medicine and memoriam

Happy Memorial Day, dear readers! I hope you all are spending your national holiday outside, preferably poolside, with a cocktail and some sort of grilled meat (or faux meat, for my veg friends). Or perhaps more reverently, placing bouquets on a loved one's grave.

I have spent mine so far in bed, or weeding out my email inbox, still full of "unread" messages transferred from my stolaf.edu account. The irony here is that they have ALL been read at some point, but still are marked bold for attention. I suppose this is a somewhat fitting way to spend Memorial Day, as I am unearthing a ton of messages that start me reminiscing about countless group projects in college, hilarious web videos, stumbleupon suggestions, emails planning meetings to plan spring break or interim trips. It feels like a barrage of time capsules catapulted into my present from another dimension.

That being said, it is one day short of one year since St. Olaf's Class of 2011 walked the stage in commencement of this next year of our lives. And therefore one day short of one year since I have been writing on this blog.

I don't think that's real.

Best of luck, though, to the Class of 2012, who yesterday embarked on the same journey I and my classmates have taken by the horns over the past year, and will continue to conquer in the months and years ahead.

That being said, I don't plan on sitting here all day. It's apparently 90 degrees outside, and I have plans to hit up a barbecue later this afternoon. I will not be eating burgers and drinking Summer Shandy this evening, however, because I got my wisdom teeth out on Friday and have spent the holiday weekend recovering. Which mostly entails watching tons of movies, planning my day around taking meds (although I have happily avoided the hardcore painkillers), trying to avoid busting my stitches by being perpetually unsatisfied on the hunger front, sleeping all day and then feeling restless and guilty about it. My ancestors are the type to break their hips and get back on the ladder a mere 6 weeks later, but I have apparently inherited the recessive whining and moping genes.

I hate sitting around.

I also hate not being able to distinguish the taste of blood from salt water, having to make that distinction in the first place, and not being able to open my mouth more than I need to put a spoon between my lips.

It gives me an appreciation for good health.

Also, it's upsetting how much I've spent on medical bills this year. Between me and my car, my medical bills easily outpace my student loans--which is particularly upsetting since I just looked at them yesterday and, although I've been making payments for 6 months, they have hardly a dent in their individual amounts. I would love to be able to skip getting my wisdom teeth pulled and instead direct that money to knocking out a couple hundred off my highest-interest loan.

This is a notable part of post-grad life. Like more than a few college students, I would imagine, I literally did not go to the dentist for over 4 years. Nor did I get any regular checkup by a GP or family doctor. I went to the health center on campus a few times, until I realized I rarely left there feeling more confident about my health than when I went in. I went to the eye doctor maybe once or twice, but only because I had to if I wanted to order more contacts. Which I definitely did. I still wear the same shitty glasses I ordered online freshman year of college, and I wear them as infrequently as possible.

I'll tell you why this is upsetting. The bill for getting my four wisdom teeth extracted, even after 80% of the surgery was covered by my insurance, still exceeds what I make in two weeks at work. That's after taxes, but not counting bills I have to pay, and gas three times a month. And I have a good job, and my dad's insurance, and I live at home. I know that there are families in this country who get no benefits, possibly don't have health insurance at all, and whose mediocre wages must cover food, rent, and healthcare for multiple children. My wisdom teeth were already starting to give me headaches and to make my jaw hurt. I have no doubt that if I left them in much longer my life would get a lot more miserable in a hurry.

And yet it's probably going to take me at least a month and a half to pay off that surgery plus my hand, and I need to get the timing belt replaced in my car ASAP, and definitely before the summer's over. There are other things I need to pay for as well, and I would love to knock some off my loans, and I was hoping to move out by the end of the summer. My social life has already taken a bit of a hit from these financial straits, because I've had to prioritize, and this is something I will need to keep in mind moving forward.

