the spirit moving

So, dear readers, here I am after yet another long absence. This one is maybe longest of all. I have been hiding my face out of shame.

But as we all know, that is the least constructive of emotions. Buck up and move on, I say.

Where have I been, you might ask? Or maybe you are not asking, because you have used your powers of deduction to figure out from my last post that I was in the Big Easy for a few days - New Orleans.

I have loved the city of New Orleans. Last time I was there it was spring break of my senior year of college. We did karaoke and drank hand grenades and hung out with dreadlocked musicians from Portland, Ore. We danced to swing and jazz and funk and jam bands in the cobbled streets of the French Quarter, and spent an entire afternoon on the trolley carting to the end of the city and back.

gator sausage.

This trip was a little different. As I [may have] mentioned 2 Wednesdays ago, this trip involved me being an "adult leader" (HA) for seven high school youth from my church.

I know you are laughing at this great joke right about now. Me, an adult leader? Me, actively involved in church?! ME not setting foot on Bourbon Street...

And still having the time of my life?!

This trip was really important, though. You might have noticed (my mom did) that I was starting to spiral into a rut of neurotic angst and perpetual anxiety. I was getting lonely and losing touch with the cornerstones of my life, my identity, my values. Not to the point of no return, not banishing them from my life, but but losing touch with what really matters.

By the way, thank you all again for reminding me of this, reminding me that while these things may have gotten covered up in the dust of routine and responsibility, they are not worthless or broken. Dusting things off is a relatively easy chore, and so rewarding as you can immediately see the difference in your life. So thanks for reaching out your social networks to reassure me. I sincerely hope it was mutual.

But the youth gathering reminded me of how to move in a group - not only in a group of 4 (the girls in my room) or a group of 10 (the Hope Lutheran, DE, contingent), but in a group of almost 34,000. This motion is unbelievable. Slow, at times, and obnoxious to resident drivers when our accordion effect fails to heed traffic signals. We got better by the end of the three days.

This motion, though, is unbelievable. We high-fived at least hundreds of people, and got as many "free hugs" as we could possibly need in one weekend. We smiled and waved at almost everyone, and we shared mardi gras beads in exchange for bottle cap necklaces and fake tattoos and cheese-shaped erasers with a tag reading, "Cheeses for Jesus" and the name of a church in Wisconsin.

And when we all got into the Superdome, well, even I couldn't deny the power of the Spirit. I will admit that the skeptic (or the tolerant) in me still wasn't ready to declare it THE Holy Spirit, as in The One and Only, but I decided it didn't really matter in that moment who or what the Spirit is or what it's called. What's important is that we were all there together, moving together and singing "Hallelujah" together and clapping together and lighting the Dome with our cell phones.

We also got to hear some amazing speakers. A few of my favorites:
"Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes."
A woman who opened her home to young people in a gang-ruled neighborhood
Takeaway: Question the way things have always been done
Finding your people!

And quotes from other talks:

It's not what's on the table that matters, it's who's at that table. - Kevin, New Orleans School of Cooking

 People say, New Orleans is different. And it's because we're not living for the dollar! - also Kevin

In the West, people have watches. In Africa, people have time. - African saying, shared by a girl named Megan whose family does mission work in Tanzania

And some memorable musical moments:
Tony Memmel, the one-armed guitarist
Sweet hip-hop band called Rhemasoul
The Gathering Theme Song: "Make A Difference"
...aaaand everybody's favorite, "Hallelujah"

Oh, and we also saw Switchfoot.*

*This is the part where I scream like a 12-year-old girl who just ran into Joel/Benji Madden. ...Do I date myself?

Every day was packed, and our group was fantastic and reflective and mind-blowing. We learned a lot and thought a lot, about service and sharing and grace (you know, good Lutheran things). I'm sure I will find ways to bring it up for weeks. But I need to get this out. I want to go to bed an hour ago, and I meant to write a letter tonight.

But first I must finish my list of excuses for not writing for two weeks. I guess everyone deserves a vacation, but these reasons are important to me, and they're important to the continuation of this blog.

On the way home, we (of course) ran into some flight issues and so spent literally the ENTIRE day in airports, from 7:30am until 1:30am. And aside from all the logistical issues, almost our entire group got sick. So I spent last week praying I wasn't going to come down with it, while really coming down with it the whole time and being fuzzy in the head and cranky at work. I made a new friend on Tuesday, and saw a fantastic production of A Midsummer Night's Dream on Wednesday, and went to Zumba on Thursday, and finally on Friday, just in time for the Olympics opening ceremony, I got pretty miserable. So I spent Saturday recovering. And suddenly another week has gone by and I'm finally caught up on sleep (as much as I will ever be) and I spend my Monday evening apartment hunting, which was really quite a good time, and I still have 10,000 things I want to do, and write about.

