Plastic is Creepy

Mumbai Love

2012-01-31T06:19:00.003-06:00

I leave Mumbai and return to Chicago in just a few days, and I am really dreading it. I've been thinking about how much this place has become part of me in a way that I can't really explain to my friends in the US. Even people who have visited India have generally come either for a few weeks as tourists or for work, and I feel like I've gone beyond that point now, so that Mumbai has started feeling just a little bit like home now (though it's complicated, because my body and my brain are still so American). People in the US are thinking about Pinterest and Republican candidate debates, and while I'm sort of keeping up with things there (thanks to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart), my mind and my heart would really rather be in India. I'm involuntarily using the Indian side-to-side head nod. I'm craving fresh lime soda and Sunny's Kerala-style beef fry and chikki and berry pulav and kala jamun and tender coconut juice and clam sukha and Goa Portuguesa's amazing pork and Theobroma's cherry cheesecake and Moshe's lemongrass cooler and Rustom's wafer ice cream and Tea Centre's Darjeeling and scones with cream and so many more things. I want to get carried away shopping at the Kohlapuri chappal stalls on the road in Bandra and Colaba. I want to spend hours sifting through the beautiful fabrics of Fabindia in Kala Ghoda. I want to dance and sing ridiculous songs with Ayeshea. I want to sit by the sea on Marine Drive at sunset with my guy at least once a week. I want to ride with him in a taxi from Colaba to Chembur at 11:30 pm, when the traffic has finally died down and we can soar across the JJ Flyover with the windows down and the cool night air blowing smog-filled air against our faces. I want to wake up next to him to the sounds of engines and honking that mean we've slept in and the city is up and running without us. This is, after all, the city where we met, where we fell in love, and the only one that has been, in some sense, a home for both of us.

It feels like there's so much more for me here. I want to learn more Hindi now that I recognize more of the words that I hear people using in conversation. I know how to get where I want to go and how to get there, for the most part, and I know how much it should cost, so I can argue with cab drivers when they misidentify me as a clueless tourist. My eyes aren't feeling as overstimulated as they used to when I visited in the past - the open air grocery stores and medical stores and barber shops look normal, the apartment buildings look welcoming and home-like instead of standing out in contrast to the buildings in Chicago. The poor are still shockingly poor, but they're not only that - they are just people, in a way that it was hard for me to process before. That is, they're not just objects of pity but part of the 20,000,000-plus-piece always-moving human puzzle that is Mumbai. I have first world problems (http://first-world-problems.com/) but also laugh at how ridiculous they are. I want to have more conversations with Mumbaikars of various backgrounds about their experiences, worldviews, and opinions on current events. I want my two worlds to collide so that I can have them both and don't have to miss one of them so terribly all of the time.

Blue Christmas

2011-12-25T11:29:00.001-06:00

I am feeling melancholy this morning, largely because it's an anti-climactic Christmas. Most of the usual family festivities were yesterday, and I'm having a fairly low-key lunch with my parents and grandma, followed later today by a train ride back to Chicago to get ready to leave for India tomorrow. I'm feeling less eager than usual to go to India, and I can understand why. It is my first visit since my five-month stay earlier this year, and I came out of that feeling like I had survived rather than thrived in Mumbai. I also just finished a pretty dark book set in Mumbai in which the worst of rat-race human nature was in full force - the same sort of forces that turn me off to living there myself. And then there's my apprehension about going for the wedding of my guy's sister - he's been busy and his calls have been less reliable than usual, and I'm not sure just how out of place I'm going to feel during all of the family chaos. I'm staying with neighbors who are friends of his family since the family house will be full, so I'm afraid I'm going to feel like a total outsider. I also just don't really feel like going on another long solo journey - I dread my consecutive flights of 12, 5 1/2, and 2 hours, followed by a 2-3 hour car ride, followed by disorientation, exhaustion, and feeling overwhelmed. And I don't want to deal with all of the last-minute details (paying rent, calling my bank, packing, making sure I don't show up without at least some small gifts of thanks for my hosts...) before taking off. Whine, whine, whine. Bleh.

Probably because I've got so much anxiety about my life for the next...well, foreseeable future, I am also feeling my sense of disappointment in humanity amplified. The book I just finished didn't help. The neighbors in a housing society end up killing an old man who was once their friend and mentor, because if he doesn't go for the huge payout that a developer is offering to move out of their building and let it be demolished for a new luxury high rise, then nobody else can get the money either. And the crazy thing to me is, it just seems like an extreme consequence of people applying the common logic of operating always in their own self interest. I want us to be better, to have consciences and an interest for the greater good. Even Christmas seems taken over by people's interest in buying and consuming, and it's hard to imagine what it would look like if you took out all of the things money can buy. Where's the joy? Where's the real commitment to peace and connection with other people? And what can I do to start living that way all of the time, to stop worrying about whether some people are getting more than they deserve and start working toward everyone having what they need and a fair chance to dream bigger if they want? How do we start making sure we measure ourselves and others according to our human value and not our monetary value? We need to spend more time with people and not at work. We need to think about others' dreams as well as our own and realize that we don't lose our own by taking others' into account. I know I'm idealistic, but I really don't want to live in a world where everyone just accepts that other people may suffer while they spend their resources only on themselves. I don't want to hear debates about the entitlement of the wealthy not to have to share their wealth, as though they are not connected to others around them, as though the most important issue at hand is the injustice of forced redistribution and not the inequity of the way resources are distributed to begin with. I know I've talked about my feeling of guilt about my relative good fortune while others struggle, but this is not only about guilt. It just seems so ugly and unjust, and I just wish that we could look at each other in a way that we see our shared humanity and not only our competition for pieces of the same pie.

Ani D.

2011-12-23T20:57:00.000-06:00

One of the most exciting parts of this week has been getting Ani DiFranco's new album, Which Side Are You On?, nearly a month before its official release date in mid-January. I've heard all of the songs before, either at a live performance or in concert footage on YouTube, but it's been great to hear what she decided to do with them in the recording studio. And it's just this really beautiful thing - she's found a wonderful lifetime love, with whom she has a young daughter, and her political voice is also more pointed and articulate than ever. She's got roots in her community in New Orleans, and it shines through both in her lyrics and the other musicians who accompany her on many of the tracks. It may sound cheesy, but she is really a role model for me. I'm not going to follow the same path as her - I'm not a folk music prodigy or poet or artist - but her social consciousness and pursuit of joy and balance is inspiring. She's someone who's always learning and growing. Listening to the album makes me feel motivated to re-engage with the world around me and appreciative of the love in my life.

A couple of tastes:

The political: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BgtY3_Ltc&feature=related

The personal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz6snoSNeE4

Want, Need, Should

2011-12-21T20:56:00.003-06:00

I find myself thinking a lot lately about what it is that I want to, need to, and should do, and how those three verbs (want, need, should) balance vs. each other. In any one choice, can I accomplish all three? I find myself feeling selfish when I do something that I want to do and not something I should do, even if it's not something I'd say I shouldn't do.

That's vague, I know. But a little more specifically, I think about the relationship I'm in, the things in it that I want, and the other needs that I have. No relationship can meet all of my needs - there's a lot that's up to me, and a lot that gets filled in by having different relationships - but which things are requisite for me to be happy in a relationship, and which things am I willing to concede? I've never been happy with any concessions - even as a kid, and even when making trivial decisions (e.g. which item on the fast food menu would I like this time?), I have had a hard time with the things that I know I'm not getting when I choose something else.

My guy is lovely, and I'm pretty crazy about him - I like the way he sees the world differently from me and doesn't balk at the challenge of being together, to name just a couple of things. He's a pretty non-ideological and level-headed person, which is a good counter-balance to me with my critical eye - but at the same time, I know he's not likely to share my interest and passion for social justice (and I don't share his love of sports). Knowing that I myself have a hard time being disciplined in my approach to life, I know that being with someone who isn't going to be inclined to push me means that I will have to motivate myself a lot of the time. I know he will always be supportive and encourage me to follow my heart and my principles (another thing I love about him - never overly concerned with what other people think), but he may not have the same causes trigger him. To what extent do I need or want someone similar to myself, and to what extent is the difference good or at least manageable? I was married to someone with similar principles, and I didn't feel sufficiently challenged and engaged in the relationship. Now I'm with someone who sees the world quite differently in many ways, even coming from a very different cultural background from myself, and I sometimes face doubts about how we're going to pull off staying together. For now it works, with blips here and there, but since my wants and needs are shifty things, it takes considerable discernment to decide, with confidence, that this relationship can last, ebbing and flowing as it may need to, but persisting.

Then there's also the tug of superhero aspirations - I want to make a difference in the world, and I know I have a hard time maintaining the will to make the effort, so maybe I should be with someone who will "crack the whip" more and push me to contribute, not let me get complacent. I don't think "taskmaster" is a quality I'd really like in a partner, but when I think about doing the most good, I wonder if I need someone to help hold me accountable or spur me on by their own example of drivenness. Then again, I love my guy...and I know he wants what is best for me, so maybe that's all that is needed to have the support I need for my aspirations. I lean in this direction and hope that it is true...and that it brings happiness, fulfillment, and some good things to the world around me.

Different

2011-12-15T21:25:00.002-06:00

I feel different. From myself, as I've known myself to be, for most of my life. It's not that my personality has changed, but I had this moment today when I just realized just how much transformation I've been through in the past couple of years. It's hard to describe in a way, partly because the connections are still being made in my brain, but I can feel the change in myself. Two years ago, I was struggling in my marriage and with my job, I didn't feel like I was at all where I wanted to be, and I didn't know how to fix that. At the beginning of last year, I decided to end my marriage. I lived alone for the first time, and for the first time I was making some decisions based on what I wanted and not what I thought I should do. I got to travel the world for work for most of the summer and saw a lot of new and amazing places. I had times of depression and loneliness and times of peace and joy. I had no idea how things were going to be when I got past the feelings of guilt and shame about getting divorced. I fell in long-distance love, which was wonderful and agonizing and another source of uncertainty. At the beginning of this year, I went to India and danced for a wedding and then went back to India for five months after that to be closer to my new love and learn what living in India would feel like. I struggled with uncertainty, the feeling of being in limbo for a long time, being out of place. I had a beautiful apartment materialize and then get washed away (literally) by monsoon rain, and then had nobody to help me rescue my moldy belongings and move elsewhere. I made a wonderful new friend during the ordeal who was preordained to be my karaoke partner. I had wonderful moments and times when I wanted to get the next available flight back to Chicago. My love grew in the midst of my doubts. My job existed, but it was not the most important thing. I returned to Chicago and still feel like I'm in transition.

I feel different because I feel like I can see life from more angles now. I still abhor patriarchy and injustice and small talk like I did for so long. I still don't like Twilight. I don't like unrealistic fantasies. But I also can now see the possibility of being happy, even through the residue of guilt that I still need to deal with. I can see an imperfect relationship with an imperfect person and think it's perfectly wonderful. I can see that I simply cannot do everything, that there are some paths that I won't take in favor of taking others, and I am more okay with that than I've ever been - I may never go to grad school, I may never have kids, and either way, I think I'll be okay. I can see the good fortune I've had through some unexpected twists at my job, when I never thought I'd still be at the same company after more than seven years. I still have some dark, difficult lows, and I'm definitely lonely, but I also have hope and some experience seeing how things ebb and flow. I know tomorrow I might read this and not be feeling as optimistic, and it might seem overly sentimental and sugar-coated. But right now, I know it's true.

Generally speaking

2011-12-07T07:07:00.001-06:00

I am guilty of doing it myself, but still I have to say - I can get really frustrated by the way we humans seem to want to generalize about other people or compare ourselves with other people. A few examples...

- I posted this link on facebook to an NPR story about the media portrayal of the American South. I know I've used the words "hillbilly" and "redneck" in recent memory myself, as well as imitating a Southern accent (in front of a friend who is from the South...oops), so shame on me! Truly, it's embarrassing when I'm part of the phenomenon I'm critiquing.

- An acquaintance in Mumbai posted this link showing how one of the best musicians in the US, Joshua Bell, played his violin at a subway station in Washington, D.C. -- and only one person stopped. My Mumbaikar pal captioned this, "Americans are ignorant?..." But really, I think the clip says more about humans at large than Americans in particular -- we are so carried forward by our habit energy that we aren't aware of the present moment. But it caught me that he captioned the picture with a generalization about Americans - first, because as an American I'm going to immediately feel defensive, but also because I know that this guy has more exposure to American media than actual Americans, and from my perspective the jump to a not-so-favorable generalization based on a video of a few hundred people one day in a subway station in D.C. betrays a pre-existing view on Americans. I do find it disturbing that people didn't stop and recognize the beauty of what the guy was playing - particularly because I could see myself being one of them - but spinning it into a generalization about 300 million + people is a leap.

- Another acquaintance recently posted a picture on facebook that was intended to be humorous: it was a chart with two columns, one for men and one for women, and under men it had things like "Conquers nations", "Frees slaves", "Discovers America", "Fights terrorists", and under women it had only "Gets more likes on facebook". I am sort of annoyed that this one even bothers me, because I consider it so easily collapsible by any reasonable, fact-based 30-second argument (men didn't do all of that alone, men have historically oppressed women, the things listed under "men" carry with them some cringe-worthy bad effects, there are plenty of notable things for the "women" column, I've not noticed a pattern of more facebook likes for women...) But it does bother me, because clearly some people think there is enough of a kernel of truth to find it funny in the first place. Gender generalizations are probably the most irritating of all to me, because I grew up in a place that still has relatively narrow options for women and I know I've internalized some of the implicit and explicit messages of patriarchy.

I don't entirely understand why I chafe so much against generalizations and comparisons. I think it's likely coming from feeling different in many ways from what is considered normative, as well as from my natural skepticism that the surface view of things is sufficient. I always want to get to the reality of things, and it frustrates me that we are all so subjective, driven to see things from perspectives based on emotional reactions and conditioned values. There must be a way to have our views, to feel things deeply, but still to allow room for others to do the same with different views and feelings and not end up arguing with or marginalizing or generalizing each other.

Social struggles

2011-12-04T16:09:00.001-06:00

I've had a hard time over the past week since my guy left and I've been on my own. I've been feeling kind of bad about myself, wondering why I have such a limited social life and don't feel like I have much going for me here. And then today, in the midst of an other bout of self pity, I realized just how many things have gotten me to here:

1. Divorce. Yes, it's been over a year since the divorce was finalized, but it's not just the divorce, but having been married for a while that led to me not hanging out with friends that often - evenings and weekends were mainly time spent with my ex and at times also his family in the area. So my friends from before my marriage adapted to the low-frequency get-togethers, and they also had plenty going on in their own lives to keep them busy (relationships, school, etc.)

2. Travel. I was in India during January of this year, in addition the 5 months I spent there from May through September. So I've not really been around much, at least not consistently, so I've had a hard time staying in touch with friends here in Chicago (and admittedly I was not great at making a point to email and Skype from India, either). Being away so much has also had the effect of keeping me in a perpetual state of adjustment, which makes social life less natural and comfortable than it might otherwise be. And of course, any hobbies, classes, etc. that I might have signed up for had I been here did not happen.

3. Life changes. One of my key social activities used to be my weekly small group Bible study, but that ended last year and I only see one friend from that group regularly, though I do see a few others occasionally. All of us have been through life changes, too - moving, getting married, having kids. To a large extent, we have grown apart as we've gone down our own paths.

4. Discouragement. Last year, after I'd separated from my ex and moved into my own apartment, I found a group on Meetup.com that seemed fun and quirky, and I tried going. The first event was fun, a scavenger hunt at the Art Institute, but the next event was awkward. It was a trip to an annual holiday craft sale, and only two other people came -- they were regulars with the group, and they seemed to feel a little uncomfortable with a lone newcomer there. I also signed up for a screen printing class earlier this year, which was cool, but the one person from the class with whom I had an actual conversation, who also lived near me and seemed to have some shared interests, didn't end up coming back again on the same nights that I was there, so that sort of ended before it started. These kinds of thing probably affect me too much - but I really hate going and trying to befriend strangers. I've never made any friends outside of school and friends of friends, so I find the blind date approach to friendship incredibly uncomfortable to begin with, and when it doesn't go well it feels particularly grim.

It's clear to me that I need new friends, but making them doesn't come very easily to me, and when I'm depressed, it's extra hard to get motivated to start. I know I'll keep trying, but I'm not really having a great time in the process.

Commitment & Aliens

2011-11-30T18:40:00.001-06:00

Should you ever find yourself considering the option of importing someone for the purpose of marrying them, it turns out that the process is a smidge complex: http://www.visajourney.com/content/k1flow. We're not necessarily starting on this yet, but I was wondering what was involved and...yikes. "Form I-129F: Petition for Alien Fiance(e)" - enough said.

Sola

2011-11-29T17:48:00.001-06:00

Every time I see my guy and then one of us gets jetted thousands of miles away, it's sort of like going through a break-up. It doesn't bring the same sense of permanent loss, but there is a mourning process, and I have a hard time adjusting back to being alone most of the time. It involves a lot of snacking and pajamas and not much bathing. In my current woman-of-the-wilderness state, I find myself with a lot of time to think. And I've been thinking a lot about relationships and connectedness, because I feel lonely and disconnected. I try to tell myself that this time alone is good for me, that I can do all kinds of things I like or have been meaning to do: pursue something creative, read, write, listen to music, do yoga, go for morning walks, cook, watch a movie, update my resume, do some travel planning for next year, post some pics from this year's travels on facebook. But right now, I just don't feel motivated. I find myself feeling kind of pathetic for wishing I had someone nearby to hang out with instead of hanging out by myself. My work is mostly solitary, so after work I feel like having dinner or just sitting on my couch with someone else, watching a show and chatting intermittently. I know I'm ready to end this phase of living alone, but unfortunately I don't see an end in sight anytime soon.

Giving it all away

2011-11-27T18:59:00.001-06:00

I've had a ton on my mind lately...what the next step is in a very-long-distance relationship, whether I want to make a geographical move and/or career move in the next year, the nature and strength of my friendships...the list could go on. At the moment what I'm kicking around is my financial standing and how it interacts with my guilt and sense of responsibility, as well as the decisions I make about everything I mentioned in the previous sentence.

What it comes down to is that I don't know how I should be dealing with my finances. For years now I've felt strongly that I should be giving a proportion of my income (generally 10%, sometimes a little lower, sometimes more) to charity, to support not only myself but those around me. When I was married, my husband felt perhaps more strongly about giving, so together we budgeted more than10% of our income to give to charity on a monthly basis. After letting this slide a bit last year and giving more like 5-10% during the months of high expenses that came with moving out, paying rent and living expenses for two apartments for a few months, and financing a divorce, I went back to giving a stable 10% of my gross income. Which sounds nice, maybe, but I struggle with it at times.

First, I feel frustrated that being married to a grad student for 4 years cost me nearly half of the income I earned during that time - my savings were set back a lot when I handed over tens of thousands in cash and retirement funds that I have never fully felt was "ours" to divide up. Surely it can be debated what was the right or fair thing to do, but to some degree I feel taken advantage of, and I don't think it's sheer greed that makes me feel that way. I think in retrospect, my financial decisions during the divorce were driven largely by the immense guilt of being the only one who wanted to get the divorce to begin with...more on guilt to follow.

Second, this year I've spent thousands on travel, mainly between here and India, mostly on account of being in a relationship with an Indian and wanting to spend extended amounts of time with him and see if we can make things work. It's something I've wanted to do, but it's taken money that would otherwise have been savings and sunk it into airline tickets. And I'd love to have the situation resolve and have us be able to live in the same place, but I'm not sure how soon that will happen...so the travel spending will likely continue to be pretty high next year as well.

So with my savings flat, my investments fluctuating, and my projected expenses high, I'm struggling to keep my resolve to keep giving 10% of my income away. Already I'm a little behind on the past couple of months, and I'm just not totally sure what to do. On one hand, I feel like I make good money and only have to support myself, so I should do what I can to help others who don't have as good of a situation as I do. On the other hand, I feel like I could really use the savings so I can possibly buy a home, relocate, take a pay cut to pursue a job opportunity, etc. So I'm torn.

And back to guilt...I think it has a ton to do with it. I realized while on a solo walk this morning that I actually feel guilty for having a good income and not struggling, so it fills some sort of psychological need for me to give a lot of it away. I also feel guilty that I'm not an activist and am not that active in my community, that I work a corporate job that doesn't do something really good for the world but is primarily driven by profit. I struggle with finding meaning, and giving to causes that uplift people and create opportunities that otherwise wouldn't exist makes me feel better. But I am not so sure the sense of guilt about my status is a healthy motivator.

