Stack Phrases

Over the last few weeks, I've let the cracks in my psyche grow over with routine. I am nourished by good words, spoken and written and sung, and by good company. I tried to visually approximate how my days tend to stack up:

Eliot, stop looking so pleased with yourself. As soon as you open your eyes,

you're going to get distracted by a bird outside and flip the eff out.

Aside from my doodle-doing direly needing work and desperately needing a defined style... this is about right. Not necessarily in this order, but these are the devils, the details, of my days.

The irksome-but-painfully-loved Eliot.

The books.

The running and strengthening of my body.

The healthy food (so much fruit, you guys).

The less-healthy food (well, red wine has antioxidants, so all you free radicals can suck on that).

The tea, the coffee.

The doodling and sometimes-art.

The writing.

The music music music.

And The Future.

That Box O' Future weighs heavily, but Eliot's ears (and my shoulders) seem to be handling the load, more or less. I'm getting pretty interested in a few Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) programs, and depending on my state of mind, the prospects are either a balm or a briarpatch in my little crisis. A crisis which, at 25, I'm learning to accept as acceptable.

The cracks are still there, of course - tiny fissures and fine lines in the underbrush - but I feel comfortably me again, and that's a lovely thing.

I'm warming up, just in time for Spring.

I Do the Best Imitation of Myself

The crickets have been chirping on this blog for almost 2 months. If you're one of the handful of my readers - whom I really (truly!) appreciate - I am dreadfully sorry for the lull and I am even the more smitten with you for still clicking over to this vomit-bucket of internet words from time to time. Fortunately, there was no good reason for the disappearance, and unfortunately, as well.

I was diagnosed with depression and and anxiety a little over 4 years ago, although I suppose I've known and avoided admitting it well before I finally broke down in a doctor's office in a strange torrent of relief and fear. I have not advertised this widely - many friends and family members who have known me for years and sometimes lifetimes don't know - so this is about as close as I could come to broadcasting such an intimate personal fissure. I still think of myself as a generally happy person, and if not happy, I am for sure at least unfailingly silly, which is close enough to happy most days. As it is, sometimes I wake up and the silly stays asleep, and I can't bring myself to want anything more than to get back under the covers to hide and spend the hours in stillness. When I can't do that or I find the strength to refuse to do it, I draw on Ben Folds and do the best imitation of myself. (I'm apparently pretty good at it, and I hate that it sounds so deceitful. I promise it's less to do being deceitful and all to do with trying to resemble a functioning member of society.)

Contrary to how it's usually portrayed in terribly melodramatic antidepressant commercials, I don't actually mope around in a sagging robe, forlornly staring out the window. There is some moping, but there's also a lot of numb paralysis punctuated by anger and frustration, flailing and fear, tears and hyperventilation. As Jemaine's character explains in Eagle vs. Shark, "It makes me pretty intense" and makes you punch innocent cake boxes (and if you haven't seen it and know Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords, see it already!). Practically speaking, there is perfunctory grocery shopping and productivity, there are breaths of fresh air in the form of casual drinks or dinner with understanding friends when I can summon the courage and calmness to enjoy being social. There is preoccupation with the inevitability that Eliot will die one day* as I watch him sleep in my lap, wonderfully stupid to it all, which then extends into selfish preoccupation with my own mortality and such questions as what the hell am I doing? What the hell are we all doing?

I tried Lexapro for the better part of a year, but the sad numbness it was supposed to ease just blanched my world of any color at all. Before, if my depression relaxed its grip for a few hours or even days or weeks, true responses to life would stir inside me - I could laugh easily, and I could stand in the Seattle sun and actually feel the warmth spreading on my skin, and gladly internalize the glow. Medicated, I wouldn't feel sad, sure, but I wouldn't feel anything else, either - I couldn't. I simply couldn't care about anything. The bad bouts were gone, but so were the glimpses of joy I savored when I could force myself to recognize them. I wouldn't notice at the daffodils yawning into life along thawing sidewalks as winter began to shed its barren coat. My creativity withered. Adam would sneak up behind me while I did dishes and kiss that spot only he knows on the back of my neck and my insides didn't involuntarily dissolve into wobbly bits - the instinctual melt never came, and I couldn't even will it to happen as I stared blankly at my soapy hands, waiting. And that was the worst. So I told Lexapro to shove it in 2009 and haven't looked back, and instead I now have some just-in-case-I-start-to-lose-my-shit pills for the anxiety (and, of course, a semicolon). They help me even if I don't take them; just knowing they're within reach can be a balm when I start to spiral. I see that Prescription Bottle Orange (there must be a crayon with that name somewhere) and it's all:

Hey, good buddy. You know, I bet you'd feel a whole bunch better if you started breathing. Now, I don't have lungs, so I can't say from experience, but I hear it's pret-ty nice. Go ahead, grab ahold of some of that sweet sweet oxygen with your mouth parts and if you have a hard time getting the hang of it, I'll be right here to give you a hand. See? Look at you, breathing like a pro. Don't you look pretty as a peach with a little blood circulating back into your face?

(My bottle sounds a lot like Kenneth Parcell from '30 Rock' coaxing a cat down from a roof.)

Anyway, coming out about depression is a scary thing, but maybe less scary than, say, ghosts or bad grammar (and definitely less scary than ghosts with bad grammar). It is less scary thanks to people who capture how it feels so perfectly, like Jenny Lawson, one of my loudly-sung heroes better known as The Bloggess, and Allie of Hyperbole and a Half, both of whom write words echoed in my own heart and elevated to a glory unbeknownst to my own feeble attempts. Until recently, the mind-fog was heavy, and that heart seized up like in my chest cavity like a stapler in Jell-O. I've been doing the best imitation of myself that I can - that alone is hard. Expressing myself at all is harder, and writing here feels like T-Rex trying to change the batteries in his smoke detector. So here I am writing, and that must mean something.

This bout of depression has to be one of the worst I've ever experienced. It came from nowhere and came at me roaring, so these past several weeks have been a very long, quiet slouch toward myself again. I am lucky; I have an incredible support system for which I am grovellingly grateful and without which I'd be in trouble. Adam is a saint and his unending supply of love and patience astounds me. But I feel like my tiny rebellion has begun because I feel. My laughs aren't hollow and I've left the apartment (the fact that my unemployment enables me to wallow in sweatpants and Downton Abbey is a mixed blessing). Kristen Bell's love for sloths killed me a few times over. I am meekly playing my guitar and finding my voice again for the first time in a very long while and am embracing the callouses and vocal strain every day. I am taking inspiration from Killian and blasting what I call "happy-yelling songs" in my headphones - mostly from the likes of The Mountain Goats, Cloud Cult, Frightened Rabbit, Andrew Jackson Jihad, and Matt Pond PA - and while the lyrics may be heart-wrenching, they're determined, and damn it, we're going to dance. Screw you, depression. Suck it, anxiety. I'm taking a holiday, and don't expect any postcards. I will be furiously happy whether you like it or not.

*In the midst of this craphole of a time, my dog passed away. I meant to make this tribue its own separate post, but here it is:

His hearing may have weakened, but his ears never stopped loving rubs. His muscles withered and his eyes clouded, but he would always light up and struggle to his feet to greet a friend. He aged happily, even when he lost his tail and couldn’t wag more than the nub to show it. He grew so tired, but never unwilling. He hated being apart from his humans – even if we were just in the next room – and now we will always hate being apart from him. Over the years of college and after moving to Seattle, I only saw him intermittently, which made each progressive glimpse of his condition appear that much worse. But he never forgot me, and I’ll never forget him. I love you, Riley; you’ll always be my good boy.

**I am in love with this drawing of one of my favorite characters in literature - the fox from The Little Prince. Perfect.

Better

Happy New Year! What did you fail to achieve last year?

That's my sour interpretation of the inevitable inquiry about my New Year's resolutions. While that may sound a bit cranky, it's just the way I've been conditioned to think. It's an implication that we must be failing at something or at least be needing improvement in some way; otherwise, why would we annually renew our vows to change? So every New Year, we're always trying to be Better. But what's Better, exactly? It's usually just a stab in the dark on a sliding scale, but I suppose as long as we're all trying, as long as we're all aware of the choices we make, well - that's Better right there. (See? I'm not always such a cynic.) But since I opened the door... here's a small obligatory sampling of my resolutions for the next 12 months.

