Transitions

Thoughts from those in-between places

Winter Break

Aside Grace1 Comment

Well, I survived my penultimate undergraduate finals week.  And now I sit in our living room across from the Christmas tree, surrounded by festive Yuletide decorations and books (seriously – we have four bursting plastic totes of Christmas books alone) and it still doesn’t feel like The Most Wonderful Time of The Year.

I’m still in that dazed letdown phase that follows a period of intense stress.  Relieved as I may be to have finished up my classes, going-going-going for two and a half weeks straight leaves me a little bewildered when I get home and there’s not as much to do.  I sit here casting around for the assignment or project I’m certain I forgot about, too used to having Something To Do hanging over my head.  The Engineer once “assigned” me coloring pages to do over the summer so I wouldn’t stress out about not having anything to stress out about.

This year, of course, I do have something to do – my thesis project.  Which is due at the end of February.  Which I’m trying not to freak out about just yet.  After all, the vacation is young.  And I do love my topic (the Arabian Nights), so the reading will probably go faster than I think it will.

But stress is not exactly conducive to the magic of Christmas.

So I suppose it couldn’t hurt to give myself a few days to breathe – and watch my favorite Christmas movies from childhood.

Decision

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the act of or need for making up one’s mind
something that is decided; resolution
the quality of being decided; firmness
I make lists.  I run a pencil down the edge of a ruler and divide my cardstock into two columns, one Pro, one Con.  I begin jotting, neatly at first, then scribbling as it becomes a stream of consciousness, leaping from one side to the other like a Highland sword dance.
I ask advice.  I gather opinions like berries, examining each one for ripeness, letting them dye my fingers and adding my stained fingerprints to the already constructed lists.
I consider myself, my own head and heart.  I still have trouble with this one – for a long time, emotions had very little to do with my major choices, unless it was to tip a balanced scale at the last minute.  Choosing a high school came down to academic reputation.  Picking my college came down to finances.  Making a decision based on feelings didn’t seem “smart,” and I was all about making the “smart” choice.
Which is probably why I was so stuck.  Why I couldn’t articulate to my friends, my family, even to myself what I wanted.  Why my heart still beats a little faster when I say it out loud, much less type it out.
I’ve decided to stay in my college town for the next year after graduation.  I can keep my apartment and my job, both of which I love.  I can be near the Engineer while he finishes up his last year of undergrad (switching majors sophomore year throws things a little out of whack).  And I can work on my own writing so the next time I pitch a manuscript to someone and they want to read it, I’ll actually have something to send them.
And I’m pretty excited about all that.

Senseless

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destitute or deprived of sensation; unconscious
lacking mental perception, appreciation, or comprehension
stupid or foolish, as persons or actions
nonsensical or meaningless, as words

We use this word a lot to describe horrific things.  “A senseless tragedy.”  “Senseless violence.”  And usually we take it to mean that there is no sense to this, that is it nonsense, this thing that has happened, we cannot make sense out of it because to any sensical person it is impossible to think this way.  Justifying it is meaningless.  You might as well try to argue that the world is flat.  We cannot make heads or tails of it.  Senseless.

But I think in the immediate aftermath of tragedies, we also mean that we are numb, that we are “destitute or deprived of sensation,” because sometimes the best way to handle such news is to shut down, at least for a moment.  Even worse, the hits just keep on coming.  Syria.  Beirut.  Paris.  After a while, the pain deadens the nerve endings rather than awakening them.  The sensation, the hopeless, helpless sensation, is there, but it is lessened with time and repetition.

Do we mean, perhaps, that our sense of outrage is limited?  That it is senseless to maintain a sense of anger because these things happen so often and the world is so dark?

I hope not.

I hope, instead, that we mean that we need to take a breath to ready ourselves for the feelings that accompany the confusion.

I hope we mean that we cannot make sense of these things because there is no sense behind them.  I hope we mean that it does not make sense to warp faith into violence, and that it does not make sense to blame the whole for the sins of one part.

And because we can recognize that, because we can say that we do not think that way and we will not think that way, we can do something.  We can change something.

It will be slow, and it will be hard, but we can make the world make sense again.

Want

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to wish, need, crave, demand, or desire

to be without or be deficient in

“Tell me, right now, what you want.”

