I can imagine this dilapidated 17 century sitting room with with painted walls, roaring fire, carpet on hardwood floors and a table with tea to welcome someone in after the cold. There’s something, to me, so beautiful about the way this room is, even in it’s broke down, overgrown, unlivable condition. It’s more beautiful that after viewing this, I returned to my lovely room at the Hayfield Manor Inn where I had tea delivered each evening whilst working at my computer – not having to worry about cleaning up after myself and having cable television (a treat!).

This is easy to do on a dreamy trip and in someone else’s place. It’s a totally different story when I get an emergency call telling me that, thanks to several severe storms, my flat has been destroyed by water and wind damage and it’s currently unlivable and that I have to stay in a hotel instead of my home.

Unexpectedly, I had to go home to see the damage only to realise that I really couldn’t stay in my place; the roof, walkway, walls had massive water damage and instability issues. So for the past week I have been staying in a hotel by my home, trying to get access inside when I’m allowed (which hasn’t been very much) plus trying to figure out how to pack up/move what I’ve got and where to go. It’s been extraordinarily frustrating because in the midst of all of this, life is still going on at full force (including work, going back to Europe, arranging things back in Santa Monica, CA, dealing with the pets, dealing with food allergies (gluten) and not having a kitchen in which to safely eat).

Looking at damaged buildings and then retreating to my hotel was charming in Ireland but has had me, at times, a flailing-limbed mess back home. I really love being settled – even if it’s in a temporary home or hotel and all this was making me feel anything but. Not knowing where I was going to be each day in reality instead of a trip was frustrating and overwhelming. Trying to figure out how to get to my stuff, what to do with the pets, where do I go, how do I get back to work etc. seemed like a never-ending pile of problems. I had to stop work on my home articles, on certain projects and reading certain sites on the internet because I just felt like I couldn’t do what I wanted to do thanks to all of this. I felt stuck as it was too much and I couldn’t see anything good – even though I was looking at damaged state during the day and retreating to a luxury hotel each night – basically I was doing the same thing in Carmel that I was doing in Ireland.

But after a few days of wallowing I had had enough and wasn’t getting anywhere. I realised that this situation – like all situations – is about attitude. I can’t change what happened so I have to change the way I look at it. Focusing on all the problems, frustrations and “why me” left me with problems, frustrations and a pity party for one. So I recounted the wise words of Maria von Trap (as played by Julie Andrews), “You cry a little, then the sun comes out.”

And after all the storms, the sun had to come out – literally or figuratively. I made up my mind to just look at my current situation differently – just as I’d done only a few days before in Ireland. The situation is so not ideal but the upswing? I knew that living here would be temporary, anyway and now there is less packing. Staying in a local hotel allowed me to finally catch Project Runway (since I don’t have a TV at home) and LOST. And now I’m free to move about the world without having to worry about being tied down to a flat for now. And moving back to Santa Monica will be easier.

So although I won’t be taking photos of the damage as “art,” I will be looking at all of this differently. It’s the only way I keep moving forward because I have challenges too. It’s just that my dreams are so much bigger and I’d rather be exhausted by them than the (temporary) problems.

Today I turn 34 which I’m so very glad for as I must confess 33 was, for lack of a better term, ass. But tonight I’m at an estate built in the 1600′s as a summer residence in a beautiful part of Ireland. I’ve had champagne and gluten free cake with two sets of flowers in my hotel apartment. So far, 34 is promising.

The photo is blurry, I know, but I think it just captures how I’ve been lately – always in motion. People always ask how I do so much and wonder if it’s a sugar daddy or magic pill. The truth is it’s just a love of life and lots of doing because I believe life is made up of choice, not circumstance and I choose to do anything and everything I can think of.

There are so many things I want to do, places I want to see, people I want to know that I am always busy either trying to figure out how to do things or doing them. Which often makes for some blurry times but I kind of like it that way. I couldn’t be happy just thinking of ideas and wondering how they’d turn out. I wouldn’t be happy feeling like I wasn’t able to do something because of something else. By choosing not to focus on circumstance or what others say is possible, my life and all that I do is possible.

