And Just Like That, There it Goes...

Whoosh... that blur flying by was the future you've been envisioning for the last year, completely subsumed by the one you'd been planning on for much longer.

That lump in your throat and the aching in your gut is knowing you'll never see what those little faces will look like, because they will never come to be.

Those tears in your eyes are the frustration of knowing you have to start all over again with a stranger someday, even though you don't want to.

Serves you right for thinking you can get what you want.

Ever Get the Feeling You're Still Not There?

You know that feeling of accomplishment you get when you wake up and realize, "Wow, I really have my shit together"? You landed the promotion, have a happy relationship, a good group of friends, a few hobbies that don't involve terrible weekend hangovers, get your oil changed every 3k miles and contribute 6% to your 401k. You've got it down.

Ever feel like you're still not there? That all of the above is just a conformation to what's expected of you, but you still haven't quite found your niche, the one thing that's going to give you purpose and keep each day from blending into the next?

I have a fortune from a fortune cookie in the clear plastic window where my driver's license belongs in my wallet. Right over my over-exposed face against the bright blue background is a small scrap of shiny paper with the printed pink words: "You are almost there."

Those printed pink words have been taunting me for the last 3 years. Mostly because I know they're still true.

I'm not a quirky person. I don't have any kind of interest that makes me a "type" (other than Type A). I like to do certain things that others don't (hike, camp, garden, cook) but I'm not Amazon woman living off the land somewhere in South America or frolicking with lions and gazelles in South Africa. I like the ocean: swimming in it, kayaking in it, boating in it. I'm not going to go live in Bali in a house on stilts and surf every day. But those all sound like attractive things, if only I really LOVED something that much.

So maybe the problem isn't that I'm not there, just that I lack passion. But after living on the planet for this much time, shouldn't I have one by now? I want to have a purpose that's bigger than making enough money to be comfortable. I want to have a purpose that I WANT to have.

I don't think I'm even almost there.

Ugh, Ugly Day

Why do some people find it necessary to be awful about everything?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Oh Hostile World?

A poem by WWII fighter pilot John Gillespie Magee Jr., and famously quoted by Ronald Regan in response to the Challenger explosion charachterizes the bond of earth as "surly."

Surly, according to Dictionary.com:

sur·ly   /ˈsɜrli/ [sur-lee]
–adjective, -li·er, -li·est.
1. churlishly rude or bad-tempered: a surly waiter.
2. unfriendly or hostile; menacingly irritable: a surly old lion.
3. dark or dismal; menacing; threatening: a surly sky.


Excuse Mr. Gillespie and Regan, but I beg to differ. Have you looked out your window today? Or ever?

Please, tell me what is hostile about this:



And unfriendly about this:



And dark and dismal?



You may yearn to slip the "surly bonds of Earth" to "touch the face of God," gentlemen. In the meantime, I'll be down here frolicking in all of the hostile, unfriendly, dark and dismal beauty of this planet.

I Am an "Urban Farmer"

It may or may not be a well-known fact that I fully plan on burning out on corporate America in the next 5 - 10 years, quitting my job, buying a ridiculous amount of land in some fertile area of the world, and starting a dairy farm.

Before this manure-covered, manual-labor dream can come true, I have to test my chops at farming as best I can living in a major metropolitan area. Baby steps, right? The problem is, I am not very good at doing things in baby steps.

So here is the result:



Look! These will be carrots one day!



These are beets. I don't even eat beets on a regular basis.



This is my herb garden, resplendent with oregano, two types of sage, thyme, Italian parsley, and rosemary



Cauliflower! Broccoli! Leeks! Shallots!



Onions (Cippolini and Sweet!)! Garlic! Chives! Red Russian Kale! Peas!



Here is a closeup of the peas, which have tripled in size since I bought them as baby shoots 2 weeks ago. This is called Oregon Giant. And yes, I bought this variety because it made me think of my 6'6" lumberjack-esque boyfriend who is from (guess!) Oregon.

Not pictured: the three types of lettuce are still too small of shoots to be worth photographing, the cherry tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, sweet peppers and cucumbers that are in a "grow operation" in my basement because it is too cold to move them outside, and spinach that just poked out of the soil about two days ago. I have no idea where I plan on planting the rest of the things that need planting.

