how to deal when things don't go my way

Well, dear readers, I just spent the last hour and fifteen minutes writing a post about how great of a time and all the good food we ate and beer we drank at the 2013 Newark Food and Brew Festival... And the whole thing somehow magically got deleted.

And this after some dramatic soul-searching about what to write about today.

I guess I'm not meant to be a food-and-beer critic. I wouldn't even venture so far as to say it's anywhere near my best genre.

But I miraculously resisted throwing my phone against the wall. That's what I get for not having internet at home and not using the super-slow library computers, right? (As much as I legitimately love the library, I did not feel like dealing with that today. Especially now that I can hook up this awesome bluetooth keyboard to my phone!)

Instead, I set everything down gently and took a few deep breaths (read: about 15 deep, deep breaths). And then Jason (who came running when he heard my shouts of rage) reminded me that I am wearing my anti-anxiety hand-on-heart necklace, and that it fits perfectly on the tip of my nose. Oddly, I have found this really therapeutic in the past.

I'm still mad. But I'm going to move on with my life and go watch Wolverine. It's date night.

promised: 6 things i learned from being robbed twice

On Monday I hinted that I might write about the movie Promised Land this week. I had a basic outline planned out and was good to go, and then after work Jason called to tell me that our house had been broken into and robbed. This is kind of hard to ignore when I'm writing, so I guess I won't be writing about the movie this week.

Lesson number one: things don't always go according to plan. What's that they always say? "The best-laid plans of mice and men / Go often awry." (From a poem by Robert Burns.) You'd think I would have learned this one by now.

I had a characteristically complicated set of plans that were thwarted by this, my second robbery since moving to Delaware less than 2 years ago. Not to mention the hard-earned, if still slightly shaky, sense of security living in the city not far from infamously drug-ridden streets and neighborhoods. 

Oddly enough, I almost feel a little less scared now. More city-hardened. Broken in (ha, ha, get it?). The guy one house down, though, told us he's lived there since 1999 and hasn't known of any break-ins on our block until now. He did say a lady once had her purse snatched on the corner, though, and was screaming for help. He said he and two other guys on the street came out to see what was going on, and one of them chased the guy a couple blocks before catching him and beating him up and bringing the purse back.

Lesson number two: city security. The cops told us "negative" on ground-floor window units and gave us a few other security measures we should put in place. So we're working on that.

In our case, they said, somebody probably was looking for pills or drug money, or both. People walk around pushing on AC units and if there's give, they push it in, fill their pockets and take off out the back door, to turn over the goods for cash or crack a few blocks away.

Lesson number three: we are unbelievably lucky in our family, friends and neighbors.

Talking to our neighbors after the fact, it was clear that people on the block keep an eye out for each other. Call it nosy, but I have had a growing feeling that, when it comes down to it, we all have each other's backs.

When I got off the phone with Jason after work and found out what had happened, I first called my mom to tell her I probably wouldn't make it over for dinner, and why. She said she was sorry to hear it and did I want them to come over. I said I would assess the situation and get back to her. Then I called Katy and told her to come home.

So I went home to find Jason and his brother watching a movie and drinking beer. And Joe stayed until Katy got there and then he left. So there we are waiting for the cops to show up (apparently there have been a lot of shootings in town lately, so they have been busy) and there is a knock on the door, and it's my parents standing there with a crockpot full of stew and some bread. "Want dinner?" they said.

A little later my sister, who was the first person to discover that my parents' house was robbed last September, showed up to give hugs and make jokes. And Jason's parents checked in on us every hour or so, and the morning after.

Family is so important, and ours are the best.

And then I told the girls at work and they said, "Are you suppressing your emotions or are you really this calm?" Since then they have been offering to make plans with us and have been texting periodically at night and in the morning to make sure we are feeling OK. And friends have been checking in and doing the same.

Friends are so important, and ours are the best.

Lesson number four: you never know what people are dealing with behind their eyes. Yesterday I decided to go to work and really dig in, try not to get distracted, act normal. You might never know if you saw any of us that something had happened. Because we don't always have the luxury (or the crutch?) of being able to check out and freak out. We have no clue what kinds of things people deal with on a daily basis. The people driving next to us, making our coffee, delivering our mail, sitting in the next office. The show must go on.

Lesson number five: when my parents' house was broken into almost two years ago, I had the most stuff stolen. I was so angry because I had just come to this new place, and it wasn't treating me very well. It hit me with an earthquake, a hurricane, tornadoes, a break-in, and a manhunt, all within the first 3 weeks of my arrival. I took it so personally.

Jason was the first to discover the robbery on Monday. He just moved in officially a week ago, and he got hit the hardest as far as the value of things lost. I asked him, "Are you ready to move out?" And he said. "Yeah..."

