For what had seemed like a few long years, Colin Hay's "Waiting for My Real Life to Begin" had impatiently been my theme song.
College was filled with transitions, cluttered with not exactly relevant elective courses, awkward flings, and drowsy eyed sleepovers with friends.
These are some of life's best times. But I always felt this sort of urgency and anxiety, waiting for it to all make sense, and feel purposeful and right. Waiting for debts to be paid off, grants to be offered, and approval from parents and grandparents that you have decent work ethic and the intelligence and drive to succeed.
"I am searching for truth and freedom! (and the truth shall set you free)" was something I always used to write in my journal. Always trying to figure out what was growing up and what wasn't, wondering at every moment whether or not I got it right (Gahan Wilson).
Today, I went into the office, feeling as though I hadn't slept enough the night before. Worked through my lunch break, vomited behind the shed due to stress at 4pm, and asked my supervisor to keep the office open two hours later than usual, just trying to get my shit done. Feeling awful and overworked, with greasy hair and a growling stomach.
I came home to make leftover crepes with the batter I had made the night before, made plans to rock climb with a friend, dropped by the market to pick up a couple of groceries, and realized that my life is completely wonderful.
I forget often that while my boyfriend and I are far from perfect for one another, I love him. And the feelings are mutual.
I used to hold things in until I would just cry hysterically. We'd argue about all kinds of things that still haunt us and fill me with misgivings.
But I have a damn good job. My office is filled with brilliantly talented and supportive people.
My co-worker Shara stayed an hour late after work today, just taking extra time out of her own schedule, to help me finish a Hmong layout. Her decision only motivated by the sincere generosity of her heart.
My boyfriend sews heart buttons in the pockets of my sweaters when I accidentally leave them at his house, sends me thoughtful texts, pictures, and videos, takes me camping, and makes me smile when he's not even around, everything funny and sweet in the world reminding me of him as I walk down the street.
My legs still ache from a climbing trip we took last weekend, and are spotted with purple bruises and scrapes. Yet, I look down at them with joy, as I think about belaying down from a challenging route I took numerous falls on before reaching the top. Thinking about Tyson hugging my sweating, smelly body after I finished it. Happy I have those bruises to prove it.
Life is filled with terrible things, stressful deadlines, hurtful misunderstandings, and painful truths. But I worked hard to be at the place that I'm at, and all feels right, and I'm happy.
24 April 2012
09 March 2012
2012 update / 25 things that make me happy
1. The kindness and humor of Tyson Hallock
2. Rock climbing with Jordan Harder
3. Sunny days in Walla Walla
4. Sunday brunch at Bacon&Eggs
5. Dancing with Devin
6. Summer lemonade in a mason jar
7. Pub house on a Friday night
8. The merry-go-round in my front yard
9. The Moth podcast
10. Thrift store ceramics
11. Letter press trends I'll never get over
12. Sitting in a tree house, my feet dangling over the edge
13. Playing the uke
14. Irreverent graffiti
15. 826 Valencia, San Francisco, pirate retail
16. DIY pinterest tutorials
17. Everything made of old maps
18. Scramble via the iphone
19. The protectiveness of Benny J
20. Borsch
21. Up-cycled clothing
22. Affordable vintage finds
23. The Kennedy school theater
24. Vinyl record collecting
25. Mismatched print fabric
29 November 2011
"Some people look for a beautiful place. Others make a place beautiful." {-Hazrat Inayat Khan}
I realize the older I get, the more I don't know who I am at all.
A designer/illustrator named Karl sits at the desk across from me at work, and when our workspace becomes oddly silent he'll use the whoopie cushion app from his iphone in his pants pocket to mysteriously eject loud farting sounds into the room, and after erupts into laughter. Karl is in his 50s, and I came home from work one day to tell my boyfriend, Tyson, that I appreciate how Karl isn't much more than a overgrown kid, with a balding head and a perverted sense of humor. And we asked ourselves if we'll reach some age where we'll just grow up, thinking of our polite and conservative parents, relatives, professors, etc. "Did my parents ever laugh at a penis joke?" Tyson asked aloud, and we both wondered if one day we'd just roll out of bed, all grown-up and and as serious as trolls, scoffing at pranks and jokes about feces.
But nevermind the non-sequitur comparison of seriousness equalling adulthood, or adulthood equalling knowing who you are. I feel I'm a fairly stable person most of the time. I show up to work on time, I pay my bills on date, I maintain stable friendships without too much drama. But my feelings about life and the future are about as volatile as Walla Walla weather.
