Writer camp, day four

What I did today:

  • 7:15 am: awoke to shower and dress for breakfast at 7:30 in the dining hall
  • 9 - 10 am: attended Charles Baxter's lecture, "The Request Moment, or 'There's Something I' Want You to Do," in which he illustrated the importance of making demands in fiction and poetry
  • 10 - 10:45 am: printed out stories for workshop and meetings with editors
  • 10:45 - 11 am: snuck in a much-needed nap
  • 11: 15 - 1:30: set the dining room tables, served coffee, and bussed tables for lunch
  • 2:30 - 3:30: attended a publishing panel hosted by a group of literary agents and editors
  • 4:30 - 5:15: attended a reading by Emilia Philips, Terrance Hayes and Lia Purpura
  • 5:30 - 8: set the dining room, waited on and bussed two tables, snuck in a late dinner
  • 8 - 8:20: found time to shower
  • 8:30 - 9:30: attended a reading by Vievee Francis, Anthony Marra and Helena Maria Viramontes
  • 9:30 - 10:30: attended a reading by the Bread Loaf Scholars, a group of emerging writers who were awarded fellowships

I believe that Sunday will be my longest day; I'm set to work breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as an hour-long barista shift. I have an informational meeting scheduled with a literary agent and plan to attend a writing class lead by my aforementioned writer-crush Kristiana Kahakauwila. There are also two other readings scheduled and a special talk about submitting to literary magazines. Oh, and a dance. Did I mention that there's an entire population of Bread Loafers who make up the social staff? Apparently they organize and host 45 separate events over the 10 days of the conference--cocktail parties, pizza parties, picnics, dances.

This really is writer camp. 

Day Three

Yesterday the skies opened up in the middle of the afternoon. I had hitched a ride into nearby town of Middlebury to pick up supplies (earplugs, razors, granola bars, wine) and as we were climbing up the narrow curves of these old Vermont roads, the rain thrust itself upon us. It was furious and fast and necessary. A few hours later we were serving our first tables of Bread Loaf writers, taking orders, clearing tables, stopping occasionally when others asked, "Are you fiction? Or poetry?"

Later, after Michael Collier's introductory remarks, we gathered outside the barn, under the stars, and the woods were within arm's reach. After the talk died down, after the acoustics of our dorm had settled into the ground, when the quiet began to settle, so, too, did my bones. Minutes pass differently here; the quality of light, the quality of sound, it all warrants attention. I am surrounded by writers who hop from residency to residency, accomplished poets and essayists and novelists and cartoonists younger than I who have already published books, who don't say that they are Stegner fellows, but they don't have to. I feel like the girl in a high school cafeteria wandering from table to table with her tray, wondering how, exactly, I ended up here, but grateful that there is a seat somewhere for me. Excited to be along for the ride.

This morning when I woke up the sun was already brilliant. For the first time in three days I've taken off my down jacket. The mid-westerners are fine in t-shirts and shawls; last night they laughed when I put away my black jacket in favor of a larger, puffier red one, this one with a hood. "You are from California," they say. I don't mind, especially now that the sun is back, and my body has finally caught up with this time zone.

Perhaps what is the most refreshing about being here is the reminder that pursuing a literary life is not only worthwhile, but important. Or, better yet, possible. I'm using every single one of my available vacation days to be here, and it is absolutely worth it. While I long for the lifestyle that so many of these writers describe--spending their summer months writing upstate, their semesters teaching here and there--I know that there are as many ways to be a writer as there are to write itself.

This morning after breakfast I wandered down to Otter Creek. Who knew there were so many shades of green. That the ground could be so soft underfoot. The kind of quiet that happens here falls lightly. Living in a city, you grow to dread the quiet, because it means something entirely different is happening--some underbelly has been exposed. But out here it brings a peace I haven't felt in some time. The marketer in me wonders if you could bottle it, that feeling. 
But that would defeat its purpose.

I better go. It's nearly time to set up for lunch service. Wish me luck. 

First Day

I think I know what the word "bucolic" means now.  Bucolic means Vermont. Three shades of green woven together across rolling hills. Clouds furrowed deep and white, lilac startling against yellow farmhouses.