Make more eye contact.

Really, this is just a symptom of the underlying illness: low self-esteem. My insecurities keep me navel-gazing or admiring the floor under false pretenses. You often need to get to the root of a problem to solve it, but I've found in many instances dealing with my awkward self that sometimes, treating the symptoms first as a reverse-approach does tricky wonders. Forcing a smile on a shit day feels disingenuous at first, but after a while, that grimace begets a real grin (I guess there's some truth to the oft-irritating, annoyingly-optimistic saying 'fake it till you make it'). I hate that my lack of eye contact probably makes friends feel dismissed and strangers uncomfortable or suspicious, so no more of the ol' shifty eyes. I'm going to hold the gazes of those I hold dear, and I'll raise my peepers to match the practiced confidence of my firm handshake. And who knows? Maybe my secret brown freckle in my eye won't be so secret anymore, and more importantly, maybe I'll learn there's less judgment staring back than I fear. So here's looking at you, kid - literally.

Floss more.

I'm sorry. I know it's terrible, and I'm ashamed. It's not like I don't floss EVER; I do it in fits and starts because I'm supposedly an adult and I know better. But in the end, I always slack because the act of flossing just freaks me out. The feeling of string sawing up into my gums sends the same shiver through my body as touching my eyeball once did. But I got over touching my eyeball out of the desire to wear contacts (or rather, the stronger desire to not wear glasses), so I know I can get over the flossy feeling, too. But seriously, eyeball-touching is still gross so please don't touch yours in front of me or you'll make me shudder like a freshly-slammed door. The feeling of clean teeth squeaking under my tongue is much better than the feeling I get when I watch pinkish-brown swirl into the drain (and I won't even get into the health problems I'm tempting), so regular, twice-daily flossing it is.

Stop trying to be perfect every day, 100% of the time forever.

Who am I kidding? Turns out the world won't end if I hork down that piece of chocolate I shouldn't have or skip a run in favor of a read - I'll leave doomsday to the Maya, Harold Camping, and Elvis Perkins. But seriously, life is messy and I realize I should stop trying to clean it up or slap a shiny Ikea veneer over the rough spots; that's not my job, and it's not a winning battle. We all can't be the best writer, artist, lion-tamer, etc. But we all just have to do our best, and that's enough. It's not settling; it's accepting. And although this won't be easy, it'll be worth the patience I'll test. Part of this means I'm going to stop trying so hard - it's exhausting. My standards for myself are impossibly high and my ambitions too lofty, so I need to start assigning the same understanding and forgiveness to my own mistakes that I do to my loved ones'. Being me should be plenty, and if not, oh well. So if I disagree with you, I'll say something instead of mumbling something neutral in fear of losing favor - hopefully you'll still like me anyway. If I don't accomplish everything I wanted to in a day, so be it; tomorrow will have a to do. If I love someone or something, I'm going to sing praises loudly and often. If I kicked ass at something, to hell with modesty in fear of offending: I'm going to let myself be proud of myself - and if I just sort of nudged ass with my toe, I'll still high-five myself for taking aim and wearing the proper footwear.



Sure, there are the other things, the same old stale promises of getting back into my skinny jeans and running/writing/laughing more and dusting of my guitar and tackling all the books on the bookshelf. These will get their turns in due time. But those are more selfish than what I'm after, at least in the first few months of 2012. Well, the flossing might be selfish except in the case of smooches, but the other two will help me be less selfish in the long run. They'll ultimately lead to worrying less about me and other trivialities and more worth-while worrying about what matters: my relationships, feeling good, and the little world around little me.

On the other hand, maybe I should quit while I'm ahead: on my suddenly-more-populated run on January 1st, I spotted a corgi at 12:20pm (Come on. A corgi at 12:20 the first day of 2012! What a sign!). So maybe I should just resolve to get a corgi. What could be Better than that?

