Some grand adventure

There are times I get excited about something and I act without thought of consequence. For example, I'll get a craving for oreos, and the initial fervor of excitement inevitably leads to despair:

Delirious with brilliant idea of Eating All the Oreos, I'll (1) run out of the apartment like a maniac to the corner store just barely making the time or effort to don publicly non-shaming pants, (2) nearly injure the sweet, soft-spoken, elderly Chinese Harry* of Harry's Fine Foods and Frozen Meats by blinding flinging money at his head like he's a first world problem, (3) tear open the package and wolf down half of it in a flurry of wafers and creme that would make the Cookie Monster blush, and finally, (4) bottom out from the sugar/adrenaline rush and hold myself in fetal position on the couch until the shame and stomachache subside.

This pattern holds throughout nearly every other area to which I've applied it: getting way too excited about a new workout and training so hard, so fast that I pull a muscle and never do it again. Boldly buying a shirt outside of my stylistic comfort zone, wearing it once with uncertainty, then letting it collect dust and mope with old pairs of jeans, forgotten in the back of the closet. The Adkins Diet (a terrible, traumatizing week during which I was denied my beloved fruit). I start strong and invigorated by the promise of - a smokin' body in 2 weeks? A new signature look? Ketosis? - and finish weak, if I even finish at all.

So many bright, shiny prospects leading to unsatisfying, if not downright dismal results. This has taught me patience. I am rarely impulsive; I weigh and measure and methodically examine my choices so that I can do everything in my power to prevent failure when I do make them. But I realized that no matter how much I plan and scheme, no matter how much I try not to let excitement get the best of me, sometimes my choices won't work out. I can't prepare for things beyond my control, and maybe I shouldn't let fear of failure extinguish the excitement. Maybe I should let my heart override my head when the choice is worth it, because the problem with so many exciting Beginnings is that they just weren't the right ones in the first place.

This time, I was impulsive. I was excited. And I still am.

On June 26, I will be starting my first course toward TESOL certification. I registered within 72 hours of discovering the program existed, and I'm still reeling from how quickly I moved to enroll. I chanced upon TESOL in a pivotal moment and something clicked. I didn't let myself get too excited at first, but it wasn't a frenzied, Oreo-score excitement; this was - is - a resonating, steady kind of slow-current excitement that tells me I'm doing the right thing.

So I'm excited. Anxious, a little nervous, and overwhelmed with day-to-day realities, but I'm excited for the right reasons. Plus I get to buy a new spiral-bound notebook, which makes me all giddy with first-day-of-school thrills. It'll be nice to have Adam to keep my head screwed on tight; after much discussion, he enrolled in the same program - apparently this excitement is contagious - and maybe this time next year, we'll be off on some grand adventure, like language-peddling Hobbits.

But for now, this course will be adventure enough.

I can't wait.

*While I can confirm that he is indeed sweet, soft-spoken, elderly, and Chinese, I cannot confirm that his name is in fact Harry. He owns (and lives in the apartment above) our corner store called "Harry's Fine Foods and Frozen Meats," so we just call him Harry and he is polite enough not to correct us if that isn't his actual name. And polite enough not to laugh when I'm buying Red Vines and ginger ale in my pajamas. 

Good night, and good luck.

I haven't been sleeping. More specifically, I haven't been sleeping between the hours of  2am and 5am, because this is the cracked, finger-smudged window of time in which my brain harnesses the darkness and negativity takes the reins. I've counted thousands of sheep, I've sipped a hundred cups of chamomile, I've drugged myself with Advil PM - but unfortunately, those standbys do little to calm an anxious mind. (My friends know well this insomnia - sometimes Killian and Stacy feel like old war buddies - and it's just something I accept as par for the course of unsettled twenty-somethings dealing with too many doubts about... well, being unsettled. As we go to bed, we just have to wish ourselves good night, and good luck.)

During the day, it's easier to take a brighter approach to my anxieties, to let a little light fall on my worries. Small problems cast small shadows. But at night, the light is gone. At night, the glass is always half empty.