I arrived in this morning, after an overnight journey from Northern California to Chicago to Burlington, Vermont, where a friendly taxi driver picked me and another writer up for the hour-long drive to Middlebury College. I'm attending the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference on a work-study scholarship, which means I'm attending Charles Baxter's fiction workshop and meeting writers at all stages of their careers while serving food in the dining hall. And I am here a day early, when the campus is eerily quiet and calm, a summer camp spell waiting to happen. 

I had enough time, between my two layovers and long flights, to steam through Kristiana Kahakauwila's debut collection, This is Paradise. The stories are all set in Hawai'i, very beautifully rendered, featuring a wide range of characters whose relationship with the islands are complicated, emotional and honest. My brother recently moved to Honolulu, with his wife soon to follow, and as someone who likes her stories very firmly steeped in place, the book kept me going from San Jose to LAX to Chicago, even on the tiny express plane that took me here. Word has it the writer herself might be here.

I am already awkward in my fandom, and only a small group of us are here yet. I walked out down a long, pebbly lane, stopping to take pictures of the light on the hills, still not quite awake. When I arrived this morning it was lightly raining, and though raindrops have let up, the air still hangs with heavy anticipation. There are words in the air, waiting for us. Bucolic, they whisper. Pastoral.

We're here, we whisper back. We're ready.


On hope

I found myself awestruck in a candy store yesterday.

I had wandered in with the intention of buying a treat for a friend. I wanted to find some trinket or treat that would somehow communicate get well  and this is shitty but you're awesome  and  if you're not feeling well why the hell not indulge in retro candy ? The store was glittery and gleaming with glucose. Everything was very brightly lit, almost too lit, because the shelves gave off a neon glow as I walked by. There were rows and rows of saltwater taffy, long gummy bacon-shaped candies, vintage mallow candies and bottles and bottles of Jolly-Rancher-colored sodas.

Within a minute two young bespectacled men appeared before me. It was a slow night. They asked what I was looking for, and I paused, thinking, they don't really care why I'm here, they just want to sell me something. But they had very earnest faces, well-scrubbed glasses and kind, friendly smiles. They were positively eager. They reminded me of the boys I fell in love with growing up; boys who had very specific niches, boys who had creative obsessions. And before I knew what I was doing, I told them why I was there. That a person I cared about was struggling to accept bad news, that though the universe sometimes has no reason, that sometimes there is no ideal antidote, the impulse to do something, to act, to believe as if by sheer will we could redirect the cells in our own bodies--that is a fierce, powerful force. 

The boys listened and nodded and in complete sincerity recommended a brand of herbal root beer.  

It was refreshing, actually; the way they talked so confidently about the healing powers of certain herbs and spices, rattling off names of candy companies and the various ingredients they espoused, as if they were pharmacists prescribing me a drug. 

They asked how old she was, divining from that what kind of candy might have been popular when she was growing up, and if, perhaps, the simple act of seeing a now hard-to-find peanut butter brittle bar would somehow trigger a positive chain of events. "Maybe," they seemed to say, "maybe, she'll see this and..." 

I stood there in the candy shop, whose iridescent glow shone particularly bright as the sky outside grew darker, thinking of the lunch break I'd taken mere hours earlier, and how mad I'd been about something far less important than a 1980s candy bar.  I thought about all the conversations I'd had that day, and which ones were important, and which ones were not, and how on my lunch break I'd had the time to change into my running clothes, weave through the parking lot and speed out on a bike path for 30 minutes, charging because I felt like charging, thinking of the things that mattered and the things that didn't, imagining it all as a series of concentric circles. And how on that run, it had all felt so complicated, and in the candy shop, the bullshit just fell away.

I eventually purchased a small token and brought it to the counter, listening as the cashier detailed his girlfriend's father's miraculous recovery from an irregular heart condition. By this point there were other customers in the store, but both boys stood there by the counter, their faces serious and earnest, recommending this and recommending that. When I finally extricated myself from the store, I couldn't help following the glow of the windows on the street. It looked like hope. 

On time

It's funny the things that wake us up. 

Last week I got a sad phone call. A dear friend, a wonderful woman who I grew up with, called to say that her partner of many years had fallen very ill. It was the kind of conversation where more is communicated in tone of voice, in the gasp between words. The kind of conversation where the universe more or less bottoms out beneath you, because there is really nothing to say, nothing to do, that will make it better.