Now, if I haven't bored you out of your mind yet with my lists of veggies, you may be wondering "Why wine barrels? Why not plant your urban crops directly in the ground, dear Jenn?"

Two Reasons:

One:



And Two:



And as much as I love 'em, I don't want to eat their piss.

So we'll see how I manage to keep these all alive throughout the summer. If it's a go, I'm one step closer to overalls and butter churns.

we're just not all that interested in saving our closest relationships

I was perusing my lady friend Danielle's blog today and came across this little gem in her post about jealousy. Enthralled, I decided to click the link and start reading the article. Like the average digital media comsumer, I began to bore and start skimming the article after line 5, until I was stopped in my tracks by this:

we're just not all that interested in saving our closest relationships

Ugh. Fuck. Thanks, internet, for calling me out again. I like to blame my poor friendship skills on a busy career, busy social life, or development of hobbies that primarily require solitude. But the plain fact of the matter is, I'm forgetful, lazy, or a dreadful mixture of both. I don't text, email, write, Facebook post, etc. as often as I should (read: ever).

And while I still love and cherish all of my friendships, I do not make the proper investment of time and effort into them, and often they fall by the wayside. There are a sacred few who make it through my strainer of apathy:

1.) The Similarly Apathetic: This is the friend who doesn't have the time, effort or mental capacity to pick up the phone either. She feels my pain, and doesn't take my lack of communication personally. A gem.

2.) The Over Communicator: This is the friend who doesn't allow me to be lazy about my outbound communication, simply because she doesn't give me the opportunity to be lazy about it. She will call several times in the course of a week, never daunted by the lack of a return call. In the repeated absence of a return phone call, she will text something shocking about her personal life that will warrant a phone call within the next 12 hours. Eventually, even someone as awful at the phone as I will pick up the phone and grudingly punch in numbers and hit "send." This is the kind of person I need all my friends to be. Unfortunately, only my very best friends will send me "I just had the hottest sex" via text message on a regular basis.

3.) The Social Networker: This is the friend who doesn’t communicate one-on-one with me per se, but one-on-hundreds with the world. I am always aware of her comings and goings and innermost thoughts because she blogs, posts, tweets, broadcasts the fuck out of them on a regular basis. I get to be an amused bystander and comment or "like" at will, without necessarily needing to make the mental and emotional investment of a phone call. This works very nicely for me over here in my (lazy) corner of the world. I want her news to come to me, I can't be bothered to go find it.

But the problem with this is many of these relationships are one-sided. I'm not involved in them deeply enough to even classify them as relationships. They are agreeable ignorings, guilt-induced replies, or casual observations. In none of the above scenarios am I invested enough to make certain I am making an effort. And so it seems that I am just not all that interested in saving my closest relationships. The ones I have now are by no means my longest-lasting or deepest connections, but they're convenient. And so I revel in my day-to-day, without much of a glance backward (except for this overly verbose blog post).

I wish I could say I'll promise to change, but that's just too much of a commitment to make.

Futures and the Seattle Skyline

I sat at Kerry Park tonight and listened to the entire Futures album by Jimmy Eat World. It was a good night.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:2nd Ave W,Seattle,United States

The Average Male... Completely Retarded?

So I've been lucky enough to be in the wonderful city of New York for the last few days. This event is particularly fortuitous because yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, the Holy Day of Obligated Alcoholism. While I spent most of the day locked in a conference room like a gerbil in a PetCo glass enclosure, I was eventually released to the freedom of the throngs of buzzed, glassy-eyed, Shamrock-draped New York City denizens.

I proceeded with a few colleagues to a bar nearby the office we had just left, and we proceeded to mark the holiday with giant mugs of too-expensive German beer (I didn't choose the bar). I was having a deep conversation with one of my female companions about the glories of straigh vs. curly hair when a couple of young men decided that our topic of conversation was so fascinating they absolutely could not prevent themselves from rudely entering into it.

"Hey" said the chubby guy with a bright green afro, Knicks jersey and Shamrock-shaped sunglasses.

My female companion (not being a New Yorker but a wonderfully polite British gal), replied back with "Hi."