The Simple Scuffin

Simplicity is something I both appreciate and pursue. I envy the minimalist life, and am a light packer. If you've seen the way I dress, you know I will rarely be swayed from my basic uniform of jeans, beater tank, gray zip-up hoodie, and flip flops by anything other than weather or dress code. I'm not good with trends or fussy new styles; rather, they're not so good with me. I like my simple routines, and their familiarity keeps my life feeling orderly in a disorderly world.

In the kitchen, I get a bit bolder. I actually play a bit, although I still keep things relatively simple to let good food be treated with little flash and lots of love. I'm comfortable enough with flavors and ingredients' personalities that I will tweak and nudge and twist recipes, or not use one at all. Cooking is a merciful art in which mistakes are seldom, but if I make one, seldom does it hurt anything besides the chances that I'll go back for seconds.

Baking, on the other hand, is less forgiving and puts me right back in my orderly place. Recipes are followed to the letter as if I'm expecting a gold star from the teacher. I'll try new things, sure, but knowing I'm at the mercy of chemistry, I tend to bake with tradition over tricks. I always read the directions like a good girl, and I know what tastes good and go with it. And oh, the things that taste good. So good that when whatever I've baked is out of the oven, I hope someone is there to shame me out of stuffing the entire batch in my mouth like a squirrel on uppers.


With Irish Soda Bread, I'm about as purist as they come. Real, traditional soda bread has only four humble ingredients, and none of that silliness of sugar or caraway seeds. It's just flour, baking soda, buttermilk, and salt - that's it. I'll happily eat other versions because they can be incredibly yummy, but those are just gussied-up step-sisters to the soda bread Cinderella. Sure, she looked nice at the ball, but we all know she didn't need the fancy-schmance. She was just as lovely at home by the fire, and soda bread is no different.

Last week, I was feeling impulsive and daring and itched to do something a little crazy. I knew better than to dash out to chop off my hair or get another tattoo while my sanity took a holiday, so I holed myself up in the kitchen to gather my thoughts. When one of those thoughts found its way to the top of the heap, I felt a little mischief curl my grin. Even I wouldn't have imagined what happened.

I bastardized the hell out of soda bread.


I wanted something that would last longer than the usual loaf - unless it's eaten in a day, it dries out quickly once it's been sliced. I know! I thought. I'll make mini soda breads! Everything's cuter when tinier! Just look at tiny owls!

I wanted something a little more like a treat than everyday soda bread, maybe a little sweeter, a little meltier on the tongue. I'll add sugar! And BUTTER! Like a baby scone! I WILL HOLD BAKED AWESOME IN MY HAND AND IT WILL TASTE LIKE MAGIC!

Oh, my ancestors must have been rolling under the peat.

In less than 48 hours, I made 4 batches with little variation of what I came to call Irish Soda Bread Scuffins. They're sweeter like muffins and shaped like them (as I made them in a muffin pan, although I'm sure they'd be just as nice drop-biscuit style), but their texture isn't quite dense or muffinish enough to call them muffins proper. Smooshing cold butter into the flour - technically the technique is "rubbing in," but rubbing butter into anything just sounds dirty - made the texture closer to that of scones, but these definitely aren't your typical scone. And so, behold, the liger of baked goods, the tasty bee in my bonnet: the simple scuffin.


Baking can make some of us feel like we should swap our aprons for lab coats, but I promise that's not the case here. The recipe is quite flexible, so feel free to play around with the amounts of butter and sugar. You can even leave out the sugar all together if you want a more biscuit-y scuffin (a scuffit?). Maybe add cheese and herbs instead. But, sweet or savory, these are addictive little guys. I burned my tongue because I was too impatient to let them cool properly, practically using the muffin tin as a plate. Anyway, you might want to share these so you don't eat half the batch yourself... in 20 minutes. Not that I did that (twice).


Irish Soda Bread Scuffins

Your first batch might take about 10 minutes to come together if you're not too familiar with the rubbing process, but the more comfortable you are, the more quickly this recipe comes together.

3 cups all-purpose flour*
1/3 cup sugar**
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes***
1 1/4 cups buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 425°F and prepare a standard muffin tin by buttering the cups or using non-stick spray. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Rub the butter pieces into the flour mixture with clean fingers until the mixture looks coarse like breadcrumbs and any lumps are no bigger than a pea, as Molly says. (If you're adding anything special to the scuffins like spices or cheese or anything, go ahead and add them to the mixture now.)

