5 things that are probably taking years off my life

It’s the end of the year at boarding school. In less than three days, all the kids will be packed up and shipped back where they came from, and I will probably be sucking my thumb on the floor. While all of the goodbyes and end of the year parties and hugs and reminiscing are a beautiful part of this job, I’m also halfway to losing my mind completely. For some reason, I blocked this insane time of year out of my memories from my previous year here. So, because I just bit all my fingernails off (something I stopped doing at age 14), I decided to compile a list of all the things that are stressing me out and therefore probably shortening my lifespan significantly.

1. The pile of dirty laundry in the corner of my room is large enough for me to hide within and not be found should I ever need to avoid an attack by a villain in a Stephen King novel/movie or win an extreme game of hide and seek with a million dollars at stake. I have no idea when said pile of laundry will have time to be washed in the immediate future, so it will continue to grow until it’s large enough for two people to hide from Johnny Depp’s multiple personality killer in Secret Window. Even thinking about this massive amount of laundry and the possibility of having to re-wear underwear before I get a chance to wash it all gives me a tiny ulcer.

2. My main source of nutrition has been meals made up of any combination of the following: chicken strips from any of the fast food restaurants in the surrounding area, parmesan & garlic Triscuits, grapefruit juice, honey mustard Pringles, mini Babybel cheeses, and cupcakes. Writing that out actually made me feel like I was dying a little bit.

3. I drink on average 3.67 large iced coffees a day. This data is merely an estimation and has been thrown off slightly by the few times I mistakenly ordered the “medium” size, which is the biggest waste of money ever because why order a medium when a large is only several cents more and will give you more minutes filled with iced coffee enjoyment while you obsessively check Facebook and then plan your next trip to the grocery store to buy more things that will rot your insides?

4. The last time I got more than five hours of sleep in a night was weeks ago, because when I finally get done working at midnight, hastily remove my makeup, and collapse into bed, my internal monologue suddenly reads like a Steinbeck novel (if Steinbeck ever wrote a novel about an anxiety-ridden twenty-something) while I analyze in great detail everything that crosses my mind: any loose ends I could have left hanging during my afternoon desk shift, my to-do list for the next day, possible future blog topics, emails I forgot to reply to, how I will decorate my future apartment, what kind of tattoo I would get if I got one, possible scenarios in Candy Crush Saga, how I can get John Krasinski to @reply to me on Twitter. Then, once I exhaust myself enough to stop thinking through how to formulate a Tweet that would catch John Krasinski’s attention and make him fall in love with me over the internet, I fall asleep and my iPhone alarm vibrates next to my face only a few hours later. The next day, I go through my day like a zombie, ingest 3.67 large iced coffees, breathe a sigh of relief when my closing shift ends at midnight, pull on my PJs, and the vicious cycle starts all over again.

5. I have lost count of how many mosquito bites are covering my body, but it’s definitely in the double digits. I know this may not seem like a big enough thing to decrease my lifespan, but if any of the mutant mosquitoes (seriously, I just killed one that was the size of a fly) that have hatched in northern Michigan happen to be carrying diseases, it might. And won’t you be sorry if I contract some mosquito-borne disease and die young, huh?

I’ll probably wake up tomorrow morning and everything will be sunshine and rainbows and hugs from my girls. I’ll probably forget about these stressful things while I suck down yet another iced coffee, but for now, I’m going to hope writing this blog entry at least cuts down on the number of things I have to think about while I try to fall asleep tonight.

stop posting on facebook about how your mom is the best, because obviously mine is

Mommy cuddle puddle.

For someone who has decided they want to become a writer, I’ve sure been doing a crappy job of keeping this blog updated. Truthfully, I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing lately, but most of it isn’t material that I want to post here right now. So I decided to take this Mother’s Day, as I sit at the local coffeeshop, two lattes into my afternoon and hiding from the SNOW that decided to make an appearance halfway through May, to write a short post about my beautiful mom. I know nothing I write will be able to truly express just how important this woman is in my life, but I’m going to try anyway.

