good times for every single person involved

Oh, Christ, this.

2019-10-05T02:04:51Z

“The internet is still so young that it’s easy to retain some subconscious hope that it all might still add up to something. We remember that at one point this all felt like butterflies and puddles and blossoms, and we sit patiently in our festering inferno, waiting for the internet to turn around and surprise us and get good again. But it won’t.”

— from the excellent and depressing essay “The I in the Internet”, which I keep thinking about; in the excellent Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino.

(LJ, I thought of you. I am always, a little bit, thinking of you.)

History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to escape.

2017-02-09T00:41:09Z

So what's the plan now? I guess we all just walk around feeling appalled and terrified and helpless all the time? Until the fascists lead us into WWIII?

(I mean, I'm doing all the things: calling my representatives and donating money where I can and going to meetings and marches... and losing my shit daily on twitter and slogging through life full of impotent horror and rage.) (And I'm highly aware I'm one of the very lucky ones, that this all of this is or will be 10 times worse for people of color and Muslims and immigrants and children and the poor and queer people and and and.)

I can't bury my head in the sand but this isn't a terribly sustainable existence either. I'm such an all-or-nothing person though (and it's such a lurid train wreck).

Ugh, I could write pages more and still not say anything you don't already know. But what the actual fuck, you know?

How did we used to write WHOLE ENTRIES sans a single emoji?

2017-01-01T05:06:23Z

tfw you're like oh hey, it's New Year's Eve, why don't I sit down and actually do the year end meme this year, and you get about 7 questions in before you start falling asleep sitting upright on the couch, because who are you kidding you have a kid and it's after 11pm and why aren't you in bed already, come to think of it?

Happy new year, cats and kittens. My life is pretty okay. The world seems pretty well fucked. Consider this me blowing you a kiss with as much inelegant enthusiasm as my one-year-old does. At least we'll always, somehow, (I hope?) have LiveJournal.

The best and hardest thing. The longest shortest time.

2016-03-13T16:39:40Z

Here's a fairly concise illustration of parenthood (!): listening to your four-month-old (!!) happily and loudly talking to himself in his sweet, baby voice, cooing around his own fingers, which he's recently learned how to suck on... at five o'clock in the goddamn morning.

(Andrew: "I guess I'll take him downstairs and we can both practice our vowels.")

(Sylvia: "You try your handful of notes / the clear vowels rise like balloons.")

For a while I had a drafted LJ post going where I kept having to change the age at the beginning: 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 11 weeks, before I finally gave up. Let's see if I can actually finish this one, even though it'll be hilariously far from the comprehensive, thoughtful post I imagined. 'cause summing up four months of the most intense phase of my life in one entry should be easy!

That notional LJ post about the whole baby-having thing would vary wildly in tone depending on how much sleep I've gotten lately. Chronic, unpredictable sleep deprivation is a level of demoralizing I can't possibly describe. And the immense host of variables that could contribute to why the baby is upset at any given moment or sleeping extra badly in any given week is so so frustrating. If the immediate and obvious solutions aren't working, there's no way to ever reliably know what it is or what you could do to fix it. The internet will kindly provide 28 different and conflicting possibilities plus impossible-to-implement fixes with murky timelines. It's like a universe where cause-and-effect seem totally divorced. So that's a lovely, helpless feeling. We've dealt with not only the miserable first couple of months of breastfeeding trouble but bad reflux and chronic overtiredness and some kind of food sensitivity to something I was eating, which I could not manage to isolate but which seems to have hopefully resolved itself?

And hardest of all, we got a baby who does. not. nap. And if he doesn't, of course, gets insanely overtired and spends the day declining steadily until he's in major meltdown mode by late afternoon. Poor kid. So like 90% of my daytime feels like it's spent fighting the sleep wars, trying everything imaginable -- both the things you're supposed to do and the things you're not -- to get him to fall asleep. And if he actually does, he snaps wide awake 21 minutes later, almost without fail. Know what you can do in 21 minutes, during which you're probably already holding or strollering the baby? Not a goddamn thing. Definitely not nap. Or shower or use the breast pump or fold some freaking laundry. I'm so insanely jealous of people with babies who nap for decent stretches or at semi-predictable times or even just in a crib. And it's not like there are even options for sleep-training a 2- or 3-month old (myr_soleil, I've thought of you with sympathy so many times.)

Weeks when he's sleeping somewhat decently at night -- and my bar is so low, by that I mean maybe a 4-hour stretch and a 2-hour stretch -- I can kind of function. But times like last week, when he had a stuffy nose and was waking up every 90 minutes and then refusing to fall back asleep -- and with the aforementioned nap problems, I can't nap during the day -- feel like torture in a very literal sense. Even worse, there's rarely an obvious cause like the stuffy nose. And I never know which kind of night it's going to be, so it's like having PTSD. (Or not even post-traumatic: ongoing-traumatic?) I've never felt so out of control of my life and never, ever for so long.

My maternity leave ends next week. Part of me is really, really sad that our time together hasn't gone better, that it's been so rough that I haven't been able to enjoy him to the level I'd want or settle into any kind of routine. (Or accomplish even my lowliest goals: clean out one drawer in my office. Get to inbox zero.) On the other hand, part of me is excited to be going back to work. I seem to remember that your coworkers don't arbitrarily spit up on you and you can choose which order you do things in. And actually feel a sense of accomplishment for finishing discrete tasks? Maybe even go to the bathroom any time you want.

(The 'is it harder to stay home or go to work' debate doesn't even make sense to me any more; work doesn't occupy every single second of my waking time or have constant 2am emergencies. It's like comparing oranges and fish.)

