Excuses

Excuses I have made to avoid taking steps to lose weight:

• I feel okay.
• I've never had high cholesterol.
• BMI's not real, anyway - I'm 4'11", but I haven't weighed 100 pounds since before puberty.
• Those clothes are old anyway.
• I still look fine in black. I'll just buy all black.
• I don't need to be taking pictures of myself anyway. I should be taking pictures of the world around me!
• It's cold out and there's a bus coming.
• It's cold out and Uber will only cost $7.
• It's cold out and I'm afraid I'll slip on the ice.
• It's cold out and my body needs more carbs to stay warm.
• It's cold out and hot chocolate.
• I should eat all this food I have before buying new food, you know, to save money.
• I could go to yoga after class but then I'd have to carry everything around.
• I could go to yoga in the middle of my prep day but then I'd throw off my grading groove.
• I could go to yoga in the middle of my living room floor but I can't find my mat.
• I could just doing jumping jacks in the middle of the floor right now but I've already showered.
• That gym is too expensive.
• The food for that recipe is too expensive.
• My partners love my body, even if I don't.
• I feel okay.

• I feel okay.

Full Health

For the past six years, I've been playing the real-life RPG called "Poly Adventures." I was pretty good at it too, until last year. I started coming upon harder levels and meaner monsters. I found my weapons cache to be sorely empty, and my emotional health bar always empty or nearing empty. I had a lot of people trying to help me play through those levels, but for a while, nothing seemed to work. I never lost any lives, and I never thought I'd stop playing, but there were times in there that I didn't see how my health could ever get back to full. I lost interest in activities and almost lost friends.

But like many games, it takes time and practice to get through those hard levels and onto better ones. I started finding things that gave me more health, like therapy, medicine, and activities I enjoyed. I especially found art, which I had dabbled with for a long time but never really put the time or effort into getting better. Suddenly, I became enthusiastic to better myself at something, and the health just kept coming back. The better I felt about my own emotional health, the more I felt I could tackle the challenges I had with friends, and everything started to fall into place. 

Yesterday, as I sat around the living room with two of my closest friends, I realized this was the most fun and easy level I'd played in a long time. The hard levels I'd played over the course of last year, though still remembered, were not affecting my ability to play through this one. In fact, I probably have become better at the game as time has gone on. I'm even ready to meet new romantic allies to play new levels with, and know that I wouldn't have been able to do so without that expert-level experience. 

I'm not actually that good at video games, but this one is thankfully not the kind you need to learn how to beat. You just need to learn how to keep at it, even though the tough levels. Because it's a pretty fun game, and I'd like to keep playing it for years to come.

A million, billion thanks to Make 8-Bit Art! It's super fun and everyone should check it out.

Preoccupied

It's been this way for as long as I can remember. When I was younger, before my body started producing hormones that eclipsed all else, it was characters and movies and shows. Peter Pan, then Robin Williams (probably because of Hook and my lingering obsession with Peter Pan), then Twister and anything having to do with tornadoes. They were all I could talk about, think about, dream about. Others called them obsessions, but it wasn't until I grew up and realized what a loaded word that could be that I felt uncomfortable admitting that's what they were. But that's what they were.

And then I got older, it changed from fictional characters and celebrities to real people. After my first boyfriend in 9th grade, I no longer had to occupy my obsessive brain on fiction. I had something to attach to that was real.

I can't even type "something to obsess on," because it makes me feel creepy. Like I'm a stalker, like my thoughts are unnatural and unwanted. And I don't know, maybe I have been creepy. It's not like I've stood outside someone's window, followed someone around, looked for their car in a parking lot, called them at weird hours of the night. But I have definitely annoyed my friends and family by talking about my interests non-stop. I have definitely driven people away by being too enthusiastic about them.

I've also made plans based more on the excitement of these attachments than logic. Like, it's a good thing people don't choose professions at thirteen, because I'd be living in the middle of tornado alley right now doing weather science. I mean, okay, maybe I'd be happy doing weather science, but I wouldn't have turned into Helen Hunt, which is what I really wanted. But even more disturbing to me are the choices I made (or almost made) based on people I was attached to. Because when I'm in one of these phases - when there's something that occupies my brain for more time than other things - my own desires and needs don't matter as much.

As I've gotten older, I've learned the difference between someone I have an obsessive attachment to and someone I have a healthy attachment to. I've developed the ability to step back and go, "This is too much." But at the same time, I still let myself be dragged under, and it is never me who, in the end, says, "I need a break from this to detach." It is always the decisions of others who break me from the spell, and with distance, I am usually grateful that they do so. I just wish I could do it myself.

And most of all, I wish the peaks and valleys of the unhealthy attachments weren't so beautiful that the flatlands of healthy attachments seemed boring in comparison. Because it's hard to plant in rocky soil, and deep down, I know that it's time to grow more things that last.

