Story Time with Uncle Michael

Episode V: The Brothers Schwartz Strike Back

Part 1

My brother and I are about to embark on an annual road trip down to the Central Valley of California. Now before you say, “What is worth going to in the Central Valley?” let me say that I completely agree. There really isn’t that much happening in the Central Valley (why do you think they named it Fres-no and not Fres-yes?). However, there are some truly wonderful people that Colin and I both love down there. But this isn’t an ordinary group of friends, either. These people are our camp family, and we are visiting our older sister for her birthday.

Camp works in amazing ways (and for those of you who’ve worked in such situations—I’m looking at you Papa Bhatti—I’m sure you’ve experienced it). It fosters relationships separate from the “real world,” where consumption, material, and social status have relatively no meaning. I feel like I get to know each individual as they are truly as a human being. And the goal of camp is to make campers’ lives as memorable for however long they are staying. This working environment fosters some of the truest relationships I have ever made. The tradeoff is that living and working at a camp is a serious bubble: I tend to miss out on large world events, such as the World Cup or Michael Jackson’s death, and only find out about these things through dial up internet.  Despite this, we will be visiting family in a couple days’ time.

This is a story about how someone single-handedly tried to mess all of camp up for everyone that works there.

First, a short history lesson. My brother and I have been going to and working at a YMCA camp at Sequoia Lake, a short distance from Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks in the Sierra Nevada mountains. It is approximately an hour and a half from Hanford, California, where my father was raised and where my grandfather still lives (yes, brother and I will also be visiting actual family as well on our road trip). There were two youth camps on the lake for a long period of time: Camp Gaines and Camp Tulequoia (TQ). My formative years had been spent at Gaines, and my formative years were also spent hating on the spoiled bitches that were working across the lake at TQ. Their camp always seemed to prosper. Our camp struggled with uncoordinated leadership, lowering enrollments, and a crappy YMCA that folded due to money concerns (yes, even though YMCAs are non-profits, that is how badly they fucked up. Additionally, we moved to Redwood, a smaller camp, the previous year because of our shitty enrollment). Here is a diagram, courtesy Paintbrush:

So I had always had some long-standing issue with TQ and all that it stood for. Some defectors who had been campers there for a long time but came (and stayed) on our side told us how bratty the kids were over there. But the whole lake was running into some difficulties, and there was an executive decision to put the entirety of it underneath the control of one YMCA and re-brand the lake as YMCA Camp Sequoia Lake, with each camp as one new “village.” Unfortunately, the YMCA that was going to be running the lake was the one that run TQ. And there were no longer going to be two youth camps. Just one. Situated at TQ.

Damn.

At least, that was my initial reaction. 

I was told that there was supposed to be a newfound camaraderie between these “villages.” The idea was that we were going to share personnel, share some traditions, get along, and make a wonderful summer for all of our campers. Simple right? Nobody told our boss… 

My Life Update

As it is now winter break for the grad students among us, it's time for our life updates!

As most/maybe all of you heard, I managed to pass my comps last spring, which meant that I got to kick back, sit around, and relax all quarter... oh wait, that's what I thought it meant. Turns out it meant that I got to work my butt off again last quarter, only this time I worked on slightly more advanced/specific projects and managed to feel like I didn't accomplish much along the way.

The second year of my program is all about finding your little niche in the world of economics. Everyone in the program takes the general "macro, micro, metrics" classes in the first year and then we all split off taking classes like "behavioral and experimental economics" or "international macroeconomics" or "industrial organization." I started off the quarter taking three classes: behavioral and experimental economics, econometrics (i.e. statistics), and industrial organization. I also decided to sit in on a matching and market design class to see if I thought it would be an interesting class to take later on. By the end of the quarter, I was auditing the economics class, had dropped the industrial organization class, and was taking the matching and market design class along with the behavioral and experimental class. My quarter was all about finding research projects, and I went through about 25 ideas for a research proposal for my behavioral class, which meant that I skimmed the surface of a lot of areas of economics and meant that I felt like I didn't accomplish much. But I'm entering next quarter with 4-5 research projects that I can launch into and hopefully turn from ideas to papers to... hopefully published papers. I won't punish everyone by describing the ideas in this post, but since some of you seemed interested I might do another post or two talking about my research proposal (and so I can get the "Isaac being nerdy" to be the most used label...)