A few days ago, I was having a rough time, which is typical of my anxious self at this point in the school year. We’ve only got two weeks left, and my time isn’t really my own anymore. For every item I cross off my to-do list, three more get added to the bottom. I’ve also been making every effort to spend quality time with my girls before they graduate and move on, not to mention all my coworkers and friends who will not be returning next school year. It’s overwhelming, but it can’t really be avoided.

That said, I called my mom during one particular moment when I felt like the sky was falling. She’s always the one I call because she knows the ins and outs of my frightening brain when I work myself into what one can only describe as “a tizzy.” Coming off a long work week, a marathon day of meetings, and a couple moments of introspection about the state of my life, I sat on a bench on campus as the sun was setting, and I cried to her about all the little things in my life that sucked at that specific time. I was a fragile mess, but luckily, my mother is perhaps the only person alive who knows exactly how to put me in my place without sounding like a bitch.

“You realize you tend to think of everything that’s going wrong all at once when you’re feeling stressed, right?” she said, simply.

That’s my mom. She lets me word vomit all over her from two states away whenever I’m having a bad day, and she still manages to help calm me down with easy sayings like, “You’ll be okay. Go collect yourself and get back to work.”

As the oldest of three daughters, I’ve gone through a lot of firsts with my mom. We’ve had our ups and downs, but she is still the one I go to for pretty much everything. She’s one of the strongest women I’ve had the privilege of looking up to. I know I wouldn’t have made it where I am without a beautiful, ambitious, loving person like her as my support system. When I moved away after college, the hardest part was saying goodbye to her and knowing I would only be seeing her for holidays and special occasions during the foreseeable future. But I think we’ve survived the separation and it’s made all the moments I do get to spend with her that much more special.

Happy Mother’s Day, Momma. I can’t wait to see you in June, and I couldn’t be prouder to be your daughter.

in which I cry in public (again) and attempt to make decisions about my future

Perhaps you recall the fact that I cry about pretty much everything that happens to me. If so, the following anecdote will not seem out of the ordinary to you, but it is still important in expressing the point I hope to make in this post.

I got the chance to attend two big events for a few of my senior students this weekend. The first was an art opening, a reception for the visual art students’ senior thesis exhibitions. The second was a senior piano recital by one of my girls. I work at an arts school, so performances and chances to see my students’ artistic accomplishments are not hard to come by — there’s something to attend pretty much every weekend — but for some reason, this weekend, the reality of where I work and what I do really hit me. Full force, like when you move away from home for the first time and realize you’ll really only see your family on holidays or at weddings and funerals, and all of a sudden, everything is raw and real and right in front of you. Unfortunately, this particular epiphany happened during the aforementioned piano recital.

Okay, so I’ve probably had many reflective moments like this over the course of my two years on the job. But as I sat in the recital hall, watching one of my beautiful students pour her heart into this major culminating performance, this expression of all she had worked for up until this point, I was overcome by how much talent I’m surrounded by and how hard these kids work while they’re here. I remembered being a teenager, staying up late memorizing lines for the musical instead of doing my math homework. I recalled being so focused on the art I buried myself in because it was the only thing that made me feel real. I imagined myself in my girls’ shoes, young artists right on the edge of the next stage of their lives, and how exciting and scary that must be for them. I’m sure you know what happened next…

I cried.

I thought about these girls, and how desperately I want them to go on and be successful, how I don’t want them to get to college and throw away their beautiful voices and thoughts and aspirations just because they discover beer pong or frat boys. I thought about how much I’ve seen them grow, how far they’ve come since I met each one of them. I thought about how I won’t be there to watch them make mistakes or share in their triumphs, and I was legitimately sad. Because truthfully, this job, this weird lifestyle of being a parent and older sister and mentor and friend to these kids, is the first thing I’ve felt good at in a really long time.