Medicine and healthcare is a capitalist system, at least in this country, and in my opinion they are not widely considered as such. Public health falls into an odd crack between services and industry, although it's not alone down there. In an ideal world, we could all take care of ourselves, and take care of other members of our communities, and we could avoid getting into sticky situations with our health, and get out of sticky situations when they do arise inevitably. Money wouldn't play such a giant role in whether or not we can afford to get care right now, or whether we are taking the appropriate steps to care for ourselves before an issue comes up. Not to mention the real and apparent impacts of money worries on our health itself, and the fact that this type of stress can, at the very least, slow our recovery processes.

I know finances are a bit of a touchy subject, and for many reasons you don't want to know too much about mine, but it's a big part of post-grad life, one of the many ever-present factors we have to think about as we navigate this territory. And it has been on my mind a lot this weekend, and last week leading up to the extraction.

That, and are the gaping holes in the back of my mouth bleeding, and what can I eat.

I am so unamused.

Also, I still look vaguely like a chipmunk.

Today I have not felt like eating at all, which is not a good idea because I really need to keep my energy up if I am ever going to heal... But I suddenly got a hankering for Bon Apetit's cold strawberry soup. I used to wait for this every spring, and it was all I could do to resist the urge to consume at least one entire tray of cups, bowls, and mugs full of the stuff.

I didn't quite pull off a perfect imitation of the caf version, but it was close enough.

Cheers to you, dear readers. Happy Memorial Day. Be safe, be happy, be reverent but not too reverent, appreciate your good health and, just for today, shove the ledger out of sight, out of mind.

My best wishes to you and your loved ones, and congratulations as we "commence" living the next segment of our lives.

milestones

It occurred to me today that 2012 is a monumental year in a lot of ways. As we are all too aware, it is the last year ever (although National Geographic reports that we may have misinterpreted the Mayan calendar...go figure). And if the world fails to end in December, 2012 will be my first year filing an independent tax return. (Death and taxes both certain, but mutually exclusive? There's a brain-bender for you...)

But no, what really sparked this epiphany was my Facebook post in honor of my middle sister's 18th birthday this morning. I remembered recently posting for Asha's sweet 16, and realized that I have long launched the countdown to my brother's 21st (assuming the apocalypse slips by unnoticed). Maria will also be graduating in less than two weeks, and in a mere 4 days I will be four molars shy of wise, and no doubt in a considerable amount of pain. So among us, we mark a lot of rites of passage this year.

Speaking of rites of passage, it is OFFICIALLY Graduation Season! While I don't remember anything our speaker said at graduation last year, or even who our speaker was, I love watching commencement addresses by illustrious, intelligent folk at other colleges and universities thanks to youtube. And because I have an awesome job, I got to spend some time today watching commencement addresses and ferreting out nuggets of wisdom from them.

Without even neglecting my day's work.

I would like to share a few of the best I found today, in case you have a few hours to spare, or you have a few hours that would otherwise be spent languishing in an ambient lack of inspiration. I will leave my mined nuggets--inspirational ore, as it were--off the table so you can enter the fray tabula rasa. (Not sure I used that right, but it's so beautiful and you get the picture.) If you don't have hours, or would rather your time outside (no judgment, trust me) then watch the last 5 minutes or so of the first two. My keen research skills tell me that a lot of chill-inducing advice gets relegated to the last few minutes of speeches, and these top two are just great.

1. Neil Gaiman at Philadelphia's University of the Arts, and a really great roundup of this address by the Christian Science Monitor. For ye readers fighting the Economic Forces Against the Arts (EFAA), this might give you a little shot of hope. Also he's just dry and hilarious.
2. Aaron Sorkins at Syracuse University. What I like about this one is that he talks about struggles. It's a little dark at times, like when he talks about his cocaine addiction at around 9:43 or one of his roommates who later died of AIDS somewhere in the 10:00-11:00 minute range. But he pulls it up for the end.
3. Am I about to share something from Sports Illustrated? Yeah. I am. It's a Monday Morning QB of highlights from commencement addresses across the country. Definitely a few gems, even though Peter King, who compiled the list, offers the disclaimer that he pretty much just writes about football. Which I neither understand, nor care about.
4. An awesome blog post by my friend and St. Olaf classmate Liz Lampman, about where she is (meta)physically almost a year after graduation. Framed like a commencement address. I majorly dig this post.
5. Aaaaand back to the root: the speech I hoped would make me senior speaker, but instead became the first post of this blog, back on May 29, 2011. In retrospect, it's probably better that I didn't have to deliver this at graduation, because I was falling asleep through most of the ceremony. I really didn't think I would make it. I feel mildly sheepish admitting that fact, but I wouldn't reorganize my priorities at that time for the world. My speech was about celebration.

