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fall in california: part one

// Monday, November 2, 2015

Firstly and most importantly: I’m writing this on November 2nd, in keeping with the many kinds of writing November is becoming known for. It is November 2nd in the time zone I’m in, which is to say Pacific Standard Time, since the time change happened this weekend. (And I think I’m right about that, but time changes and time zones never really fully click for me, for some reason.) I’m specifying this because either BlueHost or WordPress thinks that I’m writing in East Coast time, and I haven’t gotten around to figuring out what time zone setting I need to tweak to make it realize I’m in California.

Today was 52 and rainy and cold (the New Englander in me wants to make fun of me for thinking 52 is cold for November 1st, but: cold), and I guess the massive rainstorm we had in the East Bay (and/or most of California) was also snow in the mountains. Driving to work today, the guy on NPR was talking about how it’s the arrival of winter. And while I may have adjusted to California enough that 52 and raining feels cold, I haven’t adjusted enough that rain means winter. (That said: I will always associate rainy drizzly night driving with Christmas, so maybe I’m either not one to talk or have secretly belonged in California all along.)

But while it may not be winter, it is definitely fall, and I’m finding myself missing fall in New England. And then there are moments like the picture above, which I took on an 80 degree day as I was walking back from lunch after Google Maps led me from my office through a (planned and maintained) hole in a fence through a different office park to my lunch destination. (That is a story I should explain one of these days.) And there were a bunch of oak-ish trees, and it sounded and felt like fall: lots of crunchy brown leaves in patches of sunlight and shade. There was a barely noticeable leaf smell. Nevermind that I was wearing jeans and too warm, or that if I turned 180 degrees I probably could have taken a picture of a palm tree framing a ten lane freeway (calling highways freeways: harder than I would have expected). The point was that in that moment, it was really and truly fall.

It was a good reminder. I may not have bright red and orange trees, in spite of our mix of determined and half-hearted efforts to find them, but I’ve got leaves that crackle and rainy cold days where all I want is hot chocolate and tea and a good book and cloudy November skies. I just have to be open to it, and see all of what’s in front of me. Not just the sunshine and the palm trees (hi, East Coast friends!), but the clouds and the leaves and the small moments of “this place could be the place that I know, not just the place that is new.” Because there are a number of those moments, and it’s wonderful, but it’s easy to lose them in the chaos of the day.

In the spirit of writing more, I’m trying to observe more, document more, find the parallels more. Because I love new adventures and new things, but sometimes – almost always – what makes the new and exciting adventures so wonderful is finding the similarities, regardless of how small. Not comparing, but identifying common ground, common leaves, common textures and feelings and spaces. It’s about the little things, and how those little things can be made into new, different, equally wonderful (maybe even more wonderful) things.

I really love the fall. I’m missing the fall I know – the stereotypical, gorgeous New England fall, but California fall is quite pretty in its own right, and sunset still makes golden grass more golden and brings out colors that you wouldn’t know the trees had in bright sunshine. And for when that doesn’t quite cut it, I’ve got a multitude of friends who can Snapchat me pictures of the trees outside their office windows.

(Really, it’s about the little things.)

california: las trampas on film

// Sunday, November 1, 2015

I’m gradually starting to settle into a new daily routine. I’m getting used to the logistics involved with commuting by car (versus by walking + taking the mbta + walking), and I’m brainstorming ways to make up for the 40 minutes of walking a day I’m no longer doing. (I hadn’t realized how healthy my commute in Boston was? I worked in so much walking without even thinking about it.) I went to a yoga class yesterday – for the first time since July! – and I am acutely aware today of how much sitting I’ve been doing. I am sore. I’m hoping to make yoga – and more walking – a regular thing again.

I’ve also got some ambitious non-athletic goals for November. I’m torn over whether or not I want to attempt NaNoWriMo again, or if I want to do the “easier” route and commit to NaBloPoMo (WordPress.com encouragement here), which honestly is kind of a ridiculous acronym, but whatever. I’m still deciding: my plan is to write something, at least, today, so I can either build on that momentum or not, and if I don’t, I can commit to ~~spamming~~ filling your feeds and inboxes with delightful posts for the next thirty days. Because in spite of my best intentions, I haven’t been great about blogging.

So far, November 1st weekend is off to a good start: yesterday, I went to my first yoga class in three months (even though it was 10/31, I’m counting it here), and this morning T and I went for a walk in Del Valle Regional Park, which was pretty and kind of wonderful (there will be film pictures once we get them developed, hopefully this week!).