As for the social life, it was wonderful to go back to Stanford and have a group of friends all ready there as opposed to last year. But then classes started and I stopped spending much time with any of them. Unlike last year, this year includes a lot of projects that you do on your own, which obviously means that it is much more isolating that last year. As busy/stressful as last year was, the long days of difficult problems sets was a great bonding experience, and part of me misses that comradery (although all told, I'm so f-ing glad that the first year is done). Michael is completely right about the community aspect, and how it feels like the community aspect of my life is missing a bit right now. So I think I've figured out the solution; everyone just come to San Fran! It'd be so much fun!

All in all, I had a good quarter and am in a good place. Academically, I feel like I've finally found a few project to fully devote my time researching. Socially, there are a wonderful people at Stanford, and it's coming slowly. That said, I'm still missing the hell out of all of you guys and it's no accident that when describing my quarter I was able to write a massive paragraph about my academics and only a small one describing my social life.

things

"Dear Diary: Today I was pompous and my sister was crazy. [flips page] Today we were kidnapped by hill folk, never to be seen again. It was the best day ever."


http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/popculture/baf9/

Life Update

Hello friends! Ahhh, it feels good to finally stretch my fingers in a way that involves me not mindlessly word-vomiting onto a document that I will turn in for a grade. It feels really, really nice to have gotten this term over with, and I sincerely hope that everything will get a little bit better from here on out. My next two terms involve less classes as well as less difficult classes, meaning that I can spend more time at practicum (where I am based at an elementary school) and at my research assistant position (which I mostly enjoy). It’s been a really difficult term, so thank you all for being patient about my inability to reach and contact you. I miss you all—hopefully I will be able to still count you as a friend =)

Speaking of friends, I have had two recent, whirlwind visits from two of the authors of thishere blog (Emma and Elise), which have both prompted some life observations.

Something that I had struggled with all of last year (and to less of an extent, this year) was starting the whole making-new-friends-cause-you’re-in-a-new-place process. An obvious issue with these new friends is a general lack of history that is shared with new people. Gradually, that history will develop over time, especially as you figure out your sense of place.

Another obvious issue is the idea of community (as an aside, I’m starting into Community, the tv show, and all of you would find it hilarious). This sense of community and involvement also gradually develops. But what has been difficult for me, as a result of being in the Eug, is that I am so incredibly used to having a community built around me. My place, and my comfort within a place, has been easier for me to find and enjoy in the past (rather than the present), because I have been going to small schools in small towns for a while. But since I’ve been removed from these (beautiful) places and have been foisted upon the “real world,” community has been hard for me to develop.

Now, part of this is inevitably the result of being in graduate school. It is harder to get involved when the time to get involved has (felt like it has) hardly existed. The counter-argument to this is that time should be made to keep those things that you love in place. But, for me, it is harder to find motivation to do these things when I have other lists of things-to-do to do. (Let it be noted that ultimate, after not playing a lot of it last year, is booked on my Sunday schedule; when soccer is happening, that, too, is booked). Most of the time, it is easier for me to relax by lying in bed and catching up on How I Met Your Mother or other TV shows. Yet despite my poor efforts, I can feel a sense of community growing. I live with a good friend, I see another good friend in a different program on a daily basis, and I feel comfortable with people from a variety of programs in the broader College of Education.

On the other hand, it doesn’t have the same “level” of meaning that my relationships with all of you mean to me. To an extent, most people (here in Oregon) have other priorities: some people have partners, some people have family, and some people have their own business to attend to. I guess my rambling leads me to conclude that I haven’t quite figured it out here and I still miss all of you whole-heartedly.

