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Doh-si-DOE-si-Dough

After I throw an assortment of event envelopes, overstuffed folders, wire racks, and a styrofoam head into the backseat, I motion to my guest, letting her know the passenger seat is clear.

She opens the door cautiously, her Louboutin stilettos hovering over the floor mat for about five seconds, quivering as if she’s about to step onto a sheet of ice. My car reeks of cardboard, but her heavy perfume still manages to overpower it. I imagine the fragrance name being something like “Wealth Drops” – squeezed from the eyes of locally-sourced poor people for your pleasure.

Before I get in, I do a quick stretch-deodorant check; thankfully, my Old Spice is still holding up.

“Alrighty, off to lunch!” I chirp over-enthusiastically. Given that my colleague and I just got tasked with interviewing this prospective candidate for our boss over lunch, I muster everything I can to keep from entertaining my first thought, which is to bash my head into the steering wheel.

Her expensively manicured hands buckle the seatbelt over her Chanel blazer; she sits painfully upright, so much so that I quickly check to ensure I didn’t knock the headrest at a right angle. But when I look, I’m blinded by the diamond-encrusted Prada glasses, tipped down to her nose as she surveys the immediate area.

“So, this cafe isn’t walkable, then?” she curtly coughs.

“Nope. And you don’t really want to walk around this area. Even if you’re just running to Subway.”

I opt to leave out describing the pedestrian walkways around our building as “stabby.” After all, I’m trying to keep it classy.

Maneuvering through traffic, I try to keep the already awkward conversation moving while avoiding adding vehicular manslaughter to our lunch menu.

“So, what specifically about the position struck you – drew you in?”

I don’t really pay attention to her response, letting the canned question fall into an abyss-like chasm in my mind the minute it falls from my mouth. By the time she finishes, and I follow up with the expected, “Well, that’s great!” we pull into the parking lot.

While she and my coworker get out and grab a spot in line, I circle and search for a parking place. But after I park, I rummage through the pile of crap I threw onto the backseat to ensure the manila folder with my recently printed resumes and talking points for in-process interviews weren’t bent or mangled. Interviewing possible bosses while searching for a different job myself always makes for an interesting experience – and affords me the ability to hone my question-and-answer delivery.

***

Over lunch, the candidate picks at her spinach salad, coating the top with salt and selectively eating only the bacon from atop the leafy mound. The chunks of feta sprinkled among the bacon clash with the large pearls perfectly overlaying her blouse.

Rattling off a few more canned questions, I listen dutifully to her rehearsed answers and nod at the appropriate times, interjecting an occasional “Mhmm” or “Ah, I see.” Whether it’s because I’m full, or the day has gotten to me, I start to drift off. It seems I can’t escape the exhaustion that comes with interviewing – from either side of the table.

In my daze, I recall my most recent in-person interview, and fantasize about the possibility of leaving, of starting anew in a position where the “DOE” salary in the job announcement translates into something meaningful – either something close to what I’m currently making, or even a little more. Like most cities, Seattle’s liberal culture and attractive amenities come at an absurdly high cost of living – something that doesn’t exactly mesh with a nonprofit salary. What’s more crushingly painful is the fact that I’ve never made as much as I’m currently making, and am terrified that I’m trapped – that I’ll never escape, and be forced to spend my professional years in a gray cube.

The clang of our interviewee’s fork falling onto the floor snaps me back to the dull present. I mutter an, “Oh, I see…” in response to her latest name-dropping line, and glance at my phone.

“OH, we should probably get going!” I boom excitedly. I’m so ready for this misery to be over.

When we return, I rattle off an email to the hiring committee with my feedback, none of which is positive – the title of the email reading: No Hire.

After I hit Send, I hope that a prospective employer isn’t doing exactly the same thing to me.

***

Nearly a month later, I’m wrapping up the phone conversation with my soon-to-be new boss.

I hang up, and scream so loudly that Joanna freezes in place, and even sinks a little into the floor.

