Wandering through the Words

Why do I write? This is a question I have asked myself with varying degrees of urgency over the past few years. Now is one of those heightened moments. I suppose when I spend the majority of my day writing at work and a good chunk of my free time writing stories on my own, I want to think that there is some value in the exercise. Some greater purpose that will justify the hours.

The value of creative writing is not as immediately discernible as other forms of writing that function primary to convey information. In my case, the ulitity is less clear, and, I think, less important. In any case, it's not ulitity as we typically think of it.

I’ve noticed that Jesus did not speak very often in didactic statements or theologizing or the mere recitation of facts. I’m sure he did on occasion—such words are a necessity at times—but these are not then the words that his followers remembered, that they found imperative to record. What they wrote down were stories. Stories and metaphors. This is how Jesus communicated with the crowds, and this is how the crowds learned.

“There once was a landowner who planted a vineyard,” Jesus said. Here we see a picture in our mind’s eye—a man and his vineyard and the hot sun beating down on the grapes—and this is an image that has shape, that we can metaphorically touch and participate in. And then Jesus goes on with the story, and even if the people on those dry mountain slopes did not understand the meaning of it, as it is clear they often did not, they could still remember it, and they could repeat it to their friends back home, and they could puzzle over it together. And later, perhaps years later, an incident would happen in their life that would bring to mind this story which they did not realize they still remembered and suddenly something would fall into place and their eyes would be opened and it would all finally make sense.

Jesus was a smart man. Stories stick. Stories give words and ideas a handle, so that people can find a point of entry.

But parables for the purpose of teaching are one thing—novels and short stories and memoirs quite another. What’s the point of fiction? some people ask. It’s not real anyway. It never happened. It’s just an escape from the world, an excuse not to engage in what’s happening right in front of you. I admit, I ask myself this question sometimes too. It is a good question to ask, I think: What is the point of fiction? Why have I spent so many hours of my life bent over a book or dreaming up characters to set free in a world of my own creating? I like to think the answer is deeper, more involved, than “it’s fun.” Though it most assuredly is. Sometimes.

The truth is, there are some things that can only be communicated in a round-about way because they are too harsh or brilliant to face head-on. Emily Dickinson wrote a poem about this: “Tell the truth but tell it slant—/Success in circuit lies,” she writes. “Too bright for our infirm Delight/The Truth’s superb surprise.” In stories—and in some other forms of writing—truth slips in through the back door of the mind, almost unnoticed. We couldn’t handle it otherwise; we’d fight it off. But stories—you can’t argue with them. They are what they are.

C.S. Lewis once said that nearly everything of importance he ever learned was communicated through metaphor. He certainly was a master of it himself. Who can forget, having read it, that image of the “ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea”? Everyone can certainly imagine such a scene—and themselves in it. Less people will remember the words, “we are too easily pleased by the world.” Although this communicates essentially the same message, it lacks the heart, and it lacks the handle.

Good writing is like a perfect piece of glass or the stillest, clearest body of water. You look in and you see something so pure and vibrant that you wonder how you never saw it before. And yet, you also realize this is not the first time you’ve caught a glimpse. You see it is something that you’ve always known but have never brought into perfect focus. These are the treasures that metaphor and imagery and story can bring us.

I am no C.S. Lewis. I am a lowly twenty-something with no published works and no Oxford education. My words are not read by many people and may never be. But I still want to weave the web of story that may in the end be the only way to understand the world in all its shades of grey. I write to understand, to elucidate, as I am doing now writing this essay, seeking an answer to my original question. But I also write to confound, to confuse and scramble-up, so that I may know—and others may know it too—that nothing in life is straight-forward and no answers are easy.

We are called to emulate Jesus, and I guess this is the way that makes the most sense to me.

The Death of the White Stag

I realized today that I no longer feel in a stage of transition. It’s taken me a year and half, but I have finally come to define my life as it—not as where it is going or where it has come from. I not just a post-grad, looking back at and feeling nostalgic for my college experience. And I am not merely straining towards the future, single-mindedly pursuing that elusive “career” we all seem to be hunting. I’m beginning to wonder if the creature even exists in all its mythic glory.

This place—it’s a nice place to be.

Hello, Again

It's been quite some time since my last blog post, and even that one was a cop-out (merely pasting a link in a window and adding one or two sentences of explanation). I do think I have a pretty good excuse, though. My first Masters of Fine Arts application was due yesterday at midnight, and nearly all my free time in the past few months has been dedicated to working on my writing portfolio. When you spend all day writing in the office for work and all evening writing at home for school, there isn't a lot of mental energy left over to write for "fun." (Not that working on my portfolio hasn't been fun in its own way. It has been. But also stressful.)

Today is the first day in a long time I haven't felt an urgency to write and edit. My next application is due in two weeks, but most of the grunt work is done at this point and the hardest part is hopefully behind me. And yet, of course, here I am, writing. I guess I don't know what else to do with myself.

Applying for graduate schools---particularly MFA programs, where most schools boast an acceptance rate between one and ten percent---is an extremely exposing process. Rarely in my life have I felt more vulnerable than I do now. Writing is such a personal act, even when writing fiction, and to be judged solely on that standard, to be told either you are or you aren't good enough based on one collection of painfully birthed stories, feels kind of like someone is deciding whether or not to execute your kid. A slight exaggeration, maybe, but it's something close.

It's also scary for another reason. By deciding to apply to programs, I have drawn a line in the sand for myself and for all those who hear about it (aka you). "Here I have decided that writing is the passion to which I want to devote the rest of my life (or at least the next few years), and here is the way I plan to do that." Whenever you verbalize what you want and take steps to attain it, you make yourself vulnerable to disappointment. This is not a bad thing, obviously, but it does mean that the consequences of failure feel higher. The more you want something, the harder it is when you don't get it.

All of this means that I have to hold my plans and my goals loosely. I need to be ok with the idea of not getting into schools this time around and waiting another year or two if necessary. This could be, and I'm not just saying this to convince myself, a very good thing. But I also need to not let fear of failure keep me from trying my absolute best on the remaining eight applications. I need to remember, as has been my constant lesson this past year and half, that life happens and things usually work out ok in the end for those who are patient.

So I'm trying to be patient.

An Interesting Article

It speaks to themes I have addressed on and off in this blog. Potentially a little insulting for members of my generation, but, if nothing else, the graphics are highly entertaining. Recommended reading for anyone between the ages of 18 and 30.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html

Patience, Portfolios, and Piles of Mush

I like quantifiable things. I like things that can be counted, recorded, and later analyzed. For example, the number of miles I have run or biked each day. My grocery reciepts. The times my athletes run in each cross country meet and their splits per mile. The balance of my bank account. My budgets on Mint. I make to-do lists for fun, even when I’m not busy---perhaps especially when I’m not busy---and checking them off brings me pleasure.

So why on earth, I’m beginning to ask myself---why did I chose to pursue writing, of all the fields available to me? Why did I pick the most unquantifiable of endeavors, the most elusive, the most resistant to to-do lists and check marks? Shouldn’t I have gone into statistics or accounting or engineering maybe, rather than this right-brain frustration?

I’m feeling this way because I’m in the process of applying to Master of Fine Arts programs, and, if you couldn’t tell, the portfolio-producing process has not been progressing as smoothly as I hoped. The plan is to produce two flawless and imaginative short stories by November. So far, after nearly three months of sincere effort, my brain has birthed only one pile of mush that may be breathing its last breath. I’m trying not to panic.

Unfortunately for me, when it comes to MFA programs in creative writing, numbers don’t matter. Most schools don’t require a GRE score. The ones that do just want to make sure you’re not stupid. Undergraduate GPAs… well, as long you passed everything, it shouldn’t be a problem. According to a book I have about the MFA application process, 90% of your application rests on the 35-40 page writing sample in your portfolio. In other words, it all comes down to whether or not some professor decides he or she likes my story. One person could dash my hopes on a whim, no matter what my GRE or GPA is.

This is not good news for a person who likes to quantify things.

There is no way to quantify a story. There is no way to know for sure how I stack up against the hundreds of other applicants, each jostling for just a few spots. No average LSAT score, no comparable GPA or recommended extracurriculars. I can’t objectively rate my writing on a scale of 1 to 10 and use that to decide which programs to apply to. I also can’t force my writing to get better, to become more creative, to shape itself into something beautiful and poignant. Time spent does not necessarily translate into quality achieved.

That’s just how writing is, and I better get used to it because I haven’t exactly left myself room for other pursuits. Writing requires a lot of patience---also not one of my natural strengths. “Have patience with the process,” I typed on a sticky note on my laptop desktop after reading it in Story, Robert McKee’s famous book on writing and plot. I have to remind myself of this frequently. Patience. Patience. Patience.