Naturally, I am inclined to live in the present. This has happened at each of the places where I have had a big transition: middle school, high school, college. Since I’ve been here, I find myself looking more to the past. Is this a healthy thing? I’m not sure yet.

For now, I will focus on going home, unplugging, writing, reading, exploring, puppying, Christmasing, and socializing. Inevitably, there will be days where I won’t want to do anything outside of vegging on the couch. But I am also hoping to make this time off productive, especially since the last ten weeks haven’t felt like it. 

An open invitation...

... to all of you to come visit me in Snowmass, CO this winter!!!

YES I GOT A JOB!!!

I'm teaching kids to ski at Snowmass. It will be awesome. Then I'm probably going back to the huts, so if you don't visit me in Colorado, come visit me in my mountains in NH. Hmm does this mean that the Rockies are also my mountains now? Interesting. The Whites may get an inferiority complex, but I would like to publicly announce that they are still the background on my phone and computer and that they will always have a special place in my heart.

I start training Friday, December 9th.

I don't have a place to live yet, but once I do, my couch/floor/heart is yours. Not sure yet what the deal is with getting discounted ski passes for friends and family but I'll keep y'all posted.

http://emmaseverydayadventures.blogspot.com/

Christmas gift ideas/Good causes!

Below is a message from Andrew, since he evidently finds himself too cool to post upon this blog :)

If 200 people pay $10, each donor's choose participant receives $50 towards their cause!! Feel free to donate directly to his donor's choose cause (the second link listed below) at any amount you can spare, if you'd like to do that instead.



Hello!

Sorry to spam you with this stuff, but there's a great deal with GroupOn where you pay $10 and can spend $50 on a donor's choose project (hopefully mine, but they are all deserving).

http://www.groupon.com/ch/grouponicus/deals/gx-gt-donorschooseorg

If you want to forward this out or participate, I'd be thankful.

My project's link is http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=652467&verify=158483976

Hope all is well,

Andrew

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey you!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm so grateful for you and your presence in my life. I love you!

But seriously, thanks for keeping me sane this term. I can't wait to catch up with everybody individually... and I can't wait for Isaac to take me out for drinks at his expense (hooray for Oregon ROLLING on Stanford in football).

Love,
Michael

I like you Britain

for taking on innovative and suggestive approach to human traffic policy. Literally one of the most smirk-inducing yet omgthatjustmightwork-instigating things I've read.

Ok Britain. I'll dabble into your shoes. I hope this works.

http://www.good.is/post/goodbye-sidewalks-london-planners-break-down-boundaries-between-cars-and-peds?utm_campaign=daily_good2&utm_medium=email_daily_good2&utm_source=headline_link&utm_content=Goodbye%2C%20Sidewalks%3A%20London%20Planners%20Break%20Down%20Boundaries%20Between%20Cars%20and%20Pedestrians

Next

On November 2^nd, my job at the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources ended. On January 3^rd I am taking a hard left on my career path to begin teaching physics and astronomy at a place called AstroCamp, down in Idyllwild, CA (in the dry mountains ~2 hours east of LA). It’s been a decision long, long in coming. Between now and then, I’ve got some visiting to do, a move to make from Vermont back down to Virginia, GREs to take, and a car to pack for California.

It has, quite simply, been a hard, very confusing, highly educating year, and I owe several of you a hell of a lot of thanks for helping me sort it through. With a little time between me and what’s next, I want to pull together some of the many, many lessons that have come my way this year.

I’ve got a post here from July 12, 2011, which, being a little too raw at the time, never made its way onto the blog. I also have a recent freewrite about many of the same things, but from 4 months, a tropical storm, and a decision later. When I sat down to try and write one comprehensive post about my year at work, I decided that reading the two side-by-side was way more illustrative of how I’ve ended up where I am. That said, it’s a lot of words! And they're the heavier sort. They're the meat of what I've been grappling with all year. Don’t feel like you have to read them all! Just thought I’d stick ‘em up here, in case you’re interested.

