Dana Gould is one of my favorite comedians.  He was on Marc Maron’s podcast a while ago, talking about the time he had an anxiety attack on stage.  He said, “Fortunately, I’m not that smart, so I could never outwit myself . . . in avoiding dealing with my shit . . . you know a lot of people who are too clever for their own good and they never hit the wall.”

I think about this all the time.  I am intuitive and incredibly stubborn, which means that I rarely believe anyone’s lies except my own.  Especially when I’m feeling anxious or sad, my mind just spins and spins, trying to calm down and see things clearly.  My perspective is too limited to do much more than glimpse reality, so I tell myself all kinds of things.  Whatever I need to hear.

I spend a lot of time talking myself out of feeling the way I do.   I don’t know where the line is between dealing with your problems constructively and completely undermining them by denying that they are really problems.  I’d like to think my self-talk is constructive, but I fear that more often it is dismissive.

Writing fiction taught me something about this.  I was writing this story, and I found myself constantly trying to downplay the drama, because I have trouble with conflict.  At a certain point, I realized my character was not clever enough to see the wall, and the story could not move forward until she hit it.

Some people are very good at saying a lot without ever really saying anything at all.  They make smart observations about other people and don’t realize they’re talking about themselves.  A personal blog can be a place where you confront yourself or it can be a place where you say so much that you make yourself feel like you’re doing the work you’re really avoiding.

I’m good at being introspective.  I’m good at writing about my feelings.  I am less good at talking about them.  I only turn to other people after I’ve thought myself into a circle that I can’t get out of and then I’m like, “Here’s how I feel and here are the seven ways I justify feeling the way I do.”  This is how I make you realize I’ve thought about this more than you can imagine, so you’ll probably have nothing to add.  I’m hoping you’ll just pat me on the head and admire how self-aware I am.

I’m not out to fool anyone but myself and I am not even aware I’m doing that until a friend gives me that look that says, “Slow down, crazy.”  I don’t need any brilliant insight that cuts straight to the heart of it all and points to what I’ve been missing.  I just need that look that implies that there’s no reason I should be doing back flips to justify feeling the way I do. You can’t always avoid the walls.

I started this post months ago, but something I read in The Marriage Plot pushed me to finish it.  It took me years and years to get here, but I have finally reached a point in my effort to get rid of everything I own where I don’t have that much left.  Way into year four, I was still finding bags worth of stuff to give away all the time, but finally in the last year, that has changed.

So I turned my attention to the clear, but difficult obstacles that remained: CDs, DVDs, and books.  I danced around.  I considered my approach.  I thought some more. I decided I’d made enough progress for a while.  I did some more thinking.  Then some research.  Finally I was ready to face what remained.

Well, not books.  I’m still putting that off.  But I got rid of all of my CDs.  I had a few doubts as I began pulling them out of the binders where they had been sitting in alphabetical order and completely untouched for at least three years, especially when I came across my favorites.  Yeah, I got rid of my David Gray CDs.  I sent them all to a place in California where they could live on a farm.  I mean, be recycled.  You may one day enjoy the remnants of one of my most beloved albums in whatever they make out of recycled CDs.

I am keeping most of the movies I have on DVD since I do not have digital copies of them, but those I didn’t love and never watched I also sent to be recycled.

Then weeks passed as I considered what to do with my collection of TV shows on DVD.  First I feel like I should confess that I was storing them in one of my kitchen cabinets, because I am more interested in television than cooking.  I did nothing for a while, because I was hesitant to part with my collection and unlike everything else, I was not quite willing to just give it away.  I wanted to sell the set I had, but that seemed like a lot of work.  Finally I settled for trading them all in at once on Amazon (for which I received quite a bit of credit, most of which I spent buying books, but we’re not talking about the books today).

There were a few items I thought might find new homes with friends.  This led to a number of conversations where it became necessary for me to state that my decision to give things away was not a warning sign at all, but a perfectly healthy move toward minimalism. I might have creeped a few people out, but I think I finally convinced them I am of sane mind.

Getting rid of the uncomfortable sweater you have never worn doesn’t feel like a statement the way that getting rid of your Arrested Development DVDs does.  There has never been an ultimate goal to all of this that is any more specific than just living with less, but I do feel an impulse to be less attached to a place (that holds all my stuff) and sometimes it feels like I’m preparing for something that could be as practical as a big trip or far more existential.  Related: I just read and watched Into the Wild.

Previously: Minimalism (Wow, The Grapes of Wrath Really Did a Number On My Head), My Complete Lack of Style, Fancy New Person Syndrome, and More on Minimalism, and On My Continued Effort To Get Rid of Everything I Own.

There’s an episode of How I Met Your Mother where it comes out that Marshall has dancer’s hip, and you think maybe he hurt himself playing basketball or something, but it turns out that he really does dance.  Like, a lot.  Whenever he’s happy or receives good news.

