devo: the people in my life

I was toying with the idea of taking the blog on vacation this month, but I decided to just do something simple instead. I've been really inspired by Gettysburg Seminary's advent calendar photo challenge, and Organic Faith Online's DIY advent devotionals. It's reminding me how important it is to pause for reflectipon, to put some serious intention behind thought or action.

Yesterday my mom and I had a long conversation about worry, which turned into a conversation about relationships. The turning point was when she said she's been managing her worry a little better lately, in large part due to regular Skype conversations with an old friend from high school. These conversations always end in prayer.

Speaking of intentional reflection.

To me there is something worshipful in routines like this one. Like Wednesday morning breakfast with my friend Mary, all four years of college. We get together and are present together. This is a critical part of being human, and relishing in our humanity instead of being discouraged by it. My mom mentioned this too.

As I get more familiar with my new phone, I am learning how to use Google Now, which in my opinion is an incredibly useful, somewhat creepy program with an explosive amount of potential. I could go on forever about this, probably, but the interesting part in today's context is that last night my phone gave me directions and a travel time to Marina's house, where I went last Thursday evening for movies and tea. Although there is a definite element of creepiness to this, I like that this encourages routines of getting together, eating together, laughing together, and talking about things that impact our lives.

I am feeling deeply appreciative lately for the people in my life. I have a great family and great friends all over the world, and they are doing incredible things, and have enriched my life in ways that continue to amaze me.

This is my devotional this week. Love. Be thankful. Be a part of the lives of other people, and I mean be active about it. Don't take anything for granted, and if you're ever thinking of someone, for any reason, send a message. It makes a difference.

posted from Bloggeroid

a disturbance in the force / spring cleaning

Please excuse my absence, dear readers, from the blogosphere for the past 2 weeks.

If you tuned in last week or the week before, you might have been disappointed (or relieved, I suppose) to discover no lengthy treatise on the universe in its entirety, no rambling excuse for personal narrative, no amateur philosophical musings. I don't know how much you all count on my weekly posts, but I know the disruption to my personal schedule gave me some things to seriously chew on.

It doesn't entirely make sense to me how heavily I depend on my Wednesday evening blog time, and I have struggled to explain the role it plays in my life and why I take it so seriously. It's mindboggling, how guilty and unsettled I feel when I break this commitment I've made to myself to sit down and write a blog at a particular time. I feel some obligation to you all, my readers, as well, even though my weekly pageviews could be random accidental clicks on a search result or a Facebook news feed, for all I know.

Over the past few weeks, there have been plenty of disruptions to my daily grind, both personally and on a collective level.

Our society as a whole has been reeling from a few things since I last wrote: the bombings at the Boston Marathon; the explosion in West, Texas; the ensuing investigations of both of these incidents -- just today, in fact, the arrest of 3 others in connection with the Boston bombs; the continual onslaught of horrific shootings in the news, the latest trend being small children killing each other with guns... You know as well as I do what weighs on our national conscience these days. Such tragedies and conflicts disturb us, emotionally, mentally, physically, and disrupt the relative calm of the humdrum lives so many of us are desperately pursuing.

Then there are tragedies more close to home: someone was shot right outside my friend's apartment building in West Philly last weekend. My boyfriend's grandmother spent a week in the hospital, on life support and in Hospice, until she passed away last Thursday morning. These things disturb us too, and invade our home territory, the path of our daily footfalls. We all deal with grief and fear differently, but as much as some of us (cough) try to just smooth it over and do what we've got to do, we are never really the same after "something happens."

Lately I've been struggling with my routines. I miss the days of getting random phone calls from people asking to hang out and being able to accept, right there on the spot; I miss the days of being able to pick up random phone calls in the first place! I just spent a few minutes before starting to write this post looking back over some of my earlier posts. Even a year ago I was more carefree, almost flippant; my posts were shorter and lighter; I was less dry and set in my ways.

I'm doing a lot of amazing things with my life, but there is something missing.  Time to rebound. Time to process. Time to lick my wounds -- to notice them in the first place! And to heal.

So these past two weeks have made me realize that it may be time for a reboot. When so many factors outside of my control have torn my regular routine so thoroughly apart, it's made me examine why I started doing those things in the first place, what they're doing for me now, which ones I miss most when I run on a totally different track for two weeks. Which ones make me feel like they're supposed to, and which ones just aren't doing their job anymore.