(“Release” is the old post, listed below. “Next” is the new one, listed here.)

Next

What does it mean, and what does it take, to be young and good at something?

I don’t have the technical background or expertise, the experience, or the skill set to be a master or even that good at any one job right now. What I have instead is the curiosity, the determination, and the people skills to become good at something. But that doesn’t get you there. It gets you started, but you can’t do it alone. And you’re not supposed to. There’s got to be someone, somewhere, in your organization, who has some semblance of an interest in putting you to work. In making use of you. And ideally, of teaching you a thing or two. You can teach yourself your own job, to a point… but what’s the point? If no one has the time or interest to train you, or at least to include you, then what are you really learning? What are you really contributing?

How is it that I can be enthusiastic and curious and determined and yet feel like I am getting nowhere? World, help me make sense of this! I feel so shitty about this job, so confused about why this hasn’t worked, and so confounded that I could BE this confused and lack such direction when I am working in my field. I have lost so much motivation, and I am so confused. Just so confused.

One thing I got, though. Loud and clear. Don’t stay somewhere where they tell you they don’t have time to train you.

...well, at least, don't stay as long as I did.

More broadly, what does it mean, and what does it take, to work for a government agency?

Government is the only place to make change. It’s also not the place you can make change. It’s the ultimate contradiction. Governments are designed to move slowly, for all of our sakes, and, in some ways, to delay change until the entire population is shouting to the sky or has accepted the change as self-evident and moved on.

It’s too big and it’s too slow to generate energizing feedback to people. It’s funny - in a way I think you need the same persistent idealism in government workers that you do in activists; they have to continue to drive after a cause for 10, 20, 30 years without any concrete change or evidence that their work has made an impact, and to believe change really will happen this time, every time they see a tiny suggestion of a step forward. They have to be, what I would call, fooled, over and over and over. Taunted and teased into staying by the constant and rarely-realized possibility of making an impact.

This must be different in other agencies, programs, and divisions in order for the world to still be spinning, but my experience here has been exactly that. Oodles of promise of great changes being made and on the horizon, but the timescale of the feedback is so long that by the time you actually do complete a project or accomplish something, the satisfaction is soured by how pathetically overdue it is. You bang your head against a wall for 25 years, and in the 26^th maybe – maybe, if you’re lucky – it gets put into a bill or regulation. That’s victory. How do you stand it? How do you fight for one cause so persistently, so futilely, for so long? Thank the stars some people do and can, because truly it’s the only way for societies to change in a big way and for a lot of environmental concerns to be addressed, but geeze louise… I am not cut out for this. Part of me feels like I’m missing out, not having a cause like that, but it stems, a bit, from self-preservation. Even campaigning for Obama in 2008 was a big emotional drain on me, tying your hopes to a result you really can’t control. And I’ve seen what can happen when you put all your eggs in one basket, your whole life long, and in the end your basket disappears. Watching my dad this year as it becomes clearer and clearer that we cannot hang onto his family home in Vermont has lit in me a burning awareness that I must never, never attach so much of myself to any one thing.

But a cause is something a little different from a thing. Shouldn’t we all have causes we fight for? Isn’t that one of the great things about being alive, and spiritual, and social – caring about, contributing to, and being a part of something bigger than yourself? Why is it that here I am, sitting in the perfect position to hammer away at what I think is a very proactive, very pertinent, and potentially very effective cause (clearing people out of Vermont floodplains), and I’m itching to move on? I care very much about this; it’s as good a cause as I could ever ask for, in a job. Shouldn’t that care and conviction persist beyond such petty concerns as work environment and crappy management and flimsy rewards?

