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.

My Friend Emily

Recently, I’ve been feeling like Emily Dickinson. I don't mean that I think I'm some sort of poetic genius or that I lower cookies in a basket to the neighbor kids out my bedroom window. Nor do I float about the house in a white gossamer gown, hiding from visitors. (Although on this particularly day, when the world is obscured by a thick veil of fog, it is easy to feel melodramatic and imagine such things.) I simply mean that in the past few months I have felt a certain kinship with that mysterious woman, and I feel like, if she and I were to meet, we might understand one another.


When I was in college, I wrote an essay about Emily, about why I believed she was such a talented poet. I concluded that her depth of insight came from all the hours she spent alone with no company but her own soul, free (or forced) to plunge bravely into whatever fears or facts she discovered therein. The deeper she probed, the more universal were her observations, as she peeled back the layers of the human experience. She probably devoted proportionally more time to thought and self-reflection than any other woman of her day.


Sometimes, when I am feeling dramatic, I imagine I am Emily, sitting on my bed with my legs curled under me, writing frantically. I stop occasionally to gaze at the fog and the thin, dark lines of trees, arrange my face in a pensive expression. I wonder if I look the part. I haven’t written any poems, though—or anything else that could be considered remotely brilliant. But maybe, if I sit here long enough—a few years—some wisdom might emerge. Or maybe not.

There are many reasons why Emily chose to live apart from society, why she only published a handful of poems during her lifetime, and why she spent the vast majority of her hours locked in her bedroom. I don’t pretend to fully understand the psychology behind her decisions and I won’t get into the many theories of her personality here. But I do think I know a little bit of that love for solitude, and it makes sense to me that poetry could spring from the wells of thought that can be found there, when the mind is given long enough to settle.

Many people fear solitude. They fear what memories or voices may reverberate in the emptiness. Or they simply dislike it, uncomfortable with the lack of stimulation, the quiet, the dark and tangled webs of untouched emotion. But for Emily and I—and for many other people, I imagine—solitude is not a punishment. It is a blissful escape.

I like the quiet expanses of space that surround me when I’m alone in the house. I like walking up the stairs to the office where I work, hearing few noises but the soft murmur of voices or the tap-tap of fingers on keyboards. Silence is comforting to me, blankets me in like fresh snowfall on a rooftop. Sometimes when I’m driving I intentionally turn off the music or whatever audio book I happen to be listening to and let silence fill the cab of my van. I like to give my mind my undivided attention every now and then, to see what bubbles to the surface.

Ironically—because so often we use words to describe our experience in the mind that signify confinement (trapped, stuck, lost, etc)—our own heads can be places of absolute freedom and spaciousness. Emily sometimes described her mind as an expanse wider than the sky, big enough to encompass the whole universe. Physically, she may have limited herself to a small bedroom, but mentally she had boundless room to roam. Because unlike any physical place, the mind is not finite; it is ever capable of expansion, and though it is familiar, it offers an allure of mystery and the undiscovered. It is—or can be—the best of both the real and the imaginary. These past few months I have had more time for solitude than probably ever in my life, and I have found this to be resoundingly true.

But there is a dark side to my pleasure, one that even Emily felt. (As I'm sure all you extroverts are eager to tell me.) The benefits of solitude come at a price, and I'm beginning to wonder if it is not too high, no matter how much I may enjoy it.

I have found that the more time I spend alone, reading or writing or driving, the more of an effort it becomes to re-engage with society, with those complex and unpredictable creatures we call humans. The more I retreat into my own mind, the more comfortable I become there, like a little church mouse setting up house, arranging everything just so. In silence, I am able to let the dust settle, and I am reluctant to leave that still and cocooned place. It represents a place of security for me, like a rabbit den safely underground the chaos of the outside world. Like I said earlier, solitude for me is an escape. And many things in life are not meant to be avoided.

When I am alone, I only have to deal with one person: myself. And while sometimes that is no easy task, it is certainly less complicated than dealing with any number of additional personalities. It's harder for me to hurt people when I'm alone, and it's harder for them to hurt me. For a while I can ignore all the pain occurring around me and pretend everything is just fine.

It doesn't take a college grad to tell you that this world is full of crap. So much pain and suffering, so much struggle. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by it. I'm not sure why I like being alone so much—as least part of it has to do with my personality—but part of it is also a weakness and a desire to avoid discomfort. When I'm under the impression that everything is fine—within my relationships and within the souls of others—I'm under no obligation to do anything about it. I don't think this consciously, but when I stop to examine it, that's probably what's really going on: At least part of my preference for solitude stems from a fear of either the helplessness or the tough responsibility one feels when engaging with those who are hurting.