Ryan was on his way to pick me up at work and when I got off the phone it seemed that everything we said and everything we did was all at once so very trivial and so very important.  The time it took to run errands, the feel of the sun on our faces, the way we cooked our dinner -- they were all short privileges.

It has become clear to me that as I get older, there is a premium on time. Where I used to worry about how often I saw the people I loved, now I block out the days months ahead of time to ensure that the time does, indeed, exist, and not only that, but it will be honored accordingly. This can be challenging when jobs and opportunities take people elsewhere, but the value of the time itself does not diminish. There are friends that I see only once a year - or less, even - whose imprint is still indelible. My friend on the phone is one of those friends.

For S and for C: that you get well, that you find what you need, that you revel in each other.

 

 

Glimmers

I called my 91-year-old grandfather to wish him happy birthday and the phone went first to voicemail. I was unprepared to hear my grandmother's voice still on the machine nearly two years after her death. When he got to the phone mid-message I was almost disappointed; there was something about the quality of her voice, the pitch and timbre of it, that I desperately wanted to hear again.

~

I am relieved that the Supreme Court has effectively made gay marriage legal in California, but am very disappointed in Scalia's summary of the Voting Rights Act earlier this week. Sometimes it feels like American progress is a fickle thing. It definitely is a slow thing. Luckily, it is a thing.

~ 

Ryan and I have officially started our dog search. We have been talking about adopting a dog for over a year, but it wasn't until recently that we began filling out applications on Bay Area rescue sites. We got close earlier this week, when a representative from a local shelter sent us some pictures of a Nova Scotia duck trolling retriever, a brown shaggy guy who looked like he'd fit well at the end of our bed or snuggled in our tent on a camping trip. Someone else must have thought so too, because by early the next morning, he'd already been adopted.

I don't really mind, though, because this gives us more time to dream up the very best dog name in the history of dog names.

~ 

I've been waiting for a woman like Senator Wendy Davis. 

~ 

While cleaning out our bookshelf I came across Danzy Senna's latest story collection, You Are Free . I bought the book two years ago, while attending her writing class at the Tomales Bay Writer's Workshop, and I'd somehow misplaced it amidst a stack of grad school reading. I had forgotten how effortless her writing is, how seamless, how it is driven so clearly by ideas, but still somehow manages to surprise you in its subtle tricks and maneuvers. Her debut novel, Caucasia, is still one of the best novels I've read in recent years, and though this collection has a different tone, a different pace, and a different intention, it is still undeniably her voice, the voice of a writer still obsessed with the same cultural phenomena, yet somehow able to return to the same themes with a more mature, textured voice.  

I am always grateful for the writers who remind me why I read. 

 ~

Wise words from my mother, the one and only Lyra Halprin: "The best thing about being a writer is that you can do anything, be anyone, and then you can write about it." On days when work feels long, when the cubicle walls feel like they beginning to cave, when, frankly, I am just tired of testing my blood sugar, when someone near to me says something I never want to forget, something I'd like painted on a flag that I can wave whenever I need, I can always, always, trust that there is a way, some way, to make it all meaningful. I live for that very pursuit.

On blogging, Mary Englebreit, and the lost art of journaling

I haven't been blogging much because I've been writing in a physical journal, a small red notebook given to me by my friend Dumindra. I had forgotten the great joy that privacy can be, and how lovely it is to write completely uncensored, unliterary, unbeautiful observations about the world.

My perception of blogging has shifted ever since I attended a social media conference for work and was schooled on the "best ways to blog for business." The session was thirty minutes long and we were to write a snappy headline and three call-to-action bullet points for our product. That was it. These were all things I knew already, practically speaking, and could rationally understand, and had actually put into practice myself in the past, for different publications, but I left the conference terribly depressed, thinking, I wonder if this is how children will learn to write. In bite-size, profit-oriented bullet points that are sharable on social media and measurable on Google Analytics.

There is, of course, a huge difference between a personal diary and a blog, and an even greater  divide between a personal interest blog and a corporate blog. I suppose what I miss is writing without an audience. As in, no one will ever read this. As in, I am writing for the sake of writing, or for the purpose of working this idea out. As in, what I write right now will have no effect whatsoever on my profit margin. I am not convinced that children of the twenty-first century will have any sense of what it means to write privately or purposelessly.

