an interview about the second set of baby steps

Three or four months ago my friend Marina and I recorded an audio interview about the blog. Marina studied business and political journalism in Moscow, and hosted a radio interview show when she interned in broadcast media. When she said she wanted to think about starting a podcast, and asked if she could interview me about second set of baby steps, something stirred in me.

A flashback to the KSTO days, maybe, or to conducting interviews for research projects; a chance to collaborate on a creative project; an opportunity for some guided reflection on my blogging experience, just as I was starting to think about wrapping it up.

We got sidetracked in the middle and started talking about gender roles, and the changing experience of gender from our grandmothers' time through our mothers' to ours; because this is a relevant and ever-present element of adult life. But we got back to the blog topic at the end.

I remember driving home, feeling energized by the creativity and interactivity of the process and focused in where the blog was headed in the last few months, in how I wanted to approach it. I really believe that evening was a turning point in this project, and it started to take on a different life for me from that point forward.


So I am glad, now, at this final moment, on the second-to-last week of the second set of baby steps, to be able to share it with you. A big thanks to Marina for questioning me (constantly, off and on the air, even when I don't exactly welcome it) and for recording and editing our audio to be posted here.



2. Guardian angel? I was leaving work in the midst of torrential downpour recently, bracing myself to get soaked on my way to the car... And as soon as I stepped out from under the overhang, the rain slowed to a drizzle! Everyday miracle.

3. Subject: Three Things I'm Grateful For. Recently I've had an email chain going with a couple of brothers from my high school crew. We cover everything from politics to pop culture to food and adventures... My favorite part of these emails, though, has been our round robin lists of "Three things I'm grateful for today." Like All Good Things, but every day.

4. Today's Google Doodle honoring the 66th anniversary of the reporting of the Roswell Incident. Take a stab first, and  if you can't figure it out fast enough (it took me several run-throughs over the course of five hours) read about it on PCmag.com.

5. Brazilian barbecue. A bunch of us went to Fogo de Chao up in Philly last night. I was terrified because everyone was talking about how much food it is... But it turns out you can choose how much you eat, which I happen to be good at, and every bite was in-cred-ib-le. Seriously, I am not a big meat-eater, but this stuff... Wow. That's all I can say. Plus, I had the best capirinha of my life. Yummm.

6. Talking to people with shared hobbies. I went to breakfast with some local writers on Saturday, just to chat. One thing we all have in common is that we are smart and passionate and it is so refreshing to talk about something we all care about. Also, I got to meet and get to know a few new people this time around, which is always a good time.

7. Drinks in jars. I poured a bunch of gin and lemonade and raspberries together into a giant pickle jar last week and we drank it on the Fourth of July. It was delicious. Also, J found an insulated plastic smoothie cup with a straw... shaped like a Mason jar. I am SMITTEN with it.

8. Figs and peaches and crepe myrtle. (This Good Thing courtesy of my mom.) They're just coming into season right now, which means my backyard is about to burst into fruit! Plus, on the Fourth, we were passing around fig spread and goat cheese on crackers, which is my new favorite snack, and I found out that one of J's aunts has a fig tree in her backyard and makes fig spread from scratch and gives it away, because she doesn't like it. So I got on the list. Now the only question is, what will I do with the figs on MY tree??

9. Summer shandy has suddenly come to the East Coast in full force. Which is odd, since I could only find Leinie's shandy at one local liquor store last summer, and now? It's gone up $3 for a 12-pack, and it's prominently displayed in every liquor store I visit (which is a lot) and a bunch of East Coast craft breweries are making it, and you can buy "fresh" shandy at bars and there are ads everywhere, on billboards and on TV. Why the sudden explosion in popularity? J says, "Because you love it and the universe heard that." I know, gross. (But secretly I love it.)

10. Air conditioners! I'm not generally big on AC, but when it's as humid and hot as it's been for the past week, I can tell you I really appreciate it. It's so hard to sleep when the air is a blanket you can't take off. So yesterday I moved into a new room in the house that has an air conditioner, and actually managed to sleep for once. And I didn't even wake up in a pool of my own sweat. Nice.

keep calm and dot dot dot

A couple of weeks go I read a blog post comparing blogs to different kinds of beer. At the time, I thought that baby steps was a stout; now, though, re-reading the post, I think it might actually be more of an IPA: Ales have flavor. Sometimes they’re so hoppy they make your face pucker. You feel them as much as you taste them. These are blogs that make you feel something, too. They have an opinion. They’re not shy. They have passion and a natural voice. They know who they are, and they take a stand. Sometimes they’re negative. Sometimes they’re personal. I think I'm OK with that description, even though the classification is a bit ironic seeing as I am not IPAs' biggest fan. My posts are always personal. I'm tackling the Heavy Seas on a regular basis -- imagine living in my head all the time!

I think the post might have missed some categories, though. Like my classmate Caroline's blog, which I would call light but by no means insubstantial. This blog is easy to "drink," but it still has its own distinct flavor. Every once in awhile you get a hit of something heavier, like homesickness or current events or spirituality, but it highlights the beautiful things in life. We all need a little of that.

This is why I publish All Good Things on Sunday nights now. I admit the weeks get a little heavy sometimes. This week, I've had stress nightmares and anxiety taking up residence in the pit of my stomach. Makes me extra glad I started BodyCombat -- I obviously can't tell you enough how it sends anxiety packing.

I'm also really excited that summer is kicking off hard lately. Two weekends ago, my parents took J and I up to New York to see Rock of Ages on Broadway. We unfortunately couldn't get tickets together, so we saw Mamma Mia! instead. Which did not disappoint.

Plus, Rock of Ages was coming to Philly the next weekend, so I decided that in this case I could have my cake and eat it too. Please note, this is generally the biggest problem in my life right now: trying to take advantage of too many things.