It’s happened.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll submit my notice. All the work-related nightmares of wrapping up one job and starting another will surely follow, but for now, I plan to cherish the excitement that comes from changing directions – to charting a new, needed path.

This year hasn’t been easy, but hopefully this is a turning point.

***

The HR lead facilitating my exit interview has hung her head no fewer than three times and moaned lowly, “ARE YOU SERIOUS?”

I nod, assuring her that every anecdote I’ve relayed, every painfully problematic Office Space-like bit of commentary is absolutely true.

She scribbles down everything down on her pre-printed questionnaire. With every statement, I feel a little lighter. When we finish, I return to my cubicle, exhale, and start pulling out pushpins, amassing papers into a large recycling pile.

I’d hoped this job would be the one; alas, it’s been everything but.

***

Today is my first day at my new job. Like a Kindergartner, I’m terrified, exhilarated, and sleep-deprived.

When I step out the door, I begin writing another chapter.

I hope it’s worth a read.

I hope I make a difference.

I hope I feel proud again.

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Training Wings

Perched on the edge of the planter box, I rub my eyes with thumbs roughened from my morning brier-plucking routine.

The sun has nearly set, and the moon is already hanging low in the sky – a celestial combination casting a gray veil over the yard, cajoling nocturnal critters bedded down in the bramble to rustle awake.

Large, ant-like insects flounder through the breeze with awkward intensity, smacking into the open windows, looking for an entrance through the glass before their bodies’ weight drags them closer to the dusty, browned grass.

In the distance, down the hill, the steel mill clangs methodically – sheets cascading down into piles for shipment abroad, filling the air with the sounds of a bustling industrial kitchen. With my glasses propped atop my head, I take in the blurs of green, the slight reds of changing leaves, and close my eyes – absorbing the night, reveling in the smells wafting over from a neighbor’s grill.

Before long, I hear nails scratching against wood, and peer up to the windows to see a shaking tan blob atop the worn windowsill.

“No ma’am,” I coo quasi-authoritatively.

Readjusting my glasses, I stare up into Joanna’s deep, dark eyes – marbles set within her velvety, buff coat. She stares back, and I can tell her thin tail is wagging rapidly. She sniffs the air, licks her nose, and disappears – pitter-pattering back to my room, a signal she’s ready for bed.

I rub my eyes again, shift slightly, and feel the rotted support beneath me moan – and a tickling along my neck. Looking down, I see a large wing stuck to the inside of my white V-neck. And then I know what’s on me: one of the massive ant things.

I rip off my shirt and shake it wildly. My reaction’s not necessarily out of fear, but more surprise. I’ve never done well with surprises.

Another translucent wing dusts up in my solo melee, and I hear a low thunk from the insect’s body landing where I just sat.

I stoop and watch it clamoring along the weathered edge, making its way as an ostensibly different being.

A creature whose wings will regenerate.

A beginner who will learn to fly again.

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To Feel, To Touch, To Move On

Traffic rolls to a stop, and the setting sun’s intense rays glance off my smudged glasses. Sia belts out “Fire Meet Gasoline” from my battered iPod. Since I’ve never figured out the precise sequence of plugging in and starting devices in this car, I just default to the basic, knuckle-dragging predictability of the Touch’s Play button.

The perfect collision of wandering thoughts with meaningful lyrics evokes roiling waves of tears. Like shifting weight to a walking stick, I rap the steering wheel repeatedly – finding equilibrium – convincing myself, “You’ll be fine. This is all temporary.”

The drive home after therapy is never easy – a time of deep reflection, during which exhaustion often takes hold, exacerbating each toiling thought’s toll.

En route to my session, I got a call from a potential employer informing me that, while I made it to the final two, they were going with the other candidate. “Disappointed” doesn’t quite capture the series of cascading emotions that left me crestfallen.

“You know, I’ve been on the other side of the phone on calls like this. And it sucks. I’m sorry. I just want you to know it was an incredibly difficult choice.”