Make a well in the center of the flour and pour the buttermilk into the well. Gently stir the flour into the buttermilk until all the buttermilk is absorbed and the flour is moist. Be careful not to over-mix so the scuffins don't turn out tough or too chewy. Form the mixture into a loose, slightly sticky ball with your hands like you're forming a loaf - if it's too sticky to work with, sprinkle a bit of flour onto your hands.

Pull off 12 equal pieces of the dough and place them into the cups of the muffin tin. If you want, you can cut a cross-shape into the tops with a knife like traditional loaves of soda bread, but if that's more work than you want to do, you can just not give a crap like I did after 2 batches and they'll taste just as lovely. You can also brush the tops with buttermilk to give them a bit of tanginess, with melted butter to make them extra melty (and make your eyes roll to the back of your head while you moan out loud alone in your apartment while leaning on the oven for support), or with egg whites to give them a glossy shine.

Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool in the tin for a few minutes before removing the scuffins to cool on a rack for a few minutes more. Eat with butter or jam, or coffee or beer. Or eat them straight from the tin, plain and compulsively, like I did.

Yield: 12 scuffins

*I used King Arthur white whole wheat flour 3 times out of 4 (I like a slightly heftier taste) so whole wheat flour works just fine.
**I used as little as 1/4 and as much as 1/2 a cup in different batches - it just depends on how sweet you'd like your scuffins.
***Again, you don't need to use all the butter - these taste just as good with half as much, just not as rich. Okay, just kidding, of course they taste better with full butter, but they're still yummy enough for me with less when I'm feeling a little diet guilt.

So come dance this silence down through the morning

It's a gray afternoon.

I suppose it's been a gray afternoon for days, but that's winter in Seattle - a few months full of sleepy sighs as clouds blur into skyline, and bleary eyes whenever the sun pokes its head out from under the covers for a few hazy minutes before burrowing away again.

I'm feeling pretty gray myself today, a little fuzzy around the edges. It's Christmas time, and while I always tend to get a little sad around the holidays - blame nostalgia, the slowness of limbs and thinking in the cold, the seeming hourlessness of the days as the year ends and plenty of time to reflect on life and the ending of things - I usually get with the spirit of things. But I'm just not feeling it this year, and that saddens me even more. Normally, I dig under the bed for the box of lights and ornaments within the first few days of December, giddy to sprinkle a bit of Christmas around the windows and bring home the smallest fir tree I can find to fill the apartment with it's wintry perfume. This year, it took me until yesterday to dig and sprinkle, and I had to drag my butt to do it.

Maybe some switch went off with turning 25. That sense of innocence is so pervasive during the holidays - I know its there because I've felt it before - but what I feel more acutely right now is its absence, like a tangible loss. I'm not a child anymore by anyone's standards (the exception being if they see my behavior when at Disneyland), and that stings a bit. But really, this is nothing new, not to me or to pretty much anyone old enough to notice such things. Maybe reading some Salinger would be soothing if only to commiserate, but maybe I should just suck it up. Maybe I should take down one of the stockings hung with care on the bookshelf (I don't have a chimney, and besides, the bookshelf fits us better if we're using symbols here), place it on my foot, and give myself a Christmas kick in the butt. (Side note: I've said "butt" twice, three if you count just now, and it makes me giggle - maybe I'm still a child after all. Butt butt butt.)

I have my health, my friends, my family. My boyfriend is made of magic and my cat loves my lap. My apartment, finally dressed in its Christmas best, is mad cute. I'm writing again. And drawing! (Get ready for some hilarious canvas-based presents, buddies.) If I get sad sometimes, that's okay, because it leaves my silliness and my love for all of these things intact. And when I stand in the kitchen doorway framed by Christmas lights, I can't help but feel a little glow.

So if today's a bit gray - well, gray is my favorite color, anyway.

