from the horse's mouth, sort of

a little over a month ago, i was invited to be a part of a team that would travel to haiti to do a bit of volunteer work. to my sadness and frustration, i was not able to use my vacation days for this purpose. i don't want to talk about it, but i will say that if you know/hear of any great jobs, let me know.

though i wasn't able to travel to haiti, members of my family were. one of these was alisha, my cousin-in-law. upon returning, she wrote an email to all of those of us back here who were supporting the trip in thoughts and prayer, if not in physical presence. she added a story at the end of her email that i particularly appreciated, so here it is:

One afternoon our translator Enel took Aisha and me into town, and as we walked around we came upon a medium sized church vibrating with sound. As we approached, we saw that even though it was mid-day, the courtyard was filled with people. We made our way to the back of the church and saw that it too was full of people standing shoulder to shoulder, worshiping God and praying. But it was not only after the earthquake that Haiti hosted lovers of God. I'm told that during the month of December, the young people of the orphanage spent hours every night, on their own initiative, worshipping Christ and thanking him for his sacrifice. God allowed this earthquake, but not because Haiti lacks his lovers, anymore than Job's troubles were caused by his lack of love for God.

that's all. i just thought it was worth sharing. i made alisha's name above a link to her blog, so if you'd like to read more or contact her, have at it.

that was just a dream some of us had

i'm sorry if the title of this post is misleading. it maybe made something inside you jump at thoughts of an interesting dream, a telling hope, or an inspirational story. this is none of that. it's actually just an update about me. i haven't written one in a while, and, assuming that not everyone who reads this works in my office (though i'm very grateful to those who do), i thought that maybe someone might care about what's going on in my life, i know i do.

what does that have to do with the title? well, first, i have already used at least one variation of "update" and "things" and any other more appropriate title, in the titles of past updates. therefore, i was forced to come up with something a bit more creative. second, i'm going to california tomorrow morning, and, as that is the case, i started thinking about different songs that i like that talk about california. mostly, i just inserted "california" for "carolina" in "i'm going to carolina in my mind," but when i realized my mistake, i turned to joni mitchell. of course. i love her, if you didn't know that. her blue album, i would say, is one of my favorite albums ever. she has a song called "california" and in it, she sings:

sitting in a park in paris, france,
reading the news, and it sure looks bad.
they wont give peace a chance,
that was just a dream some of us had.
**disclaimer - that might not be a perfect quote because it came out of my head, and not off of lyricsaz.com.

now you see - i stole a line for my title.

okay, on to the real things. i'm going to use a bulleted list, because that's fun.

• i'm going to california tomorrow. actually, my flight leaves in less than 8 hours. it was a last minute sort of thing. my lovely aunt lori and uncle steve own a vineyard in northern california, and are commissioning my father and me to play some music there during a wine festival this saturday. my dad is staying all week and, i think, will be playing more music next saturday at my cousin's graduation party (yay for sara!!). i would have loved to stay, too, but couldn't take that much time off of work, and have a wedding in d.c. to attend on the following sunday. nevertheless, i am pretty ecstatic to be spending the weekend in wine country with my delightful family, even though i have to come back on monday.
• as of june 1st, all of my tenants will be out of my house. steven is already gone. he bought a house about 2 blocks up the street from me (yay steven!!) and katie and suzanne will be spending the summer in costa rica (yay katie and suzanne!!). june and july will bring sub-letters, dancers in town for the american dance festival. august will bring the return of katie and suzanne, and the permanent replacement for steven. she came to visit this week and, though it was a short visit, it was a lot of fun and i'm convinced that there will be many more good times to be had, come august.
• my foot is broken. i, perhaps, should have started with this one, since it's been the case for a while now. my foot had been hurting since, well i'm not really sure when. i'd like to say the late fall/early winter. i finally went to the doctor about a month ago, and they told me it was broken. that would explain all of the pain every time in engaged stilettos or the warrior pose. i have to wear a dumb boot now, and it's really becoming such a nuisance that i fear i may have forgotten about every other nuisance in my life. they all pale in comparison to this nuisance. ahg. i have given up the gym, even though i'm sure there's lots i could do, simply because i'm angry about being limited by a tiny, fractured bone in my foot. i can't wait tables, which has made me kind of poor - another nuisance, that really just adds to the annoyance of the primary nuisance.
• i'm thinking i will audition for american idol this summer. the cities/dates haven't been announced yet, but i would like to say that i tried.
• my job - bleh. i still feel generally un-valued (not even really undervalued, just un-valued) by the owners of the company, and then, sort of by default, by my direct management. it could be worse. i've taken on a very different sort of role (in addition to my other roles) in the textbook-publishing process that is proving to be fun. i get to work with art more - kind of managing the rendering, editing, organizing, naming, sending to freelancers. i'm not really sure whether it's actually fun, or i just think it is because it's different. only time will tell.
• alisha and i are making big plans for overseas travel. a long-termish (probably no more than a year, but who knows) combination of volunteer work and run-of-the-mill backpacking. why? i think that "why not?" is a more appropriate question. more to come on that.
• i've joined match.com. well, i actually joined in a couple of months ago. nothing has really come of it, and i'm pretty skeptical. i mostly did it out of romantic boredom (not sure if that can be a legitimate phrase, but let's run with it). it's kind of fun - getting emails and "winks" and then looking at profiles and deciding why it is, exactly, that there's no way. i've been on a couple of dates, and that's been good because the whole dating world still feels like another planet to me. mars, perhaps? i have more to say on the matter, but not here because that's weird. ask, if you'd like. it may or may not be weirder.
• steven bought a ukulele, so that's fun.
• i have every intention of taking a photoshop class this summer. we'll see.
• i absolutely love glee.
• i started posting twitpics of big rubberband ball that i have at my desk. i think they are great fun. they entertain me every time i post them and i know that other people look at them because there's a view counter on the twitpic site, but no one ever says anything about them. that makes it funnier because it creates or a sort of mystery for me about what people are making of my rubberband ball twitpics. if you haven't seen any of them, go here.