I struggle when I look at my finances, I try to tell myself that rather than cutting my giving I should cut my spending on myself, and probably there is some truth to that...but I don't feel like I live lavishly, and it's been a rough couple of years for savings, so it's really hard for me to stay the course and keep giving at the same level. But the feeling that I'm selfish and greedy for wanting to keep more for myself is still there. I know it's not totally fair to feel that way, that I have to grant myself some leniency since it's been a rough couple of years financially, but it is still difficult. I feel resentment about what the divorce did to my finances, so that also complicates things and also makes me feel badly for not totally letting it go. There's part of me that feels like by giving, maybe I'm trying to atone for the divorce and reclaim the moral high ground that my ex seemed so solidly to have over me...which is why I find myself resenting my ex: because I think he thought he was better as a person than me somehow and deserving of the money I earned for the years we were together. But really, it is likely more the nasty little voice at the back of my head than him whispering that to me. I haven't even seen him in months, and it really doesn't matter what he thinks of me, but still it influences me.

I guess in the end, I am trying to move forward in my own way, to find a balance between the things I want and need and my desire for meaning and contributing positively to the world, and I've lost both a lot of money and the person who held me accountable for the latter goal. If I live differently from how we lived together, does it mean that I've changed for the worse and become a more self-centered person? Rationally, I may say no, it does not, but it's a tough sell to my conscience.

Companion Energy

2011-10-30T18:57:00.000-05:00

I feel kind of ridiculous saying it, but I really don't like living alone. I can name a lot of up sides to it, mainly having to do with freedom and flexibility, but ultimately, I love having a companion. Even if we're not doing something together, I like just being in the presence of others, their living filling even silence with energy. In Mumbai, there was so much human energy everywhere just because there are so many people. A lot of the time, it was too much -- too many people, all trying to do their own things and getting in each other's way. I love that city at night because it calms down, but there is still a lot of life happening. In Chicago, there are a good number of people out during the day, enough to give me that buzz of life being lived. But at night, most people retreat to their homes, and since I live alone, sometimes it's just too still. I intentionally got an apartment on a busy road so that I can hear cars and people outside later in the evening and earlier in the morning, which helps stem the feeling of isolation, but I'd really love to be hanging out in here with someone else, listening to traffic, watching football, cooking dinner. I want to be surrounded by not only my possessions and interests, but those of someone else.

But then, on the other hand...

2011-10-27T09:11:00.000-05:00

My last blog post put a positive spin on the struggles of being in an ultra-long distance relationship. Today I am not feeling so optimistic. I'm wondering what on earth I'm doing, doubting my ability to endure a long separation when what we most need is time to get closer across our differences in cultures and personalities. I want to get on with it, to progress and grow together, not put things on idle and get on with it a year or two down the road. What even happens between now and then? It feels like I have to make some hard, rational decisions about things that are close to my heart, and it sucks.

A colleague of mine, also a nerdy researcher, told me to think of it like a conjoint exercise - basically decide how much each option matters to me (location, career, relationship) and then make a decision by picking the feasible combination with the highest value. Not so sure that one is going to help me, but I have been realizing how highly I value this relationship. Truly, I think that though I want a meaningful career in which I'm contributing to something I care about, I don't want it to be something that takes so much of my time that it's a struggle to find time for relationships and trying out new things as well. I want a job that I'm good at that is important to me, but I don't want it to be all-consuming. My company used to offer the option to buy an extra week of vacation, and I always said I'd buy as many weeks as they would let me -- my non-work time is extremely important to me, more so than a certain amount of extra cash flow. So I want to prioritize this relationship, but I'm not sure if it's even possible. I tried living in Mumbai, and while there are things that I will always be fond of about that city, it is a trying place in which to live everyday life. A lot of it is the horrible balance of work vs. the rest of life that took over while I was there -- so even when I'm there, near to my guy, the time for relaxing or doing things together was limited. So now I'm back in a less stressful place, with more personal time, and I'm alone. It's incredibly frustrating.

Maybe there is some solution that I haven't thought of yet, some way to speed up the process of getting to the same place or some location that would be good for both of us personally. I don't know...and I'm not sure how long I can wait to know.

Love and Learning

2011-10-23T20:28:00.001-05:00

I'm a pretty restless person, or at least I've been in a restless state for long enough that it feels like a personality trait. Partly it's that I've never reached a point when I've known exactly what I want and the action to take to make it happen -- I don't think most people have such moments of clarity, but the sense of "no, this isn't it", keeps me in motion. I fear committing to anything that will limit my ability to alter my course if I change my mind - I think this is why most of the time the idea of having kids elicits a strong emotional "no!" from me. And there's also a more positive force at play in my restlessness: my love of learning. I want to keep learning, and with every new environment or situation I put myself in, my brain makes more connections, even if it gives me a fresh batch of gray hairs for the stress and effort involved.

This is all a sort of long introduction to the specific thing on my mind tonight, which is what makes me stay in a relationship that is ultra-long distance and is bound to be that way for some time to come with no certain end in sight. There is a way to spin it as totally romantic, and it really is, but I also hate it. Talking at beginnings/endings of days, struggling at times to hear over traffic and unclear connections, staying in touch well enough to remain a meaningful part of each other's lives, even though we can't spend time together during our day-to-day lives. So what keeps me going? Love, obviously, but that's not all. I feel like because I'm away from him so much of the time, I am learning to appreciate what's missing when there isn't everyday life to share - if we were together, I would more likely wonder if we were growing habitual and stale. As things are now, I kind of wish I had that problem: too much time together!

I also think that I've been forced to face the tendency I have to try to control in a relationship for fear of losing the other person. It's a death grip-inducing fear I have based on the knowledge that good things can slip away - so I have a hard time knowing what the reasonable balance is between time with a significant other and time with friends, hobbies, and work. Clearly every couple needs quality time together, but I tend to want a lot of it if given the option -- so it's not all bad for us to be getting some forced time apart so that we establish that we are in a relationship, but we still have individual lives to lead. And then we can bring that individuality back and share it with each other when we talk, which I really enjoy. Maybe that sounds oh-so obvious, but how people manage to stay together without holding onto each other with all their might is still something that is a mystery to me. How do we let it ebb and flow and still feel confident that the outcome will be a healthy and happy relationship? It almost induces panic in me, but it reassures me that I can feel the love and devotion coming my way, calmly and with intensity, even through the phone. I'm fortunate that my guy is far more relaxed and patient than I am, both because it gives me the reassurance I want and because it means he's going to help make sure we're making decisions for the right reasons and not in haste. This is where the love of learning comes in -- I think it's valuable for me to learn to be on my own, balance life as an individual with a long-term relationship, and have the patience to live through the experience of getting to the place we want to be together, wherever that ends up being. I have to find joy in the process, not only the outcome.

I'm not sure that's totally thought through or well articulated, but that's all I've got in me for tonight...

The Uphill

2011-09-25T11:39:00.001-05:00

I've really not felt like blogging much lately. Partly it's that it feels like it requires so much explanation of my current context, which is almost impossible to explain, and partly it's that so much of it is emotional and hard for me to articulate. I'm feeling relieved to be leaving Mumbai, which has not been an easy place for me to live, but sad to be leaving my few friends and guy here behind, and also disappointed that I don't feel like I have been able to adapt as effectively as I'd hoped over five months. I'm also anxious about what it will feel like to be back in the US, in a place very familiar to me, after being away for a while in a place so distant physically and culturally. I'm sure I'm going to answer with "haan" instead of "yeah" at times. And going back to my old neighborhood and living alone again...I think it's going to be nice, but sometimes disorienting and scary and depressing. My friends and family will be happy to see me, and I'll be excited to see them, but there's going to be part of me that isn't all there. And of course there's the ache of going from seeing my guy every day to talking on the phone at odd times when we're both awake and available, and not knowing when we'll get to live in the same place again. I think that's the one I'm most dreading at this point, though the loneliness of readjusting to Chicago and living on my own again also won't be fun.

I know I'm supposed to focus on the positive, but I don't think it will help to deny how difficult the next few weeks will be. That said, I'll make the effort: The best piece of news I've gotten lately, which makes moving a lot better, is that my guy is going to get to visit the US in November and stay for both my 30th birthday and Thanksgiving. I'm really excited that he'll finally get to see where I'm from and meet my family and friends. Not the same as having him actually get to come and live in the US, but maybe it's a start down that path...

Melancholy

2011-09-16T01:47:00.001-05:00

I'm feeling disappointed in myself because I feel myself slipping into melancholy again as I get closer to returning to the US. I feel out of control, and the anxiety is driving me to distraction and at least some tears every day. Sometimes I think I'm okay, that I'll make it through the day just fine, and then toward the end I just feel sad, or panicked, or both. And not only that, but the insecurity is making me cling to my guy with uncomfortable intensity, and unsurprisingly it's making him want more time away from me, which makes me feel even more insecure...and it's a vicious cycle.

I know it's understandable to feel anxious and insecure right now, but what is it in my psyche that makes me suddenly start thinking that maybe it's all going to fall apart, that my depression and erratic moods are going to drive my guy away for good? I feel so awful and painful to be around that I can't imagine why he spends so much time with me. It sounds pathetic when I write it out, because I know that I'm not always, only this way all of the time, and I know there are things about me that make me likable and someone he wants to be with. But at times when I don't have a lot to offer, when I need more than I can give, I feel guilty that he has to deal with me, and I lose sight of the fact that I'm not always a source of negative energy.

The other problem is my lack of close friends here who could also support me -- I have one other friend here who is close enough to confide in and talk about how I feel, and fortunately I get to spend time with her tonight. But mostly I feel alone -- some of it is because I do tend to isolate myself when I'm feeling especially low, I don't like being seen this way and I don't want to go out and pretend everything is normal.

I'm distracted and have a hard time focusing, even on important things like work, and I feel like I've become flakier, which makes me feel worse still. I wonder why other people seem to function fine even with adversity, while I'm here feeling incapable of the standard day-to-day activities of life.

Back and Forth

2011-09-07T06:22:00.000-05:00

I think the best advice I've gotten lately has been that I'm just going to have to get back to Chicago and see how things go before I decide what I really want to do next. I know what it's like to live here in Mumbai now, but I don't know what it's like to leave my love here and go back to live in Chicago. I'm going back with half a mind to turn and come back here again soon, because I'm truly not decided. There's part of me that is craving Chicago again, but if this guy is really the person I want to be with (and I think he is), it feels foolish to just leave if I have the chance to be with him. On one hand, I have to be in a place where I want to be, living in a way that is sustainable -- so clearly if I come back, something has to change in the way I'm living so I'm not wearing myself down. Staying here sounds exhausting, but so does being so far from him...neither is really sustainable, and I don't know that I can just get used to either scenario. So I may fly back and try to look like I'm living a normal life in Chicago, but it's going to be a while before I'm truly decided on where I'm going to be for more than three months at a time.

Craving

2011-09-04T01:57:00.001-05:00

Someone asked me what food I was most looking forward to having again when I get back to the US, and I couldn't even narrow it to a top 10. So I figure food is as good a place as any to start in looking on the bright side of getting back to Chicago. Here's what I plan to eat, but not necessarily in this order (and in some cases it will take multiple trips to the same place):

1) Indie Cafe - panang curry, sweet potato tempura maki

2) Kopi Cafe - egg sandwich supreme (hard boiled egg, horseradish, tomato, greens, on mini baguette), baked nachos, blueberry white tea, chocolate malt

3) Hopleaf - any beer, blueberry mead, CB&J (grilled cashew butter, fig jam, and morbiere cheese) sandwich

4) Icosium Kafe - Carthage crepe (feta, roasted veggies, walnuts), mint tea with honey

5) Tweet - veg biscuits & gravy

6) Coffee Studio - cappuccino, mini goat cheese quiche

7) In Fine Spirits - some kind of awesome gin cocktail

8) Apart Pizza - vegetarian (4 quarters, one of which is corn)

9) M. Henry - breakfast bread pudding

10) Hannah's Bretzel - any sandwich on bretzel, white cheddar & watercress sandwich

11) Bleeding Heart Bakery - veruca salt (salted caramel) cupcake

I'm also looking forward to fall baking, pumpkins, apple cider, and other festive foods (birthdays, Thanksgiving, etc.) Mmm...

Limbo

2011-09-03T22:34:00.000-05:00

It's been three months since I last wrote here, and I'm not sure what I'm even going to write about. I've got about four weeks left in India for now, and I'm finding myself really moody. I have a lot of anxiety about coming back, and though I've missed being in the US and seeing my friends and family there, I'm also leaving a lot here. Before I came here, I felt torn between two places, in a sort of limbo, and while I've been here my living situation has felt impermanent, and I feel like I'm going back to another temporary arrangement. I feel ready to proceed on with life with all of the elements in one place -- I'm tired of having a long-term relationship that's here, and a job that can sort of straddle two places, but home and friends and family elsewhere. I don't expect home to feel like home anymore with such a conspicuous absence of the person I want to spend the most time with. I am having a hard time deciding what to do when I get back to Chicago. Finding an apartment and moving in and trying to get settled seems like a good idea, but I have plans to travel for some extended periods and getting a place that I'll be in enough to consider it home seems unlikely. I know feeling at home in Mumbai is not something I could ever count on and in fact the place taxes my energy, but feeling at home even in a familiar place when I've got my life split across such distance is also not likely to happen. Maybe it's ungrateful of me, because I know I have a lot to be thankful for, but I'm feeling down and anxious about what comes next and how it's all going to work out in the end.

Rain, Vocabulary, and Astrology

2011-06-03T06:26:00.001-05:00

It rained last night, and everyone here has been so happy about it today. It's kind of amazing, witnessing the joy and relief on people's faces as the hot, muggy Mumbai summer ends and the monsoon arrives. It will bring cooler air and a sense of freshness, but I suspect that in a few weeks everyone will be grumbling (or as they would say, "cribbing") about the buckets and buckets of rain we're getting. I packed my umbrella in my work backpack today, so that I'm prepared in case of any downpours -- last night I was not so prepared, and the cabs were all full when I was trying to catch one to go home from the office. I ended up with one of the more rickety cabs, which had pulled over so the driver could try to figure out why his windshield wiper wasn't working. He didn't figure it out, but he took me anyway, reaching his arm out the window to swipe the blade across the windshield occasionally. I felt badly for the guy. When I got home, it was nice to open the windows and feel cooler air coming in for once!

More words and vocabulary...I get called "madam" here a lot, by people trying to sell me stuff, cab drivers, and restaurant staff. An elevator is a "lift", and the one in the building where I am living (or "staying", as Indians would say) is operated by a person (the housing society I live in employs people to open doors and push buttons, which I find awkward, especially considering how tiny the lift is). Lifts here generally have a sort of criss-cross grated metal gate that is manually pulled open and closed, as well as a corresponding gate at each floor, so you get in, close both gates, push the floor button, then open both gates, step off, and close them again when you get where you're going.

I was talking to a couple of women in the office here (whom I always want to call girls, I feel like unmarried women are so innocent seeming here compared to in the US!) about arranged marriage and horoscopes the other day. And they told me that here, it's not the sun sign but rather the moon sign that gets more attention, and traditional Hindu families really will consult their children's natal charts and compare them to prospective matches to see if there is anything inauspicious. They also choose wedding dates based on auspicious times in the Hindu calendar. Being American, I find it hard to imagine having my future so mapped out for me by the stars or my family or karma (which is really the wiggle room in the predictions made by astrology). But I can't help thinking there probably is some sort of truth to us being the product of our position in the world, where and when we were born and how that sends us off into the world. As they say, there's always karma to change what's fated, so it seems more likely to have some truth to it with that acknowledgement of imprecision/complexity. After talking with them, I went to http://astro.cafeastrology.com/ and got my natal chart -- you have to know the time of your birth as well as the date in order to ascertain your moon sign, but fortunately I know my birth time because my mom is detailed with things like that. It turns out that my sun sign (Scorpio) is the opposite of my moon sign (Taurus), which means I was born during a full moon, when the sun and moon were in opposite directions from the earth. The sun sign is supposed to be about your personality, while the moon sign is more about your emotional life. So with opposite signs, I am supposed to have some confusion: "People born when the sun opposes the moon have an internal struggle between their needs and their wants" (http://www.cafeastrology.com/natal/sunoppositionmoon.html). This rings true for me, but on the positive side, it says full mooners are supposed to be able to see things from different perspectives, which can bring balance rather than extremism. This can come in the form of self awareness but also indecision. Very interesting. I recommend checking out your natal chart if you can get ahold of your birth time...fascinating stuff, or at least I think so!

Moodiness and More Minutiae

2011-05-31T02:43:00.000-05:00

I keep thinking of more things to write about Mumbai and then I forget before I get to my blog. I've also been having a rough time lately just being here and feeling both the desire to take refuge in my air conditioned bedroom and some pretty severe loneliness. I want to be out, absorbing everything around me and feeling adventurous, but when I'm out I'm just hot and at least a little confused and it saps my will pretty quickly. I am missing springtime, Chicago, my friends. And because I am so often trying to make sense of where I am in a broader sense (career, travel, love, family), I end up with some seriously funky moods. Ironically, though I've just transplanted myself on the other side of the world by my own choice, I feel stuck. I don't know how to get it all aligned. For instance, career and love are in two very different places right now, and I feel like I can really only deal with one while the other suffers. I'm not sure how to fix that, if sticking it out will be worth it and it will all come together in the end, or if I'll have to make a tough choice at some point.

On a lighter note, there's always more minutiae to note to flesh out the context I'm in more:

One general area is vocabulary -- even though people here speak English, word choice is often different. Some examples: intersection --> junction, green pepper --> capsicum, line --> queue, sandal --> chappal, moving to a new house --> shifting...and there are lots more that I don't remember right now.

Corn is a common pizza topping here, which I actually like -- but I find it odd that this is called "American", since to my knowledge corn is a topping here and in Europe but not in the US -- except at the European style pizza place I used to order from.

It costs me the same to take a cab to work as it costs to take the train in Chicago. If I took a bus it would cost amazingly little.

I wrote before about there being people employed to do things that make me feel helpless. I sense that people here prefer to have a person help them, rather than to do things themselves -- and that it's a sense of status.

I don't have a washing machine, and my maid washes my clothes 3 times a week by hand in a bucket, which is totally normal. I find this fascinating and awesome and a little guilt-inducing all at once. I actually hand washed my own stuff once, and it was kind of a nice feeling, learning to do something a machine has long ago taught me that I don't need to know. It's another life skill, one I won't need much probably, but still kind of nice to have.

People don't tip here. Cab drivers don't get tips generally, and restaurant servers get 10%. This is one thing I actually like about the US -- I think service is better when there's some incentive to get a good tip, and I think people being served are more appreciative of the service they receive because they can express it through a variable tip level. I had a realization the other day that people here seem so much less polite and courteous of other people, likely because there are so many other people around, and so many of them are paid to do something specific, and it stops being a big deal after a while.

Guy movies

2011-05-28T09:28:00.000-05:00

There is a genre of movie that I really hate that I classify simply as "guy movies". I generally avoid these movies, because the common themes are guys being wildly irresponsible, drinking, doing drugs, getting involved in violence, and sleeping with some hot, no-personality women. I hate sounding like a prude, but it actually just depresses me to think of the degree of selfishness and recklessness being basically celebrated as an ideal for manhood. All of this comes up now because I just saw The Hangover 2 today, and I hated it (and I sort of expected to going in, but I thought I'd try it anyway). The movie wasn't really all that clever, but it had everything I don't like about guy movies -- and the worst of it for me is the way most of the women (or in many cases, transgendered women) involved were strippers & prostitutes, and it was somehow cool and exciting for the main characters to get involved with them (even though one was married and another on the eve of his wedding). I guess there's just this part of me that revolts against all of the debauchery, because I don't think it's how people are supposed to treat each other. No regard for other people's humanity or background or experience, no thinking about the causes or effects, just indulgence. It grosses me out, makes me feel worse about the world we live in because it's kind of celebrating the things that I wish could cease to exist.

Stop Helping Me

2011-05-27T07:39:00.001-05:00

This place seems designed to prevent self sufficiency. To get an apartment, you have to have a broker instead of searching ads online yourself. To get a notebook in the office, I was told to ask the office admin (in Chicago there is a supply room where I can go grab what I need). People don’t clean their own apartments, they have a maid. Those with a little more money don’t drive their own cars, they hire drivers. If you plan a vacation, you don’t just go research the place online and book it, you talk to everyone you know who’s been there or is from there (and there will often be many), and they will offer you access to a travel agent they know or a place to stay with a friend or family member. People don’t raise their kids in a nuclear family, they often live with parents who help and have maids who also help with childcare. I went to the grocery store across the street from my apartment, and the shopkeeper told me to give him a call and he’ll deliver so I don’t have to come. Another time, I was painting my toenails and my friend told me I didn’t have to do that myself, I could go and pay and have someone else do it for cheap – but I opted to paint my own toenails. I feel like I must seem anti-social or controlling or even ungrateful, because I want to do things myself, or at least be able to. It feels like micro-delegation here at times, to a point that I can proceed only so far before I have to ask someone for help. Sometimes I want people to not notice me, not offer to help, to leave me alone and not be nice or helpful. I guess I want them to be Chicagoans – I can ask them for help if there’s something I truly can’t do myself, but otherwise I’m left to my own devices.

A couple of more minute things:

Oreos are labeled as a Cadbury product here, instead of Nabisco like they are in the US. Kraft owns both, and Cadbury is huge here, so it just makes more sense that way.