On the other hand, the baby himself is a freaking delight. He's cheerful and funny, with delectably kissable cheeks and chunky thighs, and watching him engage with the world and figure out his body is this ceaseless, private joy, a series of tiny, daily miracles. Like the week where he figured out he could bring his hands together and spent every spare moment doing that, in front of his own eyes, with intense concentration. Or the week when he discovered how to kick one leg at a time and turned into a full-time trick-pony, furiously stomping out the answer to imaginary math problems. The time early on when he decided our ceiling fan was the most hilarious thing he'd ever seen and would just lie on the bed grinning and chuckling at it. When it wasn't even on.

I love him and I like him: his persistence, his curiosity, his dimples (!), the way he beams at Andrew, the way he cuddles into my chest in his brief windows of unguarded tiredness. Best of all, the way he lights up entirely when I come in the room or lean over to pick him up in the morning. That smile is so unguarded and genuine. Like a shot of unbridled joy, straight to my bloodstream, to my brainstem, every single time.

Like a taxi throbbing waiting.

2015-10-21T02:47:23Z

Today I'm 37 weeks pregnant, which means that even though there are three weeks 'til my official due date, this kid is now considered A Full Term Baby. Guys, there is a completed human being residing inside my torso -- what. He's all knees and elbows and undulating rump, prone to late night aerobics sessions and yoga stretches where he pushes off my hipbone to press out against my rib cage at the opposite side. It's exactly as strange as you'd think it would be; also cool, irritating, uncomfortable, in turns.

All of a sudden the interminably long period of pregnancy has become a last minute scramble. Things we haven't done yet: assembled the bassinet (haven't even bought the crib), gotten newborn diapers, picked a name. Probably ought to get on that.

It's such a strange feeling, waiting for this Huge, Irrevocable Life Change but unable to do anything to speed it up, not too much to prep, not even knowing exactly when it'll happen. A little like waiting to go off to college, but with more heartburn and backache. I can't wait for the baby to drop, which should happen any day now, so I get a little of my lung capacity back.

Also I am VERY EXCITED about the Gilmore Girls resurrection.

I am listening to hear where you are.

2015-08-30T03:27:00Z

He's not a fish anymore; more like having a rabbit tucked underneath my shirt, one who decides to struggle for release every now and then. My stomach ripples and swells like something out of a TNG episode. If I have something on my belly that he doesn't like, he'll buck and push 'til I move it. All day I get these little nudges and wriggles. I think over and over again of the Neutral Milk Hotel line, I can hear as you tap on your jar.

It's strange but fascinating. I try to use the movements to figure out what position he's in, but it's hard to tell. Last week I had an ultrasound and he was sideways, his feet both up by his face; definitely not a position I would've ever guessed. He's supposed to turn head down soon. Getting ready to come out.

At the same ultrasound, the technician flipped a switch on the machine and it changed from the regular murky profile to one of those 3D views -- tech I didn't even know they had in this office, and which I've long made fun of for being creepy -- but oh, suddenly we were looking at his little face, this brand new person nobody had ever seen before. I haven't been able to stop staring at the printout. I'm so excited to meet him, see if I can recognize parts of me, of A, learn about who he'll be.

(Though somehow at the same time I manage to be petrified about what an enormous change this will be, worrying about how much it will suck to not have free time and flexibility and lazy weekend days, how it'll be hard and endless, worrying about turning into my mother. My brain can create an awful lot of anxieties in the space of 9 months.)

We went to see Inside Out in Colorado last week and the baby went crazy during the ukulele song in the pre-movie short. We played it to him again at home, from my phone, and the same thing happened. We have a tiny ukulele fan. I'd be embarrassed by his twee prenatal taste, but I'll just chalk it up to an early interest in Pacific island culture.

I'm just about 30 weeks pregnant, into the 3rd trimester, about to hit 7 months. I feel at the same time like I've always been pregnant and like I'll never actually get through all the things to do before November. The product research alone, guys, uggh. I spent this Saturday night cross-referencing registry recommendations lists from friends. With a highlighter. I'm a party monster.

Everything's felt so hectic lately (/always). I just counted and I've been on 9 out-of-town trips just in the past 12 weeks. (Chicago, South Carolina, DC, Boston, Kosovo, DC, Mexico, Boulder, DC.) I have two more next month for work, New York and DC, and then I can't fly anymore; I'm almost looking forward to being forced to stay in one place. All the in-between weeks have been packed full of doctor's visits; as if all the baby stuff isn't enough, I'm having all these problems with my eyes, my mouth, so I'm spending all my time at the dentist and ophthalmologist and rheumatologist and OB/GYN and feeling frantically, constantly behind on work because of it. This stupid, terrible body.

I'm usually so mopey towards the end of summer, because after summer comes fall and after fall comes HORRIBLE WINTER. This year, though, I'm looking forward so much to the cooler weather, the lower humidity, something to wear besides the same 2 pairs of maternity shorts. And Atlanta has its lovely long springs and falls going for it.

Still struggling with not feeling at home here; I was back in DC this week for work, as usual, and walking to the office in the morning, through all the energy of the city, so many different kinds of people and streets and things to see and do made me so happy. Today I discovered that the closest post office collection box here is A MILE from my house -- and I'm in one of the walkable neighborhoods. Behold my snobbery and muttering about places that call themselves cities. My drugstore is a 20 minute walk away, across a highway exit ramp, and making that trek in the scorching summer heat is so miserable it's almost unthinkable; but I hate driving everywhere! And for just a mile? I feel lazy and ridiculous. I still don't really know anyone here and I still feel cranky and tired just thinking about making new friends. All that time and energy and effort, and so few people turn out to even be worth it in the end!

When we have laughed to see the sails conceive / And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind

2015-07-12T20:40:15Z

I had one of those surreal, self-aware how is this my life moments late Friday afternoon. Sitting outside in the mild sunshine on a tree-covered patio in the capital of Kosovo, having macchiatos with a coworker and our favorite counterpart in the government there, the one who gets all the work pawned off on him by his coworkers. Kosovo is known for having amazing macchiatos, strong, smooth and frothy -- not just in fancy bookstore-cafes like the one where we were, he was telling us, but everywhere in the country, down to a gas station in the middle of nowhere.

