you have to.

I hope you all tuned in on Sunday night/Monday morning when I posted the first All Good Things Reprise. If you didn't catch it, I highly recommend you read the post because, as one faithful reader told me, "your shit gets depressing, girl!" I will be the first to agree, and I sincerely hope you all were able to shake it off. For the sake of honesty and the full impact of this blog and of sharing my struggles as a young adult, I am not inclined to sugar coat much.

But never fear, dear readers, for we are on the upswing! Spring is on its way in (despite the major snow warnings we are being bombarded with after the Great Midwestern Snow Day of 2013), daylight lingers longer, and the warmer winds are just beginning to replace the bitter ones. I hit the bottom of the curve, bumped along it for a bit, but have now managed to get a good foothold to push off faster toward the surface.

Lately I've been focusing on spring cleaning, not of physical stuff but clearing out the clutter in my jam-packed schedule. Some of you may not believe me, given the number of tempting invitations I have turned down in the past couple of weeks, but I promise I am working on it! I'm trying to get more sleep, which means being more disciplined about getting home at a reasonable hour (at least on weeknights) and recognizing that "going to bed" is a long process for me. It involves a lot of winding down, not rushing through my routines.

I'm trying to get to bed earlier, get out of bed faster, be earlier and leave myself more cushion time between point A and point B. I'm trying to be more efficient so I can cruise for 15 minutes here and there, in between the other stuff I have to do.

To be honest, spring cleaning also means sweeping out the clutter in my brain, cutting back on responsibilities and commitments, addressing issues I have with people and situations, taking care of menial tasks so they stop hanging over my head. A week or two ago, I was getting really low on gas but couldn't afford to fill up my tank until the next morning (what did I say about not sugarcoating?!), so I turned off the heat and the radio, and ran the wipers as little as I could get away with. And I found the silence liberating, a relief. There is not much silence or inactivity in my life, and to be honest that's mostly because I'm afraid of it.

But it's becoming increasingly clear to me that I need oasis. I need empty moments from time to time; I need to give myself a break. Last week I had a minor meltdown when I realized I was escaping the chaos of home to go to work, and escaping the chaos of work to go home. There is no solace in this cycle.

For me, a big part of this is awareness. Step one is infinitely harder than steps 2 through 12 combined.

I have been realizing lately the extent of prejudice that is a part of our daily lives. This is partly because I feel forced into silence on many of these topics (in this sense, silence is not liberating). I'm too skinny to talk about weightism and too white to talk about racism. I am a woman, but as we know there is a forced silence in being a woman, too. Maybe silence is normalized on both sides? We'd rather just pretend these issues don't exist. Anyway, the flavor of this week is ageism.

I have heard this word being tossed around, but it has never been tangible to me until this week. I was wondering why I have repeatedly been raked across the coals by one client after another, when my boss will say more or less the same thing to them and they are suddenly satisfied. It occurred to me suddenly this week that it probably has a lot to do with the fact that I am one of those dreaded irresponsible, self-absorbed milennials who have no valid experiences or skills to speak of and would rather spend all our time posting about what we had for lunch on Facebook than get any work done.

But here's the thing: I am one of the most responsible people I know, in any age bracket. I take accountability seriously, and I take the quality of my work seriously. I take the way I treat people seriously, and while I don't hit the mark every single time on every single task, I take getting better at it really seriously.

I will admit that I do post about what I had for lunch and other minutiae on this blog, and I'm not ashamed about it because lunch is real life and it's actually a lot more stressful than you think it is when your mom makes you sandwiches (or at least buys the deli meat and peanut butter) or it's lumped into your tuition under the subheading: Room & Board.

Anyway, the important thing clients (and other people) should know about me is that I am great at what I do, and I am just one member of an unbelievably smart, talented team. That's something we milennials know about: group work. Pretty sure I had one class, if that, in college that didn't involve a group project of some kind.

So this epiphany to me was empowering. And this, coupled with a few other small victories, successful mental cobweb-clearing, and a series of conversations, I turned into fuel to power some big changes in my attitude and my self-presentation at work and in my personal relationships. I've got skills, but no one will take me at my word if there's no conviction behind it. I will have to work harder to be taken seriously from time to time, both because I am young and because I am a woman.

There are some uncomfortable truths I am just going to have to accept:

• I will face discrimination.
• ...And, yes, I will discriminate from time to time, even though I try so, so hard not to.
• Animals are messy and demanding and I live with three of them. Too bad.
• My car is getting old and sometimes it needs a little more TLC than I am prepared to give.
• I have horrible eyesight.
• People aren't always nice to each other.
• There are not enough hours in the day.
• This is by no means an exhaustive list. In fact, I charge you to find a list that is truly exhaustive.