[Enter the Popular Title of a David Bowie Song Here]

For the last few weeks, I've been thinking about change.

The most obvious kind of change is the big, life-altering variety: moving, getting over a long-term relationship or officially starting one (like marriage), starting a new job, coping with the loss of a loved one. These are "ushering in a new era" changes, and usually, at least at times, are scary. 

Then there are seasonal changes that occur, for me, every year: the beginning of a new school year, that joyous month-long break in January, and the transition to the summer, which, for me, is actually a more difficult transition than going back to school in the fall.

And finally, there are the smaller, everyday changes that I crave: I rearrange my room a lot, like trying new restaurants and going to new places, and swap out my profile picture on social media frequently. I even chose an Android phone over an iPhone because I can customize its look more.

Right now, I'm trying to juggle a few different changes. and putting them together at the same time makes me feel uncomfortable. I'd almost rather move to a new city, break off a long-term relationship, and start a new job all at once rather than try and parse how so many seemingly inconsequential and imperceptible changes are making me feel unstable.

Like my time: the semester ended and I plunged head-first into more free time, which is always a little jarring after feeling like I should be grading and working every second of every day. Getting used to being home by myself during the day instead of out teaching is always a struggle, especially when I always need to spend less money in the summer as well.

And my home: Our apartment lost a roommate who had a lot of furniture and gained a new roommate who brought a lot of furniture, so like a few summers ago, I'm living among boxes. Getting used to being home by myself during the day plus not being super comfortable in that home yet is even more of a struggle.

And Adam's home: After Joel and I spent an incredible weekend getaway with Adam and his wife, we dropped them off at their new apartment in a different neighborhood and I couldn't help but feel like they were completely different people, and that would make our relationship a completely different relationship.

Even the cat is going through changes of her own: she's got new roommates, too.

On top of this are little things: objects around the house I need but don't have anymore (like the vacuum) because they belonged to the old roommate, trying to find a new place for the cat scratching post, my mother's procurement of her first smart phone, new short stories, new dates, new bedspread, newfound interest in butter lettuce, new distance between my parents and I, new growth on the tree outside my window, new discoveries, new expectations and outlooks on relationships.

I used to think that if something in my life was always changing, I'd be happy, and that being static is what drove a lot of my unhappiness in the past. But right now, so much feels different that I've swung too far in the other direction. At some point soon I need to find something familiar to keep me grounded until everything else falls back into place again, so I can start to appreciate these changes for the positives they are.

What is Love? (With Apologies to Haddaway)

I don't know, what can I do? What else can I say, it's up to ewe.

Now that you have that song in your head, let's talk about what I've learned about me and romantic love since being poly: 

There is more than one kind of love.

Love is not just what society tells us it is. It is not just kissing in the rain, marrying your high school sweetheart, holding a boombox outside someone's window, letting them have the whole damned door to float on even though it's clear there's room for you too. It is not just what is written in Hallmark cards. It could be any of these things, or it can be something completely different. It could be letting them have the last bite of cake, checking up on them in the middle of a really tough day, wearing their hair ties on your wrist even though you don't have long hair. The love I feel doesn't have to fit into someone else's mold.

I don't have to love someone the same way I love someone else.

Love is an amorphous feeling, and therefore can be different for everyone I love. I don't love Adam in the same way I love Joel, and I don't love Joel in the same way I loved others before him. I don't expect to be loved in the same way my partners love their other partners. And just because the love is different, doesn't mean it's not significant or shouldn't be communicated (or communicated about - see below).

Love doesn't have to be a floor on the relationship escalator. 

For a long time, I thought that relationships became real when you started saying "I love you" and whatever came before that was just casual. I thought that once you started slinging around love, more things were slated to come, like moving in together, going to (and almost breaking up at) Ikea, getting incessantly bugged about having kids. And then a few years ago, I fell in love with someone who would be leaving town just a few months later and realized that love doesn't have to be on the way to something else, or the end of something. It just is. 

Love can be scary.

In the past, I have taken for granted that love is a concept (and emotion) that has always come easily to me. I love often, early, and strongly. I fall hard. But not everyone is like that. Love is complicated for those who have only ever known it to be one thing for one person at a time (or for that matter, one person, period). Love is hard to express when you don't know if the emotion carries other obligations or expectations, and it's tricky to qualify, quantify, and clarify because it sometimes feels like doing so cheapens it. It's not always as simple as "He loves me, he loves me not."

I need to hear that I'm loved. 

Affirmative language is something I need a lot of in poly relationships, even if my partner and I aren't using "love" to describe how we feel about each other. Even though it does bring me comfort to feel a warm embrace or a tender kiss, the words "I love you" mean a lot in making me feel valued and important in a relationship. Obviously, if love is felt, it should be shown, but I'm wired to need to hear it too.

And finally,

Love should be communicated about, not just communicated.