He was telling us also how the little town where he'd grown up used to be quite mixed, Kosovars and Serbs, before the war, and how in the last ten years he was seeing things start to relax again, politicians softening the way they talked, how he thought the EU would eventually pressure Serbia into recognizing Kosovo's independence. Right now it's only recognized by 111 countries, and most of its citizens can't travel because they can't get visas. Last month I had to move a training from Moldova to Romania, because Moldovans don't acknowledge the validity of Kosovar passports. (Kosovo is the country in the world with the highest opinion of Americans, because of US and NATO support in winning their independence. There's a statue of Bill Clinton and a road named after him. "America is everything to us," said one of the security guards at the government building. It's very strange to go somewhere and be actually greeted as liberators.)

They're happy lately, though, because there's a new highway that goes through Macedonia all the way to Albania, meaning a 10 hour trip now takes 3. He was deciding whether to go down to Tirana for the weekend with a friend to celebrate a FIFA ruling involving a flag-flying drone.

He's living back in the country now after years away: some time in Istanbul with a girlfriend, his high school years in Bosnia after he fled the country to avoid the war. He was 14 when he left: right after Serbian soldiers rounded him up with a group of men and boys in his hometown and put them in a barn ("I don't know the word for it -- an old house, for horses?") and set it on fire. Everyone escaped, because the soldiers didn't know there was a back exit. He was running across the fields away from the barn when it exploded behind him.

It was a gorgeous almost-evening in a place that seemed entirely peaceful. After he left, my coworker and I pulled out our laptops and put in another couple of hours of work, since none of our other projects calm down even when we've spent all week in meetings and running trainings on an in-country trip like this. We got two enormous pieces of cake, two of those macchiatos, an espresso, a bottle of water and paid only €9, taxes and all. Kosovo's the poorest country in Europe, pegged to the Euro even though they're years and years away from any kind of EU accession. (A crazy huge budget of EU funding is what I've been urgently trying to spend down for the past year that I've been managing this project; 7 days 'til the 6-year contract ends and we're going to come out in the clear. It's a million moving pieces of staff time and sprint planning and goal setting and cajoling and fund reallocating and getting to learn all these things about the place and its context. I love it, I love it.)

This was my second time to Pristina in four months, and so much better than the last one. This trip I only threw up twice. Last time I was in my first trimester and sick as a dog, everything filtered through a haze of nausea. Because oh, yeah. I'm having a kid. I'm having a kid!

Pregnancy is fascinating and strange. Like this easter egg subroutine my body apparently knew how to run this whole time, and I'm just along for the ride. The first couple of months were so, so bad. I'm lucky because I wasn't actually puking that much, but it was just unremitting nausea 24/7 and the worst heartburn of my life (which is saying an awful lot). Such a nightmare: March and April are just a blur of misery and feeling like I'd made a huge mistake.

Thank God for the second trimester and feeling like myself again. Even if I do still occasionally barf my guts out in Balkan government ministry bathrooms at 22 weeks in. Let's blame that on jetlag.

I'm just past the halfway mark and it's crazy to think there'll be an actual don't-have-to-give-back-to-anyone baby here in November. Mostly I just want to fast forward to that part, where there's a real human baby -- with a face! What will it look like! -- instead of just an endless parade of weird new symptoms (belching! nosebleeds! and now clothes that don't fit).

Except hahaha, how can I possibly be ready for that when I'm still the exact same hot mess I've always been? Irresponsible bedtimes and forgetting to eat and reading novels (okay, the internet) instead of washing the dishes. I always thought I'd wait to have kids 'til I felt like I had figured out the whole Responsible Adulthood thing a little more. And 'til I stopped being so weirded out by the concept of growing another person inside myself. Except none of that ever got around to happening and so here we are.

I started feeling the baby move almost three weeks ago: these tiny little pulses that felt like muscle twitches or things digesting. He's stronger now -- a pound heavy and a foot long -- and the little nudges are unmistakeable. A rippling low in my stomach, little fish wriggling awake.

The faraway nearby.

2014-09-10T18:05:46Z

Oh, hey, sometimes I notice I have an LJ app! Which reminds me that I have an LJ.

I was out of town, mostly out of the country, for just about the entire month of August. Obvs I am big into travel but that's just over the top. I'm excited to be a homebody for as long as I can -- maybe all of September?! (I was in: Uganda, Atlanta, NYC, Italy. Two for work, two not.) Exciting! But exhausting.) I'm feeling nesty. I want to Organize All The Things and clean the bathroom and curl up on the couch in the evening with novels. In these daydreams it's also crisp and deliciously cool, so I can break out things like long sleeves and layers, though of course tomorrow it'll be 90-something here.

Ugh. This post is boring. Good thing approximately nobody is on LJ anymore to read it!

My ability to focus on anything -- or even remember things from moment to moment -- has become really really really bad. Internet-induced ADD? Brain meds? Old age? It's so stressful and frustrating and makes me obsessed with writing everything I have to do down instantly so it doesn't fall through the gaping cracks in my brain. Futzing around with ToDoist filters. I want to be fixed! But the only thing I can think of to do is meditation, which I loathe, but I'm desperate enough to start trying again since it's supposed to be the silver bullet for concentration, yadda yadda.

