Highs and Lows: Starting with a blank book

I just spent over an hour getting sucked into this blog instead of doing the other things I meant to be doing. It is so wonderful to read what you are all thinking and finding interesting, and I wish that I had been more regularly involved with reading, commenting, and posting. I miss you all. I miss Colby less and less as I carve out places for myself elsewhere, but I still miss all of you lots.
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Last you all heard from me here was that I was embarking on a crazy cross country trip with no real destination. Really observant/devoted TDT contributors may have noticed a post I started that has languished in the drafts section of this blog since December, unfinished. That trip started out so buoyant with excitement and promise that didn't even last me through the Rockies. It turns out that traveling alone--driving 6,300 miles in about a month--without a set plan, objective, or idea of where I was going, was really really really really hard. Had I thought about it more, that would have been an obvious conclusion, but I was so excited to get out of the rut I was feeling in Boston and NH and to go on this adventure that it never occurred to me to stop and say "why yes, Emma, of course driving across the country by yourself with minimal planning is going to get lonely, boring, and discouraging REALLY fast." That's not to say in any way that the trip was a total loss or that I didn't have any fun. 'Cause it wasn't, I did, and it was fantastic to see so many of my scattered friends along the way. I'm glad I went, and had I realized how hard it was going to be before I left, I may never have done it.

My last journal entry from that trip was written late at night on November 25th while curled up on Isaac's couch in Palo Alto, mind whirring and stressing and definitely not sleeping. It was less than a week before I got the call from Snowmass that they wanted to interview me; I was hired and off to Oregon and then to my new job by December 1st. But that night, watching headlights sweep across the darkened living room, I didn't know that yet. That journal entry is full of pain and confusion. I was so lost and alone. Yes, I could find myself on a map, and throwing things at Isaac down the hall would have given me a (sleepy, slightly grumpy, but awake) companion, but my loss and loneliness was on a different scale. It's a sloppy (I can barely read my own handwriting) rant about my previous years' failed relationships, lack of community, lack of purpose, inability to get the type of job I wanted or figure out where I wanted to live/what I wanted to do, and uncertainty about what I was doing and who I wanted to be. I ended by saying "basically, I'm not happy, don't know what I need to do to become happy, and should probably stop whining to myself and go to sleep."

This past six months have been a study in figuring out what makes me happy, becoming stronger and more stable, and not writing in my journal almost at all. I've realized that when I'm busy and happy, I don't write. For me, writing is a way to channel stress and uncertainty, to process and reflect what's going on around me. That's not to say that I don't enjoy writing--I do, very much so, but the moments that bring pen to paper are the ones where I am lost, confused, lonely, and have too much time on my hands to ponder. As you may imagine, this means that my journal is usually a dark and depressing story. In fact, when I unpacked it from the box of books that came home with me from Colorado this spring, the last thing written there was the command to myself to go to sleep. I ended up sitting there and reading the journal, which starts in May 2011 and goes until November 2011, cover to cover and deciding that, despite the clump of blank pages still left at the end of it, it was time to start over, to start fresh. I wrote a brief concluding entry: basically, that I moved to CO soon after the last entry was written, that I found a job that I love (for now), a place with friends, coworkers, and a boyfriend who are great, and that I am about to go back to the huts (which, of course, I love) in a new role and feel like a better, stronger, more stable version of myself. With that, I closed the journal and stuck it on the bookshelf of the room that I grew up in but barely live in anymore.

I have a new journal, sitting on my bed at 4,220 ft on Mt. Lafayette. In it, I've reflected on what it's been like to have a formal leadership role in my hut, made lists of things to talk about with my croo, realized just how much I miss my friends in Colorado and how quickly I made strong ties there, commented on the changing social dynamic of a hut system with 28 new croo members this year (as opposed to the usual 7-9 per year), and much more. To be honest, my journal still gets a bit whiny and ranty at times, but that's because writing is still the most effective tool I've found for processing things that I'm struggling with (second only to whining incessantly at anyone who'll listen, which is an absolutely terrible processing tool that I went cold turkey on at some point in middle school. Or maybe not cold turkey, but I significantly scaled back its usage.) Aside from the fact that I am now so much happier than I was then, the difference with this journal is a new tradition that I started with myself on a rainy day during huts training when everyone was playing a game that I couldn't play 'cause of a partially torn MCL and recent tonsillectomy: as part of each entry, I add a highlights section. Sometimes, the highlights are simple, short comments ("going out to sunset rocks with Nick before dinner" or "Johannes' bacon tree joke is really terrible"), but there are other times when writing the highlights of my day leads me to explain it more, and then to elaborate on it and think more about what made the specific moment or exchange so special.


By forcing myself to write about highlights, I have found myself appreciating and processing the positives in life as much as I do the negatives. Yes, things that we struggle with demand our attention and focus, but all too often they monopolize our attentions, making it so much harder to give the same priority to the things that make us happy. As you all know, I've always been an optimist, a silver linings type of person. Recognizing the highlights as well as the lowlights has helped me to bring that optimism inside my own head in an much more intentional and focused way. In lives as busy as chaotic as ours, taking a few minutes to reflect on the positives in our lives is so rewarding and can teach us so much about ourselves and what makes--and keeps--us happy. So give it a try, whether it be here in a plink or a post, in a secret word document on your computer, or in fountain pen in a handmade journal: set aside time to reflect on the positives. You never know where it might take you. 


Love and miss you all. Come visit me in NH this summer or CO starting this fall. My couch/floor are always yours.

real life

I put in my notice at The Empire this past week.

My official last day is Jan 27th.

I will be flying to D.C. the night of January 30th in an attempt to join rebel forces.

Here's to a new year and some excellent new adventures.

Miss you all



also:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/were-eating-less-meat-why/

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/

IT'S OFFICIAL

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00397911.2010.523921#preview

Introducing Tapping the Die Table (subtitle: to be determined)

Hello everybody! Thanks for taking a little peak at this experiment. It’s been about a year since I graduated from Colby, and I’ve been trying to hide/bury/repress how I much I: a) really miss all of you, b) the dynamics of sitting around a Foss table, (c) the discussions prompted over a couple of good beers at the pub, and (d) the conversations held at the die table. Colby, and every person within it, is/was/will always be truly wonderful, and as much as I wanted to keep in contact with all of you, grad school has kinda thwarted those efforts. So the blog is an idea that I brought up with Jess, Hasan, and Isaac, to counter the effects of missing everybody. I figure we can talk about anything and everything that interests us, respond to what other people have posted, and generally converse in a non-traditional manner. And as we all have been dispersing to different parts of the good ole US of A (or even further!), this is a medium where we can come together rather easily to “reunionize” (as Hasan eloquently put it). Hooray for internet connections! =)

 So let us know if this is something that you are really interested in, whether that is writing or commenting or participating. Everyone’s going to have a tremendous journey. And at the very least, you will have a few captive audience members…  So with that said, we’d love to have you!

Love,

Michael