Happy Birthday to me!

Today is my 44th birthday, a nice even number, smack in the middle of my life. (I could see living to 88, most of my grandparents did.)
Life is good.
Shared the weekend with friends at our favorite Montauk digs, the Sunrise Guesthouse. The forecast was forboding: thunderstorms from Friday afternoon to Sunday. Never happened. We spent the entire time on the beach, going for walks and swimming (water was warm and not too rough). Had lobster at Duryea's a dockside byob place on a bay, ate pancakes and ice cream cones, did yoga on the sand. (It was very SELF-y in some ways--and un SELF-y in others, I must admit.
This weekend has some pain in it, because my birthday (or the night before) was my anniversary with the ex. But I felt surrounded by people who cared about me, grateful for the found-sunny weekend, and excited about the next few months finishing up the book. I'm actually almost there--I have 28 essays in! Need to buckle down and finish up, but it feels like pleasure, not business.

I would like to find love this year, or at least get to flirt a lot!
Ciao amici--
Paola

A meeting of the minds, in suits! (bathing suits, that is)

Yesterday, a group of SELF editors convened at a sun-filled spot to engage in some very SELF-y activities: workout, play tennis, run, swim laps, eat salads (and dessert!), read, talk, gossip about celebs and appreciate each other and the magazine we work for. It was extremely energizing, and relaxing. A good way to work-and-play on a summer day.

Ciao!
Paola

Wanna read about the day from the perspective of SELF's editor, Lucy Danziger? Check out her blog.http://www.self.com/livingwell/blogs/editor/

That gratitude thing again

I had an amazing talk with a friend in D.C. tonight. I was feeling blue all day, bruised (a bit) by reentering the dating fray, and even a beautiful run around the reservoir in Central Park couldn't cure me. Then the phone rang, and it was my friend, who had wise and comforting things to say about breakups. He reminded me that breaking up doesn't mean the love never happened, and that nobody can take that away. He said how lucky I was that I've been able to experience transcendent love several times in my life when some people never feel it once. It sounds a bit basic, but I realized that it was a nicer way of looking at the breakup--through the prism of what I gained rather than lost. (It's that gratitude thing again--it's the hot new emotion among happiness researchers.) And I gained a lot, including things that enabled me to come up with a book about sex (Behind the Bedroom Door) and spend two months working on it in Rome. The absence of it is hard, but now I will hopefully get to experience it again, for the first time, and there is nothing quite like that. I look forward to it.

Ciao!
Paola

P.S. I'm showing off by posting the picture of clouds, above, that I took in Cinque Terre--I thought it was pretty transcendent!

Home improvement

I got a burst of energy this weekend (perhaps because I slept til almost noon on Saturday, and fixed up my apartment. My friend Millicent helped me hang several prints I'd gotten in Europe and rearrange others, then I made a major impulse buy. There is a great new furniture store on around 100th and Broadway with fair-trade furniture. Really unique and beautiful stuff from recycled wood. So I got a chest of drawers/hutch type thing and I've decided I'm going to leave it mostly empty now. I need to make room for another person in my life, so we will see who (or what )fills it. It also feels very luxurious to have a bunch of unused storage space in a New York City apartment. I also rearranged the office portion of my bedroom, moving the bookcase and some photographs. I'm very happy with all the results.

Also hung these two very special photographs I bought in Berlin side by side over my dining room table. They remind me of stained glass windows, only they are fragments of photographs taken by the artist, pieced together. The more you look at them, the more you see.

It's nice to now be surrounded by so many reminders of my trip--Vernazza and Siena in the bedroom, a little more Siena over the couch, some Berlin in the dining nook, with a final large Berlin print from the Bauhaus museum to follow in a few days. It felt very important to make a post-breakup change of significance around this place.

Going on a date with a new guy tonight. Two in one week--I guess I'm really dating. I don't know whether to say YIKES or YIPPEE!
Ciao--
Paola

Mia and Paola

I went on a date tonight!!! So wild and odd and strange and a little scary and sad but also somehow fun to be dating again. That is all I'll say. (There are eyes on this blog, even if only a few pairs of 'em.) Then I got to come home to my cozy apartment and hang out with my friend MP (aka Mia), who is in from Andes (in the Catskills) for the night. And debrief about the date!!! What could be better?
Buona notte amici!
Paola

Only Connect

Major weekend this past weekend. My best friend got married. And is having a baby. Major life milestone--for her and for me, since she is my travel buddy and go-to girl for all of life's crises and pleasures, big and small alike. It obviously brings to mind that I am beginning again, relationship-wise. (That's Pam, me, Pam's sister Reesa and our friend-from-Houston Bettina.) But the nice thing about being boyfriendless (for the moment) is that I have really connected with friends in a way that feels meaningful. I have more emotional energy to devote to them--and to devote to myself and my life. Have had several long, wine-filled evenings with old friends and it was nice to talk about everything going on in my life rather than just focus on The Relationship. It's very easy to forget how good it feels to hang with your closest friends when you're coping with the ups and downs of love.
In any case, amo mi amici!
Ciao--
Paola

Working late and neglecting the blog!

Wow. I feel as if I am truly back in New York, Italy glow starting to wear off a tad. I've been in the office til 10:30, two nights in a row, starting to dip my toe into the dating world (which, unfortunately, doesn't always feel exactly fun) and am generally a bit grumpy. Grrrr. But I have been getting to wear my new glasses at work a lot, doing all that computer work. Much as I love SELF (and I do!) I don't like working 12-hour days--I'm glad I have to do it only rarely.

The book, however, is going great. I got an amazing, amazing essay in from Pari Chang today, a former student who ditched her lawyering job to write full time. (She wrote about making that transition in SELF a few months ago). And I got another essay from a writer I met in Rome, Ethel Smith, a professor at a college in West Virginia who is writing a memoir about being a black woman in Berlin. Her essay is going to be extremely interesting--it will examine some race and class issues in a pretty surprising way. The book is so much fun--it is pretty much all pleasure. I feel so lucky to be able to do it. Working with all these great writers is amazing, being able to get personal fast (which I always love), getting to think and write and edit. About sex. What could be bad?

Ciao amici!
Paola