Paint It Red

If perception is everything, keep your eyes wide open.

This week, three old friends have populated my Instagram inbox. First Friend talked to me about God, obliquely prodding me to reconsider my “it’s all love” POV. Second Friend rebuffed my joke comparing Pete Hegseth to Sensei Kreese from OG Karate Kid. (“Strike hard. Strike first. No mercy, Sir!” … tell me you can’t picture it. Although Second Friend didn’t find it funny, some of my Republican friends laugh at my jokes, so at least I know the divide isn’t impenetrable.) Third Friend sent a reel on Red Car Theory, apropos of nothing as far as I’m aware.

For Gen Xers, “red car” conjures the image of a scantily clad buxom blonde rolling around on the hood of a ’54 Buick Skylark convertible. While a theoretical deep dive into 90’s glam rock could be fun, it’s not where this red car is going. Red Car Theory is about perception. It says that if we look for red cars, we’ll start seeing them everywhere. In other words, we get what we look for: focus on the negative, we’ll see more of the same. Focus on the positive, more of the same.

Suddenly I’m very itchy. Oversimplification tends to do that to me. As does mass-produced self-help that lacks a human story. Humans are designed for connection. Red Car Theory is a tidy summation of How To Do Life the Right Way, except leaving out the fact of being human and all the nuance that comes with it.

What if we focus on both positive and negative? The two should coexist peacefully if you really think about it (and I really, really think about things).

Imagine Pos and Neg as roommates bumping shoulders while brushing their teeth in the phone-booth-sized bathroom of an NYC apartment priced perfectly for maximum financial destruction. Despite the cramped chaos, they’re young and free. Adventuring through calendar years oblivious to the fact that one day their plump little hind ends will fall like failed soufflés.

When I was looking for apartments in NYC during the Ice Age, or 1999, I toured cramped living quarters that would make claustrophobia itself suffocate. I ended up getting a place in Jersey instead, “cheaper” at $1,200/month and doable with my $38k salary as “junior agent” at a modeling agency situated on a triangular corner in lower Manhattan’s meatpacking district (the last place you’d expect the headquarters of beautiful people, or entirely fitting since the industry perceives them as meat but make it sexy). Short of the long: I paid for a place in Hoboken and never spent a night in it. The upside is I didn’t die at the hands of a serial killer on my apartment hunt. Back then there was no Google to see photos and communicate with the landlord; there was only the classified section in The Village Voice where you circled an ad, called the number, and hoped whoever showed the place didn’t have dead eyes and a sword collection. Looking back, it’s hard to believe that 22-year-old me, still so green, roamed the streets of New York City with not a friend or loved one within hundreds of miles. What I lacked in life experience I made up for with a mashup of wits and guts, God and good luck.

Each day at the modeling agency, I felt a combination of exhilaration and dread. The city was alive; the people in it (or at least the ones I knew) were rotten. After five months of focusing on success, I couldn’t deny being uncomfortable in the skin of my surroundings. I shifted my focus to the life I was building — was making money for fashion models what I wanted to do with my talent? Was surrounding myself with cold, ruthlessly ambitious people where I wanted to spend my emotional energy? All signs pointed to No. The next sign towered high over the interstate: Welcome to Wild, Wonderful West Virginia. Home again.

I’ve been looking for red cars as long as I remember being me. Daydreaming was my first occupation, which turned into a lifelong career. Dream the dream, set the goal. That’s how I ended up in New York City, and Miami before that and Memphis after. It’s why I chose a career in words. When I spy something I want, nothing stops me — not low odds or financial instability or naysayers; not loneliness or chronic anxiety or harmful men. I see the positive and the negative as equal, though not equitable, driving forces in my life. I’ve lived it all out loud, at times literally. I talk about everything. That urge came built in straight from the factory, July 1976. No refunds, no returns.

In cognitive psychology terms, I’m an external processor; in simple terms, that’s someone who thinks out loud (on the flip side are internal processors). Tough times, well, they call for extra inquiry, which I would call “beating a dead horse” if I want to be extra hard on myself, but mostly I call it being me. Talking, explaining, analyzing, it’s just what I do. I’m not afraid of vulnerability, and I know that anyone who sees it as weakness is locking horns with their own fears. To that point, I point to Brene Brown’s masterclass on the power of vulnerability; she lays out its strength beautifully.

At dinner recently, a girlfriend and I ruminated over motherhood and the hormonal horrors of perimenopause. Since my latest bloodwork screams Chronic Stress, I told her I’m on a mission to reduce it. She volleyed right back: “How is a mother supposed to reduce her stress when …?” followed by a list of All The Things. When mothers share the rigor of their physical and emotional labor, it’s not a cacophony of complaints; it’s a gift of feeling seen. I saw the despair in her eyes and understood it because of my own. My response was atypically simple: “Make a list of your stressors and figure out what you can fix or minimize.”

I love a list, or at least the fun part where I get to imagine what I want to accomplish. The truth is, if an item isn’t tied to a paycheck, a matter of well-being, or an obligation to someone else, it’ll end up deferred to death because I probably have undiagnosed ADD, except the kind where my house has to be clean. My stressor list is certainly a matter of well-being and also quite unusual for a woman my age, but I take that as a win. When the trappings of normal life arrive, they’ll mean all the more because I waited so long to receive them.

I’d never be accused of having it all together, but in my mess I’ve always understood the assignment: fight like hell to get what you know is rightfully yours. When it arrives, turn up the volume and paint it red.