If the past few months have taught me anything, it’s to appreciate the charms of this job, the small things that make it special. On Friday night, I brought a group of my girls into town with me to see my friend (and former fellow hall counselor) John play music at a local art gallery. The night started out a little shaky — I mean, I had a group of teenagers with me and the average age in the room couldn’t have been less than twenty-six. Right when we got there, some people were dancing at the front of the room, just letting loose and not caring that they looked ridiculous or that people were watching them. But it was a bit off-putting for my girls. This wasn’t the crowd of familiar peers they usually saw at on-campus activities. The entire experience was new to them, and at first they didn’t want to stay. Eventually, after I told them we were going to stay and hear the music we came there to hear (and after I let them get some takeout from the bistro next door and they had eaten their fill of french fries), they let their hair down a little bit. We got up and danced, we cheered for John, we sang along with the songs we knew, and finally we were the ones who didn’t care whether other people were watching. That evening, I realized how lucky I was, enjoying great music with these kids I had been getting to know all school year, and watching them get the chance to be away from campus and feel free. It was perfect and a beautiful reminder of how unique this job really is.

I’ve decided to come back here for a third year. This wasn’t my original plan, and for most of the past year I had my mind set on moving on, living in a “real” apartment, and learning to be a “real” adult, with bills and a kitchen and possibly a cat. I was looking forward to having evenings and weekends free, and not having to feel responsible for anybody but myself. I couldn’t wait to be able to drink a glass of wine along with the dinner I cooked for myself ON A WEEKNIGHT. All the tiny nuances of being an adult who doesn’t live in a dorm with teenagers were so seductive, and I was intoxicated by the possibilities my coming freedom held. But I don’t feel like I’m done with this yet. This job and this place have brought so many people and lessons into my life, and I think there are a few more left for me here in the next year. Sure, it’s going to be a struggle at times, and I’m going to have to create my own challenges and keep myself busy, but there will also be a whole new group of kids for me to watch grow and joke around with and take into town to hear live music.

I’ve never been the type of person to base major life decisions on “gut feelings.” I like to think things through, weigh my options, and then make a choice. But, for reasons I can’t rationally explain, I have decided to not only stay here for another year, but work toward something that I really, really feel like I need to be doing for myself. In my last post, I wrote about seeing myself as a writer, and learning to become one. Well, that’s what I’m going to do with the coming year. I’m going to write. And I’m going to read things by other writers. And I’m going to write some more. And I’m going to try to get into a school where I can learn how to be better at it. And maybe I’ll totally suck at it. Or maybe afterwards I will know what I should be doing. Maybe I won’t. All that matters is that I’m going to try. But before I get there, I’m going to spend one more year in this special place, with these special people…and the fact that I’m smiling right now, as I write this, tells me I made the right choice.

I’m not a writer but I play one on this blog, and other dumb things that have crossed my mind lately

Sometimes I assess the state of my life based on whether I have anything to write about. When I’m too stressed out, I have a hard time collecting my thoughts in a coherent way. When things are going swimmingly, I don’t want to spend an afternoon holed up on my couch, clacking away on my keyboard. It’s typically in between those two extremes where I feel most productive. I need just enough stress to make me use writing as an emotional outlet, but enough positive energy to be able to focus and use my time productively. But that happy medium has been too freakin impossible to attain lately.

I’ve been lacking in inspiration, motivation, and creativity. I’ve tried countless times over the past month or so to just sit, write, and accomplish something. On one particular warm spring day (which have unfortunately been few and far between in northern Michigan thus far), I made the 20ish minute drive from campus into town, my windows cracked and Josh Ritter’s new album playing sweetly through my car stereo. The sun was out and it seemed like the perfect day to spend a little time at my favorite downtown coffeeshop, sipping a cup of local organic tea, and unloading some of the things that had been burdening my mind. (I sound like a huge hippie freak, sorry.) But after I got there, ordered my tea, and made myself comfortable at a little table, I couldn’t write anything. I opened a new Word document. I thought of the infinite possibilities I would have relished within that blank document back when I was a teenage short story writer, but I stared at my computer and nothing came to mind. I drank my tea really quickly and then had to pee right away. I fidgeted constantly. I checked Facebook 847 times. I didn’t understand what had changed. A couple months ago, I could barely sift through all of the different topics I wanted to write about. Now I had none.

