Instead of writing about risk-taking, I thought I would share some risks that I took today. Here they are:

1. mailing application for a fellowship with the Tomales Bay Writer’s Workshops.

2. sending a $1,000 check to my bankruptcy attorney.

3. letting people see what I really look like, sans makeup. Even mascara.

4. sharing a story that I wrote with my cousin Alicia.

5. writing about bankruptcy publicly, albeit briefly, (see number 2).

What risks have you taken today?

After my post yesterday, I began to ask myself the question: Why is being home all day so depressing?

It’s a nice home. It has a balcony and when it’s sunny out, nothing is more soothing than sitting out there, thinking, writing, reading and writing some more.

Being home also means that I can multitask, which gives me an odd (but very real) high. Laundry runs while I’m at the computer and sometimes I take 15 minute cleaning/organizing breaks. Even 15 minute napping breaks.

So what is it that makes me so depressed?

When I was a part of starting The Urban Hive last year, my friend Robin was one of our early members (and contest winner). In her words, having a workspace that wasn’t at home gave her a sense of legitimacy with her work. Legitimacy. She felt justified in her pursuit of a career as a literary consultant and editor.

Do I need legitimacy? Maybe. But I don’t feel like I need to justify how I spend my time.

What is it then?

Loneliness? Some days I don’t speak out loud until 6 p.m. when my boyfriend and I talk about what to have for dinner. But loneliness is more about a longing for deep personal connection through relationships.

So, isolation, then? Just a lack of people (which I’ve written about before) and company? People to talk to?

Absence of people definitely contributes to the depression. But it’s more than that. I think it has more to do with the absence of sharing. There’s no one for me to tell about what I’m working on. No one to share ideas and bounce them around. No one to give me feed back. No one knows where I am, what I’m doing. No one knows that I sometimes get stuck staring out the window. Or that one day last week I couldn’t force myself to get out of bed before 10:30 a.m.

And since no one’s around, does any one even care? Does it really matter that I put my pajama’s back on after I shower? Or that I wear my slippers all day? Or that sometimes I eat ice cream for lunch? I don’t really, but if I did, does it matter? To whom?  If those things don’t matter, then my work must not matter. Because, who is there to care about my work or what I have to say?

It’s like I’m in hiding. Like I’m not taking the risk of sharing my work with the world.

I’m back to working at home. Just temporarily. But even temporarily, working from home is downright depressing. I don’t care what anyone says, it sucks. Really. Here is what today has looked like so far (see if just reading it doesn’t make you depressed):

7:30 a.m. wake up, make coffee, oatmeal and toast.

7:45 drink coffee and eat oatmeal and toast.

8:15 check and reply to email.

9:00 make 3 phone calls.

9:45 check off phone calls and necessary emails from to-do list.

9:47 stare out window wondering what to do next.

9:55 take a walk and listen to This American Life.

11:00 return home and eat a banana.

11:05 shower.

11:10 put pajama’s back on (yes, I really did this).

11:15 wash dishes, take out trash. Also make toasted bagel with peanut butter.

11:30 eat bagel while checking email.

11:32 realize the house is too quiet and start iTunes on shuffle. It’s Nelly Furtado right now.

11:45 blow dry hair.

11:55 get distracted by clutter on dresser and put stray jewelry back in appropriate places. Also fold and put away laundry.

12:05 p.m. back at computer writing this blog post and convincing self to spend one hour writing before checking email again.

12:06 realize that people reading this may wonder why I’m working at home and not somewhere else (a question that deserves a whole separate blog post, which maybe I’ll write some day soon).

12:11 reread post and revise intro.

12:15 stare out the window again. Scratch eyebrow while thinking about whether or not to publish this post.

12:19 ignore phone call from an 8oo number. Reread post one more time.

12:24 appalled at amount of “work” that’s been done.

12:25 publish post anyway.

Er, I should say, why I don’t own the house I live in (because I do have a mortgage. Two, actually.).

During the past several years, I have made conscious decisions about where I live, work and play. Living and working are two closely connected life activities because, well, everyone knows you have to work to earn money to pay for where you live. So, I choose to live with two roommates so that I don’t have to pay that much for where I live, which in turn means I don’t have to make as much money as other people (read: people with a mortgage) to pay for where I live.

Today I read this post from Seth Godin, who is quoted by every blogger in the universe. But today I don’t care, because this part was rather affirming:

If you have a steady job, matching your mortgage to your income isn’t dumb. But if you are a freelancer, an entrepreneur or a big thinker, a mortgage can wipe you out. That’s because the pressure to make your monthly nut is so big you won’t take the risks and do the important work you need to do to actually get ahead. When you have a choice between creating a sure-thing average piece of work or a riskier breakthrough, the mortgage might be just enough to persuade you to hold back.

Being a risk-taker is not easy. Sometimes (like today) all you want to do is lay in bed. You get up at 7:15 and realize that the risks you’re pursing are completely, utterly, effing scary, and you crawl back into bed and sleep for another 3 hours. And even when you wake up, you just lay there for another 45 minutes before dragging your sorry self out of bed to do something productive. Like make coffee.

In those moments, the most important thing you can do is be honest. Be honest with yourself. Don’t deceive yourself by saying in your head, “well, yesterday was a long day. I had an emotionally-draining meeting that went until 10:30 p.m. and didn’t eat until after the meeting and then didn’t get to bed until 11:30, so I’m just tired.” There’s a difference between being motivated to get shit done in spite of exhaustion and being so overwhelmed by the daunting future you’ve set in motion that you don’t want to face the day. So just call it what it is.

After you are honest with yourself, be honest with those around you. Tell them how you feel and what you’re going through. It doesn’t do any good to treat the people who love you the most like crap when you’re in a pissy mood and they have no clue what the hell is wrong with you. And maybe you have no clue what the hell is wrong with you either. If that’s the case, say so. Own your confusion and depressive tendencies (as I affectionately call them), and call it what it is: some part of your subconscious self has convinced your conscious self that you can avoid everything by just staying in bed.

If you get up the guts to take the risk of just asking, might as well go one step further and ask boldly. Think about it: if you ask someone if you can borrow money, let’s say for a business loan, and the answer is yes, are you really going to sit there and ask for a measly couple thousand dollars?

Be bold.

If you’re going to ask, as for as much as you possibly can. Ask for the moon. Remember the worst thing that can happen? The person says no? And then what have you lost? (Nothing.) And so what if the answer is no? You negotiate down from your original request. But if you ask for a loan of say $10k, and the yes comes all-too-quickly, you know right away that you asked for too little.

Sometimes risk-taking means you make a bold decision in answer to your own question.

Example: I have been contemplating not teaching in the fall, mostly because it’s a lot of work for not a lot of money. But I’ve been thinking about it more and more lately. Every time I sit at my desk to “work,” I’m spending most of my time prepping for class, reading for class, responding to essays for class, and very little of my time on projects that I actually want to be working on — like building a bigger audience for these monologues.

So I inquired about fall classes, and had told myself that unless two specific classes were offered, I wouldn’t accept any. The answer came back. Two classes were offered. But neither was one that I had agreed with myself to take. I emailed back saying, “I’m more suited for these other two courses, are either of those available?” The answer came back again. “No. But I have this instead.”

I boldly took the risk of saying, “I think I’ll pass this time.”