I suppose the restlessness comes from having lots of interests, being impatient, and wanting to do something effective as opposed to fight the same battle every day. Is it better to be in a job in your field where you don’t learn or do much of anything, or in a job not quite in your field where you learn a whole lot about something random? It’s a great question that took me over a year to answer, but I’m choosing the latter. I dunno what it means about my long-term employability, but I think (I hope) it will be better for my overall happiness and mental health. But at the same time… you can’t avoid a cause just because you might not get what you want. You can’t fight for something only when you know you’ll win. That’s silly.

After a year and a half in government, my instinct tells me you won’t convince the skeptics of science or timid government employees that limits are meant to be pushed, so what I want to do is just leave ‘em in the dust. Go make the change real somewhere else, through education or consulting projects or whatever, and move on and do it again and again until everywhere it’s already done, and the government can slink over and make their bold statement about changing laws to meet the “radical” new science that’s been around for 40 years. After my time here, I know the restrictions they’re facing and I know they’re real, and crushing, and immovable, and that the people here all started out as passionate and dismissive of barriers as I am now. But I’m young and naïve and energized, and I’m supposed to be. This is the role I’m supposed to play in the world right now, and I don’t want to stay here to become what they are now. Will it be any different anywhere else? I don’t know. Maybe my truly naïve thought is the misconception that I can run away from this. Maybe this is just a metaphor for a young person entering a trying adult world. Maybe I’ll end up old and cynical anyways. Who knows. But right now I think I owe it to any cause not to stay in a situation that makes me old and cynical before my time.

So. Next.

I realized yesterday that there is really no way I’m going to be able to apply to grad schools this year. A couple of their deadlines are too early; I won’t even have taken the GREs yet. I could apply to the Canadian schools, which don’t require the GREs, but I’m hesitant to apply to my safety schools and my reach schools at different times. I don’t want to turn down my safety school only to find a year later that I can’t get into the better schools where I thought I might have a chance.

To be honest this is probably for the best. As much as I cannot imagine what I will do for two more years, Isaac is right – it’s really not that much time and now I can approach this with a lot more purpose, direction, planning, and deliberation. I learned a lot this year. This year was a little bit of a... not a waste, but a floundering year. I’m just starting to really get my feet down. Now I have such a better grasp on so many things…insurance and credit and personal financing, being new in a town and at a job. Dealing with winter. Feeding myself. More things are coming in the mail now that make sense than things that give me a heart attack. I maybe didn’t need this year to learn all these things, and I really hate the idea of waiting this long to get on with my education… but I do know a lot more now. Better to approach this all with a little more purpose.

Be grateful for this year. Be at peace that it’s over and you’re moving on. Be easy about being poor and living on the edge. Relax and (it's always funny to get to the footholds in your life when you learn that some cliches are cliche because they're perfect) don't look back!

Release

(If you didn't read "Next" above, start there! Elsewise you will be confused.)

July 12, 2011

I work in river and floodplain management at the State of Vermont. At age 22, I’m their current “expert” on climate models and go-to person for climate change adaptation science and information. I really couldn’t ask for a more perfect job, especially for my first year out of college. In most other states, my work would not only be impossible right now at any meaningful scale, but I sure as hell wouldn’t be attending State Cabinet meetings or talking with the Commissioner about working climate change into regulations. I also live in one of the most beautiful places I have ever known, surrounded by nature, with an amazing local frisbee scene and with easy access to some of the best hiking, swimming, and kayaking the NE has to offer.

So what the fuck is wrong with me? Why am I here, again, in Waterbury, with my eyes swollen from crying, again, for most of the drive from Essex?