Let's call it spring cleaning. I don't know yet what summer will look like when it's all said and done, what I will uncover and the total mass of discarded dust bunnies, but I hope to be able to ease into it. I pray for peace and time to grieve and the presence of mind to celebrate that which deserves celebration in this life.

to take time for tea (for mutti)

There is a long list of things I would like to write about. I still owe you guys a post about pumpkin beer (we're looking at next fall, at this rate, since pumpkin beer is pretty much irrelevant now); also, having parents with aging parents; how tough it is to start something new without solid leadership; and going out to dinner with people who can't split a check. All issues conscientious recent college graduates like myself probably think about... But let's be real: the latest baby steps have been pretty heavy. They're starting to leave dinosaur footprints in my psyche.

If you read Sunday's All Good Things, you'll know that I was in Baltimore over the weekend, and that I went to an Indian buffet for lunch on Sunday (#5 on the list). While I thoroughly enjoyed the meal, the part I was most excited about was the "Nepali tea" (called chia if you find it in Nepal) in one of those big industrial plastic dispensers. Number 5 mostly made the list for my mom's benefit, and sure enough, I got a text message saying, "About the Nepali chia. I'm jealous!"

My mom just revamped her blog, which is now called, "Hot Tea at Dawn." This title was the agonized result of a series of conversations and thought processes, trying to capture a journey, a lifelong journey embodied by a hike, where you get up early-early and have a steaming cup of tea that will hold you over until midmorning, when you stop again for a meal, and then continue hiking for a few more hours until a midday rest, and on 'til the next camp at dusk. And that morning cup of tea is your greeting to the dawn, and the dawn's to you, the anticipation of an entire twelve hours somehow encapsulated by the wisps of steam curling out of the cup and warming your hands and your face and your throat all at once.

You might recall that I have started a new project of being early to things: early to work, early to the gym, early to bed. Since my latest conversation with my mom about the blog, almost two weeks ago, I've been making even more of a conscious effort to actually enjoy a cup of tea every morning. This involves setting my alarm a little earlier and getting out of bed faster; it means not dawdling in front of the mirror or in front of my closet so I can dawdle over the kitchen table, the tea, and NPR instead. It means spending an extra dollar on a box of tea I will actually enjoy, and not getting distracted and leaving the tea so long it starts to get cold, or it steeps too long and gets too strong.

So back to Kumari (the Indian buffet -- highly recommended). The four of us made a pass at the buffet, but at the end we spent a long time sitting at the table, talking and eating kheer rice pudding and drinking tea. I could hardly bring myself to set the cup down, I was so excited. I remembered, when I didn't have to make the tea, boil the water with the spices and add the sugar and boil and add the milk and boil and then let the tea steep and then strain it and then drink it, how calming and energizing it is at the same time. I need this. I think I actually said it out loud. I need to write a blog about this.

A couple of friends of mine are currently traveling in the U.K., and the photo documentation of their trips as it appears on my Facebook and Instagram news feeds throughout the day is pretty stellar. There was a picture in a London cafe, and better yet, a picture of "proper high tea." I am really jealous of this tea tradition. It's like the recently abolished siesta (institutionalized "naptime"/rest hour) in many Latin American countries. At boarding school in India, we had a 15-minute tea break every morning between our classes, and lunch halfway through the day, and then tea after school.

But here? We just snack at our desks, and take working lunches.

This morning I finished the snacks I had stashed in my desk drawer, fortunately, because now I will not replace them and I will stop snacking compulsively at work. So, since I was still feeling fidgety and had already chewed a quarter of a pack of gum, I drank two or three extra cups of tea throughout the day. 

It gets me up from my desk, first of all, it's a low-sugar snack (unless I load it with honey, which I have mostly stopped doing since I was thoroughly ridiculed by my mom and Alex at the Whistling Kettle back in the day), and some types of tea supposedly have other health or mental benefits as well. There's the vanilla spice energy tea which allegedly energizes the body and focuses the mind; the rooibos chai which is revitalizing and stress-relieving; green tea has antioxidants; chamomile soothes (and knocks some people right out).

Last week we took a business trip and we stopped at Starbucks to recharge after our drive. I ordered a Refresh Mint tea and a banana, and in the car my boss turned around and said, "What is that smell?!" When I told him I was drinking mint tea, he said, "Oh, that is my favorite kind! I always get that." And I said I self-medicate with peppermint tea all the time. Tired? Have a peppermint tea. Feeling queasy? Peppermint. Too wired at bedtime? Headache? Cramps? Sore muscles? Thirsty? Peppermint, peppermint, peppermint!

