Newsletter #19: I Have a New Favorite Holiday
Lupercalia; The Roman holiday of sex, wolves, and breast feeding. And how my partner and I worked together to keep my OCD from ruining it.
Note 1: I wrote this right after Valentine’s Day and tricked myself into thinking it wasn’t ready to post and so I kept avoiding it. So I know it’s a bit late now, but I really liked the story and still wanted to share it with you!
I have a new favorite holiday.
On Valentines Day this year Robert was working during the day and had a show at night, so we planned to celebrate the following day. The 15th of February happens to coincide with the Roman holiday of Lupercalia, the sensual festival of sex, wolves, and breast feeding. (Guess which 2 out of the 3 we partook in 😉) ((Just kidding we were just wolves.))
Though we divorced our celebration from most of the original connotations of the ancient holiday (like most holidays we celebrate today), we used the date as an excuse for romantic adventure!!
Even though my OCD was DETERMINED to sabotage.
Sometimes my anxiety presents its self as hyper focus, the fixing of the problem, a horrible feeling of urgency and the attempt to try and prevent some inevitable bad thing. And it presents itself in ways that I don’t exactly notice affect other people.
So on the morn’ of Lupercalia, I’m rushing around my apartment trying to get ready, trying to get ready as quickly as possible so that we can BEGIN our beautiful date. Almost sweating with focus as I puton my make up in the bathroom and Robert tries to show me something cool on the computer, a distraction to my imperative mission of getting us out the door so we can BEGIN enjoying each others’ company!! A pause in my momentum obviously means failure and disaster so I snap at him to please let me focus, a reaction I’ve unfortunately had more than once.
And yet on this fine Lupercalia morning, I was miraculously able to stop myself. Take a breath. And say to myself, “Wait. What is really going on here?” And so I was able to notice inside myself the height of my anxiety, and articulate to him too.
I told him, holidays make me really stressed out.
I’ve felt this year like I had barely participated or celebrated in any holidays at all because emotional stuff kept coming up for me and he and I finally had this day that was planned and that I had been looking forward to and I just wanted to fully experience what it feels like to celebrate and I was so scared of something happening that would ruin it.
I was so scared that I would ruin it. And I burst in tears. Of course.
And Robert reminded me that us spending time with each other is actually inherently fun lol and that he’s here for me and reassured me that even if the day does not go perfectly according to plan, he would not be mad at me.
Rushing around with the obsessive focus of needing to get out the door so the fun and romance could BEGIN, meant I had forgotten that the person I was planning on having that fun and romance with, was already right next to me, literally trying to have fun with me NOW.
On the train that day, a very sweet and cool photographer came up to us with an enormous dope looking camera, after I had watched him be turned away from a few other couples on the train. He said he had a project where he was just taking photos of couples on the train for venmo donations and of course like the couples that turned him away I assumed there was a catch. But he took our photo, gave us the polaroid and his venmo name, and then left the train car just saying to only venmo him if we felt called to.
And it turned out to be one of my favorite photos of Robert and I and the first physical photo we have of us together in years!
I couldn’t believe how lucky we were. We OF COURSE donated to the project and I highly encourage you to check out his insta @memory_peddler
Although it had been clear skies before, when we surfaced from the subway on Roosevelt Island, it was SNOWING!!!!
Beautiful snow fall diffusing our view of the Manhattan skyline.
Robert took me to the cat sanctuary at the bottom of the island where the cats were living their most mischievous lives in and out of nicely painted cat-sized apartment complexes.
We strolled in the snow passing married duck couples floating in the East River also celebrating their Lupercalia.
To warm up and decide our next moves, we visited the Roosevelt Island Public Library. We sat in big chairs and Robert brought me over two of my favorite anime’s mangas which I hadn’t yet read.
I got to hold Skip and Loafer, a manga that has such a beautiful and realistic depiction of young friendships, in my hands and god I always forget how much of a difference it makes.
I love my anime and I feel so much from them, but there’s something about holding those characters and their story in my hands that makes me feel even more present and connected to them. Discovering what’s next for them frame by frame makes me go through the emotions WITH them.
I am the WORST person to sit next to and read quietly because, oh man, I really just can’t read quietly when I love a story. Thankfully Robert didn’t mind me (that much) when I gasped at the intrigue, and gripped onto his sleeve, and cried in the public library.
We took the tram back to Manhattan, basically a roller coaster ride over the East River and through sky scrapers, I highly recommend.
My OCD had been so manageable since the morning, but now came the real test.
It was time to make our way to a dinner spot I had been meaning to check out. So of course, if it didn’t go perfectly, I would be to blame and I would ruin what had so far been a wonderful holiday.
I NEVER wait in line, something I thought was pretty typical. I’ve always been like “Yeah, it’s totally normal that if there’s a line and wait time of more than like 10-15 min you just go somewhere else. Like why would I wait in line for and over hyped NYC experience, when I’m sure there’s something with just as a great quality down the street?” I had thought we had all kinda agreed on that. Maggie who’s “we?” I dunno, COOL people???
But we arrived at Kenka, the very hip Japanese street food spot on St. Marks and faced my worst fear. Although we were “next” in line, no one told us how LONG the wait would BE. Which meant I couldn’t make an informed decision about whether it would be worth it to wait it out or if we should leave. If I KNEW the wait time was under a half hour, okay rad I’ll set a little timer for myself and my nervous system would chill out and I’d be able to engage with my boyfriend in line while we wait. If I KNEW the wait time would be an hour “okay chill no prob, let’s go somewhere next door that I’m sure will also be great!” But the NOT KNOWING.