I sat in a springy armchair in a slightly musty room in a retreat center, twisted sideways to face my friend in the tweed armchair on the other side of the end table.  I had asked her advice, or her listening, I suppose, because she is my peer, in a similar place in life, and because it was a retreat.  You do things like this on retreats, I thought, even if you’re leading them.  You have these conversations with yourself.  It’s inherent.  Walking away for a weekend, leaving behind homework, shedding those surface attachments, it all leaves room.  Quiet, quiet room in my mind for those wonderings.

What I want?

There have been too many voices contributing to that conversation; my own was drowned out long ago.  I don’t remember anymore, without any outside influences, what I want.

I want my colorful planner to be already laid out for the next five years, the way it has been all my life, but it isn’t.

What I want?

I want to work on my writing, to be near those I love, to simply go to work and come home and have time to do what I love and maybe enjoy my job as well, small things, really, when I list them like this, but I cannot want them, because they are not what I have said I wanted, what I claimed for myself, what others want for me.

I want not to be found wanting.  I desire things of my own, but worry that by fulfilling my own wishes I will become deficient in outsiders’ eyes.

What I want?

I’d like to know that too.  Or be able to admit that I know it, and that I want it at all.  That I think it’s what God wants for me, too, because I wouldn’t still feel this way otherwise.

I sat in a springy armchair in a slightly musty room in a retreat center, twisted sideways to face my friend.  She wanted to know what I wanted.

And somehow, I told her.

Some Assembly and Yoga-Like Contortion Required

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I sat on the floor of my room, curled like an apostrophe around a bookcase lying prone on the infuriatingly un-level carpet.  Holding the side of the bookcase against my knees, I clamped the shelf under my arm and twisted the screwdriver painfully with my right hand (I’m left-handed, so this took a fair bit of coordination).  It was nearing dinnertime, and I had a meeting to go to, but I was absolutely determined to get this thing put together.  Before I had to go anywhere, before I ate, before the Engineer came back from whatever he’d been doing all day, this bookcase would be upright and my books would be rescued from their homelessness.

This corner of my room had been driving me crazy for weeks.  My printer was perched precariously on a wobbly table with spindly legs.  My books were stacked as neatly as possibly in various corners of my room.  My papers were strewn in heaps under the printer and on the ledge running under my window.  Clearly, I needed a bookshelf.

What I had envisioned was a bookcase already assembled, perhaps one from a garage sale or a family member’s guest room, or even Goodwill.  Nothing fancy, of course, but already possessing nails and screws in all the vital places.

I found myself instead with this pressboard, “coffee cherry” finish kit from Shopko and a familiar stubborn voice in my head telling me I didn’t need anyone else to help me put it together.

And I was right.  I may have attached the bottom slightly crooked and had to redo it.  I may have had red lines that purpled into bruises on my legs from holding the pieces tightly together while I twisted the screws through.  I may have nailed the cardboard backing on so that it bubbles out a little bit at the bottom.  But it stands, and it holds my books, and I am happy.

My mother (who, as you may recall, also likes to rearrange furniture at times) put together the table and chairs in our breakfast nook at home all by herself.  She wrestled with the legs and heavy top, chased screws across the floor out of the cat’s reach, and threw a tablecloth over the finished product with a proud flourish.

I suspect I get some of my independence from her.

I’ve been fortunate enough to always have people to call if I need something moved, or built, or fixed.  But it’s nice to know that, should the need arise, my bright pink toolbox and I can probably figure things out.2015-09-08 16.24.20

Seniority

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2012-11-09 13.45.17
The Senior Bench upon which I may now sit with impunity by virtue of completing 3/4 of my undergraduate education.

I had this weird thought as I walked past the Senior Bench the other day that I am now a senior and therefore may sit on the Senior Bench without fear of breaking some Long-Dead-But-Potentially-Resurrectable Tradition about not graduating on time or incurring the wrath of Actual Seniors.

It’s not like I was ever afraid to sit on the Senior Bench before – actually, Bird and I have a tradition of getting a picture together on the bench every time she visits me at school, and she doesn’t even go to college yet, much less this college.  There were never any passing Actual Seniors who snarled at me or threatened to drum me out of the student body.  I’m pretty sure half the people sitting on that bench at any given time are freshmen and sophomores, just because upperclassmen are too busy.