And it leaves me with this wonderful blurry thing called life.

Summer of 1991 from alex beauchamp on Vimeo.

Almost every day I see the same gentleman (who is in his 80′s) walk very slowly down the sidewalk. Until he takes notice of me (or any other young woman around) he is supported by his daughter (who is in her 60′s). But as soon as he sees me he shoo’s her away, stands a little straighter and walks on his own trying to be proud and nonchalant. He always says hi to Jack and I and then once we’re passed and I’m out of sight, he returns to his daughter’s side. Sometimes I’ll hear her say as though she’s an embarrassed 16 year old, “Oh Dad, really” when he lets go.

In the video above, I was seventeen years old and now the video is seventeen years old. I can remember every detail of those days – the heat, the way the grass felt, the butterflies in my tummy over crushing, the weight of the trunk on our heads, the beach, her laughter, putting on lipstick for the first time and eating McDonald’s French Fries.

Recently I showed this video to my mum who giggled through the whole thing whilst saying over and over, “you haven’t changed. Listen to how you giggle, look at those movements and that cheek! So much the same!” When we went through her photos at the same age, I could say the same things about her.

And when we look at the seventeen year old girls we were, we don’t see any non-physical differences between the (almost) thirty-four year old woman I’ve become and the (almost) sixty-four year old woman she’s become. Despite there being all those years between us and our younger selves, there’s actually none at all. We have the same heart, the same mannerisms, the same ideals, the same sense of fun, the same of love of life. We’re just young girls who dream big, hope for the best but are just a little older and a little bit physically changed.

A man in his 90′s once said to me, “I’m just a 22 year old guy caught up in this old man’s body. I’m not so wise and put together as everyone assumes I am just because I’m old. I’m not stuffy or boring. I’m fun, alive with dreams, too and I still want to chase the girls. I don’t know how to be in this body. I just know how to be 22. And I miss it.”

I think of that every time I meet someone in that age range – that they’re just young people in an older body but who we are is who we are. This has given me happiness in the past little while for I thought I was getting further away from myself when, like Dorothy, I was there all along. I just, for awhile, became someone else I didn’t recognise. Luckily, I do now.

The Santa Monica Sunday Market is always busy making parking – which is already rare – even more of a premium. I turned off main street to park in the public lot behind, hopeful that I’d find parking so I could run into my favourite pet food store to pick something up. I usually do because I don’t focus on the full lot but on one spot to open. And it always does.

As I turned in, a man about 50 in an expensive, flashy convertible stopped in front. It looked like he would get a lucky day as one car pulled out of a very full lot. However, as the car was getting ready to pull out, I noticed on the other incoming side a car of women who also thought they were going to get that spot. When convertible man saw this he began to yell not very nice things to them.

The way the parked car pulled out ended up blocking convertible man and in went the car of women. Convertable man was not happy about this and kept his car stopped so he could continue to yell not so nice things to the women. As he did this a woman walked past him and said, “Sir, you can stop, I’m pulling out right here.”

And that should have ended it. But he was angry and had to be right.

So while he waited for the other woman to pull out, he kept yelling at the all the women that pulled in – including a 6 year old child. He was so busy yelling at them that he didn’t notice the other woman pulling out but he did notice another car from the opposite side pull in.

Now he was very angry.

He had been screwed over once, and rather than let it go he focused on it so much that when a second opportunity presented itself, he couldn’t take it. All he could do was park his car, get out and chase both parties down to yell about how they were all his spot.

So there he was, standing still, unhappy, looking ridiculous and without parking. One spot taken, another missed. So busy focusing on that which made him angry that he kept himself from seeing something that he needed open up right in front of him.

My secret beach in Carmel had beautiful, tall trees and flowers that kept trying to grow amongst the white sandy beaches. It was quiet, peaceful and beautiful. I’d go here when I needed to feel the same.

Then last week rough weather approached and for a few days the secret beach was dark and clung to desperately to its winter beauty. The clouds rolled over the regular beach, too, creating massive waves and ominous skies. But the beach, though darker, was unchanged. Although the winds and waves were kicking up, the white sand tried so hard to stay, hiding things underneath while letting selective things grow. It wasn’t ready for the change and tried to pretend nothing was happening.

