I work at a church, so it's normal to pray around the office. It's not even abnormal to be walking through the hallways and see someone laying hands on a coworker in the middle of a highly trafficked doorway. This time, however, they may have crossed the line.
It was a regular morning, and I had been drinking lots of coffee and water as I do to keep myself alert in the wee hours of work. I needed to use the restroom so I walked over, pushed on the door, and felt it hit something. I pushed again, and standing there right inside the entrance to the women's bathroom was a spontaneous prayer circle with women praying and crying. My mind instantly raced with thoughts about how I was going to proceed and if it was rude for me to interrupt and ask them to move over a little so I could get around.
Fortunately, one of them glanced up and saw me so she moved over just enough for me to squeeze by. But now what about the issue of the actual business that I went in there for? Do I wait? What am I supposed to do?
I realized there was another woman in the stall next to me, pondering the same quandary. We had a silent moment of solidarity when we both decided to go for it. After all, the prayer circle picked the location.
I don't recall what the women were praying about, but maybe the sound of rushing water was a metaphor for the power of God rushing into their lives. At least, that's the only explanation I can think of.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
on turning 30
On February 10, 2015, I turned 30. I have been anticipating this for quite some time, but I don't think you can fully prepare for what it does to you mentally. For weeks leading up to my birthday this year everyone asked me, "How are you feeling about turning 30?" and, "Are you ready to be in your 30s?" I would usually answer "nothing" or "I haven't really had much time to think about it." Then suddenly it's here and there's something that feels incredibly big about it.
Your 20-something friends tell you it's not that big of a deal and nothing has changed. Your 30-something friends welcome you to the club. And then you get inexplicably emotional over watching a clip from a Disney movie from your childhood. Not even a sad clip!
I did a good job with my 20's. I had dreams and made plans to fulfill those dreams. I moved across the country and across the world and back. I got a few jobs, and I got laid off from one of those jobs, but I figured it out. I got a bachelor's degree and a masters degree, I got married, and I adopted 2 cats. I saw more of the world in a year than most people see in their lifetimes. I took some risks and not all of them worked out, but some of them did.
My 30-something friends have told me that for the first time in their lives they feel like they're secure. They've got savings and steady jobs and marriage and kids. No more tumultuous breakups and living paycheck to paycheck. I am excited about this prospect, because I like stability. But I also feel the pressure to keep up the paths that most 30-somethings follow: buy a house in a quiet neighborhood, have kids, and find my career. It's not that I don't want these things, it's just that I feel like I have to get some stuff out of my system first.
When I moved to Amsterdam in 2009, I quit my job but still had a year before starting grad school. I took that year off to live abroad and travel. In my mind I would move back in a year, get my master's degree, and settle into my career. I had a year to have my last hurrah, then I'd get serious about my "responsible" life path. But that's not really how my life has worked. Most of the time my adventures have just fueled my desire to do and see even more.
Past experience has shown that if I "wait to get it out of my system" then I will never do it. Maybe instead of putting to rest the old and begrudgingly accepting the new, I can live a life where stability and adventure are not mutually exclusive. A life filled with new experiences doesn't have to end because I find a job I like or because I pass a milestone age.
So, here we go, 30's! Let's make it great, and could you turn that music down a little? Because I'm trying to have a nice quiet evening at home.
Your 20-something friends tell you it's not that big of a deal and nothing has changed. Your 30-something friends welcome you to the club. And then you get inexplicably emotional over watching a clip from a Disney movie from your childhood. Not even a sad clip!
I did a good job with my 20's. I had dreams and made plans to fulfill those dreams. I moved across the country and across the world and back. I got a few jobs, and I got laid off from one of those jobs, but I figured it out. I got a bachelor's degree and a masters degree, I got married, and I adopted 2 cats. I saw more of the world in a year than most people see in their lifetimes. I took some risks and not all of them worked out, but some of them did.