i guess that's it. i want to go to sleep now. thanks for reading this. maybe i'll write from california (she said, knowing full well that she would not...).

Jackson Pollock-brain

i learned something. i learned it last weekend. i think i may have already "known" it, but you know how it goes - some things you can't actually know until you're there. for instance, when i was in school, i "knew" that it would be hard to find a well-paying job with a humanities degree, but now i actually know it.

i learned last weekend that fears and assumptions, no matter how well-founded they might be, come up against a particular and unavoidable challenge when spoken out loud (or written). also, the longer the fdars and assumptions go unspoken, the more they are challenged when they are spoken. i think that's because the longer things live only in our heads, the more we distort them. they may have looked like a Dorothea Lange when they went in, but they come out looking like a Jackson Pollock.

that's why it's important that we not let things live only in our minds for too long. not that there's anything wrong with Jackson Pollock, it's just that clarity, at least for me, is an important something when it comes to how i view the world around me.

and if we're being candid, which we are, because i'm the only one here, i've realized even more, how important it is that i write here - it keeps things from living only in my head for too long. even if no one reads it, at least mostly-formed thoughts on paper are more easily judged than less-formed thoughts floating around in my head.

therefore, speak to people, write to people, or even speak or write to no one. it's all better than having a Jackson Pollock-brain.

people from that box

i like to think that i'm pretty good at figuring people out. i pride myself, mostly secretly because no one really likes people who pride themselves, in my ability to identify peoples motives, goals, and general tendencies, fairly early in the game. this type of intuition is very convenient to have, but, as i've been learning more and more, it is never, regardless of my incredible abilities of interpretation, a good thing to put people in a box before you actually know them.

(i do realize that this is taking on a sort of "don't judge a book by its cover, " children's story sort of theme, but apparently i need to go back and read some of those again.)

when i do this, this sick sort of people-filing, i'm really just hurting myself.

for instance, a lot of people get thrown into the "we'll never understand each other and so there's nothing to be gained from a relationship there" box. i don't really do it consciously - it just happens. how the person gets in the box is irrelevant. what does matter is that they get there, and usually stay there for far too long. it's problematic because i am indifferent to, or even avoid the people in this box - irritated by the hopelessness of the space between us. it's embarrassing to admit because, as i mentioned above, judgement is passed swiftly, and usually based on very little information.

over and over again, people from that box surprise me.

and of course they do.

why?

because no one belongs there.

[exasperated sigh.]

this is one of those self-bettering truths that i often wish weren't so. i wish that there were some people with whom a relationship would hold absolutely no potential growth for anyone. that'd make life easier. there would be no guilt or self-sabotage in avoiding them. however, that's not the case. everyone has something to offer - a perspective that is, though perhaps completely different and uninteresting, or even maddening, one that will challenge our own to be more fully claimed or altered - both good things.

plus, i heard on the radio that interacting with people who challenge you on a regular basis actually helps prevent dementia, so there you go.

but i'm not the only one

ahg.

ahg. ahg. ahg.

i want to talk about how the church is generally perceived by the thinkers of my generation and when i start to ponder it, ahg is the first and the second thing that comes to mind.

it's hard because i know that the church has within it many loving, open-minded, compassionate, and communicative people. why doesn't everyone else know that?

i have a theory. well, a theory that is made up of a bulleted list. i love bulleted lists.