Following the most sincere, genuinely supportive rejection call I’ve received, I sighed, then screamed. Rather than chalking it up to “it wasn’t meant to be,” I fully embraced the emotional flood, letting it wash over me. And then, drenched and dripping in anger and sadness and dejection, I let it go. The future I thought this job would allow me to create isn’t going to be brought to fruition. And that’s okay. It has to be. There just isn’t time to live in the what-ifs.

A row of cars inches over into my lane as they approach a bank of firetrucks and ambulances spread over the two righthand lanes. As a Volvo scoots ahead of me, I see the upturned half of a motorcycle, the back half of which is about 10 feet away, smashed into a sheared-off bumper from a thrashed sedan. Four firefighters strap in the motorcyclist as two paramedics administer CPR. It’s one of those powerfully slow-motion moments, a painful crystallization of true tragedy.

And each of us passersby motors by, absorbing the devastating spectacle – silently willing that never to be us.

***

The West Seattle Bridge stretches ahead of me, all lanes backlogged. I ache to get home, to see Joanna and scrunch her velvety face under my chin. To walk around my neighborhood. To enjoy this little house as long as I’m able to stay here.

To stare out my windows and repeat the simple mantra I murmur every single time I take flight – gripping the armrest with all my might, as if it’ll effect some change:

“I’ve loved. I’ve lost. I’ve lived. I’ve made a difference.”

To remind myself that I’ve laughed more than I’ve cried.

That I’ll keep learning from this rough, taxing, spirited, unpredictable ride.

And will be better for it.

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Gay Gardens

Sweat beads on my brow, and Jimmy Eat World’s “Middle” blasts through my ear buds. Brier-pricked and cut, my gloved hands receive little in the way of protection from nature’s most annoying floral bastards. My paint-spattered, dirt-coated glasses slip and fall into the growing pile of freshly weeded detritus amassing at my feet as I bend to unhook a gargantuan, spiked vine from my pilled It Gets Better tee.

Now free of unwanted hangers-on, I step back and survey the cleared areas of the sprawling stone-laid terraces. Insects dart over the freshly uprooted soil, congregating around fractured, dewy stalks and root balls. I pause my music and sink into the morning’s natural calm. Hollow, browned stalks of Japanese knotweed clang together in the wind like bamboo chimes, and dead leaves filter down through new gaps in the overgrown canopy and settle in sun-dappled piles.

Gay Gardens, the early months

It’s an uncharacteristically hot Seattle day, and the formerly shaded earth quickly dries while I sit for a much-needed respite, feeling the worn stones warming the insides of my calves. Like Kate Winslet in A Little Chaos, I’ve been methodically unmasking mature ferns, shrubs, and trees from their brambly oppressors and mapping a new, slightly haphazard order onto the leftovers.

Metaphors for every sort of life experience drift in and out of my mind as I till the soil and pull at stubborn roots. I give each thought a little slant of limelight before letting them dissipate into mental white noise.

***

Sided with weathered, warped yellow clapboard and sloppily trimmed in faded red, the cottage sits on a shoddily cleared terrace, accessible only by a rickety wooden staircase built into a steep hill just off an arterial, hilly road in West Seattle. Its seclusion is just what we wanted – the antithesis of our small Capitol Hill apartment in the center of a growing party district of young twenty-something college students.

And while the subsequent tours with the uninformed property management company’s agents brought us vis-à-vis with the cottage’s less than stellar drawbacks, we went for it – mostly because its location, privacy, and space aligned with the most desired bullet points on our wish list.

Of course, being a post-war cottage that’d been overgrown for a few years, it needed a lot of help, which hadn’t exactly been a priority of the decade-long tenant before us, or the property management company: turd-colored, faded interior paint; an illegally enclosed back deck; a disgusting bathroom; dirty, ivy-covered windows; hole-pocked walls; and more than a fair share of creepy-crawly roommates.

