Wow. Really?

March 11, 2007. The last day I posted. What have I been doing since then?? Where have those days gone?

I remember that this is a question I used to think about a lot, until the days started moving faster and I stopped missing every moment I was losing...mainly, I think, because I've been spending a lot of that time lately at work. And who wants to hang on to every one of those moments? I certainly don't!

I will tell you a secret. My life is more than this. Every day that I spend sitting in my office in Arlington, VA, making spreadsheets, answering e-mails, taking phone calls, I really live my life elsewhere. Some days it's in Europe, especially in the fall, when those brief gusts of cool air remind me of walking--always walking--the streets in London, Stratford, Edinburgh, Spain. Other days I'm traveling to Montana or Alaska or somewhere else I've never visited, watching the grass sway in the wind (always, too, there's wind in this life, a little turbulence that confirms I'm still breathing), or the mountains glow in the distance. And I see colors and beauty in everything and the smells are all new and bright and mingle with sounds to make memories. More often, I live in the familiar places: on the farm in Clover, or, rather, driving the roads around and near the farm in Clover; or in downtown Greenville, along the Reedy River, having a Saffron Turkey Wrap at Saffron's Sidewalk Cafe. In this life I'm always moving, exploring, adventuring, and learning. No wonder I'm so tired when I finally come home.

Maybe it's just me...

I think deep down inside I am just not amused. Not amused by people's drama, by my own random drama, by the drama of life. Many times recently I've found myself putting on a generous, knowing smile and consoling my friends on different issues--but all the while I don't really mean it!! One day, I think, I'm just going to have to stop. Would this bad, I ask? I mean, being amused in general--laughing at jokes, making jokes, being silly--these are great qualities in life, in friends, and in significant others. But I feel like the line should be drawn somewhere. Laughing at life is different than condoning the ridiculousness. Sometimes laughing is the only thing you can do, but at what point does the smile seem false?

Which leads me to a favorite poem:

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

-Paul Laurence Dunbar

These words are not mine but I like them anyway!

Found this in my A Word A Day email today:

This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers. -Terry Tempest Williams, naturalist and author (1955- )

Help Wanted: What Is It I Want?

My dear readers,

You are correct. It has been much, much too long.

The turn of the year has weighed on me more heavily than I thought. (This might have something to do with the gravity associated with my newly formed star-state.) That and I've been in and out of town, all over the country, through various states (including those of mind), and all across the spectrum of life, love, and the pursuit of happiness.

What can I even say about this all at once? Let's see...

I have been reconsidering (as usual) my life and occupational goals and coming to the conclusion that my current job is okay for now but it isn't really what I want to do forever. This is where you come in, dear readers. I will list what I want out of a job and you will tell me what job it is I want! Brilliant! So, here goes (from a recent conversation that sparked this whole entry):

• i do not like what i do now, which is mostly just...BS (I can find general resources for people, but not specific answers, I can talk to people in the approved language for a certain project, but not with my own thoughts)

• i like helping people, but perhaps not on an individual basis

• i want to help society, do things to benefit people in general

• and i also like being an expert, but i can't decide in which field i'd most like to be an expert
  

• i would like to learn more about how the world and different cultures work and how we affect different cultures and the world

• and i would like to come up with some real solutions to fixing or alleviating or at the very least recognizing the bad problems in the world

Furthermore:

• i know the dream will never come true

• but i still dream it

So, if you have any insight, advice, or experience to share, please feel free. Otherwise, just know that I am still here, thinking and wondering and trying as best I can.

A series of unfortunate events...

It's disastrous!