In this case, though, I couldn't have made a better decision. One of my coworkers lives in West Philly, and we were both trying to find someone to go with us to the show on Saturday, without success. So, unashamedly, we became backup friends for Rock of Ages at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, rushed tickets and ended up with front row seats for only $22, and had the time of our lives.

There are a lot of parts of this story that are important: being open and spontaneous, going with the flow, doing something simply because I so badly want it. Even the theme of Rock of Ages is follow your dreams.

Maybe this is what has for so long been compelling to me about the eighties and rock music and dancing. It is antiestablishment, personal, true and a little wild. It is about dreaming and going your own way. (Thanks, Fleetwood Mac!)

And it's just plain old fun.

J and his brother donated an old PS3 guitar to my brother's secondhand Rock Band last weekend. So on Monday, at the weekly dinner, my sister and I got decked out in badass hot pink purple sparkly makeup and rocked out.

I used to dress up all the time. I used to play a lot more. I guess I'm growing up, but there are some things I hope I never forget. I hope there is always something I want so badly it doesnt make sense. I hope I go out of my way for them. I hope I still try new things even if it's not comfortable. I hope I never lose the ability to get lost in dreams and music and dancing (and Shake Shack) for a few hours, and that the real world continues to accommodate magic when I return to it.

P.S. Yesterday, another coworker invited everyone to join him at happy hour at the mall, and in line with this whole post, I thought, sure! I'll finish my post by phone, later.

And here I am, 24 hours and change later, writing something I didn't know I was going to say, but probably really needed to.

two years in review

my fam then -- at st. olaf

So. It's been two years to the day since my first post, which was about celebrating my emergence into a much wider, less defined world than the one I had previously known.

Just over one year ago, I got my wisdom teeth taken out. The doctor said my teeth were "unusual," and while I was too loopy at the time to ask what that meant, I vaguely remember someone explaining that the roots of my teeth were curved around that major nerve shooting up my jaw and into my skull. You know-- the one that makes your whole jaw go numb if they bump it during surgery.

So, last year at this time, I was sustaining myself on liquid food and ranting about the cost of healthcare. For a more general overview of my state of mind one year after graduating college, check out my guest post with Liz on St. Olaf's Sociology/Anthropology Department blog.

This year, I find myself feeling pretty differently about life in general, particularly from how I felt and thought about life two years ago, when I graduated college.

my fam now -- wearing st. olaf gear

Things in general are different. A bunch of my friends and classmates have recently graduated from masters' programs, which is wild; some of them are just starting the process of applying for further education, which from where I'm sitting feels like almost as big of a milestone. My friends are starting to have babies, too. It's becoming glaringly clear to me that we are moving into another stage of life, bit by bit. Some of us, myself included, are moving into the "2-5 years of experience" range that so many non-entry level jobs require. This feels like progress. 





remember this??

Even the blog has changed a few times since it was born on May 29, 2011. I went from posting a few times a week, to maybe once or twice a month, if we were lucky, to weekly on Wednesdays (how it is now). I've started posting from my phone, which is not an ideal situation but has made it possible to post a few times when I wouldn't have otherwise been able to. Also, there is now a "second set of baby steps" Facebook page! And, on Sunday nights, we now post our All Good Things in a new medium. 

One of my dedicated readers suggested that I mark this anniversary with a two-year blog review rather than a regular post. Read on for my favorite search terms leading to the blog, the most-read posts of all time, and a few posts I never actually wrote.

The Best Most Common Search Terms That Have Led People Here

1. "ways to eat canned tuna." The post: 50 delicious ways to eat canned tuna*, June 16, 2012.
2. "fear of ladybugs." The post: fear and ladybugs, September 10, 2011.
3. "date locals." The post: 5 reasons to date locals, February 15, 2012.
4. "and i smiled." The post: smiling meditation: war stories, April 15, 2012.
5. "baby steps for anxiety." The post: 5 ways to banish anxiety, February 23, 2012.

Top 5 Most Read Articles

1. single girl living. February 6, 2013. On food and cooking, mostly. "I'm crowdsourcing solutions to a world of problems, and at the very least asking questions that need to be asked."
2. better shared. October 14, 2012. On hosting friends and on local activities. "It doesn't matter what we do because we are doing it together."
3. another reformation. January 30, 2013. On church, and faith: the good, the bad, and the... next Reformation? "Anyway, I still think the Black-Eyed Peas raised a valid question: Where is the love???"
4. the same room together. July 9, 2012. On homesickness and identity. "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?"
5. things i've learned since i left college. March 31, 2012. A guest post by my friend and classmate Kyle. The title is pretty self-explanatory. I wonder how this list would be different if Kyle were to write an update. (Kyle? Do you have anything you would like to share with the class?)

3 Posts I Never Got Around To Writing

1. Pumpkin beer! I kept incredibly careful notes last fall about all the pumpkin beers I'd tried... But there were always so many far more compelling things to write about! This year, maybe...
2. Online dating. As this is something I've never personally done, I didn't think I could do the topic real justice... But it seems like an important part of the young adult experience! I've asked literally too many of my friends to count on two hands to write a guest post about it, and got mostly just shifty eyes in return. Maybe I can convince J to try online dating for couples? Or maybe someone will message me after this post and volunteer... Cough, cough.



i legitimately struggled to post this...

3. I was thinking at one point about writing a post about fear, talking about my debilitating fear of bees (and anything remotely resembling a bee) as a segue into all the things there are to be afraid of in "the real world." But then something a little more pressing and less depressing would come up and I would write about that instead. I have a feeling this one will officially resurface at some point.