And so was I, two years ago. But in retrospect, how glad am I that I stuck around? I am not one to run away. I am determined -- to a fault -- to overcome. And I have, for the most part. I have kept my job and, in fact, advanced within my company. I still love what I do. I have made a lot of friends and discovered a lot of things I never would have otherwise, and taken advantage of a lot of opportunities. And I met this great guy who moved in and almost immediately got robbed. The literary richness of this story is not lost on me. I only hope that there are as many good things to come in the next two years for him, and for all of us, as there have been for me.

And that no one gets robbed two years from now. There is no curse! We just live in a city.

Lesson number six: this is the kind of thing my parents told me, when I was little, that only happens to people once. I know now that this isn't true, that some people have a lot of bad things happen to them and some people have hardly any. I know from experience it's easy to feel like Job.

But I caught myself thinking that yesterday and scoffed aloud. Not everything is great, and in fact I have been heard to say more than once lately that the world is a pretty rough and unpleasant place a lot of the time. But given what we have to work with, I've got it pretty good. And to compare myself to Job? Well, that guy lost everything. And I'm definitely not trying to jinx it by thinking I'm at that level. I've got a lot to be thankful for.

So I didn't write about Promised Land. But part of what I was going to say about it is that things don't always turn out how we think they will, and life delights in surprising us. And that we don't know people until we sit down and listen to their stories. And that the world is hard, but sometimes all the more beautiful for it.

So maybe I did write about it after all.

in the face of adversity

Yesterday I saw this picture on Facebook:

I don't normally read the longer stories online, but I did read this one. I wanted to know whether I was a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean. Here's the story:

A young woman went to her grandmother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed that as one problem was solved, a new one arose. 

Her grandmother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to a boil. In the first, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil, without saying a word.

In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She then pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl.

Turning to her granddaughter, she asked, "Tell me, what do you see?"

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied.

She brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. She then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma.

The granddaughter then asked, "What does it mean, Grandmother?"

Her grandmother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity -- boiling water -- but each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.

"Which are you?" she asked her granddaughter. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?"

Think of this: Which am I? Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity? Do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?

Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and a hardened heart?

Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor of your life. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you. When the hours are the darkest and trials are their greatest, do you elevate to another level?

How do you handle adversity? Are you changed by your surroundings or do you bring life, flavor, to them?

ARE YOU A CARROT, AN EGG, OR A COFFEE BEAN?

Of course there is a clear ideal answer: you don't want to get all soft and slimy; you don't want your heart to get all tough and bitter; you want to change the flavor of that boiling hot water. (Actually, this analogy feels pretty apt right about now, in this 96-degree, 88% humidity heat, when the air itself feels like boiling water!)

I was hoping the story would present three different but equally constructive ways to deal with adversity, because I can't say that one way works best for all people, in all circumstances. I told the story to J last night and after I left the explanation hanging there was a long pause. "So... which one are you?" he asked. "Because you were just talking about how you keep a cool head through the whole crisis and then at the end of the day you come home and cry. Wouldn't that make you a carrot?" Of course I bristled slightly at this suggestion, but it says a lot.

First, about what he considers weakness and softness. Crying, to me, is a very valid and constructive coping mechanism as long as it doesn't get in the way of good conversation or moving on with my life in a more overall sense. He saw it, at least in my story, as breaking down.

But he also said, when I told him about how I tend to power through until I get a moment to myself, "You need to share that with me." And then corrected himself: "You know you can share that with me."

We agreed that the carrot-egg-coffee bean paradigm doesn't satisfactorily address the importance of community in dealing with the struggles life deals us. Any regular readers know how crucial of a role this recurring theme plays in the blog and in my life.

And overall, I maintain that the Coffee Bean Theory applies not as much to individual situations, like the "powering through a crisis and then breaking down" scenario, as it does to an overall attitude of dealing with struggle and pain. As the good Protestant girl I was brought up to be, I put a lot of faith into the idea that struggle builds character. Our trials and tribulations make us stronger and despite all the dysfunction this attitude has caused in our society I have drawn a lot of comfort from this dogma and have taken constructive life lessons from the adversities I have faced throughout my life.

 

Speaking of facing adversity, I finished the Spartan Race this weekend! We had to climb about 2 miles straight up a mountain, with sandbags to weigh us down and ropes to help us out at different points; and then we had to descend about 2 miles back down, through mud and water, under barbed wire, over walls and fire. Out of 23 obstacles we counted afterward there were only four I couldn't finish. I was left with a few relatively minor cuts and bruises, and some muscle soreness that hung around for a day or two after, but a high that lasted a full day after we got home, and pride in actually having finished the race!