It’s just winds and waves said the beach and those who came – this is how it always is. You think something will happen but really, it doesn’t. We pretend to ooh and ahh and watch the show but truthfully, it’s just show.

But then a storm really came; trees were down, power was out for two days, hurricane winds pelted down over 6 inches of rain in 24 hours. The view from my flat was usually beautiful but I couldn’t see through the rain or clouds and at night it was pitch black with no solace from a candle. It was an isolating, scary and humbling three day period because no one was really prepared.

When the worst of the storm was over the dog and I were itching to walk and so to our beach we went, expecting just to see some big waves and dark skies as before. Yet when we arrived we found the beach very much changed.

It was bare – there were no people or beach; just new cliffs with a small bit of sand below full of seaweed. It wasn’t safe to walk on, it smelled bad from everything washing out – then back – to shore. It was in transition and no one – and nothing – wanted to be there. And so we left wondering if it would ever be the same as before.

Of course it wouldn’t. Nothing stays the same after a storm.

A few more days later I went back to the beach and found it once again transformed but this time, into something much more beautiful and interesting. The cliffs were still there but now gave way to a new kind of beach. One that lacked all the comforting soft white sand and instead now had boulders everywhere that were hidden for who knows how long. They were beautiful, mysterious, filled with life in all their nooks and crannies.

And they were slowly being discovered by people who had returned after the storm and wanted to see the beauty of change.

Usually it’s a quick walk on the beach but today the dog and I lingered, even played. We got trapped on boulders, walked through the cold water, talked with some surfers who loved the new waves. I marveled at how quickly it had changed.

Even though the storm was scary terribly scary to be in and the transformation of the beach was hard to watch at first (I was sad to see my struggling flowers die), it produced a dramatic change back to what it once was. It just did it; no gathering of people to dig away the sand, no permission to get, no questions asked if it was ready – it just did it.

And that doing produced an old beach that had been hidden for so long and made it new again for itself and those who came to it. It became a beach that truthfully, was a little more fun than the last.

It’s not in me to wear a yellow slicker during storms but I still go out in them. I prefer not to wear hiking shoes whilst hiking yet have been to the top of more mountains than anyone I know. I don’t like pants when using power tools or putting up dry wall. It’s just not in me to be in anything other than a skirt or dress.

But people are often uncomfortable with this. I have friends who, for years, have tried to fit me in jeans or make me “hip.” Girlfriends who think because I wear a dress that twirls I’m prissy when I am only wearing one layer to their 5 (who put more thought in and worries more? Not I). There is an assumption because I dress like a girl, I must be limited to phrases such as “princess” and only wear pink. I have never used the word princess and I don’t own anything pink.

My adoration for dresses and skirts come for my love of pretty and my laziness. They’re easy, versatile and simply, me. And they’ve made me a target of a lot of people’s jokes, assumptions and insecurities. But that hasn’t ever changed how I feel about them.

Besides, wearing them on blustery days has given me great reflexes.

It seems as though everyone looks for “signs” as whether to do something or not. Let the stars guide me, they say. They’ll randomly flip through passages of books to find “words of meaning” and direction. They’ll count to 10 and if a bell rings they know to move forward. Everyone just wanting reassurance from some other super force that they’re on the right track.

But what I’ve noticed is when people look for “signs” they’re really only looking for the “yes.” No one really looks for the “no.” If they don’t get a sign, they try a new trick. Show me a sign that he loves me! I need a sign if I should move! Give me a sign to take that job! But if nothing happens, almost no one every takes it as a no. They just simply look for another sign.

I’ve always believed that when you ask advice, you’re really just looking for confirmation of what you already know but you’re just not ready to hear it. Sometimes I wonder if all the “sign seekers” already know the answer, too, but just aren’t ready to accept that they already have the answer and the power.