I was given my first diary on my tenth birthday, a Mary Englebreit number with a locking key. [Note: total scam. The key never worked.] The diary was structured into two entries per page, allocating a mere three or four lines per day. Somehow I got it in my head that what mattered most was frequency, not quality; what mattered was that I wrote every single day, and I didn't bother to filter if any of it was actually meaningful. Thus many of my entries were things like:

"Dear Diary, 

Today I went to soccer. Then we ate pasta for dinner. Then I read Laura Ingalls Wilder. 

Sincerely, 

Julia" 

I think at that age I equated writing a diary with writing a book. Quite literally the difference was merely prepositional: i.e. "I'm writing a book" versus "I'm writing in a book." This was further encouraged by the fact that all the diaries people gave me were hard-bound books with pictures of waterfalls or kittens. I felt an allegiance to my diaries that I felt to little else. Though I gave up on my fourth-grade diary after a few months, I returned to journaling as a seventh grader, after reading Harriet the Spy.  I made a commitment to myself the night of February 19, 1997, that I would write every single day, for as long as it took to become a writer.

I wrote every day, or at the very least, summarized every day, until the end of my freshman year of high school. When high school started, my family got a new computer, which for some reason I thought would make my writing better. I tried writing entries for a few weeks, but soon gave up because, well, high school was busy, and even though the computer was more efficient, it wasn't the same as sitting on my bedroom floor in my pajamas with the radio on, playing with the size and style of my handwriting, creating a physical artifact of my adolescence.

These are all the things I wanted to say at the social media conference, but of course I knew I never could. People write for different reasons and under different circumstances. It always amazes me the millions of ways you can push words around on a page. I am grateful that the professional work I do does challenge me and represents ideals and ethics that I support. It is remarkable, though, to think of how the Internet as a medium for communication has effectively rewritten the act of writing itself.

It seems fitting to end this post by remarking on its inappropriate length and total lack of bullet points and imperatives. Seen from the eyes of social media executives (because they are a thing now), this post is nothing more than a slowly deflating balloon. 

But it's my balloon, so there. 

 

Getting it all down

Things I worried about when I was five years old:

  • adults getting on their knees so they could look me in the face
  • what I'd do if someone actually passed me the ball on the soccer field
  • if I had somehow accidentally killed our cockapoo Sasha, who laid down on the grass and died about an hour after I fed her the remainder of my ice cream sandwich
  • if my part in the Teddy Bears Circus play required me to utter a single line

​Things I cared about: Beatrix Potter, dogs, cats, carrots, apples, pink jelly shoes, Sesame Street, Legos, my cousins, my parents, my kindergarten teacher Ms. Neu, my friends, palm tree ponytails

Things I worried about when I was ten years old:

  • delivering my first-ever hour-long oral presentation in Ms. Birse's class
  • whether or not I was officially too old to be watching Shining Time Station
  • ​being trailed by sixth-graders on BMX bikes on my walk home from school
  • Two words: Zach and Brad

​Things I cared about: all things Laura Ingalls Wilder, American Girl dolls, memorizing all 50 states and their capitals, winning the library reading contest, ​basketball, kicking the soccer ball against the garage door, writing in my diary, slip n' slides, Rollerblades

Things I worried about when I was fifteen years old:​

  • if, once my brother left for college, I'd somehow be an only child?
  • what I was actually supposed to do when a boy asked me to dance 
  • ​whether it was better to sag my corduroy pants below my waistline or fasten my overalls (yes, overalls) around the rib-level
  • getting an STD, inexplicably, without having sex

​Things I cared about: creative writing, rowing, youth group, disco dances, boys, theater, gardening, friends, family, the library, running a 5k

Things I worried about when I was twenty years old:

  • if I'd only get one chance at love, and I'd already messed it up
  • losing my insulin pump supplies in airport security, or, worse, being informed that I could not carry the medical supplies I needed
  • ​being mistaken for the "wrong kind" of American abroad
  • tsunamis and hurricanes

​Things I cared about: becoming fluent in Spanish, being in love, traveling, curing type 1 diabetes, writing, running a 10k, taking long bus trips around Granada by myself, tapas, housing co-ops, Weezer, Ben Folds, Wilco, friends, family, American politics, Rollerblades (still)