As anyone who has ever interacted with a human being knows, this is no way to properly live, and I realize that. Sometimes my introverted self gets carried away. It takes a meaningful, personal interaction to snap me out of my stupor. I visited some of my friends from college this past weekend, and I felt something in my soul wake up. Yes, there is a kind of freedom that comes with solitude, but there is also a kind of freedom that can be found only in the company of close friends. You can be totally yourself when you are alone, but it is much more satisfying to be totally yourself among people who can affirm you in that.

The number one thing I miss out on when I choose to spend long hours in my own company is the chance to grow in humility, and by that I mean thinking of myself less and others more. I wrote about this back in October, I think, in a post titled “My Bonsai Tree Life.” Obviously, it's one of those lessons I will continue learning my entire life. It's seems that every time I come back from a visit to Chicago or have a deep conversation with a friend I am inspired to devote more energy to caring for others and actively participating in their lives. And then I always fail in some way to live up to this goal, and I retreat back within myself.

I wonder sometimes how Emily Dickinson survived years and years of self-imposed isolation. How did she retain compassion for others? How was she not driven crazy by her own thoughts? Or perhaps she was. Some of her poetry does suggest a deeply troubled soul. Still, I have a deep respect for Emily, and knowing my own introverted tendencies, I won't judge her for her choices.

But I've decided that for me, art springs from a place somewhere between these two modes of being. I must be both a social creature and a private one. I must experience the world but also have time to reflect on it. One without the other produces dead art, either too lofty and ungrounded or cheap and unfiltered. There is a delicate balance between these, one that I am still trying to figure out. I suppose that's how all of life is, a back and forth shifting of ideas as we teach ourselves how to live in this strange world.

This is starting to get old...

This morning while we were all standing around the station waiting for the delayed planes, one of the full-time FedEx couriers came up to me. "I had about three people this week ask me who that twelve-year-old was who delivered their packages on Monday," he said, laughing.

I had run his route for him on Monday. It took me a second to register what he meant. "Are you serious?" I finally said. "They really thought I was twelve?" I didn't find the situation quite as funny.

One of the other couriers chipped in. "Oh come on, she doesn't look that young. Seventeen maybe, but not twelve."

"It's ok," I sighed. "I get it all the time."

"I bet you do," she said, nodding sympathetically. It did make me feel much better.

I would've been able to brush this off easier if I weren't mistaken for a high school student an hour later. I was sent home from FedEx because the delayed planes weren't due to come in for another four hours or more, and I needed to get to my next job before then. The Grand Rapids airport had been shut down due to heavy snow. My dad picked me up from the station (did I mention that I got stuck in the middle of my street trying to get to work this morning so my dad had to drive me?), and we stopped for coffee and scones. 

The very nice woman working at the counter overheard us talking about the weather and thought she'd make conversation. "You had a snow day today, didn't you?" she said to me with a smile.

I looked up from the pastries. How did I explain to her that I was no longer in school, no longer in college even, and that I had actually been at work for two hours already this morning? I decided not to try. "Uh, yeah." I said. It was sort of true, after all. Next to me, my dad was trying not to laugh.

Just for good measure, I'm going to mention that last week at the incoming freshman orientation night I manned a table for the high school cross country team, and one of the parents asked me if I were a senior on the team. "No," I said. "I'm the coach."

It's a fact. I officially look like a child. Does that mean I still get to act like one?

The Saturday from Hell (please excuse the dramatics)

Considering my last post was about how much I dislike Saturdays, it seems unfair to barrage you with yet another round of complaints against that day. But yesterday was so terrible, it was (almost) funny, and since the first thing I did when I got home was frantically type out a description of all that went wrong, it seems a waste not to let someone read it.

I should’ve known it was going to be a rough day as soon as I woke up that morning. I was emerging from two nights of near sleeplessness, and the ground was covered in about a foot of new snow. At the moment when I glanced out the window and made this discovery, I wasn’t actually worried about it. My mind, apparently, is still in that school mode where snow storms are the most exciting thing in the world because they mean sleeping in and a day off. Though this is no longer true, somehow the snow still excited me. I didn’t think about the fact that I was going to have to drive around in it all day.

When I got to the FedEx station, I learned that we were short a few drivers, so there would be no flex. That meant that if my route got assigned more packages than I could handle, which it often does, I couldn’t pass them off to anyone. This was the first of the bad news. Someone in the higher ups of FedEx gave our station a Service Disruption due to the weather, though, so at least I wouldn’t have to worry about lates---they were automatically excused. I was still feeling optimistic about the day.

Until I got stuck in the snow. At my very first stop. And everything went downhill from there.