It took me far too long to realize I needed to communicate what love meant to me versus what it meant to others. I think sometimes we think that it's this subject we have to tiptoe around because saying it for the first time is supposed to be special and important,  and because it means something. But really, it's more dangerous not to find out what that something is to everyone involved before diving in.

I truly believe that it is more enriching to live life with the potential to love more than one person. But at the same time, I know that this concept can be complicated and messy. It shouldn't be kept in a collector's box high on the shelf to maintain its pristine condition. It should be taken down, taken apart, played with, and most importantly, experienced. 

Happiness Is Not a Fish*

On a good friend's bathroom mirror, written in dry-erase marker, it says, "You are looking at the person most responsible for your happiness."

The message appeared there after one of the many parties he throws, and it's stayed there since. I read it every time I'm washing my hands, which is a lot of times over the course of a party because my bladder is the size of an olive. I read it and look at my reflection and read it again, hoping that the more I read it the more will sink in. (That pun was free. You have to pay for more). Because it's one of those phrases we read and think, "Yeah. Right on, mirror," and then we go back out into the world and it's gone, like my reflection, and I'm back at looking to others to cheer me up or make me happy.

I've been doing the 100 Happy Days project on Instagram, despite feeling kind of sheepish about the perceived notion that I'm flaunting all the things that I have that others might not (including happiness). But I know that I have trouble with looking for happiness from others - especially in my relationships - that I thought I would chronicle (mostly) other things that make me happy that I have had the power to seek out myself. I'm almost done - today will be day 93, and going back I can't believe how many of those pictures were things that weren't people-dependent: new books, office supplies, coffee, LOTS of pictures of my cat, beer, nature. These are things that no one else had the power to give or take away from me. 

And yet, others still have the power to not only make me happy, but make me incredibly unhappy. I feel like I have little control over this, and it's infuriating. This past weekend I looked up at the mirror after a particularly stupid evening that I let turn south and wondered why I couldn't take it to heart. I'm a responsible person. I pay my bills on time. I keep my cat alive. But the happiness thing I let slide. I'm not saying I can't get happiness from others, but they can't be responsible. That would be like depending on someone else to come over and clean my cat's litter box. Someone might do it a few times, but once they stopped, I'd be in a crapload of trouble (okay, that one was free too.)

In addition to the 100 Happy Days project, I keep a journal where I write a few sentences about what I did each day. Last night, out of curiosity, I went back through the 146 days we'd had so far in the year to count and see how many of those days I mentioned being unhappy because of someone else. It was a fifth of the days I tracked. That's too many. I need to stop sucking at being responsible for my own happiness, because there are (obviously) a lot of things that do make me happy. Some of them are people. Some of them are new pens and notebooks. Some of them are fluffy animals. But I am the only one who can give them power over my happiness.

I don't feel like I'm getting any better at this, but past experience tells me I am. I was unhappy in the Midwest, so I left. I've been unhappy doing jobs or activities, so I've quit. I've been unhappy in relationships, so I've tried to adjust. I'm impatient. I see those 32 days out of this year in my journal and want them to be gone now, not in six months. But I'm starting to get that happiness is an investment. It's not always going to pay out right away. It's a paycheck, not the lottery, so I best keep working.

*Our Lady Peace was right.

Alone

Over my mother's stressful visit last November, during which she caught Adam and I kissing and proclaimed loudly how much she didn't approve of our life choices, she told me she was worried that dating all these unavailable people meant I was just going to end up alone. "You can't be alone, Katie," she said. "I know you."

My first response was, "How could I be alone around more people? That doesn't make sense!" and my second was, "Well even if I am, I'm happier being alone than I used to be. I've changed. You'll see."

And I thought that I was getting better at it, that I relished those nights at home with no plans, that I still took comfort in reading or drawing or writing when I needed some restorative time, that I liked stretching out in a bed all to myself. I grew up an only child, after all, I should be used to being alone. Shouldn't I? Wasn't my mother just basing her fears on a societal stereotype that single people are lonely?

This morning, I said goodbye to Joel for a week as he embarks on a fun trip I can't take because I have to give a final and then grade them. Adam and his wife just bought a condo, so they're furiously trying to prep and pack and don't have a lot of time for dating this month. Instead of being excited that this time is an opportunity for me to get back to doing these activities I like to do solo, the prospect of a week without either of them, and then several weeks without Adam, makes me feel empty.

It shouldn't. In fact, if anything, being in love and in happy relationships should make me more okay with being alone because I know I'm really not - that there is someone (more than one someone!) out there who cares for me and looks forward to seeing me the next time we have plans. I've even met some wonderful new people I'm excited to get closer to and see more of. So why am I so lonely? Why has comfort with Joel and lust for Adam made it harder for me to be alone, not easier?

I'm frustrated with myself. I want to be stronger than this. I want to be telling my mom the truth when I say that if I end up living alone with no domestic partner for the rest of my life, I'll be OK. But right now, I'm lying to her and, I think, also lying to myself.