Earlier in October, though, we went to Las Trampas Regional Wilderness, which was also great (but I’m pretty sure I like Del Valle better? To be determined by future visits…). And since I already have some film developed from there, I figured I’d share. A thing to note: if you’re like me and from New England-ish and think of hiking as “tree covered dirt paths with tree roots”, Las Trampas is very much more of a “walk up a long hot gravel and sand road for a while, and then get to some tree-root filled trails” type of place. A lot of the trees also have the cool-looking but kind of concerning moss-bark stuff that is kind of visible in the third picture. And also: coming down the trails at Las Trampas is terrifying, because you’re basically walking on microsand that looks like dirt. #Slippery.

All of that said: Las Trampas was nice, and quite scenic, and there’s a ton of it that I haven’t seen or explored, so I’m looking forward to doing that in the future.

travel: summer 2015 on film

// Friday, October 16, 2015

First things first: I got a job! I may or may not elaborate on here (probably won’t), but suffice to say I’m thrilled, and it’s the job I really wanted to get and hoped I would get, and I’ll be back to working full-time, Monday-through-Friday, come next Monday, and I couldn’t be happier. We still need to get our living situation fully sorted out, but we’re definitely settling into California nicely.

I’m still trying to narrow down the road trip pictures from the 842 I took on my camera + a similar amount that my boyfriend took on his camera + the several hundred pictures I took on my phone. This week, however, I finally got my film developed: inspired partly by my roommate, and partly by this year+ long film project (in concept, not content: it reminded me how much I like the look of film, and how nice it would be to have some intentional, delayed-gratification pictures), I bought a Canon EOS Rebel K2 body used from Amazon for $25 and some Kodak 400 film, because I was originally intending this to be a “take pictures indoors of alllll of the places you live because nostalgia-proofing” project, and while that didn’t really happen, I can honestly say that that was the best thirty-some-odd dollars I’ve spent in a long time. I didn’t do as good of a job taking the number of pictures I’d planned – it took me until California to get through one 24exp. roll, but I’m very pleased with the quality. One or two of these might have been shot with the Canon 50mm f/1.8 II lens, but the large large majority of these were with the Canon 28mm f/1.8 USM lens, which is my boyfriend’s technically but basically lives on my camera(s). Film used was Kodak Ultra Max 400. Also, I can’t tell if these look slightly blurry because of the computer I’m using or because I resized them to not be giant, so if they appear blurry (not grainy, but legitimately blurry) on your screen, I’m sorry and let me know so I can figure out a way to fix it for next time I post film.

ANYWAYS: all of this is a long winded way of saying I took a bunch of pictures this summer before I left New England, and I want to share them. There are some other pictures from this roll that I’ll share later – some old apartment pictures, some very recent pictures of Las Trampas, but for now, I want to share Portsmouth, NH and Old Orchard Beach, ME on film. Because film is great, and also having tangible matte (!!!) prints is all sorts of wonderful. I even found a magnetic photo album, so I am (a) 90 years old and/or an accidental hipster and (b) all of the happy. These all were taken in August 2015 and are unretouched digital scans of the film. Without further ado: summer 2015 on film.

Portsmouth, NH.

Old Orchard Beach, ME.

I love it here: we’ve been coming up at least once a summer, sometimes just for a weekend, sometimes for a week, since I was about three. It’s changed a lot over the last twenty-odd years, and the crowd varies a lot year to year. The motel we always used to stay in burned down; the train tracks are still forbidden to cross down away from town but everyone does anyway; breakfasts at Venetia’s are great. Rick’s Fried Clams will always have my heart (seriously: the best fried clams!), though I don’t have a film picture of them. The rest of the pictures are all from Old Orchard Beach. If you’re in Maine, it’s worth a stop: it’s touristy, but the beach is nice and the pier is small but kind of great and terrible all at once, and there are gorgeous sunsets. There’s an outdoor amusement park of sorts, and an indoor/outdoor arcade, and Dolce Crema Cafe has good coffee and sandwiches and gelato (their pastries look great but I’ve never tried them). Bonus: they’re on the stretch of street that I think of as an extension of the pier, so you can get your coffee and then walk down to the beach in about a minute, or walk along the pier and people watch from above. I should’ve taken a picture of them, too, in hindsight. But, hey: goals for next time I’m there.

life updates: california edition

// Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Hi. I’ve been radio silent for a while – I’ve alluded, briefly, to the fact that there were big changes on the horizon, that I was thinking in futures, but I never actually got around to writing that post when I wanted to write it. I didn’t have an appreciation for just how much goes into moving, for how little time there is to do all the things and see all the people and pack up an entire life. The image above is my bedroom from my apartment, after everything was all emptied out. It was my first real post-college apartment: a wonderful space shared with a wonderful human, with a kitchen that I will likely always kind of miss (because as far as I can figure, kitchens like that do not exist in California; neither do pine floors), and the best light (kitchen in morning, living room in afternoon). I’ll write more about that space when I’m in a place where writing about the apartment and (formerly) local things seems like an exercise in good nostalgia and not just writing about last month. Or I’ll write about it next week, if I manage to properly sort through my pictures and/or get some film (!) developed.