Patience with the process is not an easy thing, in writing or in any other area of life. I like quick results and check marks, and now that I’m a year out of college, I feel like the clock is ticking for me to start producing great things. After all, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise when he was only 23 and W.H. Auden had his first book of poetry published at the same age! It’s a bit ridiculous to be comparing myself to these luminaries, I know, and to be feeling the pressures of time when I’m still a baby in the eyes of a lot of people, but it’s hard not to be frustrated with the slow progression of my writing. It’s hard not to wish for an easy way to quantify my skill level and detail the exact steps I need to take in order to increase it and produce something amazing.

I guess that’s why I’m attempting to go back to school, ultimately. To get better and to find out how to do that. But first I need to get in, and that may very well be the hardest part.

Cooking for One

I improvised a pear crisp today out of three pears, some oatmeal, butter, brown sugar, and a bit of cinnamon. It was pretty good, despite the fact that I didn’t use a recipe or measure anything. Good enough that I decided to make it my dinner.

Cooking for one is a rather motley and scattershot activity. When no one else is eating your meals, you can feel free to eat whatever strange (or easy) food strikes your fancy. Like pear crisp for dinner. Or beans from a can heated in the microwave. Or the egg and broccoli and black beans and tomato scramble thing I made yesterday because that was what I had in the fridge (the eggs turned kind of gray from the black beans, but it actually tasted fine).

It’s not that I don’t know how to cook. I do. At least, well enough not to totally embarrass myself in the kitchen. But sometimes I don’t always feel like putting in much effort or buying those non-essential things at the grocery store that would afford me a little more creativity. Maybe I’m just being lazy. Or cheap. I’ve definitely been accused of that one.

Living on my own again, I feel a little like I’m back in my college days, when I was on a ten-meal-a-week plan at the cafeteria and had about 15 additional dollars to spend on food. I was pretty good then at tracking down free meals---being on a sports team helped. But my non-cafeteria diet still consisted mainly of oatmeal, cheap wheat bread, peanut butter, and whatever cereal I stole from my parents’ house when I was home on break. I have a little more money than that to spend now, thank God, because I’ve only recently been able to bring myself to eat oatmeal again.

Still, it’s hard to summon up the motivation to make anything fancy when I know I’m the only one who is going to be eating it. And I sort of like having the freedom to make weird things and not have to subject anyone else to the risk or the malnutrition. Like improvised pear crisp for dinner.

On Changing the World

I read an article recently on theatlantic.com by Ron Fornier about the difference between my generation, the Millennials, and my parents’ generation, the Baby Boomers. The article focused mainly on the attitude of each generation toward politics and Washington, but a side comment caught my attention.

Fornier noted that Millennials---while often labeled as self-absorbed, egotistical, and entitled (and I’m not saying this isn’t true)---are actually more willing than previous generations to desire careers that further their community rather than their bank account. Millennials are more likely to volunteer, study abroad, and look beyond themselves when envisioning the ideal job. Growing up in a world that is more interconnected than ever, we are more likely to see global problems as our own.

As someone immersed in the culture of the Millennials, I have to say that I find this to be true, at least in my own circles of friends and acquaintances. I have no evidence to support that this desire to be world changers is more pronounced in my generation than in previous ones, as I have only been a 23-year-old in the year 2013 and not in 1973, but the words of my peers certainly suggest a longing for meaning and purpose in their career path.

While in college, we dream of working for non-profits and NGOs. We want to bring social justice to the red light districts of Bangkok, end hunger in Somalia, bring peace to Palestine, fight AIDS in South Africa. We want to be doctors, teachers, child-huggers, social workers, advocates for change. Our goals are lofty. So are our expectations.

The reason so many of us---us post-grad Millennials---are so frustrated, I think, is because there is almost always a lag after college graduation between intense passion and practical capacity. We want so badly to be doing something important and meaningful. But then we realize, to our dismay, that we aren’t actually helpful to anyone yet. We have a college degree but we have no skills, no experience.

We have only student loans and monotonous entry-level jobs (if we’re lucky). As we organize mind-numbing spreadsheets, file back-log data, and make coffee for our superiors, we wonder, how am I going to change the world doing this?

It is after this thought that many decide to go to grad school.

I don’t blame them.

Changing the world is a heck of a lot harder in practice than in theory, particularly, as I’m discovering, when you went to a liberal arts college and got a degree in English writing. I firmly believe that writing can change the world. I have less confidence now that my writing can do that. But I hold onto my passion to make a difference, to be a piece of the change, proudly, fiercely almost, because there is a part of me that worries I am one short step from apathy. One quick slide away from settling for something significantly less than my dreams.

It happens to people. I’ve seen it.

Somewhere along the way, life becomes about survival. We just need to put food in our mouths and a roof over our heads. We need an income. And let’s face it, most of us don’t have the luxury of being too picky about where that comes from. After a while, our dreams or passions fade. At first this bothers us. Then we don’t really care.

Somehow I---we, post-grads, everyone---need to find a new way of looking at what it means to “change the world” and how we can be a part of that. I purposefully won’t use the words “realistic middle ground” because all of them suggest to me compromise and an easy way out. But a little bit of reality and redefinition is required to prevent the majority of people from succombing to disappointment and defeat, I think. Me being one of them.

It is important to hold in tension a healthy fear of apathy and a passion for change with the humble understanding that I am just one person on this earth of 7 billion, living in a tiny window of time that will soon pass and be forgotten. As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in his little book Leaf by Niggle, I’ll be lucky to paint even a single leaf in this giant tree of God’s.

That being said, I still want my one leaf to look amazing.

Life's a Canvas

The walls of my new basement bedroom are the whitest white. I don’t mind the color, given that my overhead lights have less wattage than a candle and my one window looks out at a recessed wood wall. White keeps the room from looking too dim. Or, at least less dim than it might otherwise.

But my room is big, the walls long, and I do not have adequate furniture or decor to prevent a certain blankness from affecting the overall feeling of the place. My few sparse pictures and posters seem more to call attention to the vast white spaces than to fill them. There is a particularly large, particularly empty stretch on the wall opposite my bed. I look at it at night before turning off my lamp and it yawns back at me.

When I moved, I brought a big blank canvas from my house and my box of paints to help fill this void. I haven’t done anything with them yet or decided what colors to use. I’m waiting for a sudden rush of inspiration.

I do that a lot in life, I think. Wait for the inspiration, the motivation, the right opportunity, to find me. I tend to put off decisions with the assumption that the right choice will somehow just creep into my mind when I’m not paying attention. A lot of the time, this works out ok for me. I’m good at being patient when it means not interrupting the status quo.

But I'm realizing that like my wall, my hopes for the future will remain a blank and unfulfilled reality unless I do something to invigorate them. Sometimes great opportunities fall into your lap with little or no effort on your part, but mostly that just happens in movies. Passivity gets me and my canvas nowhere. I can’t produce a work of art unless I actually pick up my brush and dip it in the paint.

Can you tell I’m feeling guilty about not spending very much time on my writing this month?

Leaving the Nest

A week and a half ago I moved out of my bedroom at my parents’ house for probably the last time. It sounds funny now to say that---“my parents’ house.” It’s no longer really mine. Now when I say “my house” I mean a different one, one in a quaint little neighborhood about 20 minutes west, occupied by myself and 3 other girls. Of course, this house doesn’t quite feel like home either yet. It feels more like being back in college.

The bedroom at my parents’ looks strange now that I’ve removed most of my things. All that made it homey and mine has been transported or packed away, leaving behind barren shelves and stretches of blank carpet. The blue walls are conspicuously bare and cold, studded with nails that hold no picture frames or posters. If I were my parents, I’d keep that bedroom door closed. It’s empty yet not totally clean, its existence speaking loudly of an absence.

Adult children are really not meant to live with their parents. This is what I’ve decided over the last 15 months, even though my experience at home was largely positive. It happens and sometimes it’s the right decision but only because other plans fall through or things don’t work out quite as we’d like them to. The return to the high school bedroom is rarely Option A. And yet so many of my peers are in this situation, happy or not happy, trying or not trying, to make the best of it. We lack money. We possess debt. We haven’t a clue where or when the next job will appear. We grit our teeth and bare it.

In this situation, parents and children who under normal circumstance get along fine often find themselves unable to connect. Possibly they fight. Not infrequently they live in an undercurrent of passive aggressive tension. Nobody is quite sure how this is supposed to work, how they’re supposed to act.

What role does the adult child play in the machine of the family? How entitled is she to her own schedule? Completely entitled, the parent might say. And yet the mother’s feelings are hurt when her daughter rarely comes home for dinner. Can the child freely make his own life choices? Of course, everyone agrees, and yet the son feels a latent guilt living under his father’s watchful eye. This guilt may later grow to resentment, though no one is at fault.
 