My 30-something friends have told me that for the first time in their lives they feel like they're secure. They've got savings and steady jobs and marriage and kids. No more tumultuous breakups and living paycheck to paycheck. I am excited about this prospect, because I like stability. But I also feel the pressure to keep up the paths that most 30-somethings follow: buy a house in a quiet neighborhood, have kids, and find my career. It's not that I don't want these things, it's just that I feel like I have to get some stuff out of my system first.
When I moved to Amsterdam in 2009, I quit my job but still had a year before starting grad school. I took that year off to live abroad and travel. In my mind I would move back in a year, get my master's degree, and settle into my career. I had a year to have my last hurrah, then I'd get serious about my "responsible" life path. But that's not really how my life has worked. Most of the time my adventures have just fueled my desire to do and see even more.
Past experience has shown that if I "wait to get it out of my system" then I will never do it. Maybe instead of putting to rest the old and begrudgingly accepting the new, I can live a life where stability and adventure are not mutually exclusive. A life filled with new experiences doesn't have to end because I find a job I like or because I pass a milestone age.
So, here we go, 30's! Let's make it great, and could you turn that music down a little? Because I'm trying to have a nice quiet evening at home.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
On Noticing
Lately when I sit down to write, the words aren't coming like they used to. I distract myself from writing by realizing I need to research our trip to Scandinavia/clean the house/pet the cats/check the bank account/stare mindlessly at the same 3 events that keep popping up on my Facebook timeline/etc.
There was a time in my life where stories flowed out of me, to the point where my college roommate made fun of me that my favorite line was, "Okay so, let me tell you what happened to me today..." I recently saw that former roommate, and she and her husband were telling me about this weird YouTube video of a bride singing herself down the aisle. When they opened it up to show it to me, they commented, "I'm surprised you weren't there for this. You seem to be there for all the crazy things that happen in the world."
As I get older and life gets more complicated, I notice less. The things I notice, I view mostly as ordinary. I came across this quote the other day:
--
Getting back into this writing thing feels like I'm starting to run again for the first time in awhile. I feel pretty good about the first run because it's easy, there isn't much pressure to perform, and I start out slow. Once I hit the second run, however, I start feeling like I should be better than this already because I used to be pretty good at it without much effort. New routes should be clear, and I shouldn't get winded after 5 minutes. Much to my disdain, my face turns red with out-of-breathness, and my heart feels like it's going to explode out of my chest. It's a little messy to witness.
As you witness the resurgence of my love for telling stories, please bear with me through this messy, hope-the-neighbor-didn't-see-me-walk-phase. It's hard to get into the routine, but much like exercise, overall I am a better person for it.
There was a time in my life where stories flowed out of me, to the point where my college roommate made fun of me that my favorite line was, "Okay so, let me tell you what happened to me today..." I recently saw that former roommate, and she and her husband were telling me about this weird YouTube video of a bride singing herself down the aisle. When they opened it up to show it to me, they commented, "I'm surprised you weren't there for this. You seem to be there for all the crazy things that happen in the world."
As I get older and life gets more complicated, I notice less. The things I notice, I view mostly as ordinary. I came across this quote the other day:
"Sometimes I think the people to feel the saddest for are people who are unable to connect with the profound--people such as my boring brother-in-law, a hearty type so concerned with normality and fitting in that he eliminates any possibility of uniqueness for himself and his own personality. I wonder if someday, when he is older, he will wake up and the deeper part of him will realize that he has never allowed himself to truly exist, and he will cry with regret and shame and grief.
And then sometimes I think the people to feel saddest for are people who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder--people who closed the doors that lead us into the secret world--or who had the doors closed for them by time and neglect and decisions made in times of weakness."-Douglas Coupland, Life After GodI don't want to be either of those people. I want to wonder and wrestle with things and notice.
--
Getting back into this writing thing feels like I'm starting to run again for the first time in awhile. I feel pretty good about the first run because it's easy, there isn't much pressure to perform, and I start out slow. Once I hit the second run, however, I start feeling like I should be better than this already because I used to be pretty good at it without much effort. New routes should be clear, and I shouldn't get winded after 5 minutes. Much to my disdain, my face turns red with out-of-breathness, and my heart feels like it's going to explode out of my chest. It's a little messy to witness.