At a restaurant the other night I saw at a table just a bit away a man I once knew years ago. And when I say knew I mean that we were, for a few weeks, on set together and our interactions were always brief but always enjoyable. We never divulged personal information or had each over for holidays but we shared stories and laughed during the time we worked together. And I can remember almost every day so clearly and so many of the funny little thing’s he’d do – not in a smitten kitten way but because somehow even the mundane was interesting with him.

My first reaction upon seeing him was to say Hi and reconnect. But I hesitated; he wouldn’t remember me and if I just start talking like we know each other he’ll think I’m a crazy fan. Or if I ask about that project he wanted to want to do he’ll wonder why I remember that after all these years – am I a stalker? A loser? A User? So I kept to myself, not even mentioning to anyone at the table that over there was a man I once knew.

However, about thirty minutes later he approached and asked me if I’d ever lived in Vancouver. Yes, I said, for a few years in the mid-90′s. Then he smiled and said, “So nice to see you after all this time, Alex. Do you still have that skirt?”

This man is an A-List celebrity; he has met thousands of people from around the world as is bombarded with people daily. Yet he remembered a skirt I’d worn on set (it had layers and layers), a very bad joke the director told to us, the wiggly worm dance (you’d have to see it), the mittens, and the little cafe nearby that made the foam just so. When he recounted these events he did so with ease, as if remembering is just what we’re supposed to do and not traits of a crazy, loser, stalker user person. But just a fundamental human curiosity.

I remember so many details from years ago; about people, places, polka dots on wallpaper, the way the light hit, that dirty joke. I fall in-love with the little things, people’s mannerisms, moments in the every day but feel like I’m not supposed to. To remember or even notice in the first place has become a sign of obsession, weirdness, boredom, loneliness. After all, if you’re busy it means you must be doing well and if you have time to remember it means you’re not.

I’m busy, I’ve done a lot but I remember because I’m present with each and every person I talk to and am extraordinarily curious (probably far too much for my own good). I don’t half-ass this life – not even an every day conversation. That’s off putting to a lot of people (especially in LA when you’re always supposed to be looking for the next cooler person to talk to. But when I’m talking to you, I’m talking to you. When I’m writing, I’m writing. When I’m walking I look around and because of that I just notice so many things and just simply don’t forget.

But it’s not cool to care, it’s not hip to pay attention, it’s not top dog to notice others. So I have learned to keep quiet about all the little things I remember – especially about people. I can fall in-love so easily with little things about people and miss them almost the moment they’re gone. But I don’t think they’d ever know it as I’m told by most people I come off as aloof. However, I’m anything but. It’s why I still have a little note attached to the book that isn’t really all that interesting or funny; it’s just the thought of the note, the effort of the note, that is charming to me. And I want to remember the good of where that came from. Sounds crazy, no?

But after spending the evening dishing with my friend, my friend who should be Far. Too. Important. And. Busy. to remember the layers of skirt I once had, I felt a bit better about all the details I hold back on sharing. Not full on ease but perhaps I’ll send a note back or ask someone about the event that they probably don’t even think I heard them talking about.

It’s this view that I keep trying to get. Whenever I think of settling down and giving up my vagabond ways it’s this image I turn to. I understand life from this view point. Life in a small, quiet little town full of characters and charm but close to a city that is is alive and close still to a major city where anything is possible. And for the longest time, I thought I was getting closer to this view.

But today, after booking my 33rd flight this year (and actually just booked 4 more), I realise that whenever I am given time to relax, to be, to enjoy the view, I do anything but. I’m quick to fill up a calendar. I used to blame this on living in LA and knowing far too many people (yes I’ll come to your event, Yes I’ll support this cause, Yes I’ll work on that project) but upon booking a trip to Vancouver for just one event, I somehow ended up doing 4.

Right now I live in one of my favouritest flats ever; a large two bedroom with old world charm including a 1940′s stove in which I love to bake in. There’s large windows that look out into a garden {I’ve even got a few plants growing} and my bike can take me anywhere in town {beach, cafe, shoppes} so there’s no reason really to leave.

Which makes me question if I’m really trying to get the view or if I just admire the scenery because it’s so very different from my own.