the good old days

“I wish there was some way of knowing you were in the good old days before you actually left them.” – Andy Bernard

“There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. I mean, isn’t that kind of the point?” – Pam Beesly Halpert

I join the ranks of many, retrospective as The Office drew to a close last night. And like everyone else, it was Andy’s wish and Pam’s thought – seize the day, value the time-in-life you’re in currently – that struck the most resonant chord for me.

Perhaps I flatter myself, but I like to think that if anything I’m obsessed with the fact that what I’m living now will be the time I miss when I am 40 (and have a 13 year old that hates me once a day). I ruin good times by dwelling on the fact that they will end soon.

But!

At least I know I’m in them. At least I recognize that, more than likely, I won’t be able to have quiet evenings for the rest of my life. I only have so many years of being young. Of being the loudest house on the block. Of having so much undecided in my life, literally anything could still happen to me.

There are so many good old days for me. My high school years, with a small group of good-hearted little nerds whose greatest weekend thrill was getting to state Science Olympiad. The summer after I graduated, with my first real job and one of the best bosses I’ve ever had. Mary Kate and the world she lived in, completely foreign to me but so fascinating. Traveling and being as on-my-own as I had ever been, halfway around the world with people barely older than me.

College, when I spent my first night alone in my room and cried myself to sleep out of homesickness but snapped out of it and had so many adventures. The summer after that, which has yet to be beaten as the best summer of my life. I knew when I was in it that I would probably never have another chance at utter selfishness. And it was fantastic and disgusting.

My first year back, working and living. I read so much because I had nothing else to do. And it was great. A year and a half of working next to Meg. Getting good at my job, and getting better at living my own life. Discovering pockets of great friends. Half-living at Caroline’s house. Dating her brother.

Moving into my first real house, buying things like air filters. Having so much fun last summer, seeing great shows and meeting strange people.

Halloween, New Year’s Eve and my fall/winter parties with John.

This past winter/spring, with Tom and the little yellow house. The hours of doing absolutely nothing because we could. Stir fry.

The terror of a job change, seasoned with the comfort of so many people being so very kind to me. Not the least of which was my father, giving me the opportunity to pursue something I always was interested in but was never really brave enough to try.

I took a walk around my neighborhood last night, right after the finale, and thought about all the things that would have happened if The Office would have been about my life instead of a fictional workplace. There is such beauty in the ordinary, like Pam said. I’m so grateful for all of my many good old days. And I can’t wait for more.

changes.

This is a Christmas I’ll always remember.

Mostly because of gray things: a week ago I found I would be losing my most consistent source of income after the first of the year, someone very close to me is going through a very rough patch, and other smaller fissures in our normally so smooth family life.

I’m actually doing fine, my job was cut because of surprisingly extreme budgets for 2013 and I have a job I can immediately go to. There’s a really big part of me, though, that is still falling down the rabbit hole like Alice in Wonderland. Every now and then I am able to process that there are some pretty tough things in my life, but most of the time I just feel numb, or in shock.

The reasons for why this may have happened have already all either cycled through my mind or have been recited to me by extremely kind people in my life. The positives, the opportunity in such a life change have also been noted. And they’re real, for sure. I liked my job a lot. I like what I was doing, I liked who I was doing it for, I liked where I was going. But for whatever reason it didn’t last, and I find myself in a very gray state of limbo.

I’ll be honest, this mostly is awful. The cons list way outweighs the pros right now. I know things will turn up, I know my opinion of this is apt to change and I know that countless happy lives have begun with “So I lost my job, see….” and end with a rich and fulfilling life.

I’m learning a lot about how important my job was to me. How important *having* a job is to me now. How egregious an employment gap, of any fashion or length, is to me.

Most of all, I’m learning how little control I have over this. I am applying to jobs like mad. I am working at what I can. I’m sucking up my pride and asking for help. I’m calling favors, from people to whom I swore I would never be a favor-asker.

And so begins 2013, my year of…well, who knows.

a year.

I recently turned 23. And we recently celebrated Thanksgiving, my favorite holidays. While I could write some disgustingly over-sharey thing about this past year and what I want for the next, I just have two lists to put up here on the internet that I want to represent me. At this time, for the future.

GRACIE’S 24th YEAR OF BEING.

When we were kids, we would always say “my seventh year” when we were six and so on…just one way of sticking it to the man. Originated, of course, by Joe.

• Saving $50/month
• Do something every month to maintain an important relationship
• Start memorizing one poem or literary passage every month
• Start playing my violin (or cello until I get mine back) every week
• Stop saying literally

PURE AMBITION, BUT ONLY A LITTLE SHAME IF I DON’T DO THIS

written in the flush of inspired emotion at a Birthday edition of The Finer Things Club, 11-19-2012.

And now for the second list, less sparkly but so much more important. Goals are great, and are what propel us forward and to greater versions of our Self. But it’s the things on this list, the people and details and conveniences and sources of inspiration, that make being a better person worth while and important.