In keeping with my recent trend of burying the lead, all of this is to say that I now living in California in the East Bay. My boyfriend finished his PhD (!), got a job offer out here, and accepted said job offer – and we decided we would move out here together. So! That’s what we did: my last day at my job in Massachusetts was August 20th, the movers came on August 21st, and we started driving west on August 22nd. (It made sense, for a variety of reasons, for me to do it that way, but in an ideal situation I absolutely would’ve tried to have at least a few days off in between work and moving to allow for…less frenzied last minute details and packing and seeing more people. Because I was as prepared as I could be, and super organized, but there was only so much that could be tangibly, physically done until the last few days.)

En route to leave Massachusetts on August 22nd, possibly the last time my car will be driven on 93?? That’s weird to realize. I’m definitely going to be visiting family and such, but I feel like the chances of me driving across the country to do that (versus flying) are slim.

Leaving Oregon/entering California! For some reason, California is the only state we entered that didn’t have any sort of “California welcomes you!” sign, so this is the best I’ve got. But still! This was on Friday, September 4th: who doesn’t plan to end a road trip with a ten hour day of driving on the Friday of Labor Day Weekend??? (We got lucky and didn’t hit much traffic at all, but whooooops.)

I’m currently sitting in a local coffee shop, bouncing between reading things to apply to and drafting a cover letter and this, but the overhead play is Matchbox 20, and that is much more writing music than it is professional cover letter writing music. And it’s ‘Real World’, so I mean, if the lyric of the song is I wish the real world would just stop hassling me… So, you know. Blogging. (Also: I kid. I don’t mind the real world at all; I am very much looking forward to having a job again and a routine that involves coworkers. I’ve been hitting the job search hard; I’m just trying to get better about fitting in the personal things that are important to make time for.)

I have a lot I want to write about: a review/recommendation/love letter to Forge Baking Company (and in double checking that that link was correct, I just realized they have online ordering. Guys, seriously, once I’m employed again: mail order business to California?); my final summer 2015 weeks in and around Boston; our road trip out here; how I’m adjusting and liking California so far (spoiler alert, I like it a lot); and all the other things that I’ve been meaning to write and can’t think of right now. But right now, really, I just wanted to check in: to say I’m still here, just three thousand miles away from where here was the last time I wrote; to say that things are good, even if there’s still a lot I’m trying to get done; to start getting back into blogging again, because I’m not thrilled with myself that it’s been over two months since my last post, but it also makes sense, because there was so much more to do than I think I’d realized with regards to moving.

I obviously will be posting a lot more pictures, and a lot more about the trip out west. We viewed it as a true vacation road trip: highlights include the Badlands, SD; Mount Rushmore; Shoshone National Forest; Yellowstone; Jackson Hole, WY; and Portland, OR. But for now, here’s a few pictures from California thus far (and apologies if you follow me on instagram and some of these are repeats):

A partial glimpse at where we’re currently staying. We’re lucky to be able to stay with (and rent from) friends while we look for a place of our own. Apartment hunting from here is difficult-ish; I can’t imagine how hard this would’ve been to do from Massachusetts. I also am quite amused by the fact that the accent wall is very much my color scheme. (File under: things that make me happy, things that make it feel like home, even if a temporary one.) ALSO: all my plants survived the road trip!! The spider plant is living inside a tiny bit worse for wear after breaking a few leaves in the car (but it’s growing again!), and my succulents are all outside. One of the succulents is a little sad because I didn’t appropriately increase the water for 105 degree direct sun from how I was watering it when it lived inside on my nightstand in Massachusetts, but the other two are flourishing. At least for now, i’m counting that as a win.

A typical morning for me now. I’ll be happier when this includes a desk of some kind, but for now I’m loving being able to sit outside and drink coffee out of my Diesel Cafe mug and look at a whole bunch of succulents and cacti in the backyard.

:). Sunsets and palm trees are great.