As you witness the resurgence of my love for telling stories, please bear with me through this messy, hope-the-neighbor-didn't-see-me-walk-phase. It's hard to get into the routine, but much like exercise, overall I am a better person for it.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
January White
If nothing else, we're given a little time
To change the game, a chance to redefine
Everything we are,
In our January white. - Sleeping at Last
The last few months, TJ and I have talked a lot about goals. Where do we want to be, who do we want to be, and how do we want to get there. During our first year of marriage, most of our lives were functional. We figured out routines, how to share a budget, how to live together in a healthy way. Once the fall of 2014 hit, it felt like our routines had become just that: routine. We had our daily lives nailed down, but to what end? What were we working toward?
We had some lofty talks about who we want to be and how that's going to be accomplished. And then we had trips to take and obligations to uphold and the holidays and the freelance gigs, and our ideas suddenly fell by the wayside.
But January. January is this universally recognized cleansing month where we can change all of that. After the dust settles from the craziness of the holidays, we can take a deep breath and revisit those ideas of who we want to be and how we want to get there.
The theme of this year at our church is to "do less, better" and I've decided to take that on in my personal life as well. I want to be more intentional with my time. I want to stare less at my computer. I want to be healthy. I want to be generous. I want to write more.
So let's get going on that.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
how we accidentally adopted two cats
lately, our life has been disrupted by cats. don’t get me wrong--TJ and i vehemently love cats. we’ve always wanted one, but just didn’t feel like it was our time. we didn’t want the responsibility and we were gone so much anyway. we could love them, but we’d love them at a distance where they weren’t relying on us to eat.
then, we got this idea in our heads one night that we were ready. we discussed it for a few days, and made our decision. after much ado, we got the okay from our landlord. we got the food, litter, toys, and scratcher. we had everything except the cat.
we went to the san diego humane society and picked out the sweetest cat. her name was Harmony and she was very shy. she was a 2 year old, female, black cat (the least likely to get adopted!) and came from a neglect/abuse situation. she was stifled and often overlooked in an environment with numerous other cats around. we wanted the underdog, and we found her.
we took her home and let her loose in her new home, excited to show her how much we wanted her. she immediately ran and hid under the furniture. we gave her some space, but she only got more skittish as she knocked over some picture frames and books, and lost her footing on a shelf. she was so startled by all of this that we decided to leave for a few minutes while she took some time to get comfortable. we returned about 20 minutes later and she was nowhere to be found. she wasn’t in her spot under the futon. she wasn’t anywhere in the living room or kitchen. we saw paw prints on another chair, and figured she was just hiding somewhere else in the house. we searched closets, behind major appliances, under beds. nothing. we pulled out boxes, unloaded shelves, destroyed any sense of order in the house. this cat was nowhere to be found. i started panicking, then sobbing. we owned a cat for less than 20 minutes and then we lost her.
the only explanation we could come up with is that she had gotten out of the cracked window by the futon where the screen wasn’t fully secured. she would have had to do quite a maneuver, but she could have wriggled out the window, pushed open the screen, and jumped outside. she was so scared of us and her new situation, that she would never come back. she was going to die out there, and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.
the rest of the day was a fog. we walked around the neighborhood looking for her. we sat on the couch staring at that stupid cracked window. we cried and asked each other what we were going to do, then repeated the cycle. we did everything we could think of- left kibble all over the house and on the front porch, put out full cans of tuna and treats, and played with cat toys in open spaces hoping to lure her out of some fabled hiding spot we’d missed.
the next morning we woke up and checked the tuna we’d left out. nothing. we checked the litter box, the food, the water, the front porch- nothing. we decided that, while we were devastated, there was nothing we could do for her. behind the devastation of losing the cat was the ache was that we had cat accessories all over the house, but no cat.
so, we decided to get another cat.