It’s been a hard year. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to focus on the good, but maybe it’s just time to really acknowledge this truth. I’ve lost a few friends – one to an unspeakably early death and a couple others to circumstances that made it too hard for us to be the people we had been for each other before. I left college. I’ve had a back injury that has kept me away from my regular dose of endorphins for almost 5 months. I’ve carried the weight of trying to support the house my family is trying so hard to keep, and of my dad’s grief and frustration at rising taxes and continued rejection letters from job applications. Pair that with his irrationality in managing housemates and allowing me space, and I end up feeling miserably choked with anger and empathy. They’re just troubles; everyone has them. But these are mine.

I’ve lost some surety in what I want to do. It’s confusing, to land in a job that should be just perfect and yet to feel unsatisfied. The content here promises to be fascinating – water resources, hazard mitigation, slope stability, river management, climate change science and adaptation planning… really, I can’t imagine a more exciting combination of things to have access to, all in one job. But things move slowly at the state offices, and the projects drag on to such an extent that by the time ‘completion’ arrives, it seems so shamefully overdue that the satisfaction of completion leaves a bitter aftertaste. So far I’ve had more to offer them just with naïve energy and stubborn persistence than they’ve had time to offer me. I haven’t learned much about rivers or climate, being here, which is extremely frustrating, considering Vermont just had a 500 year flood event that I haven’t been able to touch.

I have learned a lot about the importance of good management, and of the effect of fear and under-appreciation in a workspace. I arrived here immediately following the last of three huge waves of layoffs. Walking down the hall to my office, I passed a sign for the WASTE MANAGEMENT DIVISION on my right. Someone had written “⅔ of the” in front of it. I didn’t understand, at first, how deeply this and other actions by the previous administration had cut into the morale of the people here. I couldn’t understand why they met my every suggestion with the 16 reasons why there was no way it would work. I couldn’t understand where all the negativity came from, why they seemed so determined to sit in their offices, alone, one door down from me, only communicating via email, and never do or try anything different from what they’d been doing for years. I couldn’t understand why my boss was never around and took days to reply to any email I sent, yet no one seemed to consider it unreasonable – why it was okay to leave a frustrated customer’s question unanswered for days.

A few weeks after the new administration arrived, I noticed something odd. People seemed to be breathing again, as if someone were loosening chains or pressing warmth back into a frigid winter freeze. Eight years, I would later learn. Eight years of manipulative and secretive secretaries and a commissioners who could not be described as environmentalists, followed by a year of the harshest job cuts the state has ever seen. It had taken a toll on the workers, on the quality of the work, and on the ANR’s reputation.

Things have been better, even since then. The new secretary and commissioner are accessible, laid back, over-appreciative, and determined not to put more work on the shoulders of people already handling a 2-3 person workload. The Climate Change Team no longer has to hold their meetings in the darkest, most hidden offices or whisper about project ideas. There is no threat of further position cuts, though the budget remains too tight to move temporary employees who have been working without benefits for sometimes as many as five years into permanent positions. Five years. The woman I know who has worked here as a temp for five years is the person I respect the most of anyone I’ve met here. Sacha has been the workhorse of the RMP, the voice of reason on the climate change team, and my sanity for the past three months. It seems criminal to me that she remains a temp. But that’s the way the state office operates; even if the people around you are good folks who would like to do well by you, the state is not structured to allow it to happen. It’s an agency – you work for it; it doesn’t work for you. And with the budget as tight as it is, there is no flexibility for upgrading positions.

It’s a confusing place to work, and a confusing place to be young. It has interesting content, it pays alright, I am barely overseen at all, much less micro-managed, and I have access to resources I couldn’t get anywhere else. But I work in a social vacuum, the work isn’t credited, and I’m not learning a quarter of what I hoped to learn about rivers, floods, and management. No one has the time to teach me. They’ve flat out told me as much.

It also hands you just enough potentially-awesome projects to make it seem really stupid to leave. There’s no semblance of meaning in between, and they come around about once every 6 months, just long enough apart that you’ve already gotten fed up again and started applying to other jobs. For example, recently my boss, who I hadn’t seen in weeks, appeared in my office and gave me a very neat assignment. “Gwen, I’m swamped with flooding issues,” she told me. “Can I hand you my climate adaptation projects? I just don’t have the time to work on any of them.”