But even before we fully moved in, we decided to separate. Sharing a home that feels more like a staging area isn’t easy for anyone, which is why the forgotten gardens started to play such a therapeutic role for me.

Now that we’re both in our respective nests, it’s time to move forward – to take time to celebrate the good times, focus on the future. And, for me, perform plenty of internal weeding.

***

The whir of far off traffic on the bridge melds together in a wave-like, rhythmic tide, lulling my eyelids closed. Seclusion like this is beyond rare, especially as Seattle continues to boom and rental prices soar. I’m sure at some point I’ll get priced out, the cottage will be torn down by a developer, and the carefully curated landscape will be razed asunder a bulldozer.

Until then, I’ll be channeling Kate and using the landscape both as an emotional crutch and an aesthetic treasure. And will keep slathering as much lipstick – and paint – on this cute pig as possible.

Because I’d like to keep Gay Gardens full of character and far away from descending into a moldy, waterlogged lair wherein I routinely swaddle my fro in a cashmere headdress and soft-shoe down the hallway to the applause of a ragtag crew of feisty raccoons.

As my cackling drifts up through the attic, between cracked seams, and melts into the night.

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The Starting Line

The orange extension cord’s serpentine coils lay across the kitchen floor, mounding at the base of the overworked, cream-colored refrigerator. A casement window hangs open, a tiny mouth breathing in the Seattle chill – a harbinger of fall.

Beyond the freshly painted sill, the yard sits upturned, its overgrown beds gutted – their English ivy and blackberry interlopers ripped out, the browned stalks and residual leaves scooped up by obese robins and thrushes for nest-making, along with the occasional displaced worm for dinner. This ramshackle stretch of existence is my Eden.

Leering over my steaming coffee cup, I’m fixating on the Mission-style, glass-fronted cabinet neatly filled with brightly colored Fiesta, the plants sitting atop cascading down like leafy waterfalls. Joanna is taking a post-breakfast nap in the bedroom, which means the house is silent and still – my favorite time of the morning.

I walk around assessing the cottage’s rooms, mentally scrawling lists of what still needs to be done.

  1. Paint trim
  2. Move dresser
  3. Add curtains

Everything’s been moved and reorganized into a space that’s now uniquely mine. From recent investigative forays into the far reaches of the house, I’m coming to know each nook and cranny. As I strip off layers of 50s wallpaper, and empty Cold War-era End Days larders of canned peaches, peanut butter, and assorted jellies from the crawl space, I daydream about the people who used to live here, and craft their backstories. I wonder if they, too, spent each morning staring out these windows, conjuring fantasies of what they’d make of their existence.

Despite the progress I’m making, I sometimes find myself overwhelmed by everything – succumbing to the numbness and ambiguity of every anxiety-inducing detail on my radar: a needy dog, an endless list of housework and landscape maintenance to complete, a social network to build, an electrical problem to be fixed.

Joanna’s wet nose startles me fully awake, making me slosh coffee out of my milk glass mug onto the weathered tabletop. In the freshly cleaned windows’ reflection, I watch as she drags a gutted seal plush to a sun spot and collapses in a heap of wrenched-out stuffing. Dust kicks up from the floor, the particles dancing in the slates of sunlight pouring in; they look like sea monkeys somersaulting in the air, disappearing in the blink of an eye, making me wonder if I ever really saw them.

I refill my mug and add milk, watching the white marry with the deep, dark roast – swirling together in a tiny cyclone, a contained storm. There’s beauty in this chaotic world, if only we stop to recognize it.

My joints ache, like a cat eternally caught arcing its back, hoping for the release a solid stretch – the most mundane contortion – will bring. A spindly-legged house spider performs arabesque arachnid aerobatics while weaving its silken tapestry from the leaves of my beloved geranium. I get up, stretch, and relocate my eight-legged breakfast companion, watching her drift down from the open window and scurry into another crevice in the board and batten.