Things I worried about when I was twenty-five years old:

  • ​​whether or not I was in the right place; the right apartment, the right city, the right job, the right school, the right career
  • whether or not I had a "career," or rather, where one could pick one up
  • ever having the money or the job to afford the healthcare I needed

​Things I cared about: biking, running a half marathon, traveling, making the rent, finding a literary community, radio, Ryan, friends, family, getting into grad school, becoming a better writer

Things I worry about now:

  • finishing projects I start
  • finding time to maintain friendships while being a good daughter, sister, friend, partner
  • my 90-year-old grandparents
  • my privacy settings on social media ​
  • setting aside time to travel all the places I want to go, see all the friends I want to see, write all the things I want to write, run all the races I want to run
  • accidentally hurting the people I love the most

Things I care about: My family, my soon-to-be-family, my friends, Ryan. Writing well. Finding - and sometimes creating - community. Biking to work in the early morning along the Guadalupe River. Running faster. Tricking my body into thinking it's normal. NPR. Cooking. Really learning to listen. Books that wake me up. Camping. Pink Converse sneakers and green pants. Lighting a paper lantern and holding the corners of it with my favorite man in the world, watching as it gets ever smaller in the sky, surrounded by the happy grown-up versions of the people I grew up with. And always, forever, writing it all down.

Rafael Campo and the Poetry of Medicine

Tuesday nights are sacred because Tuesday nights are writing nights. Every Tuesday I drive to San Francisco to attend Matthew Clark Davison's Writing Lab, a six-week generative writing workshop. Since completing graduate school I have felt anything but that--complete. The stories I started in Davis and San Francisco rattle around in my bones like a lost ache. In Matthew's class I've had a chance to step back and see the characters and conflicts with a greater kindness and compassion than I ever did in grad school. Last night's lesson had something to do with that.

Matthew shared an interview Cortney Davis did of poet and physician Rafael Campo. Campo believes that poetry is not only an expression of humanity, but an ongoing exercise in empathy. The interview, which is available on Poets.Org,​ explores how Campo turned toward medicine because he first thought it might "straighten" him out and "whiten" his identity. Over time, though, poetry became an important part of his practice. I was especially moved by Campo's belief that patients need to hear both a data-driven narrative and a poetry-driven one:

I think my patients are surprised sometimes to find a poem together with patient education pamphlets or scientific articles—and yet so often that’s what they want to discuss at the next visit. A poem says to a patient that I want to know more than just my own biomedical narrative of her illness—that I want to take care of her as a whole person, with attention to both the blood sugar results and also her struggles to maintain them in our target for treatment—that slice of birthday cake she couldn’t eat at her child’s party, the sting each time she must administer her insulin, are just as important. Such an approach, I think, not only has practical value—because the patient who trusts me will confide in me the detail of a symptom that helps me reach the correct diagnosis more expeditiously—but also is more rewarding on a personal level. So many docs these days feel alienated from their own work and from their patients. I think that’s largely due to all the obstacles to caring for patients, really caring for them, that poetry can help short-circuit: the burdens of such a rapidly expanding knowledge base, the constraints imposed by managed care on the time we can spend with our patients, the challenges of caring for increasingly diverse, multicultural patients. Poetry gets us past all the machines, literally to the heart of the matter; poetry expands the interaction with a patient to a space without time limitations; poetry bridges those cross cultural gaps by speaking in the most elemental and mutually understood form of language we have. ​

​Last night I was struck by how perfectly Campo captured the exact feeling I have had, time and time again, while sitting in a doctor's office. I've written before about that gap that so often occurs between bedside manner and effective treatment. Test results and emerging technology can help us analyze data, but data is useless without full human understanding. As a type 1 diabetic, few things speak to me more than a physician's ability to see a blood sugar result and fully see the person behind it--the circumstances that caused a high number or the stress that caused a low one. As a writer, it is always my intention to approach my subjects with compassion, but that means seeing beyond deeply embedded cultural stereotype. That's the crux of it--that's where stories get interesting.

When Campo says that "poetry helps us get past all the machines," I think of all the times we find the easy​ story, versus ​the honest​, more compelling one. Writing honest fiction to me means being patient with my characters, really doing my homework, reading, traveling, listening to other writers read, accepting shitty first (and second...and third...) drafts, and aspiring for empathy. When I sit down to write, it's hard not to take all of these expectations with me.