The best part, though, was the community. (Here it comes...) There were people cheering us on the whole way, and of course there were some challenges I wouldn't have been able to complete without boosts from my teammates. And the coolest part about this race, as opposed to some others I have run, was the camraderie between other competitors, other "Spartans." We got to talk and laugh along the route, and help each other out, and support each other. We were sharing in this incredibly intense experience, both physically and mentally, and it gave us some common ground to stand on.

Some takeaways:

1. Believe you can do it. The biggest blocks were the mental ones, hands down. The times I had to forcefully squash my fear were the times I am most proud of in retrospect, and the times I wasn't able to do that were the times I failed to complete a particular challenge.
2. Appreciate your teammates. We got each other through in different ways, whether it was physical help overcoming an obstacle or just moral support. And then we got to eat and drink and reminisce about our proud accomplishments afterward.
3. Try everything. My goal was to finish the race without getting horribly injured. I had no idea what was coming around every turn, but I wanted to at least try every single thing they threw at me. Some of them I failed miserably at (the spear throw, for example). But at least I did try, and I got farther on some of them than I thought I would. And I know now what I have to do to prepare for next time.
4. Keep moving. I tried so hard not to lose momentum at any point throughout the race, because I knew that if I stopped for too long I would get tired and lose the energy that was really the only thing keeping me going. On the flip side of this, you have to take a break if you need it. But know when is break time and when it's time to power through. Otherwise you might find yourself suddenly wallowing in the doldrums. Not good.
5. When it's all over, eat, drink, and be merry. We got free beer after the race, and open-air spray-off showers. And then we went to a delicious restaurant to recharge our batteries and collect ourselves for the drive home. You have to check in with yourself and take care of your needs before you can expect great things.

Maybe it's just me, my 5-step plan, and that is my coffee bean and you like yours French roasted or snickerdoodle-flavored. (Maybe I can rescue this analogy by likening different coping mechanisms to different roasts and flavors of coffee beans...?)

In any case, if anything has become clear to me since I left St. Olaf it is that there is a lot of adversity in the world and in the day-to-day of our normal existence. There are many things that have made the news this week alone that make this painfully clear (the outcome of the Zimmerman trial, political corruption as usual, domestic violence cases and car accidents). I won't address any of them individually since this is already pretty long and I should be en route to the Delaware Shakespeare Festival in a minute or two, but I will say that it is almost entirely up to us how we handle the curveballs and the hardballs that come at us and I'm doing my best every damn day to make bitter coffee taste sweet.

What's your roast? Carrot, egg, or coffee bean?


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awe(love)struck

The mail has been pretty sparse lately.  No big loss, really – the average piece of paper mail these days is just trying to sell us something.

But yesterday, I received a FedEx box far more weighty to me than to the USPS scale that determined its shipping cost.  It was from some dearly beloved, a second family, postmarked Amsterdam, NY, and it was FULL of DVDs and jewelry.

The women of the house thoroughly enjoyed divvying up the pretty things, but diamonds (not that I own any) don't shine a candle to a girl's best friend!  The exhilarating part of this package was the "love" in the signature, in the lavender tissue paper, and the individually ziploc-packaged pieces; the fact that, all across the country and across the world, people are thinking of my family and I through our struggles, and that they want to help.  I have received several packages since the robbery (just over a month ago, now) from good friends who stuffed the packages with replacement music, movies, and jewelry -- not just for me, but for my family.  Better yet, they wrote letters saying, "I'm thinking of you and your family and I'm amazed at how well you all seem to pull through."

Really, every single one of those authors and text-messagers and phone-callers and package-packers should take some credit for our resilience.  I am completely awestruck at how strong those bonds still are after hundreds of months, thousands of miles, and a few scattered battles, and the impact of just a word or a message on my state of mind.  I feel that love breathing in, on, and around my physical diaphragm, and beating somewhere in the general vicinity of my heart -- every single day.  It's incredible.

Now, not to take an egocentric turn here, but I'm also amazed at how many different things I can do, and how much I can really handle.  Actually, there is a segue: my Mainstays are as important to my capacity and stamina as food, water, and sleep.

Lately I've been enjoying setting up my living space -- what my mom calls my "tfol," a warehouse-style basement loft.  Its walls are made of unfinished drywall, partially-spackled and partially-painted cement blocks, floor-length purple curtains, and a staircase.  I'm using old milk crates as my (overflowing) bookshelves, and so far most of my stuff is still in cardboard boxes.  My clothes hang from a pipe suspended by chains from the ceiling beams, which are covered over with brown paper.  I've put up some posters and stuff on the walls now, mounting things in the ever-difficult drywall anchors, thumbtacking a few things up there, sticky-tacking other things.  I rewired an Indian lamp last night...  The list goes on and on.