If you're still reading, or if you scrolled down in hopes of unearthing some profound wordbombs, I would like to leave you with a video I think is hilariously fitting to my (and my general peer group's) current stage of passage. Not sure being 22-24 can technically be considered a rite, but it's relevant. So enjoy. And please share your favorite commencement clips. I need them for work.

P.S. While I was finishing putting this post together, Maria walked in and asked for advice writing graduation advice for her creative writing class, a la Sunscreen (1998). Apt.

where did you come from, where did you go

I spent today at the Fair Hill Scottish Games watching dudes in tartan skirts play bagpipes and throw logs (theoretically) in flying arcs through the air.  More accurately, kilts and caber tossing.  And as kilts and caber tossing are outdoor activities, and it was a nearly perfect day outside, I spent today in the sun and my brain is fried.  I make bullet points about different blog topics throughout my week, and maybe I should transition my post-grad blog to a "daily thoughts on" format after the 1-year mark.  But I do enjoy reflective essays.

It didn't occur to me until we were waiting in line to pay the exorbitant entrance fee that I have Scottish blood!  Last Christmas, in fact, Granma was emptying out an old Ross steamer trunk and found a tie made of our clan tartan, which she gave to my brother, much to my dismay.  Yes, I am aware that I am not a man and therefore have little use for a tie (since Avril Lavigne slipped out of fashion) but I have a lot of use for heritage, and for the stories often couched in artifacts.

According to the "find your name" booth at the fair, the first Rosses set foot on this side of the pond in 1651 and '52.  Assuming that my Ross ancestors were not unrecognized stowaways, carriers of my blood have been shaping their corners of U.S. History for 350 years.  And now some of us continue to dip our pens in that pot--for example, the pen that inscribed "Ross" in the "middle name" slot on my brother's birth certificate.  Cool.  The clan lives on!  Although sadly it does not appear to have an active faction in the tri-state area.

I've been thinking about heritage and origin a lot since coming back from the Midwest this week, feeling myself lock into place as part of that landscape, and feeling that landscape lock into place within me...  And then being rudely ripped from that landscape, with a pair of psychological bolt cutters, and feeling disoriented upon my return to the Philly airport and to my house and my job and my life in Wilmington.  Jason said I didn't "come back" to Wilmington until Wednesday--2 days after my physical arrival.  Not coincidentally, I think, 2 days is approximately the amount of time it takes to drive (fairly comfortably) from Minneapolis to Wilmington.

Thesis: Jet planes fuck up our biological/psychological clocks.  You know how our eyes take about 45 minutes to fully adjust to darkness?  And the "twilight" part of the day lasts about 45 minutes.  (At least that's what my freshman year senior counselor told me, and I am inclined to believe it.)  There's some beautiful ecological symmetry there.

As much as I would like to dwell on ecological symmetry forever, I'm straying from the crux of the current issue.  Which is, eternally, belonging; originating; coming and going.  Pinpointing the location of my heart at any given moment.

I will probably never find complete security in this realm, and maybe that's just an occupational hazard of being human.  At some point I may also stop realizing new aspects and explanations and solutions to my rootlessness.  But I can never deny value in realizing the same thing over and over and over again: Love is a decision, and homes spring up where you invest in them.

For a second there, back in Delaware and not even able to pretend I was happy about it, I toyed with the idea of cutting all ties and heading back to Sunny V, St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.  To the physical embodiment of my ideal life.  The place I felt most happy, most at home.

But life is not ideal.  In fact, as we have found, the most beautiful moments are bittersweet.  The most beautiful moments are the ones that mix tears and laughter, the ones that finish chords of sadness, anger, disillusionment, with a flourish of hope.