It’s not that we children don’t appreciate the free rent, the food, the minimal expenses, and I apologize that we often act as though we don’t. It’s that we regret that we need them. It’s that we are ashamed we cannot provide these things for ourselves. Or perhaps we can provide them, but then we feel ashamed that we can but still are not. We do not like having to tell people, “Yeah, I live with my parents.” There is usually a slight embarrassed silence after this statement, which we hurry to fill with some justification. “I’m just trying to save money to pay off loans,” or “I’m hoping to move within 6 months so I didn’t want to sign a lease,” or “I’m looking for a job.” The recipients of these statements nod respectfully. We hate this as well.

We acutely feel our lack of independence and so we compensate, asserting independence in whatever other way we can. Absenting the house for long periods of time. Spending time with friends in other apartments, other cities. Withholding information, perhaps not consciously, to keep some illusion of privacy and a separate life. Rebellion, thought to have run its course in high school, may return with an immature, embarrassed edge. We are not proud of ourselves.

It is difficult to move from the autonomy of college life back to the psuedo-autonomy of life at home. It is difficult to return to a state that has not been our reality since we were 17 or 18 and know how to incorporate 4+ years of independence into that routine. Cut us a little slack if it seems that our maturity level has dropped a few notches. We struggle to adjust. Restless, straining, and off-kilter, we feel at odds with our circumstances in some fundamental way.

Of course, despite all this, despite the fact that I know I am meant to grow up and grow out, despite my readiness to have a place of my own, it’s still a little hard to make that final break. That’s the paradox of this strange time of life. There cannot be a moving forward without a leaving behind.

My departure marks the first time my parents have less than three kids living at home since their third child was born in 1994. Two seems so empty, so quiet, compared to the chaos of five. It’s sad to realize that all the members of my family will never live under the same roof again. The nucleus is breaking up, the bedrooms emptying out. It’s a good thing---I enjoy seeing the different directions my siblings lives are taking---but it’s also a kind of loss.

“But you’ll have a bathroom all to yourself now!” I told my 13-year-old sister when she expressed some dismay that I would be leaving her to the unbuffered mercy of her older brother.

“Yeah,” she admitted, not looking me in the eye, “but you were the one who cleaned it.” This is as close as she’ll come to saying she’ll miss me. I’ll take what I can get. I’ll miss her too.

Today after cross country practice I returned to my parents’ house to welcome my younger brother home from a summer in California. While there, I sent a text to my older brother: “I’m at home.” “Which home?” he texted back. It’s a fair question; home is an ambiguous word now.

I guess this is just one more step into the real world, that harsh and exhilarating place that beckons us to partake of its tragedy and adventure. I’ve been living there already, of course. It just feels more official now.

Pretty as a Picture

I got a digital camera ahead of the curve. I was 12 years old and paid for it all myself with cash that I saved up from my allowance and the odd babysitting job. In the tech department of Sam’s Club, I picked out the highest quality point-and-shoot available at that time: a 5 mega-pixel box of silver plastic with 3x optical zoom and a tiny screen in the back. You couldn’t sell it for $25 now. But once upon a time, it was a magnificent piece of technology.

Eleven years later, it has never been easier for the average person to take professional-looking pictures. Even the tiny cameras on cell phones take photos of surprising clarity and color---with a plethora of filter options so they can appear appropriately aged or bright or grainy or dim. Partly because of this and partly because of networks like Facebook and Instagram, it has also never been easier to share them.

I don’t necessarily have anything against this ever-expanding phenomenon, this trend of increasingly beautiful pictures shared with an increasingly large audience, but I’d be lying if I said it couldn’t use a little critical reflection. Photography can be a dangerous artform because, though it is arguably the most realistic of the visual arts, it has the ability to present as truth something which is far from it. Its very realism deceives us.

I have a friend who uploads new photo albums to Facebook on a very regular basis. He is extremely well-traveled and also possesses a professional-grade camera. This combination of facts means that nearly all his pictures look like they’re straight out of a travel-adventure magazine or possibly an advertisement for happiness. “Me in front of the Taj Mahal.” “Me and my girlfriend in Manchu Pichu.” “Me feeding a baby zebra.” “Me eating sushi in Tokyo.” They’re beautiful and exotic.

And I can’t stand looking at them.

I’m not sure if this friend is intentionally trying to make us land-locked people jealous, but if so, he is succeeding. Comments under the album usually read something like, “You’re in New Zealand right now? Are you kidding me??? SO JEALOUS!” or “stop being so cool. seriously.” Written in jest...but not really.

Which makes me sure I’m not the only one with a Facebook friend (or friends) towards whom I feel this complicated combination of fascination and revulsion, awe and envy. I want to be him and yet...oh, how I despise him.

Nearly 15 months have passed since my college graduation, enough time, it seems, for most people to get their feet back under them if they were caught off guard by the sudden rush of unregulated, unprescribed real life. Cue the comparison game. We’re all feeling a little self-conscious these days, let’s be honest. Who is working at the coolest company?, we evaluate implicitly. Who is living in the most exciting city? Who is married or engaged or dating? Whose life looks the most romantic, the most adventurous, the most successful?

It is at this point that the art of photography fails us. It is at this point that the cool 1970s filter, the photobooth crop tool, and especially the delete button, assist us in manipulating, or being manipulated by, a world that is not real.

On Facebook, or any other social networking site, you can present to others any side of yourself that you desire. You can tailor your uploads, comments, posts, and settings to reflect whatever it is you decide is the best “you.” And, of course, you’re not the only one doing this---all your friends are too. But that side of the equation is easier to forget.

We know that photographs present us with a flat image, a mere split-second in time, but we often take them at face-value anyway.

Nothing illustrates this better than the wedding albums which have been popping up on Facebook left and right this summer. I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for looking at them---even if I don’t know the girl. Artistic photography for the big day is much more important now than it ever was ten years ago, and many brides are willing to shell out big bucks for a professional photographer with an impressive portfolio. I don’t blame them---I doubt anyone regrets having high-quality pictures of such a special occasion. But the experience of clicking through a wedding album online has very little direct correlation to the experience of the actual wedding. This isn’t just the obvious difference between activity and passivity. It’s the difference between reality and idealized reality, fluid imperfection and frozen perfection. Because I think we can all agree that no picture is going to make it into the wedding album that doesn’t support a memory of flawless bliss and harmony.

Artistically focused close-ups of the flower arrangements. The bride’s sundrenched dress as it hangs expectantly in front of a window. Candid laughing grandmothers and dancing groomsmen. The “let’s have the whole bridal party jump in the air” kind of shot is no longer the limit and height of creativity. But despite the beauty of these pictures, we can’t deceive ourselves into thinking they represent something 100% real. People are rarely as happy as they look in pictures---which cannot capture things like headaches, self-consciousness, weariness, or the ill-fitting strapless bra which may really be at the forefront of your mind. No wedding is ever perfect, just like no marriage is, despite how it may appear in frozen retrospect.

I’m not advocating that we attempt to document things like frantic mothers-of the-bride, missing bow ties, uncomfortable jokes, family tension, or any of the other million things that can go wrong at weddings. But the disparity between the actual day and the albums that emerge from them serve as a good reminder that what we see in a photograph may not actually be what we get. The beauty of the bride in her pictures is no indication of how likely her marriage is to last.

Like a painter with a blank canvas, you can make your photos say almost anything you want. Remove from the frame the garbage in the street, the vendors selling cheap keychains made in China, the ragged beggars, the smell of sewer, and you can make your trip to Europe look as picturesque as a post card. Pull out your camera as your bus drives through a slum in Mexico and you might capture something truly heart-wrenching to share on your page; meanwhile your own heart remains decidedly unmoved. These things, the motives and feelings behind the photos, are something Facebook can’t show us.

We all have friends who manipulate the medium in this way, and we all, to a certain extent, are guilty of it ourselves. We post pictures of fancy lattes to advertise our high class. We strategically post, delete, tag, and untag until only the best of ourselves remain. We upload fat albums from all our adventures, pretending that its only for the purpose of “photo-sharing” with those who joined us. Or sometimes not even pretending. Because, whether we admit it or not, we want other people---even those we don’t know well---to click through our pictures, comment, “like,” and maybe even be a little jealous of all the fun we’re having. We like to feel validated in this way.

It’s definitely not something that is limited to the post-grad years, but sensitivity to such habits is perhaps increased during this time of branching out and settling down. Some find they have not landed quite where they hoped to be, and thus those pictures of their happy friend in San Francisco (who somehow manages to look so gorgeous in every picture, damn her) have a sinister, siren-like appeal. How do I measure up? we ask ourselves. What do people think when they look at my Facebook (or LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever)?