Stay tuned, readers and friends. We've somehow stumbled this far; I have no idea where we will go from here but I hope we can find out together in the weeks, months, years to come!

resolute

I've spent some significant mental time debating myself today: To go home and nap, or stop at the library and write a long-due blog post? That is the question.

As if in answer, a friend posted on my wall that she noticed my long absence from blogging (Blogger has not seen me yet in 2013, I regret to say). No rest for the weary. (Kidding...)

It's not like there hasn't been anything to write about. New Year's Eve itself was a storied success--if you can get over the fact that our TV antenna reception cut out twenty seconds before the ball dropped and so, when the clock struck 2013, we watched it happen on a black screen, heard the big bangs from the neighborhood behind our house (presumably fireworks), toasted our extra-large mugs of champagne in the most disorganized manner.

And since then I've had one weekend to myself, which avoided turning into a party solely by virtue of bad weather combined with my brother's new job (congrats, bro). But that only saved Friday night. Other than that, I've been to Baltimore and Brooklyn, and am this week preparing to be a small group leader for a high school retreat in Ocean City, Maryland.

Off the top of my head, I can name 14 new people I've met since the ball dropped. My evenings are packed with social and personal commitments. This time last year, I was aching for interpersonal, extrafamilial encounters. Here's the closest I got to sharing my resolutions at the start of 2012:

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.

Check that. Not only have I met a lot of people, including some who are quickly becoming dear friends, but I've read new books and tasted new beers--too many to count. I've traveled and hosted, I've stayed in (surprisingly good) touch, I've gone to the wedding of a good friend. I've fallen in love with new music, seen new movies, written some new poetry, and... OK, no novel--yet. And on top of all that, I have been blessed with hundreds, nay, thousands of priceless moments I never could have foreseen or even wished for.

This year, my top resolution is to carve out more free time, take more me-time. In Brooklyn, Borough of Hotties, over the weekend with Karin I read in a book about "artist dates"--basically, weekly appointments with myself nurturing my creative stimuli and impulses. I am excited about this.

When I've been asked so far this year if I have any resolutions, the only thing I have come up with is this: I want to learn to fight. I have never been a violent person, or wished to be; but I think living in the city, and just generally facing the real, driving sexism and racism and ageism and pervasive pain in the world, is making me seek sources of power. Not to wield over others, but to hoard for myself. A coworker-friend who lives in Philly has lately taken to saying, "I am prepared at all times to be attacked." I don't think this is an unusual thing for a young woman in our circumstances to think. We hear about violence against our peers far too often.

Yesterday, contrary to my aching for a free moment, I tried out BodyCombat at the Y. From the website, sticking with this class "tones & shapes; increases strength & endurance; builds self-confidence." Pretty much exactly what I am going for. I will say that I was not in the least disappointed. It was one of the most empowering things I have done in some time, and one of the most intense and satisfying workouts I have ever had. I am expecting to be sore for a short while now.

I'm also hoping this will add depth to my "training" for the Spartan Race I'm doing with a few friends in July. Just looking at the website makes me feel hardcore--or makes me feel like I will have to get a lot more hardcore over the next 6 months. But it is less intimidating than it is a challenge, and we all know how I love (need) challenges.

This year I want to write more, and get involved more with other writers. This means going to more Second Saturday Poets events, and actually staying connected with the people I meet there. It means dragging my roommate (a closet writer, as it turns out) to these writing events with me. I also had beers with a fellow Wilmington-based Ole (!!) last night, who loves and misses writing it sounds like as much as I do. How I would love to grow a really young crowd of writers here!

Speaking of, I never want to stop meeting new people and doing new things. I want to get more comfortable talking to people, starting mutually enriching conversations. I want to stop being so terrified of small talk, but then to take that small talk to the next level. Not necessarily to big talk, at least not right away, but I want to talk the kind of talk that boosts everyone involved for the rest of the day.

I want to be more patient, and more accepting of the wrenches thrown in my carefully crafted plans. I want to become less dependent on such carefully crafted plans, and be able to throw more caution to the wind, leave room for spontaneity.

I want--and this is really my biggest resolution--to recapture wonderment, awe, rapture. And, in turn, devastation. Skepticism. Wrath.

The past two or three months have been full of depression-talk. Talk about feeling depressed, talk about being scared of getting depressed, talk about the neurology and psychology of depression. Beacons blinking feebly into a seemingly very dark and empty sea, smoke signals and mirror morse code flashing back in an unconvincing display that the sea is less dark and empty than it seems.

The surface of that sea began to crack first in a phone conversation with my friend Liz out in Portland, a month or so ago. Roughly quoted, "I think in college we were constantly enraptured, consumed by wonderment. Things devastated us. And now that we are out, there is not so much enrapturement and so it feels like depression. The highs aren't quite as high, and the norm just feels like a droning low."

So it is. An informal survey about our post-grad circumstances has revealed that the intense intellectual, social, spiritual and emotional stimuli of our college years sets us up for a big fall into the routine of adulthood. And this routine, unlike routines of the past, is self-inflicted and seemingly unending. There is no diploma waiting for me anywhere down the road; there are no final exams and there is no specified expiration date. The discoveries we now must make, quickly and suddenly, are discoveries about survival, discoveries of grave significance. And these discoveries juxtaposed with the constant fast enlightenment of the liberal arts education, the designated creative spaces, the Pietri dish of like-minded meaning-seekers... We must be destined for disappointment. We are lost and lonely.

And so, my goal for 2013 is to be devastated, the way I was upon entering a Brooklyn bar on Saturday night to find myself surrounded by incredibly attractive people. My goal is to be starstruck by the beauty of sunrises and sunsets. This year I will be delighted, heartbroken, enraptured, disproportionate to my experience. This year I will feel.