And I have to remind myself how long it takes to turn a new place, new people, into home.  And how much energy it takes on my part, how many moments of feeling certain I would, finally, once and for all, give up.  Funny enough, it is those moments that make new homes possible.  Those moments slap me in the face and tell me straight to get a grip and work out the situation at hand.

I almost give up a lot.

And those aren't moments of weakness.  They lay the foundation for the moments I look back on and say, "Thank God that happened."  They lay the foundation for moments of glory.

hook, eye, and sinker

I just got back from four and a half days of vacation in the Midwest.  I am writing now because I am due for a post, overdue in fact, and while mere mortals might be unfazed by the calls of a self-imposed schedule, I am the Pinnacle of Self-Discipline.  Sometimes to a dysfunctional degree.  But mostly, without this characteristic, I would have spiraled irrevocably into the deepest circles of the inferno.

But there is no good place to start.  There is no way I can share every activity, every discovery, every crucial moment even of the past five days.  There is no way to fully express exactly how much this time means to me.  So I am loath to write anything at all, knowing I can never do it justice.

My mom said, driving me back to Wilmington from PHL, "You said it earlier, when you were talking about going back: Closure."

There it is.  Closure.  Did I go back for this?

It has been just shy of one year since I pulled the loose threads of my college career into a quick and careless knot of necessity.  Part of me feels that if I had postponed this trip by just a few weeks, certain things would have hardened into unfortunate eternal truths.  I didn't really know that up front, but I think it's good I went when I did.

I went to see Ann, and the apprentice art show at the NAG.  It's strange to me that I haven't seen her in 9 months.  That feels wrong.

I didn't make plans, I told about 3 people in advance that I was coming, and I vowed to keep a low profile.  I was going to avoid campus at all costs.  Anyone I did speak to while in Northfield heard my apprehension about running into any of my ghosts should I set foot on The Hill.  This is something I may never feel prepared to do.

But places get under your skin.  I love St. Olaf.  I am proud of the place I chose to get my (invaluable) education, and awestruck by the relationships that grew out of that place.  Of course I would go back.

I got in on Thursday, which as any Ole knows is Froggy's night.  Froggy's flooded last fall, weeks before I turned 21.  So I never got to experience this particular tradition.

Of course I had to go.

And of course some ghosts appeared to me there, and it was expectedly mundane, and we drank (and sloshed through) cheap beer and danced a little and laughed at how normal it felt to be at Froggy Bottoms on a Thursday night.

The next day Ann had some work to finish in the ceramics studio on campus, so I went up there with her and sat next to her workstation for most of the day.  Again, I felt content.  I snuck out the back door to do some yoga, and tried to work on a stagnant poem, but predictably I got restless.  My respected fellow anthropologist William had suggested to me the night before that I stop by the Soc/Anthro office (Ye Olde Stomping Groundes) and say hi to some of the professors there.  If there is anywhere on campus I do want to visit, it is Holland Hall suite 400.

I undoubtedly chose the right course of study at St. Olaf, and I was glad to be back.  (I did miss the Bananagrams set that used to be the focus of my Friday mornings in the Soc/Anthro office, but things fall by the wayside.  We all know this.)  Mid-May is a hectic time on campus, but I snagged some really good chats with a couple of professors.

Professor Tom Williamson of Anthropology Lore invited me to walk with him to Buntrock, where he was going to a meeting.  Buntrock.  The center of campus activity.  My kryptonite.

Of course I went.  He mentioned the chances he's had to catch up with a few of my classmates lately and said, "What strikes me about seeing all of you is that, in 8 or 10 months, you've got this confidence.  You're just so confident."  He seems a bit awed, as always, with us and with the world at large.

"We have to be," I reply, and launch into a description of the requirements of professional conduct.  But I get this weird feeling he understood better than I did that I was really talking about something much broader and deeper than just self-presentation.  It's about survival, and self-discovery, and the truthful uncertainty of the post-grad world.