It comes down to a matter of self-consciousness vs. self-confidence. Are you secure enough to not post that picture of yourself that’s really cute? Are you satisfied enough with your own life to see past the veil of other people’s "perfect" realities?

Sometimes I find that I just have to say no to the mindless knowledge accumulation.

No, LinkedIn, I do not want to hear about Janie Jone’s new job.

No, friend from high school whom I barely know, I don’t need to see the pictures of your new loft apartment.

Nothing feeds discontentment like comparison, and nothing prompts comparison like an online diet drenched in other people's photographic lives. 

Show Me an Adult with the Courage to Fear Differently

Today, for probably the 7th time this year, I listened to a Wheaton College chapel message which I first heard in late February of 2012, just as I was beginning to feel the black shadow of college graduation creep up on me. Of the hundreds of chapel messages I sat through in my four years at Wheaton, this is the single one that remains clearly cemented in my mind, filed at the top of the academic shuffle. I’ve provided the link here, for those of you whose curiosity is piqued enough to watch it. I highly recommend it. Hopefully the speaker, art professor Leah Samuelson, would not mind my shameless endorsement were she ever to discover it (which, frankly, isn’t likely).

You might recall that I quoted part of this message in a previous blog post, back in September of last year (although, on second thought, you might not, given that it was only my second post ever). It is this same section of Leah's talk that caught my attention on the 7th (or whatever it is) listen, as it did on the first.

"How many gifts from God will justify trust and thanks?" asks Leah, speaking of her struggle to find a role model of faithful living in the year after her college graduation. "Are the pressures of life stronger than the call to be wise? Show me an adult with the courage to fear differently."

When I first heard this message, sitting in my pale blue seat in Edman Chapel, I thought I misheard her. I thought she must have said "the courage to live differently." This seemed to make more sense; it is certainly a more commonly used phrase. But after watching the video recording, I realized this is not what Leah said. She used the word "fear," and she used it intentionally.

So many of life's actions are driven not by what we love but by what we fear. We fear rejection, failure, money shortage, loneliness, shame, dependence, low status, the inability to get what we want when we want it. We worry about rent, bills, our appearance, our careers or career plans, doing things to boost our resumes or our cool factor on facebook. Getting ahead. And so our lives become oriented around meeting these needs. In some ways this is perfectly natural; such worries are not inherently bad, after all.

But what if our fears were different? What if we were driven not by these---the fears of the world---but by a different kind of concern? What if we feared selfishness, shallow relationships, greed, complacency, and apathetic living more than we feared not being able to buy a new car or get into a good grad program? What if our lives were oriented so that most of our emotional energy focused not on living well on the surface, but on living well in the deepest parts of our beings? What if we refused to buy into the concerns of our culture and instead lived with a different kind of concern?

I've been thinking a lot recently about what that would really look like. I worry a lot about my future, how I'm going to keep my bank account from running dry, what kind of career I should pursue to make my life feel valuable. These aren't bad things to think about or to want, but as Leah said, I don't want them to become the source of my life's intention. All too often, focusing on these concerns is really the easy path, the route of escape rather than transformation. A bandaide solution to happiness. Transformation is hard, and for those who really don't want it, it is avoidable.

Many twenty-somethings live---even if they claim to deny it---as if there is a magic formula for a meaningful and successful life. Steps include, among other things, a well-paying job, a grad degree, a significant other (leading to marriage), exotic travel, stylish clothes, a cool apartment, a fun group of friends, and some sort of "nonprofit" passion (because who doesn't want to save the world in their free time these days?). And so these are the things we---and I'm not leaving myself out of this---tend to pursue.

Pursuing other things, things like patience, selflessness, community, passion, and servanthood---though we claim to desire them---often fall to the bottom of our to-do lists. They don't feel very urgent. We worry about them after we think about our money or work or status problems. Practically speaking, they are not the source of our lives' intention. And, a lot of the time, they are more difficult to achieve anyway. But maybe we should be afraid; we should worry that we lack them.

I'm not totally sure how to change the orientation of my life so that my primary pursuit is not financial and social stability and security. But I think it begins with a big step back and two open hands. I think it means moving towards God, cultivating relationships, asking big questions, practicing good stewardship, and learning how to be content. It means consciously and daily challenging the assumptions of many of my peers (and myself) that career and success are everything.

When Leah graduated from college, she looked for an adult with the courage to fear differently and ultimately decided that she had to become that adult herself. I think that's what we all need to do.

Trapped in the Amber of the Moment

The physicists say that time is not a line; it is a dimension, independent of events and a fundamental structure of the universe. Or else they say that time is nothing, an immeasurable nonentity, simply referring to the mental framework that we humans have created in our heads for our own purposes.

I’m not sure which is right because the physicists do not seem to agree.

For the student on the academic calendar, time is cyclical. A slow upward spiral. The year is broken into a predictable pattern of semesters and breaks, distinct from the past and yet entirely recognizable. For some, this repetition can feel like a endless death march, a treadmill leading nowhere, ever circling: class after class broken only by the brief sunshine of a summer break. I suppose for those who dislike the formal setting of school, such a calendar might be suffocating. But now that I have been done with college for a year and off that routine for the first time since I was making finger paintings in preschool, I find myself missing the old familiar rhythms of academia. Patterns are comforting, I’ve discovered, and everything is easier to endure when you have an idea of what comes next. Isn’t this how the world survives winter?

In any case, while the academic calendar has built-in predictability, it also has built-in variety, and this is really what I miss. Each semester promises something new: a new class schedule and pattern of life, new people with whom to cross paths. For me, a new sports season. If there is a class you really can’t stand, well, you only have to gut it out for a few months. If you have a living situation that’s terrible, you can always sign up for a different one next year. Each January and especially each August offer possibilities of new adventures, experiences, knowledge, and friends. A school setting, particularly college, is one of the few places that can provide such regular novelty free from many of the stresses and fears that often accompany change.

During one of my lower moments this winter, when I was feeling particularly dramatic and pitiful, I wrote in my journal how difficult it was to look into a future that has no foreseeable marking points. No spring break. No fresh start of the school year in August. Not even a new summer job to break up the monotony. Just the same life stretching endless forward, an unbending line disappearing into the fog. Work. Bills. Sleep. To think about life this way was (and is) very depressing; I don’t recommend it. Out of my inner chaos, I began brainstorming ways to escape my life in Grand Rapids, to run away---quite literally. I saw this as the only way to rediscover the variety I missed from college life and, more to the point, to push the restart button on what I felt were the millions of mistakes I’d made since graduation.

What I didn’t see then was the way that life has of creating its own novelty, even without, yes, a new class calendar. I wanted a do-over, like the do-overs I got at the start of each school year.

A few nights ago I watched a documentary on my laptop on happiness, clicking on it impulsively after scrolling through my brother’s Netflix account. One thing that happiness researchers have found is that novelty, even in very minor things, has a big impact on emotional well-being.

Something as simple as changing up your running route or cooking a new dish for dinner can trigger releases of dopamine in the brain and boost your outlook on life. So perhaps I can’t entirely be blamed for desiring a change in my routine, wanting a bend in that straight line of time, or at least a bend that I could see. When you aren’t enjoying life and out of necessity that life doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon, of course you’re going to feel depressed.

But the solution to this, I realize now, is not scrapping the whole thing, biking alone across the country, and starting over from zero. That was my original self-rescue plan. Adventures like that can be good, but not when their primary purpose is to serve as an escape from a life that I half-heartedly tried to build in reluctant fits and starts. I shouldn’t have been surprised when it wasn’t really working for me.

Academic calendars have made me used to do-overs. I’m used to having the opportunity to start fresh each year, erase my mistakes (to a certain extent), and try again with a new class, professor, job, or sports season. But sometimes you have to gut through a job you don’t like for (gasp!) longer than 4 or 8 months. Sometimes, probably most of the time, when you screw up, you don’t have the luxury of starting over. You have to piece together what is left and move forward with the glue still drying.

As a perfectionist, this reality is particularly difficult for me to accept. When I mess up, in anything---a round of mini-golf, my writing, a relationship, an art project, a job---I like to be able to start over completely and forget the whole thing ever happened. Square one. A blank slate. That way I don’t have to deal with the awkwardness of living with something that is askew. It’s like when you have a crush on someone and they clearly reject you---you’d really just prefer to never see that person again.

But in this documentary that I watched, the researchers also stressed that happiness comes from challenges and difficulties, and people who struggle often become more joyful in the end. It’s a counter-intuitive reality, and one that isn’t exactly comforting in the midst of trial. Even knowing this, I’d still probably use the do-over button an awful lot if life offered one. So I guess it’s good that it doesn’t.