The house was on Liberty street just south of downtown where the homes are old and small, and it was at the top of a very steep hill. As soon as I turned down Liberty and started creeping up the hill, I knew there was no way I was going to make it. The road had not been plowed, and my wheels were already spinning on ice. So I figured I would be smart, stop my truck right where it was, and wade through the two feet of snow up to the house. A bit of a walk, but then I could reverse out of Liberty and onto the clearer street below. This would’ve been a good plan if it had worked.

When I got back in my truck after dropping off the envelope, it took me about two second to realize I was in trouble. In the process of stopping the truck, I had slid back into a snowbank, and the back tires were completely lodged. For about ten minutes I tried rocking the truck backwards and forwards, switching between drive and reverse and angling the wheels in all possible directions. I even got out of my truck and tried to dig out the tires on my hands and knees, covering myself with snow in the process and feeling more and more sorry for myself as time passed and my fingers and toes grew numb. Eventually I had to admit defeat. I made an embarrassed phone call to Dispatch.

She said it would be about an hour before the tow truck arrived.

As I slumped into the driver’s seat, I tried not to make eye contact with the curious neighbors who were all out shoveling their driveways and watching as every five minutes or so I stirred to make last-hope efforts to escape.

The one redeeming aspect of my day arrived 30 minutes later in the form of a hispanic man with a minivan. I’m thinking about writing a letter to this man. It would say:

To the kind soul who pulled the FedEx girl out of the snow on Saturday:

I was skeptical at first that your minivan had enough horsepower to pull free my truck, even after you told me about the four-wheel drive and the police officer you rescued. But you proved me wrong. Thank you for driving to your shop to get your chain, and please thank your friends too for so kindly assisting me. I’m sorry I was freaking out so much and kept stomping on the brake.

Sincerely, your friendly neighborhood FedEx girl

The man with the chain and the minivan pulled me off the Liberty and on the adjacent street. And I was free. Free to go forth and have the worst day of my life.

Ok, so it wasn’t the worst day of my life, but it was pretty bad. After that first 45 minute delay, I got stuck again about 10 minutes later, although this time I was able to free myself with some effort. I learned from this that I couldn’t drive down most residential streets that hadn’t been plowed, which consequently meant parking blocks away and hiking through the snow in my FedEx-approved black shoes (note: shoes, not boots) which were soon soaked. I was flustered from all that was going wrong and from how slowly I was progressing from stop to stop, so I started making mistakes---missing streets and turns, etc---which of course only made me more flustered and more prone to mistakes. At noon, I had only delivered six packages. Usually, I’m on my way back to the station by noon, done for the day.

The last straw was an innocent-looking little package addressed to 1139 College SE. I am convinced this house does not exist. And if it does and you live there, I’m sorry that you did not get your package on Saturday, but you really should live somewhere easier to find. I wandered through the snow for several freezing blocks before giving up and returning to my truck (slightly panicked because I had parked it smack in the middle of a street blocking all traffic---it was my only option!), package still under arm. And then I called my dad. When he told me the address I was looking for was exactly where I had just been wandering, I about lost it. Actually, I did lose it. “No it’s not!” I cried. “I was just there. There is no 1139! It doesn’t exist! I hate this job! I hate all this snow!” I started to gasp like a three-year-old, my voice broken by sobs. “I can’t drive anywhere and all the roads are blocked and I’ve already been out here forever and I’ve only delivered six boxes and my toes are cold and I can’t read my maps and this just sucks! And that house doesn’t exist!” Sleep deprivation really wasn’t working in my favor at this point.

My dad did the only thing he really could do in that situation: he pretended like I was behaving totally rationally and informed me that if I had anymore questions, I could feel free to call. I thanked him and hung up. I can’t believe this, I thought. I am a deranged, hysterical FedEx driver. I should be in a movie. It wasn’t exactly a comforting thought.

After that I delivered 17 huge, heavy boxes to this girl’s apartment on the 2nd floor (I think she may have noticed how annoyed I was with her), 42 boxes to an office on the 3rd floor, attempted to enter several locked apartment buildings, tried to turn the wrong way down a one-way street more times than I can count, fishtailed every time I accelerated, dropped off 4 large boxes of human blood, got stuck in the Grand Rapids Auto Show traffic, and then was forced to take a 30 minute break at McDonalds so as not to violate work rules even though all I wanted to do was finish up and go home.

I’m not sure I’ve ever uttered more profanities in such a short period of time as I did that day. Good thing there was no one there to hear me.

When I finally got back to the station, I had been out nearly five hours later than usual.

There is no moral to this story, other than to say that the day eventually ended, even though I thought it never would. And I am in a much better mood now. I just hope it doesn’t snow like that again.