"In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning" - F. Scott Fitzgerald

This was exacerbated yesterday when I learned the MAT program I was most excited about at UW is no longer offered thanks to a new departmental dean. The news was a little more devastating than it probably should have been, given the very preliminary stages of my planning, but it still felt like the rug was unceremoniously pulled from under already shaky legs. I've held many restless 3am vigils in bed agonizing over my future, and I know there will be more over the next several months (years, decades, etc.); last night was no exception.  Because soon I think I might actually be taking a step - maybe not in the direction I'd planned, but a step nonetheless.

I've always been interested in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), although it's something I've always compartmentalized in my head as a nice idea, but maybe not the actually actionable one for Career Kait. Remember ESL (English as a Second Language)? It's the small-minded ancestor of a field that has evolved and expanded into something really exciting at the international level, way beyond photo-flashcards for transplanted children in a tiny back room of a public school. And as it turns out, the community college a few blocks away from my apartment? It offers TESOL certification.

I spoke with the program coordinator yesterday, and with my B.A. in English and history of tutoring English from grade-school level to university level, she encouraged me to enroll. The course is 8 weeks this summer, followed by a grammar-specific course in the fall (for which I am perversely excited, because immersing myself in an environment of proper grammar is sexy, sexy, sexy). Once I can put that certification on my resume, I can do anything from teaching classes at English learning centers in the US to working as a language aide in schools, to teaching English in countries anywhere in the world. And if I want to continue toward getting my regular teaching certificate, the TESOL certification is just another advantage and gets me back in the classroom to start logging experience hours. Plus, the cost is significantly less, both money-wise and risk-wise, than other programs about which I feel less sure.

"One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night" - Kahlil Gibran

I still don't really know what I'm doing, or if this is the right choice, or even a good one at all. I'm plagued by fear and am struggling to move forward while pulling the weight of the insecurities I'm constantly dragging behind me. Tonight, I will probably lie in bed at the appointed time and place, prodded awake by anxiety, paralyzed by doubt, inspired by the crowding sheep to run away to New Zealand to work on a farm where I won't have to worry about money or teaching certificates. Tonight, I will want to take the half-empty glass and smash it against the wall. But today, reason and rationality edge out the fear. Today, the glass is half full.

To try to love it

Any generic article on weight loss sings the praises of whole grains, lean proteins, leafy greens, and the standard-issue indulgences of dark chocolate and red wine (in proper portions and in moderation, of course). It preaches the usual health virtues: take a walk, take the stairs, get off the couch and to the gym. Keep track of what you eat. Get enough sleep, but don't sleep in. Drink water. Drink more water.

Most women (and plenty of men) I know could spout off these commandments as mindlessly as the alphabet, knowing as always that while they're easily said, the doing is just as easily interrupted by, you know, wanting to enjoy life - a life with whiskey, and lots and lots of cheese.

I try to do these things because, while they're not exactly fun, they're common sense. Who wouldn't want to look and feel like these girls? I'm lucky to live in a city where I can and do walk virtually everywhere. I enjoy running when I hit my stride, and like to participate in a handful of 5K events each year (never mind that many of the registration fees include a free beer from a beer garden at the finish line). I LOVE fruit - I can put away a pound of strawberries and twice the watermelon in 5 minutes, and don't even get me started on blueberries - and in keeping a predominantly vegetarian diet (the fancy term I suppose applies is 'flexitarian'), I do pretty well keeping healthy.

But then there's the Great Scale Debate. The rule used to be Weigh Yourself Once A Week: the same day, the same time, to the same degree of naked, and - let's be honest - preferably after you poop (WHAT, EVERYONE DOES IT, didn't your parents have you read that book?) Over the last few years, in the gradual, glorious shift of the general diet-culture focus from wanting to be skinny to wanting to be healthy, the rule has shifted as well. Sure, go ahead and continue to weigh yourself once a week to keep an eye on things if you must, but maybe try this instead: Don't Weigh Yourself. Pay attention to how you feel. How are your clothes fitting? How is your energy level? Instead of using an ever-fluctuating number to indicate your health, just Don't Weigh Yourself.