we drove to the escondido campus of the humane society, unable to show our faces in the san diego location we had been at the day before. we picked a new feisty cat, a tiny little 2 year old orange tabby who had the same color hair as TJ. she had been picked up as a stray and was much more outgoing. we immediately renamed her from her shelter name (Amber) to Piper Cub, after the little yellow airplane she resembled.
we were much more prepared this time around- we let her roam in the guest room only, attempting to get her familiar with her surroundings before letting her loose. she explored and cuddled and jumped onto shelves. she had only been here for a few minutes, but this was where she belonged. i still thought about Harmony. i still cried at the thought of her fending for herself. but we had Piper now, and that was our new reality.
eventually we let Piper loose in the house. a few minutes after she started exploring, we heard another loud meow. it didn’t come from Piper, so TJ ran out to the alley where we thought Harmony would have jumped, but he found nothing. he came back inside feeling slightly defeated.
then we heard it again. it was coming from inside the house.
“the refrigerator!” i yelled to TJ. he pulled out the refrigerator and in a tiny enclave underneath, a little black head peeked out. even though we’d looked behind the refrigerator, Harmony had managed to wedge herself into a tiny space underneath the fridge where she was no longer able to remove herself. she had been back there for over 24 hours without making a sound until she sensed Piper.
we definitely only intended on getting one cat, but we like to think that it took getting Piper to help us save Harmony. we’ve slowly been introducing the cats to each other, and they are quickly becoming friends. Harmony still has a long way to go before she feels at home, but Piper has been helping to draw her out.
then, we got this idea in our heads one night that we were ready. we discussed it for a few days, and made our decision. after much ado, we got the okay from our landlord. we got the food, litter, toys, and scratcher. we had everything except the cat.
we went to the san diego humane society and picked out the sweetest cat. her name was Harmony and she was very shy. she was a 2 year old, female, black cat (the least likely to get adopted!) and came from a neglect/abuse situation. she was stifled and often overlooked in an environment with numerous other cats around. we wanted the underdog, and we found her.
we took her home and let her loose in her new home, excited to show her how much we wanted her. she immediately ran and hid under the furniture. we gave her some space, but she only got more skittish as she knocked over some picture frames and books, and lost her footing on a shelf. she was so startled by all of this that we decided to leave for a few minutes while she took some time to get comfortable. we returned about 20 minutes later and she was nowhere to be found. she wasn’t in her spot under the futon. she wasn’t anywhere in the living room or kitchen. we saw paw prints on another chair, and figured she was just hiding somewhere else in the house. we searched closets, behind major appliances, under beds. nothing. we pulled out boxes, unloaded shelves, destroyed any sense of order in the house. this cat was nowhere to be found. i started panicking, then sobbing. we owned a cat for less than 20 minutes and then we lost her.
the only explanation we could come up with is that she had gotten out of the cracked window by the futon where the screen wasn’t fully secured. she would have had to do quite a maneuver, but she could have wriggled out the window, pushed open the screen, and jumped outside. she was so scared of us and her new situation, that she would never come back. she was going to die out there, and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.
the rest of the day was a fog. we walked around the neighborhood looking for her. we sat on the couch staring at that stupid cracked window. we cried and asked each other what we were going to do, then repeated the cycle. we did everything we could think of- left kibble all over the house and on the front porch, put out full cans of tuna and treats, and played with cat toys in open spaces hoping to lure her out of some fabled hiding spot we’d missed.
the next morning we woke up and checked the tuna we’d left out. nothing. we checked the litter box, the food, the water, the front porch- nothing. we decided that, while we were devastated, there was nothing we could do for her. behind the devastation of losing the cat was the ache was that we had cat accessories all over the house, but no cat.
so, we decided to get another cat.
we drove to the escondido campus of the humane society, unable to show our faces in the san diego location we had been at the day before. we picked a new feisty cat, a tiny little 2 year old orange tabby who had the same color hair as TJ. she had been picked up as a stray and was much more outgoing. we immediately renamed her from her shelter name (Amber) to Piper Cub, after the little yellow airplane she resembled.