I’ve found that sometimes the hardest challenge of all is staring down that unbending line of life, the one that seems to promise no change worth celebrating, and reminding yourself that its straightness is an illusion. That life comes with seasons, some of which may be longer and less regular than those promised by a school schedule, but seasons nonetheless. Variety and change and unpredictable adventures. And in any case, I guess it’s ok to do the same thing for more than 8 consecutive months. It won’t kill me.

May I always live with this kind of wonder:

"First, I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism; saying that everything is as it must always have been, being unfolded without fault from the beginning. The leaf on the tree is green because it could never have been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because it might have been scarlet. He feels as if it had turned green an instant before he looked at it. He is pleased that snow is white on the strictly reasonable ground that it might have been black. Every color has in it a bold quality as of choice; the red of the garden roses is not only decisive but dramatic, like suddenly spilt blood. He feels that something has been done."

--G.K. Chesterton, in his essay "The Ethics of Elfland", part of the book Orthodoxy

Big Fish, Bigger Pond: Reflections on the Michigan Division 1 High School State Track Meet

The forecast called for thunderstorms, but the morning is warm and clear when I arrive at East Kentwood high school for the Michigan D1 Track and Field State Meet. It seems the weather is always hot on that first weekend in June. Waves of heat rise off the track and the athletes wait nervously under the bleachers, trying to follow their coaches’ advice and stay out of the sun. In the stands, the spectators glisten with sweat. I remember one State meet that was so hot the event staff set up misting machines for the runners to stand under in an attempt to stave off heat stroke.

It’s no small thing to qualify for this meet. The runners, jumpers, and throwers around me---warming up on the infield, shaking themselves loose at the discus or long-jump pits---are the best of the best in Michigan. Exceptional athletes, all of them. This year, for the first time, I’m not here to compete myself or to watch a younger sibling compete. I’m here as a coach, with a job to do. Sort of.

Unfortunately, I’ve never been very good at attending these meets, not when I was in high school, not now. I get all riled up, agitated, restless. I want to watch the races, and at the same time, I don’t want to. Somehow, during the most important events, the ones that I used to run and should theoretically care about the most, I find myself walking in the opposite direction of the track or watching with only a peripheral interest, as if the race were little more than a commercial on TV. I detach.

Why do I do this?

While standing near the pole vault pits watching one of my athletes jump, I run into an old teammate of mine from high school. Five years ago, we competed in this meet together as members of our school record-holding 4x800 relay team. I’m very happy to see her again.

Happy, but also mildly unsettled.

Though I was a little bit faster than her in high school, this girl had walked onto a D1 track team and consequently, by the end of her career there, became a phenomenal runner. And I mean phenomenal. This girl is now leaps and bounds ahead of me. As we stand there catching up, I find myself making excuses internally, justifying why I chose to go to a D3 college, and imagining what I could have accomplished had I decided to go D1 as she had (not that any D1 schools were remotely interested in me). I want to believe that my potential is just as valuable as hers. That she is not really better than me.

Ok, so I’m jealous.

As much as I hate to admit it, it’s for this reason that the State meets always make me so restless, unwilling to watch those events I have every reason to be interested in. In high school I didn’t like feeling like a small fish in a big pond. And now I’m no longer a fish and this isn’t even my pond, but I still find myself envious of these teenagers who are faster than I ever was or will be.

Later, after the meet, I go for a run to clear my mind. It’s not so much my jealousy that’s the problem---although that certainly is a problem---it’s the assumption behind it that’s in error, I realize. It’s the idea that, at the end of the day, shaving a few seconds off my 800 time really matters, really means something about my identity and worth. It’s the desire for brief moments of glory to last longer than their due.

It is so easy to think about life in the immediate present, with it’s trivial cares and worries, and forget to take a step back and remember what it looks like from a bird’s-eye view. Setting and achieving goals in athletics or elsewhere is a great thing and has brought me much happiness over the years, but like nearly every accomplishment, it is short-lived. A flash in the pan.

Every single one of the athletes who competed at the State meet will one day lose their speed or their height or their power. Probably one day soon. It’s a victory to be held loosely lest the acid of bitterness corrode whatever lasting satisfaction it did bring. I don’t want that to happen to me, even when the day comes (which I’m sure is not far down the road) when the athletes I now coach are able to leave me in their dust.

While we were watching the girls’ 2-mile relay, my brother elbowed me and pointed down the bleachers. “Britta, look,” he said excitedly. “I’m pretty sure that’s Austin Sanders. See him? The kid with the dreads.”

I followed his finger to a muscled black man finding a seat in the stands below us. I didn’t recognize him.

“Who?” I asked.

“Austin Sanders. He won the 100 and the 200 last year. He’s super fast.”

I studied him for a moment, as he sat with his friends in the stands, watching the first heat of the relay. He was the superstar of the meet last year, but today no one---besides my brother and maybe a handful of other people---would know him from Joe. He was just a member of the crowd. Like me.

Of course, this Austin kid is probably running for some big name D1 university now with even more accomplishments under his belt, but I still felt a brief moment of solidarity with him. Today is not his day---not anymore---and it’s not mine either. It’s time I let it go.

My Top Reads for Summer 2013

Yesterday at work I wrote copy for a marketing email advertising select summer reads for a couple publishing houses. "Start your summer reading adventure today," it read. "Find the perfect book."

I found it likely that I wouldn't agree with all the books on their list, so I decided to make my own. In any case, as an English Writing major, I am frequently asked to recommend books and often find myself suddenly blanking on anything beyond a title or two. So in the future, I will just refer those people to this page. Here is my list of ten great summer (or anytime) reads:

1. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy---I will never stop recommending this novel. Set in a small town in 1969 India, The God of Small Things poignantly captures the innocence of childhood through the eyes of twins Estha and Rahel. Their narrow perspective is rivaled only by the even narrower (and not so innocent) perspective of the adults in their lives who have rendered themselves completely blind to truth. Brilliant characterization, brilliant narrative structure, and magical language. The prose reads like poetry and carries a richness unparalleled to any novel I have ever read. Where else can you read sentences like, "Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-colored puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-colored minds"?

2. The Brothers K by David James Duncan---This book is not to be confused with The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (also a good book, though of a very different kind). In this case the K refers to a strike out, as in baseball, or, as one character puts it, "to come unglued, come to grief, come to blows, come to nothing." A sprawling, genre-mixing novel, The Brothers K chronicles several decades of the Chance family, especially the four brothers who come of age during the upheavals of the 60s. I love this book because while it is moving and emotionally deep, it is also laugh-out-loud funny.


3. The Princess and the Goblin by George McDonald---For those of you unfamiliar with the works of George McDonald, think C.S. Lewis plus a little more magic and mystery (McDonald was a major influence in the writings of Lewis). Like The Chronicles of Narnia, this loosely allegorical fairy tale is for adults just as much as it is for children. It's a quick read, non-intimidating, and you can get it for free on Kindle. But don't be deceived by its simplicity: The Princess and the Goblin was one of the most influential books I read in 2011.

4. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt---This memoir won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1997, and for good reason. McCourt tells the story of his childhood in America and Ireland at the height of the Great Depression, growing up poor, hungry, and largely unsupervised. The narrative is both fascinating and tragic. As McCourt himself says, "Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." But I've never seen anyone capture the first-person experience of a three-year-old so accurately, nor have I been so caught up in the antics of a simultaneously world-wise and naive little boy.

5. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali---Ayaan is a controversial figure in politics, but I recommend this book more for its anthropological insights than for the political and religious conclusions to which Ayaan comes at the end of her memoir. Ayaan was born in Somalia, grew up Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia, and obtained asylum in the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage when she in her early twenties. She eventually became a member of the Dutch Parliament and now lives in the United States. Infidel tells of her Islamic and deeply patriarchal childhood, her growing disillusionment with her heritage, and her eventual turn to atheism and political activism. But I like it most for its fascinating accounts of life in East Africa.

6. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L'Engle---At this stage in my life, Walking on Water has offered me more encouragement and direction than any other piece of literature. Most people know L'Engle as the author of the children's book A Wrinkle in Time, but this slim volume of non-fiction is my favorite of her works that I have read. My copy of the book, slyly gifted to me last summer, is thoroughly marked up and underlined, evidence of the many times it has articulated thoughts that resound deep within me. Any aspiring artist---whether writer, dancer, painter, or musician---who wants to understand the connections between art, God, and hope, who wants to "find the cosmos in the chaos," needs to read this book.

7. Cat's Eye, The Robber Bride, or anything else by Maraget Atwood---Atwood is a master of characterization. Every time I read her, I am blown away by her command of language and her abundance of vivid detail. Because she is such a prolific writer, many of Atwood's novels are still on my to-read list, but the three that I have read have completely entranced me with their worlds.