I miss my coffee shop. I wish there were one here that was half as good. On the bright side beverage-wise, fresh lime soda is really refreshing, and mango milkshakes are also delicious (it’s mango season).

Groceries, etc.

2011-05-23T04:30:00.003-05:00

I'm in my new place now, and I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable here -- it always takes a few days to get the hang of the layout and switches and knobs in a new place, and this is only day 2. Last night I was feeling a little pathetic and sorry for myself because I wished I could be somewhere familiar (i.e. Chicago), somewhere I could just go out and walk around and not feel sort of lost and out of place. It doesn't help that I feel the curious eyes of everyone on me, some of which comes from the reality that a lot of people really do stare at me, and some of which stems from my being extra self conscious since a lot of the time I don't know exactly what I'm doing and don't really want an audience for my cluelessness.

For example, I went to get groceries last night, which I was a little anxious about even though it's really not hard. I got the address of the store, glanced at the Google map of my area to see the route, and set off...

Walking in Mumbai is always a little nerve-wracking for me, because there is rarely sidewalk (there are stretches, but they are inconsistent and sometimes not worth the trouble to use) and you're generally sticking to the sliver of road between the parked cars and the cabs, cars, motorcyles, bikes, buses, guys pushing/pulling carts of stuff, and other people on foot who are out and about. There's always a lot of honking happening, and you generally cross the road whenever there's a reasonable clearing in the traffic (or the next car coming can slow down or swerve around you a bit). My neighborhood isn't too hectic relatively speaking, thankfully, but it still doesn't make for a serene stroll.

Also, directions and addresses are difficult for me here. I've been spoiled with a very nice grid system in Chicago, complete with numeric coordinates and almost all perpendicular streets. Nothing is perpendicular here, and addresses are relational (near such and such landmark). And for some reason, whatever the landmark is supposed to be never stands out the way I think it should. For instance, I've had people point out a train station before, and I never would have seen it because it doesn't look like a train station in the US with a big, fat obvious entrance that is clearly labeled and trains and tracks that you can see as you approach. And right now, I'm living in a place where the nearest landmark is the Colaba Post Office, and I don't actually know which building around me is the post office. I haven't really looked, admittedly, but it seems like it should be glaringly obvious. I have a sort of contextual blindness here that I think is getting a little better, but it's still there.

So that brings me back to my grocery excursion to the world foods market last night (which carries exotic things like peanut butter). I set out on a route that was semi-familiar because I'd walked in the same general direction before, but at one point I kept looking for a left turn that didn't materialize. I knew at some point I'd have to hit a left, and I eventually did, and it took me in a slightly roundabout way to the place I was looking for: the World Trade Center. The grocery store address online said there was a shopping area at the bottom, through gate 4, where the grocery store would be. When I got to gate 4, it had a metal detector and a security guard and didn't look like a grocery store at all, but like some kind of official entrance to an important building -- but I thought, okay, this is how things are so often here, I'm just going to walk through this metal detector and see if there's a grocery store somewhere on the other side. And there was, in, around the corner and to the left - which felt like a triumph because if it had been my first time in Mumbai, there's no way I would have assumed that there would be a grocery store in such a strange place with no sign whatsoever out at the street. That's how I feel about everything here -- it's not at all obvious, and so the first time doing anything is always the hardest by far. Maybe because of my feeling of success, I decided to try a different route home that I'd spotted on the Google map...but that didn't work out so well and I had to retrace my steps a little bit to get back. In the end, I got food, though I was disappointed because I forgot the ice cream bar I'd been planning to reward myself with. It's the little things. :-P

A few other random things just to flesh out my experience here a little bit more...

Today I felt sweat drip down my inner thigh to my calf. It's HOT. But it's amazing how much good ceiling fans do -- we definitely overuse AC in the US.

I have a maid, which is totally normal here, and it's absurd how little I have to pay her. The amount she gets per month for an hour a day every day would get me a maid for an hour, once, in Chicago. It makes me feel confused...I know this is how the economy here works, but it still feels wrong.

Speaking of employment, it's amazing how it works here. In stores, I always feel like there are 3-5 times the number of people it actually takes to get a task accomplished -- which I won't argue against since there are a lot of people here to employ, but I also think it's funny. At the grocery store, there are two guys in a small produce section who just weigh and label stuff for checkout as you pick it out. I was offered help finding stuff by at least 2 guys (and the store is fairly small, I think it has 4 short aisles or something). A guy rings everything up and checks to make sure the price of each item shows up correctly in the computer, another couple of guys bag it, and another guy stands by the door, checks your receipt as you leave, and then opens the door for you. I once stopped at duty free at the airport here and had four or five people help me purchase two bottles of whiskey. And on construction sites here, there always seem to be a bunch of guys just hanging around, and this is only compounded by the lack of safety gear worn by these guys (something that makes me feel a little worried for them).

I despise crows. They are big, ugly, and loud. Replace all the songbirds in the trees near you with these giant cawing things and that's what happens outside my bathroom and kitchen windows. At least the trees are pretty and have bright orangey-red flowers.

I guess that's all for now...til I think of more minutiae to share!

Home

2011-05-14T01:48:00.000-05:00

The past few days have been pretty rough for me, because I don't currently have a space of my own. For the last two weeks and for the next one to come, I'm staying with people while I wait for the day when I can be in my own place. I didn't expect to feel this way, especially so quickly. It's made me a little crazy (okay, more than a little), because sometimes I just want the feeling of being at home and relaxing, but there is no such place right now. I don't have a kitchen filled with food I picked out, I don't have a closet to hang my clothes, I don't have my own bed and bedside table to keep the book I'm reading. It's hot, so afternoon exploratory walks aren't super appealing right now. I am dependent on other people to help me get by in even the most basic ways, and I don't enjoy it. I really can't wait to get to my own apartment and be able to be cluttered and laze around and read and look out at the sea, or go to a store and get some food to cook, or work from home, or walk to a random museum and check it out and then come home. The morning walk may get revived if it's not too hot or rainy. One more week...

Amazing things

2011-05-09T12:00:00.000-05:00

In less than two weeks, I will live in an apartment with a sea view. Amazing. You can Google "Colaba Post Office, Mumbai" and it will give you an approximate location. And for the record, I'm not living at the post office, just near the post office -- landmarks are key to addresses here. If you tried to get in a cab and tell them an address, they'd likely have no idea what you were talking about. You have to know the name of the neighborhood, major roads, key landmarks, and you'll get there.

Also, I am addicted to Kerala style food. I have gone from feeling a little weird about ordering fish and having it look like a fish (how American am I anyway?), to picking the fish up by the tail and flipping it over and rip off more of its delicious flesh with my bare hand. Also amazing.

Final point of amazement for the evening: It is 10:21 pm, and I am neither asleep nor drowsy. I am on a Mumbai schedule now, which means I haven't gone to bed before midnight in a while, and I need an alarm to wake me up for work in the morning. I went to an 11:20 movie the other night (sadly, we arrived late, so I missed the national anthem at the beginning, but I witnessed the intermission -- they literally cut in the middle of the reel and bring up the house lights so people will go get snacks, playing ads & previews meanwhile), and went to bed at 2 am, only to be awoken by my phone ringing close to 10 am. This is quite a departure from my Chicago schedule, which is a 9 hour sleep pattern that starts sometime during the 9 pm hour and ends in the 6 am hour without the use of an alarm. I feel healthy and happy, though; it's just odd to look at the clock sometimes.

So far so good

2011-05-08T09:11:00.002-05:00

Week one in Mumbai has flown by, but I think I'm now settled into a local sleep schedule (I'm going to be trying to be a night owl instead of a early bird for the next few months...eating dinner at 9 pm or even later already feels normal).

I've looked at some apartments, which is an interesting process here. In Chicago, I'd just go on Craigslist and find a few places that look good, call or email the landlord, and arrange to see them. Easy and very do-it-yourself. Here, everything is done through brokers, which on the upside means you have someone showing you a bunch of places with your specifications; but on the downside it means a lot of salesmanship, pressuring, and an extra month's rent to pay to the broker for their help. At one point this week while looking, there was a place I really liked, so we went to talk to the landlord -- and "we" means three brokers, my friend Reema, and me. And I did very little talking -- it was mainly the brokers and the landlord discussing the financials (rent, deposit, length of stay), Reema speaking up when need be, and me sitting there fascinated that renting a place for 4-5 months could be so complicated. In the end, I didn't get the place because the landlord didn't want a short term tenant. But fortunately, I have since found a great place for exactly the right length of time, so in the next couple of days I'll hopefully have the details sorted out and be able to move in a couple of weeks.

Aside from the adjustment and logistics of apartment shopping, now that I'm emerging from the jet lag stupor, I'm really happy to be here. I'm very, very happy right now, and some of you who read this know exactly why. I'm looking forward to more of that, picking up more Hindi (maybe I'll blog with some of my phrases when I have a respectable amount), being more self sufficient, and getting settled into a little bit of a routine. More to come soon...

Wistful thinking

2011-04-17T21:21:00.000-05:00

It's the end of my last weekend in Chicago for a while, and since I don't know if I'll live here again and I've been saying some goodbyes, I am feeling wistful. This place has been my home for 7 years, and maybe it will be again, but I know that even if I come back, this is a new phase of life for me. I think life is set up to be full of beginnings and endings, it's perpetual motion, with so many things coinciding and overlapping. It's really exciting, but it's hard to adapt and evolve at the pace that decisions are made and circumstances change. Even when I'm the one making the decisions and changing the circumstances, which is what I'm in the process of doing now. It's amazing, these feelings both that I'm the least certain of the outcome of what comes next, and simultaneously the most sure of myself that I have ever been. I feel empowered even while I feel as though I'm not really in control.

I've been thinking a little about my orientation toward life, how I have this persistent sense that there's more to learn and do, and it motivates me to keep going. Back when I had first started making some of the big decisions I'm now carrying through, someone asked me, "Is there a chance that this won't work out?" And it's always felt like a very silly question to me, because the answer is, "Of course!" I think it's really the only honest answer to that question, in any context. To only pursue "sure bets" means we miss both that nothing is truly a sure bet and that so many of the most important and rewarding things to pursue involve risk and investment of ourselves. What I'm doing now feels like going "all in", a strategy I was never taught and have in fact been discouraged from. But my "sure bets", my very rational and responsible-seeming choices up to now, have gone bust when it comes to bringing me happiness. And I'm actually excited to be going a different route now, one in which my heart and intuition have more influence. It feels very romantic and much more genuine.

And speaking of being genuine, to start a new tangent, I have also been feeling like I have put myself through too much emotional hell just for wanting to really be and express myself. It turned out that what I wanted was not to be in my marriage, which I began realizing more than a year and a half ago. And that really jolting realization was then scrutinized, first by myself, but also by others, including my now ex-husband. It became a debate of what was true, but the truth that was my emotional reality and not somebody else's, so I find myself getting this surprising new feeling of indignation about how I treated myself and how I was treated by others in the course of trying to navigate how I was feeling (though some very graceful people in my life were much more generous with me). It was a terrible process for me, but the burden of blame was readily given to me (largely by me) and I accepted it, so it was difficult even to acknowledge my own needs at the time. It's hard not to break my principle of "no regrets" when it comes to the way things went last year, because I really would do some things differently if I knew then what I know now. But I know life is what it is and there will always be imperfection, some gap between the way things are and the way we would have liked, because we can't understand and anticipate everything we will encounter.

But we can learn, and that is what I find exhilarating and rewarding about life. I feel anxious about what comes next, but I feel better about it because I am facing it with someone who doesn't balk at uncertainty. I don't want to gush, but I'm feeling grateful for all of the really unmatched strengths of this guy right now.

And I guess that's as good a place as any to call it a night.

Zen week is over

2011-04-15T21:06:00.000-05:00

So last week I was feeling a sense of possibility, excitement, and everything coming together for my impending move. Very calm, very zen. This week, I have felt really anxious. I feel like I have a lot left to do, and at the same time that I'm trying to focus on the practical things like work and packing and making sure my pre-departure to-do list gets done. The practical things have never been that hard, they are sort of a welcome break from the emotions of leaving Chicago, being farther away from most people I know, and not really knowing how this whole adventure will go or what will come next. I don't really spend time consciously worrying, but I've been feeling overwhelmed, and people around me can attest that my emotional fuse has been shorter. I'm fortunate to have some very supportive people in my life, and even just reminding me that what I'm doing is exciting and that I am capable of doing it is a help. I think at this point, the encouragement makes the most difference, because soon I will be getting onto a plane alone. I have some help on the other side, too, but so much of it will be up to me to figure out and to make the most of it.

That doesn't seem like a complete train of thought, but that's all I've got tonight.

Sunday evening and what's next

2011-04-10T19:39:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting at home on a Sunday evening at 7:30ish, and I'm loving that the daylight is just now fading. I feel calm and content after a great weekend road trip with my friend Gloria to my sister's place four hours' drive away. I will be in Mumbai in three weeks, and I'm trying to savor the time with people here, the relative quiet, and the familiar surroundings. After 7 years living in Chicago, leaving for Mumbai and whatever comes next after that is going to be bittersweet. I'll be turning myself upside down in plenty of ways, but the one that's been on my mind is how I'll be missing the people I can currently see and seeing the people I currently miss. All of my relationships will change, and it's hard to imagine how it will feel.

Gloria asked me during the drive back home whether there was any year in my life that I see as my best. And I said, I think it's now. Maybe that's because it's now, but when 2011 arrived I thought it would be my best year yet, and so far, so good. I think I'd be hard pressed to pick out any year in the past that I felt was so full of opportunities and lessons and growth and new kinds of happiness, as this year has been so far and promises to continue to be. I am anxious about the vast unknowns, but they are also what give me a sense of the possibilities ahead. Things could all blow up, but then I'd adapt and try something else -- I think that's really the only way for me to live.

Just a quick one

2011-04-06T21:32:00.000-05:00

I feel sort of lame and cowardly for posting this here, but I just didn't have the interest or energy for a facebook based soundbyte debate. Today I posted a link to a story about income disparity in India (50 billionaires account for 20% of the country's GDP), and I got a mix of responses -- a few outraged by the fact itself, a few taking issue with my posting it. So I'm not sure how I feel about it...I mean, I got some strong responses, so people are engaged and that's generally a good thing in my book, but I feel like they were responding to what they thought was my position on it, not my actual position (which I didn't actually share, other than to simply say "Wow"). It's got me thinking about how divisive the things that we care about can be. I don't really expect facebook to be a good forum for dialogue, and maybe it's not really fair to post something without any personal context or opinion, but it was surprising to see how quickly the outrage on both sides of an issue can come out in a way that feels derisive of the "other side". To me, the problem is one we are all more likely to agree on -- poverty and human suffering -- but who to blame and how to go about changing it are not things we have consensus on. I do think there are some individuals to blame (and more than just 50 billionaires in India), but I think that more than blame, compassion is needed. It seems so many problems are exacerbated by lack of communication, which is exacerbated by lack of knowledge of how to communicate and really connect and understand each other. One facebook post is a small example, and probably not entirely illustrative of the thing I'm feeling at the moment, but because real attempts at understanding each other have been on my mind lately, it sent my brain in this direction.

And now, I will sleep.

You know what's funny?

2011-04-04T17:44:00.000-05:00

The past few days I've been all calm and zen, and today I am sick and exhausted and totally annoyed by everything. I took the afternoon off and slept for three hours, and woke up not so sure I feel better. I think it's going to be a bit of a crazy month!

Expansion and expression

2011-04-03T20:46:00.000-05:00

It's been a good weekend, but I'm feeling exhausted both physically and emotionally. Some of it's a shortage of sleep and the fatigue after a long evening of revelry yesterday after my friend Kris's wedding. And some of it's the emotional work of reflection and connection-making that's been occupying me so much lately. I'm not really eager to start a work week with such thin resources and a persistent need for rest, but my spirit is feeling hopeful. Because I feel like I'm evolving, like I've become more expansive and less limited inside, and I'm excited by the new possibilities I'm sensing as I experience a new range of emotion and expression. I was describing to my friend Kelly today at breakfast that I have been finding myself talking to people lately, and while I'm talking, I'm feeling sort of amazed that what I'm saying is articulating so well what I'm feeling. It's like I'm hearing myself and thinking, "yeah, that's it!" For a long time I feel I've been drawn to other people who articulate emotion and experience really well, especially to Ani DiFranco, whose music is really emotionally eloquent, both lyrically and in what's conveyed through her guitar playing. There's been a longing inside me to be able to express things so well, and I'm in the process of learning to listen and hear myself, as well as listen and understand others better. It's something that excites me, makes me feel somehow stronger and more capable of facing whatever unknown challenges lie ahead. And it makes me feel more confident in my relationships, because there's more fluidity of what's flowing in and out of me.

Vague emotional reflections

2011-04-02T11:23:00.000-05:00

So, so much has been going on with me emotionally over the past week or two, and it's hard to know how to begin blogging about it. Especially since it's a lot of deep and long-standing personal stuff that has roots in a family dynamic I haven't lived inside of in more than a decade. So it's complicated and hard for me to articulate, but here I'll give a shot at beginning to...

The way I'm feeling right now is something like freer, lighter, less encumbered. Some of it's likely that I am about to embark on a new adventure in India, and I feel like I'm finally stepping forward after a pretty introspective year post-ended-marriage. Partly I have been eating a healthier diet as well. But another big part of it is discovering some parts of me that have been like locked up, forbidden wings of an old mansion (and for some reason the palace in Beauty and the Beast pops into my head as the image for this...)

I always thought my family had problems of the kind that every family has, nothing out of the ordinary. But the more I reflect, the more I realize how not normal it actually was. I am hesitant to go into detail because it's the proverbial dirty laundry, so I am going to at least try to stay general instead of citing specific examples. There was a dynamic in my family of my sister being the black sheep, the rebellious one, and the dominant emotion I remember feeling about the way my parents responded to her is fear. I steered clear of frequently explosive situations between them, and I developed some obsessive, perfectionist habits and became the model student. I behaved well to get my parents' approval instead of their wrath, and in doing so I limited which parts of me were allowed to be shown to the world, as well as to myself. And I also absorbed a sense that my gain was linked to my sister's loss, which has created a long-standing sense of guilt, and I think some of the decisions I've made as an adult have been attempts at atonement for the injustice that has chafed at me for so long.

I feel like I should limit how much more I say about the past, but at this point the reason I'm feeling good, given all of the deep emotional stuff, is that I feel more like me. I am seeing some good things that I didn't think were part of me, as well as realizing some not so great things I've thought about myself were actually imposed ideas that I don't have to buy into. I see a less distorted version of myself and I like it (and I hope the process continues, I doubt it can be over yet). I've decided not to keep trying to get complete acceptance and affirmation where it's never been offered, and I feel more able to take care of myself emotionally (taking care of the material things has never been difficult). It's weird, I find myself thinking, "So this is what it's like to feel self confident and not depressed. This is nice. I hope it stays."

Struggles and Gifts

2011-03-18T21:37:00.000-05:00

By most standards, it's been a rough day. But what's on my mind now is not the difficulty of it, but the upshots and gifts I've received through it, so those are what I'm going to write about.

Sometimes I feel lonely because I have a fairly solitary life a lot of the time, but today I've felt connected and supported when I've needed it. I have some great relationships, and I'm very grateful for them, though I may not always appreciate them the way that I should.

One of the relationships I have found more value in than ever is the one with myself. Maybe that sounds strange, but being more aware of my own feelings and trying to listen and take better care of myself has made me feel calmer and more assured in the decisions I've made. I feel like I know myself better now, and I'm a little wiser than I used to be.

I've been feeling more connected with God as well. It's hard to write that sentence in a way, because the word and idea of "God" is so loaded and I don't like some of the conceptions that people have of God. But what I mean is that I'm feeling more tapped into the loving, caring, and mindful spirit that's available and present in each moment. Not an idea, but a reality to be experienced. It's clicking more for me, in part thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh and Rob Bell who've helped articulate and guide my thinking lately. It's sort of awakening my consciousness and renewing my interest in staying connected with some spiritual practice.

Heart in Motion

2011-03-12T18:40:00.007-06:00

I'm on a sort of emotional upswing the past couple of weeks, possibly because I've started eating more nutritious food and I have more mental focus and energy than I did during the first couple of months of the year. And while I'm generally feeling pretty good about the state of things, there's also been a lot of troubling emotional stuff that I've been processing, though thankfully it's made easier by a few things, including the improvement in my overall health, the increased energy I feel for work and preparing to move next month, a very supportive relationship with my sister, and a therapist who is helping me to recognize and respond to the way I feel.