I share that secret, even while insisting that I don’t dance.  And I recently injured myself.  Okay, so not while dancing, but it is sure cramping my style. Not that I have a style other than bad.  There’s a reason the dancing is secret.

I hurt my foot a couple weeks ago, and then just as that minor injury was starting to heal, I started getting sharp pains up near my toes, and this afternoon when I was limping to my car, I heard this snapping/crunching sound and now it hurts much worse and a bruise has formed.

This injury is throwing the half marathon training into great concern, and making my job very difficult.  Plus it takes me forever to get anywhere, and I look like an old lady limping around, and I keep making these terrible wincing sounds when the sharp pain hits.  Add to which, whenever I feel the least bit limited, I become very aware that I live in a giant state by myself and suddenly I don’t feel so kiss ass and independent.

For whatever reason, none of that really bothers me.  What bothers me is that I can’t dance and I can’t go for long walks.    Call me Thoreau, but I get a lot out of standing up from my desk and disappearing outside with no particular destination.  It’s a habit I developed when I was at my most anxious, and it has stuck with me for the last couple years.  I like to roam around campus, listening to music (that still counts as communing with nature, right?).  Even when I’m at work, I will take any excuse to walk through the stacks.  Everything I really need is within walking distance of my apartment, so I have become used to walking everywhere and only using my car on the weekends (more nature points).

Right, so I can’t work out my feelings by dance-walking Troy Bolton style, which may result in me becoming a little angsty.  If I start wearing a bunch of eyeliner and talking about how no one understands me, you’ll know why.  And if you have any good thoughts to spare, my foot and I would appreciate some healing vibes.  Thank you kindly.

In the Summer, I found myself alarmed by my own inability to focus on any one thing for more than a few minutes.  I couldn’t even sit down and read for very long before I found myself checking my phone to be sure nothing interesting was happening on the internet.

It was like I was wholly uncomfortable with silence.

It was a mystery to me how I ever got anything done.  I actually had to use a program to block access to the internet on my computer and an alarm on my phone just to get myself to sit and read for a full hour.  You know when you know you’re being ridiculous, but you can’t do much about it?  It was like that.

Regardless of how I got myself to do it, concentrating felt good.  It was peaceful.  I felt productive.  World domination was within my grasp.

But I’d known for a long time that my problem with silence was not just about a lack of discipline.  You have to be pretty comfortable with yourself to be silent for long periods of time, because it’s like inviting all your very worst thoughts and doubts to a party without even balloons or alcohol for distractions.

Less deliberately than makes for an inspiring story, I kept working at concentrating for longer periods of time.  I was on a separate mission to ditch anxiety, and I found that also made quiet moments alone much easier.  I wasn’t always reaching for my phone, hitting refresh to keep from thinking about my own life, because I was already dealing with it.

Because change like this happens so slowly, I didn’t notice anything was different until it was December and I was reading for hours at a time with no care for what was happening on the internet.  And–SHOCK TO THE WORLD–without even listening to music.  That’s right, dead silence.  I guess I should say that with the small exception of philosophical texts that are so difficult that they require all of my attention, I haven’t read in silence since I received my first Walkman (approx. one million years ago).

Everyone knows that if you heard someone say they read something somewhere, then it must be true.  Well, years and years ago, a coworker told me that she read somewhere that multitasking is actually a myth.  You are really not accomplishing more by trying to do several things at once.  You’re just looking busy.

I held this knowledge in the back of my head while willfully ignoring it whenever I could, but sometimes I had to face reality.  When you have a 20-page paper to write, you can’t finish it by doing anything but sitting down and writing all five thousand words.  At a certain point, it doesn’t matter how neat your notes are or how many awesome articles you found, you have to do the really tedious work of concentrating for a good 10 hours.  No matter how hard I work to avoid it, there is a lot of value in that tedium.

So lately I have been working on doing just one thing at a time.  Aside from making me far more productive, it is also really peaceful.  (I tried to add music back into my practice of reading and found I enjoyed myself more in silence.)   Months ago I expressed concern that I don’t get lost in art anymore.  I always seem to hold myself back and hide behind a veil of distraction.  Somehow in dealing with anxiety and working on concentrating and becoming okay with silence, I think I found my way back into caring too much about fictional characters and crying at every movie.

What I’ve learned is that you actually can’t do all the things.  At least not at the same time.  Trust me, I tried for a really long time.  But you can do one thing, and since you’re only doing one thing, there is a much greater chance that you’ll actually finish it.  And having finished something, you will have the confidence to attempt a new thing, maybe something bigger and scarier.  And at the end of all of that: world domination.

This picture was taken in December. Those are unknowing googly eyes.

Currently reading: The Marriage Plot

Even though I love speaking critically about books and it is basically what I am trained to do, I can’t bring myself to write book reviews.  It’s one of the few areas where I’d rather have a conversation than spend time carefully putting my thoughts into words.  I don’t want to write about the book as a thing that exists on its own.  I want to write about it from my own perspective.