So my goal is to continually get better at living with these truths -- yes, and mitigating them as much as I can, but with the understanding that these things take time. I am so often guilty of expecting too much of myself, and that only makes the weight feel heavier. So what can I do?

One day last week my boss was joking around and instead of laughing I made some kind of skeptical face.

"It's a joke!" he said. "You're supposed to laugh!"

"I miss your laugh," my supervisor chimed in. "You used to laugh all the time." (It's true; I did, and they all used to try for it. They called it "gracious.")

"I don't have time to laugh these days," I said, trying to brush it off and get back to the endless checklist on my desk. "There's too much to do."

"Make time," boss-man said. "You gotta have time to laugh. You have to."

When he said this I felt guilty. I used to tell my friends in college, "If I'm ever start dating someone and stop laughing, get me out of there stat." I have always judged my general state of being by laughter, and I think it's cyclical: laughter is both an indicator and a perpetuator of happiness.

I have to laugh; I can't afford not to.

smiling meditation: war stories

Last week I was driving home, touting my characteristic meditative (plastic) smile all over the place.

Note to potential smiling meditants: I know it's hard to smile for five whole minutes when you're starting out.  But after a couple of days--seriously, less than a week--your face gets used to it and the five minutes are over in a flash, and then suddenly you look at the clock and realize you've been grinning like a ninny for 10 minutes... then 15...  Trust me.  It's good for you.


In fact, my girl Kristy was telling me a pretty traumatic story the other day and I'm sitting there thinking, "When is this going to get funny?"  Because her eyes are sparkling and she just has this cute smile playing at the corners of her mouth through the whole thing.  But then the story is over, and I burst out, "That's awful!  I kept waiting for it to get funny because you were laughing the whole time!  But it never did.  If it had happened to me I would be so serious, tormented even."


"Well," she explained, "my natural face looks really angry, so I just trained myself to smile instead.  So now everybody thinks I'm just really happy all the time because a smile is my default face."


How much nicer this is than my default grimace.  Everyone probably thinks I'm a huge bitch (I have some testimony to back this up), or that I am the most unhappy person ever, or that I take myself verrrry seriously.  On the contrary, I am quite a sweet girl, if I do say so myself, and I'm actually one of the more existentially happy people I know, and I don't take myself THAT seriously.  I should work on this.


Back to the story.  So last week, as I meditated the shit out of my forced smile, I got cut off.  Twice.

Now, my normal reaction would have been to start (harmlessly and good-naturedly) cussing out these incompetent drivers under my breath.  But my road rage was surprised to find, instead of a ready glare, a silly grin in its place.  I could feel my face contorting as the two expressions battled for the front-line real estate of my visage.  But the smiling meditation, with the element of surprise on its side, sent the anger scurrying off into a dark alley somewhere with its tail between its legs.

This all happened very slowly.  I got this really odd out-of-body feeling that I had just witnessed a crucial turning point in history, like the Shot Heard 'Round The World or the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.  Or maybe the invention of the internet.

The compound effect of this bizarre phenomenon was that I started laughing at myself, which totally dissipated the entire idea of road rage, and even sparked a hint of sheepishness about the fact that I'd gotten upset about unknown idiots who can't drive properly.

Aside from the shock factor, I maintain that smiling is a superior facial expression to the poor dejected glare, and that in a power struggle Happiness would win out over Anger.  I am not by any means downplaying Anger's very real potential to consume, and perhaps this is just another facet of my "happy endings depend on where you put the period" theory.

Either way, in my life, I accept this as one of the Obvious Universal Truths.  As you have probably gathered by now, I am a firm believer in the healing properties of laughter.  Also, if I had to choose one weapon to vanquish all the world's forces of negativity, laughter would be my first and instantaneous pick.  Call me naive, happy-go-lucky, idealistic, and I will laugh it off and move on with my life.  It's really a win-win situation.

***

Speaking of happiness, Kristy and I discovered on Friday one of Wilmington's most famous happy hours, at Dead Presidents.  A great way to end a universally weird week, with half-price appetizers from 4-7 and $3 rail drinks after 6pm.   We actually missed the half-price apps, partially because Kristy set her ID on the computer desk at my house and we had parked in the Dead Pres lot before she realized it was missing.  Partly because we weren't really looking for food anyway.

The drinks, though, were strong.  This bartender kicked my butt on the heavy-handed scale, which is saying something.  Nobody's complaining.

On the way home we stopped at this bakery we'd passed earlier, and noted for the delicious baking-bread smell hanging over the whole neighborhood.  We stopped there at 9:00, looking for pizza--but it closed at 6:00 and didn't have pizza anyway.  Just your standard bakery fare.

So we hit up Yummy Pizza instead, on the corner of Old Capitol Trail and Newport Gap.  I ordered a small Hawaiian pizza, and 10 minutes later the girl at check-out waved a box at us.  She told me how much I owed and as she counted out the change, she said, "You ordered a medium, but they gave you a large.  But we charged you for the medium."