So rest assured, dear readers, that there is always more to come.

progress report

A few weeks ago I posted some version of my most current life to-do list. I will admit I have yet to do #1, the item which spurred the entire list to be written. But I'm in an airport right now, about to board a connecting flight to New Orleans, and air travel for me is good for 2 things: napping, and writing letters. (Actually journaling is probably a more common air travel activity for me, but it's the same genre.)

That being said, while returning to New Orleans after spring break last year was NOT on my most recent to-do list, it has been on my more long-term bucket list. So I am ticking things off as we speak. I'm very ambitious.

Since writing that list, I've had a couple of resumes and cover letters sent to me for review, and have consulted on countless career decisions. There goes #3.

I've also started a lovely habit of hitting the pool for 1000+ yards every Monday morning before work. Aside from starting the week off right, it's also become a really valuable sister activity with Asha, who is 16. #11, thank you VERY much!

I'm making a point of going outside, and even WALKING to lunch every day (#8 and #16).

And I did indeed go to the Wilmington Pirate Festival - #13. (See photo below.)

I've been to the beach TWICE this summer and have plans for a third and maybe fourth visit! I'm liking this Delaware beaches thing. They are really nice too...

I'm saving more, getting less worried about money, staying in closer touch with my bank account - although there's definitely still room for growth.

That's the beauty of it, though. I'm sharing my latest accomplishments (some of them, at least; you would be surprised if you knew how much I break down my progress to measure it for myself. Talk about hyper-monitored daily detailed post-it to-do lists...) BUT THE POINT IS, there's always room to grow.

Time to board. Expect a more thoughtful post upon my return from this trip. If you want to know what I'm doing in one of my top 5 cities his weekend, check it out at http://www.elca.org/Growing-In-Faith/Ministry/Youth-Ministry/Youth-Gathering.aspx/

:)

a study in the art of sleep (the remix)

It's been a hell of a week, emotionally, for me and by the power of association for certain people close to me. You all got a dose of that last week, readers, in my last post about feeling far away from my mainstays. This homesickness hits hard every so often and throws me WAY out of whack. Like, "breaking the chains of this life" out of whack. But it gives me an opportunity to fix things that are out of balance. I need reminders.

Thank you, by the way, for all of your "reminders" over the past week. It's good to hear from all of you.

There are other things, of course, that go into the soup. I share a lot of them: Money is a big one. I'm sure you are familiar with the usual contributors too, work stress and relationships and all that.

I just read a couple of posts about sleep by one of my favorite fellow bloggers, Andy of Flight Test Dummies. The first post details a highly coveted recipe "for it to all work out." The second is about being tired.

Talking of emotional chaos, tired is a feeling I am all too familiar with.

First, you should know that I picked up a lot of sleeping habits from the Greco Boys (of whom Andy is the oldest). Back in 2007, when I was still scared to death of Andy, I spent most of my time in their living room. Possibly I spent more time there than they did, and I almost definitely spent more waking hours in their living room than they did. Those couches are comfortable, but I used to have insomniac tendencies. It was a stressful summer because my parents had just left the country and I was feeling a bit orphaned and homeless. (My mom often referred to me as her "poor little huerfanita/orphan child." Still on the fence on whether that was helpful or not.) I was on my way to college, which is a big deal in itself, both exciting and terrifying. And I was facing the breakup of my best (and only successful) relationship in life to that point.

With all this stuff on my plate, I lost sleep. I stayed out as late as I could, snuck out of my girlfriends' houses at 4 in the morning and went to the grocery store to buy coloring books and trash mags and act out scenes from Monty Python. (Price Chopper was one of two places in Amsterdam open past 10pm; The other place was Fastrak, infamous for its rumored parking lot drug deals.) When I was trying to fall asleep alone, I would journal frantically for hours, pouring out my tormented teenage soul. I listened to soothing (or arguably, depressing) music, staring up at the ceiling for hours in the dark.

Mike, one of the Greco Boys and my boyfriend at the time, slept. I felt like I hardly ever saw him because he spent his time doing one of three things: working incessantly, playing Smash Brothers while drinking Mountains of Dew (there are photos), and sleeping.