In this case, I want to write about my experience of a book that I am not even half completed.  Because reading it has been an experience.  Like when I read Just Kids, I find myself putting this book down because, I don’t know, it makes me feel restless.  I want to talk about it or just look up from the page to make some kind of face at someone who understands.   Maybe we would have one of those conversations that begins and ends with, “I know, right?”

The novel begins in an academic setting with characters who study English, philosophy, and religion.  Do you know that that is my life?  I’ve spent enough years in a little bubble where it seems normal to care as much about these subjects as I do, but at one point it was a crazy decision I made, and still it is strange for me to read in fiction about Derrida and Tillich.  That’s so specific that I am nervous just putting those names together, because I know a classmate working on a paper is going to do a search and find this post.

(To that person I say: Hello.  Yes, it is that girl who sat next to you in that one class. Sorry that you found a bunch of my feelings instead of anything helpful.  But your paper sounds interesting and I’d love to read it.)

I can’t say that I find any of the philosophical discussion in the book enlightening, but reading someone write about things that I know very well make me realize that I should be doing that.  I don’t know what it means to have a purely academic interest in anything.  To me, everything is personal.  But reading about the (again, really specific) things that I study, I keep thinking that I need to find new ways to share all the meaning I find shoving my face into books and writing research papers.

As a grad student in an age of overwhelming distraction, I always romanticize student life in earlier decades, but the minute one character had to stay in on a Friday waiting for a boy to call, I was pretty happy to be back in own decade. I am not yet willing to say I am a great fan of the main female character, but smart girls are sometimes written very strangely, as if being intelligent means never being stupid or lacking confidence, and she seems complex in a way that is real, whether I want to be her best friend or not.  I wish I’d understood that kind of complexity when I was younger.

I am so aware reading this book that I am not 22 anymore. Only now am I getting to the point where I can think back on my early twenties with anything more than relief that I somehow survived them to become a sane and happy person.  I keep thinking of how strange it would have been to read this book when I was the same age as the characters.  I don’t know whether it’s good or bad that it hadn’t yet been written.

I find myself somewhat critical of the writing, but I am still so engaged.  It doesn’t feel transcendent like Middlesex, which was so well done that it seemed to belong to a different world, but the experience of reading has been so much more fun.  I really want to know what happens, and that’s not always the way I feel reading serious literature.

Whether in the end I decide that The Marriage Plot is a good book or not is second to the fact that it matters to me and I am having an experience (worthy of italics) just reading it.

Every January I tell the same story.  I was taking a required religion class when theology entered and then immediately took over my life.  I think it’s fair to say it swept me off my feet and then dropped me on the ground.  If you have never taken an opportunity to question everything you know, you should totally do that sometime!

Fair warning: things will get personal right away.

I am forever grateful that I didn’t have to go through it alone.  Like that really great friend who doesn’t make you feel better, except in the way he seems to totally understand what you’re going through, David Gray was there for me.  By some coincidence, I discovered his music at the exact same time seven years ago that theology found me.  I can’t say which one has been more important.

Theology did not strip my worldview of mystery, but it did of superstition.  I no longer look for secret meanings in things or assume that they happened for a reason.  I don’t wonder why certain people have entered my life. I’m just happy they’re here and for some reason like me enough to hang around.  I like the freedom I have in creating my own future.

But I also like knowing that for all my planning and good intentions, things I never predicted will come out of nowhere and make themselves undeniable in my life.  They might even happen all at once with no care to space themselves out or give a girl time to process what’s happening.

So, as to the future: I have no idea.  January always reminds me of that.

Those of us at WBWV (We Blog, We Vlog) use Penguin Awareness Day as a chance to vlog about an arduous journey we will be undertaking in the year to come.  In preparation for my vlog this year, I watched my video from last year. 2011 was not at all what I expected, but I spoke in vague enough terms that it almost sounded like I had some idea of what was coming.

A year ago, I was finishing coursework for my PhD and working two jobs (for a total of 55 hours a week).  I had just come to the end of a 14-month journey of getting myself out of credit card debt, and after working like a crazy person for all of that time, I was ready to slow down.

As difficult as it was to get myself out of debt.  As little sleep as I got.  And as many sacrifices as I had to make.  I loved that time.  I rocked those 15-hour work days.  I continued to do really well in school.  I even managed to do my hair every day and maintain two blogs.  I just kept getting better and better at doing more and more.  I was kind of amazed at myself and I didn’t mind the way it impressed other people.

I’m a perfectionist with an impostor complex, so I can’t even call myself a workaholic without thinking, “Well, someone sure thinks highly of herself!”  But the facts are that I’ve done really well in school since sixth grade, and at 28 have never not been a student working toward a degree. I have had a job since I was legally permitted to and have always worked way more than any of my friends.  The longest amount of time I have been unemployed in the last 11 years was a month in the Summer of 2008, and while I was searching for a job that July, I finished a 90,000 word novel.  In the last six years, I have almost always worked more than one job, and for the last three years that has meant working more than full time while being a full time grad student.