Sometimes I tell myself I just need a primary partner who isn't unavailable. That the problem is I keep becoming involved with people who already have homes, or who are okay with being their own home, when in reality I want someone to make a home with. But that's not going to solve the problem. I had that once and it didn't make me happy. Even if I had that again, there would still be times like this week I'm alone and lonely and empty.

This comic says very succinctly what I want to do: not be so worried about filling the hole in my chest. I think there is a misconception that poly people can't be lonely, or even that coupled people can't be lonely, but the truth is that if we're unhappy with being with ourselves, it doesn't matter how many people we live with or are dating or trying to fill that hole with. We have to figure out how to be happy letting it whistle as we run. I'm still working on it.

Maybe my first step is to get over my hatred of running.

The Trap, or Why Facebook and I Are on a Break

The biggest irony is that I am, indeed, posting this to Facebook. 

A few weeks ago, I was wasting time online when my mood changed from relatively content to sour. As I continued to scroll, the sourness deepened, and I went from gherkin to sauerkraut to lemon wedge to Green Apple Warhead in about thirty seconds. By the time I pried myself away from my distraction, I had settled into a funk that stayed with me for most of the morning. If someone had gone back through my browser history to try and get to the bottom of my mood, the findings would be inconclusive. No one would have been able to tell that it was spurred by counting "likes" on Facebook.

I've taken various breaks from the "Book of Faces," as a few friends call it, at different times, mostly during busy periods of my life where I simply can't afford the distraction. Up until a few weeks ago, though, I'd never stepped away from it because I thought it was "bad" for me. I always just figured I had a "healthy" level of addiction just like everyone else, that I could step away from it whenever I needed to get things done, and that it would continue to be a source of harmless entertainment. That was until some other factors in my life made my emotions go on a bit of an amusement park ride, and I realized that Facebook wasn't so harmless after all.

I got jealous. I started comparing the number of "likes" on my posts to others' posts. I even started counting the number of times certain people "liked" my things versus others' things. I craved that little cartoon thumb, but at the same time hated it. So I stepped back again, this time to get my head back in the real world, where people actually like me.

How my Facebook newsfeed affected me wasn't healthy, but it isn't rare, either - studies have shown a correlation between spending time on Facebook and depression, like this one from Sweden, which found that "women who spend more time on Facebook report feeling less happy and...less content with their lives." I can usually catch myself becoming more discontent the longer I scroll, and I know the cure is to walk away and focus on the happy things that are happening in my own life. But that's where the trap pulls me in again.

Because a mark of our generation is to share things. To share everything. Not just information, but pictures. Look at this sandwich. Look at this sunset. Look at this cat. And sometimes I think the sandwich doesn't seem as delicious, the sunset not as brilliant, the cat not as adorable, if we can't get someone else to share in our satisfaction. So back to the internet we go, and wait for the "likes" to pour in. And if they don't? It must not have been that great of a sandwich/brilliant of a sunset/cute of a cat after all.

The only way right now I can break the cycle is to step away from it - well, partially anyway. I'm still on Twitter and Instagram, still wonder why there are fewer hearts on my pictures of me and Adam than on my pictures of the cat, still wonder if anyone even read that last Tweet. But for some reason those darts aren't as poisonous, so for now, it's where I'll make my social media home*.

But Kate, you ask, why don't you just step away from everything and go out and live your life? If you're so worried about the quality of your experiences being marred by your desire for social media validation, why don't you just unplug altogether? Because, disembodied voice talking to a blog post, I live in 2014. I'll always be right back in the soup, and so will you. The trick is not letting it slosh out the sides.

*But of course I'm still posting a link to this on Facebook. That's where you found it, right?

The Comparison Trap

A few weeks ago, a friend shared this comic from one of my favorite websites, Zen Pencils. Gavin Aung Than's artwork always catches my eye, but this time the quote especially struck something in me I've been thinking about recently. In the cartoon, philosopher and writer Juddi Krishnamurti observes that from birth, we learn to measure our own self-worth by comparing ourselves with other people:

In an ordinary school where there are a lot of boys, when one boy is compared with another who is very clever, who is the head of the class, what is actually taking place? You are destroying the boy. 

I didn't grow up with siblings to be compared to, but I grew up with neighbors and cousins, and was never immune to these comparisons. Though my parents tried to balance them out with healthy doses of encouragement, I internalized comparing just like everyone else, and it stuck: "Her handwriting is nicer than mine," "She serves a volleyball faster than me," "He can draw better than me." Over the years that has become "She's a more motivated writer than I am," "He's a more well-read professor," "She's thinner and thus more beautiful according to societal ideals."

Measuring self-worth by comparison can be toxic to anyone in any environment, but in polyamory can be even more damaging. I mean, think about it - I'm constantly exposed to other people who are with, in one way or another, people who I am with. If I'm not comparing myself to the people themselves, I am comparing how I am treated with how others are treated, or I'm comparing how this relationship is progressing versus how this one progressed. (Which is ironic, in a way, because one of the reasons I like polyamory is that all relationships are different.)