Before I could rescue her from her fate of entertaining a conversation with such a specimen of humanity, I was verbally accosted by his companion.

"Hi there," said a young man with painfully crooked teeth, smiling like he'd had braces for the majority of his adolescence and clearly not realizing that someone had forgotten to pay the bill.

Sigh. Now I must speak.

"Hi there."

"So, where are you from?"

Ooh, my FAVORITE topic of conversation.

"Cambodia"

"Oh, yeah? Where is that, like Ohio?"

Oh Jesus.

"No, it's actually right outside of Sheboigan, ever heard of it?"

"No. So what are you doing in New York?"

Can I say I am here chasing down leads on another race that lives in a parallel universe that is on a collision course with ours without infringing on JJ Abrams copyrights? Eh, probably not.

"Working."

"Oh that's cool. What do you do?"

"Advertising."

Clearly this one-word answer tack isn't working with this kid.

"What about you? What do you do?"

A sly smile revealed the broken piano keys behind his lips again.

"Let's just call it finance."

"Finance."

"Finance."

Perfect, I am being hit on by a drug dealer. Look dad, dreams DO come true!

"How long are you in New York for?"

And now he has moved on to sussing out his potential for getting me into the sack. Time to go.

I could no longer bear this entirely inane conversation, and was a little disappointed in myself that I hadn't kept up with replying ridiculous answers to all his questions, because that could have been a little more fun.

So, despite being raised by parents who strongly stressed the importances of social grace and good manners, I simply turned around and walked away. Only when I got to my group of companions did I realize I left a fallen soldier behind, desperately trying to end a conversation politely with the green 'fro man.

I have to hand it to the British, they are POLITE sons of bitches. Polite to a fault. Even the woman who was being aggressively hustled by a giant sweaty leprechaun-man who had no concept of personal space was still saying "Please" and "Thank You" and seeming genuinely intersted in whatever drunken drivel was spilling out of the gentleman's mouth. Not knowing her well enough to bodily lift her up and remove her from his presence, I figured she'd find her way back eventually.

While I waited, I pondered over the deep thought of the utter unintelligence I had just witnessed. Before you write me off as a heartless bitch, let me just say that I realize that approaching a woman at a bar is not an easy thing to do, and that it can involve the consumption of multiple alocholic beverages, and the risk of ego deflation is approximately 90%. Which is why I try my hardest not to be a massive bitch to whichever poor sap strikes up a conversation. But when you stick to a script that is so tired and vapid, don't understand when I try to crack a joke, and smile like you are the slickest thing since Valdez, I reserve the right to void myself of your company without so much as an excuse. It was almost painful to watch the gears turning in his head as he tried to figure out the next thing to say that might end in the possibility of nakedness and bad decisions.

So, after that period of deep reflection on life-changing matters, I deduced that the lowest common denominator for males in bars is a level just above that of a highly intelligent monkey.

Fortunately for me, I have the rest of the weekend to enjoy the men of New York City, so I'm brushing up on my story-telling abilities so that the next interaction I have with one of these brilliant creatures ends up being much more blog-worthy than this one.

Leavin' on a Jet Plane...

Maui is just two short days away... And at the rate I've been going I might just not come back. I have the dangerous skill of being able to completely ignore my breaking point and simply force myself to keep going, going, going. Fourteen hour workdays? Whatever it takes to keep desperately grasping at the next rung of that ladder. Never mind things like time with friends, time by myself, time to take my dog on a goddamn walk. Just a pat on the back, a thumbs up and three-day long tension headache for the effort. But enough "poor me, I am a miserable corporate hamster spinning on a wheel" (or this may become the sequel to Fight Club). Let's talk about something fun! Like sun, sand, 80 degrees and being able to completely void my skull of cognitive thought.

Tragically, I have become that cliche coming-of-age heroine who emphatically chucks her ringing cell phone into the ocean and does a lame victory dance since she has recovered her sense of self. Looks like I've managed to talk myself out of living and into just being undead (thanks Chuck). Here's to a week of living!

And yes, this is just a pouty self-reflection and a long winded way of saying I will be ignoring all of your phone calls, texts, emails for the next week.




Cheers!

Location:1st Ave W,Seattle,United States