I don’t resent or regret any of this hard work, because it was all self-motivated.  It’s just that I was very aware that my self-worth was completely wrapped up in proving how hard I could work and if anyone so much as vaguely suggested that I wasn’t working as hard as I could be, it made me defensive and I would react by working harder.

There were some side effects (anxiety), but I was almost alarmed at how easy it seemed to just keep going a million miles an hour.  I decided to slow down less because I needed to and more because I worried that if I didn’t jump off the speeding train now, then I never would.  I said in my video that 2011 would be about learning how to do less even if doing more would sound great and look awesome on my CV.

So I got off the train.  Not all that gracefully.  I held on too long looking for the perfect place to land and then when I finally did let go, I hit the ground and kept rolling.  The challenge was not in doing less, but in doing less without losing myself.  I was nervous about all the time I’d have to spend with myself if I stripped away so many of the distractions.  I was worried that when I finally had the time to do the things I wanted to do, I’d fall apart under the weight of my own expectations.  I felt like the best version of myself, and I was scared that slowing down would me sliding backwards.

I know from experience that these concerns were all valid.  I think what saved me this time was that I’d worked so hard in 2010 to get out of debt that I no longer had anything to prove, to myself or anyone else.  I was satisfied knowing that I could continue to work that hard, but I didn’t have to anymore.  I felt free of my own ridiculously high expectations.  I was ready for something different.

Of course when I ran into a super ambitious classmate of mine and she said it takes everyone at least a semester to adjust to being done with coursework, I thought to myself, “Well, I can beat that.”  But when it turned out I was exactly like everyone else, I didn’t take it badly.  I’m in good company.

With this new level of self-assuredness, I will say that I think maybe I got awesomer this year.  I know I got happier.  It’s probably all the sleep I have time for now.  And I really don’t miss people looking at me like I’m crazy when I tell them all the things I’m doing, though I did get a lot of joy out of that.

I have this very simple narrative in my mind about how one accomplishes goals.  You make up your mind to do it, then you start, then you kick some ass, then you high five everyone, and then you carry on feeling pretty damn good about yourself.

Well, I’m a fairly ambitious person and also madly goal-obsessed, and in my experience it’s more like decide what you want to do, then get overwhelmed with what to do next, then try and find that things are difficult, then don’t give up but maybe flounder for a while, then question whether you are making any progress at all, then the slow fade, and then discover months later that you kind of did end up doing what you meant to but there were no high fives and you missed the moment when you were supposed to feel awesome about yourself.

Despite the evidence, I insist that I can change my life in an instant.  It seems that I can actually change my life, but it happens on a schedule that does not work for a crazy impatient person like me.  This is especially true when it comes to feelings.  I had some experience last year with bitterness, jealousy, and self-doubt.  I could feel them eating away at me and so I got very good at talking myself out of them, but when I woke up in the morning, they were there in my stomach filling me with dread.

I know I’m never going to have the patience to approach change with any kind of perspective like, “Hey, this may take a while.”  And that’s probably for the best.  I think running at things full speed, ready to put in all the hard work, only to get tangled and grow uncertain in all the messy details, is more effective than playing it cool.  I admire my own irrational optimism.

Because I do change.  I have let go of bitterness and crippling self-doubt, and maybe I would have reached this same destination with time alone, but I doubt it.  There is still power in trying really hard.  So often it looks like failure, but then I realize weeks and months later that success just didn’t look the way I imagined it.

The simple narrative is the one that motivates me to jump out of bed in the morning, but I am developing an appreciation for the slow but meaningful reality of change.  I just wouldn’t mind if it hurried up.

I find it really difficult to write while irritated.  The words jump around in my head and none of them are quite right, and I don’t have the patience that writing demands.

People keep making noise and asking me questions.  My coworker is humming.  My brain feels mushy and I think my heart is beating faster than normal.

It’s stupid that I’m irritated anyway. There’s no reason.  I’m just annoying myself and being unfair to others.  But I can’t get back to my normal calm right now, so I’ll stop fighting myself, and give into the pettiness.

It really is unreasonable that anyone should make noise typing.  And why are people talking?  This is a library.  Do I really still have two more hours here?  Could anyone blame me for shaving my head so that I don’t have to deal with this one piece of hair that keeps getting in my face?  Stop coughing!  Why doesn’t anyone else seem to notice that this is the most annoying night in history?

I will laugh at myself very soon for being so ridiculous.  I could fake it in writing right now, and you would never know that I just glared at someone like this and then I tried to take a deep breath and it got stuck in my throat.