I am resolute. These are my resolutions. What does 2013 hold for you?

elements

I am feeling pretty all-American this week. Friday afternoon I went to a baseball game, courtesy of work. I spent yesterday at the beach with the fam, and today is Father's Day. We're not planning on grilling, and we're not beer-drinkers, but we ARE ice cream people. So to Woodside Creamery it is.

Yesterday I also got stung by a bee (my worst fear) on the inside of my right wrist (most tender spot ever). It's not as stiff or swollen or red as it was yesterday, but now it itches like the dickens.

The cool part about this is how resilient our bodies are. Bee-stings irritate our skin, and even inside our skin, because they have poison in them. They are strategically designed to protect the hive, kamikaze-style, by doing damage to intruders who are often much larger than the bees themselves. I am fortunately not allergic to stings, but that tiny stinger embedded in my wrist laid out my dominant arm for an entire day. The inside of my wrist hurt. I imagined the bones and muscles screaming against the venom, and felt my body rushing to the aid of the injured limb.

But today, I woke up to find the sting pinched up zit-style. Overnight, while I slept, my body collected the venom and pushed it toward the injury site. "Thanks for coming, see you never!" my immune system calls out after it. And I've been awed once again, as I am continually since the extraction of my wisdom teeth: Every morning I wake up and feel more normal, feel my body rushing to get the evidence of trauma cleared up and back to business. I'm sure I've shared this before, but my grandfather the doctor once comforted me by saying, "Our bodies are pretty amazing. They can mostly take care of themselves... It's just sometimes they need a little help."

That being said, I've been looking forward to going to the beach all week. I always feel cleaner after a run-in with salt water. I always feel fresher and haler and tougher. Maybe because my mom always said salt water (and kisses) have healing powers. I wholeheartedly believe that, and will testify in an exhilarated heartbeat to the truth in that statement. And in spite of bee stings and bird poop (yes, I got hit with that shit yesterday too) and humblingly huge waves, I do feel healed and re-energized.

Speaking of humblingly huge waves, and of being re-energized, and Father's Day, my dad always says the beach is where he feels most alive. He pines for it 12 months out of the year. He makes career decisions based on proximity to the ocean. This year, he even suggested we take a family trip down to Rehoboth in Februrary. His eyes light up any time he has the chance to tell stories about a half-century's worth of trips to beaches around the world. Even though a lot of them are sobering testament to the dark side of water and its overwhelming power.

Yesterday he brought up a conversation he'd had with someone about the duality of every element, the constructive and destructive powers held by water and fire specifically, but by all the elements. "It says something about us, which element we identify with," he said. "I definitely identify with water." We both turned silently to watch the uncharacteristically huge waves crashing on top of each other and across each other and in quick succession, and the dwindling number of beachgoers who dared to face them or ride them in. My brother joined us a moment later, having fought his way back to the foaming shallows, warning that the undertow was getting stronger.

While I let the salt water soothe my sting and buff my tiredness away with every crashing wave, the lifeguards had a busy day dragging bold swimmers back to shore against the stubborn sucking tide. Fewer and fewer bodysurfers dared catch these waves as the afternoon wore on and I, a strong swimmer with strokes built in ocean waves, feared the currents I knew I couldn't fight. I went out once but stayed in knee-depth water after I had to tumble into shore on a big wave since I couldn't face the drag otherwise. This roiling sea, like the floods of Hurricane Irene back in August, perfectly pared the element's soothing qualities against its disturbing ones. We regard both sides of that divide with awe: It cleans and it drowns. Same with the other classical elements: we have campfires and forest fires; windchimes and tornadoes; gardens and earthquakes.

There is also duality in deadlines. The limitations they impose help us to get things done, keep us moving forward; but they also cause stress and, sometimes, bring good things to an end.

I created this blog in May of 2011 and promised to update it a few times a week for the first year after college graduation. That year is over. So do I stop writing in the name of discipline?

In the past year, I have wrestled publicly with moving, at least twice; looking for jobs, twice; starting new jobs; dating; getting over; missing people and places; traveling; making new friends, and taking old friendships into a new context; being robbed; car trouble; money trouble; medical trouble; church; and perhaps a thousand other things. I have written about these things in part to process them, to figure out life as I now live it, to separate the things I know how to deal with from the things I don't even know how to begin to deal with.

But more importantly, I have written a post-grad blog to maintain connections with those scattered souls who are doing the same things as I am doing, or variations of the same things, at least. I hope to put words to our common struggles and victories, to remind my peers and myself that we are not alone. I have continued to post these past few weeks because little has changed: our post-grad experience has not ended. We continue to face unfamiliar situations, and we continue to take in new things we need to figure out. We continue to be hit with the duality of elements, we continue to rejoice and to mourn, and life goes on.

I could pose the same question about life as I did about reading a couple of posts ago: is it better as an individual or a shared experience? But it would be futile. Life is a shared experience.

A lot of us are facing a second round of changes, as service corps placements wrap up, leases run out, grad school approaches, knots get tied (this summer brings a hearty round of weddings for Class of 2011 grads). Is this our third set of baby steps? Maybe we are starting to walk more confidently, to take longer strides. But in my opinion it's still nice to fall into step with someone else. And as long as it is mutually helpful and joyful for me to share my footfalls, I don't see how I can quit. Writing is my sanity.

Over the next few weeks I'm hoping to make some changes to the blog, the way it looks, the features and labels and organization... I'm thinking about making a Facebook page. I might try to write shorter/more on-the-fly posts, and I'm trying to figure out blogger for mobile, which so far proves pretty un-user-friendly. I want to stay true to the core spirit of the blog, but to grow it up a little to match the steps we've taken since graduation. Some things will definitely change. But don't worry -- I'll keep you posted.

pressing questions of a word nerd

I want to run something by you guys.

