Observations of a Sometimes-Stiletto Wearing but Mostly Fleeced-Out Working Mom on the Outskirts of Manhattan

Introduction I used to have a glamorous high paying advertising job in Manhattan until I resigned to become a platinum award-winning rock star and best selling novelist. This was my dream. I gave myself one year, which seemed aggressive but reasonable especially for a girl who can’t wait five minutes for any thing. The six month check-in went, hmmm, how can I say, shitty. This book is sort of but not really about that. When I resigned I did not see the seam in my beautiful dream. I did not know that it would split apart again and again. Now I spend half my day in flannel pajamas on my olive green chaise with a yummy dark chocolate brown faux-fur throw over my legs, laptop in lap, opening metaphorical Russian dolls to find the dream inside the dream inside the dream. And I have found it. It’s just ninety-seven percent different than I thought. Tonight my husband, Joe, and I will have a date. Yesterday, he unexpectedly bought me a pair of red leather chaps. I don’t ride. This is what this book is about. Today I will go grocery shopping with my two beautiful boys, Leo who is almost four and Finny who is 2 and a half. They will giggle and wiggle and arch until they nearly fall out of the cart trying to capture a wild mango. Tomorrow we will eat it. This is also what this book is about. Three months from now I will be throwing balls off the shores of Nantucket for our golden retrievers Wally (truly ball-obsessed) and Otto (fetches because he knows it’s the right thing to do and because he secretly kind of enjoys it). Four months from now I will put my head on their sleeping bellies and wonder if they are dreaming about yellow tennis balls bobbing in the surf. This too is what this book is about. My name is Kelly. I will be forty, in three months, and I am not afraid. I have perfect blond highlights (two weeks out of every ten), stormy blue-grey-green eyes and an athletic body (more than not) covered in the kind of freckles that don’t connect but conspire to charm. I am very close to perfect except for a small ninety-seven percent sliver. This book is mostly about that. Before We Begin If you prefer the simplicity of an entrée to the diversity of tapas, do not sit down. If you are more inclined to eat a pork chop for dinner than a box of chocolates, do not put your napkin in your lap. This book is about tasting life in the random unexpected places along the way. There will be no consecutive three square meals, no carefully organized pyramid of proportion. But if you are interested in a geometric feast of experiences pick up your fork. Craving predictable linear order? Do the dishes or the laundry or refold all your sweaters at symmetrical right angles and color code by style. It works. If you have a taste for something a bit different, consider this... What if your job was not to painstakingly piece your life together but rather merely to embrace the fluid shifting shapes of its kaleidoscopic complexity? What if softening your gaze could put the world in sharper focus? Goodbye Big Salary in the Big Apple In Search of Baby Blue You can stick with the pantone 365 Caribbean blue of corporate branded sky. Or you can muck your way through the soupy grey green fog of dreams in search of your own small strip of baby blue sky. It is a twisted decision to have to make later in life unless you can see some kind of light at the end of the tunnel. I saw two, until their batteries ran out. My first false start was heart breaking. Through one of my husband’s close friends’ I was given the rare opportunity to work with one of Dave Mathews producers for six months before finding out he was actually a creepy sociopathic flooring salesman funded by his wife. False start number two was quick and slightly less painful. It began with Denise Richards (the real Denise) being interested in my first cd until she (well, actually her executive producer) realized I’d never performed live so didn’t really have a touring schedule lined up nor a fan list longer than my immediate family. Corporate Caribbean blue was looking better and better. But I still had four screenplays, three manuscripts, two unproduced albums and my two beautiful boys, who if I worked for myself I could see all the time. But being more of a ‘both’ than ‘either or’ girl I negotiated working two days from home. I read “Oh The Places You’ll Go” with Leo and Finny on my lap between client huddles and scribbled out chapters when I would have been commuting. But in doing a little of everything I continually accomplished a lot of nothing. And it began wearing me down. But there was the money. Lots of it. And the feeling that someone considers what you’re doing worth paying for. But mostly there was fear. Lots of it. And this question: Do I want to take my life seriously? Not play with it like a fun or clever puppet show but step all the way into it, be it? It’s a question with hundreds of easy and graceful exits. There is the responsible parent exit, the like my lifestyle exit, the laundry list of logical reality-based reasons why it could just never happen. There are bright orange exit signs everywhere. And just one small, non-descript entrance, recognizable only by the soupy grey green sky above it. I had kind of hoped in reflecting on all this that there would have been one big life-altering epiphany arrived at via some cataclysmic event. Would have made it so much more exciting and probably marketable. But the reality is I have been saving money for almost twenty years now to do just this and I knew if I waited much longer I would slowly pour it into greener grass for the backyard and a more sophisticated couch for the living room and other aesthetically pleasing decisions that would make me feel successful and fulfilled and somehow more complete. And just so you don’t get the wrong idea as soon as I make my millions I will be out couch and sod shopping. Just not before the dream. So, in a moment of great clarity and certain insanity I did it. I left my six-figure salary downtown Manhattan office overlooking the Hudson for an unpaid, wifi-challenged suburban coffee shop. Said good-bye to writing for the best creative ad agency in the world with the most talented creative’s in the world to become - a rock star (hermit in pajamas scribbling lyrics on envelope backs), best-selling novelist (recluse pecking out chapters between refills from John the barista) and sought-after screenwriter (crazy person who stares blankly at old scripts hoping they will rewrite themselves). I had three weeks left.