Happiness is easy to celebrate and sadness is interesting to articulate, but what about irrational annoyance at everything and nothing?  It gets no love!  Tonight, I take a stand against that.

Okay, I think I’m ready to laugh now.

Last year, We Blog, We Vlog celebrated Penguin Awareness Day by vlogging about a journey we would be undertaking in 2011.  Well, we’re going to do that again.  And we want you to participate!

Here’s How:
1. Dress in black and white (like a penguin) and record a vlog about a difficult journey you will be undertaking this year (like penguin migration).  Aim for less than 3 minutes.
2. Upload your vlog on Penguin Awareness Day (January 20, 2012–FRIDAY).
3. Use the hashtags #PAD12 and #WBWV.
4. Watch and comment on the videos of other participants.
5.  Ask Nico or Ashley if you have questions.

More details at We Blog, We Vlog

My mom kept a diary for many years and, if I understand her correctly, hated it. I came across a box of her diaries years ago and after looking through a couple of them, I thought I figured out why. They were all about what she had actually done. Things like, “I took Ricky to the park.”¹

I always had in my mind that unless I wanted journaling to become a dreaded obligation, then I should avoid all the mundane details of life. And I have. You could read my last ten years of journals² and not know really basic facts about me, let alone learn anything about actual life on Earth.

Every feeling I’ve ever had is well documented, but I probably only mentioned once back in 2004 that my name is Ashley.

Lately I have been struck by the idea of keeping more of a logbook. The idea of a logbook is just to keep a list of the things you did, who you were with, and maybe what you read. This is the post that got me thinking about it .

Between a blog, a journal, emails and texts, the occasional letter or postcard, and all forms of social media, I don’t think my life needs more documenting. Not even raging existential anxiety about the impermanence of life makes me want to record every detail.

But I do like the idea of a logbook for the immediate benefit of figuring out how I spend my time and trying to be more intentional about spending it doing the things that really matter to me. If I’m going to go through the trouble of writing something down, then I want it to be worth recording! What a great way to gently coerce myself into thinking about what I’m doing right now instead of always thinking about what I will do in some vague future I have imagined for myself.

I am reluctant to make a commitment right now, but I am slowly moving in that direction.

1. Ricky is my brother and he’s gone by Rick for at least the last 25 years. I don’t even think I could get away with calling him Ricky these days.
2. Theoretically, I mean, because you’d have to fight me for them, and then if you were successful, you’d probably die of boredom before making it through the first year.

I mentioned casually in my Boston post back in November that Ashley and Nicole talked me into running a half marathon in February.  It’s actually pretty easy to talk me into doing something that I already want to do, so for the last eight weeks I’ve been training.

I started running my first year of college when I was going through something that I only knew how to handle by waking up before everyone else and hitting the streets with JT’s first solo album (he used to make music).  That Summer I read all the books and then I started running some races.

The day before starting my senior year of college, I ran my first half marathon, and then I was finishing two majors and working two jobs and applying to grad school, and everything else was pushed to the side.  Running has remained there on the side for most of the time I’ve been in grad school.

The one big surprise about running again is that it turns out I’m not the raging perfectionist I used to be!  I realized almost immediately that 13 weeks was not going to be enough time to go from barely running to doing anything impressive, and I was totally okay with that. I actually haven’t felt discouraged once in all of these weeks. It’s just fun to be back out there again (with JT’s second album).

Last night I was limping home in the dark (because I did something to my foot) and breathing out of my mouth (because I have a cold), and I was really happy.  But I do kind of miss breathing out of my nose and walking without a limp.  And, seriously, it’s time for another album, Justin.

You know those people in your life who you talk to so much that you find yourself thinking about telling them something that happened to you as that thing is actually happening?  Blogging is like that for me. The words I am putting together in my head to explain to other people what I am experiencing actually become part of the experience itself.

In other words, I blog a lot.  Way more than I actually post.  I have always done the writing and not publishing thing to a certain extent, but lately I have been writing without any real thought about ever publishing.  It’s like all the work without the fun part of throwing your words out recklessly into the world.

I don’t want to deny that sometimes it’s fear that stops me, but so often it is really nothing at all.  It’s just easier to not make a commitment to anything by putting it in words and then sharing those words with other people.  I have been slipping into this mood a lot in the last year, and I’m always shaken out of it when someone tells me that what I do here matters to them.

First, thank you to those people.  Second, we should all be better about telling other people that what they do matters.  Third, I really should not require that kind of assurance to keep moving forward.

Brain crack is a Ze Frank term that refers to the very good ideas that you hold onto as precious and never execute because you’re not quite ready yet or it would take resources you don’t have or you don’t have the time or it would be really hard.  Brain crack addicts are those people who are always talking about what they’re going to do, but never actually do anything.

There’s a little addict in all of us, but if you want to get off the stuff, then you have to execute your ideas as faithfully as you can and then put them into the world and move onto the next thing.  In the last several years, I have gotten into the very good habit of doing the work, but I still dance around timidly when it comes to sharing that work with other people.