I love my job; which still feels exhiliarating and weird to say. I'm getting loads of new projects and being bumped to PM on nearly all of them which is all thrilling but also fairly panic-inducing. Don't let me mess up. ~~(Please don't make me be the monkey butler.)~~

EVEN MORE BORING. Let's see: jet lag is hitting me hard this time, which is unusual since usually I love the west-to-east timechanges. They're *so* much easier than the opposite and a generally nice counterweight to my frustrating nightowl/slugabed tendencies. But when I got home Sunday I accidentally fell sound asleep at 6:30 at night and woke up wide awake before 3am. ROOKIE MISTAKE. Surreal feeling. Exciting to have time to read and doze off again; NOT exciting to then have to go to the office to do a full day's work. (Three days later and I'm still having trouble eating.)

I got up and went out a little after 6. Excited to wear my new MOMA tanktop with a Stephen Shore photograph, excited to make the three minute walk around the corner to my favorite coffee shop, excited to get coffee and a cheddar rosemary biscuit and walk back home past cheerful morning people commenting to each other on how lovely the sunrise had been, the air fresh and the sidewalks mostly quiet. An alternate universe very slightly diagonal from the world I'm usually in. I'm told it comes around every day?

I am so bad at not being anxious. Even when there's nothing to worry about at all.

This is a blues riff in B, watch me for the changes, and try and keep up, okay?

2014-04-09T01:53:38Z

I'm doing this ten steps to happiness thing, and the next one says: write down something you're grateful for. Watch me segue.

1. Coming out of yoga class, feeling dim and dozy, into the warm spring night and the busy busy sidewalk of my neighborhood, the sandwich shop underneath the studio spilling light and Modest Mouse out its open windows, and walking the twenty-or-so steps home.

2. That I'm feeling good enough these days for both yoga and biking; pushing off in the cool morning, coasting down the bike lane to work.

3. I finally finally finally finally finally finally finally got a job. There's a reason I've gone more or less radio silent here and it has to do with the hopeless angry feeling you get when you've been looking for a job for ~~six~~ ~~eight~~ ten-plus months. It's what every post would have been about -- that and my terrifyingly expansive spreadsheets of informational interview contacts -- and you want to read that even less than I wanted to be writing it.

(To clarify, I have been working for most of this time, but contract work at the morally gray multilateral we shall continue to call the Ministry of Magic. Very lucky because it was money and it was a way to look much more legit to all the folks I was trying to network with. Very crappy because there was zero possibility of being hired in the long term and it meant I had to keep full on looking for a real job with fevered intensity while also trying to juggle, you know, actual work. Let us sum up the horribleness of that entire era into the overly tidy: blergh.)

But long after I'd tempered my expectations down to shreds of their former selves (“Look, you’re British, so scale it down a bit, all right?”) and almost immediately after I'd stopped looking for jobs in DC altogether (I'll spare you my tight five on a city that runs on the labor of unpaid interns) ...... I got called and asked to interview for a job at the partner organization for a company I interviewed with fourteen months ago. Which I did. And then interviewed some more. And everything happened very quickly and I ... essentially got my original dream job. So all of a sudden I'm doing everything I wanted to be doing, the whole reason I went through that stupid grad school nightmare, someone's actually paying me money to do international development technology consulting here in DC. They gave me a title bump. They acquiesced to my ridiculous salary counteroffer. (They legit really wanted me to come work for them!!! ???) They just moved into a gorgeous new office space an easy bike ride from my house. Today I got assigned my first two projects, for Laos and Haiti. I'll get to travel internationally. I don't really understand how ten-months-of-ceaseless-rejection suddenly transforms into this, (what even is the labor market?!) but I'm not going to complain. (And I was looking hard, in all the miserable networky ways you're supposed to; if nothing else, this process has transformed me from sullen introvert into a regular Keith Ferrazzi.)

It has felt very surreal. I kept expecting it to get taken back away, right up until I walked in the front door for my first day. I feel overwhelmed with gratitude and pretty damn terrified of everything they're trusting me with.

tl;dr, Richard Siken gets it:
The way it's night for many miles and then suddenly
it's not.

4. POETRY MONTH, KIDDOS, which like 99% of you are already fully aware, I bet. But (1) aaaaahhhhh, The Hairpin linked to me!!! And suddenly there are a LOT more subscribers (like, I can't even let myself think about it) on the silly little email list I started for my LJ friendslist long long long ago. It makes me all verklempt and thrilled. And (2) GOD it makes me happy every year to plunge face first into this frog pond. It forces me to wedge this thing I love back into my life, hardcore, no matter how busy or stupid my life gets. Like, I have to let Ted Berrigan take us out:

I am in love with poetry. Every way I turn
this, my weakness, smites me.

This is plenty. This is more than enough.

2014-01-19T03:49:42Z

I just wrote a ridiculous and unnecessarily long email about poetry to an undergraduate professor and it's so rare that I write anything lately that's not work-related, I thought perhaps I should save it somewhere for posterity. (Also: POETRY! Oh yeah! That's that thing I love!)

[Context: We were discussing a quote from the philosopher Theodor Adorno, who said “Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” These are poems that I think are doing interesting things in light of that quote, figuring out how to address atrocities in the changed consciousness of the latter half of the twentieth century.]

From Geoffrey Hill -- two Holocaust poems:

September Song -- I have some commentary on both poems at this link, and their connection to Adorno specifically

Ovid in the Third Reich

These poems both also bring in the idea of persona (see other confessional poets too: Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Robert Lowell); inventing a self to dialogue with or explore horrors.

Carolyn Forche is known for coining the term poetry of witness, about writing that focuses on documenting and confronting atrocities. She spent time in El Salvador during the civil war, which is what a lot of her poetry focuses on, including The Colonel. You can read some of what she's said about poetry of witness here: I really like the end of the second piece (from where it begins "This is a poetry that presents the American reader with an interesting interpretive problem.") She also has a great anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness.

One interesting thing to consider: there were people writing poems about war and tragedies long before Adorno or Carolyn Forche came along. What separates them from the post-Auschwitz era? And from the idea of the poetry of witness? (It may be that there’s not a real difference. This is something I'm still mulling over.)