I would corner him to have an important conversation about something, usually trying to figure out what we were going to do when I set off for Minnesota, and he would fall asleep. And the closer it got to my departure, the more he slept.

"You know, honey, he's stressed out," his mom would tell me. "That's how he deals with stress. He sleeps. Andrew is the same way."

Which brings us back to now, when I'm reading Andy's blog posts about being tired and figuring out how to balance all the demands life throws our way. He recalls college, when "sleep was just another thing on my list like dinner and homework." Yup. Got a big project due? You reallocate your time, take some away from sleeping and dinner and add it to schoolwork. You feel yourself getting sick, you power through until a weekend when nothing is going on, and then you just get slammed by that head cold and don't leave your bed for two days. And then you're behind.

You know the drill, I don't need to go into detail here.

A lot of the "introduction to being a grown-up" articles I read throughout my average week note fatigue as something that will be a part of our lives as adults. "You will be tired," they say, as if staring into a crystal ball. "You will be more tired than you ever thought possible."

At the time I first read this, I thought, you are crazy. It is not possible that I would be more tired in my well-balanced adult life of going to work, going to the Y, going to sleep at a reasonable hour that will give me (theoretically) 8 hours of sleep. Also, remember how little sleep I got in college, how many nights I got home at 5:00 in the morning or stayed up until 2:00 eating chips and salsa with my podmates (on a Wednesday)?! I functioned just fine back then.

But I was young. I remember my mom, all through my childhood, falling asleep pretty reliably at 10:00. She used to say, "OK, brush your teeth, I'm turning into a pumpkin!" We just knew that after a certain time of night, she would not be involved in family activities. Even if she tried to be there, she would nod off and start talking nonsense. We laughed, but we weren't surprised. She just got worn out by the end of the day.

Now, I don't know why, because I spend my days sitting in front of a computer or behind the windshield of my car, but I get tired. I can hardly watch movies anymore because I fall asleep 10 minutes in. Jason comes over and we try to have conversations, and I fall asleep mid-sentence and start talking nonsense. I often try to carry deep, metaphysical conversations with him about things like spiders. It doesn't make sense.

After battling my overactive brain for most of my life, I changed my strategy for living. It was a good day if the sun goes down and I am physically and mentally exhausted. There will be no lying in bed for hours, wishing I could just fall asleep. I want to have maximized my awake-time so that when night comes, I can maximize that too.

But to be honest, it's getting in the way. There are not enough hours in the day for me to be exhausted at bedtime, because there are still 10,000 things to do. Not sure what it's working on, exactly, but I'm certain my mind is working while I sleep (yes, I know it's scientifically proven). Lately I have been dreaming, vividly, every night. The dreams all have a similar theme: I am on a task force, tracking down a killer or taking down a mafia, and it becomes clear that I am the next target. So I give the task force a get-out-of-jail-free card and finish the job myself.

In my dream, the job never gets done. I always wake up right as I look my enemy in the eye.

I probably average 6 hours of sleep a night, which isn't bad; but I'm doing a lot on those 6 hours of sleep. (See the section of Andy's recipe for it all to work out titled, "5 Parts Fuel.") I do work out almost every day. I eat. I problem solve, in my own life and at my job. I have meaningful conversations with people, spend time with my friends, with my family, and with my man. I want it all to be quality time, but right now I'm running at max capacity and I can't cut corners anywhere. I have no time to reallocate, no hours to move from one category to another.

And last week I maxed out. Something's gotta give, right? With me it does. Every now and then I need to really recharge. I do get a lot of energy from being with other people, but I'm the type of person who needs to schedule time to think. There's something not quite right about that, but I don't quite know what to do about it.

On Saturday I spent the day at the beach with my girl Kristy. We both set aside the whole day to just lie outside and do whatever we want. And talk about whatever we want. Topics that are important, that we don't even have time to breach in a normal week. We swam a lot, tired out our bodies, and talked ourselves into silence. (If you know Kristy OR me, you know this is nearly impossible; if you know both of us, well, you probably don't believe me when I say that we actually had patches of silence on the drive home.)

And I'm starting to feel like a normal person again. Not all problems get solved by constant worry and attention; some just need to be left alone for awhile.

And now, it's time for bed.

the same room together

I have been carrying this pervasive anxiety around with me for at least a few days now, with spikes every now and then. Not without reason. There are a lot of legitimate things to worry about these days, in the unexpected barrage of stressors following the 1-year mark after college graduation. I know for a fact that I am not the only one feeling this shallow-breathed constant state of near panic under the wave of "OMG-so-THIS-is-real-life." (Or is it, "OMG-so-this-IS-real-life"?) Too many things to do, and too many things to pay for, and too many things to figure out.