I don’t want to do that anymore.  I am making a renewed effort to get out of my own way.

I’ve had it in my mind for more than a year that I am really ready to move.  I’ve been in California for five and a half years now, and I have grown to love it way more than I ever expected to, but I’m ready to go somewhere new.

That seemed perfectly reasonable. But in the Fall, what was reasonable became something else.  Let’s call it unreasonable.  This place started to suffocate me and getting out became urgent.  So urgent that I was projecting my own feelings onto everyone else, thinking “how does anyone stay anywhere for more than a couple years?”

And that’s when I started to question my motivations, because there are some problems that putting yourself in a new location will solve, but you’re still going to be the same person, living the same kind of life.  I wasn’t trying to escape myself–I actually kind of like being me these days–but I was ready to take off to anywhere to solve a problem that would only follow me.

I think the reality was that I had grown bored with my life, which strikes me as both a simple and terrifying problem.  Most of the time I’m trying to figure out how to do everything at once, but sometimes I find myself not wanting to do anything at all.  I’m not talking about a lazy Sunday on the couch, but a loss of meaning and purpose.

I’ve always hidden myself from thoughts like these and buried them under piles of distraction.  I know a lot of answers to the questions I am asking myself, but I am hesitant to take the obvious steps. When your world has gotten too small, then you have to make it bigger, but everything is so comfortable here and does this mean I have to talk to people I don’t already know?

I was thinking a lot of thoughts about staying where I am, and then it seemed that every movie I watched was set in LA, and it was like I had to be reminded that this is an interesting place, and even if I plan to leave sooner and not later, there is a lot here that have left to do.  I’ve never been to Griffith Observatory, I want to see San Diego, the last time I hiked the big mountain behind me was four years ago, I could waste many more hours at Manhattan Beach, and the people responsible for the comedy podcasts I have been obsessed with for years put on cheap shows all the time and I never go!

I have a new attitude about staying here.

In March, I decided to start reading for fun again. Mostly because I missed it and reading a book or two each year on breaks from school was making it difficult for me to justify being so pretentious.

My modest goal was to read 10 books by the end of the year, and I read 19!

Favorite book I read this year: Just Kids.  If you like memoirs or like things that I like, I suggest reading it.  It’s one of those books that I wish I could read over and over again as if for the first time.  It was an experience.

After a year of debating getting an e-reader, I finally have one.  I considered every option and then decided I wanted an iPad, but hey they are expensive, so I was in no hurry.  Then my dad kindly gave me one for my birthday.  Oh my, it’s better than I even expected.  I’m still buying books in paper as well, but I enjoy reading on the iPad.  And the world has not fallen to pieces.

I have a big stack of books I’m looking forward to reading in 2012.  I would like to make some crazy reading goal, but I would also like to have time to write and work on my degree, so I’ll say my goal is to read 30 books by the end of the year.  Starting with Born Standing Up and then The Marriage Proposal for #twookclub.

A year ago, I had the bright idea to write one post a month that gave some indication of my life at that moment.  I imagined that I would reach the end of every month and have something insightful to say about it.  Instead I found that months pass very quickly and it is hard to have any kind of perspective on things that just happened.  I wrote from the middle of things, not knowing the significance of what I was feeling and having no idea what would come next.  Here at the end of the year, I have more perspective, but I will save that for another post.  Here is 2011 with limited perspective.

January: Oh, January

January usually makes me crazy.  The pressure of a new beginning mixes with gloomy weather and too much time to think, creating a perfect storm that threatens to sink my ship every year. I cope by listening to David Gray’s A New Day at Midnight, because six years ago, I was taking my first ever class on theology, staring a crisis of belief right in the face, and David Gray was there.  He’s been with me every January since, but that hasn’t made them any less difficult.  This January is not like the others.  Maybe it’s the heat wave we’ve been having in Southern California, but I suspect it’s not the weather, but rather this girl who has changed.  All of the normal things are there–times a thousand, really–but I feel different: optimistic.

February: A Scattered Post of Good Intentions

This leads me to something I already knew about myself, but was reminded of in February.  I go to great lengths sometimes to avoid things–even the truth–because I don’t think I can handle them right now.  I tell myself I’ll deal with that later;  I’ve got things to get done and I don’t need the distraction when I’m trying to write papers and get through long shifts at work.  I go all Scarlett O’Hara and say,  “I won’t think about that now. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”  This is an awful thing to do to myself.  Real things I can handle–it’s anticipation and not knowing that kill me.  Ashley, stop trying so hard to protect yourself.   Whatever it is, you’ll be okay.

March: So This Was March, and I’m Both Happy and Sad About It

What I’m saying, internet, is that I’m going through something right now.  And it’s hard to explain, because when I express my optimism, it seems to too easily miss the sadness and when I express the sadness, I miss the optimism.  I experience happiness and sadness together in a way that seems paradoxical.  But, if studying theology has taught me anything, it’s that truth is often found close to where things seem uncomfortable and contradictory.

