Waiting For That Rocket

I feel like there’s this whole new world out there.

Back in May, when I was debating applying for my current job and then debating taking it or not, my thought process went something like this: “Same money, better hours. Position bump. Cuts out some time on my L.L.Bean timeline. But I’d have to leave L.L.Bean. It would be my fifth year of service. And the centennial. And I’d have to leave L.L.Bean.”

For those of you who know me, you likely understand how heart-wrenching a decision that was for me. Few things are, or have ever been, as dear to my heart as L.L.Bean. As a consumer and as an employee.

As I walked out the door the morning of my last shift, I promised myself and my coworkers I’d be back. Not necessarily in the same role, but back I would be. Imagine my surprise when I recently said out loud, “I don’t know if I’ll go back.”

Maybe it’s just symptomatic of being in my twenties, but I’m loving the freedom I have at Horny Toad. Not just the freedom to not be confined to khakis and a white or green shirt, but the freedom to come up with new processes. To creatively problem solve. The freedom to fail and then come up with a way to fix it. Something that’s not in the manual.

Working for a 100-year old company is awesome. You know that, somewhere, an answer exists. In the digital age, it’s not hard to access that answer. However, that same thing is also what makes working for a 100-year old company somewhat stifling. At least for someone like me. Someone who has to know the why.

L.L.Bean gave me the basic and intermediate tools needed to do my job. They also developed me so that I want to do and know more. Horny Toad is giving me the space and flexibility to expand into advanced tools.

All of this isn’t to say that I won’t someday return to L.L.Bean. I will. I still plan on retiring there. But first I need to forge my own path. Figure out why something is done the way it is before I can figure out how to make it better. The ultimate moral of the story is I’m incredibly lucky. I’ve worked in some outstanding companies in my short career. These companies have, for the most part, already had It figured out though. With Horny Toad, I think the opportunity is here to make a real difference.

I’m psyched to see what the next few years bring.

Some of you would have seen tweets alluding to this, but here I expand on the thought: St. Lawrence University still feels like home.

It’s been almost 10 years to the day since the first time I remember coming to visit with my parents. I was a high school junior. I remember crossing through Crawford’s Notch in New Hampshire, leaving the head of the Saco River behind, and feeling like – with the river – I was also leaving behind everything I knew.

I’m going to pause here and point out how dumb that feeling was. My paternal family is from Plattsburgh, NY, a city we passed through on the way to Canton and a city we visited fairly regularly. My maternal family (at the time) rented a summer house on Lake George, also on the fringes of the Adirondacks. This (a) wasn’t a new route to me, (b) wasn’t a new region to me. But. I digress. Regardless, it was one of those pivotal moments in my development as an adult.

We stepped out of the car to a miserable, gray, drizzly, North Country, November day.

I was in love.

Everything about campus felt right. From the class I went to with the freshmen (sorry, Student Life Professionals, “First-Years”), the meal I ate in the “Pub” with my parents, and the soccer game I froze through in the new stadium. There were flaws (I’d learn about more later), but it was perfect for me.

SLU ended up being the only school I applied to the following year. I have never regretted that decision.

This was nailed home when I walked onto campus last night. It’s been two years since I’ve been here, and the last time was for the new president’s inauguration, so that was hardly a typical weekend, but still. Even without the alumni red carpet rolled out, this place is STILL home.

Although I had 18 years of life before I matriculated into SLU, I feel like my life didn’t begin until I had matriculated.

This place is so damn special.

Time is awfully sneaky.

I was driving to Bard this morning and it hit me: I have no idea what I’m going to write for this year’s #nanowrimo. This was immediately followed by the two part of the one-two punch: #nanowrimo starts next Tuesday. As in less than ten days away.

I remember last year at this time I was certain I’d never make 50,000 words. This year I know I can make 50,000 somewhat cohesive words, but am petrified that – after a strong start last year – I’ll never make it this year.

Oh the foibles of playing at being a writer!

In other news, a week and a half until #nanowrimo kicks off! I’m so excited!

So, some of you may not know this (chances are, you know me, so you probably do know this), but I have a bit of a book problem.

I’m addicted to books.

I can’t stop buying them, I can’t stop reading them.

Luckily, I have a lot of really smart people in my life who are more than willing to enable me in this addiction. Among them Josh (who I affectionately call my “dealer”) who works at a book store near me. Josh, bless his ever enabling heart, has a podcast with two delightful ladies, Jenn and Rebecca. Their podcast, Bookrageous, is dangerous in that, inevitably, by the end of it I’ve messaged Josh fifteen times over about books that he, Rebecca or Jenn have mentioned throughout. However, it often gets me thinking at the same time.