I let the sunlight warm my face, and the breeze tousle my unkempt curls. Birds dart from nearby branches into the thicket far behind the house, reminding me that there’s so much to see, so much to explore – that there’s a whole world waiting.

Joanna sniffs at the door and circles, watching me expectantly. I shrug off the morning, the fractured thoughts tumbling around, and embrace the uncertainty of the day with a smile, open mind, and sense of humor.

Because I have a dog to walk, walls to paint, plants to grow, and cookies to make for new friends.

And a cottage with electricity that works most of the time.

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The Hard Stuff

Spiders cower in hole-pocked wall crevices. Bags overflow onto cluttered tabletops, computer cords dangling out like disemboweled hunt kills over long-neglected CD cases with 90s-era pop band icons plastered across their yellowed covers. Boxes packed and repacked line every available space – constant reminders of blocks to begin building new lives.

Birds chirp in the rising sun, and wind gusts through overgrown flowerbeds and hedges, creating the illusion of a giant, larval caterpillar undulating across the yard. Beside me, the tendrils of a newly sprouted plant shiver slightly, reminding me of all the cottage’s cracks and gaps I’ve yet to discover – known only by the cool morning air, the nests of freshly hatched brown spiders. It’s a little after 7:00, and the fragments of morning light refract in the jadeite mug I’m holding, offering very little in the way of welcoming warmth.

Staring out at the unkempt blackberry bushes and sprawling decades-old English ivy, I reflect on how much work there’s still to do to reclaim this little piece of existence from the bramble. The pink-tinged sky brightens a bit, and I tip back my mug, sighing heavily as I peer out into the jungle of weeds.

And then the clouds swallow up the light for a moment, and there’s just me – puffed hair and six-o-clock shadow reflected in the dirty window panes.

Still so much to do.

Somewhere in this mess is where I must begin again – suss out the cherished from the painful. All of it’s part of a new recipe, and I don’t know what I’ll make of it.

***

Not that long ago, I wrote that life is a string of unscripted, unknown experiences, from which we can either choose to grow or wilt. Lately, this phrase haunts my shallow sleep and momentary daydreams; it frightens me. It empowers me. And, at times, it crushes me.

Life has changed, and I must change with it.

Andy and I are separating. Albeit amicable, it’s still the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make.

I gulp a mouthful of cooled coffee, closing my eyes and letting my thoughts thread this new reality together as my body adapts to the daily machinations of fledgling routines.

Joanna stretches out in a patch of sun and stares up dreamily with a bloated breakfast belly. And I’m overcome.

I’m a ball of exposed nerves; daily minutiae can thrust me into a mental brier patch. But rather than fleeing from the welter of conflicting feelings, I have to embrace it all head-on – grapple with the hardship, ambiguity, terror, exhilaration, anxiety – and fashion a different future from it.

I must once again become my own knight in shining armor. And remind myself that I don’t need to be rescued – that I am enough.

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The Change

I guess we all get to that point. You know, when you stop relying on other people to fix your problems, asking why something is done a particular way, or being a “yes” person. Some might call this hitting your bullshit threshold; others, your thirties. And still others may assert that you have, in fact, become an adult.

I’d like to think I’ve been this way for a while. I mean, sure, the whole cross-country, starting-over thing required a particular adult-like commitment; but mostly necessary naivety fueled by a flight response. But even while we were in California, I still felt more like an adult impostor than a bona fide adult.

But then, relatively recently, I woke up, thought about my day, and adulted. I listed out all of the insane to-do items in my head while making coffee and feeding the dogs. And then I acknowledged the enormity of the tasks at hand, reminded myself that only about two of the innumerable things I should get done actually will get done, and then snapped out of it because the dogs had to poo.

And then I did it all again the next day, and the next, and the next. I just sort of stopped looking to others as the “people I want to be like when I grow up,” and stopped mentally interviewing everyone I passed on the street with the question, “And how exactly do you make adulthood look so effortless?” I just gave in to the internal metamorphosis that’d apparently been in-process the whole time and went with it.