Las Trampas Regional Wildness. I’ve only seen a tiny portion of it so far – there are “5,342 acres of wilderness” with a whole bunch of trails. It’s pretty great, but it’s also going to take me a while to get used to the fact that sometimes “hiking” means “walking up a gravel path hill with no trees” – but that said, one you walk up the gravel path road with no trees, you get to a place with trees and roots that feels more like hiking in New England, only you’re walking on weird slippery sand-like dirt. But it was super pretty once we got up to the top of the trail we were walking on.

More posts to come soon. As I’ve mentioned, I have a lot I want to write about. It’s good to be writing here again.

on spoons and peanut butter and blueberries

// Friday, July 17, 2015

Recently I was walking home from work, feeling sort of gross, and it took me the entire walk home to realize it was because of the spoonful of peanut butter I had at 5:07, before I left work at 5:30, before I took the train and some escalators and got home. And I had this aha moment, this realization that the afternoon pause for spoons and peanut butter, this tiny little insignificant snack, was more than the sum of its parts. Spoons and peanut butter go together, you know? It’s such a handy I’m-slightly-hungry snack that’s healthy enough that I don’t feel bad about said snacking. And I love (the idea of?) peanut butter, so somehow the fact that that it’s been making me feel bad with increasing frequency hasn’t translated to action.

The problem is that I’ve been so focused on the larger consequence that I’m losing sight of the smaller, gradual steps. I’ve gotten better at the whole big-pictures-causing-blind-spots thing, but I’m far from perfect and luckily reminders of progress over perfection still sneak in. And I can think on something and see the steps, sometimes: Reese’s, which I use to consume with some regularity, are now something I have maaaaaybe once a month or so (see also: Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups, because they are excellent). I buy a jar of peanut butter maybe 4x a year? If that? So I’ve scaled back, somewhat subconsciously and somewhat consciously, finding a way to make moderation work for me, except now I maybe have to scale back again, scale back more, to smaller spoonfuls, or no spoonfuls.

The universe, it seems, has been reminding me of the fact that small steps (and teeny tiny fixes) are important things to keep sight of, because incremental changes (whether specifically steps forward or not) are, for me, more often than not the way progress is made. Lately I’ve been reading archives and miscellaneous posts on enJOY it by Elise Blaha (is that the proper way to refer to that? titles: not a thing I am good at), because somehow I missed the (many years’ long) internet memo and only discovered her last week. I am so in love with all of the things, but, for the sake of brevity, what really stuck was her post about a 365 day calendar/goal tracker/motivator. Because, this:

I really believe that progress is better than perfection because progress is something we can strive for. Progress is motivating. Perfection is paralyzing. This calendar’s goal is to encourage you to pick ONE THING for the year. Something you can attempt to do everyday. And then this calendar will help you track it and hopefully remind you that there is a much larger picture to see here.

It’s just: that’s what I needed to read. A reminder that progress is the goal. That you have to take a bunch of small steps to make a big step. (Sidenote: I’m bummed I’m so late to the game and missed out on getting the letterpress cards, but I will be purchasing the digital file once I figure out how I’m handling my recently closed PayPal account (because I thought their updated Terms of Service & Privacy Policy was stupid, because now I’m regretting closing it because PayPal is so handy).)

Given that I’ve been able to relatively painlessly wean myself off of peanut butter because it makes me feel odd and sort of nauseous (yay, weird genes? my dad’s the same way and it also hit him in his twenties?), why can’t I also, at the same time and on the same timeline, get myself back in decent shape? figure out a blog schedule that I’ll actually stick to? fall back into reading? I’ve been saying, emphatically, that I need to write more, need to run more (or at all), need to read more. But I’ve also been doing the thing where it’s all big goals, all “well, shit, I didn’t read at all last weekend and I wanted to finish that book and I haven’t even started, so maybe I’ll just watch Modern Family instead?” And that’s the part where that 365 day calendar comes back in.