Ah. My stumbling block. I've fallen victim to scale-driven negativity time and time again, sometimes obsessively stepping on what I've un-affectionately deemed the 'fate plate' every single morning, getting a gambler's rush waiting for the flashing zeroes to show its hand while holding my breath and pointlessly sucking in my stomach. Even if I wake up feeling Okay, a number pops up higher than whatever arbitrary limit I've set and I let it ruin my day. I let some fickle digits determine my attitude toward food as the enemy, and even worse, I allow myself to rely on a crappy instrument to determine my self-worth, even though I know better. That is seriously pathetic, seriously unacceptable, and seriously effed-up.

So I gave Don't Weigh Yourself a chance. After roughly 3-4 months resisting/avoiding/hiding the scale - just listening to my body and guiding myself by the fit of my most unforgiving jeans - I weighed myself this week. I lost 10 pounds.

You've got to be freaking kidding me. I'm only 5 pounds above my self-defined 'ideal weight' at 5'3 (my healthiest during and after college) by the method of what feels like doing nothing? I'm still baffled and suspicious. I even waited a day and weighed myself again just to reassure myself that my scale wasn't broken. Turns out, what was broken was my body image. Stupidly, the months on my break from scale addiction up to that weird, exhilarating moment of tile-floored truth, I'd been feeling kind of heavy, crappy, and unattractive. I honestly still kind of do, maybe because I've simply gotten used to the feeling, accepting 'Not Gross' as my baseline judgment of decency in the mirror. My head is still screwed up, but for once I'm starting to believe myself when I think I'm looking and feeling fine.

I've been lucky to never have been significantly overweight - indeed, there have been times I've been underweight, usually when depression takes the reins and disordered eating happens (although I'm not sure I know what 'normal' eating is, come to think of it - it's different for everyone, but still, what does it even mean, 'normal' eating?). However, thanks largely in part to perfectionism, neuroticism, and a generous helping of ever-wavering self-esteem, I've definitely struggled with weight. It's not fair of me to put my own difficulties in the same category as those who battle more than the measly 15 pounds I'd gained in the last year or so, and under much more challenging circumstances - I have no children to raise, no culturally-encouraged dependency on fast food. But I still call mine a 'struggle' because I do struggle - I have constant company in the form of a thin, toned, kale-munching angel on one shoulder and a chubby, greasy-fingered, and many-chinned devil on the other. I struggle to make the right choices in the face of much tastier ones. I struggle with the fact that I'm not perfect, inside or out, and that it's okay, and no one else really cares - they're too busy worrying about their own problems to pay attention to my defects.

Nobody checking my ID is going to note or give a flying donkey if the weight listed on the license doesn't quite match the weight of the flesh-and-blood version; my favorite bartender at my neighborhood bar isn't going to refuse to serve me my beer and quinoa nuggets because I ate half a large pizza two nights earlier. I have to learn that it's okay to scarf down delicious kale chips and equally-delicious oreos in the same day without having a body-identity crisis. I'm ashamed to admit that I spend more time thinking about my weight and body than is productive or healthy. It is always, always a factor - even if I manage to ignore the shoulder-angel during a gluttonous, margarita-fueled Mexican buffet, she'll sneak back into my conscience an hour later as I realize how much I ate and am horrified for days.

I will probably always struggle a little - to accept and be grateful for my body and all it can do, to try to love it. Adam, my boyfriend of unfathomable patience and the endearing/frustrating audacity to love my flaws for 6 years (!) come August, tells me I'm beautiful and means it. He's an intelligent dude, and while not entirely objective in this case, he's unfailingly honest; I do my best - in love and sanity - to listen.

Food happens, and I'm going to enjoy it. And I'm going to get better about enjoying myself - off the scale.