On Saturday I went to a birthday party at Yakitori Boy in Philadelphia's Chinatown. The party was for my boyfriend's twin brother's girlfriend's college friend, who I don't know that well in the overall scheme of things, but I've met her before and I like her.

We had a private karaoke room reserved for the night. The room was supposed to hold 30 people, but it felt pretty packed with 17 or 18 of us there. The tables were loaded with food and drinks, and most people sang at least one song. We shook the place with rousing choruses of karaoke classics like Don't Stop Believing and HEY! Must be the money! The weirdest part was when everybody chimed in for songs I'd never heard before (Alive by Pearl Jam, for example), but as far as I'm aware everybody had a really good time. I know I did.

But I couldn't shake one nagging question: What would it take for me to get 30 of my closest friends into the same room for four hours?

Audrey answered that for me on the phone last night: "It would take 30 plane tickets."

That's almost true. It would take a few international plane tickets and a few domestic ones, a few bus or train tickets, a few hundred dollars' worth of gas. It would take a LOT of hotel rooms or empty beds or camping mats for out-of-towners to sleep on. It would take planning YEARS in advance to make sure everyone was available, which they still wouldn't be. And the question of the room still remains: Would my 30 closest friends fit into my basement lair? Would they want to gather there?

And I realized I am homesick.

Not for a place, not really. From time to time I ache for Amsterdam (the Upstate New York ghost town whose denizens are choking on their gravy fries at the thought of anybody getting out of there and wishing to come back). Lately I've been longing to return to the land of my birth, to Ecuador, the land of fresh juice and home to some serious family history and one fifth of the world's bird species.

I'm homesick for my mainstays, for people who know me really well because we've done our time together. As much as I hate that this is true, I am losing touch with who I am because they are not around to remind me.

Or maybe I am just not the same anymore. What an excruciating state of being. In flux, unknown, undefined, feeling the path in front of my carefully with feet I can't see through an aggressive haze. How am I supposed to introduce myself to people or have normal interactions with anybody if I don't even know who I am?!

That's not true. I do know who I am. I am a reliable ENFP; I'm a cat person; I'm more of a morning person than a night person, but I hate napping as a rule; my color is yellow even though I hardly ever wear it; I'm an organizer and a creator, according to the color test; I like original tart fro-yo the best in a row of interesting flavors; I'm an initiator, anxious to put things in motion but not quite as patient when it comes to seeing them through.

I am also not nearly as impulsive as I pretend to be when I take these myriad personality tests, so who really knows. I'm never as decisive in real life as I am when I have two options in front of me, and there are zero stakes for the outcome.

I guess I know, for the most part, who I am at my core. But how does that fit into my current roles? How does my Core Self interact with future best friends instead of past ones? What does Core Self want to be doing at work 5 or 10 years down the line? How much at odds is my Core Self with the vague set of house rules and family expectations, and what is Core Self's chosen form of rebellion?

What did the packaging around Core Self used to like to do for fun? What do I like to eat? What do I like to wear? What's my favorite color and my favorite flavor of ice cream?

A lot of the answers to these questions are changing, suddenly and drastically, or at least seemingly so. And that just makes my people seem so far away, separated from me by a year or more of unshared experiences, unfamiliar settings, diverging dreams. My close-fisted love cannot punch through that haze.

I've been drafting this post in my head for a few days, and the seed took root in my solar plexus probably long before that. And after addressing these life-shaking issues through a series of solid conversations and connections (via Facebook chat, phone, Skype, cross-country "<3" text messages, a trip to the mall and DIY pedicures with my sister, a sit-down family dinner with special guests Carly and CJ, and bantering with my mechanic about debit card culture) it feels unfair to say that I am homesick and that I miss my friends and I feel out of touch. It feels unfair and it feels false and fragmented.

My sister said Saturday that she is lonely. I'm afraid I was a bit dismissive of this comment at the time, not sure how to respond. I remembered being 16 and certain that isolation was both unbearable and interminable. I remembered being 19 and certain that the same isolation would cause me to die unheeded. I remembered being 20 and freely admitting that my number one fear in the world is being alone, and informing everyone who would listen with inherited missionary zeal that I was no longer afraid of that because it is, in fact, impossible. I can never be alone. My fear of loneliness stemmed from the misguided impression that the only relationships with enough weight to bear the burdens of the world were eternal romantic ones; not so, it seems.