So that’s what I’m doing: I’m scaling back and I’m moving forward all at once. While I still have half a jar of peanut butter in my desk at work, I’m less about the spoons and peanut butter and more about the blueberries I picked the last time I went up to my dad’s. (Because they don’t ripen all at once. Because they require patience, and care, and maybe ~~some~~ a lot of netting and fencing, and even then: results aren’t guaranteed, but you’ll end up with something that has grown and probably nourished you.) Over the last week, I’ve gone for two runs and read from my kindle on my commute home from work each day. Neither is particularly impressive numbers-wise: both runs were under a mile and a half, and there’s only so much reading one can do after jostling for a seat and fighting for space on a packed commuter train. But I’ve been running an amount that is healthy for me (in that I need to ease back into it, very slowly) and reading a little bit each day, and I’m happy with that. Progress, and perspective – and blueberries, because summer is wonderful.

thinking in futures

// Friday, June 12, 2015

I was doing so well for a little while: I was writing regularly, thinking about writing regularly, consuming content in an intentional way where – barring the occasional endless link spiral – the blogs/news/articles I was taking the time to read were being read with a purpose. And then suddenly I wasn’t writing or reading much, because free time was spent outdoors with T, or day-dreaming and thinking in futures about summer plans and new adventures, or grabbing lunch or dinner with friends, or building up our sun-porch herb garden (so much mint and basil!! I am the heart-eyed emoji at our plants). I’ve been wonderfully social recently, but that means I’ve been falling behind in other things, because there is only so much time in the day, and when the choice comes down to being fun!productive (see: this space; organizing my desk) or regular!productive (see: laundry? oops) versus hanging out on the couch catching up on tv with my boyfriend, sometimes – lately more often than not – it’s the latter option that wins out. And I’m not saying it shouldn’t: not by a long shot. But the reason that choice is happening, lately, is because I’ll have nights where I get home from work and suddenly I’ve wasted three hours on the Internet, with nothing to show for it other than being caught up on reading other people’s words, seeing other people’s pictures. When I mentioned in my last post about ideas for posts, I somehow did the thing where I went from wanting to write about all of the things to feeling like nothing I wanted to write about would be, you know, perfect.

And that’s, for lack of a better word, silly: I am not perfect. I don’t want to be, though I definitely have a perfectionist streak. But what I like about writing, what I like about my writing and what I like about me, is that there are moments where the how-I-think-and-slightly-polished words become something else: when the moment where my fingers are moving faster than my conscious brain produces a typo, a slip, an incorrect word that is perfect and fitting and where I wanted the words to lead even though I didn’t know it until those words were on the page in front of me. And if I over-analyze to the point of paralysis, that magic can’t happen, won’t happen.

In college, back when I was writing creatively regularly (thank you, creative writing fiction and poetry classes), during a time of…typical college-age-twenty-something-emotional-turmoil, I wrote a thing – a poem – that based on the way I’m introducing it should be terrible, but it wasn’t. And it’s not something I’m going to reproduce here (because, college? because there are parts of it I love but I don’t want to rework it to post it here? because posting creative writing – in the real, I wrote this story/poem/prose poem, way – is a kind of terrifying I’m not ready for yet?), but what the whole five part thing stemmed from was the idea that thinking in futures is – was – a thing that I Did Not Do. And it’s funny, to me, how much a person can change in four, five years while still being the same person, only older and wiser and hopefully improved.

I know I haven’t been posting much, but one of my goals this summer and definitely over the next few weeks is to work on that more, consistently. I have a lot I want to talk about, to think about, to think through words and write about, and some wonderful coffee shops (see: local and slightly less local) I want to review. And at some point – maybe? I think? – I want to dive in a little to what is bound to be a very interesting election season. I have some lofty goals.

I’ve become a person who spends time thinking in futures: not all the time, and I’m still pretty consistently grounded in whatever my current reality is, but I’ve also reached a point where thinking in futures is feasible, and exciting, and wonderful, and only a little bit terrifying.

And that’s kind of great.

on accidental springtime hiatuses

// Friday, May 22, 2015

It’s been a month, nearly, since I’ve been on here. And I realize that that’s not that long in the grand scheme of things, or even in the how-often-I-usually-post scheme of things, but it feels longer, if only because I’ve been pretty absent from the internet overall.

I’m overdue for a Travel Thursday post: I haven’t forgotten, but I’ve been so focused on spring, on the spring fever that seems to have overtaken me without raising any alarms. I’ve spent the last several weekends making trips to and from Mahoney’s Garden Center (I swear to you: no exaggeration, I would live there if I could and if my allergies somehow disappeared.)

I’ve started a plant table in my room: my cactus is dying (and I think it’s beyond fixing; I tried, but I realized what was wrong too late), but the succulents are thriving so far. I hadn’t realized how much I like having plants around, how calming and peaceful they look on a rehabbed old white table from goodwill that I snagged from my grandparents when they moved out of New England.

I hope to be around here more soon: my spring fever is settling a little (/I think it is physically impossible, space-wise, to purchase more plants, which means more free time), and I’ve got a number of ideas in various stages of development. The next few weeks should be a good mix of fun and low-key: camping hopefully, helping sort/organize/purge the basement at my dad’s, having barbecues with fancy homemade cocktails and mocktails, and writing in sunshine filled rooms and outside spaces.