Months ago, I read an article on PRdaily.com called How to improve your writing in 15 minutes. I read articles like this because they keep my wordcrafting muscles toned and agile, and sometimes there are good tips. (Tip for my fellow writer friends: PRdaily has a lot of good articles about writing, so if you want to stay sharp, check out their writing exercises and word-nerd features.)

Anyway, leave it to me to get more out of the example than out of the article itself. I got hooked on the example topic: "How to become a better communicator." In particular, the third talking point under step 1, "Read often so you're able to speak confidently about a number of topics."

At the time it struck me that I OD'ed on this in college, being able to speak confidently on tons of different topics, because at any given time I was taking 3-4 classes in which that was how we spent our time: reading (or in my case, "reading") lots of books and articles, and talking about them.

Actually, I've been doing this my whole life. My lifelong book addiction hooked me up with a love of language, an outlandish vocabulary, an atrophic social life up to age 14, the most random pockets of expertise you can imagine, and something to contribute to almost any conversation. The difference has been mainly what I read. As a 6-year-old, it was Babysitter's Little Sister; at 8 I devoured Encyclopedia Brown; the summer before middle school I burned through the juvenile fiction and into the YA section at my local library, and then housed Harry Potter interspersed with the entire bibliographies of Madeleine L'Engle and Philip Pullman, and the misadventures of Georgia Nicolson, until I graduated high school. In college it was a lot of heavy academic stuff, philosophy and social theory and ethnographies (a genre I still get jazzed about even though most academic literature makes me gag and pass out).

Now? I read PRdaily meta-articles about writing. I read post-grad and travel blogs. I read vampire novels bought as a ploy to get me to go on dates with coffeeshop crushes. I read Facebook terms and advertising guidelines, New York Times and Huff Post articles about the impending apocalypse, and interview tips. And I read the nerdiest book you would have never heard about if Borders hadn't gone out of business and madly sold their entire inventory for $2.

It's called The Great Typo Hunt and it's about two dudes who go on a Pan-American road trip documenting and correcting typos in the name of better communication across the nation.

Yes, I'll be the first to admit what a honking big word nerd I am.

So a few weeks ago I was sitting in my car on my lunch break, reading this book, and I thought, "This is pretty good for a mediocre book." And then I realized what I had just thought and my head snapped up. I am loving this book. It makes me laugh out loud on a fairly regular basis, and I've actually had to close it a few times on something that blew my mind so I couldn't focus on reading anymore, and I needed to process it for a few days before picking the book back up. Also, I kind of love travel writing. Holy Cow!: An Indian Adventure, for example, or Eat Pray Love, in spite of all the criticism. (Yes, those are Goodreads links. Feel free to friend me.)

So why would I file it away in my mind as "mediocre"?

In that moment, I decided I put it there for its obscurity. The fact that I didn't hear about it through the grapevine, and in fact I had never heard about it before, and didn't know anyone else who had read it either. I couldn't talk about this book. It would be complicated to reference in conversation because I would have to explain the whole principle, or give a synopsis and include a link to its webpage if I wanted to mention it in a blog post.

Is it prior text status that takes a book from mediocre or good to great? Does the shared experience of having read some 300 pages, the shared familiarity with characters and plotlines and settings, make a book a favorite? Is this why we recommend books to fellow lit-lovers? So we can talk about them, and thus bump the book we enjoyed into greatness, among the monuments of our formative experiences?

Tell me what you think. I'm dying to be back at school to be around people that like talking about such things, but I'm not. So PLEASE hit me up with thoughts and comments.

"There's 2 parties in here, and us.
...We're a party. Let's be honest."

Meanwhile, I will mention that I spent Sunday in Philly's Chinatown in search of flaming drinks, lotto tickets, fortune cookies, and a great birthday for my girl Kristy. We found all of those things. Like a boss.

Also, my phone (i.e. my life in device form) decided to go swimming in the cat bowl on Monday, and I've just now turned it on after a 2-day rice bath. It's just graced my ears with a symphony of message alerts, so here's hoping there will be photos in future posts.

Though I will never admit this if you ask me in conversation, my life is never boring.

picking up the storyline

It's getting weird seeing all the posts on Facebook and Twitter about finals, about people going home for the summer, about people GRADUATING.  My brother is home for the summer, looking for cars to drive to the job he's got set up, and my middle sister is in the throes of AP exams, put in her enrollment deposit to ST. OLAF (fram fram!) and is looking forward to graduating in about a month.

Meanwhile, my parents and Asha are looking at this huge house and thinking how empty it will be in a few months, with the two middle kids away at school and me (fingers crossed) in my own apartment somewhere in the city.

My friends, the ones I graduated with, are feeling the ends of their one-year commitments closing in on them, issuing ultimatums and maydays about the long-awaited "rest of our lives."  They are frantically scouring Craigslist for plausible careers, submitting resumes and cover letters and wondering what they really want to be doing with their time.  It's throwing into pretty sharp relief the fact that I am no longer a student (and perhaps nevermore) and that I have in fact been a graduate for almost an entire year now, and I have worked in my current position for more than 8 months.  My story has taken a different turn.  Maybe we're onto a sequel now.

This is making me think about the passage of time.  It seemed to take awhile to hit 6 months, but after that the months just fell like dominoes behind me.  Just as I start feeling tired because it's Tuesday, I'm playing Loverboy's Working for the Weekend on repeat and putting in my last posts on Friday afternoon.