It Doesn't Hurt

"I've always dreamed of growing up to be Amy Poehler." - Amy Poehler

The world provides many idols: religious, false, American, Billy. I have a touch of superstitiousness and am fascinated by the symbolism, ceremony, and cultural significance of idols - I'm pretty positive growing up with one foot in the door of Catholicism had a hand in this - but I don't really subscribe to any such object-worship in particular. I do have a ceramic lucky kitty on a bookshelf because something about those little guys just delights me, but I could hardly say I idolize the thing when I high-five its raised paw. When it comes to people, a person as an idol tends to become objectified, and that person becomes the object of hero-worship, but when it comes to me, the person I worship - well, I just dream of being like her, and fantasize about being her friend and meeting her for brunch. Here's the weird thing, though: it just so happens that this idolatry is manifested in my face.

Since the last years of college, there have been several occasions on which a friend or acquaintance, or even a practical stranger, would comment that I reminded him or her of Amy Poehler. Usually it was based on a physical likeness, that I looked like her, but if the person knew me beyond what I looked like, they would also make a comparison of personalities. I didn't quite agree at first. Despite a few endearing comparisons made by my boyfriend to Jenny Lewis in certain photos when I sang and had reddish hair, I'd never really thought I looked like anyone but just plain ol' me, although I like to imagine that because my father looks a bit like a younger Jon Voight, I could have looked like Angelina Jolie had my mother been Marcheline Bertrand instead of a blonde occupational therapist.*

I was honestly taken aback by this comparison, because frankly, I've adored Poehler for years and wouldn't ever flatter myself to conceive of such a connection - plus, I think she's pretty darn cute. Often, upon someone noting the similarity, others would undoubtedly stare blankly at my face for a few moments before declaring, "Hm, I don't see it." But as more and more unsolicited analogies were made, I started to think that maybe all these people weren't actually in on a really boring conspiracy. There are some resemblances, sure - we're both on the short side, with comparable blonde hair with bangs, and a sarcastic wit. We share a love of tall, sardonically funny men, Tina Fey, and silliness. We're obviously both hilarious (at least, that's what I like to think when I make people laugh - fingers crossed). And after some very studious, self-indulgent observation sessions in the mirror and being presented with some photographic evidence of a few ridiculous faces I tend to make, I suppose I can admit that our crooked smirks, and the way those smirks sneakily crease up from our jawlines to our cheeks like wry parentheses, can indeed be quite alike.

Amy Poehler happens to have played a character on Saturday Night Live named Kaitlin (correct spelling even! Uncanny!), described by the ever-wise Wikipedia as an "excitable preteen." If you've seen her as Kaitlin, and you also know the Kaitlin whose blog you happen to be reading, then you know that she and I share the ability to be awkward people very well - it is an unfortunate fact that hyperactive awkwardly-fast-talker Kait shows up to embarrass cool-collected-awesome Kait from time to time. Further parallels can be made between me and socially-inept over-acheiver Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation, so let's all breathe a collective sigh of relief that I never got involved in government works. Poehler's impersonation of Sharon Osbourne clutching a visibly confused Pomeranian is one I do myself if I'm moved to annoy, my cat Eliot as the casualty.

Really, all of this is self-serving, because when I'm feeling smug, I fancy myself as pretty funny. Likewise, when I'm feeling insecure, I fancy myself as pretty funny, but... I hear laughter after I make some remark or joke and think Uh oh. Maybe they're just patronizing me, like patting a child on the head when she makes an asshat of herself in front of the adults. I hope they don't think I'm an asshat. Wait, maybe there's something on my face. Do I have cheese on my face? I did eat a lot of cheese earlier. Please don't let them be laughing at a gouda smudge. (Turns out, my internal monologue isn't backed by a soundtrack of awesome 1970's TV show theme music with a swagger-pumped bass line; rather it tends to just be frequently punctuated by a cartoon trombone whining a sad womp womp womp wooooommmmp.) And so I think of the comparisons that have been made between me and Amy Poehler as validation of my sense of humor as well as my expression of it, and if someone's opinion links us... well, there's no higher compliment you could give me, and I will want to be your friend forever (consider that a warning).