This weekend, I’m visiting a friend in New York City (hi e!) in a whirlwind twenty-four hour trip, and I am the most excited. (Loosely, I’ve been meaning to visit for two years, it’s fine. Sometimes I am the worst. But! Visiting now! And, well, :)!) For the rest of the weekend, I’ve got low-key plans to fix up our window boxes, bunny sit, and go to a barbecue. It’s going to be a wonderful weekend indeed, and an excellent start to the unofficial beginning of summer.

on anniversaries and the moral bucket list

// Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Last week was a weird week for me, full of anniversaries and birthdays and histories. My boyfriend’s birthday was earlier in the week, which was lovely and wonderful and we spent Sunday up in Portland in celebration, wandering around in the sunshine (and finally seasonally appropriate warm weather!) and heading to Duckfat for the first time (might make a post about it soon: I know it’s not a ~new thing~ but man, it was good).

But then midweek, last week, was April 15th. On a personal note, that date is the anniversary of a personal matter that I haven’t figured out how to write about in this space yet: I probably will, eventually, but now is not that time. But it’s a day for me that has a huge spectrum of emotions, and it puts me in sort of a odd headspace. And on a much larger, much more emotionally complicated anniversary scale, April 15th is the second anniversary of the Boston Marathon Bombings. Boston is my home, in the broad sense. I’ve grown up (and spent my whole life so far) in Massachusetts, and I work in downtown Boston. And I was at work in downtown Boston two years ago – I work about a mile away from the finish line, and it’s a Day, for Boston and for Massachusetts and for the country. I’m lucky: I’ve only peripherally felt the effects, in that I know people who know people, but nothing happened to anyone in my immediate circle of family and friends. It still has impacted me, absolutely, but I’m lucky. At least, as of last Wednesday, Tsarnaev was found guilty on all counts in the Marathon Bombings. So that’s something. But regardless, April 15th is a Day.

And because of all that last week was, I’ve been out of sorts. I haven’t felt like writing, haven’t wanted to write, other than when I accidentally filled three journal pages writing about something that happened a million years ago, and even then, it was Facts versus Writing, just because I wanted to see if I could. I haven’t been writing the way I want to write, lately. I’ve been overthinking and overanalyzing, and even just on here, I’ve got a half dozen drafts in various states. None are where I want them to be: I can’t find the right words, can’t get the feeling right, can’t translate what I’m thinking in my head to words on a computer screen.

But the reason this post is coming out of drafts and into the world is this: I really want to write about the “The Moral Bucket List” by David Brooks, an excellent piece from last week’s Sunday Review section of the New York Times, which has been circling the internet some already, but I want it in this space, too. and it was exactly, precisely, what I needed to read. It’s long, but it’s worth it. If it weren’t bad form and a crappy internet thing to do, I’m pretty sure I’d just paste the entire article here. But it is bad form to do so, so as such, here are a couple parts of the article that really resonated with me:

But if you live for external achievement, years pass and the deepest parts of you go unexplored and unstructured. You lack a moral vocabulary. It is easy to slip into a self-satisfied moral mediocrity. You grade yourself on a forgiving curve. You figure as long as you are not obviously hurting anybody and people seem to like you, you must be O.K. But you live with an unconscious boredom, separated from the deepest meaning of life and the highest moral joys. Gradually, a humiliating gap opens between your actual self and your desired self, between you and those incandescent souls you sometimes meet.

and

Commencement speakers are always telling young people to follow their passions. Be true to yourself. This is a vision of life that begins with self and ends with self. But people on the road to inner light do not find their vocations by asking, what do I want from life? They ask, what is life asking of me? How can I match my intrinsic talent with one of the world’s deep needs?

Their lives often follow a pattern of defeat, recognition, redemption. They have moments of pain and suffering. But they turn those moments into occasions of radical self-understanding — by keeping a journal or making art. As Paul Tillich put it, suffering introduces you to yourself and reminds you that you are not the person you thought you were.

The people on this road see the moments of suffering as pieces of a larger narrative. They are not really living for happiness, as it is conventionally defined. They see life as a moral drama and feel fulfilled only when they are enmeshed in a struggle on behalf of some ideal.

and

External ambitions are never satisfied because there’s always something more to achieve. But the stumblers occasionally experience moments of joy. There’s joy in freely chosen obedience to organizations, ideas and people. There’s joy in mutual stumbling. There’s an aesthetic joy we feel when we see morally good action, when we run across someone who is quiet and humble and good, when we see that however old we are, there’s lots to do ahead.