I ended up on campus one more time, the next afternoon, to see Grace, who refused to let me escape unscathed.  She recalled the place she saw me in last spring, wild and desperate and even delirious, and she said she understood then to give me space, and she understands now what I felt like.  I was amazed by her perceptiveness of a situation I myself was barely aware of, but I remember feeling the same way in the spring of my junior year and the spring of my senior year about my good friend and peer mentor Jon.  I'm overwhelmingly grateful to her for knowing, all along, and for not letting me leave without a hug, a conversation, and a St. Olaf Cookie.

I ran into a few more people while I was there, all of them important.  For all my fears about having to tell all 2500 campus denizens a blander version of my year, I only suffered encounters with people I think about often and with whom I could have hoped to share my time.  It felt normal, sitting on the quad in the sunshine, being the Enabler of Work-Shirking, just like I always have been.  Talking about nothing in particular.

We did talk about their plans for the impending eternity, and I did find myself spinning my life story with a bit of a didactic touch.  I have learned so many lessons this year and I want to talk about them so much more than I have opportunities to do so; I guess what I'm hoping is to set up the stage for a continuing dialogue, and that maybe someone will pick up the dangling thread a few months or a year down the road.  Or tomorrow.

Feeling sun-tired and almost overwhelmed, I headed back downtown to breathe before Ann wanted to leave for our camping trip.

We were pretty quiet in the Rover, winding between cornfields and trying not to speed too much on those classic U.S. highways.  Both of us alone with our own thoughts, but once Ann said, "I was wondering why this feels so normal, and then I remembered that we did this last summer, 3 days, all the way across the country."

So normal.  We crossed into Wisconsin as the sun sank slowly from its piercing peak.  I didn't know until we crossed the old bridge spanning the St. Croix River, and my heart sped up erratically before thunking back into a slower, deeper rhythm, how normal.  Without a doubt there is a piece of my heart melted into the wild Wisconsin landscape, molded to the river and the hills and the dark green trees.

We stopped just over the border at St. Croix Liquor to pick up the New Glarus Wisconsin beer I've been craving for weeks now.  The proprietor spoke with such a warm, thick Wisconsin accent, was so friendly, helpful, knew the trails and the beers and the importance of a good campfire.  "Beautiful night for camping!" he said, waving us out.  "You girls have fun!"

I didn't know how much I missed it.

I still am not a through-and-through Midwest girl, but my loves are in Wisconsin, Northfield, Minneapolis.  I got my fill of Bread Belt witbiers at the Lowry in Uptown, drank cold press coffee at a hipster coffeeshop on a high-traffic corner.

Most importantly, though, I got to touch base with my loves and with the parts of myself I left with them in May, June, August.  I got to access that deep, unspoken, unspeakable click that happens when we reconnect, which is as simple as a smile and a touch and a minute of quality time.  This is my love language.

guest post: getting off the couch

I think inspiration is circular.  Scratch that, I know it is.  I have certain friends who habitually respond to my posts in ways that completely floor me.  For example, today I got this message on Facebook: "I just read your blog in ITALY!"  Awesome.  I want to highlight every person I know, because you all are incredible.  That particular person has a several-month-long gig playing cello on a Mediterranean cruise!  I also have friends in France, New York City, Portland, San Francisco, India, D.C., and pretty much anywhere else, who wrestle with the same exact issues I wrestle with here in the State-That-Was-Never-Really-Supposed-To-Be-A-State.

One person I have a really involved, ongoing, and absolutely invaluable dialogue with is my friend Andy, who is conquering the world from Seattle, Washington.  He contacted me out of the blue back in October with a pretty freaked-out text message asking for advice about moving to a new, unfamiliar place, a place that offered him his dream job, a place located several thousand miles from home.

Ever since then I have found myself wondering, regularly, why he asked me for advice.  Because everything I can think of to say, he seems to have already taken to the next level.  I admire his gumption and apparent fearlessness.  Every day there is a new adventure.

I have been meaning to share this exhilarating email he sent me, and subsequently blogged on his own site, for weeks now, but I only just remembered after a fantastically adventurous weekend here in the mid-Atlantic.  Granted, my adventure (a hike at White Clay Park on Saturday, and Sunday spent cheering J and his twin brother in Philly's Broad Street 10-miler) doesn't quite measure up to Andy's thrillers, but the point here is that we inspire each other.