we were much more prepared this time around- we let her roam in the guest room only, attempting to get her familiar with her surroundings before letting her loose. she explored and cuddled and jumped onto shelves. she had only been here for a few minutes, but this was where she belonged. i still thought about Harmony. i still cried at the thought of her fending for herself. but we had Piper now, and that was our new reality.
eventually we let Piper loose in the house. a few minutes after she started exploring, we heard another loud meow. it didn’t come from Piper, so TJ ran out to the alley where we thought Harmony would have jumped, but he found nothing. he came back inside feeling slightly defeated.
then we heard it again. it was coming from inside the house.
“the refrigerator!” i yelled to TJ. he pulled out the refrigerator and in a tiny enclave underneath, a little black head peeked out. even though we’d looked behind the refrigerator, Harmony had managed to wedge herself into a tiny space underneath the fridge where she was no longer able to remove herself. she had been back there for over 24 hours without making a sound until she sensed Piper.
we definitely only intended on getting one cat, but we like to think that it took getting Piper to help us save Harmony. we’ve slowly been introducing the cats to each other, and they are quickly becoming friends. Harmony still has a long way to go before she feels at home, but Piper has been helping to draw her out.
it’s been a huge adjustment, but TJ and i have learned a lot through the process. more on that later.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Gigantic, Gigantic
At the risk of wearing out my welcome, I've come to you today after a 2 month hiatus to brag about my husband again. TJ recently had the opportunity to contribute electric guitar to a Pixies cover that was used in the latest Apple iPhone 5s commercial. While there is an actor in the commercial pretending to play it, it's actually TJ's recording from start to finish. His part starts at 28 seconds in the video embedded below.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Planes: Fire and Rescue
We all know that I love to gush about how incredible of a musician my husband TJ is. He has dedicated his life to music, and it shows in the quality and originality of his work. He is a mix of eccentric creative with a touch of engineering genius, which makes him skilled at understanding not only how to create something beautiful to listen to but something that also looks good on paper.
Being a musician professionally is not for the faint of heart. It involves doing way too much work that is often underpaid (or not paid at all). Even for someone as talented as TJ, it's just tough to catch a break.
Recently, however, TJ has had the opportunity to do some higher profile freelance work. He's played on some promos for NBC such as this one for The Voice and some demos for the new Madonna album. However, probably my favorite thing he's done recently is played guitar on the featured song in the upcoming Pixar movie Planes: Fire and Rescue.
While it's a small part that made it into the song, he spent a couple days coming up with various guitar options which were then reviewed by John Lasseter himself. Yes--the mastermind behind Toy Story reviewed TJ's work. Later it became the only original song that they kept in the movie, and then it became the featured song in the new trailer for the movie.
I am incredibly proud of TJ for his diligence in keeping at this music thing, even though it can be discouraging at times. If you'd like to check out the trailer, it's embedded below.
Trailer 1 - Courage - Planes: Fire & Rescue on Disney Video
Being a musician professionally is not for the faint of heart. It involves doing way too much work that is often underpaid (or not paid at all). Even for someone as talented as TJ, it's just tough to catch a break.
Recently, however, TJ has had the opportunity to do some higher profile freelance work. He's played on some promos for NBC such as this one for The Voice and some demos for the new Madonna album. However, probably my favorite thing he's done recently is played guitar on the featured song in the upcoming Pixar movie Planes: Fire and Rescue.
While it's a small part that made it into the song, he spent a couple days coming up with various guitar options which were then reviewed by John Lasseter himself. Yes--the mastermind behind Toy Story reviewed TJ's work. Later it became the only original song that they kept in the movie, and then it became the featured song in the new trailer for the movie.
I am incredibly proud of TJ for his diligence in keeping at this music thing, even though it can be discouraging at times. If you'd like to check out the trailer, it's embedded below.
Trailer 1 - Courage - Planes: Fire & Rescue on Disney Video
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