***

The dream I’m having jars me awake. As I regain my bearings in the real world, hints of light begin to redefine the bedroom furniture, conjuring them out of darkness.

Joanna stirs in Toby’s crate, which she annexed last night as hers – at least while he slept, comfortably swathed in a warmed towel on the living room sofa. The unmistakable ba-du-dah from her jumping onto the trunk at the foot of the bed is my 1.5 second warning of impending tongue-to-ear-and-face licks.

I lift up the covers in a feeble attempt to redirect her attention, hoping the sheets’ encasing warmth will cajole her into a few more moments of slumber. Shockingly, she accepts this olive branch and settles for fifteen minutes, during which time I slowly pull myself out of shallow sleep to embrace the inevitability of morning. Somehow their atypical sleeping arrangement last night afforded me an hour more of sleep – an unexpected treat made all the more enjoyable by having the day off.

The luxury of time off is something I once took for granted – draining my stores once a few hours accrued and days were replenished. But now as the singular driver of a nonprofit development department, I’m finding it nearly impossible to take time off – for obvious reasons. Departmental restructuring and strategic planning and diversifying funding streams seep into my dreams more frequently now, compounding generalized exhaustion and providing more mental fodder for the next day’s sprint. It’s not as though I dislike what I do; it’s more like I’m frustrated by wanting to do so much – realize the latent potential I see, but am too thinly spread to bring to fruition. This is yet another lesson I – a self-proclaimed control freak and perfectionist – am learning to make peace with: trying to do all the things and help everyone is a collective exercise in madness which will ultimately lead to burnout.

***

Leaning against the counter while overseeing the pups’ sloppy eating, I give half-hearted thought to going in. But instead of stealthily sneaking out with my car keys, I will myself to pick up a book and settle onto the sofa, at which point my mobility is completely curtailed by breakfast-bloated chihuahuas. Toby stares up at me, pitter pats in a circle on my stomach, and settles in for a much needed nap; Joanna, however, not so subtly maneuvers for a better position – traversing the tops of the sofa cushions whilst keeping an eye on her slumbering brother beast. Her leg brushes his side as she skirts along, and he growls lowly, threatening action unconvincingly. Albeit commendable, her tenacity works to my detriment given her insistence on using my hoodie pull-string as a pacifier. constricting its billowy comfort around my head as she lulls herself to sleep.

With my neck contorted and legs and book pinned, I acquiesce and give in to the nothingness of the moment – something I both detest and begrudgingly welcome. Because I know in about twelve hours I’ll be soundly asleep, my mind wandering to a backlogged to-do list.

Until then, though, I’ll continue to embrace this newfound acceptance and ownership of adulthood – and the self-confidence and commitment it takes to exercise and wield it every single day.

Because there will always be something to do, something to sideline expectations, something disastrous, and something enthralling – and it’s up to me to accept all of these inevitabilities, the entire package, and glean benefits from each and every moment.

That’s real growth.

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To Grow or Wilt

It’s around 6:00. It must be. Joanna’s signature high-pitched whine punctuates the dark bedroom as she rustles up through her crate blankets to greet another day.

Before my mind even registers the ungodly hour, my body, zombie-like, starts shaking off the night’s shallow slumber as I propel one leg off the bed followed by the duvet-snagged other – and then stoop down to the small blue crate nestled against an Eastlake vanity.

Predictably, Joanna feigns sleepiness in a halfhearted attempt to cajole me to scoop her up so that she, the exhausted one, can be rubbed and doted upon for approximately two minutes before she’s harnessed to visit her favorite garbage-dotted bushes along the sidewalk.

The front door’s loud thwack and my jingling keys do little to rouse Toby who, judging from snores and grunts, is still covered in his towel fort atop the living room’s sagging Victorian hexagonal chair.