Perhaps I should explain that I’ve never considered myself “a writer.” That sounds stupid now that I’m actually declaring it, because…well, I have this blog, don’t I? And honestly, I’ve been writing for most of my adolescent and adult life. But I’ve gone through writing phases. As a preteen and teenager, I wrote short stories all the time. I was obsessed with young adult fiction and most of my stories followed the typical teenage-girl-facing-the-world-slash-in-love-with-her-best-guy-friend model that I devoured, one novel at a time. As a senior in high school, I got my first (and only, so far) freelance job as a teen opinion columnist for my local newspaper. (My old columns are all in their online archives, I recently discovered, so that was a fun blast from the past during one recent and extremely boring front desk shift.) In college, I understood the mechanics of writing for academics well enough to breeze through the writing requirements of all my courses (especially my music ones, because apparently nobody in that discipline expects you to be able to express yourself unless it’s through performing or writing notes on a staff — one time I was assigned an analytical paper on a specific lied for my theory class, and my professor was so impressed by my writing skills that he gave me an A+, which I didn’t even know you could get in college). I even tutored other students in writing and took one creative writing course during my senior year. But I never considered writing to be more than just a skill that I had, a useful tool that allowed me to easily communicate in various capacities and environments. I didn’t consider it as a career choice (though I guess I have made a little money doing it and teaching others how to do it). I let it be a part of me as it always had been, but it was never a defining characteristic.

I guess the point is, writing has always just been a normal part of my life; a convenient skill when I need to capitalize on it, or an outlet to express creativity or get caught up in telling a story that’s not my own. More recently, though, it’s been a way for me to process emotions that I can’t otherwise get out. For one thing, I don’t express myself eloquently when I try to speak about my feelings. I have to get them out in writing, to put them down in black and white, in order to feel like I’m adequately explaining myself. So I do that sometimes. But since I don’t see myself as a “real” writer, I don’t have ways of getting myself past that staring-at-a-blank-screen-with-no-inspiration point. I don’t have exercises that I use to get the words flowing. I always found those exhausting when I was forced to do them in school. But sitting at that table in the coffeeshop with nothing to do but browse my Spotify playlists, I realized that it’s also exhausting to want to write, to have this desire to let the words flow freely for awhile, and not be able to do it.

So now, as I’m trying to redefine myself and my career path heading forward into my adult life, I’m starting to wonder if I should take writing more seriously. It’s always been this constant in my life, but since I saw myself as a musician for so long, the writer side of me always fell by the wayside. I’m not sure why I felt like I needed to choose between the two, but now that music has become more of a hobby for me, I feel like it might be time to let my writer side grow more. I need to force myself to sit and write, even if it’s about nothing important, nothing worth reading a few hours later. I need to come up with ways to break through that blockage I face, but I also need to accept that sometimes, the block is an important part of the creative process. I need to want to do it, but I also need to do it even when I don’t necessarily want to. I need to start writing down my observations, taking in my surroundings and reacquainting myself with the way words can express literally anything around you or within you. I need to find a way to write when I’m so stressed I can’t handle it and when I’m over-the-moon happy, and all those other moods in between.

Mostly, I think I need to see myself as a writer. So here we go. I’m a writer.

things I want

I want to spend an entire afternoon in bed, finding shapes in the patterns on my ceiling. I want to make a pot of coffee, but let the mug I just poured sit cooling on my bedside table — I’ll drink it anyway, but there’s no rush. I want to not worry that there are more important things I should be doing, or that my life is passing by while I lay there. I want to be calm for one day.

I want to put my entire music library on shuffle and just let it play, not worrying about a song that’s wrong for the moment because every song has something in it that’s right for the moment. I want each track to draw up some kind of emotion or memory, and even if they don’t fit together, I want to know that this order of moments has never happened before and never will again.

I want to sing, loudly and without any awareness of my surroundings. I want to not think about breath support or vibrato or diction. I want to forget everything I learned in school and just sing because I have a voice that’s meant for that. I want the raw side of myself to come out through my voice. I want to not worry about sounding pretty.