When I go to the Lab, though, the rules are different. Time is set aside to think and write. The burden of accomplishment, of having a fully realized, living story, is secondary to the greater intention to explore who we are, who our characters might be. That freedom reminds me of why I like to write in the first place.

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I Heart Tig Notaro

​Tig Notaro is one of my heroes. Last year she survived an intense bacterial infection and pneumonia, lost her mother in a tragic accident, was dumped by her girlfriend and then was subsequently diagnosed with breast cancer. You want to give her an award for surviving it all. Impressive though that is, that's not why I love her. I love her because she somehow found a way to make it funny.

Within days of her diagnosis, she opened her now-famous comedy set with the lines, "“Hello! Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you?” The half hour set represents comedy at its best--both as a confrontation to life's lowest moments, and as an irreverent antidote to all the reactions people are "supposed" to have when the shit hits the fan. Esteemed comedian Louis C.K. insisted that she release the set as an album and sell it online. Ira Glass aired an excerpt of it on This American Life. I bought it and can vouch that it is worth way more than its $5. It is aptly titled "Live."

Last week's spot on Conan reinforces not only her unique voice and perspective as a comic, but also her underlying social critique. The lady's a genius. ​Get off your phone and buy her album.

The art of teatro

When I lived in southern Spain, I had the good fortune to meet Marta Moreno, an English teacher at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas in Fuengirola. I spent my days trying to teach Spanish to British elementary students in the neighboring town of La Cala, and my nights learning Spanish proverbs via Marta's engaging (and free) teatro classes. About half of the group were Spanish speakers enrolled in her English classes, and the other half were Americans and native English speakers who were there to practice Spanish. Marta encouraged us to bring in photos from our high school proms, to share American slang, to bring in recipes and cultural anecdotes that would provoke discussion. One week she gave us a Xeroxed handout with a number of different cartoon expressions with adjectives written under their faces (agobiado, liado, encantado) --a resource that I still have six years later, pinned to the pliable walls of my cubicle at work, though its edges are frayed and curled.

I'll never forget those final weeks in Málaga, when she invited a group of teatro regulars over to the condo she shared with her husband and daughter, just blocks from the city's central square. I remember how groovy it all was; they were intellectuals, artists, educators, speakers of multiple languages, and they lived in the most beautiful space. It was a warm night in late May when they led us up a narrow staircase to their balcony. We had to walk through a curtain of gauze to get to it. I remember the way the fabric felt against my face, the way my Belgian friend Geoff sat in the sun with his guitar.

Geoff on the patio

For my first several months in Spain, I was obsessed with the French film L'Auberge Espangole, which followed a group of young ERASMUS students from half a dozen countries. How badly I wanted that feeling--the exposure to other cultures, other languages, other everythings. It wasn't until that evening on Marta's balcony that I realized that that's exactly what teatro was: a group of people bound together by language and location. A group of people gathered on a sunny balcony not far from the sea, the throng of cathedral bells echoing off cobblestone.

Marta and I have stayed in touch. A few years ago, she established a multilingual publication called Collage Magazine that her English classes have been producing every spring. The magazine showcases writing both from her students and with her friends from around the world, and also features the glorious photographs of her husband, Lorenzo Hernandez, whose skill and talent have taken him around the world. (This is the same Lorenzo Hernandez who took the picture on my About page--taken that very day on their famous balcony.)

In 2010 she asked me to contribute a piece about San Francisco. This winter, she contacted me because they were working on a jazz issue. I submitted a piece about New Orleans, and encouraged my mother, longtime journalist and nonfiction writer Lyra Halprin, to submit as well. The issue is gorgeous--there are essays, interviews and stories written in Spanish, English and French, as well as Lorenzo's stunning images of musicians and artists from around the world. It is a true work of art--and you can view all 62 pages of it here.