I tipped them well, and smiled at the guys peeking out of the kitchen, and as we stumbled out into the street I asked Kristy, "Did they do that on purpose?"  And she replied, "Yup."

Again, nobody's complaining.

cheers to a year free of wild goose chases

Well, happy new year!  Welcome to 2012!  It is everything I hoped it would be, so far.

Let's compare.

Last week, to top off my recent series of shenanigans a.k.a. 2011, I managed to slice my poor little pinky finger with a butter knife.  Thank you, frozen cinnamon raisin bagel.  On the plus side, now I see the reason in butter knives not being allowed past airport security.

And I decided that I'd like to start the new year with a clean shiny car.  So, fittingly, December 31st turned into the King of 2011 Wild Goose Chases: the Great Car Wash Expedition.

Let me first illustrate the situation here.  I have not washed my car since I got it.  It has dust from at least twelve states on it, plus the cave drawings certain people used to make it look prettier through the grime.  It also has several different varieties of bird poop, mud splatters, dead bugs (on the inside and outside), and toe prints on the passenger's side windshield left over from the Sunny V - DE road trip this summer.  I finally gave in and realized I couldn't put it off any longer when I noticed flies congregating on the car after work on Friday.

Yeah, gross.

Now, the last time I was even inside a car wash was Christmas break of 2008.  The reason?  The only 3 places open in Amsterdam after 10pm (at least for the under-21 crowd) are Price Chopper, FasTrac, and the automated car wash.

It wasn't because Kat's car was particularly dirty.  We were just bored.

We looked online for nearby car washes, and found that one of the nation's top 50 car washes is only a few miles from our house.  Imagine if your job was to scope out the best car washes in the U.S.  I can't believe this list exists.  Of course I had to check it out, so I convinced my sibs to ride along with me in exchange for sparkling apple cider and we went in search of the famous Prices Corner Car Wash.

We passed one car wash in Prices Corner, but it wasn't THE car wash.  Then we passed the real deal, but it was on the other side of the highway, so I had to pull a U-ie and pass another car wash to get to it.  Then I got in line, a long, long line...  And couldn't read the sign until we were boxed in on both sides.  The basic car wash was $14.  No way, José.  I threw my dirty Golf in reverse and hightailed it out the back way.

...Still grimy.  We headed down toward a gas station on the corner of Limestone Boulevard where you get 20 cents off per gallon if you get a car wash with it, but went through the car wash first (apparently that's not how it works).  I drove forward with the green light and stopped when it turned red, and in turn the car wash soap-soaked the front half of my car.  Then nothing happened, except a couple of tiny tubes trickling water on my front windows.

...And nothing continued to happen until after a few minutes the green light flashed again, ushering me out.  Guess how much cleaner my car was?  Not.  Only now it was streaked with dirty soap, or rather, soapy dirt.

So I parked and tried to figure out what was going on, and formulated my speech asking for help from the gas station attendants.  Who were totally trying not to laugh when I explained the situation, especially since there wasn't much to explain except, "I think I messed up the automatic car wash...  By the way how do I get that discount on my gas?"

So they refunded my $6 in the form of a free car wash, and I bought gas with the discount, and then the pump I'd chosen refused to print up my receipt with my "free" car wash code.  We tried again.  Watched the car in front of us very carefully, and did everything the same.

Double soapy scum, no rinse.  Not even a drip on the back half of the car.

Same result the third time, even though I followed directions better than I have since middle school.  I gave up, and forfeited my $12 as reparation for all the car washes I will never again try to get at that horrible place.

It was not my fault.

Fortunately, the whole thing was audio- and video-recorded (all three times) so I hope someone gets a good laugh out of it.

To keep a long story from getting too much longer, I decided to wash my own car at home on December 31st.  Thank you, global warming.

Come to find out, we don't have a garden hose...  Nor do we have car soap, and the biggest sponge we own sits in a seashell on the kitchen sink.  So I washed my car with old T-shirts soaked in tea tree castille soap, and my sister's help.

Bizz III is now clean and shiny, just like 2012.  And I guess that's probably a more green way to get her clean anyway.

I've managed to keep from slicing myself with any butter knives so far this year, and I haven't had to work at all yet.  (Hopefully that will be the first thing to change.)  Plus, I challenged Craig's farthest champagne cork pop.  A proud moment, documented in the morning by the former champ himself (see photo).


New Year's Eve was a lot of fun, even though I did not send my resolutions up in smoke this year.  There was plenty of snapping (the quick and silent substitute for "that's what she said" in mixed company, in case you want to adopt it in your classes and workplaces worldwide) and even more laughing, and an unknown amount of pomegranate tequila (absolutely delicious, in case you were wondering).  Apparently I am the unlucky team member in a game of pool, so be warned.  However, I'm not bad at air hockey...