But it’s odd to think that that’s who I am now.  An Actual Senior myself.  I find myself with a case of nostalgia for the experience I am still in the middle of.  Mourning the coffee shops I still have months to visit.  Hugging my friends just a little too tight.  Grasping at the familiar walkways with curled toes inside my shoes as though I’m trying to make them stand still when I’m the one moving.

College is coming to a close.  Slowly, yes, and not unexpectedly, but still.

Hermione Did It, Why Can’t I?

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I quit something!

Normally I’m not the type of person who shouts this from the rooftops, or even whispers it across a table in a noisy coffee shop.  But in this case, having gotten overwhelmed and exhausted and emotional and angry and just generally drained on the second day of school, not to mention having three separate friends ask if there was any way I could cut back on my activities – well, something had to go.  I didn’t have many options; most of my time is taken up by classes, which qualify me as a full-time student, and work, which brings me a little money and which I also happen to love.  One of my internships is technically being taken for credit, and I only need 5 more hours to earn it.  So that left the newest internship, the one only a few days old.

I felt like a traitor, because I had pursued this opportunity myself.  I felt like a slacker because I had only completed one task (she had only given me one task, but that didn’t make me feel any better).  I felt like I always do when I have to make a perfectly legitimate excuse for bowing out of something, which is to say that I was certain my professor would think I was flaky, irresponsible, and ungrateful.  It took me a full five minutes of staring at the email I’d written her, analyzing its professionalism, to work up the guts to hit send.

And you know what I felt?

Relief.

This internship thingy had to do with organizing writers’ visits to my university campus throughout the year.  Now I didn’t have to worry about sporadic weeks of hectic stress cutting into my already packed routine, nor did I have to shove aside activities to make room for writers who may or may not have even worked in my preferred genres.

But even though I knew it was the smartest decision for me and my mental health, I still found myself justifying to all my friends who asked about it.  “Oh, yeah, I just didn’t have room for it in my schedule,” I would say, hastening to add that I was still very busy, not slacking off, not flaking out on all my other obligations.

My friend wrote a wonderful column in our university newspaper today about the problem with perfectionism, particularly in college students.  She points out that many of us strive for perfection in order to avoid shame; if we’re perfect, no one will chastise us.  The size of the failure doesn’t matter because the shame is always looming, gargantuan, disproportionate to most of the ways we fear “failing.” I thought pulling out of the internship would undo all the good work I had done in that prof’s class last semester.  Even as I happily marked down the hours I could now spend relaxing or doing, I don’t know, the homework I hadn’t had time to do, doubt poked at the back of my mind.  What if she got mad?  What if my thesis advisor thought I’d flake out on him too?  What if this was the beginning of my new slacker lifestyle?

I realize this is illogical.  The thing is, when it comes to shame and perfectionism, logic has very little to do with it.  Hermione took All The Magic Classes Ever in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I tell myself.

Yes, the more reasonable part of my brain answers, but she needed a magical Time Turner to do it.

As it happens, I got an email from my professor a few days ago.  She said that my schedule did look demanding, and she hoped that I could join the group for dinner with one of the writers anyway as a thank-you for the work I had already done.

I think I can pencil that in.  But if I can’t… it’s no big deal.

Personal Bubble Encroachment

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Lacking a parking pass, I have to navigate my college town’s public transport system this year, unless I feel like walking for 20 minutes in the smoke.  Interestingly, I’m finding that the bus is becoming the perfect metaphor for my experience of the first few days of school.

For one thing, the bus is packed.  All the time.  Being short, I get to either dangle from the overhead bars or lean awkwardly over another person to grab the upright handles (there’s pretty much never a seat).  So my personal space shrinks to nothingness first thing every morning.  The first week of school is also the most crowded.  It’s when everyone shows up to class to find out if attendance is mandatory.  It’s when it’s impossible to find a parking spot or a free mat at the gym because everyone is trying out the free classes and telling themselves that this semester they’ll work out every day.  It’s when people who are pretty much never on campus for the rest of the year explore every nook and cranny of the buildings they never visit and steal the regular seats of students who actually hang out in on-campus coffee shops (I may be slightly bitter about this part).