Beyond the spectacle of filling up my motor oil at a high-traffic corner Exxon station in my work clothes, or the utter satisfaction of having mounted a corkboard on my wall or dripping with sweat and/or dust-coated from hard work...  Beyond the relatively fleeting rush of those things, what is exciting to me is the thought of presenting my finished work to my friends, inviting them into my interesting, comfortable tfol and offering them a beer or a cup of tea, a place to sit or to sleep, some nice music to listen to.

And even on the worst days, when there is no fleeting rush, a letter or a package or a phone call or text message is more refreshing and energizing than a nap, a snack, or a cool drink of water.

state of crisis

When I interviewed for my social media job, the team warned me that life at this firm is a constant state of crisis.  I laughed, because crisis runs in my blood.  Only two days earlier, in a conversation with my parents, my dad had said about some people we know, "She gets exhausted because she thinks he runs in constant crisis mode, and he thinks she's not taking things seriously."  And I said, "I say that about you actually, that you're in constant crisis mode."  And then I had to explain (probably unsuccessfully) how fond I am of that particular quality in my dad -- especially since I have almost definitely inherited at least some of it.  Mostly, I think it shows how much he really, really cares.

Speaking of crisis (how unusual, ha), the first thing I heard when I got into my car this morning (at 7am) was that there was an accident on some major highway.  I passed another one, L. passed one, and B. passed one on our way to meet up for the presentation.  We passed another accident on the way back from the ReStore and Lowe's this afternoon, and a car got totaled right outside the Den tonight while I was working.  The blue flashing lights of the police car sparkled through the rainy windows, just like in the movies.

That's a lot of accidents for one day.

When I turned into my street on my way home from work, early, I saw two cop cars parked in front of a house.  Immediately I said out loud, "That better not ******* be my house!"  Maybe if I was less selfish I would have just been sad for whoever's house it was -- and after my initial adrenaline rush, I was sad for that person; it was a neighbor of ours, about three houses down.  Apparently she decided randomly to come home for lunch today, found her door wide open, and ran into the guy inside her home.  Terrifying.  So she threw her keys at him, he ran, and she chased him up the street yelling for help.

Long story short, the guy was caught, along with an accomplice.  There is some likelihood that this is the same guy/team of guys who robbed our house.  I care less about "justice" than I do about the security of our neighborhood.  It's supposed to be a quiet neighborhood.  Neighbors recall two robberies in the past 15 years.  People grow up here, move back as adults, raise children here.  This is unusual.  Our district, of course, wants to keep it that way.

Delaware has not been doing the best job at convincing me that this state is not normally full of disasters -- that it is not a State of Constant Crisis.  Fortunately I am increasingly charmed by many aspects of the state, and meeting a lot of wonderful people.  But I can't help but wonder...

I have this semi-constant apocalyptic inkling these days -- or, I am acutely aware of The Economic Crisis, Climate Change, Unemployment, The Disintegration of the Family, Terrorism, The Problems With Oil and Gasoline, Cancer, The Rapture, 2012, and so on.  My question, at least since college graduation, has been: is it just me, or is the world falling apart?

Fortunate soul that I am, I spent my free afternoon driving around with people who have been alive twice as long or four times as long as I have -- i.e., they might have some perspective on the Current State of Crisis.

(For the record, I'm not just living at home right now because it's cheap and I can't handle independence.  It's also because my family is pretty cool in general, and I basically haven't lived at home for 6 years now, and during that time I have been making mental lists of things I still want to learn from them.  Case in point.)

Grampi mentioned that he watched his father fight in World War I, his family suffer through the Great Depression (both national and personal Great Depressions), and his brother fight in World War II.  I would say this is a pretty intense prolonged state of crisis.  He did concede, "I could see now, with how fast we can get the news, that it feels more present now than it did before when we had to wait for our headlines.  But these things were probably happening just as much before."

My dad commented that it was not unusual when he was growing up for kids to assume they would die in a nuclear war.  This is wild to me.  Now, he suggested, we worry that we'll die in a terrorist attack.  "We feed on disaster," he said grimly.  "That's why we have reality TV."

Yes, they said, environmental change does seem to be causing fluke natural disasters.  Everyone, even my bosses, readily admits that the economy is taking a toll on our society and our lifestyles.  But also, "your age right now does kind of feel like a major crisis," my dad pointed out.  "You're suddenly having to take all this responsibility, depend on yourself for some things you're not used to and then learning how to depend on other people for those things sometimes."  "It is a pretty big deal," my mom chimed in.

I've decided to give Delaware another chance to prove itself to me.  We may spar a bit, but I think we're learning to get along.  Despite the number of times I've said or thought something's gotta give in the past few years, I don't need to waste my time waiting for something to give.

I should really spell it out on my resume: Just because it's a State of Crisis doesn't mean it's not Business as Usual.  When it comes down to it, you still just have to push through and hope you break the surface for a moment long enough to fill your lungs with good, clean air.