Um, hell yes you can, Boss!

Now it’s not really as big a deal as it might sound. Let’s be honest – I was going to do that work anyway, seeing how busy she’s been, and the work really only adds up to reading a ton of others states’ adaptation plans and being ready to answer questions and provide information to the contractors who end up working on the state climate vulnerability assessment. But it’s the State of Vermont Vulnerability Assessment! It’s the next step, after the white papers I coordinated last year, toward a full-fledged Climate Change Adaptation Plan for the State of Vermont. It is kind of a big deal, and a hell of a thing to put on your resume at age 22.

But it’s a 1.5 year project. I will have to be here a minimum of another year and a half to even see the fruits of that effort, and that’s assuming everything goes as planned. That’s a long time. What about the summer science camps I want to work? Outward Bound? The western lure that’s been tugging at my sleeve since way before I graduated from Dickinson? Committing to another 1.5 years might be the best thing I could do for my mental stability; stop thinking about moving on, stop judging your every day as a ‘do I stay or do I go?’ decision, and stop investing the time in trying to analyze what might make you happiest. Move to Montpelier, or Burlington, out of that family house, and delve into life in Vermont.

Why am I so scared that I’ll like it? Why am I so afraid of getting “trapped” here?

Most importantly, I don’t like how this job is shaping me. I don’t like the messages this place is sending, or the bitterness I hear in my own voice when I talk about work. There’s a quote on my co-worker’s wall that says “It’s better to limp slowly in the right direction than to go nowhere at all.” I never, never, never want to be someone who mistakes that for a rally call.

It’s also easy. It’s easy to stay, and I’ve never wanted to stay here. Since the moment I came here I’ve been looking to leave. It’s not healthy (actually it’s downright stupid), but I don’t think a lack of ability to live in the moment is just a personality trait. I had no problem living in the moment in New Zealand. Not a one, because I loved what I was doing and the people I was around. So the question becomes: am I just being ungrateful and need to chill the fuck out and appreciate what I have? Or is this dissatisfaction deeper, and legitimate, and caused by the circumstances around me? Do I swallow it, or do I chuck it? Do I stay or do I go?

I don’t know, and I don’t know how to figure it out. I can talk myself in circles and argue both sides better than anyone I’ve ever met, and at this point I can’t even imagine what would break the cycle. I actually am pretty sure I will be very, very happy once I get up the gall/momentum and actually leave, but I’m also afraid of leaving a chance missed, and it has me paralyzed. I don’t know what to do to get me out. I don’t even know which direction ‘out’ is.

On the upside (I just can’t end it like that!), there are also some truly great things that have come out of this year. I’ve remembered a lot of things about my high school self that I like – things that just got overshadowed in the happy business of college. I remembered that I used to be a pretty good loner, and that loning happily is a pretty essential life skill. I remembered I love to write, love guitar, love to read and ride a bike, hit tennis balls against walls and sing at the top of my lungs alone in a big house. I got hooked on winter, and cross-country skiing. I got to watch the same beautiful piece of land change every day for 365 days, and on my birthday I got to sit on a frozen lake with a big red candle and watch the sunrise.

I realized how much of me was shaped by my family, their values, and the kind, cheerful, supportive community where I was raised. I gained so much admiration for the values my parents live by, if they had to form, develop, and hang on to them while battered by all the confusion I’m encountering in this crazy, broader, real world. “I know it sounds nuts, but you’ll look back on this time fondly,” a mentor from Charlottesville told me in early May, over coffee. “So much is possible right now; there are so many ways you could go.”

Well…I don’t really know where to go, or what to do with a canvas that blank…but I ‘spose it’s rather like getting over writer’s block: just start writing. “After all,” that same mentor told me back in high school. “It’s much easier to edit crap than nothing at all.”