And the way my scattered brain all connects these things (quote and work story) is that I have long been on the fence about the idea that contentment equals maturity - knowing your role, knowing which dreams are fluff or worth pursuing. And every other day, I want to live so many different ways, not sure which route is realistic, or more importantly, which route would make me happy: in expensive sadness (yeah, The Kills! if you got that reference, I'm in love with you), married to my work and ambition, all around the fucking globe never stopping to have a home, or simply, with no more money than i'd really need, with a few bicycles hanging in the garage, with meals cooked from farmer's market produce on the table every night at 6 pm, with a husband and mischievous children, with friends who like to play scrabble on a Saturday night. Small instances like flipping through a travel magazine, a phone call that didn't seem to go quite right, or an off-handed and hurtful comment from my father about how my life has taken a rather unfortunate/different path from the plans he made for me in his head, making me violently sway one way or the other.
But I need to breathe, embrace my surroundings, realize that while I may feel occasionally suffocated by overbearing phone calls, condescending remarks, or the redundant 8-5, I live on my own, in my own house. I buy, eat, wear, and travel where I want, and when I take things one day at a time, content without answers, making small choices and smiling at little things, I feel pretty okay, maybe even happy.
[sigh]
I'll end with a quote by Rainer Maria Rilke, because I can never say as eloquently, the things inside my very own heart as someone else can or has.
"I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
I realize the older I get, the more I don't know who I am at all.
A designer/illustrator named Karl sits at the desk across from me at work, and when our workspace becomes oddly silent he'll use the whoopie cushion app from his iphone in his pants pocket to mysteriously eject loud farting sounds into the room, and after erupts into laughter. Karl is in his 50s, and I came home from work one day to tell my boyfriend, Tyson, that I appreciate how Karl isn't much more than a overgrown kid, with a balding head and a perverted sense of humor. And we asked ourselves if we'll reach some age where we'll just grow up, thinking of our polite and conservative parents, relatives, professors, etc. "Did my parents ever laugh at a penis joke?" Tyson asked aloud, and we both wondered if one day we'd just roll out of bed, all grown-up and and as serious as trolls, scoffing at pranks and jokes about feces.
But nevermind the non-sequitur comparison of seriousness equalling adulthood, or adulthood equalling knowing who you are. I feel I'm a fairly stable person most of the time. I show up to work on time, I pay my bills on date, I maintain stable friendships without too much drama. But my feelings about life and the future are about as volatile as Walla Walla weather.
And the way my scattered brain all connects these things (quote and work story) is that I have long been on the fence about the idea that contentment equals maturity - knowing your role, knowing which dreams are fluff or worth pursuing. And every other day, I want to live so many different ways, not sure which route is realistic, or more importantly, which route would make me happy: in expensive sadness (yeah, The Kills! if you got that reference, I'm in love with you), married to my work and ambition, all around the fucking globe never stopping to have a home, or simply, with no more money than i'd really need, with a few bicycles hanging in the garage, with meals cooked from farmer's market produce on the table every night at 6 pm, with a husband and mischievous children, with friends who like to play scrabble on a Saturday night. Small instances like flipping through a travel magazine, a phone call that didn't seem to go quite right, or an off-handed and hurtful comment from my father about how my life has taken a rather unfortunate/different path from the plans he made for me in his head, making me violently sway one way or the other.
But I need to breathe, embrace my surroundings, realize that while I may feel occasionally suffocated by overbearing phone calls, condescending remarks, or the redundant 8-5, I live on my own, in my own house. I buy, eat, wear, and travel where I want, and when I take things one day at a time, content without answers, making small choices and smiling at little things, I feel pretty okay, maybe even happy.
[sigh]
I'll end with a quote by Rainer Maria Rilke, because I can never say as eloquently, the things inside my very own heart as someone else can or has.
"I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
18 November 2011
15 November 2011
03 July 2011
welcome to the working world
Two weeks ago I started working as a graphic designer at a company called Coffey Communications in Walla Walla. We do hospital marketing and I work in CES (Client Editorial Services) laying out newsletters and magazines for different hospitals and healthcare centers, etc.
A big part of me was elated and relieved to have a stable job related to my major, offered to me before I even graduated, in a place that's cheap to live, close to NW cities I love (Portland and Seattle), and where I have some friends around. Also, the demand for health care promotion doesn't waver much unlike American economics. But the dreamer/idealist/quixote in me was reluctant to accept such an un-wild transition to adulthood, working the 8-5 indoors in a cubicle, where I wouldn't be spending each day worrying about how I'd pay for my next meal from inside of my treehouse. And the silly naive fatalist inside felt doomed for un-excitement, devoid fairy tale endings and anxious twitter-pated stories involving danger or stress or adventure.