My introverted side is having trouble adjusting to this.  Unpredictable behavior from hundreds of other bodies milling around the same spaces as me is preventing me from slipping back into my School Routine as quickly and easily as I would like.  Other people are variables; I like limiting the uncontrolled variables in my life, but for the first few days of school, I can’t do that.  I can’t prevent others from invading my personal physical or mental space.

Then there’s the fact that the bus tends to be so packed that it cannot take on any more passengers, thereby precluding itself from serving its purpose… by serving its purpose.  It’s a weird cycle.  My schedule is starting to take on a similar tinge of cyclical futility.  I’m only taking 12 credits (the minimum required to be considered a full-time student), and I’m only working 10 hours a week (so far), and I’m only working out about an hour in the evenings at the rec, and I’m only doing 2 part-time internships, and I’m only starting the research on my thesis (the real work comes next semester, I keep telling myself).  But all those “onlys” add up to a lot of stuff going on in my life at once, all of it ostensibly necessary, most of it something I really do want to do.  This leaves very little room for error; procrastinating on one assignment would be like putting another bus out of commission and increasing the demand on all the others.

All my work on self care in the past year has taught me that I am most likely to drop the things that are personal first.  It’s much harder for me to bow out of obligations to others that I have agreed to fulfill than it is to tell myself that I don’t have time to work on my manuscript because I have so much homework.  But the manuscript makes me happy.  So, to drag this metaphor past the point of reason, like the bus systems, there are many demands on my time.  Now I just need to figure out a screening process to decide which passengers to allow to get on.

Which would be a lot easier to do if there weren’t so many other people throwing elbows in line for coffee.

Sister Car Dancing Level: Pro

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19a4839788909bdabb46838c9630e130One of my favorite things to do in traffic is defuse the tension by being that weirdo jamming out in her car, and I blame my sister for that.

My family has always been vehicularly musical; our road trips to visit relatives always involved rotating through tried and true soundtracks.  I knew the words to Camelot, Godspell, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, etc. before I started first grade.  We still bust out Hairspray and The Best of Andrew Lloyd Webber.  So I sang in the car a lot growing up.

But car dancing didn’t really start until I taught Bird the moves to a dance associated with a particular retreat at my high school.  Although The Dance is and always will be connected to that retreat, the more I chauffeured my sister around, the more it became our thing.  If either of us was having a bad day, we’d put on The Song.  If we were bored driving home, we’d put on The Song.

Now, initially we only tended to do this while moving, so we felt like no one could see us (side note: I always toned down the moves enough to maintain full control of the vehicle at all times).  But one day, when the other drivers at a lengthy stoplight looked particularly irritable, Bird turned to me and said with that little-sister grin, “These people need Jesus.”  Before I realized what she meant, she had cranked up The Song to full volume and rolled down her window.  We were attracting glances from our neighboring cars, but the moves hadn’t started yet.  They thought we were just another couple of teenagers with really loud music.

I sighed and rolled down my window too.

When the lyrics began, we bounced in rhythm to the song and performed the moves in perfect synchronization.  The drivers across the intersection started to stare.  By the time the chorus came around, pretty much everyone was watching us.  The light turned green, and we drove on, still dancing and singing, but I definitely noticed some smiles.  Maybe they just thought we were ridiculous.  We probably looked ridiculous.

But who doesn’t love telling stories about ridiculous stuff?

Our car dance performances are not necessarily restricted to The Song or religious music.  We make up moves to Ariana Grande and Hunter Hayes.  The point is that it’s fun to get weird looks from total strangers and to make their day a bit more interesting.  (We also love to do this when we’re stopped by construction workers.)

car dance gif

And yet, for all our unbridled enthusiasm for car dancing, there has been only one spectator who dared to, as they say, get on our level.

Remember how Bird and I volunteered at VBS?  Well, one year we were given our own class to teach, a group of rambunctious 2nd and 3rd graders.  Like every other class group, our students had to learn a song.  At the concert at the end of the week, each class would perform their song, with the corresponding dance moves, for an audience of parents.

And as the teachers prompting them at the foot of the stage, Bird and I had to learn the moves too.

