Sassy Is As Sassy Does

Part of my dissatisfaction with life lately, is due to the fact that I don't get out much.

I'm bored silly, if you want to know the truth.

I'm a stay at home Mom, so my social outlets are limited, especially since we live on one income. I can think of all kinds of things I'd like to do that would put me in contact with like minded women, but many of them cost money that we just don't have.

I'd like to brush up on my once fluent French. I'd like to learn how to play the piano. I'd like to take up ballroom dancing. I would like to learn how to throw pottery. I'd like to take some writing courses at the local University.

I even considered going to beauty school, just because I thought it would be fun. And, I would meet gay guys. I miss having gay guys in my life. And I could make some money on the side doing hair in my kitchen.

But we have children. Children who need food and clothing and medication and therapy and orthodontia. I made choices a long time ago, and now I am living with those choices. I still think they are the right choices for our family, but I didn't think hard enough about how to also make them the right choices for me.

For a long time I was too busy with small children to notice that I had disappeared, but when I did, it was a shock that I have yet to recover from.

Oh sure, I meet people at PTA and school functions. I run into other Moms here and there. I chit chat, I mingle. I cawfee tawk. But in all honesty, though they are perfectly nice ladies (most of them; some are amazingly catty and venomous), they are not often the kind of smart, interesting, dynamic women I really want to spend time with, and I can't make myself care about the things they want me to care about.

Does that sound snooty? Well screw it, I'm snooty then. I would just like to talk about some stuff that makes me think, people. Is that so wrong? It's been thirteen years since I held a job outside the home.

My brain is dyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyiiiiiiiingggg.

It's depressing me. I mean, really depressing me.

When a person kisses her children goodbye and then goes back to bed until it's time for the bus to bring them home, simply because she can think of no compelling reason to stay awake, and cannot face the fact that all she has to look forward to is another day of mindless drudgework that makes her want to tear her hair from her head by the roots....

It's time to do something.

Because you know, I'm a take charge kind of person. A pull yourself up by the bootstraps kind of person. I don't mope around. I find solutions and I implement them.

So I've been trying to figure out a way to fix this. Fix me.

I've actually had quite a few ideas that I thought could satisfy my need for social interaction, put me in touch with the kind of people I really want to be with, and also provide me with the sense of purpose that has been sorely lacking in my life for some time now.

If you've been reading Blogs Are Stupid for long, you've probably read about some of them.

Unfortunately, I keep encountering these huge, twisted, snarling roadblocks that leave me frustrated, disappointed, and increasingly apathetic about further endeavors.

So I've given up on all my grand plans and decided that at the very least I need to find a way to get my ass out of the house and give my atrophied brain an opportunity to stretch it's metaphorical legs.

So I Googled writing groups in my area.

They are astonishingly few, which shouldn't surprise me, since I live quite a ways outside the city limits, in an area that isn't really known for it's cultural or creative arts. No...this area is populated either by the tractor pull/hog calling afficionados, or the pseudo elite who are busy practicing their right to conspicuous consumption, and industriously appointing their big fat, soon to be foreclosed upon McMansions with all the latest furnishings and bric a brac.

Most of them condider the Shopaholic series great American literature and Thomas Kincaide a true artiste.

I know, I really am a snooty bitch aren't I? I'll own that. I've been called worse.

So anyway, I did find one. It meets nearby on Saturdays, twice a month. They have group discussions and they do workshop type stuff as well.

They have real published authors who speak, although I am personally unfamiliar with the gentleman who will be speaking at the next meeting. But so what? He's published, so he must know something about something.

Sounds great, right?

So what exactly is my problem?

Well...first of all...joiny stuff is so not my thing. I don't know why. I just dislike the dynamics of large groups I guess, particularly groups of women. I hate Queen Bees, and there always is one. I hate power trips, I hate hierarchy, I hate jockeying for position. I hate that people expect me to care about all that, but if I don't, I'm seen as an outsider or a....snooty bitch.

But I'm desperate, so I guess I can get over that.

Here's the real issue: The name of this group is...."Sassy Southern Writers"

GROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN

Why does it have to be Sassy?? See for me, this is immediately off putting.

Why? Well because it's just stupid.

But worse than that, it completely diminishes the writing, I think.

I am not now, nor have I ever been "Sassy". I don't want to be "Sassy". I don't want to write "Sassy" things. And I don't want to hang out with people who are "Sassy" or read their "Sassy" schlocky writing.

See, I told you. I just don't do the group thing well at all. Or maybe I just have a big, fat, not Sassy chip on my shoulder.

As one very good friend pointed out to me...

"I know sometimes I will think negative things about a situation so I don't have to put myself out there. It's easier to reject people without meeting them than having them reject you after meeting you."

But I am far too self actualized to do something that ridiculous.

Except that I'm not. And I would.

And damn her hide, she hit the nail right on the friggen head.

So I guess I am going to go be a Sassy Southern writer. Or try, anyway.

And, as another friend said,

"Look at it as a social experiment. It might make you puke, but at least you can write about that in your blog. Look what happened when you went to apply for a job! And seriously how bad could it be? It's not being held at the Baptist church is it?"

That last bit was totally tongue in cheek. She lives in Texas and we spar about religion all the time. When we had a girls' weekend in Chicago last June, she brought me an Anne Lamott book as a gift.

Now that's Sassy.

Anyway, I'm going, for better or for worse. Maybe the guest speaker's fly will be open or the group leader will tuck her skirt into the back of her pantyhose and I'll have some good blog fodder. Maybe it won't be a complete waste of time.

And who knows, maybe it will actually give me some motivation, some inspiration, and some much needed gratification.

God knows the toilets aren't doing it for me.