And speaking of feelings...the depth and range of emotions I've found myself experiencing makes me feel kind of crazy and unstable. I'm naturally analytical, and I've always tried to be very rational, objective, fair-minded, but I'm learning that there's deep wisdom in emotion as well. I have struggled at times to understand my feelings, especially the complicated ones over the last year or two while my marriage was ending and I began a new life on my own and now a new relationship with its own challenges. It's been unsettling to have such strong emotional responses in such variety, because I feel less in control than I ever have. But sometimes when I am talking with my therapist about what's going on in my life, I'm amazed how much insight comes from just recognizing my emotions, as well as how much I miss when I don't pay attention to them. I think I'm sort of on the remedial learning plan for feelings. For so long, I thought of them as a liability (and the feminist in me starts crying, "patriarchy!" since toughness and rationality are such valued masculine traits), but really they help balance and drive the best rational thought processes. They make sense of everything, because they tell us what's valuable.

This intertwining of emotions and rational thinking was the theme of a recent op-ed by David Brooks in the New York Times, and what he said resonated with me in this stage of my life. The full article is at this link, but an excerpt that particularly hit home for me was this:

"We have a prevailing view in our society — not only in the policy world, but in many spheres — that we are divided creatures. Reason, which is trustworthy, is separate from the emotions, which are suspect. Society progresses to the extent that reason can suppress the passions.
This has created a distortion in our culture. We emphasize things that are rational and conscious and are inarticulate about the processes down below. We are really good at talking about material things but bad at talking about emotion."

I really want to be better at articulating emotion, but first I've been trying at least to let it surface more. I feel like I've bought the rationality-drives-progress message for too long, and I'd like to evolve beyond it to value experiences more.

How we view everything

2011-03-08T20:13:00.003-06:00

Americans are control freaks. This sentence has been popping up in my head over the past few weeks as I've been thinking about what things will be like when I stay in India for a few months. Spending small amounts of time in a lot of different places in the past year has kept me thinking about how the places where we live, the culture and the population density and even the weather, shape how we view everything.

For instance, America is freakishly efficiently run compared to India and has a lot of conveniences freely available. One of the consequences of this is that many Americans get really irritated by things like not having free unlimited wifi with the purchase of a cup of coffee. In some ways, I think Americans are not sufficiently grateful for all that we do have; but then, some of the reason why we have so many good systems is that we have high expectations. On the other hand, the sense I've gotten in India is that no matter how you'd like the system to work, you often can't do anything about it -- so I've found the Indians I know to be far more adaptable to external circumstances (which can be good and bad in turn) where Americans would likely try to bend circumstances to our will (which also has pros and cons). Americans try to control things because where we live makes us more likely to believe that we're actually able to (which is sometimes a dangerous belief).

Something that works hand in hand with this is that the American dream is all about the pursuit of individual goals. There is a sense that it's our birthright to acquire and achieve. India is not wired so individually - social status is not as malleable, and families are much more involved in things that Americans would consider very personal, individual decisions (like who to marry). People in India also live in closer proximity to one another in general than Americans do (at least in Mumbai, which is a huge city crammed full of people). It's something I've felt a lot recently -- the American isolation. Our connections are fewer and thinner than the ones I've seen in India, and we are less likely to get involved in other people's problems or personal lives, even those of our close friends and family. I have more freedom to be myself and do what I want here in the US, but that means I also end up spending more time by myself. In India, my existence and needs just feel like less of an inconvenience to other people because everyone I've met there is used to having a lot of other people around and being active participants in each other's lives. There's less personal space, but there also seems to be less loneliness (though for an expat, I have a feeling that at times I'll feel lonely even in a crowd).

I suppose that's all for now...perhaps to be continued another time. Maybe when I'm actually back in India. :)

Relationships are hard

2011-03-06T19:37:00.002-06:00

Relationships are hard. It's something that I've heard over and over, and I've never doubted that it's true, but I feel like I've been really deeply learning the truth of it through my experiences over the last year or two. And lately I've also been thinking about what's important to me in my relationships and what has made the good ones so strong and the bad ones so disappointing.

I think all people want to be understood and affirmed, but feeling the connection of understanding and shared experience is maybe the most important way that I feel close to other people. That moment when somebody's talking about their own experience and they describe perfectly what I've been feeling is priceless. And then there are those rare people who can listen to me and, even if they haven't experienced what I'm going through, they still show such empathy for me. I feel very lucky to have some really great people in my life, and I feel like they teach me how to be a better person in relationship to others as well.

And then there's the buzzkill: the relationships where understanding is elusive and empathy is seemingly out of the question, where you hold out hope but it's continually challenged. I've been struggling with this type of relationship over the past couple of weeks, feeling misunderstood and disregarded by someone I care about. Because I can see more clearly what I appreciate about my healthy relationships, the void in this one is all the more gaping. My instinct is to have a tough conversation to try to reach some point of understanding each other, but I am also really frustrated by feeling that if I don't take the initiative to deal with it, it will just never be dealt with. I know ultimately I'll have the conversation, but...it's hard. It's hard to be humble enough to admit I've been hurt and to choke down the disappointment in order to seek reconciliation.

To come full circle, though, I'm realizing that no relationship just stays good, and the best I can do is to know myself well enough to be aware of how I'm feeling about it so that I can take action to reconnect with the other person. I used to see my feelings as a liability, but now I'm finding them incredibly informative and constructive. They're helping me bring more things to the surface that would otherwise bubble underneath and continue wreaking havoc.

Blog love

2011-02-14T18:17:00.003-06:00

Sometimes I am self conscious about my blog. I wonder if, when my entries are read consecutively, they're just totally disjointed. I actually try to make them individual entries, so that I can maybe avoid writing the same thing I did at some point before; but I wonder if that makes me sound totally unstable and all over the place. There has been a lot going on in my life in the last year-plus now, a ton of change in work and relationships, a lot of traveling and absorbing, and a lot of thinking and panicking and celebrating through it all. And so it happens that while my last entry was focused on my feelings of loneliness, this one is joyful.

Maybe I've not said this before, ever, but...I'm in love. I'm characteristically private in my relationships and spare in my expressions of affection, but it sort of bothers me at times that I never let people get much of a glimpse into my happiness because I'm too busy keeping my cool and looking calm and collected. Sometimes I worry that people mistake me for a robot. But I am super smitten and so very grateful for this very lovely guy. I didn't know how good it could be (whatever "it" is), and I strongly suspect it's only getting better from here. With him, and with life in general, as tough as it all can be sometimes.

Alone

2011-02-08T05:42:00.004-06:00

I'm feeling pretty aimless and down lately, since returning from Mumbai. And I kind of don't want to blog about it because it feels kind of pathetic and whiny, too. But in general, I feel like I'm not really connected into a community, and I don't really know how to be. I don't know if it's just normal for someone who lives alone, but I spend a LOT of time by myself, and it makes me feel lonely and unmotivated. I don't just think think I could disappear and it would take a long time for people here to notice - I know it's the case, because most people I know, I see maybe once every couple of months. And maybe lately I've been lazy about putting in the effort to reach out and find time to see people, but it's partly because I know that if I don't, it's unlikely that they will. Maybe all of us are just bad at getting out or making a point to see people; but at times I also realize that most people I know have family or close friends who they are making a point to spend time with, and so their limited time and energy are devoted to them. I don't have family or a significant other nearby, and I'm finding it challenging not having that sort of go-to companionship that I had for a few years while I was married but that I've been lacking for the past year or more.

Now, I'd like to think of myself as a strong and independent woman and not a pathetic whiner, but this line of thinking really doesn't help my self esteem. I'd like to feel self sufficient and be content spending time with myself; and I'd like to feel like I can be a social go-getter who can go out into the world and make friends easily. But neither of those descriptions fit me right now. I know I could make more effort to do more fulfilling individual activities (reading, drawing, cooking, etc.), which would make my time alone a lot less lonely; and I know I could get out more (I am beginning a textile screen printing class next week, so that's good). I need to do these things. But at times, I want to hang out with someone else who knows me -- oh, man, the Cheers theme song just popped into my head ("sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name...") I'm guessing other people know this feeling, too -- sometimes I don't want to just go out and be with strangers just to get out of the house, I want some familiarity, to be in relation to someone else as more than a bystander or passerby. I tend to relish my alone time a lot more if it doesn't feel like a sentence but is in balance with relationships.

I guess that's all for now...sigh.

One month in...

2011-02-05T07:44:00.003-06:00

This year is already awesome, and I'm hopeful that it will only continue to get better.

The Packers are in the Super Bowl tomorrow. I'm really nervous, but also extremely excited. The last time they went was 1998. And it's vindication of my claims all season that they are better than their record indicated (they never lost by more than 4, and the sum of their loss margins across 6 games was smaller than the margin in one of the Bears' epic flops!) The only down side is that I wish I had Packers fans to watch with...being in Chicago makes this tough, so I'll most likely end up in a bar.

I went to an Indian wedding and spent most of January in Mumbai. It was fantastic, both the wedding and the rest of the time, which I spent working and socializing. I missed my friends in the US, but everyone in India has been so warm to me that I started feeling comfortable there quickly. And honestly, I don't see my American friends nearly enough when I am here...something about being adults and working and having babies and weddings -- we are all busy, so I have a pretty quiet solo existence. Being in India always makes me think about my roots, where I come from and how I've become who I am...because it's such a different place and requires a pretty different set of skills to operate in. I'll probably write more about that when I'm in a little more reflective and less excited mood.

After such an exciting January, I'm eager for the rest of the year because I'll get to see my friend Kris get married (and all of the fun that precedes the event) and plan for my next big international adventure -- I'll be in Mumbai May through September, and I'm basically freaking out with happiness and anxiousness about it. I'll probably talk more about it in the weeks and months to come, but for right now I'm just kind of overwhelmed...in a good way. :)

I have no idea what happens in October and beyond...but I'm okay with that. One thing at a time...

2010 Retrospective

2011-01-01T12:57:00.004-06:00

I'm welcoming 2011 with wide open arms today. The last year has been what I euphemistically call, "a learning one," and I'm hopeful that this one will be better. Before launching full-force into this new year, some thoughts on the one I've just finished...

I'm sitting here wondering where even to start. I guess if there is a theme, it's one of learning more about who I am and what I'm capable of, and of evolving relationships.

The biggest happening of the year was that I made the decision to get divorced, and it took most of the year for that decision to be finalized legally. There have been so many awful things about the experience -- deeply hurting someone I care about and watching him go from confidante to stranger almost immediately; the guilt, doubt, and fear that accompany such a big decision about a relationship; losing people who were previously family; letting go of a lot of money; bouts of depression, loneliness, and anxiety; feelings of failure; and quite a bit more gray hair.

But in the end, and this really amazes me, I feel happier. I have such gratitude for family and friends and all of the grace and support I've received from them where I expected more criticism and judgment. I've also been to two different therapists and have a great appreciation for the usefulness of their gifts and skills -- being deeply heard by someone has helped me to better hear myself as well as listen better to other people. I've learned more about humility, flexibility, both self-sufficiency and interconnectedness, and self-love. Also, I've learned more to discern between the things I can live with and the things I really want to live for.

A little more tangibly, highlights of the year include...

Traveling all over the world (all the way around it, twice!) and seeing more than I would ever have dreamed I might see. Istanbul, the meeting point of two continents and focal point of so much culture and history. Shanghai, my first foray into the behemoth that is China, fascinating and intimidating and yes, odd. Mumbai, which is becoming an unlikely second home for me, always mind-bending and expanding, lovely and chaotic. Oxford, which is beautiful even in its ordinariness -- simple doors and houses are postcard-worthy. Brussels and Bruges, which kept me while I was sick and far from home, full of fantastic edibles and beautiful streets. Kuala Lumpur, a place I might never have thought to visit -- hot enough to draw comments from Indians, but with so many amazing places to see, gardens and mosques and an Islamic art museum. Bali, island of my dreams, where I spent one of the most idyllic weeks of my life, soaking in beaches, volcanoes, temples, and rice terraces.

During a lot of the travel, my manager, Emily, was with me, which was a ton of fun. Especially when she got her picture taken with a lot of random Chinese people because she stood out with her blondness...and the time we were abandoned in a monkey-filled jungle and rescued by a kind Malaysian tour driver. We ended up with a lot of great photos and some funny stories.

Evolving in my relationship with my mom, which has often been difficult -- but nonetheless, progress has been made.

Making the effort to see more of my friends, and learning to let loose and have a good time. This resulted in my first (and second) hangover ever and relatedly, singing loudly to ridiculous music in public. Cyndee and Mandy took me out for shots and a ridiculous jukebox singalong after I told them I was getting divorced. Erin and I toured a windmill, drove across a covered bridge, were stalked by a giant ice cream cone at Culver's, went down an epic slide, and at at a crap-themed restaurant called Poopy's. I was surrounded by friends for dinner at Indie Cafe the night I moved into my own place, and they turned it into a "Mulligan" party, complete with shower gifts and a cake.

Reconnecting to my roots and feeling more at peace with where I am from and how those people and places have shaped me. I spent more time with my family, more time in my hometown, more time with a high school friend I'd lost touch with. I feel more comfortable in my own skin, and I think that makes me more comfortable with everyone else and the ways that we're both alike and different from each other.

In the end (or the beginning, as it seems more appropriate to call it now), I am thankful. And I'm not making any resolutions for the year ahead -- though maybe that's a resolution in itself, to be better at taking things as they come and enjoying the journey through whatever comes next.

Ugh

2010-12-19T07:50:00.002-06:00

It's been a while since I turned to my blog as a way to vent. But I'm feeling really frustrated now, and it's first thing Sunday morning, so this is about the only place to go with it at the moment. I have had an often difficult relationship with my mother, and this year we've actually grown closer than before -- a step in the right direction. But the truth remains that out of the list of possible things to talk to her about in this very interesting world, a very small percentage are viable. I'm not going to go into detail here, but yesterday I once again attempted the improbable and tried to bring up something I thought was important out of concern and frustration. The result, as usual, was a reply (not right away, always later, via email, so I get is as soon as I wake up) that was brief but somehow loaded with both denial and accusation. And the crappy part is, I feel like the adult thing to do would be to call and talk about it. But I'm pretty sure I know how that will go already (do I really want another email tomorrow morning?) Ugh.

The Life-ness Monster

2010-12-16T18:57:00.002-06:00

Not infrequently, I feel like I'm struggling to keep up with life. It feels hard to find time for work, chores, play, and relationships...and I end up sitting on my couch on a Thursday night, acutely aware of the heaps of mess around my apartment -- dishes, laundry, sweeping, etc. -- that I'm not dealing with. Sometimes it feels like a lot of effort just to keep things going, let alone have time for everything else that I really want to do. But there are also moments when, in the midst of feeling stretched by what it takes to live, I realize that I am, in fact, living. I'm doing what needs to be done, I'm doing what it takes to gain and maintain ongoing happiness. I'm realizing that, for the first time in a long time, and probably more deeply than ever before, I'm actually enjoying the everyday life-ness of life. It's not that I never get bored or discouraged; I have a lot of ups and downs, which are evident in this blog. But in general, and right now, I feel happy with who and where I am and where I'm going.

Living Unimportantly

2010-12-05T08:19:00.005-06:00

I've been in the mood to blog lately but haven't felt very articulate or organized. I guess that's becoming a pattern, that I have to write when I'm not at my most clear-headed instead of biding my time, or else I will never get around to it.

One thing that has been on my mind is the way I've been so bad at relationships of all kinds. Maybe I'm being overly critical of myself, but I can definitely see that my pattern of trying to be self sufficient has led me to isolate myself unintentionally. I think I learned this honestly, and there were reasons during my childhood and adolescence that helped push me in that direction. It's a little difficult for me to tease apart introversion and self-directedness from true isolation, but I sense a lack of depth in my relationships at times. I can see a family pattern of isolation, of believing we should all take care of ourselves and not wanting anyone to count on us being there or offering something, for fear that it will take some of our freedom. I think this fear of entanglement and commitment has driven me to be anti-social at times. And it's more clear now, at this point in my life when my connections are at a particularly thin point, that I haven't always nurtured the ties I have with other people the way that I should have. It seems a little late to be realizing this...but I'm glad I am, even if I'm a slow learner at this part of life.

Maybe it sounds like a sad realization, but it's not entirely so. As my brain learns to see things in new ways and my heart is also given more room to do some of the "seeing", there are things I've gained. Like less existential panic...I feel now that even though I have not exactly done or accomplished what I previously thought I could or should, it seems to matter less if I realize that life isn't just some sort of an individualized goal-seeking mission, but also a shared experience. That is, if I am able to build good relationships, that already seems much more fulfilling and meaningful than whatever grand purpose I think I should have. I still don't totally have my head in that mode, it still confuses me a bit that life is really in the living and not the observing and planning and achieving, but it's already given me some relief not to feel so much of the weight of trying to be or do something important. Apropos of this realization, I read this the other day:

"Yours is to live it, not to reveal it."

These words are from a final conversation that poet Mark Nepo had with Helen Luke, his mentor for a couple of years, until she passed away. These were Helen's words of advice for Mark, and here's what he had to say about them:

They have troubled me, for I have spent my life becoming a writer, thinking that my job has been just that -- to reveal what is essential and hidden. In the time since Helen died, I've come to understand her last instruction as an invitation to shed any grand purpose, no matter how devoted we may be to what we are doing. She wasn't telling me to stop writing, but to stop striving to be important. She was inviting me to stop recording the poetry of life and to enter the poetry of life. This lesson applies to us all. If we devote ourselves to the life at hand, the rest will follow. For life, it seems, reveals itself through those willing to live. Anything else, no matter how beautiful, is just advertising.

I'm hoping that in the months and years to come, I can really learn to live this way. I feel sometimes that some distorting lens has been taken away from my eyes...or maybe a new corrective lens has been added. Maybe it's because I just had an eye appointment for the first time in years, but I think my literal farsightedness is a pretty apt metaphor for the way I have so often missed all the great things that are close by and immediate in life.

Worst Case Scenario

2010-11-15T17:19:00.005-06:00

I've been trying to face down this tendency I have (and I think it's either genetic or something I've learned from a very young age) to always see the cost or potential for loss in any situation, rather than focusing on the opportunity. Right now, I want to fight it with some inspiration. There's a really nice compilation at http://www.quotegarden.com/risk.html, but I'll pull a few of my favorites at the moment:

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself. - Soren Kierkegaard

A ship in harbor is safe - but that is not what ships are for. - John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves. - Andre Gide

Split

2010-11-14T21:40:00.003-06:00

Try as we will, we cannot be both participant and observer at the same time without splitting ourselves.

- Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

I just read this quote from today's passage in Nepo's book (which I first encountered during a session with my former therapist in which she had me read an excerpt that reminded her of me). And it rings true, because I spend so much time thinking and analyzing that I can often find myself outside of the action rather than in the moment. I know that's not a totally new idea from me, because it's a theme I've been finding in recent months. But the way Nepo frames it as splitting ourselves, as not being totally invested in what we're doing if we're trying to look at it from the outside, objectively, resonates. Maybe it's that this idea of living in the moment is taking so long to sink in for me, and when I get stuck in my head it does, in fact, feel like I'm not really living.

Another thing that's come to my attention in the last day or so is that I have a hard time maintaining a consistent level of happiness (even when I haven't had a rough year), and the phrase "chronic low-grade depression" has been repeated a couple of times in conversation about this. So I Googled this exact phrase to find out if it is actually a recognized phenomenon and if so, whether I might be experiencing it. It turns out that there is a form of clinical depression called dysthymia, which basically consists of mild symptoms of depression sustained over a long period (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/dysthymia/DS01111). I don't know if I would actually qualify for a diagnosis, but I can relate to at least some of what is said. One thing that was mentioned in one description I read was that people with this kind of condition often function quite normally most of the time (so it may not be evident that they are depressed because it's quite possible to recall times when they seemed happy). And another thing that stuck out was that people with the condition often respond well to knowing they have an impact and mean something in the lives of the people they know. Both of these apply to me -- more than one person close to me has said, in the face of me expressing a sense of ongoing unhappiness or dissatisfaction, that they can remember me being happy at very specific times. And now, for instance, I am not unhappy. It's just the balance of happy time vs. unhappy time that seems to be off at times, and I often pass happy times with some level of detachment from them rather than really feeling the joy that they bring and experiencing an emotional connection with someone else.

Perhaps more troubling than some of my other recent posts, and with no real conclusion or happy ending, but it's what is on my mind. And I feel good about having some realization of my own problems, because it's only through self awareness that I'm able to improve. I guess that's all for tonight...

(Untitled)

2010-11-12T20:42:00.004-06:00

Relationships aren't goals.

It's not that relationships have nothing to do with goals -- we can have goals within our relationships, but relationships at their core are not aimed toward achievement. I think this contributes to the difficulty I have understanding why on earth they happen and how they hold together over time. Even relationships with long term promise and commitment can really only exist in the present, when the people in the relationship are, well, relating. And because I'm so goal oriented and really get a buzz from learning new things, I have a difficult time sustaining attention and engagement with now. I don't notice the joy in the increasingly familiar, the deeper view of an enduring and repeating pattern, because I am anticipating the broadening of my experience.

I'd like to appreciate the unspectacular more that I do now, partly because I want to be in a relationship that lasts through the unspectacular moments (which, to me, are often worse than conflict), partly because I think there's wisdom in improving our eyes to better see things in our immediate vicinity and experience each moment with awareness. I want contentment without settling, and I think the path toward that isn't so much onward and upward as it is inward.