• no one wants to talk about religion--it's pretty much understood that christians have some sort of handicap that prevents them from seeing that what they say they believe can't possibly be true. and so many christians live in this strange state of wanting badly to talk about our faith with people with whom we have any sort of relationship, but at the same time being paralyzed by a fear that we might, in the minds of those around us, join the crazy ranks. and there's little worse than joining the crazy ranks. we work hard for credibility and, whether it's fair or not, we risk losing it when we talk about Jesus.
• something worse than joining the crazy ranks is joining the crazy and assaulting ranks. "assaulting" isn't quite as fun a word as "crazy," but i can't figure out how else to describe the manner in which some past, present, and unfortunately future christians (individually, or as a church) try to communicate their faith. regardless of who i am, when i start to talk to someone about my faith, i'm continuing a conversation that that person has already been having with any other "religious" person/institution in their life. this is particularly difficult here in the south as these conversations have often been long and damaging - assaulting. it's almost like if i had an identical twin who murdered someone. i would spend my whole life trying to convince people that i was trustworthy and maybe never really succeed. i might just want to hide in my room, only speaking to people who already knew me - to whom i didn't have to explain myself. that's a very tempting option for christians - hide in the church where no one will challenge.
• this is kind of an extension of the previous point: because one of the biggest complaints that people have against christians is that they talk too much and listen too little, it becomes difficult to talk. but how will people know that we're different, if we don't talk? but how can we talk without making the same mistakes all over again? not without difficulty.

it's risky and difficult. we might say the wrong thing. people may not understand. they may say hurtful things. they don't mean to be hurtful. like i said: not without difficulty.

but it's worth it, right?

isn't it worth it? to let the world know that christians are really just people (regular ol' people) who follow Jesus, someone who, if you read about it, came to love, heal, teach, and to give us a chance at reconciliation. how we turned that into something crazy and assaulting is a mystery but hopefully we can make amends - convince people that we, though not perfect, are not our murdering twin.

now now now

once again, it's very late. i want to be asleep, but it's my final night of the five-blogs-in-five-days challenge, and i couldn't simply go to sleep with such an accomplishment at my fingertips. okay, it's not really that much of an accomplishment. some people blog every day. i'll try to blog more. i will. i will.

i'm not going to write much, mostly because i want to sleep.

what i want to say tonight is really something that i need to internalize, myself. people put a lot of pressure on themselves to make their lives look a certain way - have a certain career, certain body, certain partner, certain home, certain car - the list goes on and on. we all have an idea about what our lives could look like and should look like. take a second to envision that. it might not be specific, it might just be a state of mind, or even just a set of vague characteristics that will make you happy.

now that you have that in your head, you might either be excited, because you believe you're on your way, or depressed, because you just don't really see it happening, or know how to change that. it's the latter group that i often find myself in, and it's the latter group that i'd like to engage right now. so, all of you shiny, happy, on-your-way-to-the-top people can just stop reading right now. not really. that would hurt my feelings and you might become a bounce rate statistic for this blog.

now, second group, in my experience, those negative feelings often rest on me. i'm responsible for the direction of my life, and if i'm not making it happen, then it's my fault. this sort of self-loathing is how unhealthy complexes are born and perpetuated, and that just makes life difficult. i propose, for us, a slight shift in perspective. i've said this before - perspective is absolutely everything.

let us never be upset with ourselves for what our life looks like. that's silly and not constructive.

why?

well, because we, our present selves, really only have control over one thing - the absolute present. the only thing i can control at this very moment is what i write here, because that's what's going on right now. do you see? life is a vast series of very small and very large choices, and if we just focus on making the decision right in front of us a good decision, then we will be well on our way. this attitude may or may not change the course of our life. (that's a disclaimer - i'm not offering advice that will change your life circumstances, per se.) but, it will make the life we have a happier one.

for instance. let's say that i wanted a new job because the one i had was slowly crushing my soul. i could complain to everyone who would listen and be angry with myself for not having a better job, but that wouldn't help anything. it would only make me angry and think poorly of myself and i need to get along with myself because i have no choice but to be myself.