Some other poems that I mentally put in the same category, finding new ways to engage with the nightmarish:

Written in pencil in the sealed railway car, Dan Pagis - a Holocaust survivor

Tortures, Wislawa Szymborska - Polish; Eastern European poets have a LOT of insight into the ugliness of political ideology intersecting with poetry in the wrong ways

A Brief for the Defense, Jack Gilbert - this has a bit of problematic (colonial?) imagery in it, but I think he's one of the absolute master poets of the 20th century

What the Living Do, Marie Howe - an AIDS poem, but more generally a survivor poem

When Leather is a Whip, Martín Espada

On a completely related note, it's almost the end of January which means it's almost April which means NATIONAL POETRY MONTHAPALOOZA and guys, GUYS, this is going to be my TENTH FUCKING YEAR doing this thing. I want to do something special to celebrate. But I don't know what. E-extra emails linking to some of this huge, glorious backlog from all the past years? .... something else? GIVE ME IDEAS.

killed it with kisses

2014-01-13T16:31:48Z

Someone stole my bike tire. It's my own fault, kinda. I stopped using a cable on my tires a couple years ago and hadn't gotten around to changing it from a quick release wheel to the kind you have to stand on end to unlock. Sucks though. I feel like I've been hacked off at the knees. How do I get anywhere? The bus is going to take how long? I'm going to have to… walk these four blocks?

Luckily, today it's sunny and the air feels gorgeously balmy at 48°. I walked by the White House on my way to work this morning. Hello. I hear this is a livejournal.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

2013-06-26T18:46:35Z

You know how my life always seems crazy? Yeah, that's still happening. CONDENSED RUN-THROUGH OF THE CURRENT BATCH OF INSANITY HERE WE GO:

- As previously mentioned, I finished grad school!!!! Thank fuck. That was without a dobut the hardest thing I've ever intentionally done. It didn't feel real 'til I had the (giant, pretentious, entirely-in-Latin) diploma in my hand and I'm still a little nervous they'll realize there's some economics- or language-related hoop I didn't jump through, but my transcript says I met every requirement and passed every exam so .............

- I got a job? Kind of??? IN APRIL? I started a contract at an institution which, for purposes of unsearchability, let us call the Orld-Way Ank-Bay. Which is kind of hilarious because it's one place I swore I would NEVER work (because I'm the wild leftist in my class: blah blah structural adjustment, highly indebted countries, social justice!!!), but. Here I am. I thought it would be like working at the Death Star but instead it's exactly like working at the Ministry of Magic. Giant atrium, statue of poor Africans, tons of bureaucrats, well-intentioned, mildly evil, way too many elevators. I get lost a lot.

Anyway I've been doning financial analysis of agricultural lending capacity building for banks in Africa and Asia WOOOO SEXY. Also lots of infographics. But my contract ends this week which is honestly a huge relief because I haven't had a break at all yet: I started there while classes were still in session so I was juggling work and class and then work and finals and let me tell you how not fun it was to be pulling 12-hour days doing job-related work and THEN get to start on my school stuff. I still feel unbelievably burnt out and I haven't been doing my best work on ANYTHING in my life. Ideally I would like to sit very still in a chair somewhere with a book and a drink for like three or four weeks at least, just to start recovering from the past two years. (I may get a new contract next month but. We'll see.)

- I went to Panama! For work! With a professor! On a project about social performance indicators in microfinance! Fulfilling my life goal of getting someone else to pay to fly me to foreign countries!

- I went to Alaska! To see my brother! And ke_rose_ne! It stayed light all the time! The mountains were amazing! I was very sleep-deprived!

- I'm going to Maine to see family! And Boston for a wedding and then Georgia to see in-laws! I was out of town for half of June and will be doing the same in July. Hence my whining about juggling work + travel + job hunting + moving. Oh yeah:

- We're moving! Aahhh! Just in DC for now since who even knows where I'll get a permanent job, but our landlady is selling our house so blah blah blah nomadcakes. And we hadn't found a place to live yet but I biked by a building with a rental sign on Monday, went in and saw a unit, dropped off an application yesterday (Tuesday), and got approved this morning (Wednesday), SO I GUESS THAT'S HAPPENING? It's in the ultra hipster part of Northwest DC, so I can pretend I'm living in a pseudo-Brooklyn. It's smaller than our current place but bigger than our place before that and it's a third floor corner unit with seven (!) windows so hopefully it will fulfill my insatiable need for sun.

Moving is going to suck hardcore, as moving always does, but it'll be a major relief just to be *done* and not have to spend any more time helping stage the current house and organize putting things in storage and having workmen in and out all the time.

One day I'll have a calm and stable life again, right? Right???

Also. I'm 31 now. Chew on that.

How you'd have a happy life if you did the things you like.

2013-05-23T13:44:48Z

This morning I woke up without an alarm -- earlier than I meant to since I stayed up late again reading -- lying diagonal across the bed (decadent!) because Andrew's in Australia. I have all the windows open and the delicious, cool morning humidity and the shrieks of kids from the elementary school playground out back were all rushing in together.

I made iced coffee and cleaned the kitchen and then I sat down out on the deck with my breakfast and I read a book. For fun. A book I chose. A fiction book -- my third one this week.

I am really really really really really really really really really happy to be done with grad school. Remind me never to do that again.

I don't know why this is wigging me out so much but it really is.

2013-05-06T03:03:02Z

I just had the astounding revelation that I graduated from college TEN YEARS AGO THIS WEEK. Ten years and three days, which I know because I sure have been LJing for even longer than that, and sure did used to write like four entries a day, so it's well documented. Good god.

I don't think I realized I'd be finishing up grad school at the same time as this milestone. (Four days and three assignments to go.) Bookending a decade of my life by staying up late writing papers and being sad about leaving my friends. Plus ça change.

and, yes, you can feel happy with one piece of your heart.