And then I thought, "Well, everyone is lonely." It's a shared human condition. That's the beauty of it. We are all together in feeling alone.

So, once I recognize that I'm back in a (dark, scary) place I've been before, I can start to reteach myself that connections don't ever completely disappear, that some of them are stronger than ever even when they are just gathering dust, that there is always room for new ones. I can get a grip on who I am even in the absence of defining roles and characteristics.

And hope this time it sticks.

history & holiday

Inevitably, when I think about today, I think about todays of the past. Where I have been and what I have done on recent Independence Days. On Christmas I think of past Christmases, on my birthday I think of past birthdays, on March 12 I think of where I have been on past March 12s...

This is somewhat unfortunate because the post I woke up and thought to write today is essentially the same one I wrote last year (which I highly recommend you all re-read), and while it would probably turn out different today through a lens one year thicker, I kinda want to write something new.

This is what holidays are all about, though, if you think about it: looking through a thicker, richer lens at an event worth remembering, commemorating. The Fourth of July is not celebrated the same way today as it was 200 or 100 or even 50 years ago (or even 10 or 5 years ago, in my case), and there is something special and profound about this simple fact. We are still celebrating the independence of our nation, but that means something different to us today than it did back in 1776.

On July 4th, 1776, 13 dudes in powdered wigs celebrated independence by adopting the Declaration of Independence, severing on paper their ties from the Mother Country, Britain. This famous document is most famously (or infamously) known by these words:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

This passage today would undoubtedly be a lot longer, imbued with political correctness and all of our nation's intellectual developments from the past 236 years. (It probably wouldn't even get signed, because Dems would have one version and Reps would have another version, and each side of this invisible barbed-wire fence would refuse to even read the other side's version.) But 236 years ago, it was fresh and groundbreaking and signified a big and important change in the lives of the colonists.

Back in the Revolutionary Era, the colonists used to celebrate independence by staging mock funerals for King George III as a symbol of the end of his reign on this side of the pond. A little morbid, but you can see the roots of some of our modern traditions in their celebrations: bonfires, parades, shooting off cannons and muskets. George Washington (though he strangely shared a name with the king) doubled the rum rations for his troops on the second anniversary of the signing. (Booze, pyrotechnics, parades? Sounds about right.)

July 4th didn't hit calendars until 1781, though, when Massachusetts made it an official state holiday. Over the next decade or so, the major political parties held separate Independence celebrations in many of the major cities (which, might I remind you, would not have included LA or San Francisco or Seattle; we're talking Philadelphia here). Back then, the 4th of July provided an opportunity to make grandiose statements of patriotism and political affiliation. It was a critical sealant on the bonds of our baby nation. Almost a century later, in 1870, Congress established Independence Day as a federal holiday, but it wasn't until 1941 that it became a paid holiday for all federal workers.

Probably the major symbolism tying all these various celebrations together? The red, white, and blue. (Despite the fact that John Philip Sousa didn't compose The Stars and Stripes Forever until 1896! Just imagine. 100 years of Independence without that illustrious march...)

It is weird to consider how much our culture has changed since T.J. wrote that important document (by hand). These days, we know ("hold these truths to be self-evident") that not only men (read, straight white men in powdered wigs) but also women, former indentured servants, and people of other races are created equal. Or at least that all of these groups are endowed...with certain inalienable rights. We're still working on gay men and women, and haven't even figured out how to approach transgender, and we're not so sure collectively about that "Creator" business, and we can't quite seem to get the "total equality" thing down.

But we're working on it, and this day is one thing we can't really fight over. Today we all proudly wave the same flag, regardless of what platform, political or otherwise, supports its post. I think we can all agree that those original, elemental tenets of T.J.'s brainchild still have a lot of potential to expand and grow, and that we need to keep carrying them forward through our country's ever-morphing culture. But this is as good a time as any to look back and recognize our roots, and how far we've come since their planting.

Stay safe today, fellow revelers. Avoid burns at the hands of grills, fireworks, and the sun, and please stay off the road if you've been drinking. But take a moment to acknowledge what you're most proud of in our nation's history, and think about what you hope to celebrate, and remember, next July 4th.



***
P.S. If you read my post from last year, you might have noticed that I've spent a lot of July Fourths with my dear friend Alex, who less than a month ago returned from a post-grad year abroad and writes a BEAUTIFUL blog, which can be found here. His latest post is a fitting tribute to just what I'm talking about here.