This week’s episodes centered on “Subversive Books”, books that turn on end how you previously thought of the world. Hearing these guys talking about their books made me wonder what books might fall on my list.

Books like The Giver, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and The Odyssey certainly gave me a much broader understanding of the world than I had before. But I was thinking, what books might have had the same effect on me since I was in school?

I couldn’t think of any.

Which made me wonder what the hell I’d been reading for the past five years. My answer was a WHOLE lot of Young Adult fiction. So how has that affected me? Other than being a whole lot of fun to escape into?

And it occurred to me, since starting to really read YA, I see so many more possibilities around me than ever before. I commented to my parents once that YA isn’t necessarily about creating a whole new world to live in, just about changing one or two things so that it’s different. It’s not necessarily just seeing faces in the brambles, but about seeing…more. I can’t think of any clearer way to say it than that.

I love YA for the power it has to stretch my imagination on a near daily basis.

As adults, we all get so tunnel visioned into our lives. We have to get to work, get home, go grocery shopping, sleep and do it all again. YA ensures that we never get too comfortable in our ruts.

I love that :)

Regardless, I can’t find the words to sum up all the reasons I love fall, but here’s a picture representation of a large reason why :)

Have you ever noticed that sometimes not being stressed about an event is as much, if not more, stressful than being actually stressed about an event?

We have a warehouse sale next week. Which is fine. Based on my experience with our previous sale, I was anticipating a heck of a lot of work, a heck of a lot of stress. The former is certainly there, but the latter is not.* Surprisingly, not being stressed is stressing me out more than actually stressing would.

It’s the most confounding of situations.

This all results in me feeling like an uber goober.

Seriously. Who gets stressed over not being stressed? Evidently this kid. What do you do in these situations?

*That is to say, the stress isn’t here YET. I fully acknowledge it may be there by week’s end…

It’s incredible how secure we can fool ourselves into thinking we feel. Last night after improv class, my friend K and I sat on our cars talking for an hour. We talked a little about this, a little about that and then a little more about this and that.

As we were talking, it occurred to me: I still don’t know what the root of my “shit” is. There are certainly significant events, some of which I’ve written about in this space, some of which I haven’t, which have me all turned around inside. And that’s…fine…I guess…But…

The feelings that do, and don’t, go through my deepest subconscious and conscious have GOT to be tied to something more than “just” a chemical imbalance.

Right?

I didn’t want to  buy into the whole “9/11 anniversary” thing. Or, as I recently called it, “That Day That Shall Not Be Named, But Was Kind Of A Big Deal.” The mainstream media, a grouping that I tend to be ambivalent about, made a HUGE deal out of it. Perhaps rightly. It was certainly a definitive moment in our nation’s, our world’s, history. The falling of the Twin Towers, the craters left in the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, were certainly a tangible representation of the tear that would happen in the world of international relations.

On the other hand, That Day That Shall Not Be Named, But Was Kind Of A Big Deal was, and continues to be, something that touches all of us in a way far deeper than any surface reflection can touch. We remember with horror film of the first, and then seeing live the second, plane flying into the towers. Those of you who were in New York or DC at the time may remember seeing both with your own eyes. None of these feelings have faded. We don’t need incessant coverage of the coverage to remind us of that day. Nor does it feel right to have a flashback to that day on the news, and then “well, it’s going to be a gorgeous day let’s check in with the weather.” Instead of being touching, the Mainstream Media’s coverage seemed to be taking advantage of a horrific time in order to boost ratings. Worse, there were times it felt like Sunday was nothing more than a patriotic penis contest, “Which network/football/baseball team is more patriotic; quick flash your stars and stripes.”

That Day That Shall Not Be Named, But Was Kind Of A Big Deal, more than the global implications, was SO personal. Nobody was unaffected by it, nobody IS unaffected by it. It should not be, it cannot be, monetized. Additionally, so many traumatic events have happened in the rest of the world before, and since, then. There is absolutely NO DOUBT this was a MAJOR event, again, with global implications. But this was not the only terrorist attack with major casualties. But to put things in perspective: since March, there have been more than 2,500 casualties in Syria. Not at the hands of “terrorists”, but at the hands of the Syrian government.

We, as Americans, can no longer afford to think of ourselves as the center of the world. That Day That Shall Not Be Named, But Was Kind Of A Big Deal brought us together (temporarily, at least) as a nation and as a world. We need to reclaim that feeling.