But if I've been raised to internalize comparison, and I'm always going to be around those who are easy to compare myself to, how do I escape from the trap?

The conclusion Krishnamurti gives, that looking within to find out who you are instead of looking without, encourages us to avoid the trap altogether: essentially, he's saying just stop comparing. But that's hard, especially in a world that's based on comparison and competition. I would be lying to myself and everyone else if I said that Krishnamurti's solution is realistic for me.

In a response to the cartoon, another friend told the story of the energy she spent throughout high school trying to be better than another French horn player from a different school. Once they'd actually started talking in college, they realized that both thought the other was more talented, and instead of destroying their self-worth, the comparison pushed both of them to get better. She used the comparison as a motivator. What have I been using it for?

So far, nothing. I've been noticing it and letting it make me feel shitty. I haven't been using it as a motivator. I haven't been using it as an opportunity to learn. I haven't been using it as a way to grow. I've been letting it do to me what it does to the boy in the cartoon: destroy self-worth and confidence. I push the successes of my peers away to keep them from bringing me down, instead of using them as a motivator to bring me up.

I know I need to change. I know I need to figure out what motivates that writer, what books that professor has read, what that couple has done to be happy all this time. I need to focus on what's good about my relationships instead of what looks like it's better in others. I need to catch myself comparing and ask, "What am I using this for?" and if the answer is "Nothing" then I need to distract myself with something else until I can stop. It's not going to be easy. In fact, I'm comparing myself to others right now - others who can recognize something in themselves and be like, "I'll change that," and then just do it. (To those of you who might think I am one of those people, and have made peace with all the challenges I discuss in this blog, I'll set the record straight: I have not. Not even half of them. Not even a quarter. This stuff is still hard.)

But thinking about it and recognizing it is probably a good start. I was thankful that my friend who posted the cartoon gave me the opportunity to think about it more. And I'm thankful that Than did such an amazing job of illustrating Krishnamurti's words, because they impacted me more than they would have in text form. I would say that I wish I could draw as well as Than, but instead I'll say that I'm glad he can draw and design the way he can so that we can all appreciate it. (Did that count as a start?)

Not-So-Tiny Problems I Have with this Cosmo Article About Not-So-Tiny Short People Problems

For those of you following along at home, a little bit about me: I'm short. Not like, a little-smaller-than-average short, but like really short. Like under-five-feet short. And as I am prone to having problems sometimes living in a country where everyone, on average, is a half-foot taller than me, you could expect me to appreciate an article with the title, "17 Not-So-Tiny Problems Only Short People Understand."

Not so, if you couldn't tell from my oh-so-subtle title.

Now I'm not arguing that none of these are problems for anyone - I can only speak for myself. And for myself, my biggest fear is that someone will read this article and think, "Oh no! Kate can't grocery shop alone! Kate can't ever put her feet up on the couch! Kate can't hold hands with anyone over 5'6"! STOP CALLING KATE 'CUTE!'" Never fear, people who might read Cosmo and worry about me. I'm fine. 

Here's my response to Cosmo's list:

"[People] really like to call you cute. It gets annoying fast." 

I guess if you're going for "beautiful" or "knock-out, drop-dead gorgeous," cute could be a step down. But I'm not going for particularly anything. Sure, I'm called "cute" far more often than I'm called "beautiful" or "gorgeous," but I'm okay with that. Please, continue with the cute-ing. I won't be offended or bite your ankles or anything like that. 

"Hope you have small ladder." 

Secretly, I like jumping up on counters. It's like the only time I do anything vaguely acrobatic. 

"Standing-room-only concerts are the worst. Oh, did you want to see Beyoncé perform?"

Actually no, not really. But if you really want my take on this, it's called planning. If I really really wanted to see Beyoncé perform, or more realistically, OK Go, I would show up to the venue early enough to stake out a good place. I mean, I know planning is hard. But I'm a big girl, inside. I can handle it.

"Grocery shopping is an exercise in flirting." 

Wait, what? The only way I can ever possibly get that can of soup on the top shelf is by flirting? Screw that noise, I'll use the longest item in my cart I can find - baguette, wrapping paper tube, box of cereal - and knock that sucker down myself. Or, you know, Ask someone politely to get something for me. Like a human being who doesn't need to flirt to get what I want.

"You might as well not bother owning an ottoman because your feet will never reach it." 

If only I were smart enough to get up and move the ottoman. But I'm too short! I have less brain power than everyone else!

"You have to wear heels to work. If you don't, you are basically a foot shorter than all your coworkers." 

Don't you tell me what to do, Cosmo. I'm lucky to work in academia, but even if I worked in, say, business, where I would have to more actively assert myself as a woman (and a short one at that), I would do so with my voice, not at the expense of my feet and back. 