I want to read a book in a silent room. I want every distraction to melt away because I am so immersed in the words on the page. I want the text to leap off the page, soaked into my mind and every fiber of my being. I want the scent of the pages as they flip through the air to keep me reading.

I want to be kissed — not a romantic movie kiss, but just a simple, gentle kiss from someone I love. I want to know in that moment that there is someone who cares for me as much as I care for them. I want that kiss to linger with me for the rest of the day, my lips tingly, knowing there is someone out there who might be thinking about how they just kissed me. I want the fluttery heartbeat of anticipation that follows that kiss, waiting for the next one.

I want to drive somewhere without worrying about emptying my gas tank or getting back home in time for the next thing on my calendar. I want to maybe park somewhere and get out and go for a walk before turning around. I want my best friend to be in the seat next to me and Paul Simon to be playing on the radio.

But mostly, I just want to lose control for enough time for all of these things to happen.

home is where your teddy bear is

I’ve been pretty homesick lately. Homesick is really the closest word I could find to fit the way I’m feeling, but the truth is, I don’t really have a home to be “sick” for. Sure, my physical home back in Minnesota is a place that I miss often, but I miss my family more than the actual place. In the years that have occurred since I graduated high school and began a semi-nomadic life of moving from dorm to dorm and place to place each school year, I’ve struggled with the fact that I don’t really feel like I have a home anymore.

While that statement may sound more dramatic than I intended it to, it does bring up a central question that I’ve fought with for the past six years. What defines a home? For the first eighteen years of my life, my home was with my family. Growing up, even though we moved once, we lived in one northwest corner of our Minnesota town, and both houses felt unmistakably like my home. My parents, my sisters, and my pets were all there. It was comfortable. It still felt like home for the first part of my college career — I lived less than an hour and a half away, and when I came home on weekends and breaks, my room felt the same, my place at the dinner table still felt like mine. It was all still normal.

Then, as time began to remove me from the house I grew up in more and more, it became clearer that it wasn’t meant to stay my home forever. I started spending my summers at camp in northern Michigan and my school years at college, and I came home less. I still loved seeing my family, but the time I spent there wasn’t as comfortable, as normal as it had been. But still, I knew this was the natural progression for a young adult, and I enjoyed the time that I did have with my family. I talked to my mom on the phone a lot and kept up on the family events from afar. My final semester in college, I moved back home for my student teaching placement. I settled back into that house, I bonded with my youngest sister, who had been only twelve when I first moved out and was suddenly a full-blown teenager with opinions, a driver’s license, and a makeup collection. I settled into a routine: I drove to school in the morning, taught all day, came home, and hung out with my family. It was monotonous and my social life was pretty much non-existent since none of my friends lived in my hometown anymore. But it taught me a lot, and I will never regret getting the chance to spend that time with my family.

When I moved to Michigan for this job, it was a bit of a reality check. I suddenly realized I couldn’t come home for weekends, and even week-long vacations during the school year would be a struggle because the logistics of traveling home were difficult. I was worried about missing my home and my family and not having them near me as a safety net. Even though I was transitioning into a job with a built-in place to live and I was familiar with the area I was moving to, it was scary knowing I couldn’t just go to home when I missed my mom or wanted to spend a weekend snuggling my dogs. It started to hit me that this was what adulthood was like when you chose to move away from your hometown. Some people come to that realization in college; for me, it didn’t happen until I was 22, and I still struggle with it every once in awhile.

I’ve only been home three times since I moved here. Every time has been relaxing and reminded me what it is I love about being there. But I can’t spend more than a few weeks at a time there. I run out of things to do, I watch too much TV, and I get restless. It will always be my technical home, the place I was raised, the place where my parents live, but it doesn’t feel that much like mine anymore. I just keep reminding myself that it’s okay to feel that way. This quote from Garden State has been running through my head lately, because I think it describes exactly how I’ve been feeling:

You’ll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It’s like you feel homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist. Maybe it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I don’t know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.