8. The Stream and the Sapphire by Denise Levertov---Not many people read books of poetry anymore, including myself, but this collection of poems is one that I eagerly sought and purchased after I got a taste of Levertov in one of my college literature courses. The poems deal with themes of faith and doubt and, as Levertov remarks in the Forward, "to some extent trace my slow movement from agnosticism to Christian faith." To get an idea of what her poetry is like, look up "The Avowal," one of my favorite poems in this little book.


9. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy---I meant to read this novel ever since one of my college professors called it possibly the greatest work of fiction ever written, but it took me until this winter to finally get around to it. It's a hefty book, well over 700 pages in my edition, and intimidating to begin. Well worth the effort, though. Tolstoy has amazing insight into the fickle human mind. If you've seen the recently-released film version of this book, don't rule it out based on that unfortunate interpretation.


10. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson---Gilead is epistolary novel, an extended letter written by a dying father and pastor to his young son. This is by far the most difficult book on my list to describe because it is so unlike any other novel I have read. Simple, unornamented language and plot yet heart-breakingly beautiful. It is a book that will have you underlining. Deeply spiritual, full of faith and doubt and all the right questions. The narrator, Rev. John Ames, is the most ordinary and yet possibly the most profound character in all the contemporary literature I have read.

"So would I learn to attain freefall, and float"

My memory of that day is hazy. A mist obscures the details, blurs the edges. Dream-like. Shimmering. I am a little afraid to touch it for fear it will come suddenly into focus. Flood me with the four-years-worth of memories it represents, the combination of which is too bright to look at.

Has it possibly been a whole year since I walked down the steps of Edman Chapel, diploma in hand, drowning happily in a synthetic blue robe?

Sunday marked the one-year anniversary of my college graduation. The weather this time around was much like it was then. Cold and wet. Mothers’ Day. I felt an obligation and yet a disinclination to write this blog post as I moped around the house, trying to figure out why I was in such a strange mood.

At this milestone, I feel like I’m supposed to have some list of profound insights, truths I have gathered over the past year that will carry me into the next. In reality, I’m just as perplexed by life as I was when I graduated. The future remains just as opaque and my next step just as shaky and unsure.

The difference is, I suppose, that this uncertainty doesn’t bother me as much as it did then. You get used to walking around in the dark after a while, even if your eyes never fully adjust. You realize that no one really knows what they are doing, that everyone---even those much older or more experienced---are 90% faking it.

A year isn’t really that long of a time. Most lessons worth learning take decades. I think I anticipated I would only need a few months to find my feet, to uncover some path with clearly marked road signs and a straightforward direction. I didn’t expect a dream job---but I think I expected at least a dream plan.I’m not sure I want that anymore though. I sort of like the forest I’m lost in.

What can I say then to those who have donned the cap and gown this spring, who also are stepping out of the structure of a school system for the first time? Only this:

Life happens and it cannot be stopped. Unexpected and ridiculous things will happen. This is a good thing. No matter what your plans are, a year from now you will look back and be surprised by how you got there.

I do not confess to understand a thing about why or how.

The World On Time...But Not Thanks to Me

It is an ominous morning. Lightning streaks horizontally across the sky, and behind me, as I drive the dark and familiar roads to work, the sunrise is a pale grey-pink. By the time I leave the airport in my FedEx van, that light has disappeared entirely, obscured by a torrential downpour of rain and even more lightning. The rain roars on the metal roof of the van.

I have only two packages to deliver this morning, a record low since I began work back in October, when I was too inexperienced to be trusted with more. Now, my First Overnight route is normally the second heaviest, and I arrive ten minutes earlier to the station in order to get it all delivered on time. I guess today is just a light one for FedEx Express.

There is a flutter in my stomach that has nothing to do with deliveries, the most typical cause of anxiety on these early mornings. I grip the steering wheel and bite my lower lip as I peer through the heavy rain at the tail lights in front of me, contemplating the task that awaits on my return to the station. I don’t have to do this today, I tell myself again. I could wait another few days, another week. Schedule that dentist appointment first and take advantage of my health insurance. Deposit a few more paychecks. Perhaps that would be wise...

But no. I shake my head and force myself to think about another day in another vehicle about a week ago, the day my casual fantasies cemented into firm resolve.

I can pin it down to a moment. I was on Alpine driving north towards I-96, in what I thought would be a clever detour around the traffic on 131 where the left lane is closed. But either everyone else had the same idea, or I underestimated the ability of the people of northwest Grand Rapids to flock to their cars in early afternoon on a Saturday. We were creeping along, barely moving, and I still had several miles to go before I reached my destination, a PakMail all the way up by 4 Mile where I was scheduled to do a pick-up. As I watched the minutes tick by on my dashboard, all I could think about was all the boxes and envelopes I still carried in the back of my truck, each one adding precious minutes to my total time on the road.

It had been a rough morning. Within seconds of entering the station at 7:30 am, one of the other employees said to me, “Did you hear about the planes?” They were both over two hours late, apparently, putting us hopelessly behind schedule. My heart sank. Today of all days? I was planning to drive to Chicago immediately after work to watch my younger brother run in a track meet and to visit with some dear friends of mine, some of whom I hadn’t seen since in many months. Now I wasn’t sure if it’d even be worth it to make the drive. I wanted to sit down on the dirty cement floor of the station and cry.

Ok, so maybe I was being a little dramatic. But it my defense it was 7:30 am, I hadn’t slept enough the night before, and I had managed to convince myself that morning---as I somehow managed to do nearly every Saturday morning---that this day was going to be different. That it would not be stressful. That we would be light on freight and I would get done early.

It was rarely so.

The late planes (which, by the way, did not mean we got to sit in the break room eating donuts waiting for the packages to arrive) were only the first of a number of problems. The other problems included, but were not limited to, short-staffing, a million envelopes left over from Friday, a 5K and half-marathon downtown that had the dual effect of closing some roads and jamming others, and my perpetual problem of being assigned the most stressful route. Oh, also, it was April 20th and snowing.

So by the time I was stuck in traffic on Alpine, watching as the minutes and my chances of making it to Chicago that night slipped away, I had long ago lost my ability to roll with the punches. “Keep it together, Britta,” I muttered, but I could feel my face growing hot and tears pooling around my bottom lids. A light turned red, the digital clock ticked another minute, and I gave up. I let the tears roll and said loudly, firmly, to anyone in my truck who happened to be listening, “That’s it. I’m quitting!” And that was that. It felt good. I sent out a few dramatic texts to make it official.

But now, driving my van down the highway while listening to a symphony of thunder and rain, I am feeling a little more hesitant about that final and decisive act of quitting. The walking into my boss’s office and saying the words part. I’ve never actually quit a job before, I realize. All the other jobs I’ve had were temporary, with a set end date, so I never needed to bring up the topic of leaving. (When I worked my last day as a waitress at Bob Evan’s the summer after my freshman year of college, I was technically on an “academic leave of absence.” I never went back to alert them the absence would be permanent.) My managers at FedEx have known since the day they hired me that I would not be a career currier, calling FedEx my home for the next 30 years. But still, I’ve only worked there eight months, which---while longer than I’ve worked consecutively anywhere else---is really not that long.

When I arrive at Capital Communications, my second and last stop of the morning, the rain turns to pea-sized hail. Little white pellets bounce off my windshield and roof, and I wonder how long I can wait in the parking lot before Brian, the owner inside, starts to wonder what I’m doing. Finally, I pull on the hood of my jacket, clutch the FedEx box to my chest, and dash for the receiving door.

On my return to the station, I steel myself for the conversation with my boss. My heart is pounding a little, but I want to get this over with. I walk to his office---no boss. Another manager tells me he’s out on the road. Shoot. Just when I had worked up the nerve.

I have contemplated quitting this job for quite some time. While the pay is good, I know it’s not leading anywhere and wouldn’t want it to. But still, quitting anything is hard and humbling, especially now that I finally feel like I know what I’m doing. FedEx doesn’t own me or my time, but that doesn’t prevent me from feeling a little like I’ve let them down, disappointed them in some way. Also, I worry about the time and money gap leaving will create---but not nearly enough to change my mind.

I tend to elevate extreme busyness and the stress that comes with it to a level beyond what it deserves. Packed schedules are better than empty ones. Stress is better than boredom. I’m not very good at relaxing unless I feel like this relaxing is “accomplishing” something. Which, of course, rather defeats the purpose. Switching from a routine that involves 55+ hours  of work per week to one that hovers closer to 30, at least for now, might be a bit of an adjustment. As much as I complain, I do take a bit of pride in my ability (though that seems too optimistic of a word) to handle three jobs every day, and I feel like it makes up a little for the fact that I’ve been out of college for a whole year (yikes!) and am still living at home. But I’ll have the time to reevaluate some things now, and I think that will be good.