"You look up to everyone. Literally." 

Oh wow, a correct usage of the word "literally"! I'm actually quite impressed with this one! Still rolling my eyes at the non-problem, but impressed nonetheless!

"Making out with a tall dude is a workout." 

My ex is 6'4" and I will admit, dancing at our wedding was a little ridiculous. But there are these awesome things called couches (and ottomans! Good thing I ended up getting one of those anyway!)

"Holding hands is also awkward." 

Now you're reaching, Cosmo, something I never have to do when holding hands - not even with my ex.

"People use your shoulder as their personal armrest, and sometimes your head as a headrest. Do I look like furniture?" 

No, seriously, do I? I know I waffled a bit on buying this paisley sweater but now I'm starting to worry I look a little ottoman-y. 

"Taking pictures is a nightmare. It takes at least three takes to convince your taller friend that 1) she should not bend down to take a photo with you and 2) she does not look like a yeti next to you." 

Honestly, taller friends who are reading this post, I don't care what you do when we take a picture together. Heck, you can just stand behind me and use my head as a headrest. That might even be the cutest possible arrangement for us to be pictured together.

"You will never be a supermodel." 

Promise?

Return of the Jealousy Monster

While Adam was out of town with other partners this past weekend, I had a visit from my Jealousy Monster. It arrived on Thursday afternoon, settled in even as I tried to unseat it with a bubble bath and a relaxing evening of reading, and was still gorging happily on envy the next day, making the most annoying chewing sounds - like someone eating potato chips and smacking their lips in an otherwise silent room. My weekend, which was jam-packed with fun things, was at stake. I had to do something. 

In my previous post about managing expectations, I talked about the fact that most of what I know about navigating relationships comes from past experiences. I know, for example, that I fear the unknown, so when I've approached situations involving jealousy before, my first instinct is to have everything laid out in front of me. 

But this time, asking about the fun things he was doing made things worse, especially as I was, at that moment, grading a particularly horrible paper. I tried to explain that maybe I didn't need to know the details, at least not right then, and we even tried to change the subject. But the longer we talked the worse I felt. So I tried the complete opposite of my past inclinations: I told him I had to go. I wished him a good weekend, told him we'd talk when he got home, and closed the chat window. 

The immediate relief I felt was almost startling. Who was I? Wasn't I someone who felt that more communication, not less, was the solution to all problems? Hadn't I hated it in past relationships when the other person had requested a few days of silence? I continued to listen closely for my Jealousy Monster for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, but I couldn't hear him. He wasn't gone, but he was no longer making those annoying chewing sounds.

I took advantage of the silence and enjoyed my weekend. It wasn't that I didn't think about Adam, but I wasn't dwelling on the envy the way I might have if we'd been checking in every once in a while. Instead I focused on those other things that make me happy, and because of it was glad to talk again when he got home. 

I know that the Jealousy Monster is still there, biding its time to come out again, and I feel like before I revert back to my tell me everything inclinations I need to make sure I'm ready to hear it. It's nice, though, to realize there are still solutions to be found, and helpful to recognize that they might be the complete opposite of what was expected. Hopefully next time I'll know ahead of time to focus on what's in front of me that I am doing, rather than wondering what I'm not. 

"to cope"

When I looked up "cope" in the dictionary, I found two definitions - the one I expected, and this:

"to meet in combat."

It's so interesting that this word, with roots in Greek and Latin, used to mean (depending on the language) "buffet," "blow," "strike," and "cut," when we now use it to mean "deal with and attempt to overcome problems and difficulties."

Isn't that just like our world today, though? We're less likely to need help buffeting the advances of swordsmen and more likely to need help dealing with hard emotional things. It's like the stress and anxiety and depression have become those swordsmen.

The first thing I thought of when decided what to write for this week was a phrase I've uttered more than once over the last few weeks: "I'm not coping well." I'm to the point in an over-booked semester (please, someone, remind me I can't teach five sections at a time ever again) when I feel overwhelmed by stress. I'm the one valiant knight in the middle of forty opponents at a time, and every time I fight them off forty more appear. And the more than I have to fight, the less able I am to cope - to buffet, to strike, to blow, to cut - effectively. The less able I am to maintain a fighting spirit.

Because that's really what we have to do when we cope, right? Whether it's anxiety, depression, the stress of 90 students, dealing with it all is a fight. Sometimes we're more equipped. Sometimes we even have squires or other knights who have our backs. But it's always a combat of one sort or another. I mean I'm glad, overall, that I'm combating argumentation papers instead of armored warriors, but sometimes I feel like those papers had better training than I in dealing serious blows.

I know I'll be victorious eventually, if not only because the semester has to end at some point. But until then, I'll continue to fight, even if I feel more like the Black Knight by the end.