Outside, typical characters are performing their morning scenes – the jogger clop clop clopping along the pavement; the flyer stapler bash bash bashing one more concert announcement into an already thickly layered telephone pole; the neighborhood druggies hack hack hacking up partial lungs while lighting up in alcoves where the faint morning light still hasn’t penetrated. Mini trash tornados circle and die in the street, and the sky threatens a morning shower. Joanna sniffs castoff food wrappers and smashed jalapenos outlining where the late-night hot dog vendor set up to entice drunken revelers to convalesce with compressed, meaty bliss.

Back inside, filtered light warms the apartment ever so slightly, and the dogs settle down with their post-breakfast treats while I indulge in a few cups of hot cocoa – my recent, somewhat successful attempt at limiting my coffee intake. The expected chocolatey skim forms on top, which once stirred vigorously, settles into the thickened mixture swirling around in the jadeite mug. I sip and gulp, and then rub my favorite geranium’s rough leaves – letting their peppery fragrance kick me in the nostrils.

It’s one of those mornings framed for reflection.

We’ve packed a lot into the last three years: we moved across the country; I started a new career; we moved out of our first CA perch, our tiny Koreatown studio, for our WeHo digs; we adopted Toby, then Pearl; Andy got another job; we got married; Pearl passed away; Andy got a promotion; we moved to Seattle; I finished my manuscript, and got a new job; we adopted Joanna; Joanna broke her leg; we decided to stay strong and lean in.

And now, in a few months, we’ll be moving again – but this time, only a stone’s throw to a larger place where we can let ourselves root in Seattle’s ever damp soil and save up for a house. We’re re-learning to focus on the good bits that sustain us – whether it’s overfilling our apartment with greenery, or enjoying the fact that Toby and Joanna have finally bonded.

A greenery-filled house is a happier house

They've bonded!

And acknowledging that life is a string of unscripted, unknown experiences, from which we can either choose to grow or wilt.

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Chill the F*ck Out

You can’t breathe these days without offending someone. Even if you’re not gobbling down a garlic-onion bagel slathered with three-day-old, clove-laden lox.

Our tech-centric lives have transformed us into sponges, absorbing absolutely everything that spills out of the television screen, off the sidewalks, through conversation – even from eavesdropping. There’s very little that we don’t soak in on a daily basis, about which we subsequently have a complete, utter meltdown that’d rival a one-month-old screaming about diaper rash. For instance, I’m sure anyone with kids probably just blew a gasket because I clearly don’t have kids, so how dare I even joke about such things. But there’s a fairly reasonable way of counteracting this overwhelming, omnipresent rage.

Take a hearty, deep gulp of chill-the-f*ck-out cocoa topped with a dollop of perspective.

Whether you’re getting ready to hit “Enter” on yet another reply to a thread from your high school chum who recently posted some racist, homophobic, classist, transphobic, misogynistic crap on Facebook, or your gaping maw is about to tell that hipster that their skinny jeans are too tight, just don’t – it’s not worth it.

I say this as a pretty high-strung person who, for most of the last decade, defaulted to anger and angst rather than letting the gross, trashy parts of life stay in the can where they belong. That junk can’t bother you if you leave it be. So don’t revert to being some silly dumpster-diving raccoon reaching for a deliciously old morsel to quench your momentary appetite for drama.

I don’t know about y’all, but my spongey self is saturated. Rather than continuing to bloat from all the stuff pouring into my consciousness, I’m starting to French-press the bejesus out of my life – letting only the good, strong, sustaining bits stay in; everything else can pass through my mental sieve and get poured into the garbage disposal.

This slurry of negativity has been swirling around in my mind long enough, completely inundating the things that I felt proud were parts of me. My artistic side has been eclipsed, my writerly bent completely blocked; but instead of doing something proactive about any of it, I’ve just channeled more negativity – attributing my gradual loss of grip on those things to the inevitability of aging.

I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet, though. I’m not 100. I have plenty of life left to resuscitate the right things – choose to clutter my mind with beauty and inspiration, not depressive minutiae, the flotsam and jetsam from my workdays.

