The Blogless again shall be Writing

Long time, no blog.

For those of you who have followed previous iterations of my online writing presence, it probably came as no shock to you that I went deep and quiet the past couple of months.  I tend to do that.  I've tried journals, I've tried vlogs, I've tried many serial creative projects like blogs before, and I've always ended up sort of letting them fizzle into nothingness.

This time was a bit different, though, than those other things that failed like an air mattress with a pinhole.  This time, I didn't gradually forget about the blog, nor did the promises I made to myself to keep writing suddenly stop mattering to me.  This time, I just got scared, and I'm genuinely sorry about that.

I actually thought about this blog and considered writing something for it probably every day or every other day over the past few months.  I would muse to myself about something odd that I experienced or some story that I could tell, and I would think, "I could blog about that and that would be good because I haven't blogged in a while."  But it never happened, primarily because, right after such a thought would occur to me, a second thought would chase it that went something like, "That would be really hard to make into something worth reading," or "I'm not sure I'm really that good of a story teller anymore," or "I don't want to sound so whiney and complainy on the internet, where everything I do is eternal and forever."

This last thought would come on days when I was being pessimistic about the world.  I must confess, those days have been coming more often lately, and they often cause me to view, not only the common, everyday evils of the world, but also the painful, personal evils of my own life in very stark contrast to the ideals that I wish I could see around me and within me.  This made it hard to write because I couldn't think of funny things, I couldn't think of goodness or uplifting stories worth reading, and I constantly convinced myself that if I wrote about the darkness in my head, readers would roll their eyes and think, "Oh, there's another disillusioned twenty-three year old, unhappy and angsting over the vast amounts of world that she's seen and the sheer mass of life she's lived.  How original.  I'd rather watch another cat video."

I'm sorry for all this pessimism that has crept into my thoughts.  It's not something I think I could have controlled (let me quickly reiterate for you all that 2013 has been a very painful year for me and a mind's reaction to pain is not easily controlled without practice that I haven't had in my cushy life) but it has nevertheless robbed me of substantial...well, Me-ness, and I desperately wish that could have been avoided somehow.  It hasn't been fun for me, and it hasn't been easy for the people around me, and these unfortunate side-effects of life on Earth are generally not things we laugh about later.

But I'm happy to say that, for now at least, the cloud has passed.  I can't explain it, but this past weekend, while spending Thanksgiving with my boyfriend's family in Michigan, a change sort of just happened.  It wasn't like a revelation occurred to me, a distinct thought or feeling passed over me, or an experience I had jogged me out of my prolonged negativity.  There isn't a moment or an understandable instance that I can point to and say, "There's when I got better," especially since I doubt that I am "better."  When one is in the doldrums of life, one does not experience a single moment of clarity and suddenly escape it.

Nevertheless, I can say that I am less scared now.  I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes.  I feel ready to write on this blog again--among other things that I was scared of before.  Not only that, I am itching to try out some creative ideas I've been putting off.  Because they are in half-baked mode now, I will not elaborate, but I promise: once they're underway, you will be the first to know...if you continue to read this blog.

For now, it will have to suffice for me to say that I am back, and I've got some stories to tell.  Stay tuned for more.

Mary Margaret

You fill up my senses like a night in a forest

I just returned from a week of camping in the Rockies with my extended family on my mother’s side.  The biggest life-lesson take-aways were these: 

1) On a dewey morning, it feels practically impossible to start a campfire without using lighter fluid. 

2) No campfire is as satisfying as the one you ignited without using lighter fluid.

3) Watching people cook food over a fire you started and tended largely by yourself makes you feel like a breadwinner, even when you’re unemployed. 

4) Charred marshmallows are very tasty.  Charred bagels are useless. 

5) Spitting Knob Creek whiskey into a 8-foot bonfire is an almost certain method of ridding your entire family of eyebrows. 

6) Nothing brings a family together like a mutual lack of eyebrows.

You may have noticed a trend.  Don't worry; so did I.

Where am I from?

I was recently on an airplane, traveling from my parents’ house in the Chicago area to visit my boyfriend who has an internship with a large computer-y company in California.  I’ve never flown alone before, so right up until I boarded the plane I was on edge about something going wrong.  But as soon as that seatbelt sign came on, I felt that weird dry lump in my throat dissipate and I suddenly felt much more extroverted than I really am.  I had a similar experience during my first week of college.

The girl sitting next to me was young, maybe 11.  Too young to sit up with her father in the emergency-exit row in front of us, so she had switched seats with the Navy-boot-camp graduate.  I asked her if she had ever flown before, and though she hesitated before saying yes, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a lie, since her enthusiasm during takeoff and landing was tragically lower than it should have been for someone of her age.  As we were taxiing to the runway, I noticed out my window the silhouette of the Chicago skyline, and, being a history teacher at heart, I wanted to make sure she saw it if she was interested.

