Waiting For That Rocket

Newsflash: I love tattoos. Not just on other people (although comparing ink and stories is a favorite past time of mine), but getting them on me.

I have three small ones and one (VERY) large one that I’m not quite done with. They all, as you might imagine when talking about ink that I’ve had injected into my dermis by a gajillion pin pricks over the course of nine hours, have a lot of meaning to me. To sum up my smaller pieces: I have a monument to my niece, a reminder to fail big, a representation of my astrological sign (look up characteristics of Aquarius – it’s astonishing how much of an Aquarius I am). My larger piece is more multi-layered. The base was inspired by a piece of Bahraini street art, the book (for obvious reasons) and all nestled in a version of Yggdrasil (Norse tree of knowledge).

I wanted to throw this background out there because I’m thinking about getting a new tattoo. Obviously pain is no object, nor is fear of the stigma of tattoos. My hold up has more to do with location. My plan is to get “Live” tattooed on the web between my thumb and forefinger. While it’s innocuous enough, and discrete enough, to not be an issue when it comes to work, I’m worried about the grandparents. While (for most people born after WWII) the idea of tattoos being for criminals and military men, my grandparents still VERY strongly believe that outdated view. I’ve been able to (I believe successfully) hide my tattoos from them for the four years since I started getting them. A tattoo on my hand would be difficult to continue hiding.

However. As I’ve written about and alluded to here and in person, “live” is something I have had occasion to question. I want the reminder. Sometimes I need the reminder. I just need to figure out how to navigate the grandparents next time I see them.

Last night I went out to dinner with one of my oldest and bestest friends. She’s stuck by me since freshman year of high school, and let me say: adolescence? Not a high point in my life. Since I started to become aware of myself emotionally, she has been there for me. Last night was absolutely no different.

As you may have picked up from my previous post, this month has been absolutely brutal for me. I’ll admit it here before God and the internets: the week following Brian’s death was easily in the top three worst weeks of my life.

I talked this over fairly extensively with my friend last night. The first time I’d talked about it with anybody. She did her best to get to the root of my discontent (understatement of the year? maybe). After much psychoanalyzing, her conclusion: I’m chemically broken. Well. Yes. But maybe more chemically broken than I had known or thought about (or wanted to think about).

I’ve been off my meds for about a year. Let’s be honest with each other – since we’re among friends – when I say “meds” I’m talking the lowest-grade-one-step-up-from-a-placebo meds. There was a difference when I was on them, but having been off them for a year and making some changes in my life, the differences were not so significant. My friend is lobbying pretty hard for me to see someone, to go back on meds, to fix the parts that are broken. I don’t know if I want to. I’ve heard too many stories about anti-depressants emotionally flatlining people. I’m worried that instead of not feeling sad, I’m not going to feel anything.

Part of my problem right now is that I’m not…unhappy with my current lot in life. There are undoubtedly things that get to me. Things that bring me from my standard 7 down to a -10. However, 90% of the time I’d put me at a 6 or 7. I don’t want to risk losing that. I don’t want to be at a constant 5. However, my friend brought up a good point. I can always go back. Especially if I’m not UNhappy with how my life is, I’ll always have how I’m feeling right now.

My life is a constant stream of #firstworldproblems. A good job, for a good company, Benefits, incredible family, friends and so many amenities that place me in the global 1%. My computer is on its last legs (but I have a computer), my car is twenty years old (but I have a car), I am drowning in student loans (but I have a college degree). If I’m going to be depressed. If, as my friend said, my brain is going to be broken, at least this is my median.

I don’t know if I’ll change anything, do anything, pursue anything. But I’m entertaining the idea. When it comes down to it, K is right. I’ll always have this. And this? This isn’t the worst situation I could be in.

This week has been a pretty rough one.

A friend of mine from college committed suicide last week.

I can’t say where he was mentally (or physically for that matter) as our friendship, like many, waned after I graduated. However he was certainly a part of my life for three years at college. He had this giant grin which I can’t get out of my head.

Hanson and Steph

He was a giant goofball – always knowing what to do to make you laugh. Even when photo-bombing group pictures.

Hanson photo-bomb

I’m (mostly) sure that in the not so distant future I’ll write about the emotional effect Brian’s death has had on me. But for now, this is about him. I hope that wherever his spirit may be hanging out that he realizes; though we may never have been “good” “close” friends, he was a consistent bright spot in my life when I was in college.

I hope he’s found relief.

Brian, you are loved.

I’m not going to lie. The past couple weeks have been tough for me.