But the longer I work here, the more I find the people warm, professional, and hardworking. And the more I find the publications I work on to be meaningful, sensitive, and purposeful. My friend Chelsea got a job in Africa where she was hired to write stories for the newsletters for ADRA. Yet, from what I know from ADRA (which has one of the most selfless, wonderful, and respectable mission statements I've ever heard), she was probably overworked and under-resourced, didn't have enough time to make the stories feel in-depth, and while the idea sounds amazing and heartfelt, I'm sure it wasn't without its sacrifices, frustrations and flaws. And while international stories of world poverty are so important, the less glamorous and often overlooked stories of American ghettos, teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, and fetal alcohol syndrome are so prevalent, right in our own cities and neighborhoods, happening to people we know, see, and most-likely interact with on a daily basis.
A magazine we put out called Winning Health was explained to me by its Art Director named Shara. She explained our demographic: teenage mothers from lower income homes, often minorities. So the layout is simple, the models match accordingly, and the stories are written for people with no higher than a 4th grade reading level. While some of our other publications are geared toward higher income doctors, surgeons, or drug reps, etc. And something hit me there, that what we do is purposeful and intentional, and very humane.
At the desk across from me is another designer named Maureen. She's a runner and has a quote cut out from a page of Runner's World Mag tacked up on the bulletin board behind her desk, reading: "Some people follow their dreams, while others hunt theirs down and beat them mercilessly into submission." And this made me smile, and feel okay that I work the 8-5 and life keeps on going, contradicting the idea I read in an article in 07' about M.I.A. in Resonance mag and never could forget. Or that I'm heartbroken and missing someone in a city away, wanting to fall asleep each night thinking I shouldn't have worked a bit harder to make it work, or learn to believe that everything happens for a reason.
Instead it makes me excited to have a stepping stone, and that maybe after a year or two, I could move to New York, open a publishing company with Emily, or work on an organic farm in South America, and look back and say "SUCKAH! I made it on my own! Not everything is perfect, but I'm damn happy, because this is my life and my story, all on my own." And it's not even close to over. No, not yet.
A big part of me was elated and relieved to have a stable job related to my major, offered to me before I even graduated, in a place that's cheap to live, close to NW cities I love (Portland and Seattle), and where I have some friends around. Also, the demand for health care promotion doesn't waver much unlike American economics. But the dreamer/idealist/quixote in me was reluctant to accept such an un-wild transition to adulthood, working the 8-5 indoors in a cubicle, where I wouldn't be spending each day worrying about how I'd pay for my next meal from inside of my treehouse. And the silly naive fatalist inside felt doomed for un-excitement, devoid fairy tale endings and anxious twitter-pated stories involving danger or stress or adventure.
But the longer I work here, the more I find the people warm, professional, and hardworking. And the more I find the publications I work on to be meaningful, sensitive, and purposeful. My friend Chelsea got a job in Africa where she was hired to write stories for the newsletters for ADRA. Yet, from what I know from ADRA (which has one of the most selfless, wonderful, and respectable mission statements I've ever heard), she was probably overworked and under-resourced, didn't have enough time to make the stories feel in-depth, and while the idea sounds amazing and heartfelt, I'm sure it wasn't without its sacrifices, frustrations and flaws. And while international stories of world poverty are so important, the less glamorous and often overlooked stories of American ghettos, teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, and fetal alcohol syndrome are so prevalent, right in our own cities and neighborhoods, happening to people we know, see, and most-likely interact with on a daily basis.
A magazine we put out called Winning Health was explained to me by its Art Director named Shara. She explained our demographic: teenage mothers from lower income homes, often minorities. So the layout is simple, the models match accordingly, and the stories are written for people with no higher than a 4th grade reading level. While some of our other publications are geared toward higher income doctors, surgeons, or drug reps, etc. And something hit me there, that what we do is purposeful and intentional, and very humane.
At the desk across from me is another designer named Maureen. She's a runner and has a quote cut out from a page of Runner's World Mag tacked up on the bulletin board behind her desk, reading: "Some people follow their dreams, while others hunt theirs down and beat them mercilessly into submission." And this made me smile, and feel okay that I work the 8-5 and life keeps on going, contradicting the idea I read in an article in 07' about M.I.A. in Resonance mag and never could forget. Or that I'm heartbroken and missing someone in a city away, wanting to fall asleep each night thinking I shouldn't have worked a bit harder to make it work, or learn to believe that everything happens for a reason.
Instead it makes me excited to have a stepping stone, and that maybe after a year or two, I could move to New York, open a publishing company with Emily, or work on an organic farm in South America, and look back and say "SUCKAH! I made it on my own! Not everything is perfect, but I'm damn happy, because this is my life and my story, all on my own." And it's not even close to over. No, not yet.
05 May 2011
This year ...
I've done more mischievous things than ever, and haven't written a single thing down.
I'm not even sure where to start.
I'm not even sure where to start.
12 March 2011
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