I turn 24 and suddenly I'm falling apart. By falling apart, I mean...well, not getting any younger...or skinnier. I finally gave in and bought a new pair of jeans in the next size up last weekend and they still don't really fit. They look fine, but I feel slightly like fainting if I wear them for long. (Harkening back to the uncomfortable era of corsets...) Luckily, I have my old favorites that fit me perfectly (strange how that works--they have grown with me...larger and wiser, of course) so I guess I'll just wear those until forever. That'll be nice. "Grandmother Lark, where did you get those jeans? Well, Tommy (because I'm sure my children will name their son Tommy), back at the turn of the century, I went to this store called Old Navy"--even the stores I shop at are old!! And I'll have lived through the turn of a century!!

To add insult to injury, we picked our next book at book club, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which is all about this gorgeous young man who sells his soul for perpetual youth and beauty. An excerpt:

"We never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail. Our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!"

Clearly, this probably isn't the best book to be reading at the moment, but the thought didn't cross my mind when I voted for it. Really, though, how much can I trust a character who ends a sentence with a preposition?

So, while I'm considering purchasing heat-activated Avon wrinkle cream and an Ab Lounge Ultra, please, my young friends, don't squander your youth or our country. Vote on Tuesday!

Yes, yes, it all made sense to me. Perhaps I'm just approaching senility...luckily (again), I'm also approaching stardom, according to a previous comment (c.f. "The year in review" from 9/5/06), so please, be prepared.

The year in review

In a few weeks, it will be almost a year since I moved up to DC for my first-ever job in the real world. I just re-read some of my entries from the beginning of my blog (which I created the same time I moved here) and was struck at how exciting yet bittersweet I found my first few weeks in the area. New places always invigorate me, but at the same time I was wishing for home. It's funny how little things really change as the time flies away.

I don't feel like it's been a year. When I think about all the experiences I've had individually--it's more like decades! :-) I think I've definitely taken advantage of most of the opportunities, at work and socially, that have come my way, but I still feel like I'm missing out on some things.

Granted, I have only been here one year. That's not a whole lot of time in comparison to the 18 years I spent in Clover or the 4 years at Furman. But I guess when I was a kid and in school I was always waiting for that next step that would propel me into grownup-dom, so I spent a lot of my time thinking about the future and expecting my graduation from college to solve all the little problems and frustrations of being a kid. And now that I'm here...well, I'm not sure that adulthood is really all it's cracked up to be!! Haha. It's liberating in a way and I have become more adjusted to it in the past year, but it's filled with (probably more) little problems and frustrations of its own. Oh, to be back where my biggest concern was whether to play in the front yard or the back yard today...

It's all okay, though. I have plenty of time to master the art of growing up. No reason to be in any great rush at the moment!

Weaving is Believing!

Today I walked through the neighborhoods across the way and wished I lived in a house with a yard, but not a neighborhood necessarily, with space and green and more than one room that connects us all.

I wonder why, around 4 pm every afternoon, the sky I can see from my office window refracts light in such a way that it turns an unsettling shade of yellow.

New York was a while ago, so here are 10 things that have happened since then:

1. My sister Erin turned 21! (She also visited Arlington.)
2. Maria married Brian. Brian married Maria. In C-lover. Nice times, pretty curls, and spinich dip! According to Maria, I was an awesome maid of honor, minus forgetting the sandals. (Oops!)
3. Michelle married Jeremy. I got to see my Michelle after more than a year of apartness! And Vermont was kinda cooler than I expected (temperature and atmospherewise). According to Michelle, I was also an awesome bridesmaid. If you ever need a female wedding party member, just ask Maria and Michelle for recommendations. I'm turning pro.
4. June...
5. Vacation/home for the 4th of July! Rotated time spent in the garden, in the pastures, communing with family, and hanging out with both freshly-married and dear old friends.
6. Belle & Sebastian, Broken Social Scene, Ted & the Pharmacists concert.
7. World Cup, Italy, Zidane...?!
8. My sister Abby saw her first non-adult-supervised concert, Taking Back Sunday. She's so much cooler than I ever was at 14!
9. My aunt accumulated another year full of living.
10. Continuing work on my self-titled masterpiece by gradually weaving the threads to make sense of the tangle that is Life.