Here's the moment of truth: What is your Reaction?

Reaction: a study in touch

This post is my reaction to "a study in touch" by Clara on secondsetofbabysteps.  Check it out, take the message, run with it, maybe naked.  Anyway, this is part of an email I sent to my friend Clara after her post reminded me that there's stuff going on right outside the door, maybe in your own back yard, maybe just a 2 hour drive away.

Clara,

Love the post about touch, it really played into what is going on in my life lately and I dig it.

I've been trying to soak up life like it's water and I'm a sponge, but the sponge needs to get off the couch to find the water (funny thing is, it's as easy as getting off the couch!).  After I went snowboarding in Canada, I realized how easy it was to check things off my bucket list ... My life got 5 times more interesting the other day when I bought an avalanche shovel.......

So the story goes:

After an inebriated weekend at the TELUS Ski and Snowboard festival in Whistler, British Columbia, it was an intensely unproductive week at work.  This week was interrupted by meeting during (and after) work with my peers to work on a proposal that was due Friday ... we were all stressed out wearing suits and everyone was wishing us luck when we left to make the presentation.  Our boss showed up in the audience for support and the judges really liked our entry proposal.  Not being able to concentrate after that, we went to check out happy hour at a new pizza place that two of my friends from work found.  Dollar beers and $5 pizzas, clutch.  While relaxing, I brought up an idea that I had tossed to them the week before. 

     Me: "We really should grab our boards and hike up Rainier, find the snow and make a little kicker."

     Mike: "What are we doing tomorrow?"

And then that not-awkward-but-epic silence when we look at each other and realize that this shit is going down tomorrow.

We broke and headed to REI to get an avalanche shovel.  Walking out with that thing is like putting on a parachute at an airport, anyone who sees you is going to know that you plan to do something intense.

The next morning when we needed to decide who would drive, it happened that Garri was taking the windows and roof off his jeep wrangler.  If he didn't want to drive, that was the kiss of death because honestly, top down for a 2 hour drive to the highest peak in the (contiguous) United States?  I think so.  

You had mentioned that you try to remove the barriers between your senses and the world.  This is a great thing indeed, so I tried to take off my sunglasses as often as I could.  We eventually were down to t-shirts and no gloves.  The result is an incredible sunburn.  I never though I would see 75 degrees with snow under my feet, but there I was, exhausted and working my way about a mile or so up the mountain with my board and all my gear.  We stopped a few times and scoped out a place to build our jump off a natural ridge.  We took less than a dozen runs.  They mean so much more when there is no chairlift, plus, it's exhausting.  I thought about you and what you said when I was up there, you'd be a good guide, maybe not for hiking Mt. Rainier specifically, but a guide through life for sure.  Not because you're old and wise, way better; you're the best of us at groping in the dark (she is, read her blog).

After a hot and sweaty ride down one of the longest runs I've done, we jumped in the Jeep and enjoyed the sunshine and the wind beating against our ears with our arms outstretched.  High-fives were had by all.

Cheers,

Andy

Video games might not desensitize us because of high-fidelity murder and explosions, but it might be because we are inside on the couch when we play.  Take our advice and go for a hike.  Send pictures.

Cheers,
Andy

maintaining friendships

I'm going to try and make this quick, because I'm heading out to hang out with some local friends.

The distinction is only important because of the topic of this post.  And I can't believe it's taken me so long to write about this.

I think I have mentioned before that I could not have predicted my post-grad long-distance social network, and the varying degrees of keeping-in-touch.  Some people I talk to most now I never, or rarely, talked to while we were at school together.  Some of the people I have the most important conversations with, too.

Granted, these conversations tend to happen on Facebook chat, but that doesn't make the subject matter less important.

That being said, I would like to reiterate Kyle's (incredibly salient) point that a 10-word text message can be enough to maintain a relationship with a good friend you haven't seen or talked to in awhile.  This can make all the difference in the world.  I was inexplicably happy to get a text from J the other day that read, "I'm finding that people really like it when you reach out to them via text."  And a minute later: "You taught me that."