Because life is a lot more enjoyable when you chill the f*ck out, and let the good in. Or so I’ve found.

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Leaning In

Life is weird. If being an autonomous agent in this world teaches you anything, it’s that. You can plan and scheme and outline your entire future – or even just your morning – and everything can change without pomp or circumstance, without some clouds parting or an internal voice telling you “This is your moment.”

Things change. People change. We get older and more tired. But something that few of us leave behind fully is a taste for life, for the sweet, sometimes unexpected bits sprinkled into our daily existence like toppings over ice cream. And right as you’re squaring your jaw, drawing a hard line, you break into that bizarre, alien sweetness – an experience that, again, throws you off balance just enough to make you pivot and change course.

This past year has been full of heartache and changes. We’ve said gut-wrenching goodbyes, moved from a desert to FernGully, had plenty of hiccups, and started all over again.

As freeing as moving here and there can be, I’ve found myself waiting for that inevitable push elsewhere, using a bad day or passerby’s glare to fuel some choking ember into an inferno – raging and demanding change, being that ostensible evidence that I belong somewhere else.

Not long after we rooted in Seattle, we both started having misgivings. Perhaps we succumbed to Seattle’s permeating dampness, its seemingly impenetrable gray skies; or maybe we just needed something in the world around us to reflect our internal dialogue. So, yet again, we vowed that perpetual motion was the only way out of this overwhelming, emotionally draining welter. And where better to funnel our efforts than toward the place where we first met, where we first made a home together – on the other side of the country.

Returning to a place you consider home almost seems a given these days. Or maybe it’s just a product of getting older, realigning priorities – all of those revelatory moments you witness onscreen and never imagine actually taking hold in your own consciousness, made audible by your two lips and shaky vocal chords. And for a while, we began to pave our road back to Raleigh, imagine house-hunting around our old haunts, remembering all of the goodness we shared with family – genetic and chosen. But, as I’ve said, life happens.

***

A few minutes into my 90-day review, I know everything is about to change. My director is leaving the organization, and I know with the utmost certainty that it’s only a matter of weeks before the other member of our dwindling department raises anchor and sets sail too. I swallow. I smile. I say all the things a professional would – interjecting humor where necessary, blunting cynicism with sarcasm.

And so the shift begins. A week after she leaves, my other teammate departs, as I’d suspected he would. So, it’s down to me.

This is it. There’s no point investing my time or energy here. 

But the departmental chaos reveals a chance to propel up the ladder a few rungs faster than I’d imagined. Coupled with a few other wrenches that’ve been thrown our way, we have a lot to consider, more than a few decisions to make.

***

It’s easy to run away; it’s harder to stay, absorb, learn, grow as much as you can, and have confidence that, no matter what, you’re doing something because you want to – not because you have to, or because it’s what’s expected at this point in life.

So, we’re leaning in. We’re staying in Seattle – for now.

We’re acknowledging that where we are today is incredibly different from where we were in May, when we first set foot in the Pacific Northwest. And that’s a good thing. And we owe it to ourselves to keep making it as good as possible, to let the ink dry on this latest map we’ve scribbled down before wetting the quill again and drafting a new one.

For me, the scariest character in all of our conversations has been that familiar specter – the great and powerful Unknown, which gobbles up fear and optimism, dreams and nightmares. And we never know if what we entrust to it will ever manifest down the line in some guise – vindicating or damning us.

But at some point we have to look beyond the paths we see ahead of us and take stock of what encompasses them – limitless beauty and opportunity and, yes, that terrifying, ghoulish Unknown bathing in a soup of ambiguity.

Left, right, back, or none of the above?

You can yoke yourself to the trite saying “There’s a time and place for everything and everyone” – that when you hit some arbitrary number of years on this earth, you must fall in line.

Or, you can acknowledge that there’re lots of places, and time enough to do some exploring.