I decide to return to FedEx after my second job when I’m pretty sure my boss will be back in his office. I don’t want to drag this out another day. I feel better, more adult, wearing a dress and cardigan anyway, as opposed to my regulation FedEx uniform which even I can’t take myself seriously in. I still haven’t decided if the too-big purple and navy polo looks better tucked into my extremely high-waisted pants and billowing out around my rib cage or untucked and swimming about my mid-thighs (also interfering with placement of my PowerPad holster). It’s a losing battle either way, I think.

Once in his office, I stutter out my news, and he takes it surprisingly well. He’s even happy for me, or so he says, that I’m moving on to bigger and better things. I breathe a huge sigh of relief and sign my two-weeks notice.  

Thank you, FedEx Express, for delivering a paycheck for the past eight months, teaching me how to reverse a truck into a narrow parking spot, and providing me with a free Halloween costume for next October. It’s been a good run, but I’m ready for a new beginning.

On Writing and Running

The day is misty and cool. Dampness has darkened the spongy red surface of the track, and drops of water drip slowly from the metal benches in the stadium, from the chain-link fence, from the orange and blue hurdles stacked in lane 8. The false green turf of the infield and the real green grass beyond are saturated and slick, but the track has friction enough.

Strands of hair, wet with mist and sweat, cling to my forehead, and every couple minutes I have to unpeel my long ponytail from my neck, where it has wrapped itself like a persistent blonde snake, and fling it back over my shoulder. It slaps against the skin on my scapula with a satisfying smack. In a few minutes, as I run down lane one, eyes narrowed, teeth set, in the second of three 300 meter repeats, the ponytail will find its way back over my shoulder.

Despite the wet, despite the pain in my quads and the burn in my lungs at each turn of the track, this for me is a piece of paradise. The pain, the burn, the slight give beneath my running shoes, the rain on my skin---all are reminders that I am alive. And not just alive: alive and well. I am grateful for air, for water, for my body---every piece of it. I feel full and empty at the same time.

On some days, I feel like my legs could carry me anywhere, at any speed. Today is one of those days.

I blink water from my eyelashes, reset my watch, and go.

* * *

On another day, in another place, I am hunched over my laptop, fingers moving rapidly between long pauses. I sit cross-legged in a big green circular chair---the foldable kind that can be found in freshman dorm rooms everywhere---but I am not in a dorm; I am in the attic of an old house, surrounded by unwanted piles of clothing, bulky suitcases, unused home decor, and the odd bike. Artifacts of my life and the lives of my friends. It is night and a little cold up here, with the uninsulated floor and ceiling. The mug of tea at my feet has long since lost its warmth.

This creative essay I am working on is due tomorrow. I type, delete, type again, then rearrange, and though the process is slow and unscientific, I move steadily forward. I let the words take over. They seem to know what they are doing.

As I read over the twelve pages one final time before I shut my laptop, I wonder where these words came from. How did they get from my mind to the page in these particular sentences and paragraphs? Where did the images and metaphors come from? Inspiration is such a mysterious thing, but I am grateful for it. I am grateful that, tonight at least, it cooperated.

* * *

Running, like writing, is both a practice in discipline and an experience in liberation. And writing, like running, is both terribly painful and unpredictably exhilarating. They are forms of self-expression, participants in complicated love-hate relationships. Art, under very different guises. And for me, though the connection is at first difficult to see, unavoidably symbiotic. I need them both as much as I need food, and I need them together.

* * *

If writing and running have taught me nothing else, they have taught me, to borrow words from Madeleine L’Engle, to “keep things wound.” Many days, I eye the running shoes in my closet with a combination of guilt and dread. Will I take them out and put them on? Will I force myself out the door and into the cold spring air? I know I should; I know that later I will be so glad I did, but in the meantime anything and everything sounds more appealing---cleaning my room, checking my email, rummaging for food in the kitchen.

After all, the very real truth is that not all days are like the endorphin-soaked ecstasy of the track workout described above. In fact, the vast majority are not. There are days when my body feels about 100 lbs heavier than normal, when my legs just won’t cooperate with my mind, and when picking up the pace feels as awkward and uncomfortable as if I were a marionette with a drunk puppeteer. This is especially true when I’m getting back into shape, but still happens frequently and unpredictably at the peak of my fitness. Running, as anyone who has so much as jogged the mile in high school gym class will tell you, is not always fun. And yet, despite this, everyday---or as close to that as I can manage---I still lace up my shoes and head out the door.

This is what I mean by keeping things wound. Though at this point in my life running is something I do (theoretically) solely for my own pleasure, if I did it only when I really felt like it, the element of pleasure would slowly escape me. I would have more and more days in which runs were torturous ploddings and fewer and fewer moments of grateful strength and fluidity.

The same is true of my writing. I know I need to write every day. I know that this is the only way to improve my craft, to justify my (ok, I admit it) impractical major, and to produce anything worth reading. Somehow though, I rarely feel like doing it. Writing can be like pulling teeth, and who wants to see the dentist every day? Of course, once you’re there, it’s never as bad as you remember it, but that doesn’t mean it’s pain-free.

Even on days when I do keep my appointment with my laptop, open up a Word document, and focus my mind on character and plot, I don’t necessarily get anywhere. I don’t even want to know how many hours over the course of my life I have spent staring blankly at a computer screen unable to type more than a few halting words. Some days the sentences flow easily, and I can barely keep up with them. Most days, not so much.

But if I don’t go through the motions, if I don’t stay “in shape” verbally, if I don’t write, as Madeleine says, even “when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heavy, when our bodies are in pain,” then I will never break through those barriers of self-doubt, procrastination, and defeat that so often plague my writing. I will never produce anything of meaning or depth.

“We may not be able to make our ‘clock’ run correctly, but we can at least keep it wound, so that it will not forget.”

The beauty of this is that sometimes, unexpectedly, I (or the muses, or God, or my body) will break past the rhythm and routine, into that great and mysterious place of---could it be possible?---enjoyment.

The day I ran the best cross-country race of my life (6K or about 3.7 miles, for those of you unfamiliar with often the often overlooked sport of collegiate cross country running) was also the day I felt the worst in the hour or two before the gun went off. During my warm-up, I tried to think of an excuse---any excuse---that my coaches would except as a legitimate reason why I should sit this one out, cheer on my teammates from the other side of those colorful flags. It was a beautiful fall day, perfect running weather, but my limbs felt like lead. I was so tired, sleepy even, and the routine two miles I ran to warm my muscles had done nothing to wake me up. Am I getting sick? I wondered. I ran a few fast sprints to try shock my body into preparedness, but that didn’t seem to work either. This race was going to be embarrassing. Worse than that, it was going to be hell. At that point in my running career, as a senior in college, I had eight years of agonizing race day memories under my belt, and I knew---I knew---what late-race muscle fatigue felt like. It did not feel good.

But despite my anxiety at the line, once that gun went off, I did not hit the wall I was expecting after the first mile. I didn’t hit it after the second mile either, or the third. In fact, as the race went on, I felt better and better, not worse and worse, and I picked up my speed. By the end of the race, I was the number three finisher for my team. I had never placed even close to that high before. I was elated, but also a little bit shocked.

I remember telling myself as I ran along the wooded trails, Britta, this does not happen very often. You may never feel this good in a race again. Make it count.

I never know what is going to happen---with either my writing or my running---until it happens. The day I feel physically or mentally dry as a bone may in fact be the day the walls of frustration finally crumble.

And so I must daily keep things wound.

* * *

Most people would agree that writing is an art form. To be moved by a novel or a creative rendering of information, the fashioning of facts into a story---we know that words, properly chosen and ordered, can illicit a soul-level response. But running, is that art? It doesn’t create anything, except maybe fatigue and some endorphins. It cannot be shared with others, not in the same way that paintings or books or dance can be shared. For many, the idea of a “soul-level response” during or after exercise is laughable. And yet, running feels like art to me. It feels like my body is doing something beautiful which is not completely in my control.

Both writing and running are forms of self-expression, of getting “out” what can be explosive or agitating if it stays “in.” Sometimes there are emotions---positive and negative---which can be expressed only in an embodied and physical way because words are either insufficient or as yet unformed. And other times words are necessary and helpful; they give order and meaning to the jumble of thoughts and feelings that are the human experience.

When I run, I do not always think in words. I allow myself a break from them. Often, this break is exactly what I need for the words I do want to express to clarify, to rise to the front of my mind like butter rising from cream. Only then can I write with the precision that eluded me.