One of my favorite ways to stay in touch regularly is with my famed #LunchBreakPhoneDates.  I have 30 minutes for lunch most days, which is by no means long enough for a satisfying long-distance conversation, but I am the queen of working healthy activities into my daily or weekly routine.  If we keep waiting until we have enough time to have a satisfying conversation, we will never have any conversation, and eventually we'll just stop trying.  There is no way I will let that happen.

Now, the 30-minute time limit also means we can't waste time worrying about what to talk about.  I don't care to talk about "what's new in my life" because it's just another day to me.  But, as you may have noticed, I ALWAYS have something on my mind.  So what do I talk about on a typical #LunchBreakPhoneDate?  Here is a brief sampling and synopsis of topics.

1. Hair care and no 'poo.  Yes, this is some hippie shit.  But you all know I love it.  Also, I have a lot of hair, so there's a lot to talk about.  This particular #LunchBreakPhoneDate also has quite a lot of hair, so between the two of us, we're set for AT LEAST 30 minutes.  If not 30 hours, or 30 days.  Or 30 years.  I'm sure we'll still be talking about hair when we're 50.
2. Objectification, to-be-or-not-to-be a feminist, and Take Back the Night/sexual assault.  This, of course, is part of an ongoing conversation, which I have been meaning to write about, but it's an armful to take on.  I'm not sure yet what approach I want to take.  But here's a teaser: I promise to consider the complexity of these issues, every time I consider them.  Which, as a woman, is pretty much every day.
3. Relationships, theoretical and otherwise.  Yeah, pretty much every conversation I have has something to do with relationship theory, but since most of my friends are negotiating the minefield of post-college relationships, our specific experiences come up a LOT.  Also the weird number of our peers who are suddenly engaged, married, or popping out babies.
4. Work.  Sometimes this topic has a "what-do-I-want-to-do-with-my-life" kind of spin on it, but in my case, I like my job and I'm happy here at least for now.  And most of my friends are at least somewhat satisfied with their current status.  So we also talk about how much money we make, and where we see ourselves going, and what we're passionate about that we'd like to push more into our work now or in the future.  (Work.  Is this what adult life is all about?!  It often seems that way.)

Obviously this is not a comprehensive list, but none of you care about my day-to-day conversations anyway, unless you're having them with me.  Or you only care about them to the extent that they often inspire me to write about some topic or another right here on the blog.

I know I don't have to tell you this, but every conversation and every relationship is different.  Some relationships need more careful curation than others, more time and energy and demonstration.  I thought of this yesterday when I was (as usual) chillin' on Facebook and someone I haven't touched base with in awhile popped up in my top 6 friends.  I am not a habitual Facebook stalker, but I read my news feed, and every once in awhile I give someone's timeline a skim just to make sure they're apparently alive and happy.  And usually I'll drop a line.  In this case, the line I thought to drop was a simple "<3".  But right before I hit "Post," I remembered what a mutual friend said about her once: "You really have to reach out to her, because she likes to do things, but she doesn't like to call.  She feels like she's imposing."

And so I sat there debating whether I should feel guilty for not writing something more substantial, until the most obvious epiphany hit me like a water balloon: That's how Mutual Friend is friends with Her.  My friendship with Her is not that way.  My friendship with Her is incredibly comfortable with a <3 from time to time, and in fact, is more comfortable with that than with obligatory extensions and "catching up."


That may have been a little obscure, but the thesis of my story is that each friendship, and even each individual friendship within trios and groups, is different.  Some of my best friends (as much as I cringe to use that word, there isn't really any use denying it) are people I don't feel the need to have big catching-up conversations with every day.  Because our friendships depend on the fact that we each lead our own separate and active life, and that's something we like and respect about each other.  It makes the time we do spend together that much richer and more worthwhile.

Now, speaking of spending time together, I'm off to curate my present relationships: it's ladies' night!  (By the way, if you were wondering, my love language is Quality Time.  You don't have to act surprised.)

Thanks for tuning in, as always!  Each of your comments continues and enriches my conversations with you, and that's why I keep writing.  So keep writing back :)