THINGS I AM GRATEFUL FOR or THINGS I GET NERVOUS THINKING ABOUT LOSING or REASONS PEOPLE COULD HATE ME or THINGS I SHOULD TAKE BETTER CARE OF or THINGS I IN NO WAY DESERVE

you get it.

• Obviously, first and foremost, above everything, my family. Each one of them…this year has brought a lot of change for many of us and don’t judge me, but every year that passes reminds me (in a possibly sick way?) that our time all together and with everyone is finite. And as such, should be treasured above all things.
• Where I live. My house, my town, my region, my country, my planet…there are so many privileges that I was just born into. The level of community that I have is what most people dream of.
• Color. We could be living in a black and white world, I could be color blind, I could be living in Soviet-era Eastern Europe…but we don’t and I’m not and color is all over my life.
• My job. I have a job in an industry most believe to be dwindling, and in a capacity I couldn’t have thought to ask for. I work for someone who likes me and who I understand. I’m doing something that I know I’m good at.
• The group of friends that I spend most of my time with. I’m lucky enough to have people who will not only let me love them and be a part of their lives, but love me and actively participate in my life. There’s something about that, knowing that there are people who voluntarily care about you, that’s just warming. I think I’ll always look back on right now as a very loved time in my life.
• Younger siblings who feel comfortable telling me way too much about everything in their lives. It keeps me young. And worried.
• Storytelling. The fact that people, from as current as this week’s Modern Love to Les Miserables to the Odyssey, have recorded the most important facets of who we are as humans and we learn from them for generations. The faithfulness of Penelope inspires me just as it did people waiting out the Civil War. The common threads that make us all the same are molecular, I guess, and can probably be seen with a microscope. But I like better that we can feel and see this sameness in the stories we set down.
• New things. The fact that we discover our own lives, we aren’t just given them. The unknown is terrifying and comforting to me right now.
• Eating clean. I feel amazing. Beyond amazing. I feel clean and strong. And I even more so now than ever want to take a tour of my body.
• Routine. I never thought I’d say that.

things that make me feel like Don Draper and/or Joan Holloway

• Dialing someone’s extension with my middle finger
• Depositing checks
• Opening the mail
• Sorting the mail
• Anything mail related, really
• Making brave judgment calls on things like Christmas cards and meeting times
• Conference calls

open the door

You miss all the shots you don’t take. You’ll never know until you try. We regret the things we don’t do more than we regret the things we do.

I’ve always been a taster. It’s a horrible flaw, having to try things on for size before I can really say, oh no that was a horrible decision – I know this. Accept the wisdom, listen to the odds, see if the movie has more than 1.5 stars on Netflix before watching. That’s the advice I give other people, confidently and adamantly.

It’s also advice I’m trying to openly disregard this year. My Year of Living Dangerously. Instead of saying to myself, sure that would be fun but that’s ridiculous…instead of thinking, what a waste of time…instead of trying to come up with life goals that I don’t actually want…I’m taking this year-long experiment to live presently, and not analytically.

There is a little book that goes everywhere with me, it has a pretty blah Toulouse-Lautrec on the cover and is pretty unremarkable and disgustingly grimy on the outside. It’s a little larger than my hand, and was given to me by one of my soul idols in college. She is the one who really introduced me to Thoreau, to other pillars of American beauty and would always have the neatest pieces of wisdom to insert into conversation. She sent it to me in a letter once, and the empty book just sat around for a while before I started to use it to scribble down clips of brilliance that I would read or hear. Only things truly remarkable, and only things that I felt I had never heard before.

Rabbit trail.

Anyways, the book is now wrinkled and worn and more than half full of bits from sources varying from Galliano to Emerson to Tiger Woods to obscure magazine writers I’ve never read again. As I flipped through the pages the other day, I realized the vast majority of the thoughts that have stuck out to me over the past two years have been about chances, experiencing, jumping out of the plane, being honest with oneself, et cetera. Oddly enough, these past two years have been me trying to care about 401ks and master plans – two subjects about which I never hear people sling around regrets. Like, oh I wish I would have taken those years to just make sure that tiny 401k I had when I was 22 was in a good portfolio, and not just an okay one. Never heard that one.

What I have heard, what I do hear, is people wishing they would have crammed and stretched and filled their twenties with as many expansive and vivid things as possible. Things I won’t always be able to do.

Fear not, I’m not quitting my job and I’m not shaving my head and I’m definitely not getting married. But I am going to try to  stop overthinking, stop caring if everyone agrees with 100 percent of my choices (surprise, they never have/will) and submerge myself in whatever life throws/gives/offers/suggests to me.

Like that haggard old Mark Twain quote, plastered on coffee cups a-plenty:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines.

Sail away from the safe harbor.

Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore.

Dream.

Discover.

stay cool

If being a parent is like wearing your heart on the outside of your body, being an older sibling is like wearing your heart on the outside of your body underneath a thin sweater.