There have been tears, somewhat therapeutic drinking, and highly amplified frustration and anxiety.

From the previous posts, you’ll see that I just ran my first physical inventory. There were lots of aspects that went well with it. There were just as many aspects that could have gone better. Then there was the moment, after we uploaded our results, that I got the “this is wrong. Why’s it wrong.” This led to four more days of being buried in (literally) dozens of Excel spreadsheets that are almost imperceptibly different. My eyes were crossing, my temper fraying, and just about every little step and and setback seemed to take on monumental proportion.

I…I just didn’t know where to go or what to do.

I wrote an email to a friend I used to be exceptionally close to. We have fallen out of touch, but not so far that she’s not still a confidant. I haven’t really talked with her in close to a year. But still, my stream of consciousness flowed right into the Mail client and straight down to her phone. I ended the email with “Moral of the story: Excel makes me cry. As do a lot of things these days.”

I think that’s the big thing about depression and anxiety. From an insider’s point of view, it could be the most mundane things that flip the switch inside your brain. For me, the issue wasn’t that inventory was wrong. I knew, in advance, that there would be aspects that were wrong if only because it was the first time I’d run a PI. What really pushed me over to the deep end was that I couldn’t figure out how I had messed up. While doing that swan dive off the high board, every other thing has hit a nerve. My coworkers, my car, my baristas, my friends, my family.

My friend Black Girl in Maine wrote once, “Things started to feel so good that I forgot, I forgot that when I don’t actively know my limits and accept them that I push too hard, too fast, hell I become Superwoman and I have been on a Superwoman high for a while now.”

I’ve hated being reminded of how perilous my mental and emotional well-being are. I’ve been somewhat overwhelmed at being reminded of how incredible the people in my life are. I don’t regret the myriad decisions I’ve made over the past couple years. I just need to remember, when I’m trapped in the absolute darkest nook and cranny of my mind and heart, I am surrounded by love.

Today’s the day.

Today is physical inventory. It’s probably best that inventory has finally rolled around. I’ve been building it up and planning and doing so many little things to prep for it that my mind has gotten completely overwhelmed. I get this little ball of anxiety hanging out in my chest, slowly growing and overwhelming my lungs and brain in one fell swoop. I don’t know how inventory is going to go today. I suspect it’s going to go well? I’ve taken into account hiccups that have affected me at other times during other inventories. But, somehow, being in charge has completely changed my outlook on any issues that come up and magnified them to the nth degree. At least by 10pm tonight PI will be over, nothing left to do but compile and streamline the data. Here’s hoping it goes smoothly.

Moral of the story: if you don’t hear from me throughout the day, don’t worry about it. I’m just freaking out, possibly curled in the fetal position in a box of cashmoore fleece.

Tuesday is the day that I’ve been leading up to for the past month. Physical inventory.

Some of you who spend time on the interwebs probably have seen this hashtag or meme spreading like wildfire throughout the internet. For those of you who haven’t seen it, or don’t live on the internet, the idea behind #firstworldproblems is that when something happens in your life that is irritating, inconvenient, or just down right a PITA, but nothing major in the grand scheme of things, you follow it up with “#firstworldproblems” and it puts things back in perspective.

I have found myself using this tag more and more over the past year or so.  For me, I started using the hashtag in the spirit it was created:  a joke, something to laugh at, and something that does add a bit of perspective. As I find myself becoming more familiar with global events and situations, I use the tag predominantly as a reminder to myself: Yes, my computer’s hard drive crashed, but I’m not being shot at by my government. #firstworldproblems. Yes, I keep getting calls from various student loans companies, but I had the privilege of attending college. #firstworldproblems. I had to pay $30 to go to the doctor’s office the other day, but I have health insurance. #firstworldproblems.
The Occupy movement needs to have this hashtag impressed on their forehead. The majority of the Occupiers are not the 1%. They make, if they’re lucky, $30,000 a year. They have no insurance. They are put upon by employers and neighbors. There should absolutely be something done to equalize the gross disparity between the 1% and the 99%. Well. Just some perspective: if you have a job – ANY job, if you have a roof over your head, if fewer than 5 people live in your house/apartment, if you had a meal today, or were able to get a cup of clean water from the tap, you are part of the global 10%*. We Americans tend to have a very myopic view of the world. As in we don’t see it. Maybe that’s something that we can work on. Remembering that, despite the hardships that we face in our lives, we are still better off than the majority of the world’s population. Our problems are real problems, no doubt. But #firstworldproblems are just that: #firstworldproblems.

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!