All Kinds of Time: Impatience and Immobility

Last week, I was hit with several large stacks of papers to grade, so many in fact that I worked through last weekend and most evenings of the week. I didn't cope very well with the pressure. I found myself anxious, jumpy, and wanting to cry at the weirdest moments. I couldn't focus. I wondered if I needed to ask my doctor about pharmaceutical assistance. The thought that Oh god there just isn't enough time rendered me almost useless for more hours than I care to admit. Last week sucked.

But I don't think I have an attention disorder. When I have one or two things on my plate, I can get them done, no problem. But when my daily to-do list expands into a weekly to-do list, my desire to get everything done right now makes it hard for me to figure out what to do first.

Saturday, while relaxing for the first time in a week and a half, I admitted that I have a problem with patience. I see things that I want to happen and for some reason expect them to happen today or tomorrow, and when they don't, or when I can't predict when they'll happen, I get anxious. I start to wonder if they'll happen at all. And in my anxiety, I am unable to work toward those things that I can actually make happen. (See: my novel-in-progress, a short story that's done and just needs to be submitted somewhere, the short fiction papers I should be grading right now.) I was posed with the question "What is your ideal for right now?" and by worrying about the future so much, I had difficulty answering.

As I sat down this morning to tackle everything on my daily to-do list, I heard a song by early 2000s band Fountains of Wayne (and it wasn't "Stacy's Mom," though that song does certainly have its merits). The song, "All Kinds of Time," is about an ultra-slow-mo moment between when a ball is snapped to a quarterback and when he throws it into the outstretched arms of a teammate. In that moment of chaos around him, everything stops: he looks around, imagines his family watching him on television, is at peace, and just like that, everything falls into place and he feels like he owns the world. 

I'm not a football fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I couldn't help but listen to it again and realize that in those moments of chaos when I'm working myself into an anxious frenzy of When will this happen or How will I ever get this done, I forget to step back and take stock. I forget to see that what I do have isn't worth ignoring for what I might have, and I forget to see that there are enough hours in the day, I just need to use them better. 

Patience isn't an easy virtue for anyone to learn, but I want to try harder because I feel like I've missed out on so many "own the world" moments. I feel like I haven't been able to separate the crushingly intimidating Future Goals from the totally obtainable Present Goals, and because of it have immobilized myself to opportunities. And mostly, I want to be able to answer the question "What is your ideal for right now?" so that I can attempt to make it a reality. Or, even better, realize that in a lot of ways, it already is my reality. 

Thoughts on the Word "Busy"

Last week, I decided I would try to eliminate the word "busy" from my vocabulary. This was spurred not only by my utter exhaustion of using the word (as repetition is the seed of boredom), but also because it's been the subject of several articles in my newsfeed the last few weeks. 

Laura Vanderkam of Fast Company challenges the notion that being busy equals being powerful, suggesting that "[a]nyone can be busy. It’s easy to fill your time if that’s your only goal. In our hectic world, the ultimate sign of success is empty space on your calendar." Carmel Lobello of The Week takes that idea a step farther, suggesting that "talking about how slammed you are can actually damage your ability to connect and interact with people." Finally, Meredith Fineman of the Harvard Business Review blog drove the last nails into the coffin of the B Word, in my mind, with this:

In addition to having entire conversations about how busy we are, we fail to share feelings with friends and family, ask about important matters, and realize that the “busy” is something that can be put on hold for a little while.

The last thing I want my job to do is keep me from having meaningful connections with people, and what's more, I think the more I tell people I'm busy the more I feel busy, and that leads to more stress and anxiety that I'm too busy. 

So I'm saying goodbye to the word "busy," and instead will explain that I am going to move my regular blog-posting day to Mondays instead of Fridays just because. 

Five Years Ago

Five years ago today, my friend Kristi and I set out from my parents' condo in Ohio with a packed 2001 Volkswagen Beetle. We were destined for Boston with a stopover in Niagara Falls, both on our own journeys: Kristi, to Canada and Boston for the first time; me, to a semester-long internship in Cambridge. 

I told everyone that this trip was an opportunity for me to get experience and make connections in the publishing world. I told them that I needed my own adventure before coming back and settling down. I told them this would be temporary. I told myself it would be temporary. But I lied. 

When I had left Michigan a few days earlier, I left that life: a husband, two dogs, and a person who I barely recognize now as me.

It wasn't a bad life. On the surface, I had a lot to envy. The economy was bad but we were doing okay, Tom having just started his emergency medicine residency and me working part-time at a bookstore. We had friends. We had a new house.

What I didn't have was a sense of self. I was just starting to figure out what I wanted to do after years of unsettled decisions: the recommendation letters my undergrad professors had written to apply to an MA program in literature went unsent, and the LSAT registration fee I paid, refunded. Twice. I had finally decided to continue my studies in creative writing, something that had always brought me joy. But instead of making me feel more settled as myself in the life I already had, it made me more anxious to get out. This internship was the perfect opportunity to see what it was like on my own, and if I didn't like it, I could always come back.