2013-04-27T04:51:48Z

Feelings I fucking love: biking home at night in a group of friends, me and Alex and Andrew and Kate, swooping by each other and laughing, downhill all the way, after spending all evening on campus, drinking red cup beer on the roof in the long, late sunlight at the grad student barbecue. And later making up cheers to support our powderpuff football team under the Friday night lights. Sitting in a pile on the green astroturf with Susan and James, trying to keep warm in the cold night air, wanting to make the most of everything before it all ends. All of it like an idealized brochure snapshot of grad student life, though nothing like it actually was.

(Tomorrow is our last prom -- ball, whatever -- and I have a serious plan to dance my face off.)

It's less that what's on my plate has changed that drastically and more that I've willfully decided to stop caring about anything that doesn't make me happy. It's hard but I'm getting better and better.

O you were the best of all my days.

2013-04-16T15:40:16Z

I'm so heartbroken about Boston. My city, my city. Of course this kind of thing shouldn't feel so different just based on where it is. But of course it does.

All the news is horrific and so much stranger since I know every inch of where this all went down. I've been right there on marathon day, taking the day off work to drink and wander around Back Bay with my friends. Everyone I know is safe, I think, family and friends, though all afternoon I kept thinking of more and more people who might have been there. (Facebook was this oddly reassuring stream of check-ins from Boston friends. Social media, who knew.)

Stolen from disblfsuspender's post there:

"Some context for people who haven't lived in Boston: Patriots' Day is like the spring carnival. It's maybe the happiest day in a city not exactly known for its public cheer.

It's often at the very beginning of the decent weather, and it's a state holiday in a place where tons of people work in education and government and thus get a day off. There are revolutionary/colonial history commemorations all over the place, the Sox play an 11AM game, then the Marathon is running right through the heart of town all afternoon.

So, everyone is out walking around, people watching, and cheering on the runners and the place is just coming back to life from winter in general. And then some monster has to go and do this."

Also this gives me so many (stupid stupid) feelings, not because it's New York and Boston, but that it's the Yankees and Red Sox logos.

And I keep avoiding the news for sanity's sake then checking back in and wishing I could do someone for everyone who was hurt or panicked. (This should be a post about them, or something bigger; but it's just a post about me.) (And I'm lucky, I don't need comforting, just a place to write all this down.) Thinking of all of you there now.

In my head there are two Bostons. The one I used to visit when I was little and we'd drive in from north of the city for Red Sox games or Christmas lights or the Children's Museum or visiting my great aunt and uncle on Beacon Street with their amazing view of the Charles. And layered on top of it, the one I became a real, human adult in, those five years I lived there after college: the T and jobs and friends, learning to like beer, learning how much spring means after six months of winter, the gritty sugar in the bottom of Dunkie's iced coffee, bitching about traffic delays around Fenway, dating, running into people you knew everywhere, Harvard Square, the hospitals, rummaging through books at my great uncle's same apartment with the same amazing view, boats on the Charles, the commuter rail from North Station for family visits, parties in Allston and JP and Cambridge and our house in Somerville. The Common in summer, in fall, in winter with ice skaters on the Frog Pond. Wandering down Yawkey on game day. The Citgo sign from every distance and angle. Wondering out loud on the street what the Red Sox score was and always having a stranger nearby know the answer and tell you. Having a drink at the Top of the Hub at dusk, where you can see the whole city sprawled out around you and Cambridge across the river; the blimp that sailed silently right by the windows like a whale by a submarine, on its way to watch the baseball game.

Boston is more home to me than anywhere else in the world. I never took a minute of living there for granted. Even when it was frustrating and miserable and you had to trudge home through slushy black snow or deal with T drivers yelling at you, it still felt inexorably like my place and I felt part of the people who were living there dealing with all of that too.

I wish I were there.

This is either senioritis or my Turning 30 freak out 9 months late.

2013-03-28T18:00:19Z

I think I'm going to try something ultra crazy and just do whatever makes me happy.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

It's a weird life but it's where I'm at right now.

2013-03-26T14:39:11Z

MUSIC: I woke up* and realized what the internet probably wants today is my most current whacked out playlist. Because who doesn't love a mix that's equal parts twee indie rock covers, twangy '60s countrypop and hiphop? Oh and hard rock. Something for everyone to hate!

Download it here: Invincible Spring
(You can grab individual songs or use the blue Download button at the top right to get the whole thing as a zip file.)

Titled after this excellent, paraphrased Camus quote: "once in the midst of a seemingly endless winter, i discovered within myself an invincible spring." (Thanks, etsy!)

(Hat tip to cleversimon for Tumbling that K.Flay song and getting me obsessed.)
(The other night I was getting falafel at like 3am in a hole in the wall full of drunk people and that Biggie song came on and the entire place erupted spontaneously into a singalong from the first word. It was like living in a slightly grimy musical.)

* (Ugh, I ACTUALLY woke up at the crack of dawn because of all my painnnnnns and couldn't get back to sleep. Which is actually a sign of something amazing: ....I think the Humira is finally starting to work. After a full year of trying to find something that does. Which I know because I inject it every two weeks and while I still hurt the first week, I am MISERABLE the second week. [But oh, that first one! When I don't have to plan my morning around how many times I'll be able to do the stairs or have to sit down to rest while making breakfast!]

So that is fantastic news in the long run and crappy news in the short run when I can't tell what hurts the most, my joints or my muscles or my skin or my poor janked up back, and it's still four days 'til I can shoot up again. But THINKING POSITIVELY. Crossing every finger I have.)

We've got poetry sign!

2013-03-25T17:50:10Z

Hey do you guys know what time it is? What's that? It's POETRY O'CLOCK??

