ I mean me and my nerdy friends who have been known to delight in matching sky colors to form the outline of a Tuscan landscape. Ok, it was just me and no friends were involved.)

For now, my puzzle piece is a cute little apartment in Venice that, yes, has a popcorn ceiling and I love it anyway even though it’s not in San Francisco or India or Bali.

Uh oh.

Tie-dyed just sang ‘Landslide’ and some other man/woman (80% sure she’s a woman) sang along from across the cafe. This is riveting entertainment. Nobody is that confident in Venice unless they’re homeless.
I really love it here. So, maybe… maybe just this one time, everything I just wrote is bullshit and I do have to move. Just this one time.

*Note: This mural sits in a random alley in SF. There’s a baby exiting the vagina of a woman who seems to have had her face darkened and ruined by pregnancy. This is why I fit in in San Francisco. This is why I’m never having babies.