Holding on

2010-11-11T22:14:00.002-06:00

I'm in a state of mind that I wish I could hold onto -- calm, unworried, optimistic, happy. The kind of mood that comes after a great conversation over dinner and a nice walk home in the unseasonably warm weather on shiny wet sidewalks that are reflecting lights from stores, houses, and streetlights.

But I know that trying to hold onto this mood is futile. This moment is now, and this is when I get to enjoy it. It's when we stop to think, "I just want to find a way to keep this, to hold onto it", that it vanishes. We can't hoard life. Very frustrating for those of us who want some control and assurance.

This line of thought made me think of the verse (and it turns out that it's actually many verses, repeated throughout the gospels), "Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it" (Luke 17:33). This is said with reference to the story of Lot's wife, who looked back on the life she was leaving behind and as a result was doomed. Perhaps a bit of a creepy story, but the idea that it's wrong for us to live looking back as what we've had up to now makes for an important lesson. I spend so much time planning and analyzing that I forget to enjoy the moment.

So tonight, I'm going to enjoy this, knowing that the moment won't last long but it's all I have right now, and that's a lot to be grateful for.

Hard to Relate

2010-11-06T08:03:00.004-05:00

I've been trying to gather into coherent thoughts some of the truths I've been experiencing and trying to learn lately. All the connections between ideas and thoughts are so weblike that I have difficulty getting started on a blog, because there is not really a starting point or a finishing point. Nonetheless, here goes...

Lately I can feel a difference in the way I think about and interact with people and the world around me, and I think it's a sort of maturing process. I found this nice quote that pretty nicely fits how I think it's been going for me:

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.

- Alden Nowlan

At least for me, perfectionism and the accompanying attempts to feel in control of circumstances have been a hindrance to being a fully functional adult. It's been very difficult for me to start letting go of the parameters I'd set for myself and the world. It's extraordinarily hard for me to acknowledge that life is a process, and we can't attain our goals without some new goal or need popping up to replace them. It's a struggle for me to enjoy a journey to God-knows-where. Because I'm a bit of a control freak, and I am just starting to forgive myself for my imperfection and my imperfectibility. A few days ago, when I was having an especially hard time with this, a former teacher of mine posted this really helpful quote as his facebook status:

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.

- Lao Tzu

Another helpful thing that I discovered recently (but admittedly haven't explored much yet) is the Japanese worldview and aesthetic of wabi-sabi. According to Wikipedia, "[Wabi Sabi] is sometimes described as one of beauty that is 'imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.'" This really stuck with me:

[Wabi-sabi] nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, nothing is perfect.

- Richard R. Powell

I really love the idea of beauty in the imperfect, but it's hard for me to get my brain into that track. At this point, there seem to be a couple of options to approach life. In the face of inevitable imperfections, we can learn to accept them and settle for what we can actually attain (and maybe even appreciate them a la wabi-sabi); or we can fight them and work toward change and progress. I think a balance of both is necessary. To live right now and be happy, we need to be at peace with the world and with who we are and enjoy with gratitude all the great experiences and things that we are able to. But to sort through it all and come out with some sense of meaningful narrative, we have to be mindful of what we can do to impact reality and take action to change things that we want to change, keeping in mind that it's a lifelong process and we're not guaranteed anything -- we're never going to finally sort it all out, at least in this life. I can know in my mind that peace doesn't come so much from circumstances as from outlook, but it's a lot of work to maintain a can-do outlook when I'm feeling such uncertainty. I'm trying to find happiness in the process.

I think relationships are the key to learning happiness in the process. I tend to be goal-oriented rather than people-oriented, which means I seek a lot of my fulfillment through personal achievement rather than interpersonal relationship-building. This is heavily tied to the fact that my sense of self has really rested on what I can do and how competent I am, rather than who I am in relationship to other people. Do I need to mention that this has been a major problem for me? I've set myself up to feel like I'm never quite as good as I'd like to be, and I end up being critical of myself and others rather than seeking mutual support and understanding. It's very self-isolating. And it's sort of a hard thing for me to grasp, but this seems to capture the truth of the matter well:

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.

- Sam Keen

I think the most appealing religions and philosophies acknowledge imperfection, and however they explain its source, they tend to offer solutions that connect us to community. Healthy functioning churches are more about sharing experiences and support than about bringing people in line with a rigidly delineated path of righteousness. Even very individualized practices like yoga and meditation seek to help us realize our true selves and put us back in connection with a shared reality. We really can't go it alone (if we try, we're deceiving ourselves), and since independence is my natural tendency, I know that I have a lot of learning ahead of me when it comes to community and relationships.

Desperately Wanting

2010-10-20T10:01:00.004-05:00

"We're flawed because we want so much more. We're ruined because we get these things and wish for what we had." - Don Draper, Mad Men

Desire and its link to happiness have been on my mind a lot lately. Everywhere I look, including in the mirror, there are people who want more, who aren't where they'd prefer to be in life. None of us have everything we want, and we make tough trade offs between career, money, time, relationships, and other priorities.

The lesson I'm learning lately is that there is no "happily ever after", at least not one that's predicated on "she got everything she ever desired" or "she finally found the one piece that was missing". Perhaps by human nature, maybe partly on account of cultural forces, we all want more than we have now. And if we get what we want now, then we'll want more than that, too. To some degree, it's how we progress -- discomfort and discontent are motivators to change -- but it's also easy to lose sight of what we do have right now in our itch for more.

To some degree, seeing all of the wanting in myself and others is really frustrating because we can't seem to break the pattern. It could be that it's especially American to have a sense of entitlement, wherein if we want something and it brings us even momentary happiness, then we feel it's our right to pursue it. At its worst it becomes an endless materialistic pursuit, which is both selfish and ultimately unfulfilling -- a real waste of resources. To be fair, having our basic needs (physical and emotional) met is important, and I think that includes indulging at times (but still within reason, not so much that we self destruct). I spent a lot of time and energy for several years ignoring my emotional needs while I tried to be a good person and to require little. So now I find myself trying to find this happy balance somewhere between constant consumption and asceticism.

Most major organized worldviews (and in particular I'm thinking of Christianity, Buddhism, and the teachings of the yoga center I attend) instruct us that happiness is in the present, that the present is all that we have, is all that is real. Our minds naturally wander to things that have already happened or things that we anticipate in the future, but what is real is actually now:

"Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life." - Thich Nhat Hanh (TNH)

I believe that there is a balance we need in life, between contentment on one hand and pursuit of something better on the other. Where we can go wrong is if we are misguided in what we pursue, if it's not really going to make things any better or bring us or others any benefit. I read somewhere recently about a research project that found that in the scheme of things, people get more happiness from things they have when they've been considering them for a while, when it's something that they anticipated rather than something they got on an impulse. This may seem to contradict the idea of living in the present, but I think it's actually in keeping with it. If we live too much by impulse or are overly driven by impatience, we can lose track of our real, lasting interests, the things that come to the surface when we are truly aware of ourselves in the present moment.

This is maybe a bit of a disconnected post, but I'm sort of mid-thought process, and I'm starting to be okay with that as a perpetual state of being. So I'll end with one final quote:

"Life is short. Time is fleeting. Realize the Self. Purity of the heart is the gateway to God. Aspire. Renounce. Meditate. Be good; do good. Be kind; be compassionate. Inquire, know Thyself." - Swami Sivananda

Moving target

2010-09-06T18:22:00.002-05:00

I have such a hard time remembering some things -- scratch "things", actually it's "feelings". I've had a sense for a while now that I don't have a great emotional memory, which may be part of why I don't have a strong attachment to the past. Is this a problem? I'm not sure. And I'm not sure whether this is really a unique problem, or if all humans characteristically have feelings that are fleeting and not easily recollected.

I can be less abstract here -- I don't remember what it felt like when I was happy in my marriage. And now that it's over, I can think back over the past several years and recall the fact that there were happy times and even remember the events in some amount of detail...but what it was like to be there and feel that way is gone.

I've not really journaled much throughout my life, but earlier this year when things were actively unraveling, I wrote about how I felt a few times, and I've been journaling a little bit lately as well. When I go back and read about my feelings, I can recall them better, which is encouraging to me -- it means I can still relate to myself from several months ago. And it makes me feel less callous, makes me realize that behind my analytical exterior and tendency to look forward and not back, I am also feeling my way through life as it's happening right now. But that also unsettles me a bit, realizing how feelings can be there in one moment and change in the next. It can make me feel unreliable in my judgments, even though I think I have fairly good judgment.

I guess what it comes down to is that it's just so hard to know something with certainty, because what we know is so tied to what we feel and experience and live. Committing to one version of reality, to one life path, to one person, without the option to change and adapt based on new information, is something I don't understand. How do people stay married for decades, truly til death parts them? And not just how, but why? What compels them aside from obligation? How do we keep growing together with another person in a way that is mutually enriching? Somehow I think it's both simpler and more difficult than it seems. Simpler, in that there are probably some basic principles to follow that help; and more difficult, because learning and applying basic principles is not as basic as the principles themselves, and applying them consistently enough to sustain a relationship over time is a tall order.

The funny thing about life, though, is that it's a learn-as-you-go venture. So while I'm thinking through these questions, I know that ultimately the answers are in living them out. This is not a style I'm naturally at ease with -- I like to look before I leap -- but I'm trying to learn to relax and have some appreciation for this sort of free fall.

Presence

2010-08-24T19:40:00.002-05:00

It's hard to have perspective on my own life when I'm in the middle of it. Like everyone, I'm a complex creature with a lot of emotions and tendencies that pull on me and interact with each other. And it's a real challenge to try to get to the eye of that storm, to the calm center where all of those forces are peripheral and there is a sense of the true direction in which I'm headed. I have friends who, like me, are going through particular challenges in their lives now, and it's often easier for me to give them calm and reasonable advice than it is for me to take the same advice to heart myself. This works the other way around, too. I have a friend who has listened to some of my recent frustrations and anxieties and responded that I should take time to remember what I've accomplished up to now, all that I've been doing that I'm not giving myself credit for. And that I should also bear in mind that things won't be this way forever, that it's a trying time right now but I'm continually moving in the right direction -- it just takes time to realize all of the changes. But this same friend who gave me such encouragement about my situation and decisions is having a hard time seeing past the immediate troubles in their life as well and seeing that there are brighter times ahead, in spite of the fact that this is what they have told me. Sometimes what lies between us and the payoff seems so daunting, and it's difficult to have the determination to persevere with a hopeful and optimistic spirit intact. But I think that's what we have each other for, to remind each other of the good in our lives and of the truth that the good is ultimately what will prevail.

On a related note, I read something encouraging yesterday, written by Thich Nhat Hanh in his book, The Energy of Prayer. In the third chapter, he discusses each line of the Lord's Prayer, and I particularly loved this section on being happy in the present, in spite of anxieties, from his comments on the line, "Give us today our daily bread":

In our daily life we have many anxieties. We have our cravings and we tend to want to store things up. We do not know that the present moment is important. Life can only be there in the present moment. If our only concern is to invest in tomorrow, then it would be easy to completely forget about he wonders of life in the present moment. We have to return to the present moment, to live it deeply and properly. We have to live in such a way that the kingdom of God is present here and now. This is a prayer that needs to be practiced twenty-four hours every day, because we want to live the present moment deeply in every second. The words of the prayer are not only to be read before we go to sleep; they have to be recited all day long.

We already have sufficient conditions to be happy today. We have to pray in such a way that we can be in touch with the conditions of happiness that are in us and around us. They're all there, available. We shouldn't be greedy. We shouldn't demand that life go on for hundreds and hundreds of years. How can life continue for hundreds of years if right in this present moment we are not able to be alive?

Looking Up

2010-08-22T19:52:00.003-05:00

It's pretty incredible what a positive outlook can do. That sounds very sappy and self-helpy, but it's another one of the often-repeated bits of wisdom that has taken a long time to really start taking root in my brain, probably in large part because I tend to be dismissive of things that come across as overly sugar-coated. I'm a natural skeptic, and I gravitate toward the flaw in the logic that will dispel any illusions that things are picture perfect. I crave the realistic, the practical, and the honest -- if it's gritty or unpleasant, that's fine, so long as it's true.

But what I'm seeing now is that I can influence what is real and true through choosing my attitude. If I look for the flaw, I am going to find it. I almost can't help but notice the problems with just about everything at this point, because I am almost pathologically (and truth be told, also professionally) analytical, but I've started giving less weight to the part of everything that sucks. I've adjusted my expectations to account for suckage, and now it doesn't bother me as much when there's some drawback; I'm better at putting it into perspective, and I'm a lot happier for it.

Seeing

2010-08-19T19:00:00.008-05:00

For the past few weeks I've been adjusting back to life in Chicago after seeing so many new places in the world, and it's been more challenging and less of a relief than I expected. I've found that it's difficult for me to be back among my fellow Americans because they haven't been removed from this place and haven't spent time looking at the world through so many different lenses, so I'm overwhelmed by all of the Americanness and the attitudes and behaviors that come with our nationality. I know that may sound snobby, but that's not my intention. This is not me trying to be high-minded and cosmopolitan; this is me feeling strangely because I don't feel totally at home now that I'm home again.

The reason for this feeling, I think, is that my way of thinking and seeing things has changed, thanks to all of the wonderful places I've visited and people I've met. And it's lonely not to have other people around who know what this is like. I can recount how much I loved Istanbul or Bali and people will listen interestedly, but it's still not real to them, they're just abstract, far-off places that sound exotic. I realized my loneliness existed when I was telling a colleague and her husband that I'm planning a trip back to India in January for a wedding. They visited India a few months back, also for a wedding, and then stayed for a while to visit various places around the country. So we were able to share some of our impressions during our respective time there, and I was so happy to talk with them about it and know they understand at least in part the experiences I've had.

I keep worrying that I'm going to sound uppity when I talk about how important traveling is to me and how much it has transformed me. But it's true, and it's actually been a really humbling experience to have the structures of my thinking challenged. I'm noticing things that would be difficult or impossible to pick up on without being immersed in environments where they are absent.

One of the things I've noticed is the way that so many Americans don't have, and in some cases also don't see a need to have, any real sense of the way life is elsewhere. We have a large country, and we have a lot of resources, and it seems that we feel entitled to the conveniences we're afforded. There also seems to be a sense that people from other countries are distant and different, which maybe comes partly from our geography (being separated from most other continents by huge expanses of ocean). I've been uncomfortable with the contrasts of extreme wealth and poverty in our world for a while, but now I really struggle when I hear conversations about the relative cleanliness of Chicago train lines (my beloved red line is consistently criticized, but it's the busiest line in the city and runs through neighborhoods with a wide range of income levels), the bother of being talked to by a homeless person, and where the best and safest places are to buy a condo in the city.

I guess it's that even these trivial examples give me a sense that what a lot of Americans really want is a metaphorical white picket fence with an enclosed place of safety where the dangers to our physical safety and to our dearly held world views are kept at a distance. And I see evidence of this in the news lately. For instance, some people are freaking out because a Muslim group wants to put a community center near the World Trade Center site in New York. There is a false equation of Islam with terrorism, and people are fearful of inviting terrorism back to that site. But what I see is that fear is being exploited for political gain at the expense of true understanding and peace. It's frustrating to me, because I just want everyone to get to know a few Muslim Americans and realize that different doesn't mean dangerous, and moreover, that they're not that different to begin with.

In any form of fundamentalism, whether religious or political, there are strict boundaries laid around the world that are based on limited information. I don't really fault people for missing information; we all do because it's impossible to know everything. But I am frustrated by willful ignorance that refuses to acknowledge truth if it is too challenging or inconvenient. I wish we could all have the humility to let our own assumptions be broken, but I know that's a difficult thing to do. I keep thinking of the Bible verse (which I had to look up, as I have to admit I'm no great memorizer of scriptures), "For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline." When we act in fear, we go into defensive mode against things that we feel threaten our accepted truths. Violence, oppression, and suppression result from this kind of defensiveness, which does nothing to promote the truth in love. If we really do experience the truth of God's love, I think it makes us realize that there's nothing we need to defend ourselves against, because we have faith that love is ultimately what wins out.

I've been going on about politics and religion and fear pretty abstractly, but in the end what I'm struggling to articulate is the way our perspectives change the more we allow ourselves to experience and see new things. And I think this applies both at a personal level, when people on the other side of the world become acquaintances and dear friends instead of distant strangers, and at a societal level, when we stop thinking of our own system of living as correct and see ourselves as citizens of a shared world.

Big Should-er

2010-08-14T18:51:00.005-05:00

A wonderful thing about weekends is that I get to gorge myself on all of the deliciously open time that I have for a couple of days. I spend a lot of time alone, and I spend a decent proportion of my alone time walking -- to the coffee shop, to the grocery store, to the train, or just around the neighborhood, to nowhere in particular. And I find that the solitary walking time is some of my favorite time because I love being out in this great part of the city and the activity and life around me make my mind active and invigorated as well. I'm a natural introvert, so I find that if I've been spending most of my time working or socializing with other people, my nerves start to get frayed, resulting in stress and crankiness. When I get a chance to go for a morning walk after a really socially demanding few days or weeks, my brain just starts to chug through all of the stored-up experiences and thoughts that haven't had a chance to be explored or digested. It's easy for me to lose sight of the broader picture of my life and my emotional path when I'm trying to stay "on" continuously, and it's being alone that so often gives me the ability to piece together the context and themes of my experience.

One of the major themes I've been noticing lately is the dominance of the word "should" in my psyche. I've spent a lot of hours, days, and years agonizing over what I should do with my life. What's the right path so that I make a difference in the world? How can I live morally and do the least harm possible? What more could I be giving to help other people? These are good questions to ask myself, but the extent to which I've made them the central questions to guide my existence and the way in which I've responded to them have constituted a sort of fundamentalism. In some ways I traded one system of "should" -- a conservative religious upbringing in a tiny, traditional Midwestern town -- for another -- a progressive social consciousness in a diverse city. Whatever the ideological system I'm currently espousing, that's what I have let rule me, and I have strived to suppress my own desires in the interest of these beliefs. The thinking has been, what makes me feel entitled to indulge in any way if it is not right and good? And again, it's a good question in some sense -- it's good to be mindful of the impact of my actions. But there's a part that I have always left out of my consideration -- that what makes me happy matters, too. I want other people to be happy and have a strong sense that everyone is entitled to pursue what fulfills them, but somehow in my mind "everyone" has never included me. It was not until my therapist asked me (and this in my first session with her), "Why do you feel guilty for wanting to be happy?" that it occurred to me that in fact, I do feel guilty for wanting anything for myself. Mind you, this guilt hasn't led to me carrying out a flawless and morally pure existence -- it's just made me feel like a bad person for merely being human and having perfectly normal human failings.

In addition to my pervasive sense of guilt, or maybe as a result of it, I also find myself compelled to express myself as directly and honestly as possible and appreciative of people who are forthright. This may not seem like a direct cause-and-effect, but I think these two characteristics are related. A lot of my craving for honesty and directness is derived from a strong desire for outside information as validation of my thoughts and feelings. I am naturally oriented to be a sort of "info sponge", partly because of my love of learning (a positive motive) and partly because of my insecurity (not such a great motive). I don't want to do anything wrong, so I pay attention to people's thoughts and behaviors and use them to gauge what I should do. It seems odd for someone as defiant of norms as I often am to be so concerned with what others think. But I know I don't have all the answers to living figured out (which for some reason I keep mistaking for a personal flaw rather than part of the human condition), so I try to fill in the gaps of my knowledge by having conversations with other people. This is an effective way to learn, to listen to the wisdom (or folly) of others, but I also need to start listening more to myself. Listening inward is a lot more difficult for me than listening outward, but a few months of therapy got me started trying to pick up my own frequency. And I'm learning now that there are a lot more words than "should" in the language of life. Some of my favorites so far are "enjoy", "patience", and "love".

Inner Self Defense

2010-08-12T21:37:00.006-05:00

I'm experiencing a moment of truly happy inner peace. I'm currently rereading the book Eat, Pray, Love, in eager anticipation of the release of the movie version of this fantastic memoir. I first read the book two and a half years ago. I loved the book the first time through, and now I am relishing it even more because of the upcoming movie and also because it resonates with me during this season of my life. The author, Liz, made the difficult decision to divorce her husband when she was around 30 and realized that the life she had been helping to build with him was not what she wanted and was making her miserable. After the divorce was final, she decided to spend a year traveling, first in Italy, then in India, then in Indonesia (Bali), and the book is a recounting of her personal journey (physical, emotional, and spiritual) through those places.