At first, Kristi and I had a great time being tourists. We wandered the crowded sites of Niagara, we rode the Maid of the Mist, and we sang embarrassingly loud songs as we drove on to Massachusetts. When we got to Newton, where I was renting a room for the semester, we unpacked my Beetle into the first place I would ever live completely on my own. We rode the commuter rail into Boston, ate at Fanueil Hall, and wandered the Public Garden. I TA'd my first course at school. We ate Indian food and drank Guinness in pubs. I knew the city was already affecting me in a way that would make moving back to the middle of nowhere, something my ex-husband and I had always agreed upon, nearly impossible.

When Kristi left a few days later, I came back from dropping her off at the airport and took a look around my rented room, a strange mixture of freedom and loss filling my chest. I started realizing what it meant to be me, totally alone. I was there less than two months before I admitted to myself, and then to my ex, that I wasn't going back.

The next few months were hard. I missed the stability, my friends, the dogs. I learned how to manage my own finances, something I'd never done before. I learned how to cook for one and eat at my desk every night. I learned what it really meant to be lonely. I learned how to live by myself. But I also learned how to live as myself.

On October 13, 2008, I wrote:

I hope I never regret any of the changes I make to my life. I hope that throughout it all, I can still look back and see that I became happier, or wiser, after it all. But it is the nature of change to blind you to all but hindsight. And I cannot say how any of it will turn out.

Me in 2008 would have never guessed that by this time, I'd be employed doing something that I love, that I'd have so many amazing friends in my life, or even that I'd be dating not one but multiple people who care about me. But I was right about having become happier and wiser. If I could time-travel, I'd have to try really hard not to tell past me what mistakes to avoid. But I would definitely tell her it would be all worth it to make them anyway.

All of the Above

There are a few things I'm positive I know about myself: I will never be five feet tall without shoes I refuse to wear because they're uncomfortable, I will always be right-handed despite that week in sixth grade I tried to switch, and I will never settle for either/or. In most areas of my life, I will choose letter D. All of the Above. And I've come to realize this is not a defect, but a feature.

A few months ago, I wrote an article for a local bi newsletter called "Now What?" The focus of the article was to talk about what I did once I realized I was bisexual, and to explain, I discussed my history of poor follow-through. I chalked up the year and a half it took me to realize I wasn't straight to thinking it was perhaps something else that was fleeting, like my half-finished short stories or half-eaten bags of frozen vegetables. 

I thought of my poor follow-through as me being unable to finish something, but now I don't think it's that at all. I think it's me being unable to resist starting something, because in reality, I want to do everything.


And just like my desire to do everything, which sometimes means I don't finish everything, I've always wanted to be everything. Growing up, I played softball, volleyball, the piano; I wrote, sang, drew, and painted. One of the hardest decisions of my childhood happened in seventh grade when they made me choose between visual arts, choir, and band. The answer to the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" changed from veterinarian to comedian to gym teacher to police officer to coffee shop owner to high school speech coach, then finally to writer. I didn't want to be one of those, I wanted to be all of them. I wanted to dabble.

But "dabbling" sounds so negative. It sounds like, "Hey you, why are you farting around? Pick something and go for it." But I don't want to pick something. Just like I don't want to pick one gender I'm attracted to, or one person to be with forever, I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing just one thing.

We spend so much time worrying about what we're going to be, which can be overwhelming for someone like me who doesn't want to choose. We think about the issues of stability versus variety, but in all honesty those things don't have to be mutually exclusive. I get asked all the time, "When are you going to get that full-time teaching position?" and I answer as expected: "Whenever I can publish a book. Whenever I have more experience. Whenever I start applying for one." When really, I want to say, "Maybe never. Maybe I don't want one."

I like being an adjunct professor: I can (mostly) pick and choose the classes I teach, how many I teach, and am flexible with the rest of my time. If I want to try and get a part-time job doing something else in addition, I can. If I want to save up money over the school year and do little-to-nothing for three months of the summer, I can. If I want to spend entire days switching back and forth between blogging, writing fiction, painting monsters, and grading, I can.

I used to feel insecure about how, as a person with writing degrees, I wasn't an expert at anything. But now I realize I can be knowledgeable in a little bit of everything, which, I think, makes me better equipped at teaching brand-new college students who might be a little lost themselves. It definitely gives me the power to say, "You don't know what you want to be when you grow up? Good! What do you want to be right now?"

There may be a time when I focus a bit more on one thing professionally, but I am almost positive I will never stop leaving the last few pages of my journals blank, hone in on one artistic pursuit, or resist opening that new box of cereal before the last one is finished. What I need to do right now, however, is stop listening to that pesky voice that keeps asking, "When are you going to be a professional something? When are you going to be more secure?"

"I'm a professional everything," I'll say to it, "I'm All of the Above. And there's nothing more secure in knowing what you are."