I do feel homesick for a place that doesn’t really exist anymore, but I keep trying to hang onto it…in little ways anyway. The other day I asked my mom to send me the teddy bear I’ve had since I was an infant. I didn’t bring him with me when I moved, and I haven’t ever needed him until now. Transitions are especially difficult for me emotionally, and I’ve been feel extremely uneasy about the concept of “home” because…I don’t know where my home is going to be after May. My anxiety has been at an all-time high and my emotions are all over the place. This campus is the closest thing I’ve had to a home over the past two years. I’m comfortable here, and while my family isn’t with me, I feel at ease when I drive around town and when I come home to my room at night. So my mom sent me my bear, and when I got him in the mail today, I felt this overwhelming sense of comfort. This one object, this little piece of home, of my childhood, was just what I needed. Do I feel childish for needing a teddy bear to comfort me when I’m 24 years old? Obviously. But I’m not apologizing for it. Sometimes you just need a teddy bear to get you through a rough patch, and this is mine.

pure michigan, a love story (of sorts)

I’ve lived in the midwest my entire life. I spent the first eighteen years of my life in the same town in southern Minnesota, then attended college in northern Iowa. Needless to say, when I moved to Michigan, I wasn’t shocked by the cold winters or the ridiculous amounts of snow. I grew up in it, I learned to drive in it, it didn’t scare me. I’ve always prided myself on being from the northern midwest, because we have thick skin when it comes to winter. But for a long time, I thought that was my only claim to fame when it came to hailing from the middle of the country; “I’m used to the snow.” It took me most of my life and a move to Michigan to learn to appreciate the region I call home beyond just being unafraid of tomorrow’s blizzard.

Truthfully, there are a lot of places I’d love to live in the future. I feel like I should explore other areas of the country, new regions and new cities. But I think I’ll always have immense pride for the region in which I grew up. I didn’t know it when I was younger, but people are definitely nicer here. You know that stereotype “Minnesota nice”? That’s a real thing. I didn’t see it until I traveled to other places, but there’s a certain neighborly attitude that most people adopt in my hometown and others like it. I didn’t appreciate it before, but I certainly do now.

The midwest will always be my home, and honestly, I think I could do much worse. Sure, people from either coast will tell you that it’s the center of civilization, because that’s where all the big cities with “real culture” are located, or you can find any number of places open after 2am, or because the local music scene has been praised by Pitchfork, and maybe they’re right. I don’t know. But the midwest has great metropolitan areas, too. We have culture. We have local musicians. We aren’t just cows and corn fields (though the drive to my college town would suggest otherwise). Yes, things are more spread apart, and it gets frustrating when the nearest major airport or great concert venue is two hours away, or you can’t find anything to do after 10pm on a Thursday night. Yes, I sometimes feel like I’m living in a bubble. But after living in Michigan for a year and a half, I think I’ve actually fallen in love with it.

I don’t know why I didn’t necessarily see it before I moved here. I mean, Minnesota has its own fair share of natural beauty. But this new area I’ve come to call home really opened my eyes and made me appreciate what is surrounding me. I’ve realized that I will probably never be completely happy living in a place that doesn’t have real seasons. Like I said, winters here can be rough and long, and by February, you miss the sun so much it hurts…but during the rest of the year, we get crisp fall air and rainbow leaves, spring puddles and the smell of new grass, and summers warm enough to enjoy the beach. Sometimes, cliché as it is, I have to force myself to take a moment and appreciate the natural beauty I’m surrounded by, living up here. When I’m missing my family, or so stressed out with work that I can’t think anymore, I remind myself that I am in one of the most beautiful places in the country, and it helps.

I’ve made the decision to be here for another year. Sometimes I think I should move on to “bigger and better things,” find something more exciting to do with my life, start an adventure. But I’m not really ready for that yet. I love this area, it feels like home now, and it feels right that I should stay here, even if I need to move on from this job. I’ll find a place to live, I’ll find a new job. Things will work out. And if they don’t, I’ll still be in a place I love, and that’s enough comfort for now.