“Are you from Chicago?” I asked.

“No, I’m from California.”

“Oh, so you’re going home?  That’s nice.”

Before I could point out the Sears and the John Hancock to her, she asked, “Where are you from?”

“Pittsburgh,” I said, without much thought.  That came later.

A few seconds passed and then the skyline was in clear view from her angle.  I pointed it out and she was clearly unimpressed, and I got a sudden pang of the kids-these-days syndrome I’d seen strike so many other, much older people.  I brushed it away, remembering that, when I was 11, I would have been more interested in playing Super Mario on my DS than in looking at the far off, foggy figure of some buildings in an unfamiliar city—that is, if I had had a Nintendo DS and had spent much time in unfamiliar cities.

If you're looking for Lake Michican, don't hurt yourself in the effort.
This is not Chicago.

That was when the thought struck me.  Was I really from Pittsburgh?  Had I just lied to this prepubescent gamer?  Granted, she wouldn’t notice if I had, but the question still bugged me.  I’d spent only about a total of 2.5 weeks in Pittsburgh in my whole life, and during one of those, I was practically hermited in my subleased apartment.  I wouldn’t recognize the Pittsburgh skyline if it wore a “Hello, my name is” sticker and politely introduced itself.  I didn’t back the Penguins for the Stanley cup.  I needed the Automated Annie on my phone to get me to the nearest Aldi.  No one would accept that I was from Pittsburgh if they pushed me to defend myself.

So, the next likeliest place for me to call home base would be Chicago.  I know my way around—the highway system, at least—I cheered on the Bulls back in the nineties and I have strongly considered buying a Blackhawks celebratory t-shirt (which, if you know how much sports paraphernalia I own, you’ll know is a big deal for me).  My cell phone has a Chicago area code.  The skyline and lakeshore still feel like home when I see them, and when someone says, “Let’s go to Navy Pier,” I flinch reflexively.

But I’ve been in the Chicago area for over a month now, and though I’ve eaten about seven Chicago-style hot dogs in that time, I’ve been living out of a suitcase and telling my family about how my move has been going.  I was born here, I took field trips to all the museums, did school projects on Fort Dearborn and the Great Chicago Fire, and went downtown countless times with my father to take-your-daughter-to-work day, but those were all decidedly past-tense events in my life.

How do we measure our connection to a place?  Is it the existence of memories enjoyed there or the way those memories work together to represent who we are?  And if it is the latter, how can we even know in this life where we are “from”?  Can we—limited as human understanding of the longue-durée of our own lives is—see in any detail the ways in which a place has shaped us?

If I were to guess, I’d have to say that Grand Rapids, Michigan has really been the most formative city in my past.  I came of age there, came into my faith, my political efficacy, my social and cultural understanding of myself and the world around me, and my concept of a vocation and the first questions I asked of what mine might be.  I’ve done token-Grand-Rapids things, been token-Grand-Rapids places, and dreamed idly of what a long-term life there might look for me, but when I went back a month after graduating to attend the visitation and funeral of a beloved professor of mine, it did not feel like my city anymore.

Truth is, neither do Chicago or Pittsburgh.  I feel like I don’t have a “my city,” which, to me, makes it feel a lot like I don’t have a home.

This realization could be sad, lonely, even frightening especially for someone whose strength-finder results said her number-one strength was connection.  And in fact, my life has been more than the usual amount of sad, lonely, and frightening lately, so it would be natural to let this realization—made while munching a Tapas airplane snack that I paid too much for—sink in with all the rest.

Most of what I own.  Stored in a Uhaul in Pennsylvania

But back in January, somewhere around the time everyone else was making resolutions to get in shape or to reconnect with lost friends, I was singing along with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, proclaiming “I’m gonna make it through this year if it kills me.”  And since the siege by lucky number 2013 is clearly underway, my best defense is to look at this homelessness, this disconnection, as an opportunity I’ve never had before.  For the first time in my life, I am no longer in school, and I am also not yet employed.  I am renting an apartment to which I possess no keys and I have the lion’s share of my childhood packed away in boxes in my Prius.  For once, I am as indefinable—by most Western social standards, anyway—as I ever have been and perhaps ever will be again.  I am not alone; I have the whole world as my home and all of its citizens as my company.  While I make my way though this rocky period, I am doing just that.  Making my way.  I am as connected as I choose to be to all the places, people, and experiences around me.  What more could my strength-finder ask for?

“Where are you from?” asked the little girl, maybe out of politeness or habit.

What I should have said was, “You know what, I don’t know.  Let’s find out, shall we?”