Kristy and I measure the passage of time by Tuesdays and Thursdays and girls' nights.  We always laugh because when someone asks what day it is, Kristy looks at her watch, and I use relativity to figure out what day of the week it is, and then which week it is.  "Well, two days ago we went to yoga, and last week you were in Chicago, which is the week my parents went to Boston to pick up my brother..."  But looking back, the days and nights and big events and boring afternoons and the mornings I didn't think I'd make it through all melt together into this blurry, psychedelic GIF that is my life.

Between the two of us I think we create a pretty workable narrative.

I'm picking up the storyline now of this blog, of my life as a post-grad.  I'm picking up this meta-story from December 27, when I talked about the storyline of the history of fruitcake.

Here's a story I like, about watches making their way back into fashion after being shut out by the cell phone revolution.  I like it because it's tangible.  It's built out of images.  It pulls in history, economics, fashion, practicality.

It's essentially about hipsters.  I am haughty of hipsterdom, but I will be the first to admit that it's all a ruse because, in fact, I am the Worst of the Hipsters.

Also, the composite storyline is the reason I am so obsessing over public radio these days.  The long reports and interviews, the multiple subjective insights they reap over the course of days, weeks, or months digging into the same story.

I value this storytelling style as a counterpoint and a complement to the flash news we get as we go through the day.  To be fair, our brains really have an incredible capacity to process information.  Part of the reason we are able to take in so much is the fact that people make snap judgments that are completely and unavoidably subjective.  Sam McNerney (a classmate of a friend of mine) writes this often mentally-straining but always jaw-dropping psych blog.  In a post I read today, The Irrationality of Irrationality, connects subjectivity to the narrative in the passage below:

[M]ental shortcuts are necessary because they lessen the cognitive load and help us organize the world – we would be overwhelmed if we were truly rational. 

This is one of the reasons we humans love narratives; they summarize the important information in a form that’s familiar and easy to digest. It’s much easier to understand events in the world as instances of good versus evil, or any one of the seven story types. 

...In the process, hooking up my inner anthropologist to my inner writer for some serious intellectual fireworks.

Anyway, McNerney first raises our hackles and guilts us into recognizing our inevitable bias in every decision we make--and then promptly soothes our smarting egos with the assurance that "It’s natural for us to reduce the complexity of our rationality into convenient bite-sized ideas."

He wraps it all up with a warning: Take every new story as a new side to the same story, a new puzzle piece.  Life in society is complex; court cases are complex; arguments and fights between friends and lovers are complex.

And what do I get out of this?  Acknowledge your story.  Own it.  But let it change.

scavengers

I spent yesterday--chilly, damp day that it was--blazing through the first book of The Hunger Games (written by Suzanne Collins, for future reference).

Let me first say I haven't been that taken by a book since The Help this summer.  And before that, probably re-reading the Harry Potter series over the summer of 2009.  This is one of those books whose writer is naturally gifted enough not to agonize over the craft of the language, which makes it easy to read, but not painful like some books whose writers have a knack for plot but just suck at writing.  I would give you an example but I'm finding I must have blocked them all from my memory.  I'll let you know if I think of one you might be familiar with.

Anyway, I was so absorbed that I finished the last 310 pages in a single Sunday afternoon, about 5 hours curled up in my awesome giant green chair, completely oblivious to the world around me.  The action-packed plot would have been enough in itself, but what really got me was the layering.

It's a YA novel, written from the perspective of a 16-year-old girl.  A 16-year-old girl who is the main provider for her family, but a 16-year-old girl nonetheless.  So I was roguishly delighted by the depth of the story.  I've heard very little outcry about the political undertones or societal criticism I found hard to ignore--thrilling, in fact.  Its post-apocalyptic setting inevitably carries the values that led this society to its demise, a demise that terrifies those of us who take democracy for granted--a la 1984.  I find it hard to believe that there has been no debate on the perpetual leftism of implied apocalypse--I may have just missed it, but that would be uncharacteristic of me.  Maybe I'm just reading into it too much.

I was also impressed at how well-researched it was, and how insightful.  There was a lot of anthropology woven into the story's social scheme, and a lot of psychology.  And while Collins alluded to fairly complex concepts and theories, and in fact based huge chunks of the story on these theories, they did not interrupt the flow or drop heavily into the narrative.  She explained huge ideas, like biopower, hegemony, and cycles of poverty, in terms the YA audience could grasp fairly easily, on the ground, in a way that was important to the story.

Yes, I am a nerd, and also far too academic for my own good.  I don't blame you if you got stuck in the middle of that and stopped reading.  SKIP TO HERE: READ THIS BOOK.  It's much less dense than my review of it.  Can't wait to get my hands on #2.

I should track it down now, because I will no doubt have to reserve it or wait for it to turn up, and I already have another book lined up that I'm pumped about: Sisterhood Everlasting, by Ann Brashares.

Sounds familiar?  It should, if you are or have ever been rightfully obsessed with the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.  This is the adult book follow-up to the last college-freshmen reunion we witnessed of the famous foursome, Tibby, Carma, Bea, and Lena.  So I can't wait to start this.

I stumbled upon this book on Saturday while looking for a Nicholas Sparks title at the New Castle Public Library--no, I am NOT trying to READ a Nicholas Sparks book (but if you asked me if I ever have read one and I was hooked up to a lie detector, I couldn't say no).  He has a book called Safe Haven which fit the bill of "A book with safe in the title"--an item on our list of things to scavenge and hunt.  (For a scavenger hunt...)

Scavenger hunts have unintended side effects, like accidentally learning historical facts about the place you are scavenging, or finding used syringes in the sand at the public park.  Sketchy.  We added it to our list and carefully (without touching it) removed the needle from the beach, where there were tons of little kids running around.  Kind of a rough awakening.

American flag from another era

Coin from the year someone on the team was born

Out-of-state license plate

Help Wanted sign (a little outdated...)

Business cards from REAL working professionals!