I feel like it is especially important to share this right now, after the tragedy of the Boston Marathon, and the explosions in West Texas, and Congress' failure to pass crucial legislation. All week I have meditated on this violence, this tragedy, this surprising and ferocious turn of events, but it is projects like Collage Magazine that surface true beauty in the world, in multiple languages, in multiple countries. It is a humble effort, but an important one, a good reminder that regardless of what's happening in the world we can still write, we can still sing, we can still take photos, we can still revel in it, all of it, together.​

For Boston

I was at work when I heard what happened in Boston today. Roughly 23,000 runners started the prestigious Boston Marathon early this morning--and only 17,580 crossed the finish line after two hidden bombs were detonated, killing three and injuring more than a hundred. The irony of it, stealing healthy people of their limbs just before accomplishing a major physical feat--it hit me in the knees. It's macabre.​ It's cruel.

For Boston: that you rebuild, that you heal, that you find strength. ​

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On persistence

run!.jpg

Ryan, Shirlee and I ran a half marathon in Santa Cruz this morning. It was Ryan's first half, my fourth, and Shirlee's seventh. This is perhaps my favorite course; it runs along West Cliff, around Natural Bridges State Park, and circles the bluffs out at Wilder State Park. Shirlee and I ran it last year and I convinced Ryan to train with me this winter. ​

A few weeks before we started dating, Ryan told me about a 10k in Golden Gate Park. He sent me link and mentioned that he'd be running it with his family. My dad and I ran it together, though I kept my eye out for Ryan and Richie. I kept pace with my dad until the final mile, at which point I broke free and tried furiously to catch Ryan, thinking what a badass I'd be if I beat him in that final push. ​Needless to say, I did not beat him, though I very nearly caught up. We said hi to each other and then walked our separate ways to stretch. Two months later he donned his now-famous Christmas moose sweater and surprised me with a kiss on his back porch.

The two years I was in grad school, I ran three half marathons with Shirlee, and at each of them, our families were there to cheer us on, Ryan always waiting on that final corner to shout encouragement. ​Last spring, he trained for a 10k and placed well. This winter, while juggling five classes and coaching badminton, he ran with me every Saturday morning. Within a few weeks he had me beat.

I've come to realize that the activities I love most require the fiercest form of persistence. Writing, running, camping, traveling--in some cases, even reading demands a sustained attention that these days is kind of rare. These are all activities that I enjoy doing alone--and love​ doing with my favorite people. I've noticed, too, that it is much easier to be persistent when can feel support the whole way through---on the sidelines or even a mile or two down the road.

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On careers

​One of the tasks I must complete at my day job is to write useful "career tips" for professional engineers, scientists, educators and environmental hygienists. Thus, I spend a lot of time researching professional organizations, career sites and blogs that boast the latest and greatest approaches to finding the right job.

One of the sites this took me to recommended a friendly aptitude quiz. I couldn't help myself. When I got home I had to take it. The results recommended the following jobs, based on my skills and interests:

  • Teacher
  • Professor
  • Tour Guide
  • Landscaper/Groundskeeper
  • Stock/warehouse clerk
  • Grocery Bagger
  • Dining Room and Cafeteria Attendant
  • Custodian/Janitor
  • Cook
  • Baggage Handler
  • Research Assistant
  • Editor/Writer
  • Production Line Worker
  • Web Developer
  • Data Entry Clerk
  • Nursery/Plant Worker
  • Construction Worker
  • Librarian

I was surprised by these results -- not so much in their accuracy, but by their spread. Sometimes I wonder if I'd be a better writer if my daily work required me to sit or stand for hours, simply observing. In a way, all jobs require one to observe, but in how many is that our primary occupation?

"Dining room and cafeteria attendant" might be one of my favorites. This, I believe, was selected because I had indicated both an interest in working with children and a willingness to lift objects over a certain weight. When I think of the cafeteria attendants I have known, I immediately think of people who can tell stories, whose daily uniforms are in themselves stories, whose lives are instantly interesting.

Perhaps the best part of this list is the fact that the writer of this quiz somehow took the average of all of my dream jobs and actual jobs. The summer after I graduated college, I was working three different, equally wonderful jobs: tutoring college students, leading poetry workshops at a summer camp for teens, and giving college tours to incoming freshmen. I remember the afternoon it struck me that this is the way I would live a fulfilling life: simply juggling multiple interesting projects, as each project satisfied some passion or creative challenge. It seemed genius...until I realized that I'd have to pay out of pocket for health insurance.

I really wonder whoever wrote the algorithm for this career quiz. I wonder how many jobs they have. I wonder what stories they'd tell.

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