The thing that has struck me as I've read tonight (and I've read almost the entire India section), is the way that she struggled to be patient with herself. I relate a lot to her feelings of inadequacy and failure, as well as to her fear that she will never overcome some of her problems, that her knowledge will always be too limited and her will too difficult to tame. And what's been going through my head is something that she realized along the way that I've also come to realize recently -- that we have to love ourselves enough to be patient with our own learning and growing process. At times, we may have to defend ourselves fiercely against our own discouragement and self-criticism in order to give ourselves the space and the grace we need to seek some inner peace and happiness. We need encouragement and guidance from others, but we also need to be able to listen to ourselves and have some trust and respect for the wise inner voice that can emerge. Reading about another person's journey to heal and to get closer to God and herself is really affirming, and it makes me feel a sort of unity and contentment with everything around me. I can't help feeling like everything (in the world, in my life) is working out for the best, even in spite of the trials we each face and our own imperfections.

What goes up

2010-08-11T18:59:00.003-05:00

It's funny how sometimes our experiences can parallel each other's in unexpected ways. For example, recently I've been having a hard time accepting how okay I am given all the major change in my life in the past few months. I find myself thinking, "Am I really fine? Or am I suppressing something that I'm not aware of and it's just going to come crashing down on me at some point?" My good friend Erin has reassured me that it's entirely possible that I am just fine and that things could just be working out as I hope. It's difficult not to be skeptical and just to enjoy this time of growth and happiness, but I think she's right - why not be optimistic?

Meanwhile, Erin has also made a big life change, moving from Chicago to Phoenix and adapting to a new job and social scene. And so far things are going so well that she's now also wondering if she's really going to get off so easily. And so I thought I should remind her of her own wise words, which basically boil down to a nice mantra: "Why not?" Why can't something just go well?

I wish it were easy to live with that sort of optimism. Nobody likes catastrophic surprises, so we try to anticipate and brace ourselves for them, but in doing so at times we hinder our ability to enjoy the good in life right now. It's certain that life still has more bad news and challenges in store for us all, but it also has a lot of joy and blessings to give us, and that's reason to be thankful and have hope.

Life Now

2010-07-31T10:55:00.004-05:00

The past year or so of my life, and especially the most recent several months, have been a season of major change for me. It's been an uncertain time that's in turns terrifying and exhilarating, sober and celebratory, confusing and revelatory, sad and joyful. I think this blog has captured mainly my calmer and more reflective moments during this tumultuous time, because when I'm freaking out or feeling giddy, I most often direct the energy outward and not inward.

Today is no different, I suppose, but as I was starting to write this time it occurred to me that I may come across as always pondering, but that's less and less the case for me. And ironically, that's what's on my mind at the moment -- I'm thinking about how I haven't been thinking so obsessively lately. One of my goals for myself has become to live more in the present moment, to appreciate the place and situation and people where I am now. For too long, really for all of my few adult years so far, I've agonized over what I should be doing for the sake of accomplishing things for myself and for the world around me. But the hypothetical accomplishment was always in the future. I do quite well not dwelling on the past (a characteristic that lends itself to both benefits and limitations), but I have overemphasized the future and have been in a perpetual hurry to get there, wherever "there" is. I've tried to settle things too quickly and map things out too far in advance. This has led to a lot of boredom and dissatisfaction when things don't happen quickly enough for me and also a good deal of anxiety that nothing seems to be happening, making life seem pointless.

Thanks to the huge amount of change in my life and newly introduced uncertainty about what comes next, I've been learning the truth in the advice that all we really have is the present, so we have to live now. In an amazing way, I think it makes the future much more promising, because I'm realizing I don't have to ascertain what's to come and work to set it all up now. It's freeing, and it's exciting to see how things flow and come into place. I worry a little about becoming too easygoing and not getting around to setting and working toward goals since I'm not very concerned with them right now, but I think that what I'm working toward is a balance of personal ambition and appreciation for all that the world makes happen without my intervention.

All in all, life is good. Actually, it's quite wonderful.

Return of the Mac

2010-07-29T20:00:00.003-05:00

After spending much of the summer traveling, I am home. A few days before I returned, I felt ready to be back and achy for the familiarity of Chicago and the US. But rather than immediate relief and rest, I've been feeling disorientation and a bit of loneliness. Being home is bittersweet. I love being in my neighborhood and seeing familiar faces, and I'm happy that I'll see my friends and family soon, but I feel like I came back with not quite all of myself. The cliche goes that home is where the heart is, and if it's true, then that helps explain why I feel not quite all here. I think we all lose part of ourselves when we love, and that includes loving not only people but also places. At the same time that I feel such swelling gratitude for all that I have in my life, I also feel some sorrow as wonderful experiences are relegated to fond memories and photos. One of my aims lately has been to live more consciously in the present moment, though, so I'm trying to remind myself to take the opportunity during this relative uneventfulness to enjoy some solitude, allow myself some rest, and perhaps start on some new goals for fitness and creativity.

Traveler

2010-07-03T17:12:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I returned from 3 weeks spent abroad, and I've been trying to alternate between getting some much-needed rest and taking care of some of the tasks at hand before my next departure in a week. Traveling for so long and to a variety of different places is something I'm immeasurably grateful for; the amount of learning is just incredible, and I get a real high from taking in new things and altering my way of thinking. Some reflections...

On home:

I've been restless for a long time, wanting to get away from home and also to move homes constantly. I love going from place to place, but as I have I am learning the value of having a place (and people) to call home, a space that I influence, that fits me and that I fit in. Constantly moving around makes me feel more at ease with the idea of having something settled and more permanent, where previously those two words, "settled" and "permanent", were unthinkably scary ideas. Now they're at least conceivable, even if I'm still not very enthusiastic about them.

On being American:

I think there is a way of thinking by some Americans who like to think of ourselves as broad-minded and understanding of other cultures. When in the US, this makes us do things like use politically correct language and go to different cultural events and try a variety of cuisines. When we travel, we like to keep a low profile and try to blend in when we're in a new environment, so we absorb as much information as possible both before we travel and as soon as we arrive. And while I think it's good for people to try not to be ignorant of other people's lifestyles and points of view, I have also come to the realization that no matter how open I am and how hard I try, I am so utterly American, and really, there's nothing wrong with that. India has been a particularly good place for highlighting to me all of my culturally idiosyncratic assumptions and behaviors, and I love the way it messes with me. It challenges me and also makes me love my country more than before. I feel unexpectedly patriotic, not in a "we're the best in the world" kind of way, but in an "America created me, America is in my blood" way. It's been a valuable lesson for me, and I don't think there's any proxy for being in a totally different context through travel, through existing for a while in a different place.

On flexibility and control:

When traveling, there's no way to plan it all out. You can have flights and hotels arranged, but there are going to be mishaps along the way and things about the place you're going or what you're experiencing that you can't read about ahead of time (and if you could you'd not understand til you were there experiencing it anyway). I have always been pretty controlling, afraid to look silly or incompetent and so avoiding situations that introduce the possibility. But traveling has taught me to be flexible, not to take myself so seriously, to ask questions when I need to, to accept when things don't go smoothly, not to think too far ahead, to acknowledge that I'm not doing all (or even most) of the steering. I'm along for the ride, and I'm getting better at it. I'm less fearful than I've ever been.

On effort and fatigue:

Traveling is hard work. But that makes it a really nice metaphor for life, I think. Anything worth doing seems to require some real effort and cost. For me, it's tough to fly because of my debilitating fear of heights, and I've been jet lagged pretty consistently for a few weeks now, and I'm sick of packing and unpacking and keeping track of documents and dragging around a couple of suitcases. In short, I'm really tired. But I'd also not trade the opportunity I've had to travel for anything. This life of mine right now is just amazing.

On flying business class:

This one is far less philosophical. Flying business class is incredible. Short lines or no lines at the airport, champagne before takeoff, and seats that recline fully to become beds. Genius. I'm ruined forever for coach.

Making peace

2010-05-31T20:41:00.004-05:00

I've been feeling more relaxed lately, happy, even. Why is this so perplexing to me?

Maybe it's because at the same time that I am feeling happy, there's a lot happening in and around me that is stressful, worrying, uncertain, unfair. A couple of thoughts for tonight...

I've been realizing the extent to which so many women, myself included, go out of our ways to accommodate the people around us. Otherwise strong, independent, and fantastically capable women can have this surprising tendency to put up with a large amount and broad variety of nonsense, particularly from men. For me, it's part of my desire to be self sufficient -- don't ask for anything, try not to need or want or expect anything. And somehow I manage to feel guilty and intrusive and even unreasonable if I do need or want or expect something from someone else. I want to give without taking. But alas, this is not healthy or sustainable. I'm learning to be attentive to myself and to speak up for myself, but it's really hard.

I've also been thinking tonight about the idea of peace. I've heard that peace isn't the absence of conflict but the presence of something better -- perhaps love, patience, intent in practice. And that's really ringing true right now. Accommodating other people endlessly and avoiding conflict actually decreases peace. I think that in my marriage, there was little conflict at all, but at least part of it was avoidance of conflict rather than true harmony. That's damaging stuff, a destroyer of inner peace and ultimately also interpersonal peace. So I've been trying to be more honest even where it's difficult, and what I'm finding is that it's creating peace, which, incredibly, makes space for happiness. Lovely.

The Plan

2010-05-24T20:16:00.004-05:00

In short: there isn't one.

Or at least that's my take on things at the moment. It seems that so much time is spent trying to determine what should be, what is meant to be, the one and only one right way. But I don't think there's just one, I don't think life is a previously charted trail that we follow with our maps and GPS. I think we are made for adaptation.

So many of my friends and acquaintances have been going through, "This is not how I thought it would be", lately. Maybe it's a particularly American malady, but we all seem to have had some expectations of what life would hold for us, and we're finding ourselves surprised that it's not at all what we had in mind. But how could we possibly have anticipated it? In wonderful and devastating ways, life doesn't match our expectations. And I think that's because there's too much moving and variable, and we can't possibly account for it all -- even in a society as efficient and measured and predictable as the US.

I'm thinking of how this interacts with the idea that God has a plan for each of us. I think a lot of people want to think that means there's a certainty, a pre-ordained purpose to every minute happening in their lives. But it seems that even as we adapt to changing situations, the plan God has adapts to us. That doesn't make us purposeless or take away the meaning in the everyday, I think it just makes us flexible and hopefully responsive to the real, in-motion world we inhabit.

On the whole, I am grateful for this arrangement. My life is not at all what I expected, and certainly not what I would have planned. But I love it.

Water

2010-05-16T10:45:00.003-05:00

I took an extra-long morning walk today because it's just too beautiful for words outside. I did my normal route down Clark Street in Andersonville with a stop for a coffee on the way, then felt this irresistible urge to see the lake, so I walked down to Foster Beach. The lake was stunning today, bright blue and constantly throwing small, choppy white waves toward the sand.

And it made me think, it's amazing how magnetic water is for all of us living beings. We depend on it, we are made of it. It has such raw power, so much teeming energy. It comforts and nurtures, disrupts and breaks. It's no wonder that the way we as humans understand the world has water in such a central role, as such a broadly applied metaphor. In Christianity, we have baptism. And perhaps more useful than thinking of it as a cleansing is thinking of it as an invitation of the fluid, rhythmic, transformative power of water into our lives. The recognition of life as dynamic, not static. Of the need to be responsive to the undulations of something bigger that we're part of, rather than trying to harness for our own purposes something that's not within our own power. I stood and looked out across the lake, at the waves breaking near my feet, and was overwhelmed by gratitude for the water and for the joy of living in a world with such beauty and potential. It's better than any world I could dream up and control myself, and what a gift it is to be part of it.

What it takes

2010-05-14T17:05:00.003-05:00

Lately, somewhat surprisingly, I have been finding more of the joy in life. And I'm finding that there are a lot of paradoxical forces at play, so it's hard to pull principles or nuggets of wisdom from what's happening around and inside me. But I do feel that I'm growing, and I'm becoming happier and fuller, even as I try both to grasp what's happening and not to grasp to quickly or tightly at anything during such a time of change.

The decision to strike out on my own is one that I know will be one of the biggest and most influential of my life. And people's reactions to it, both the reactions I know and the ones I imagine, as well as my own reactions, are mixed. There's sentiment that I'm selfish, cruel, immoral, a quitter, out of touch with reality. And there's sentiment that I'm strong, brave, self aware, caring. There are feelings both that I've done wrong and that I've been wronged. And I'm realizing that it's not all one way or the other. I think there's probably some truth to all of these characterizations. Which means there's plenty of reason to be humble and also plenty of reason to believe that I'm no better or worse than anyone else.

When it comes down to it, I believe I've made the right decision. I think in some ways, I have only very recently discovered some parts of myself, or at least allowed myself to acknowledge them. And right now, where I am is where I believe I'm supposed to be. Not where I ever expected to be, but I have this sense that it will be better than I imagined.

It's funny how even those of us who are known for self-sufficiency, confidence, and ability can still crave the approval and affirmation of other people. In an odd way, even though I'm generally not concerned with conforming, I still want people to like me. And so making a decision that both made my need for other people evident and put me in a less approved-of status was hard. Although it is a decision that I made for myself for the sake of my own happiness, that it has required such humility and sacrifice of me makes it extra hard to peg it as a wholly selfish act. Is it selfish to want to be happy? Is it selfish to decide that being happy requires more than a minor adjustment to my life? Is it selfish to decide that what is best for me is something that hurts someone else? Is it selfish to decide these things after giving my word that I would never make such an adjustment or hurt that other person this way? Maybe. But maybe there's some distinction to be made between selfishness and self interest.

In a strange way, I think I've come across as pushy, willful, and stubborn, while at the same time I've somehow failed to get what I want or need. And maybe there's some logic to that -- when I'm truly happy, there is not a lot I feel the need to demand, and I'm more circumspect. But when I'm seriously unhappy, I want more, and I am more apt to be less reasonable about less important things, which can come across as really selfish. But true, healthy self interest, what I've been trying to learn recently, makes decisions with emotional awareness. Emotional awareness is perhaps the thing I've been most lacking up to now: awareness of my needs and desires and their legitimacy, as well as those of other people. Wholeness as a person requires understanding and acceptance of who each of us truly is, not who we think we should be according to our ideals.

I think there's so much to learn, and so much I'm learning already, and it's humbling to realize how much I've missed. There are other people whom I admire greatly who seem to know some of these things so much better than I do. It makes me feel stunted, but also energized at the realization that there's so much more opportunity to grow. I feel tired sometimes when I think about how much work life is, how much it requires of each of us if we want to be truly fulfilled and purposeful. There's really no coasting toward contentment, it's something we make room for and help create.

Protagonist

2010-05-02T09:48:00.005-05:00

This morning I began with a nice walk in my neighborhood and breakfast at the coffee shop nearby, then came back home to get to work on the to-do list I didn't get very much crossed off of yesterday. There's something about morning solitude that gives me such energy, and today it was extra invigorating to breathe the cool, rain-soaked air after the overnight storms.

And as it has been doing so much recently, the solo walk got my thought process up and running and helped bring some emotions up to the surface. While I was doing dishes, I was having one of my recurring lines of thought about the way that I can't control other people's responses to me, their version of my story or of the role I've played in their story. And it bothers me that I may be remembered as a negative player in others' stories, and I'm afraid I'll be seen at best as a psychologically flawed character and at worst as an unqualified villain. Some sort of unsympathetic caricature. As much as I know that I have to do what is best for me right now, it's difficult to cope with people I've known and cared about for so long suddenly cut off and possibly viewing me this way. It's difficult not to have editorial control over my image or the ability to speak for myself. I know I have to let this go, to accept that what's really important is the narrative that I still have the leading role in -- my own life -- but it's going to take time to figure out how to live that way.

Self Love

2010-04-30T07:38:00.003-05:00

I've begun a new routine of going for early morning walks on days when I work from home. It gets me out into the world and gets my mind and body up and functioning. It helps me to be more conscious of my emotional state and get perspective on what's going on in my life. And somehow being out and moving enables me to look at things more positively -- maybe the physical act of walking becomes symbolic of an internal progression: I'm moving, I'm going somewhere.

During my walk this morning, I thought about self love and how difficult it really is. I'm living alone for the first time in my life and facing a truth that I've known but hadn't dealt with before -- that I'm afraid of being alone, and I don't know what to do with myself because I want someone around to keep me company and to validate me. I have a tendency to scan the world around me for information and to assimilate it, which I think is a valuable skill to have. But I think that in addition to my love of learning that drives me to do this, there's also this other motive of wanting some outside confirmation that who I am and what I'm doing is good. I want a stamp of approval, a pat on the back. Now there's nobody here to give me that, and I'm forced to find something more stable within me for balance.

I need to learn to love myself, and so do most people I know. I'm still very early in a process that will probably never fully end, but here are some of the things I think will be a big part of it...

Forgiveness. My acceptance of myself has been way too dependent on worthiness, living up to some standard of goodness. But I've failed, and I'm going to keep failing no matter how hard I try. I'm going to fail myself and other people, and I'm going to make decisions that don't turn out well, and I have to forgive myself of that.
Being conscious of the present. I'm so goal focused, always looking for the purpose of everything I do, always plotting how to get closer to the that "real meaning", that I miss out on what's going on right here, now. And so much of the real meaning is here and now, in the process. When I forget that, I forget to tend to my own needs.
Having fun. Related to the last point, I've never thought that it was worthwhile to do things just for the sake of doing them. I've wanted some compelling reason, some higher purpose. I've downplayed and even disdained emotions that don't lead to something productive. But we all need to have a good time, to experience some joy, and to realize that we deserve it.
Believing that I deserve to be happy. I didn't even realize this was a problem until I was talking with my therapist and she asked me why I don't think I deserve to be happy. And I realized that I have had this assumption all along that I don't deserve anything. It goes something like, why should I feel entitled to anything? All I see are my responsibilities and how well I live up to them -- that is, I see what flows outward from me, but not not what could flow back into me. We all need things flowing back into us, we all need to give as well as receive. Without allowing some inflow, the outflow dwindles. I want to contribute to others' joy, but I can only do that if I am happy myself -- and I need to make sure my happiness is being fed.
Balance. Taking care of myself is a product of my love for myself. And to take care of myself, I need both alone time and a social life, quiet time and noise. I need physical, intellectual, mental, and spiritual health. I need to indulge and possess self control, to be emotional and rational, to rest and to exert myself, to take responsibility and to be free of my worries. I can't ignore a vital part of myself in favor of another part that's easier for me to deal with. Balance is hard, and it's a dynamic and ongoing process that involves a lot of self awareness and emotional maturity. I'll be working on this one for a long time to come.

The god of beginnings

2010-04-29T20:53:00.003-05:00

A couple of years ago, when I first visited Mumbai and was preparing to leave and come home, I was given a gift by the group I'd been there to spend time with and train. It was a metal wall hanging of the Hindu god Ganesh, who is the god of beginnings, among other things. Wherever I've lived since (and incredibly, I'm on apartment #3 since then), I've kept Ganesh near my front door to welcome everyone who comes to visit and to greet me when I return home after being away. Seeing him makes me think of the graciousness of everyone I met in Mumbai, the lasting impact that going there has had on my thinking, and just the idea of new beginnings large and small. I love the idea of a god of beginnings -- in Christianity, God is all-encompassing, so it's rare that we characterize God in really specific ways, such as creating new beginnings. But I think that's one of the most real and satisfying ways I've found to think of God -- it rings true. It seems that so many people I know, including myself, are beginning new chapters in their lives right now. And it's a wonderful thing, even as the changes feel somewhat overwhelming at times. But it feels like strands in a larger fabric, and I guess having Ganesh around reminds me of all that there is to look forward to.

Last night

2010-04-22T20:19:00.002-05:00

I'm feeling really sad tonight. I was trying to think about how to begin this post, and that simple statement pretty well covers it.

Tomorrow I move out, and in the hassle and rush of packing I've been coming across things from the past, mostly small things, that are mementos of a relationship that's ending. And even though I'm the one ending it, even though I decided to do this, it's really sad. And it's not something I'm doing without any doubt. I think a decision of this magnitude is something that few people, if any, could make with total certitude. But I've made it in moments of clarity, as far away as they may seem now, and now I'm trying to get through this part where I follow through and put the choice into action.

Oddly, the hardest part of today has been just sitting on the couch and watching TV tonight -- with Mark. There have been a few times when we've looked at each other, and the sadness is overwhelming. I know we're both sort of amazed that this is really happening.

In all of this, in the midst of the doubt and fear, I'm trying to remember the hope that I have for the future. It's hard to keep in sight just now, but I do believe that both of us are going to get through this and have happy lives.

Giraffe

2010-04-12T10:12:00.002-05:00

I'm realizing more and more lately that the point of it all -- that is, of life -- is joy. And I'm notoriously bad at enjoying things, so I've been missing the point. Big time.

I feel like I've been this sort of head-in-the clouds creature, like an extra-tall giraffe who only sees what's big or high up or far away, but never what's on the ground here next to me. But someone's tipped me over now, I've come crashing down painfully, and now I'm sort of lying here on the ground, sprawled out and confused by the sudden change in perspective. And you know what's amazing? It's beautiful down here. I'm injured and aching, but the ground is green and lively and full of lovely people whom I didn't look at closely enough before. I just want to keep lying here and rest for a while. And when I do get up, I want to start holding my head closer to the ground.