April: Here Comes a Feeling You Thought You’d Forgotten

One of the things I love most about myself (and love most in other people) is my ability to get really excited about things.  Mountain moving, ocean parting excited to write a novel, read every book on a subject, or go to New Zealand and hope against hope that it really looks like Middle Earth.  I’ve always had this, but for a while it was tinged by doubt and my failure to be the person I thought I wanted to be.  The things I liked and was excited about were separate from the life I was trying to create for myself.  I thought that I needed to be perfect to be happy.  What I didn’t realize was that I’d already found the things that make me happy.

May: The Original Title of This Post Was Wildly Inaccurate

I have always treated working at a job where I have specific tasks and, you know, get paid very differently from my own writing projects.  That makes it very easy to push aside the writing in favor of either the jobs that pay or watching everything that was ever available on Netflix Instant (believe me, I do the lazy thing about as well as I do workaholic).  I don’t know what’s changed, but I’m not doing that this time.  The hours I used to spend at a second job, I have now dedicated to a job that doesn’t pay (can I be my own intern?): writing.

June: On An Insignificant Month

The most significant thing about June was that it wasn’t that significant.  For the first time all year, I wasn’t taking a course in Advanced Level Feeling.  I think this led me to be even more restless than usual. I have to remember that life is about contrast, because the moment things get real, I want peace, and the moment I have peace, I’m like, “Well, what now?”

July: The Forgotten Month

Last Summer, that realization led me to conclude that I was not as strong as I thought I was.  I criticized myself for being so unwilling to sit with sadness; the minute I felt it, my mind was working overtime to convince myself that I should feel differently.  I wished I had the courage to dive deeper instead of constantly fighting to keep my head above water . . . I still wish I had the courage to do more than glimpse sadness before running away.  But, looking back, I want to give myself credit for something I didn’t see then.  For my overwhelming and sometimes irrationally high level of optimism.  For a hope burried so deeply that no sadness could ever eradicate it.  It took me until the following Spring to realize that I am actually a great deal stronger than I thought I was.

August: All Kinds of Alive

I debated taking a break again, decided against it, and then the break I was running from stopped me in my tracks and said, “You need me.”  And I guess I did, because winning VEDA means not taking a single day off, and that takes something out of a person.  Plus, there’s been the transition from Summer to Fall, which I can best describe at this point as weird, because I think there is a lot more going on than I yet understand.  And I finished The Hunger Games on the day I started the break, and it put me in this mood I am not quite willing to be honest about at the moment.

September: “I am literally sitting on your couch right now”

I keep writing things and then not posting them.  At some point over the Summer, I was hit with this massive wave of self doubt that I have not yet been able to escape.  It seems to be traveling around the internet.  I know all on my own that these doubts are mostly ridiculous, but when I see people I admire expressing the same doubts, I realize that there is not a shred of validity to any of this.  It’s just destructive and though we’re all completely human for experiencing these feelings, they are not worth our time.  So I don’t think I’m going to do that self doubt thing anymore.

October: I’m No Doogie Howser, But That’s Not Really What This Post Is About

Some days it seems like I don’t have much to say, but I always have something to say.  I think I should have been surprised by the second half of that sentence, but instead I was surprised by the first half.  I have thought a lot this year about this instinct I have to get back to a baseline of feeling where I am completely at peace.  I have a lot of feelings, which would make it seem like I should be comfortable with inconsistency, but instead I am constantly trying to ride the waves of feeling back to this fictional place of calm where I can see everything clearly.

November: Am I going to smell the roses or am I going to watch every episode of 30 Rock ten times? (Life Post Coursework)

I didn’t even make it through September before I was confronted with a load of existential questions and started wondering, “Is this all there is?  Because I don’t think this will do.”  I wasn’t at all hysterical.  It was just the realization that after having things figured out for a while, I was in a new phase where it was time to figure it all out again. In the quiet of the last few months, I have found that for the first time when faced with not knowing the next step, I do not feel like I’m starting from scratch.  No thoughts of “OMG! What is my life?!” or “I need to become Brand New Fancy Perfect Ashley.” There are plenty more walls to hit and opportunities to crash and burn, but it is nice to feel like a put together person once in a while.

December: Especially If It Includes Big Risk and Possibly Fire

The thing about knowing what you want is that then you have to actually go get it.  And it turns out that’s the hardest part.  That’s where I am now and have been for quite a while.  This is a new kind of overwhelming.  The kind where you can’t quite see your way into the life you have imagined.  Here’s what I need to do: sit at a desk and focus.  Here’s what I find myself thinking about instead: doing anything else, especially if it includes big risk and possibly fire.   Finish your degree, Ashley, and write everything.

