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.

Shanah Tovah (Happy Rosh Hashanah)!

Hey all,

In a few hours, the annual Jewish superholidays will begin. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the ten days in between (called the Days of Awe) have become for many Jews a period of reflection upon the past year and a transition into the new one to come. The celebrations and rituals vary considerably depending on the Jew in question, but typically, Rosh Hashannah marks the reopening of a spiritual book of your past and the beginning of fashioning your "book" for the upcoming year, the days of awe being a chance to see what has transpired in your published year and how you can use what has happened to build next year's book, and Yom Kippur as a placement of that book on your bookshelf featuring a plea for a healthy and full book year to come.

There are many traditions to be told about how Rosh Hashanah is celebrated (and this is still ever growing!), and if you're interested just ask and I (or Emma/Isaac) can talk about some of them, but a typical tradition that you can find almost anywhere is to give one other blessings for the upcoming year without expectation to receive. Usually we say "Shanah Tovah U'Metukah" (Have a good sweet new year), but I find that that gets to be too mechanical, especially if you happen to say it toward a person you've had a close relationship with. I'd like to take some time share my own blessing with you all, along with a few that I've found to really resonate with the work we do and the free love we seek to spread. Since this is the first time I've introduced this to you all, I'll do an altered version of it. Feel free to do it as well-- these blessings are intended to be pluralistic :-).

Here goes:

Thank you all for giving me the year(s) of experience, lesson, passion, and love that have come to meld seamlessly into my own. May much life, love, and experience fill your year to the brim, and may it spill to all that surround you. May you find all that you seek, and may everything you forget to find show up alongside your path. May you find solace and peace in being, happiness and humility in doing, and curiosity and inspiration in thinking.

May you live for you, and share it with all that you find.

PS: Here are some alternative interpretations of this tradition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlcxEDy-lr0&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRaQSbuTiBg

http://sichaconversation.org/

http://ajws.org/what_we_do/education/publications/holiday_resources/high_holiday_prayer_card_2011.pdf

A Year Ago

I had a couple of moments of reflection yesterday. It was my last day of class for the Spring Term here at the University of Oregon (woohoo!), and the School Psychology program puts on an annual showcase. The showcase involves bringing all of the students and faculty together, along with any of our community partners and faculty from other departments. It is a celebration of how productive of a year we have had, and a final way for all of us to come together before peace-ing for summer. We meet the new student body executive board, celebrate any awards garnered by our faculty, and salute everybody that is going off for internship the next year.

The reflective moment from yesterday occurred once I realized that I had stood in the spot a year ago, not necessarily knowing what was going to happen for me in the upcoming year but hoping for the best. Through sheer coincidence, I happened to be at the showcase. My mom and I had made a trip to Eugene to become familiar with the neighborhood, to learn about different apartment complexes, and see if anything was going to be available for me for the upcoming school year. All of the incoming first years had been invited to see the showcase--I just happened to be in town at the exact right time. I remember being in a complete state of nervousness, as I was about to re-introduce myself to all of the students and faculty as a member of the UO SPSY program. I talked briefly with our program director and my potential advisor. I was a bit too shy to introduce myself to some of the students that I hadn’t met at a social during Candidate’s Day. I talked with Tracy, a member of my cohort who was living in Eugene at the time, because we had been in the same student group during all of the interviews… it was nerve wracking but somewhat exhilarating at the same time because I wasn’t entirely sure what the future would hold for me.

And there I was, yesterday, in a spot that I probably would never have imagined. I do feel as if I’ve become a part of the program. I’ve slowly figured out my identity, as a student, a potential researcher, and as a member of a (great) cohort. (Also, I understood all of the terminology mentioned by the research teams, which I definitely had no idea about last year... sometimes I think the program took to big of a gamble on me, as I had no idea what school psychology was like looking back on it). While many things have changed and the program was different than what I expected it to be like (e.g. practicum—working in schools—for first years was changed, my advisor having been diagnosed with cancer—a different story for a different time), it had been a solid year overall. That isn’t to say there weren’t ups and downs (which I will document in future times), as there were many, I could finally say yesterday that I was happy where I was.

Grad school has the ability to suck the life out of you, but I think I needed the reminder of why I was here, why I enjoyed the program, and how much I enjoyed the members (students and faculty alike) of the program. So with that, I had some momentum to work on my last final last night… and I can now an 80+ degree weekend in Eugene. There will be barbecues, beer, and ultimate, and it will be goooood. =)