Date/time marked with Roman numerals

Animal made out of glass

Picture with someone dressed from another era

Sign with the name of a team member

Birdfeeder (bird not on the list)

Group jumping photo

(Really awkward) group picture on a slide

On a lighter note, I have some more Delaware historical tidbits for you!  Someone asked me once why Dover is the capital of this lovely state, if most of the action happens up north in Wilmington.  Turns out, after the American Revolution, the Brits were parked in the Delaware River, pointing 400 guns right at Delaware's capital: New Castle.  Now, the rebels, traitors to the crown, understandably felt very nervous about their vulnerable position; so they moved the whole operation inland, out of the way, in the middle of nowhere--to Dover, where it still operates today.

Operating from the new, non-centrally-located capital, Delaware has always been revolutionary.  The First State to ratify the U.S. Constitution, may I remind you, was the last state to ratify the 13th Amendment.  You know, the one that freed the slaves.

That story, like every other story, history or Hunger Games, is a lot more complex than just that.  But I'll leave it for now, because I could never hope to address, or even comprehend, the full scope of pain surrounding slavery and its prohibition and the years that have followed.

Speaking of pain, flogging (by bull-whip) was a legal punishment in this state until 1972.  The last incident punished this way, though, was in 1952.  Wife-beating.

Sometimes it takes awhile for things to change in law, on the books, after they have already changed in the world we live in.

And sometimes it's the other way around.

In 1970, two years before flogging became illegal in the First State, Democrats and Republicans in Washington cooperated to instate Earth Day.  Things were changing.  And now, 42 years later, things are still changing.  This year, people are still writing about the good of the earth, and about fighting for the good of the earth, and about fighting to preserve what's left of the earth.  Things are better than they were in 1970, or so I've heard, but they're still changing.

The longest-serving member of the House of Reps wrote an Earth Day post I really loved.  "This world is not ours," he wrote.  He says we borrow this earth from future generations.  I see that we're sharing it, with too many people and organisms to ever conceptualize.

What I love is that he places us "at a vital point in history. We lead, but if we fail in our leadership, we will fall into the dustbins of history."

The dustbins of history.  My favorite place to play.

a not particularly cohesive, but perhaps somewhat enlightening, post.

I am continually amazed at the resilience of certain relationships in my odd and scattered life.  Some, too, surprise me.

You would not be surprised if I told you that, although I no longer live in the same room, suite, building, town or even state as most of my mainstays, I still manage to stay in fairly good touch with most of them via a mindblowing number of mediums.

But you might be surprised to hear that the bulk of my daily conversation, outside of the people I see on a regular basis, happens with classmates I graduated with but barely talked to while we were at school together.  A lot of this is witty banter, small talk, or sharing funny stories, but we hit on a really fulfilling amount of serious shit together.  Like relationships.  Vocation.  Philosophy.  Social issues.  Life goals, greatest fears, and daily struggles.  These are really important conversations, and I am continually amused at the fact that they are happening now, now that we are 1000 miles apart.

One thing I've been doing quite a bit is workshopping, which is cool because one of the top 3 things I'd like to really do with my life is coach writing.  Workshop.  So I've been working with a friend on a lot of different kinds of stuff, and working through a lot of hangups in the process.  Today we brushed the surface of a potentially heated discussion about an element of a piece he wrote.  We disagreed, but while I try not to do the passive-aggressive thing, I don't find outright disagreement the most constructive way to work through an issue  like that.  When I alluded to this philosophy, he responded, "I'm continually amazed at how openminded you are."

I laughed out loud.  Open-minded?  Me?!  I am one of the more impatient, stubborn people I know.  While I don't do a whole lot of broadcasting, I have some pretty rigid ideas about how the world works and what I think about it, and I don't feel very receptive to the idea of change most of the time.  I reacted pretty strongly against my friend's stance on the issue at hand, I just didn't come out that strongly to him with it because I wasn't prepared to make a case.

The amazing thing is, I'd call him at least a little stubborn too; but we can talk for hours and hours, coming at an issue from very different sides, and verrrry gradually I can see these sides shifting, a little farther into the grey area, looking a little more alike.  I think it's safe to say we both enjoy learning from each other.  And it's a fascinating, fulfilling example of how we (people) change each other's lives.

Because despite all our disagreements, I'd most likely catch a grenade for that guy without thinking too hard about it.

Not to mention some of the people I bear closest to my heart, who have some key things in common with me but by and large rub my sensitivities in completely the wrong direction.  Which, now that they are scattered and flung, is actually a little soothing.

Here is a returning theme: Resilience.

I am finding myself lately struggling not to approach situations too cerebrally, but to give myself a moment to step back and say, "What is my stance on this, really?"  And I check in with myself, try to just talk it out, and then chill out.

I am learning so many new things it's a wonder my brain hasn't reached capacity.  Isn't learning supposed to slow down as we start getting old?  I'm faced every single day with a situation in which my instinctual or original approach needs to shift to make room for other input or adjustments.  This is difficult.  But I am finding that ideas have incredible elasticity.

This is a bit of a rant -- my thoughts are disorganized lately, or too organized, perhaps.  There are things I'd love to talk about that I'd feel weird writing about here.  Like the awesome ob-gyn I saw today.  For example.

Anyway, speaking of resilience, the longest, slowest train in the world sometimes likes to cross my morning commute.  Not on a schedule at all, mind you.  But more than once I have spent longer waiting for it to pass, or waiting while it comes to a full stop in the railroad crossing, than it normally takes me to get to work in the morning.  I was wildly unamused, and even more unamused at how unamused I was about it.  Trying the entire time to just let myself roll with the punches.  Speaking also of the cerebral vs. holistic dilemma.