HAPPY ALMOST NATIONAL POETRY MONTH. SIGN UP FOR YOUR REGULARLY APRIL DAILY POETRY EMAIL, TUMBLR ENTRY, TWITTER UPDATE, LJ POST OR RSS FEED. No need to re-subscribe for those already on board the crazy train. Tell your friends and family. Wear your seatbelts. No returns or exchanges. Browse the poetry archive to slate your excitement. (Now newly redesigned! When I should have been writing a memo on refugee policy! Tell me if anything looks wonky or hard to read.)

We're going to have to revise that line about the cruelest month, though, because it's been SNOWING HERE ALL DAY. SOUTH OF THE MASON DIXON LINE. At the end of March. In what is TECHNICALLY SPRING. In like a lion, out like a lion, apparently. Lions all around. A lion surfeit.

**

In other news, cheapmetaphor is coming to visit and we are DEFINITELY going to play True American. Somehow.

Everything you hear in True American is a lie.

True American - Season One, Normal

But with a sexy new twist.

True American - Season Two, Cooler.

And of course someone on the internet figured out some semblance of rules. ONE TWO THREE FOUR, JFK.

**

Oh, also, I passed my epic, soul-destroying oral exam. What! A! Clusterfuck! But this means that theoretically I'm actually going to graduate. AND I don't have to spend any more time memorizing statistics about foreign direct investment or analyzing the implications of America's drone policy or framing my position on the Millennium Development Goals. The world is new again!!

The way it's night for many miles and then suddenly / it's not

2013-03-01T14:08:08Z

HEY: since I'm spamming all my other social networks with this (when we all know this is the one that really matters): are any of you going to SXSW Interactive? Or do you know anyone who is that I should meet up with? I'm going to (a) eat all the tacos, (b) network my ass off for a job and (c) revel in the fact that I AM FINALLY GOING after ten years of watching internet friends go. Even though I have to miss the music part because I have to be back in DC for oral exams. And even though I'm going badgeless and thus won't have access to most of the panels and will have to crash parties. AUSTIN! I'm 83% sure I'm going to come home with cowboy boots, even though it seems wrong to get them without ke_rose_ne or cheapmetaphor there.

... that paragraph got out of hand. Anyway, I'm in Austin from 3/4-3/11, so let me know if you want to have ADVENTURES together.

In Atlanta for a weekend stopover on the way to Austin, and I'd forgotten how much all the hipster barista dudes here are into formal wear. I was just served iced coffee (in a mason jar, natch) by a guy in a full (mismatched) 3-piece suit with houndstooth blazer and skinny tie. And enormous beard. It's like a Sartorialist photoshoot all up in here.

I've been feeling really happy lately.

and all your bones and life leapt up to mine

2013-02-16T17:48:16Z

GONNA GET TO DOG SIT THIS WEEKEND. PRETTY MUCH 1,000% JAZZED.

And she's SO sweet and chill and friendly, I love her to pieces already. And we're taking care of her at our place, so it'll be a trial run for dog-having!!! I want a dog SO MUCH I can barely stand it anymore. So it's probably a good idea to actually have to deal with walking one in the rain and picking up poop and all that fun stuff. Like changing diapers if you're feeling too broody. (What? That's not a thing for everyone??)

**

Here's what I have to do this weekend:

Finish typing up and submit admissions notes on my current batch of program applicants, because I'm way behind. Making decisions about other peoples' futures is hard!
Finish microfinance assignment calculating flat vs. declining balance interest rates.
Pick a topic and write humanitarian crisis analysis paper. (Mali?) (Hey, guess what really bums me out: reading about humanitarian crises! Why did I take this class!!! Oh right, because it fit my schedule.)
Microfinance: policy memo, fffffuck.
Microfinance: get started on group presentation.
Crises: email project group.
Technology class: innovation project outline (and meeting with prof?).
Labor: Blackboard post on Syrian migrant workers in Lebanon.
Pick up boots from shoe guy. (Guys, the salt in the snow in Boston last weekend totally ate away at the leather on my fav pair of boots, even though I wiped it off as soon as I got inside every time. Faceclaw.)
(FINALLY) finish essay questions for Dream Fellowship and submit application.
Finish cover letter for another job.
Prep for my orals study group: briefing on relationship between civilian NGOs and military forces in post-conflict environments. (Ugh, wtf do I know about this, I'm an econ person.)
Call J back.
Catch up on LJ comments! Ugh, I'm the worst.

Here's what I'm about actually about to go do in an hour or so:

Crazy drunk afternoon brunch at Belgian restaurant with all my friends, because I agreed to it months ago. But of course now I'm stressing out about work and not wanting to end up hungover and worrying about how expensive it is (and also how I can manage not to sit next to my friend's jackass boyfriend). When I want to just go and relax and have a good time! These days when we're all here are so fleeting, yadda yadda, life is short! Why do I have to be such a stick-in-the-mud??

**

Valentine's Day was nice. Andrew left work early and we went to see the Ai Wei Wei exhibit at the Hirshhorn and then got an early dinner at a place that does a grilled cheese happy hour with combos that'll make your eyes roll back in your head. And crazy delicious microbrews you've never heard of. (Bonus: instead of paying $$$ for their Valentine's prix fixe, the sandwiches were like $7. Because we were willing to eat at like 5:30. Haha. Frugality!) We also had some kind of chocolate praline parfait that I'm still thinking about (and which they comped!). Then halfway through dinner the Secret Service walked in with Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security. Oh, DC! (I also got stopped by Biden's motorcade last week on the way to the SOTU. Last year the same thing happened with Obama's. Guys, stop showing off for me.) Also the bartender gave us a free drink. And did I mention the amazing fancy cheeses?!? Oh, and we were home before 9, hahaha, which was completely perfect because we are old and lame and happy.

**

I keep telling myself it will be spring soon. That's a thing that happens, right? Not something I imagined?