There’s lots to do ahead. And so many people fit into the “stumblers” category; we’re all just figuring out what works and what doesn’t and trying to find those moments of great joy, whether collective or personal. That’s what I want to focus on. That’s what I am focusing on. Because anniversaries and the memories and histories that go with them are easy to get lost in; but the fact of the matter is that the past is something to remember, not live in. And there are wonderful things in the future, even if a lot of the future, right now, is unknown and not fixed – but that, in and of itself, almost makes it more joyful, because the possibilities are endless, even the if the unknown is and can be frightening in the best of ways. This last week might have been difficult, yes, but, as above, those pieces of time are part of something bigger, a story that is and always will be unfolding, because there’s always another page to read, to live, to experience. And that’s the important thing.

Today, I’m drinking coffee out of a mug covered in hearts, literally, and that’s about where I’m at. Here’s to forward and futures.

Travel Thursday: Minnesota via Instagram

// Thursday, April 9, 2015

Every Thursday, I’ll be posting about travel. More often than not, it will be a look back at recent trips I’ve taken, such as the British Virgin Islands, which I wrote about two weeks ago, but sometimes it will be a place I’m itching to go to, or a place a friend has visited and I can’t stop thinking about. This is a new series, and one that’s likely to evolve over time.

Last week, when I talked about the roadtrip to Minnesota I took with my boyfriend, I was really just writing the first half of the story: because once the roadtrip ended, I spent four days both playing tourist and hanging out with my boyfriend’s family (and their adorable puppy – this picture is from July, but how cute is she??). It was a wonderful, wonderful trip, so here’s a look back at playing tourist in Minnesota via Instagram.

We wandered around Stillwater on Friday, Nacho Mama’s in Stillwater for lunch – super cute interior, but neither one of us were particularly impressed with the food. He’s been there before and really enjoyed it, but this time around not so much.I had the El Cabo Wabo Sandwich, and everything was drowning in ranch sauce, and in spite of the assurances I received beforehand, there was so way to avoid the excessive jalapeños both on and in the bread.

HOWEVER: after lunch, we went into a few of the local used/rare bookstores in the downtown, and things picked up considerably. I know this sort of display isn’t unique to Stillwater, MN, but it made me smile all the same.

AND THEN THERE WAS THIS. My one regret from this trip is that I didn’t purchase this book. I couldn’t quite justify the cost at the time (wasn’t terrible, definitely – very reasonable, considering, but more than I was willing to pay for a book at that moment), but this was a first edition of the original 1930 version of The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene. I was obsessed with Nancy Drew growing up: on one trip to Florida, I brought five books with me and read more than one complete book on the plane ride there from Boston. And I still have all of the (modern) versions of the (original) series: needless to say, I probably maybe almost definitely should have bought it? But oh well. If it’s there the next time I’m in MN, I might.

BABAR. (See also: used/rare books bookstores are the best. Also, so much childhood nostalgia – though the one thing I ended up buying was a used Kurt Vonnegut hardcover, which I’ve yet to actually crack open. I showed some restraint, at least, re: wanting all of the childhood things. At least in terms of purchasing them, anyways. I liked this poster (piece of art?) a lot.)

We met T’s cousin for dinner and drinks at the Stone Tap Brewery in Hudson, WI. I was super impressed with the beer flight I had. I learned I liked saisons! I loved three of the four of them! I do not remember what all of them were/all of their names. Beer names and types: not something that sticks in my brain. That said: the Left Bridge Farm Girl was my favorite.

Five Watt Coffee. This is their menu: enough said. We both had the orange blossom special, and yum does not even come close to describing it.

Gratuitous picture of the roller coaster in the center of the Mall of America, because I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that this a thing that exists. Also, I knew going in that the mall was gigantic, but I definitely didn’t have a good grasp of what that actually meant. There are duplicates of stores. And a roller coaster. And a ferris wheel. America is a very strange place, sometimes.

Saturday night at Indeed Brewing Company It’s a wonderful spot – great beer, great atmosphere, great food trucks according to others (we didn’t have dinner there), great gift shop. (I may or may not have a shirt or two and some pint glasses. Like I said: great place.)

After we had post-family-Chistmas-party beer at Indeed, we headed over to Chimborazo in Minneapolis, a delightfully wonderful Ecuadorian restaurant. Everything we had was absolutely phenomenal. If you ever find yourself in Minneapolis, I seriously cannot recommend them highly enough. Great space, great staff and service, great food.