* * *

Last week was nothing but clouds and rain in Michigan. For practice one day I took the distance kids on the track team to a nearby neighborhood to run a fartlek workout. When we were a mile and a half from school, the sky suddenly darkened, thunder boomed, and we found ourselves in the middle of a torrential downpour. I ended the workout and we all took off for the high school, soaked to the skin in less than thirty seconds.

It was a miserable mile and a half dash in some ways. The roads turned to rivers and our shirts stuck to our skin like rice paper. One of the guys got a bloody nose along the way, and when I looked over my shoulder I saw him running with blood streaming across both sides of his face, blurring into the wet of the rain. He looked horrible. But he also looked intense and inspiring. We all did, or at least we felt that way. Probably we looked more like drowning cats, but we felt alive, and for once, running fast seemed like a practical and necessary skill. We needed to escape the lightning.

From "Walking on Water" by Madeleine L'Engle

"It may be that we have lost our ability to hold a blazing coal, to move unfettered through time, to walk on water, because we have been taught that such things have to be earned; we should deserve them; we must be qualified. We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.

But a child rejoices in presents!"

Real Life Post-Dog

When I was seven, I knew exactly what responsibility meant. I didn’t have the vocabulary then to express it, but if I had, my definition would have been something like this: “The ability to feed, walk, train, play with, and in other ways care for a member of the canine species in such a way that your mother allows you to get said canine and then keep it. Also it helps if you are willing to pick up poop.”

I spent the better portion of my cognizant childhood trying to prove to my parents that I possessed this quality.

It was difficult to do this of course without an actual dog upon which to practice, but my mom said I could also demonstrate my responsibleness by clearing my plate after dinner, completing my Math Boxes tantrum-free, and remembering to brush my hair before school. I tried my best to do these things, but since none of them directly correlated to dogs or dog-chores as far as I could tell, it was easy to forget. I spent more energy pouring over dog books from the library and meticulously copying the picture captions into a notebook than I did cleaning my room or remembering what to pack in my backpack.

Today, fifteen years later, I’m supposed to have a better understanding of what it means to be responsible. After all, my family has a dog now! But recently, I’ve felt like my definition of responsibility (and I’m not just talking about my first-grade definition) has become completely insufficient. My choices can no longer be divided into clear-cut categories of “responsible” and “irresponsible,” and even if they could, I’m not sure it would be a helpful distinction.

As I move forward in my post-college life (or backwards, or sideways---direction seems pretty irrelevant at this point), I feel a dual pull between two often conflicting impulses. One is the desire to advance in a career, to save money, pay off loans, create a stable and predictable schedule for myself. Some might call this the “responsible” impulse. It is the natural inclination for knowledge and security, the need to plan for the future. But the other impulse is equally strong and quite opposite. At the same time that I yearn for stability, I also want to quit all my jobs, move far away, and do something crazy and spontaneous and totally unexpected. I want to jump off cliffs, paddle down rapids, backpack across Iceland, and forget about savings accounts and “career paths”. I want to write a novel on a green hillside in New Zealand, ride my bike to the Pacific, discover the secret stories of the world’s forgotten.

I want both to carve out a Britta-sized space on this Earth and move fast enough that the space never forms.

My struggle with these conflicting impulses is not unique. I think the tension---the dual desire for stability and adventure, peace and conflict---exists naturally within each of us. No person wants to live a life of total monotony, no matter how pleasant their surroundings, but no person wants to live a life of total unpredictability either. We tend to yearn most for whatever it is we currently lack. To live exclusively in one camp or the other is exhausting and empty. We need both.

But how much of each is a question I have been pondering for the past few months. How much do I indulge my desire for variety and adventure and how much should I force the reasonable and practical part of my brain to buckle down and be responsible? If I’m currently employed and well-paid, is it idiotic to give that up just because I’m tired of it and want something new? Is it ok to move across the country or quit my job just for the heck of it?

This tension takes on a very tangible form. I'm currently working three very different jobs, six days a week, nearly ten hours a day. When I leave for my first job at FedEx every morning around 6 am, I feel like I'm packing for a weekend trip, not an average work day. I have my FedEx uniform, my designated FedEx backpack, my purse, my business-casual clothes for my office job, my running clothes and shoes for track practice, and sometimes a normal outfit if I'm heading somewhere directly after practice. I go straight from job to job to job. My free time is limited to the three hours after I get home from practice just before 6 pm until I go to bed around 9. And this time fills up fast.

It is this busy schedule and my desire to modify it into something more sane that has led me to ask these questions about what it means to be responsible, about how it is we determine what the “responsible” action is, and to what extent I should indulge my appetite for novelty. I’m considering quitting one of my jobs and devoting that time to writing, working on my novel, and possibly preparing a portfolio for a Masters in Fine Arts program. The idea is extremely appealing to me, but it means giving up a pretty substantial portion of my income and cutting back on the amount I’m currently devoting to student loans. I’m already a poor and indebted post-grad. Do I want to make myself even poorer?

As I debate this question internally, I tell myself that setting aside time for writing is an investment. If writing is really my goal and aspiration, then of course I should be committed to it. I owe it to myself to give this dream my full attention. But of course, I’m not being entirely honest with myself if I leave it at that. I also want to quit one of my jobs because I hate working on Saturdays and I want to take fun weekend trips this summer. And there is a lot of free time that I currently possess which I am not devoting to writing. What makes me think I will be more productive with more time?

What comes first: Paying off my student loans asap or pursuing my writing dreams? Money or free time? Reducing my stress-level today or for the distant future?

Believe it or not, I have been in some stage of writing this blog post for several weeks. This is not (clearly) because I'm devoting extreme care to the craft or quality of it but simply because I change my mind on what I think about this issue every couple days. I have completely restructured the organization of this post at least four times. Sometimes I think I'm ridiculous for even asking these questions. I should just go out and do whatever it is I want to do! I want to bike across America? Ok, so just go out and do it!

But then I think about all the single parents out there, all the people who are working even more hours a week than I am and yet still manage to retain their sanity. And I wonder: am I just being a wimp? I have no dependents; now is a perfect time in my life to focus on reducing my debt so that in the future I have more freedom to do the things I want to do. It's only for a season after all. I don't have to do what I am doing forever. I should just be patient a little longer. It's not like life only has this small window of opportunity for adventure and excitement and if I miss it now, I'm never going to get it back.

So I come back around to my original question: What is more important to me at this point: stability and security or adventure and the unknown? And if I make a choice, how long will I have to live with it?

I told myself before I graduated from college that I was not going to end up back in my hometown. When May 2012 came and I was left with no other option, I told myself my stay would be temporary, short-term. I would not "settle in" here. 

It's now nearly April, and I'm fast approaching the one-year mark of my college graduation. And I'm still in Grand Rapids, still holding myself in that limbo between permanence and impermanence. It's not a very satisfying place to be. 

I was thinking about this one day as I sat at my florescent-lit desk in my pink cubicle in the maze of an office building where I work. Suddenly, a sentence popped into my head. "Britta, you have no idea what is in store for you." Just like that, those words exactly. It felt separate from myself, like it was someone else's voice and not my own. I wrote it down on a piece of paper and pinned it to the pink wall.

It was the most comforting line I had heard in a long time. 

Because it's so true. I have no idea what is in store for me. I can plan all I want---I could choose to stick with my current jobs, I could start something new, I could move to Chicago---and still I would have virtually zero control over my life. I was reading a manuscript for my job last week about a woman who was in a car accident that paralyzed her from the chest down. No one decides to go on that kind of adventure. It just happens. Life is utterly unpredictable. And yet, somehow, I find this reassuring rather than terrifying. 

Nothing about this past year has been expected. It has unfolded week by week, day by day, with only a rare glimpse beyond the immediate future. It has come with unforeseen disappointments and heartaches, but there have also been equally unpredictable blessings. A year ago I could never have imagined the goodness that could come from coaching track and cross country, forming new friendships, strengthening old ones, and gaining new and strange work experience. My path could take a sharp turn next month---or tomorrow. I have no idea what is in store for me. And there is something exhilarating about that. 

After weeks of thinking about and writing this post, after hundreds of deleted sentences and paragraphs, I still don't know what I'm going to do about my job situation. I don't know how I'd like to spend my next year or where I want to live. Heck, most of the time I don't even know if the choices I'm making are stupid or smart; I'm just sort of making them arbitrarily and hoping things shake out for the best.

If only responsibility were easy and straightforward, like it was when I was little and trying to convince my parents to get me a dog. I have a lot more options now, a lot more ways to live, and there is no way of knowing how any of them will turn out. It's really not a question of responsible vs. irresponsible, monotony vs. adventure. It's not that simple. Life never is. But there is a beauty in the complexity and a wonder in the mysteriousness of the future. It's all so much bigger than I am, and it keeps me humble.