When the swelling of flagrant vanity subsides, I float back down to reality, where maybe I could pass as Poehler's younger, funny-enough sister - I know I'm no doppelganger. But I will happily settle for a passing observation of "Hey, you remind me of that blonde chick from Baby Mama..." and I will blithely thank them and hope they meant it in a nice way. Tina Fey beat me to it by writing her own love letters to Amy Poehler, but let this be my overture - Amy Poehler is brilliant and I idolize her, but more than my idol, she's my inspiration. She's unapologetically funny and she won't be pigeonholed, and she doesn't give a crap what you think or who you think she is (her quote at the top of this post says it all). My lucky kitty would high-five her in a heartbeat. While she may not be curing cancer, she's making people laugh by doing things her way, and with her as my role model, I hope I can say I've always dreamed of growing up to be Kait... but that it doesn't hurt to be Amy Poehler.

*Don't worry, mom - I think you're pretty cool.

Everything in Transit

I love liminal spaces. Anywhere in which transition is tangible – doorways, hallways, stairwells, bridges – I love the feeling of being physically in-between. Traveling is made easier and all the less stressful because I typically take more delight in the train ride than the arrival at the station (and who would enjoy a book, save ones about travel spots and historical places, perhaps, that is all climax and no journey?). I even have a semicolon tattooed on my wrist to exalt in the smallest of breaths between two independent chunks of sentence, and to remind me to take one of those breaths myself when the many sides of my life grow too compact and solid around me.

The unfortunate dark side to this particular moon, however, is what this means. While I may be just fine in transit out in the world, I can't move on the inside. Physical crossroads are no problem, exciting even. Figurative ones are frightening.

For me, fear is at once a great motivator and a cause of paralysis. When I first left my family, two jobs, and my comfort zone of California for Seattle, I luckily had the wonderful distractions of my boyfriend, Adam, and my dear friend and sometimes-roommate, Stacy, as well as the task of the move itself. While I had saved as much money as I could for the life change, I still needed to find a way to support it. I had only two familiar faces for hundreds of miles among the constellation of unfamiliar lights that was my new city-home, and suddenly, I needed to become an urban astronaut (or an adult, as some might more commonly call it).

I found a job with a Seattle-based bank less than 2 months and hundreds of resume-attached emails later – out of fear, out of simply needing money. I am grateful for the lessons learned and the enormous amount of growth I experienced over nearly 3 years, as well as the invaluable friends I made. But after all that time, I couldn’t work at a bank anymore. That’s not who I was when I started, not while I worked there, not who child-version of Kait ever wanted to be (in fact, she was probably sitting in a corner somewhere with her head in her hands, moping that she wasn’t Indiana Jones, or at least, a teacher like she’d always wanted as a close second to adventurer/archeologist). So I couldn’t do it. I had known it for a while, but I was terrified of the change it would bring if I actually acted. With enough nudges – both patient and frustrated – from friends and family and my incredibly supportive boyfriend alike, I finally left.

I could barely recognize the old writery, canvas-wielding me obscured by the gray pencil skirts and numb talk of debits and credits, but with a trusty pair of jeans and a few sketches later, I think I see her in there. But she’s scared. She’s terrified, seeking refuge in a stairwell because she doesn’t know what to do. No longer with the trappings of standard “success,” I am now voluntarily without job and income. For someone growing up crying if she got less than an A (that first B from my high school chemistry class will always haunt me) and who always knew what came next, not over-achieving or even just achieving by choice is a lot to swallow. But I have to keep reminding myself, when I catch own my unemployed eye in the mirror, that while I may not be considered successful by convention, what I am doing is allowing myself the opportunity to find my own version. And that in itself can hopefully be considered a success in some small way.

So now, here I am, afraid, in transit, and in pajamas (I am unemployed and at home, after all, and it’s cold – let’s not judge). Said incredibly supportive boyfriend kissed me goodbye before leaving for work, and my cat is snoring at my side with his paws over his nose. There is laundry and grocery-buying to be done, and then there is anything I like. I don’t know what comes next. But I will sing and paint and cook and create and write write write, and if I’m lucky, I will be too busy being successful to be afraid. And if some days I do feel a little fearful, that’s okay – there’s a lovely stairwell just outside my door.