I completely dissociated into a cycle of “should we leave should we go should we leave should we go what if we go and it would have only been five minutes longer that we would have needed to wait what if we stay and we are in purgatory for an hour when we could have already been having fun and sitting somewhere else and in either decision lies my fault for making this a bad time.”
(Also please know there’s literally nothing wrong with waiting line or how the restaurant was, obviously the place is POPPIN, this is all just MY personal anxiety and baggage.)
Sweet Robert tried to keep me present, tried to remind me that when we are together it is fun, but gosh was I having a hard time. Miraculously, maybe we waited for 15 minutes, and then we got to be seated in one of the coolest restaurants I’ve ever been to in NYC.
We sat at one of the small tables surrounded by Japanese porn, a few tables away from a plexi glass room with a BDSM mannequin hanging from the ceiling, we drank cheap yet delicious beer, I devoured what I had really been craving for weeks, okonomiyaki, and my nervous system finally settled. We made it and it was all okay.
And then Robert said to me, “You did such a good job planning, today.” And I cried. Again. Of course.
Who knew that was a compliment I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear?
With a lot of really wonderful and patient help, I got through celebrating a holiday. I got to practice being present, I got to practice being flexible and receiving joy that I had not anticipated. I got to practice things not going according to plan, and it all being okay anyway. I got to practice getting out of my own way.
We shall see you next year, Lupercalia.
How might you, Dear Reader, enjoy the act of celebrating a day without putting pressure on yourself for it to be perfect?
I’ve hit 200 subscribers on Substack!
Thank you so much to everyone who has sent my newsletters to their friends and to my friends on Substack who recommend me on their pages!
This Substack has been such a creative reprieve for me to process what’s happened in my life over the past two years and has been such help in allowing me to make my writing a practice. I’ve written posts I really am proud of.
Check out my top posts!
And check out my friends on Substack!
- Insight into the entertainment industry, creative entrepreneurialism, voiceover, and a dash of neuroscience. by Robert Price (of the above story Robert Price hehe) - Poems of new and old - Writing about the writing life, astrology, and pop culture. - Introspective words for you to consume. - Unfiltered truths about healing and what it takes to get there.
I’m writing a short film
I had started seriously writing this thing, a short film thing, a year ago but almost totally abandoned it. I remembered it as a barely fleshed out idea but upon recently returning to my notes I realized that the script is almost completely realized, at least in first draft form!
And it was much better written than I remember! The jokes were good. Even some of the weirder stuff I had written as a placeholder was good.
And it’s really cool how sometimes we are just too close or too in the middle of what we are writing to know how good it is and its only with a break and with fresh eyes that we are able to see what it really is, as an outsider would. And its good!
Thank goodness for my friend, director/writer/producer, Alex Church Gonzales, who invited me to do a casual reading of the script at their variety show, Basement Bumz on April 15th which has given me an actual deadline to get the draft to a readable state.
There will be other very cool performances as well! Check out the event at this link if you’d like to come thru!
If you attend, you’ll find out just how relevant this gif is to what I’m writing 🙂
I’m coaching solo shows for PIT’s Solocom ‘25!
Two of my clients will be presenting brand new material at Solocom in April!
Little Stars by MICHELLE RODINO-COLOCINO (April 13th, 2pm)
Little Stars explores the question, “can anyone be as constant as the stars?”
Cost of Kissing by LISA WHITTEN (April 13th, 6pm)
From the death of Mr. Pinkie to the loss of Pony, Cost of Kissing follows Lisa on her journey of tongue-twisters as she tries to figure out if the butterflies are worth it.
They are both incredibly talented storytellers so come see what they’ve been working on and get inspiration for your solo show! 😊
Stuff to Check Out
Advice from The Field* (Ultimate Frisbee Edition)
*(A new segment where I get my friends to give advice from their jobs and interests.)
“‘Sometimes you just gotta throw a hammer1 into the wind…’ Because hammers are like pretty unreliable throws so that would kinda just be like ‘fuck it.’”
- Hanna F
Show
Abolish Everything is now on Nebula! - Your favorite live debate show is now on streaming on Nebula!! This is HUGE.
Open Mic/Jam
Speakeasy Shakespeare: Beware the Ides - Bring a monologue or scene from Shakespeare to perform in NYC’s warmest and most welcoming setting of nerds! Monday, March 24th 7:30pm, Blue Haven South.
Livestream
AGreenQueen on Twitch - Fellow anime nerd Alli Green has started her own gaming livestream! She’s currently playing Genshin Impact which she has told me is gay and magical! Check out her Twitch page for her schedule.
Class
PIT Improv - Where I was trained and met some of my best friends! Great place to start if you’re extremely nervous like I was, is Level 0: Joy of Improv!
What I’m Loving
This way of thinking about Creativity from a Substack I’ve been loving:
“…Understanding Creativity as a spirit we have a lifelong friendship with, with approaching ideas and stories as spirits to co-collaborate with rather than assume the onus of responsibility…” -
How do you invite Creativity into your day as if they are a friend, spirit, deity, etc. with their own energy and wants? How do you listen to it and work with it, rather than trying to force it into your life? I love this! 🤗
As always, I’d love to hear what you think of my Substack! Feel free to reply to your email and follow me on insta @magnadoodler.
“It’s a type of throw where you throw the frisbee really high up and it’s upside down.” - Hanna
🥰💜💜