We were in the car on the way to St. C’s, practicing the moves and lyrics, music at full blast, when we stopped at a red light.  Since the choreography was designed for little kids, the chorus was mostly just waving your arms back and forth.  So that’s what we were doing – when we noticed the guy behind us staring.  And so was the lady next to us.

We bounced all the harder in our seats (restrained by our seatbelts, of course – safety first!) and exaggerated the ridiculous dance moves even more for our audience.  We figured we might as well.

And then, just as the light was about to turn, I glanced in the rearview mirror to see the guy behind us grinning and waving his arms back and forth in time with ours.

Well danced, sir.  Well danced.

Oh, You Don’t Want To

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If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me, “And what are your plans after graduation?” I could probably pay for another year of college.

But that’s just kindly curiosity.  People are just being inquisitive, or concerned for my welfare, or even just making small talk.  I get that.  It’s what we ask as humans, isn’t it?  What are you going to be when you grow up?  What college are you going to?  What outcome are you aiming for after this Big Socially Recognized Transition?

What gets me is the number of opinions offered based on my answer, no matter what that answer is.  It’s usually, “I don’t know,” to which they reply, “Oh, you don’t want to decide anything now, you’re so young!”  If I elaborate, “Maybe grad school,” then the op-eds really start flying.

“Oh, you don’t want to get an MFA in creative writing – all you can do with that is teach.”  “Oh, you don’t want to study literature – all you can do with that is teach.”  “Oh, you don’t want to stay at the same school for your Master’s.”  “Oh, you don’t want to lose any momentum by taking a year off.”  “Oh, you don’t want to stay in school forever – work for a few years, then come back and get that degree.”

If I mention a job?

“Oh, you don’t want to stay here, publishing is much bigger in New York.”  “Oh, you don’t want to go into editing, there’s no money.”  “Oh, you don’t want to go too far from home.”  “Oh, you don’t want to get stuck in some office job, you’re much too smart for that.”  “Oh, you don’t want to waste any time, you should start networking now.”

And forget even hinting that the Engineer might come into it.

“Oh, you don’t want to make decisions based on a boyfriend.”  “Oh, you don’t want to do a long distance relationship, so few couples can handle that.”

And on and on it goes.

I’ve been calling these bits of speech opinions rather than advice.  That’s because of the four- or five-word formula at the beginning of each snippet: (oh) you don’t want to.

Don’t I, though?

Don’t I want, in some moments, to study more creative writing because it’s what I love?  Don’t I want, at times, to elbow my way into publishing regardless of the paycheck?  Don’t I want to take the person I’ve been dating for years into account?

How kind of these opinions, sensing my confusion, to tell me what I want.

I’m used to some of these.  I’ve heard them before.  “Don’t worry, lots of people change their majors,” acquaintances would say, trying to give me a way out after I told them I was majoring in creative writing.  Sounds an awful lot like, “Oh, you don’t want to do that.”  But I did, in fact, want to.  It was like Warner thinking Elle Woods couldn’t get into Harvard even after she, um, did. 

like it's hardMy chosen area of study, like Elle’s sudden decision to pursue law, has raised a few eyebrows.  It seems implausible that writing would maintain such a strong hold on me, especially in a society that places so much emphasis on money making.  I get it.  And, following up on those undergraduate doubts, it makes sense that people would make similar assumptions about my choices post-grad.

I know most of these people mean well.  They want to see me succeed, or at least not starve to death or bankrupt my parents within a year of graduation.  They probably believe that their opinions are, in fact, good advice, and I appreciate that intention.

That’s where I run into trouble.  I was raised to respect adults, to seek advice from those with more life experience than me.  So I don’t really want to just start arguing with everyone – “Oh, you don’t want to [insert action here]” “OH YES I DO COME AT ME BRO.”  But I don’t know how to politely disengage when the opinions are irrelevant to me (such as when the information is outdated or based on hearsay, or just has to do with their own worldviews that I don’t necessarily share).

And even if the advice underneath the opinion is sound, I can’t help chafing at that formula. You don’t want to.  Words carry weight in my world, and that particular phrase is like an anvil dropped from a Looney Tunes cliff.  If you know what I do and do not want – why did you ask in the first place?