But which one is the real Beyonce?!?

2013-02-04T01:27:33Z

It's been snowing on and off all weekend, not enough to stick, but enough to fill my head with James Joyce. I want more more more. If it's going to be winter (which I hate) it should at least snow (which I love).

(1) I'm totally not engaged yet with this semester yet (my last!!), which I know because it's a month in and I still can't remember which classes I'm taking or when they are. I should probably work on that. But I think I'm happy with how my schedule turned out:

- Science, Technology and Development.
- Gender, Labor and Development in the Middle East.
- Humanitarian Crises.
- Microfinance.

Hooray classes I'm interested in! More or less.

(2) I've also officially chosen and submitted my topic for March's oral exams, the high-strung gauntlet we go through to graduate. (Still infinitely better than a thesis, IMHO. Been there, over-researched that.) I'm briefing on the social and economic returns of information communications technology in West Africa, with policy recommendations. So.......let me know if you have any ideas for that!

(3) This week I gave myself my first shot with a syringe instead of an Epi-Pen style injector. I requested the syringes when my rheumatologist switched me from Enbrel to Humira because I had so much pain with the pen and I'd heard that it hurts much less when you can control the speed of the injection instead of getting all 50 mg slammed into you in ten seconds. And it worked! It barely hurt at all! But I won't lie, it was fairly scary facing that needle down before I took the plunge.

(4) Oh, also I cut off all my hair. Surprise plot twist: apparently I have curly hair?!?!?!??? Kind of? Dim sneak preview via someone else's Twitter account. Except I have no idea what to do with curly(ish) hair. But that's another post altogether.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Escarmouches! (Was a word that I had written here in a draft for no reason I can recall.)

2013-01-17T23:53:30Z

I've had an astounding revelation about why I'm so stressed and frantic and busy all the time. I take a really long time to get things done. All things. Emailing, homework, getting dressed. All the time. No wonder I can only ever get halfway through my to do list. See also: why I'm always running late, even though I super hate being late.

I think this is half thanks to my debilitating perfectionism and half because I have a majorly awful sense of time passing. I am constantly being shocked because I'll get engrossed in something and think five minutes have gone by and it's been half an hour. Shocked! Constantly! Like I was born without an internal chronometer.

And yes, I realize it's ridiculous to be thirty years old and just realizing this. Or maybe I've gotten worse.

So anyway. I ... guess that's something to work on?

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

It's going to be gone soon. / I know. / What do we do? / ... Enjoy it.

2012-12-22T21:46:46Z

I'm cleaning out the front room. Part of the deal with getting reduced rent for the amazing and giant upstairs apartment was that we'd be responsible for getting rid of all my landlady's old things, from when she used to live here years ago and the time since while she's been renting it as a furnished apartment: big things like furniture, but also just boxes and boxes of personal belongings that she doesn't want anymore. We started by putting everything in the empty upstairs second bedroom at the front of the house. It's a gorgeous room: a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf on one wall, two dormer windows that get lots of light in the afternoon. But we haven't been able to use it at all since it looks like something from an episode of Hoarders.

I've been DYING to get in there and just start moving things out, but there was of course zero free time for giant nesting projects during the semester. But I'm done now (Huzzah! Joy in the morning!) so I started in on it today. I knew ahead of time that it would be hard to make decisions about whether we should keep things that fall in the category of "it's a perfectly good ____________!" and I've been working to stay strong. What I didn't expect was how sad it would make me. It's easy to put a many-decades-old vacuum or a stack of ancient beach towels in the donation pile. It's much sadder to get rid of someone's carefully-categorized recipe clippings, even if they do date back to the '70s. It feels like going through someone's estate: someone cared about these things, collected and kept them, saved thank you notes from people who'd borrowed cookbooks, and now it's all just something I end up putting in the recycling because what am I going to do with photocopied newsletter articles about how to throw a fondue party?

Also sad, in a different way: the hundreds and hundreds of dollars of VHS tapes that probably nobody will want. More hilarious: discovering that my high-powered, distinguished, art-collecting landlady owns a lot of videos of Kevin Sorbo's ouevre.

I've been so happy since finishing up. We threw a huge Hanukkah party, made latkes for 25 people, vastly overestimated how much food we'd need so I'm now hoarding recipes to use up our huge stash of sweet potatoes and sour cream. Last weekend we went to a cookie party, another Hanukkah party, brunch up in Adams Morgan, dinner at a friend's house. Yesterday we hit up the Newseum, which really ought to just build itself an official Amy Poehler and Stephen Colbert Appreciation Wing already. Next week we go to Florida for Christmas, where I get to see ke_rose_ne and my brother!! Oh yeah, and my parents.

It's cold here, and hella windy, enough to make all the windows rattle. I'm in the middle of reading three books at once. I'm thinking of more baking. And finding something good on Netflix streaming. What movie from the past year or two do I need to watch? I have to catch up on everything.

Décembre.

2012-12-13T21:53:55Z

Whoa, new LJ iPhone app! Who knew they'd ever upgrade it. Or how long ago they did, since it's not like I ever look at it.

Today I walked from campus over to the French embassy with a couple of my classmates and half the French professors in the department. We had lunch in the cafeteria there: five kinds of cheese and crusty bread and un verre du vin et crème brûlée. It felt like being back in Paris, everyone in the whole room speaking French. Afterward we had tiny, bitter coffees on the terrace, flipping back and forth between languages. My friends and I were the last ones there, sitting in the bright, almost-warm sunshine because astoundingly none of us had anywhere to be. How amazing to just sit and chat and remember how to exist like a person, not a walking to do list. Feeling simultaneously thrilled by my French (I'm having conversations!) and appalled by it (I make so many mistakes!).

Then we walked back to campus in the crisp December air. All the leaves are gone now, the lacy patterns of branches dark against the sky whenever I look up.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.