Spring Twitterpation

I'm sorry guys. I'm woefully behind on posting, and my excuse is... well, I don't know if it's ultimately good or bad. For now, It Is What It Is. And you can probably figure it out from the new addition to the sidebar of THIS. VERY. BLOG.

I've joined the ranks of the Twitter legion.

#THEGOOD

 > I'm now much more easily and readily connected to my friends (and famous-people-I-idolize) in real-time than before (and hey! there's actually an infinitesimal chance that famous-idol may actually read what I write! and write back! and we'll become best friends forever and eat cheese together on famous-friend dates!). 

> Twitter totally satisfies and legitimizes what would otherwise be construed as stalking. (Sorry, Jon Benjamin*).

> Tweets force me to practice self-editing and brevity. 140 characters is not a lot, buddies.

> Facebook still has its charms, but there's something to be said for low-commitment one-liners that might (read: would definitely) be unappreciated cluttering up the newsfeeds of my parents' neighbors and high school acquaintances. 

> Twitter is rather an audience-appropriate vehicle for my in(s)ane one-off thoughts and horrible jokes that occur to me on an at least hourly basis. I share because I care. But I don't expect all my friends to care, and that's okay on Twitter more than anywhere else in my interwebs presence.

Because I would never abuse my dear, delicate blog readers to that.

Because I am a professional.

Obviously.


#THEBAD

> I feel incredibly self-serving and self-indulgent sometimes believing my Twitter friends might actually give a flying corgi-butt about something I thought was funny. Because that would mean I think I'm funny. Which is a stretch on good days, and ironically funny on bad ones.

> I definitely did not need another black hole in which my attention can easily fall and break its legs and turn me into a distracted mental-paraplegic.
> I am bad at hashtags. I didn't need another things to be bad at. I usually just try to turn any hashtags I use into a bad pun or clever little punchline to the tweet it follows. Please just consider them little winks or sheepish apologies.

> Socially-acceptable stalking of Jon Benjamin (again, I'm so, so sorry about the harassment, Mr. Benjamin. But I'm not making any promises to stop).

I realize I'm beyond fashionably late to this party. So late that I'm just showing up with a tray of cookies as the pools of vomit I'm stepping over to join the fun are already drying on the sidewalk and the walkers-of-shame have managed to stumble halfway home, barefoot and mascara-smudged, with their heels in their hands.  But I think cookies are always welcome. Even for breakfast when hungover from online information overload.

Better late than never, right?


*I have an amazing story involving me actually meeting Jon Benjamin this weekend at his Seattle show. I'm still giddy and reeling from the encounter, so I need to let it settle before I try to coherently tell it here. But next time, friends.

I've heard in the spring we'll live again

Spring has been winking at me for a month.

I've been winking back.

Daffodils defy sidewalks and tulips politely smile at each morning's sleep-drunk pageant of shivering dogs and damp coat hems.

Plum and pear tree blossoms blush at their own audacity and laugh pinkly down with the rain onto the concrete cold of a city still yawning in its winter bed.

Evening masquerades as Afternoon with the idle sun forgetting its appointments.

A crush of petals paste over windows like rice clinging to a bridal veil - the promise of a honeymoon on the steps of a stone-gray church.

The smell of new grass mixes with soursweet cedar.

Warm shoulders and numb toes.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

My neighborhood farmer's market re-opens soon. I'm itching to wander vendor to vendor, fruit stand to flower stall, to have happy Sunday mornings saturated with tastes and colors as fresh and familiar as summer rain.

In the meantime, la nouvelle saison has inspired an Art Nouveau kick; the rapture and beauty found in the blend of women and nature have romanced me a bit (and have maybe made me a tad envious, as well). Alphonse Mucha's 1896 Season series (Spring, in particular) inspired a little seasonal drawing of my own.

Spring Girl

She looks happy, I think. Blissful, even. And that hair. 

Seattle is slow to thaw this year, but if I'm lucky - and if the weather obliges - I'll be sharing her spring joy soon enough.

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.