if i, instead, whenever tempted to have this bad attitude of exasperation and self-hatred, were to look online for a job, or work on my resume - that would be me, doing what i can do at that very second to make my life into something that i want it to be.

as i said at the beginning, this is a message to myself more than anything else: i can only do what i can do at any given time, let the rest fall as it will, because it will anyway, with or without a shred of my concern.

this is where, as a christian, i should have some sort of advantage. though i'm kind of unclear as to what God actually moves and changes in my every day life, trusting that things that i can't control will work out - looking for the good in everything, for the hand of God, is healthy. it, when done properly, allows me to focus only on what i can do in my tiny little sphere of influence, and if we all did that, all the time, our tiny spheres would make up one, giant, worry-free world.

katie and the south

i wrote a blog, a while back, entitled "katie vs. the south." it was about gender roles and sexism in the south - misogyny, to be more precise - as a woman, after all, i have no clearer view of discrimination than of the sort which is inflicted upon me. i was rather hung up on gender questions, as you can tell from the content of my blogs during that period.

this post, however, will be nothing like that. i would like to balance things here by discussing some positive observations that i have made during my time below the mason-dixon. i decided upon this topic today, as i drove from durham, north carolina, to johnson city, tennessee, through virginia. i've made the drive from here to there and back again several times and have never been through virginia - thank you, GPS. yes, i was in three states today - of america, that is. i will make no comment on how many states of mind i have visited since waking this morning :)

i was driving through beautiful mountains, windows down, hair dangerously flying in front of my face, singing along to wagon wheel by old crow medicine show. i began to realize that i really have come to have a very special place in my heart for the south.

it wont deny that it's been a long process, and there is still something inside of me that feels akin to shame when i make this confession. (i suppose it's that feeling that causes me to refer to it as a confession.) i think that when you're raised in the northeast, you are programmed to believe that all other areas of the country are inferior to your own. (except maybe the west coast because california and seattle seem pretty hip.) the south is no exception, and is actually, i would say, at the top of the unwritten list of regions to which the northeast is superior. i say the list is unwritten, but i'm sure you wouldn't have a problem getting one of us to write it out for you.

for these reasons, combined with the misogyny, country music, and artery-clogging food, i was somewhat slow to come around. i viewed my life in the south as a horizon-broadening sort of experience, but certainly not something that could in any way compare to living in the great northeast. the proud yankee in me is by no means dead, and i'll argue the outstanding merits of the region with anyone who will fight back, or even listen, but my attitude toward the south has gradually, certainly, and unexpectedly changed.

who could possibly hate the south while listening to wagon wheel? it's just not possible. even my proud clam-chowder-filled heart swells when the banjo starts to play and my mind relives even just a small fraction of the good things i have experienced here. i smile bigger than i usually ever do when i'm alone and i get all happy inside.

the landscapes around here give me this warm feeling. the landscapes look pretty much identical the ones i enjoyed growing up in new england, when they weren't under feet of snow, of course. and what i can't figure out is how looking at basically the same thing, only in two different places, can make me feel two, both delightful, but distinct feelings? it's strange, but it happens. i think that the drive between ashville and johnson city might just be the most beautiful on earth.

the culture is interesting. i believe that one of the reasons that we northeasterners feel so justified in believing that we're the greatest is that we have such history and culture all around us. the south certainly has no shortage of culture and, while i might not understand or appreciate all of it, i can definitely see the value in it, especially after spending a year in florida. (it was a great year, but trading the freedom trail for strip malls wasn't the best deal i ever made.)

the weather is generally pretty great. i wish there was more snow and snow plows, and maybe a little less humidity, but i can't complain when i get to wear t-shirts in march. maybe that's why the landscapes make me feel warm - because i'm actually feeling warm.

i already knocked the food, and i have a standing rule that, if i can help it, i try to avoid restaurants with "biscuit" in the name, but i will say that the southern culinary tradition of "casserole" and "salad" as words that can aptly be applied to just about anything on the table, is quite impressive. the word casserole used to make me cringe, but now it just makes me get ready to cringe because it could be delicious or disgusting, you just never know.

alright, i think that's all for now. i'm sorry, my dear southern friends, if this wasn't mushy enough for you. i'm getting there, bit by bit.

it doesn't help that i'm living in the triangle, which, as i am reminded every time i venture beyond it's perimeters, doesn't really count as the true south. i do love it, though - the pseudo-south is just great. i could write a-whole-nother post about that, but i fear it wouldn't be of interest to those of you who don't live there. it would kind of be like if i wrote a whole post about why the patriots are awesome. not great for, umm, wide readership.