Owning it

2010-04-01T13:05:00.002-05:00

This morning was one of the not-so-great ones that I've come to know will be but somehow still never quite expect. If I didn't have such wonderful people in my life, people who teach me the meaning of grace, that most undeserved sort of love and acceptance...well, I think I might not make it through such mornings. I have been feeling the weight of myself, of my decisions and their impacts on people I care about. Not for the first time, certainly, it's not like I'm just now realizing the impacts...I carry these things with me all the time. I own them. And I am learning what it means to own them, to be the person making the decisions and really bear the weight of the decisions -- it affects me physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

I think for too long I've sort of acted as a bystander to my own will and emotions, without really owning the situation I'm in and my role in creating and sustaining it. I'm trying to change, and it's haaaaard. But what can I do but keep trying?

Lessons

2010-03-23T10:18:00.004-05:00

I am blogging from work. I have so much to do, and maybe it's unprofessional, but I really had to bang this one out because there's been a lot on my mind this morning.

I've been learning an overwhelming number of lessons lately. I feel like I'm being stretched to the breaking point, pressed down under the weight of the reality of my life. And it's a reality I am choosing in spite of its difficulty, although I have plenty of moments of doubt and anxiety. Some of what I'm learning...

1. I've always believed that relationships are what make this life so rich and worthwhile and that they're also what put us most at risk. They bring out the best and worst of experiences, the best and worst in ourselves. We have in us the power to build and create and also to hurt and destroy. I'm understanding this more and more every day -- it's one of the things that I have always known was true, but now I'm experiencing it more profoundly.

2. When making big decisions, it's easy to agonize. I tend to over-think things, to worry endlessly about the consequences of a decision before making it. I've had a lot of up and down days lately, and it's hard to keep track or predict where I'll be emotionally from one day to the next. So I've tried to be mindful on days when I'm feeling particularly emotional or anxious: those days are not decision-making days. So I try to save it for the days when I am calm and can consider things with clarity. The other days I focus on survival by whatever means possible.

3. Other people's desires and perceptions are terrible guides for personal decisions. This isn't to say being considerate is a bad thing -- but we have to live by our own consciences. I've spent a lot of time worrying about what people will think of me, how I live and the decisions I make and the truth of my failings. But the truth is, my story is mine, even if nobody understands it or if others reject it. I have become my own champion in some respect, as I've had to stand alone by my choices.

4. I'm learning that good and bad aren't as clear as I thought before, that they can get tangled up together in confusing ways. I guess this is why we're told, "Judge not lest ye be judged."

5. I've always had a strong fear of failure, and I've done a lot to avoid situations where I could fail. Right now I'm facing a massive fail, and I'm learning what it is to accept that failure. And a lot of that is learning what it means to fail and to continue loving and respecting myself. It's an uphill battle.

6. Related to my aversion to fail is my aversion to take any risk at all, but I've found myself in a situation where all I can choose is risk. I'm at a point in my life where any course I take could possibly lead to a lot of pain, so there is no "easy way out" option. So I'm learning what it is to make a decision and live it, come what may.

7. I've always been very goal-oriented -- everything I do, I want to be toward some greater purpose, some sort of clear meaning. I am learning to be present, in the current day and moment, and it's maybe the hardest thing to learn of all. I don't know what's next, I don't know if there's a "next", what I have is now, and so I have to be in it. My 17-month-old niece helps me with this a lot -- she knows nothing but the moment she's in, and she draws me into it with her. I'm trying to stop over-thinking and start living more.

8. I have to be more independent, confident, and assertive than I've ever been before. I have to take care of myself. This is an especially odd lesson because I thought I already had these things covered, but there's so much more to learn.

This feels rather brief relative to the amount of internal processing that's been happening in me, but I guess it's still pretty long. That's all for now...I'll probably be back with more soon

Optimistic Exhaustion

2010-03-07T16:53:00.003-06:00

I am having a hard time putting together a really coherent thought right now. But lately I've been struggling to cope with the sheer volume of thoughts and emotions I've been experiencing, and putting any kind of structure around them is a challenge. A big theme is the way I set hopes and expectations for my life. I feel a lot of dissatisfaction, a longing for more, and the prevailing message I keep seeing people playing back in the world around me is, "At some point, you just have to settle and accept the way things are. Calm down, appreciate what you have, don't ask for more." The thing that makes it hard is that I do feel like I have a lot to be grateful for, but I am still unhappy in some big ways. And I think ultimately I'm an optimist, because I do believe that things can be better than they are, that there's a purpose in reaching for more. And I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. But there's something unsettling in optimism, too, because often people have to let go of "good" before they can achieve "great" -- the true test of optimism I guess. And if there's anything I'm learning, it's that life isn't tidy and there aren't guarantees, but that anything really worthwhile requires some risk and investment of oneself. This realization makes me feel perpetually exhausted lately, but I'm hopeful that it will eventually lead somewhere lovely and fulfilling. I think this is something like what President Obama has referred to as "the audacity of hope".

On a somewhat tangential but I think still related note, the Rushdie book I'm reading now, Fury, has a lot for me to think about and a lot that I relate to. There are a lot of quotable excerpts, but here's just one reflection on America (published in 2001) that I keep rereading. It's long, but this kind of reflection on the state of human affairs is why I'm in love with Rushdie:

In spite of all the chatter, all the diagnosis, all the new consciousness, the most powerful communications made by this new, much-articulated national self were inarticulate. For the real problem was damage not to the machine but to the desirous heart, and the language of the heart was being lost. An excess of this heart damage was the issue, not muscle tone, not food, neither feng shui nor karma, neither godlessness nor God. This was the Jitter Bug that made people mad: excess not of commodities but of their dashed and thwarted hopes. Here in Boom America, the real-life manifestation of Keats' fabulous realms of gold, here in the doubloon-heavy pot at the rainbow's end, human expectations were at the highest levels in human history, and so, therefore, were human disappointments. When arsonists lit fires that burned the West, when a man picked up a gun and started killing strangers, when a child picked up a gun and started killing friends, when lumps of concrete smashed the skulls of rich young women, this disappointment for which the word "disappointment" was too weak was the engine driving the killers' tongue-tied expressiveness. This was the only subject: the crushing of dreams in a land where the right to dream was the national ideological cornerstone, the pulverizing cancellation of personal possibility at a time when the future was opening up to reveal vistas of unimaginable, glittering treasures such as no man or woman had ever dreamed of before. In the tormented flames and anguished bullets Malik Solanka heard a crucial, ignored, unanswered, perhaps unanswerable question -- the same question, loud and life-shattering as a Munch scream, that he had just asked himself: is this all there is? What, this is it? This is it?

Emotions

2010-02-25T21:19:00.002-06:00

I've always been pretty extraordinarily terrible at processing how I feel, or really even allowing myself to feel the way that I do. As a matter of pride and as a matter of personality, I tend to keep a rational exterior, even when there's a storm brewing underneath. When I am upset, it often comes out as an angry outburst or tirade that is easy to brush off later.

So I've been trying to be more aware of my emotional experience of life lately. I'm trying to accept my emotions as a legitimate way to experience the world. I still try to stuff them through the rational lens a lot of the time, but I'm at least not allowing my rational side to decide I'm ridiculous for feeling the way that I do. So often I have felt something deep and real and then decided I was overreacting and ignored it. Or I have failed to recognize a nagging ache until it becomes a major crisis. But if I stop and listen to myself, the emotional me is actually really smart, quite often smarter than the rational me. I need to take time to be silent and rest, and it's amazing what truth can surface when I do that.

Sacred Space

2010-02-21T15:42:00.004-06:00

What's on my mind now is something I rarely talk about anymore, because it's so complicated for me: faith. Faith is something I really struggle with, because I am a consummate skeptic. I'm also generally very empirical, a self-described "information sponge" who is always scanning the world around me for truth. But I also believe that there is as much a source of truth within us as there is in the world around us, perhaps even more if you think of the created environment that humans have made largely as an expression of the various inner worlds of people. I think that for the past few years I've been gradually suppressing and neglecting the inner sense of truth that I used to experience so deeply and vividly. And at the same time, I've gotten farther and farther from an "organized" religious practice. I'm uncomfortable with prescriptions of the right way to be and feel and act, because I have seen so many lovely ways of being and feeling and acting that seem to have never been accounted for properly in any institution or system of organized thought.

That's all rather abstract, I know. But it's on my mind because it's Lent, and at the same time it's a tough and uncertain time in my life in pretty much every arena (work, relationships, inner life). I decided yesterday that I need to spend part of each day quiet, to calm the constant info processing that I tend to do. In the course of trying to find something to feed my meditative time, I rediscovered Sacred Space, a contemplative prayer and study guide that a Jesuit group in Ireland publishes (http://sacredspace.ie/). It reminds me of how much I love these Irish Jesuits -- for the contemplative approach that guides a person to be receptive and open, to ask for meaning rather than prescribing meaning, and to allow an honest emotional response to God and scripture. This is the only approach to faith that has ever rung true to me, and it's funny because it's so hard for me to practice: "shut up, relax, listen".

Passion

2010-02-10T21:10:00.003-06:00

It's a bit difficult to get started on a new blog entry when it's been so long since my last one and there's been more than ever processing through my mind, so much that I'm grappling with. How to pick something to talk about?

For now, I'm not going to get too detailed, but one of the things I'm learning right now is the importance of passion. I've made almost all of my decisions up to now based on a rational assessment of what I should do -- what's most practical, most reasonable, does the most to help others, does the most to please others. And in the process, I've suppressed the part of me that lights up when I see something that captivates me. I think everyone must have at least one thing that does this to them -- for me, it's books, music, art. Words and patterns. Creative articulation. I don't think I'm ever much happier than when I'm a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I feel calm and centered, but also invigorated.

I think I've underestimated the need for passion to drive me, and I doubt I'm the only person who's done this. It's tempting to keep what I have now, what I'm sure of, rather than to try for something better and more beautiful and risk losing what I have. Especially if all the voices, including the one in my own head, exhort me to exercise caution.

It's also hard to change when you don't like what you have, but you also don't hate it, and there is nothing really forcing you to make a move. Inertia is incredibly powerful. But that means that a first step, an initial push, can also continue to produce motion.

What does it take to be happy? I'm trying to learn more of the answer to this question. I think it starts with self awareness, recognizing what it is I love most and realizing what that means about who I am. It also includes choosing continually to do what makes me happy, both in the current moment I'm living and in whatever situation the future may bring. And I think it is also something that is fed by witnessing the passion and happiness of other people, wherever they might find it.

Healthy Lifestyles Response Pack

2009-11-04T18:50:00.003-06:00

In the mail today there was an envelope addressed to me (not "current resident") with a picture of a couple who look perhaps 60 and the heading, "Healthy Lifestyles Response Pack." I was intrigued, so I tore the envelope open and rifled through the contents. Inside, there were a whopping 41 postcard-sized ads, most of which were for health & wellness related products, with a heavy skew toward the geriatric. There were a few things that stood out that I thought I'd share, as a break from my typical rants.

The first thing I pulled out was a card headed with the question, "How do the Japanese Manage to Stay Healthy During the Flu Season?" (A couple of immediate questions from me: Do the Japanese really manage to stay healthy during the flu season? If so, how do they manage it?) The answer, according to the card, is that "They Take AHCC!" Apparently, AHCC is "a blend of Japanese medicinal mushrooms..." Yeah...who wouldn't feel great during flu season with some medicinal mushrooms?

The other one that really got me was the one for the Vacurect, a Vacuum Erection Device (VED) that the card informed me "is unlike conventional VED's. The Vacurect is a very compact, one-piece, easy-to-use system." Who knew such a thing existed? And it's manufactured by a company called Bonro. Subtle. http://www.bonro.com/shop

In the midst of all of the health-related ads, there were a few that were a bit out of place: a coupon for 50 cents off Egg-land's Best eggs, an offer for a complete set of all 50 state quarters, and a plug for DirecTV packages. I'd think that last one would run counter to the health & wellness theme...

Random blog post, yes. But an even more random piece of mail...

I think, therefore I freak out

2009-10-30T20:17:00.004-05:00

Lately I've been wrestling with a lot of serious thoughts about life and meaning. I took a trip to Mumbai in August for work, just for a week, and came back feeling like something had shaken loose in me -- I didn't want to come back to my life as usual, and the thought of "back to normal" induced some serious panic and depression. In the couple months since returning, I've continued to feel really off-balance, and have spent a lot of time thinking about what it is I want, what I value, and where I might be headed. Yeah, so I've been incredibly self-absorbed.

What I've been finding, though, as I talk to other people who are in the 30-give-or-take-a-few-years crowd, is that many of us are experiencing this sort of crisis of meaning. It seems that in the course of our early lives, up through our early 20s, we are propelled almost involuntarily through a charted course with clear next steps. There was always something to look forward to that we didn't really have to discern ourselves -- going to school, proceeding to college and/or a job, dating, marriage, kids. But now that we're finding ourselves at a point in which these things, or most of them, are in our hands or imminent, and the rest our lives are looking both monotonous and unsettlingly open-ended. For some reason, we didn't realize this would happen, even though it seems obvious to me when I look at it now that it was always going to. Maybe we're set up early to believe in a tidy version of the future, in which we have everything on this sort of checklist of life and are content with exactly that. But in fact, we all want more than what's on the list, and we're now responsible for our own happiness. All of the beginnings and endings of things are decisions we make, not things that are structured for us. Newness and progress are not things thrust upon us automatically, and the routine of life can weigh upon us. I'm struggling to find the ingenuity to find a good answer to "what's next?" -- as well as to a host of other questions, like "why?" and "seriously, this is it?" I think I'll make it through okay eventually, but it's difficult to continue with day-to-day life in the meantime while wrestling with these bigger questions.

Trying to keep perspective

2009-10-04T13:00:00.002-05:00

It's been a loooong time since the last time I wrote. Partly it's facebook consuming my online time, partly it's work, partly it's that I haven't felt super inspired to write. But in any case, I'm back, at least for a few moments.

The last time I wrote, back in May, I wrote about the principles I try to live by. This is particularly striking because lately I've been struggling with my principles and the ways in which I fall short of them in ways I never thought I would. It's something that challenges my self-image and my paradigm, which is difficult to cope with, but it's also something that's teaching me about what it means to be human and take part in the risky experiment that is life. The result of this struggle right now is depression, but I'm hopeful that this will ultimately be another time I'll look to and think, "Thank God that's over," and, "but I'm so glad I went through that." I had another trying time 5-6 years ago that I feel that way about, now that I have emerged from it and can look back -- I ended up learning a lot about myself and making a lot of connections about life in general that I value immeasurably. In the end, we're the woven-together product of all of our experiences, millions of different things all bound up and banging up against each other inside one body.

Principles

2009-05-31T19:29:00.003-05:00

Lately I've been on one of my "rage against the machine" streaks, feeling frustrated by the way society functions (or fails to). I think what it comes down to is that we as humans are generally short-sighted creatures, and I think that's the cause of most (if not all) of our major problems. Rather than rail on things (which I tend to do, and fortunately Mark is a patient listener and empathizes with my frustration), I thought I'd do something more productive and list out some of the principles I think it's essential for us to strive to abide by - a first stab at my life philosophy.

1. Zoom out and think beyond your current situation. Basically, keep in mind what's really important. Desire can be strong and compelling, but if unchecked it can lead us to make choices that hurt us and the people around us (and even the people not-so-close to us as well). Think about long-term impacts, not only short-term pleasures.

2. Consume only what you really need. This applies to food, energy, and possessions/purchases of all kinds. We're living with finite resources, and most of us in America already have a lot and aren't getting any happier with more (in fact, we become less happy if we consume as a drug). Take stock of how much you have and how much you spend -- question your motives for buying.

3. Consider others before yourself, or at least give others as much consideration as you do yourself. When we do consume and buy, the resources we are using came from someone, somewhere. At the very least, we should use resources that help sustain the people and places that produced them, rather than exploit and deplete them.

4. When calculating price, think beyond your own checkbook. Deep discounts in retail stores save us money in the short run, but they may have a heavy cost to the people who work in those stores (they may be undercompensated and lack necessary benefits), the people at each step back in the supply chain, and the broader environment. If something looks like a fantastic deal for you, you should question what kind of deal it is for others involved. Remember that you vote with your dollar for the kind of world you're opting to live in.

5. Question yourself when you find reasons why it's not possible to live by your own stated principles. Your priorities are revealed by your actions, not by your thoughts, words, and intentions. Hold yourself to a high standard, challenge yourself, and surround yourself with people who will reinforce this in you.

6. Be open-minded, and be willing to be out of step with the people around you. If there is a change you need to make, don't be afraid to make it. It can be discouraging and even lonely at times, but it's also empowering and incredibly rewarding to live consciously the way that you think you should. And if you are in touch with other people striving to do the same thing, you'll find community there.

I think that's about it at this point. I'm sure this list will evolve as time goes on, but for now I think it covers the things that I find most important. Hopefully it's food for thought for my wealth of blog followers. :-P

Out of control

2009-04-25T17:12:00.003-05:00

This past week I spent four solid days with an incredibly smart French man who owns a company that designs custom computer programs to improve business processes, because he is currently helping my company build just such a thing, and I'm coordinating this with him. (I stay vague when setting the scene because my job doesn't make good reading or conversation.) It was quickly evident that he is the most direct and outspoken person I've met, which is a fantastic quality and an incredibly irritating one in turn, depending on your frame of mind at the time. Unexpectedly, through the course of our conversation on day 4, I mentioned my paralyzing fear when flying, and he suggested that I might have an issue with being out of control. It sounds so cliche, and I've thought of this explanation before, but somehow when he suggested it, it really clicked in my brain. And as I kept reflecting more, I think that a deep fear of getting myself into situations where I don't control my own circumstances and my destiny isn't clear explains a lot about how I live my life. When I think about it rationally, I know I control very little in the scheme of things, but rationalizing has never helped me banish fear. I'm not happy with this characteristic of myself...and I'm not sure what to do about it...but it's on my mind and I'm hoping that now that I am aware, I can change the way I make my decisions.

Incommunicado

2009-03-28T16:43:00.003-05:00

Work has been really, really busy lately. The details are not all that interesting, but the result is that on weekends I am often so emailed-out that I find myself dreading my Hotmail almost as much as my work mail. And I inevitably do this thing where some message (or messages) ends up marked as unread perpetually because I want to save it for a time when I have the energy to really put together a reply that is human and engaged. It's disturbing to me that sometimes that whole "human and engaged" time just never rolls around. I'm sorry to anyone whose emails are languishing in my inbox.

Another post, because the other one had such a cohesive theme

2009-03-15T06:41:00.005-05:00

Also, just some tidbits from of-late:

Work is very busy, but I've been in a great mood this weekend nonetheless. The first taste of springtime and sunlight are great.

Toffee is one of my favorite treats. Sugar + butter, at times applied to nuts, at times coated in chocolate. Brilliant. We bought some yesterday "to share with company"...after which I half-heartedly lobbied to eat it all right away. I got some toffee peanuts instead and the gourmet toffee has survived.

Things involving vinegar (pickles, mustard) are also awesome. As are fruits of all sorts, as are tacos, pizza, and taco pizza. I'm going to make a pineapple upside down cake today for dessert after a dinner of tacos tonight. We'll also eat toffee at some point, and maybe also drink some margaritas. (Because we're having company.) It's going to be a good food day.

There are some great small furniture shops in Andersonville, many with vintage stuff. There is a set of six silver lockers (two high by three across) in one of the shops, and it is magnificent. The doors all open smoothly like they've been recently oiled (they most likely have). I'm trying to justify buying this set of lockers...where can it go, what can it hold? I have to see our new place again first.

Lately I've really enjoyed the new show, "Lie to Me". It's really interesting, and I think it's worth checking out if you haven't yet.

The old apartment

2009-03-15T06:33:00.002-05:00

I'm trying to come to terms with the reality that we're moving next month. Six more weeks, then a new place to live, never to see the old place again. So I've had the Barenaked Ladies song, "The Old Apartment", stuck in my head a lot lately. Some things that I'll miss about this place:

Seeing "dinosaur dog", the giant schnauser who lives behind us across the alley, from our back kitchen window. Since we moved in he acquired a look-alike companion.

Windows on all four sides, since it's a full flat. The plants love this.

The original dark-stained woodwork on all of the windows and around the living room.

The fireplace that looks quite unauthentic with its knob and fake logs, but that keeps us toasty in winter.

The Halloween parade of adorable children to give candy to.

The adorable children who live downstairs.

To be continued...