I have five younger brothers and three younger sisters. A lot, I know. Yes, we loved being in a big family. It’s warm, you always have someone in your corner and I have never had to go through anything major without an embarrassingly large entourage.

What I never expected, especially as a 14 year old who was humiliated by having my younger brothers come along to whatever I was doing (?!), was the ripping feeling that has accompanied each of my siblings coming into their own and moving into their young adult lives.

My brother Joe went to college while I was at school, and I wasn’t nearly as much of a spectator/participant as I would have liked (more so in retrospect). It was still strange to hear about his life away from all of us, interesting to think of him making decisions and moving places on his own. He was only two years younger than me, and I’ve honestly never thought of him as a younger brother so much as a peer.

Cam, my next brother, is four years younger than me. He is going off to college this weekend and because of our busy schedules, I’ve probably already seen him for the last time before the big move. It hasn’t sunk in yet that I won’t see him until either I go up to Chattanooga or he comes down for Thanksgiving or whatever. I won’t want to punch his face until sometime in November. We never did go to the drive-in this summer. I think we also talked about driving to the Grand Canyon. If I put lights on my house for Christmas he may not be here to help me.

Being a parent is rough. I don’t know from experience, but I trust that it is and I can surmise from observation. Being an older sibling, however, is a love that often has to be kept quiet and hidden, underneath that thin sweater. It doesn’t make any sense for an older sister to get cut up crying goodbye to a younger brother, but his mom will bawl her eyes out all she wants. I was holding back tears both times we said goodbye, but I think I chose a swift shoulder punch instead. Just as strong as my love for him is my need to be one of the coolest people he knows. Parents don’t have a reputation to keep.

It surprised me as I got older as I would get livid when things weren’t fair for my younger siblings, or when I could tell I was legitimately proud of their achievements. I started to make bigger life decisions, and for some reason I gradually cared what my siblings (especially the three brothers) thought. The boys started to grow up, to look like men and occasionally even act like men. They changed my tires, threatened to cuss out ex-boyfriends and told me what certain words mean. The concept of siblings has evolved from people we have to divide a box of popsicles between to favorably biased counselors who know us better than we know ourselves.

And that’s why this move is different. When George moves away a year from now, it will be just as bad. Cam is about to work for grades without all of us haranguing him, finagle college life and girlfriends without our un-asked-for input, keep roommates happy and learn what’s really important to himself, by himself. There are cell phones, texting and the stupid internet, I realize…but instead of us just observing his life, it will be his prerogative as to what we hear about and have the opportunity to weigh in on.

I know it’s silly, but I worry about him. I worry that he knows I worry about him. Then I realize, of course he knows I worry about him. Then I worry that he won’t feel like he can come to me if he ever really does get into big trouble. Which he can. I worry about me, what will I do without him. Who will give me the most honest opinions in the world. Who will tell me to be more materialistic.

Cam, I already miss you. I’m proud of the man you have become and the magnificent things you accidentally let on that you believe and feel. I love you.

Or whatever, man.

_____lessness

Summer brings out the gypsy soul in all of us. It sounds so harmless, so free and exciting.

Summer always makes me feel expansive, wider somehow. I feel more things. I feel them in a more vivid way. I remember things I never think about when the weather is cool.

I read through an old essay today, sequestered in a computer folder marked “personal” and it brought strange old feelings up to the surface. It resonated, still, which surprised me. Have I really not changed that much in two years? Has it really been two years? Do I sound the same?

Summer always makes me think about regrets. I don’t really know why. What are the things I wish I wouldn’t have done, I would have done, I would do, I wouldn’t do. What is staring me in the face, what do I need to recalibrate.

I’ve never understood why people wanted to be gypsies. They live in wagons. They don’t take showers. Their hair is dirty, and they steal. Who would want that life? But indeed, we all do.

I look back on beautiful summers, nights under the stars and days buried beneath sand, and sometimes I only see the discontent it gives me now. Will I ever be happy, as an adult, knowing what I’m missing out?

We all want to be gypsies because they’re free, they’re beautiful, and because they tell fortunes. They have charming, terrifying wagons filled with delicious soup and, I presume, skulls from various humans and creatures. I think we tell ourselves that the gypsies are the only ones who have it figured out, living a sustainable life and all that. Wearing scarves.

I tell myself that I was happiest when I was surviving on coffee and the occasional cigarette, wearing the same blue tshirt and jean cutoffs night after night and sleeping with my contacts in.

But as I re-read that essay, happiness is not the primary emotion that rolls over me. Awakeness, maybe, or intensity. Upon second examination of those memories, I remember that elephant-on-chest feeling of not knowing what was going to happen to me after college and knowing that I could only go for so long before I had to start washing my hair regularly and/or sleeping at least a little.

I guess the summer makes me twinge because I remember the gypsy feelings, and also remember that I don’t want them anymore. But I’m glad I had them.