On another note, happy Groundhog Day!  Let's be honest, has there ever not been 6 more weeks of winter?  I'm as superstitious as the next guy, but let's be real.  It's February.  And it seems to me Groundhog Day is just an excuse for every weather-manipulating deity to get together and laugh at our folly.  It's like the Super Bowl of the gods.  Maybe global warming will change things next year, give those suckers a challenge.  Make winter hard for once.

Minnesota has a hard winter every year.

I want to tell you what I'm most excited about right now, regardless of how relevant it is to any of the aforementioned topics.  It is: red velvet cupcakes with lime green frosting.  I'm going to make them tomorrow and I could not be more pumped.  And the reason I want to make this particular kind is because I got stuck (after the train) behind a magenta landscaping truck with lime green accents.  And for some reason it made me want cupcakes in that color scheme.

Makes sense, right?

getting social

So today I finally started the Conversation with Coffeeshopcrush.  I mean, after the customary enter-and-talk-small, and after he remembered that I like 2% milk, even though I haven't been by in over a week.  I said, "So I've got a question for you.  Where is your favorite place to drink beer?"  Get right down to the point, I say.

In the middle of the conversation I turned around and there was this small boy glaring up at me like an angry cartoon child, so unfortunately we should hurry it up.  But before I left he got out of me that I went to school in Minnesota, and he said, "You don't have an accent..."  I love when this is the first thing people say when I tell them I went to school in Minnesota.  I laughed.  "That's because I've tried to cover it up."

"It's not bad, though," he said.  "It sounds so wholesome!"

Wholesome.

I talked to Lisa on my birthday and she accused me of talking like an East Coaster, though, which I'm tickled about.  I will acknowledge the fact, for accuracy's sake, that she has been holding her breath for me to get my East Coast Twang back, so she might be rushing it a bit.  But I've started calling people "hon," which is what people do around here, so I may blend in yet.

Anyway, I got a scoop on places to go outside the college 'hood, which is also positive.

I also hit up my second Wilmington open mic last night, and got another scoop from a Wilmo native: "Have you been to the Valley?"

Now, I will just say that calling something "The _____" is a great way to get me interested.  It's just so beautifully mundane.  Doesn't "The Valley" usually refer to someplace in California?  I'm not sure, but there are valleys EVERYWHERE.  On the other hand, when I went to Maryland that one time I said, "I'm just surrounded by highways," and everyone there said, "Yeah, and it's just so flat."

The Valley in the Flatlands.  So intrigued.

It's on my list.  Sounds like a good place for a picnic.

I think I might have actually driven through there, and it's a part of Delaware that is so lush, with old winding roads and crumbling stone bridges.  He said earlier in the fall, when the sun still comes through and the leaves haven't dropped, is the best time to go.  "Just drive around back there for awhile and you'll see what I mean," he said.

This is exactly why I wanted so badly to find an open mic.  Because I went there, got myself a drink, and slid into an empty booth.  And after about 2 minutes, a couple of guys burst in the door and suddenly my booth was full of guys and coats and books and even a guitar.

It wasn't totally random, because we'd keyed into each other last time.  We liked each other's words.  This is one of my favorite ways to connect with people.  That creative circuitry is just so exhilarating.  And it makes me feel more grounded and comfortable with loving language when other people are twirling the shit out of it too.

There's something about poetry that opens up your soul to the other people in the room.  It's like, these people know what it means to love.  And what it means to suffer.  I remember reading this Kafka essay senior year of high school--I mean, let's be honest.  I don't remember reading that essay, but I remember this one line, at the bottom of some random page in the middle of all that depressing existential babble, that basically claimed that poets feel the world's suffering in an intensity far beyond the experiences of an average human being.  I think he meant "poets" in a loose sense, but I don't think he was that far off.  A lot of the poets I know are really intense people.

I realized suddenly, as though my pages slapped me in the face, that I have mostly performed old pieces.  And the more time goes by, the older they get.  I haven't written a lot of new stuff in years, nothing worth performing, anyway.  What I have written can mostly be found on scrap message paper, kitchen slips, paper bags, and napkins, and they're all clipped together next to my bed and none of them are finished.

I feel like I'm on the verge of decoding a new Rosetta stone, except this one is a message sent from my future self that I have to crack.  Like all of these little snippets of poetry will somehow, not literally, but conceptually get taped together into the True Revelations Of My Life As It Is Now.  Which is definitely different than it was in 2008, when I wrote Confessions.  I'm not trying to be condescending to the earlier versions of myself, but there is at least one new layer to me now.  Probably a few new layers, considering everything that has happened since I was cranking out all kinds of cadenced masterpieces with widespread appeal.  I'll get there eventually, I guess.  Until then, I've got a new genre to work through.  So enjoy, my lucky readers ;)

So, in reverse, that was Thursday, Wednesday...  Tuesday I went to the Y with my mom and we just chilled in our own little elliptical worlds for awhile.  As Mutti said on our way out, "There was a lot of testosterone flying around in that room tonight."  True.  I was kind of loving it, to be honest.  But there was this one kind of small guy bouncing around looking really chipper, with those South American laugh lines I find so comforting.  All those guys in the free weights area always look so stiff and serious, but this guy was almost dancing.  He walked in front of me, caught my eye, and smiled.  Such an easy, open smile.  Unassuming.

He was lifting next to the paper towel dispenser when I finished, so I threw caution to the wind and said, "You have a really nice smile."  He flashed it again, looking delighted.  Then he casually lingered while I put my rainboots back on, cleared his throat, "You also have a... beautiful smile."  And then he pulled out my favorite line: "Do you come here often?"  Except it was a legitimate question.  The best.  Really.  His name is Daniel, and that's the story of my first non-staff introduction at the Y.