Craig has a lot of tools, which is exciting.  My favorite was a welding mask, which he let me wear for a few minutes because it made me feel like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance (a la this video at about 1:00).  I love tool chests.  You never know exactly what combination of things will be in their drawers, but whatever it is it's always useful.  I love useful things, and I love the cool stuff that tools in particular can make happen.

That being said, I did not manage to finish my cedar chest before year end as I had hoped.  I opened it up and found that the inside lip is covered with layers and layers of paint just like the rest of it -- I thought I was done with that.  Unfortunate.

I'm not feeling particularly refreshed for the year, but hopeful?  Definitely.  I'm excited to get to know the people I shared the opening moments of the new year with, and I'm excited to get to know new people as well.  I'm excited to learn more things and read more books and taste more beers.  I'm excited to visit people and host visitors, the first planned guest of the new year being Anna Linn a few weekends from now!  I'm excited to stay in touch with far-flung friends and watch all my classmates find new opportunities and passions and whatever else we find this year.  Hopefully all good things!  I'm excited to listen to new music, watch new movies, to write new poetry and maybe even a novel, this year, and, of course, more blog entries.  It's been over half a year now since we graduated, and look how much has happened since then!

I'm not gonna lie, I would be OK if the world didn't end on December 21.  I could go for a lot more years like the ones I've had so far -- with a few minor tweaks.  Here's hoping.

Cheers.

fear and ladybugs

"Listen.

When I was a little girl I used to spend HOURS looking for ladybugs.

Finally, I would just give up and fall asleep in the grass.

When I woke up, they were crawling all over me."

-Katherine, Under the Tuscan Sun

The thing is, ladybugs don't JUST come.  Because you have to be in the field in the first place.

I have been in town almost three weeks.  As you have seen, I have been steadily nearing lunacy for lack of an external community and tasks to tick off.  (I love the library.  Libraries in general.  And the New Castle County library system is one of the best I've encountered.)  I have clicked through so many job descriptions.  I probably haven't completed as many applications as it feels like I have, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I want to do with that time.  Also, I have at least 4,586,408 resumes to my name now.  Thank you, Center for Experiential Learning, for teaching me life's most important skills.

So I am definitely in the field, and I've been searching for ladybugs using every tool and tactic I can think of. It's slow going, and it helps to remember that it is just slow.  Everyone I've talked to, when they find out I'm looking for work, rolls their eyes and says, "So how's that job market?"  Some people spend months looking for employment, and I can't imagine how absolutely insane that would make me.  It may help to be less picky, but this is my life I'm talking about.  I want to do something that I can at least stand, something I want to spend my time doing.  This morning I stumbled upon my brother's first year architecture portfolio, and just flipping through it, even though it's largely unintelligible to me, I am in awe of how much he loves what he's doing, and how good he is at it.  I know he spends almost literally all his time working on his models and drawings, even during the summer, but it looks effortless and I envy his conviction.

I decided last week that the key is to stay refreshed.  I found new physical locations from which to conduct my job search, places I might see or meet someone new, find new local publications and get oriented to this new environment.  It's like the rules of The Game: laugh as often as possible, surround yourself with people you like, do activities you enjoy, and the person whose eye you're trying to catch will most likely notice you.  And if he doesn't, then you're happy anyway!

So toward the end of my week of refreshment, I got a part-time hostessing job at a restaurant near my house, and then I got a call back from a really cool PR company, and while I was in the interview with them, I got a call back from another advertising company.  From my brief encounter with the first firm, I at least feel reassured that my community is out there.  There are people who want to enrich the broader community and who have created a team with which to do so, in places I had never really thought to look.  Suddenly there are a few ladybugs that so far haven't morphed into Asian beetles.

(For those of you that are not familiar, Asian beetles are a common phenomenon in dorm rooms and empty houses in the Midwest.  They look like ladybugs until you know what they really are, and they stink if you touch them, scare them, or squash them.  So here's hoping.)

Now I'm realizing that the possibility of actually finding something to do can be almost as scary as the possibility of never finding anything.  Because the results I'll have to turn out impact far more than just myself.  So I want to do a good job to show that I can do a good job, and also because I have an objective to achieve.

I love objectives.  Today I have to come up with some sound bites (something new and different) and unearth some quintessential writing samples, to show that I have potential and the ability to say something of substance.  I'm somewhat nervous but, as a boy with a motorcycle once said to me, "I try not to let my fear keep me from doing anything."  And as we have seen, good results often come of this overcoming, enriched by the courage it takes to achieve them.

So, dear readers, blunder onward.  May we all crawl with ladybugs, and never fear confusing them with Asian beetles.  I'm sure even those are good for something.

"Ladybugs, Katherine.  Lots and LOTS of ladybugs!"

-Frances