I feel obligated to admit that I spent most of the year hating this project.  Regular blog features are not for me.  I find them too limiting and dread keeping up with them.  I knew all of this when I decided to take on this project, which made me extra annoyed with myself whenever it came time to write another post.  If I am being honest, it was stubbornness alone that kept me going after the first month.  I am so glad I did, even though I grumbled through the entire process.  My primary motivation for writing is to figure things out in the moment, but there is this existential anxiety about the passing of time that motivates me to make things permanent in words.  It nice to look back and say, “that happened and here’s my proof.”

Tradition: capturing Christmas break in pictures (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, and Vol. 3). I had a lovely time in Washington and now I’m back in California, but vacation is not yet over!

Birthday beer with my dad. Blue Moon, of course.

This was taken on my 28th birthday. It's like the wisdom just radiates from it.

A windy and rainy Northwest Christmas.

Christmas manicure.

My name is Ashley and I'm officially a Californian who can't handle the cold.

I like to make my mom think she has to talk me into playing this game called Rack-o, but really I enjoy it.

Lounging by the Christmas tree. I did a lot of reading while I was home.

My last day in town, my step-dad took me to Steilacoom for coffee. It reminds me of Stars Hallow.

It’s been a weird December.  Or maybe it’s been a really normal December and I’m not used to that. I’m used to having finals-induced tunnel vision until about this time of year when I finally look up and realize it is nearly Christmas.  I tried to stretch the merriment out and enjoy it all month, but instead I kept thinking, “It feels too early. Is it time yet?  How about now?”

Well, self, it is finally time!  Tonight I’m catching a flight out of California and home to Washington.

I have mentioned that this has always been my favorite time of year, but I have not mentioned that for a while it really wasn’t.  It was like, “let’s mix super high expectations with turning a year older and trying to figure out what home is when you don’t live there anymore and I know you live on your own but now you’re back to being the baby of the family and hey maybe it’s a little pathetic that you’re alone and, for good measure, let’s add some depressing music to the mix.”

There were many years of feelings all those feelings, some years of being anxious about feeling all those feelings, and now we’re into the years where I just don’t care about any of that.  The angst: I don’t have it anymore.

I’m just looking forward to being home and spending time with my family and eating cinnamon rolls and drinking too much coffee and playing board games and staring at the tree.  If I feel sad, then I’ll go write about my feelings and listen to “River.”  Like I don’t love those things too.

Hello Christmas!  I’ve been waiting for you.

This time of year always reminds me of my first Christmas after moving away to college.  I came home to find that home didn’t feel like home anymore.  That loss made me incredibly anxious about creating some kind of future for myself that was certain.  But the reality was that I had no idea what to do with my life.

I considered everything.  I talked to everyone.  I panicked and panicked and panicked.  I was strangely jealous of my favorite musicians and writers who all seemed to know from birth what they wanted to do.  I thought that if I just had that information for myself, then everything would be easy.  Hard work was something I knew how to do. I just needed a direction.

I figured out pieces of it along the way.  After considering almost every option, I finally decided my junior year to stop being an idiot and just major in English like I should have known I’d do from the beginning.  After wrestling for years with my more practical side, I finally realized it made no practical sense to study anything but what I was most passionate about.

That same year I took one required theology class and I knew immediately that I would never be able to walk away from those questions, so I might as well pursue them seriously.   It happened that for all the angst and as much work as I put into figuring this all out, the answer was: do the thing you’ve always done and also the thing you never saw coming.

So there I was at 21 and I had it all figured out!  Just kidding.  I spent the following four years (for a total of at least seven years) in a state of almost constant doubt and anxiety about my decisions and where I was going.  What a privilege it is to be overwhelmed with possibility.  I can’t say I handled it well, but I took it seriously.  I considered my happiness to be my own responsibility.

Everything is so obvious, but it took so much hard work to get here. I criticize myself for being too careful and not taking enough risks, but maybe I should give myself more credit for never giving up. The clarity I have now–not just about what I should be doing, but what I shouldn’t be doing–was worth all of that.  It feels pretty damn nice.

But, of course, it’s the beginning and not the end.  The thing about knowing what you want is that then you have to actually go get it.  And it turns out that’s the hardest part.  That’s where I am now and have been for quite a while.  This is a new kind of overwhelming.  The kind where you can’t quite see your way into the life you have imagined.

Here’s what I need to do: sit at a desk and focus.  Here’s what I find myself thinking about instead: doing anything else, especially if it includes big risk and possibly fire.   Finish your degree, Ashley, and write everything.

This is not a matter of getting myself to do the things I think I should be doing.  It’s about being disciplined in doing the things I want to be doing.  Because they make me happy.  So I don’t have a real conclusion, because this is something I’ve written about several times and yet it remains a struggle.  By its nature, I think it always will be.  But maybe I have found a theme for 2012.

2011 by the month: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, and November.