So, tomorrow is Thursday, and every Thursday my mom comes over to my house after work and we drink tea and sit for an hour and a half and talk until I leave for Zumba and she catches a ride or catches the bus home. Tea has always been a common point for my mom and I, a conduit and an excuse for us to spend time together. If I got anything from her, it was to value slowing down for a minute, and to allow or sometimes force myself to do so. And if we get anything from tea, it's this.

As Lisa said at the buffet this weekend, you can't rush a cup of tea. You have to let it steep. You can't throw it back; you have to sip it, because it's hot. Sipping leads to savoring, and savoring leads to happiness. The formula is that simple.

I'm excited for summer to come, for the return of the sun, harbinger of sun tea! In gigantic pickle jars now catching the light with a color that can only come from the earth: hazel, honey-colored, rum-colored. Rich and smooth and warm -- the color of flavor, the color of time. The color of tea.

And now, it's time for dinner and for date night and for perhaps this day's final cup of tea, #5: Sleepytime.

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.

when things go up in flames...

Today my sister graduated high school.

Congrats, Maria & Brandon!

I have enjoyed recently being the Enforcer of Rites of Passage. There is something compelling to me about the cliches of prom, graduation, and all the photos and speeches. I made sure Maria took the obligatory Awkward Prom Photo, and I took notes on the speeches at her graduation ceremony.

The principal found a fan in me with his message: "Find your own definitions of success." I appreciated the recognition that different people need different things out of life, and that there are many respectable ways to live well. Mr. Murphy offered 3 definitions of successful people:

1. Those who dedicate their lives in service to others
2. Those who find their call, do what they love, spend their lives doing good work and doing it happily
3. Those who get up every single day, no matter how tired or out of sorts they feel, to go to work and support their family, to care for the people they love.

I know that many of my fellow St. Olaf graduates feel pressure to fulfill a certain definition of success; scathingly, "getting a high profile job, making enough money to give generously to the College, and changing the world."

I also read a commencement speech referencing a quote that really stopped me short:

“One of my favorite quotes is this: ‘For every 10 people who can handle adversity, there is only one who can handle success.’” – - Dom Capers, Green Bay defensive coordinator, University of Mount Union (Ohio)

Only 1 in 10 people who become successful can handle it. What a strange and frightening concept, when much of the world spends lifetimes working to achieve this Pinnacle of Societal Acceptance. Working to Win.

Dom Capers explained that once a person reaches his or her ultimate goal, ultimate success, that person has to spend the rest of their life defending that position, protecting themselves against those who would try to take it away, trying to avoid the pitfalls that accompany wealth and the anomie of no longer having something to work toward.

But to me, success is a process, a state of being. It requires maintenance and awareness and alertness, and it changes just like everything else. The danger is thinking you've made it, letting your guard down, failing to continue doing good work. Live well, do good work, be successful.

The district superintendent's core message was this: "The most important thing you will have in your life is your name." He continued, "What people think of you will define the course of your life."

It is important to consider how our actions will affect our social standing, and thus our access to social resources and opportunities. I agree with him: "The most important thing you will have in your life is your name." But more important than what people think of you is what you think of yourself. Your name is important because it reminds you who you are.


And that is what will define the course of your life.

The salutatorian is going into the military and his speech was little more than a review of the past four years at John Dickinson High School. The student speakers in general appealed to the sense of class-ness on the floor, over the past four years. They told in-jokes that would naturally go over my head, a head which had never even passed the threshold into the school building.

We heard the typical messages: Thanks to my friends and my teachers; Learn from your mistakes and move on; Your failures are as important, or more important, to your success. And a beautiful speech from a student who transferred from a dangerous situation in southern California two years ago.

But the valedictorian repeated wholesome, inspiring messages from some of their teachers. And then she said, "But the most important thing I learned was that when Mr. Peck sets a table on fire in chemistry, you grab your best friend and run."

Perhaps the most poignant tribute to friendship I have ever heard: You grab your best friend and run.


I will leave you with that, and with best wishes to the Class of 2012: May you define success and achieve it, every day of your lives. May you discover beautiful things. When things go up in flames, grab your best friend, and run.

Always forward.