I’m not sure when the next time I’ll be back in Minnesota is, but it’s nice to know that I’ve got a ready list of places to which I want to return when we’re back in the area. Also, I’ve started following on Instagram both Five Watt Coffee (link) and Indeed Brewing (link) on Instagram, and it makes me want all of the things. Mostly coffee. And sometimes good beer.

Have you ever been to Minnesota? Any recommendations for the next time I’m there?

The Importance of Positive Spin

// Wednesday, April 8, 2015

I struggle – maybe more than I should – with where the line is between focusing on the good and/or being cautiously optimistic and feeling like I’m avoiding reality with regards to the thing that isn’t the silver lining. That’s not to say that there are Terrible Things in my life: just that I’m human, and like everyone else I have my moments of doubt, of feeling like others are doing something better/worse/smarter/dumber than I am and not knowing where the actual reality line stands. But by and large, I’d classify myself as fully aware of reality with a healthy focus on the importance of positive spin, on finding the good, of realizing that low moments can bring out the best in those around me. (The above image is from a note this summer, courtesy of my wonderful roommate and friend, when some personal things were all sorts of terrible, and I came home to find a vase of flowers and that note on my bookcase. Because sad, stressful things can lead to realizing just how cared for you are: people around me have so much love and strength.)

I’ve been thinking about that recently, about Reality versus Negative versus Positive, and then today at lunch, I read an article in The Wall Street Journal about the importance of positive spin on personal stories with regards to staying healthy. I don’t read the WSJ all that often (I’m not a fan of the writing style, or the direction they’re more inclined to lean than other papers I read), but my joint office suite has a full subscription, so every day there’s a current paper that floats around the office kitchen. It makes for good lunchtime reading, especially now that I’m trying to focus on not using my phone as an idle-I’m-sort-of-bored-while-eating-this-sandwich activity. But anyways: the full title of the article* is, “It’s Healthy to Put a Good Spin on Your Life: How we construct personal narratives has a major impact on our mental well-being”; while that is not a novel concept, and parts of the article are sort of a stretch, the tagline is worth remembering, worth internalizing. (A sidenote: I’m so used to reading about various new exercise crazes that when I first saw the print headline and associated athletic picture, I honestly thought the article was going to have something to do with taking a spin class. I’m glad I was incorrect.)

Today, two days after Easter, the above article was what I needed to read. Holidays – no matter which ones – almost always highlight certain aspects of family dynamics more than other regular days, and I like to maintain a healthy perspective. I had a wonderful (secular) Easter, but still: holidays. And given that most of the office talk on Monday revolved around the general mostly-secularly-meant, “How was your Easter?”, it seems even more appropriate to think about the ways in which people present narratives and the broader (personal) implications of such presentations. The article touches on two studies published last month (which I haven’t had time to read yet) the fact that good spin is more than just always finding the positive: you need to acknowledge the negative, but focus on the positive – the silver lining, so to speak. (The article also includes a list of steps/guidelines on the best ways to foster framing narratives in positive, good-for-your-mental health ways. Again, nothing groundbreaking, but the sidebar on personal accounting is worth looking over.) What positive spin comes down to is this:

“You can’t impact every event of your life,” says Jonathan Adler, lead researcher on the study and an assistant professor of psychology at Olin. “But you have a choice in how the narrative plays out. You tell the story and the story really matters.”

The story is what lasts: you have to accept all facets of the story, but you get to decide the story that lasts, to an extent. Because what you tell yourself and what you tell others is what sticks, what forms itself into solid memory and feeling of memory. It’s not about the fact that you can’t run a triathalon, though that is a fact of the story; instead, it is about the fact that you have more time with your family, with yourself, with others. It’s like the sayings about college: you don’t remember sitting for every exam, though you did (or will, or whatever), but you remember the times with your friends, with your classes. Time has a funny way of sanding down the stories we tell into what matters. And that, at the heart, is what makes positive spin, positive presentation without negating the bad, is so important. Because it’s all about how you frame it, and how you frame it is how you see it for years to come.

On a much less serious note (or more serious, depending on your degree of religiousness): if you celebrate Easter, or Passover, or any other holiday around this time that I am forgetting: I hope it was/is/will be wonderful.

Do you think that the putting a positive spin on personal narratives is important?

*The Wall Street Journal‘s paywall is ridiculous, and I’m not actually sure how long this link will link to the full text of the article, but at least this way if you’re inclined to read it and you’re late to the game, you have a shot at finding it.