A happier post

2009-02-15T07:52:00.005-06:00

So lately I've felt like I should blog, but mainly I've just been working a lot, which doesn't so much make for interesting reading (or writing). But I'm going to try now, and I'll also try not to rant as I often do in my blogs. :)

There are some things I'm excited about at the moment:

Seeing my family in a couple weeks -- my sister, bro-in-law, and niece are repatriating to Illinois from Texas, and we'll get to celebrate my nephew's and mom's birthdays together.
Going to see a new apartment that is a little bit smaller than our current place tomorrow -- we wanted to move last year to someplace smaller and hopefully also cheaper, but after looking at one place that was extremely disappointing, we gave up and re-signed for our current place. This year, the place we're going to see sounds awesome (a condo whose owners are moving to California). Let's hope it is.
I'm YouTubing Mary J. Blige right now. Fun!
Valentine's Day with Mark was really, really nice. We did a lot of chatting throughout the day (which in a marriage of two introverts isn't all that common) and caught up on all the latest details of life (which in a marriage of two intuitives don't always get shared) and thought about the future a little, too. Dinner was delicious -- we ate at a "rustic Italian" restaurant called Anteprima in Andersonville, and the cocktails and food were amazing.
The Brown Elephant resale shop in Andersonville is my go-to place for pants. I almost always find a pair when I go in, and yesterday I got 2 pairs for $10. It's cheap, and it's also ethical, which makes me happy.

I'm really not a big jerk, for the most part

2009-01-11T06:07:00.005-06:00

Most people with whom I spend any time at all probably know how fascinated I am by personality type, in particular the Myers-Briggs type indicator. It has helped shed some light on my tendencies and the relationships in my life, especially the most difficult and strained relationships. Sometimes people are naturally predisposed in ways that makes it hard to understand how each is not intentionally being the way they are for the purpose of making the other insane. But I've worked to accept that this incomprehensibility is part of life, and in fact it's actually pretty valuable to have people coming from drastically different angles to bring some balance to the world. My current trouble is that not everyone appreciates or even feels inclined to tolerate this diversity, and in fact some are not particularly fond of my personality in particular. My self image doesn't really depend on this approval, but it's still hurtful when I feel essentially rejected. So to indulge myself, a couple of clarifications (yes, those are bullet points):

On being "different," when the word is used euphemistically - I'm not different from people for the sake of difference alone. When I'm different, it is because I don't like taking things for granted or on someone else's authority. I evaluate, then decide...and this sometimes leads to decisions that are not mainstream.
On being "analytical," when the word is used as a synonym for "insensitive" - I don't think this is totally unfounded every time. But I also don't say things with the aim of hurting, so I hope other people will try to see the intention and not only the level of varnish.

The final thing I'll note as a thinking personality who is a woman is that it's even easier to be seen as wrong or unnatural when you don't fit the overtly nurturing expectations that have become part of what our culture considers feminine. Something that I have found is that if I don't express my feelings, many will assume that I don't have them, which to me seems like a very strange thing to believe about another person. This kind of judgment does spur more introspection in me, though, about how I come across to other people. Lest we all decide that feelers really are nicer people than thinkers, I've come up with a couple thoughts on ways in which thinkers might be particularly gifted to consider other people (cue bullets again):

Intuitive thinkers in particular have a tendency to be very open-minded and not judge people for being different - the question to me is, "Why not?" Everything is up for consideration.
If a thinker's worldview & principles encompass believing that every person has human rights, then this view that they have certain entitlements is going to be quite firm and won't easily be swayed by how we feel about what a person has or has not done or whether or not we like them.

This is all quite self-defensive, but it's been on my mind recently, so I thought I'd get some of it off my chest. And of course, if others also experience identity/society/interpersonal tensions, I'm always interested to hear about them. I think many of us have similar types of struggles.

Change

2008-12-01T19:53:00.006-06:00

Every once in a while, I'm told that I need to cheer up, read happier books, relax, spend less time worrying about the state of the world. But recently I've been honestly wondering if the inverse is the case: have we humans reached a point at which we are creating change faster than we can adapt to it, that we aren't as "big picture" as the problems we face? This isn't cynical; it's not lack of faith in people, but a sense that we don't understand the gravity of the situation we're in and it won't sink in fast enough for us to avert some serious consequences. For instance, we know we've been changing the climate of the entire planet we live on, but in response most people do little more than recycle (if that). I have to believe that if we really thought it was going to cost our lives (literally for some, but certainly life as we know it for us all), we'd be more motivated to act. In fact, it is costing lives already, and we've yet to make the connection.

We still seem to be taking the path of least resistance and thinking that our small acts of treason against the world won't hurt anything. We seem to forget that we are part of a community of billions, and our actions together amount to a tremendous amount. So how do we buy things without knowing where or how they are produced, or shrug the vaguely-acknowledged reality off because we not the ones to blame, we're just buying things as we always have, we're innocent participants in the system. Our stuff has always been made in sweatshops. It's always been made of petroleum-based plastics. Our farms have always been huge fields of one overproduced and overfertilized crop for miles, that's how it's supposed to be. It all looks too lovely to have a dark side.

We say we can't afford to live justly and sustainably, it's too expensive, and giving up some of our gadgetry and creature indulgences is just too much to ask. We value our individualism, our right to choose and to buy. And the imposition of a value system that preaches sacrifice is anathema to our sense of entitlement. In fact, the imposition of any value system that uses "should" and "shouldn't" rather than "this is just what I think, you can think and do what you want" doesn't seem to get very far. I am not saying all of this to be negative, I just want people to think. And deeply, a really honest look at ourselves, at what we do and who we are, with an eye to our collective future and what we are going to do to create it wisely. I think that's actually quite positive.

Commuting Karma

2008-11-22T06:32:00.003-06:00

A couple of days ago after work I had to stop at the corner of Clark and Jackson and wait for a few minutes because the police had blocked out a route for Obama's motorcade to depart from the federal building. The entire wait had to be about 5 minutes or so, but about 3 minutes into it a lady standing near me on the corner turned to a guy by her and said, "Someone else should have won the election so we wouldn't have to go through this." I was like, oh, yes, lady, someone else should have won so you would have an uninterrupted stroll to your train. Not being interrupted for a moment on one day of our lives is certainly worth another term of inept leadership. For me, if it was an inconvenience at all, that was more than compensated for by Obama waving at all of us as he went by. It was enough to put a smile on my face, and I even had a wave of rock concert euphoria where I wanted to throw my hands up in the air and yell "Woo!"...but fortunately I kept that urge in check.

On a less novel note, that same day I encountered a higher than typical number of inconsiderate fellow commuters. I was shoved two times while boarding the train to go to work -- not the "we're all trying to get on this thing at once" kind of forward-thrust shove, but the "I want to go this way and there's a person in my way, so I shall push this individual out of my way" kind of sideways shove. The kind of shove that's easily avoided by waiting about two seconds until I've naturally moved out of their path. And then on the walk from the train to the office, a guy turned the corner and became oncoming traffic, only he decided to walk on the side of the sidewalk where everyone's going in the opposite direction from him. His solution wasn't to move over to where the traffic was flowing the same way as him -- it was to grimace at me and wave me out of his way with annoyance. I just don't get it, rude people. We're all trying to get somewhere, what's with the jolt of jerkiness to start the day?

But maybe it was my price to pay to get a wave out an SUV window from our soon-to-be President.

Protest & paranoia

2008-11-15T06:36:00.002-06:00

This one's going to be rather random and rambly...

Can I just say I hate Christmas in America? I mean, why does it have to start before my birthday, which is in the first half of November? That means we have at least 6 weeks of Christmas, although I've heard of Christmas paraphernalia sightings as Halloween candy is being clearanced. So that puts it more at 8 weeks before the day...so that means that we start thinking about Christmas far enough in advance and spread it out for long enough that we essentially devote one day out of every week of the year to it. Doesn't that just suck away the novelty of it? And not only that, but it's not like we start giving or appreciating each other or any sort of wholesome community-based activity...we start buying. So many people complain about the commercial orgy that is Christmas shopping, but that doesn't stop most of us from participating in it and making ourselves less happy. Can't we just wait for Christmas to actually arrive and then spend it with people we love, perhaps exchanging small tokens of our affection? It doesn't seem so hard to accomplish.

On a completely separate topic, a strangely paranoid thought popped into my head recently that I'm having a hard time shaking. Sometimes I look at the people around me and wonder if any of them can get into my head and know my thoughts. It's a pretty horrifying possibility given some of the shameful and ridiculous things that pass through my brain, which I'm guessing are natural and along the lines of what pass through other people's brains as well, but all of us keep these things backstage for a good reason.

The new relationship between my butt and the couch

2008-10-19T08:19:00.004-05:00

Okay I'm seriously depressed -- I think it's a combination of work stress, reduced daylight, and a combination of feeling both "stuck" and "can't-keep-up." I don't know when I became such a working stiff, but lately I go to work, get my butt kicked, and then come home exhausted and want to do nothing but consume myself to sleep with TV and snacks. It's all pretty pointless. And I don't really savor my own whininess, either...I just wish I had some kind of game plan to change things, but I don't, and that just makes me doubt my own resourcefulness. Ugh.

Pleas(e)

2008-09-14T18:13:00.003-05:00

Please, women, don't vote for Sarah Palin just because she's a woman (find a good, credible news source or two...or more).

Please, bikers in my 'hood, slow down at crosswalks so you don't hit me or scare me senseless. I promise not to jaywalk. Deal?

Please, pals, take a listen to Ani DiFranco's new album streaming here: www.imeem.com/anidifranco. It's fabulous.

Ber

2008-09-06T15:56:00.002-05:00

This week we went from highs in the upper 80s to highs in the low to mid 70s. While most people I know thought this was a step down, to me, it's the best news I've heard in a long time. The "ber" months are the best time of the year for me, and I love the first hint of fall's arrival. There are apples at the farmer's market, football season is kicking off tomorrow, and I'm in the mood to bake and knit again. Now I'm biding my time until apple cider and pumpkins arrive...

Vaguely Determined

2008-09-01T19:49:00.003-05:00

I've been pretty keenly interested in personality type for the past year or two, particularly the Myers-Briggs types. When I first took the type test and read about the INTJ, I was like, "Holy crap! They're psychics." Since I bring up personality and the interactions between types so much, my friend Erin was sweet enough to pick me up the Myers-Briggs Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type book. In it, while discussing the IN_J types, they quote J.H. Van der Hoop, who I'd never heard of until now, but part of what she or he said really hit home with me, so I thought I'd share:

"In later life, also, it is a persistent characteristic of people of this type, that while on the one hand they possess great determination, on the other hand they find it very difficult to express what they want. Although they may have only a vague feeling about the way they want to go, and of the meaning of their life, they will nevertheless reject with great stubbornness anything that does not fit in with this. They fear lest external influences or circumstances should drive them in a wrong direction, and they resist on principle." [from Concious Orientation, 1939]

When I read this, I had a Charlie Brown moment inside, where I thought, "That's it!!!" I have really been struggling over the past few years to put my finger on what it is that I really want in life. It's frustrating, because it ends up looking like I'm wishy-washy, when in reality I know that if I found what I wanted to do, I'd be eager to get up and do it. It's just that I know a lot more about what I don't want than what I do want. In a way, it's affirming to know that this is something that other people experience, but then again it's frustrating to think that this could be a lifelong issue...

If you have the choice, pay for some books, not for shipping to Mexico

2008-08-26T20:17:00.003-05:00

I feel compelled to write something since I've not in a couple of weeks and I just left things hanging in the middle of vacation. I like the idea of writing, and I love to read, but when it comes down to it I am just not very motivated to express myself via blog on a regular basis.

A few things, as they come to me...for those who haven't read anything by Salman Rushdie, and who think you might appreciate some challenging and brilliant writing, pick up a copy of The Satanic Verses, Midnight's Children, or Shalimar the Clown. I'm actually reading the latter now, and I am loving it 100 pages in. It goes from poetic to concise and from reflective to irreverent...I can't really convey the brilliance that is Rushdie, so you can just read.

I'm taking some training at work this week that involves receiving the results of a consulting/influencing skills survey from some of my colleagues, and I'm learning that I need to be more assertive when talking about my ideas. More than one person said I had valuable things to say but back down too quickly. That's really useful to know, but I think it's going to be difficult to overcome my natural disinclination toward sales.

Also, I tried to mail a box to Mexico City yesterday. I stopped into FedEx after work with the box containing about $25/1.5 lbs. worth of giftage from me and Nicole (one of my direct reports) for Tania (my other direct report). After a few minutes of elaborating on how there would be duties and fees to pay for shipping internationally, which I decided was okay with me, the FedEx employee then said something like, "Oh, yeah, and the shipping itself will also be over $100." My response was, "Are you kidding?" And unfortunately he wasn't. The tab would have come to $117 and some change, which he attributed to gas prices, etc. But Mexico D.F. is not that much farther away than California (a fact I pointed out as I politely declined to ship), and I fly myself there with the box in tow (among other things) for under $300. What the crap?

Maine, at last!

2008-08-11T19:40:00.004-05:00

After three days of riding with Mark, Jeff, and Heather, I'm in Maine. Comments from the journey thus far:

Day 1 was exciting but not so scenic. Lots of Michigan and the part of Ontario that looks like Michigan, although stopping for lunch in Detroit was a highlight. The Canadians hassled us on the way into the country, possibly randomly or possibly because Jeff accidentally drove past a stop sign before the customs booth. In any case, we had to pull off to the side and have them search the car, and then we were made to go inside to immigration and have someone officially let us into the country. Jeff and I were bitter toward Canada after that -- after all, it's like the same country, really! Between the border and Toronto, our first stopover spot, we drove through the heart of a couple of thunderstorms that unleashed massive amounts of large water missiles on us. We reached Toronto around 7, checked into the hotel, and then found a nice, hip Italian restaurant to eat at. I was a particular fan of the fact that they had an "All Ontario" section of the menu, with items made of local ingredients.

On day 2, Mark and I got up around 6:30 and went for a walk through downtown Toronto, getting our socks, shoes, and sub-knee portions of our pants soaked. But it was cool, and nice to see at least a little bit of Yonge Street on foot. Before leaving the city, we all stopped by a nearby grocery store to pick up lunch supplies in order to make the drive go faster with fewer stops. Then we got our coffee and some breakfast for the road. New York let us back into the US without a fight, which we appreciated. I've since proceeded to eat a lot of maple flavored everything...although this technically began with maple cheesecake at dinner in Toronto. We drove through the Adirondacks, which were beautiful. Mountains, trees, and rushing rivers...just gorgeous, everything I'd hoped for from upstate New York. In the early evening, we reached the ferry dock and enjoyed the ~50 minute cruise across to Burlington, Vermont, our second night's stopping spot. It was a beautiful ride across Lake Champlain, with mountains in the distance on both sides and the sun setting with a brilliant pink to the west. After checking into the hotel, we went to dinner on Church street, a bustling retail and restaurant strip in downtown Burlington. I proceeded to become very sleepy and crabby, but managed to eat my salad anyway.

Day 3 is today. After I got up and showered, Jeff and Heather had gone to take a dip in the pool, and Mark and I left to take a stroll along the lakefront. It was a great and refreshing way to start the day. We left Burlington a little after 9, riding past the University of Vermont campus, which was beautiful. We stopped in Montpelier, where Mark, Jeff, and I spent a few minutes browsing through the state capitol (Mark and I have a quest to hit all of the US state capitols.) It was a really neat building, with old, historic furnishings still intact, and a manageable, not over-the-top size, which I suppose is appropriate for the capitol of a state as small and practical as Vermont. The town also seemed very nice, with a lot of shops and restaurants. That's how a lot of our drive has been so far, though, small towns strung together in the middle of some of the most amazing scenery you can imagine. There are an incredible number of ice cream shops, and we've taken to watching for giant ice cream cone cutouts, blow-ups, and statues along our travel route. At one place where we stopped yesterday, I got a medium waffle cone, and it appeared to contain a full pint of ice cream, piled on it precariously. It was deliciously overwhelming. We managed to cover the width of Vermont and New Hampshire and get to our final destination, Bar Harbor, Maine, before 6. We ate at a nice diner in Littleton, New Hampshire, for lunch -- a really idyllic small New England town. After checking in at our really nice, cozy bed and breakfast here in Bar Harbor, we all headed out to dinner at a seafood restaurant (where else?) downtown. I'm looking forward to exploring the shops and the national park here more over the next few days...but for now, I think that's an exhaustive amount of detail.

In summary, it's lovely here. :)

Unorthodoxize

2008-08-03T06:52:00.006-05:00

I've been going through another bout of "What am I doing with my life?" lately, which is largely spurred by the book that I'm reading. It's called Take this Bread, and it's the memoir of a woman who inexplicably wanders into a church after somewhere around 35 years of being perfectly content with not being religious, takes communion, and evolves into a Christian over the following months. For her, this doesn't mean adopting a creed and starting to behave nicely, but really digging into the action that seems imperative as a result of her faith -- feeding people. It's a pretty incredibly different perspective from my own since I grew up going to church, and behaving nicely was the first cardinal rule I was taught. Sometimes I think I need a good dose of misbehavior to break me from some of my less savory orthodox inclinations and assumptions. It's been largely the social requirements of being part of a "church" (at least as I perceive them) that have kept me shying away from even attempting to attend services for the past four years. But with or without a disciplined regimen, I think I need a change of some sort, a spiritual renewal that isn't just a nice front, which will affect my life in a pretty major way. I've thought that for years now, and to be honest, I'm not sure that I won't just continue to think it for another couple of years before I am resolved to do something about it. I don't think it's going to leave me alone until I act, though, which must be a good thing.

Twizzling

2008-07-31T19:18:00.003-05:00

On the walk from the office to the train today, just before I reached the stairs down into the subway on Dearborn, I crossed the path of a guy riding a bike through the federal plaza. One of his hands was on a handlebar, and the other was gripping a full-size bag of Twizzlers, holding it up to his face like an ice cream cone so he could munch on the licorice inside. At first I thought it was odd, but then I thought, "Dude, I'm with you." I could handle a pound of red licorice right now.

I keep getting flashes of India that make me a little bummed to be back. But I also keep getting flashes of Chicago's blue sky that make me love this city. And somehow the guy with the Twizzlers adds a little bit of extra charm.

Bombay hiatus, but still creeped out by plastic...

2008-07-11T12:48:00.001-05:00

dodgingautorickshaws.blogspot.com

A sore arm, a visa, and four packs of probiotics

2008-06-28T06:43:00.002-05:00

Mark and I leave for India this Thursday, and it still doesn't quite seem like it's really going to happen. But everything is in order, including the visa that I was freaking out about getting in time and the last-minute tetanus shot that has made my arm sore and annoying for the past few days. The goal today is to get some Chicago souvenirs for my coworkers in Mumbai while we're down on museum campus.

But stepping back for a moment, I had a conversation with a couple of coworkers yesterday in which we were talking about people who somehow have all the weird and inconvenient issues happen to them. Isn't that strange, that some people just chronically have crap for luck and have to deal with all the random dilemmas that life seems so eager to throw at them, while others of us just kind of coast through with only an occasional blip of a problem and whine when those blips come up? I think that in my family, my sister has often been that random dilemma person, and I have to say that while I think that she is probably better suited to deal with it than the rest of us, I don't think it's very fair.

Sleepy in Chicago

2008-06-15T14:16:00.005-05:00

So Mark and I just got back from our weeklong vacation to Seattle, which was incredible. I don't have the energy or patience to describe all of the details at the moment, so I'll stick with the two biggest highlights for me:

1. Seeing Salman Rushdie read...Mark spotted the announcement in the paper that he would be reading from his new book, and so we took the bus down to Elliott Bay Book Company on Thursday and got to sit about 10 feet away from him. For those who don't know, Rushdie is my favorite novelist, and I was pretty much beside myself to get to see him. And he didn't disappoint -- he was really captivating, both when reading from his book (I have an autographed copy!) and when answering people's questions. The sense of humor that comes through in his books is also part of his natural conversation style. It was fantastic to get to see him, although I opted not to stand in line and gush all over him since we had other places to visit (the line was quite long), and I really preferred not to make a big fool of myself in front of him. Here's a picture of him:

2. Seeing mountains in Olympic National Park from Hurricane Ridge...it was a sort of scary drive up since I'm terrified of heights, but it was worth it, as the view was stunning. We were actually above one layer of clouds, which kind of hung down in the valley, and a higher layer of clouds, which was above us and the mountains. We got up to the ridge after just about everyone else had left, and there was a deer grazing in the meadow not far from us, which made the scene just that much more idyllic. Here's a photo of me at the top:

Flaky, Unremarkable, but Still Competitive

2008-06-04T21:27:00.003-05:00

I've been too old and corporate lately to feel interesting enough to blog, thus the flakiness. Work has basically taken over every vacant brain cell I have, and then I can hardly stand to Qwerty my way through a ramble here. But next week I'm on vacation, which brings with it a brand new excuse for neglecting to share my thoughts.

One of the things that I've been realizing lately through my relentless introspection is that I'm not terribly remarkable. I think that over the course of school and childhood, and even since then, it was easy to see the ways in which I'm different from other people, and I was given a lot of praise. I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, but I now realize that there are plenty of other people who are better than me at about anything that I do...I'm ashamed because it's taken so long to really, consciously realize that. It's not that I'm devaluing myself, it's just that I've got too many examples of truly extraordinary humans in my consciousness to think that I'm a stand-out at all. So now I have to learn to be okay with it, but I still would like to be the best at something, because I'm stupidly competitive.