Ask anyone I know--I recently got super into rock climbing.
A month ago, I got back up on a rock wall for the first time since my fall, and I've craved to return ever since.
On a whim, I invested in a pair of shoes, a chalk bag, a bouldering gym membership, and a roll of tape. It's pretty rare for me to jump head-on into something so quickly, but I'm so glad I've invested in this hobby because it's starting to pay off.
When I hit the rock gym, my mind is instantly cleared. I'm no longer focused on student essays, lesson plans for the next week, or how my lesson may have crashed and burned that day. Instead, I'm faced by different issues--how to climb a particular route, how to best bandage a blister, how to catapult myself over a ledge--the list goes on. Rock climbing gives me a physical activity that embodies problem solving, and helps me process along the way.
Granted, not all problems are solved in a quick and clean fashion. Some problems take a few falls or a few fails before being solved, and I've learned to grow comfortable in those times.
I'm learning to grow comfortable when I fail at teaching as well.
Don't get me wrong--I hold myself to a very high standard, but teaching is a try-and-fail setup. If you try an activity and you fail, you try again or you move on to something that may work. If you fail at getting a point across, you stand up, brush yourself off, and come back the next day to try again.
I'm so thankful I found rock climbing in my first year of teaching so I could learn to fall, learn to fail, and practice getting back up time and time again.
My sweet time in Tulsa is coming to an end. I'm ready to go home, but I've met a lot of lovely people here and made new friends.
The students I have--my first group of students, aside from the incoming freshmen I taught at ASU's Early Start program two years ago--are amazing. They're humorous, curious, and all doing relatively well in class. My Tulsa kiddos have taught me how to interact and teach many different types of students, and I'm excited to meet my 150 Phoenix kiddos with these 4 weeks of teaching experience under my belt.
My co-teacher (or "collab" in Teach for America terms) is a blessing. His name is Elliott, he has teaching experience, and he's such a calm and loving person. He spent the last 3 years living in Iceland (I know, right?) and has classroom experience as a teacher.
In the past 4 weeks, we've experienced actual tornado warnings where we had to go down to the basement and stay "calm" while our students had to stay "calm" while we were all late for lunch and hungry. We've shared deodorant (I forgot mine one day and our classroom is at least 80 degrees and humid every day), shared life stories, and grown to know each other well.
There's nobody else I would rather share a classroom with, and knowing that Elliott is going to Miami when I go back to Phoenix is rough--but I'm stoked because it means I have someone to go and stay with in Miami!
In addition to my students and Elliott, I was privileged to work with an entire group of fabulous humanities teachers (pictured at the top of this post.)
This was my CTE group, and we're all English, history or geography teachers. We bonded over our tough work and stuck through many hours of lesson planning, classes, and preparation for returning to our corps cities. I feel well equipped thanks to these awesome humans, and led by our fearless Sasha.
I've enjoyed Tulsa, for what it's been, and I'm ready to jump in to teaching in Phoenix.
I've never been homesick before in my life, so naturally it took a while for me to recognize the emotion I'm feeling as homesickness.
The first week of Teach for America training flew by, and it left me spinning in circles Friday night.
Seriously.
I miss my friends and my cat, and the coffee shops and restaurants I'm so used to going to in Phoenix. These emotions, when compounded with all the teaching techniques and social justice information I learned in the past week, have been lot to process--so I've been focusing one thing this weekend:
Being unapologetically myself.
I'm pretty good at this when I'm with people I already know, but whenever I'm thrown in with a group of new people, I have a hard time owning my unique likes and dislikes.
For example, I dislike going out and I really dislike most pop music--but it's hard to make friends and bond with people who are SUPER into these things.
I'd rather sit around and play Cards Against Humanity while drinking wine and listen to Sufjan Stevens or Iron and Wine than go bar hopping.
So I'm working on owning that part of myself and hopefully will find some friends who like the same things as I do.
As I sit writing this, I'm in Dallas sipping a hot cup of coffee and listening to David Ramirez. I've been a lot of places in the past month and a half. Chicago, Denver, Salt Lake City, Louisville, Phoenix, Ecuador, Prescott...and soon I'll be trading Dallas, Texas for Tulsa, Oklahoma.
It's been a whirlwind of a summer thus far, and everyone has been asking me "how do you travel so much?" or "wow! Why so much traveling?"
Sky Harbor feels like home.
Only one of these trips was in my plans before April 25th, and that plan was Ecuador. Even then, I only ended up on the Ecuador mission trip I just returned from because I was unable to go last August. All of these trips have otherwise been planned in the past month and a half.
When I found out I was accepted to Teach for America, I made plans to go to Chicago to help Jackie move home from Phoenix before moving to NYC. I had money saved up to go to Iceland in the fall, but as a teacher, I won't have the ability to take two weeks off of work to go and do that.
So I chose to help a friend move, and then I took advantage of the fact that I was on the opposite side of the country (Illinois) and decided to use that trip to spend some time on a train and some time visiting a few other friends who had offered to host me.
To Denver
I had plans to return to Phoenix after Denver and Salt Lake City, but I found out my great uncle had metastasized cancer while in Denver. My parents made plans to drive to Kentucky to say their goodbyes, and I changed my end-of-trip flight from Phoenix to Louisville.
I stayed in Louisville for about a week with my parents, and we spent most of it with my great aunt and great uncle, sitting, talking, and watching tv game shows.
While I was road-weary and just wanted to be home, I'm glad I took the time to go to Kentucky and visit him because he passed away while I was in Ecuador.
I'm sad that he passed away--he was like a grandfather to me--but I know his death was painless and clouded in elderly dementia. He had forgotten he had cancer, and often times would forget within the same day that we had visited him earlier in the day. He lived a long life, passed away peacefully in his sleep, and I'm grateful I was able to see him one last time.
Soon after returning from Kentucky, I turned around and went to Ecuador on a mission trip (I'm talking more about that in a travel blog post). After Ecuador, I was in Phoenix for a whopping four days and then I boarded a plane to Dallas, where I currently am.
Dallas is my last chance to experience a bit of peace and rest before I start an intense five week training program with Teach for America in Tulsa, so I'm reveling in this last bit of real vacation. If you need me, you can find me by the pool or eating tacos with Hannah.
And there you have it--I've traveled some 15,000 miles in the past five weeks or so. While I love traveling and visiting my friends, I'm eagerly awaiting July 23 when I return to Phoenix (for good) so I can spend more than four days with my cat, cousin, parents, friends and favorite coffee shops. For now, I've got five weeks of living in a brand new city up ahead of me.
I'm not particularly a fan of the whole goodbye thing. I've helped three friends move across state lines in the past two years, and I usually end up in blubbering tears, boarding a train/plane/sitting shotgun with an upset stomach because I hate leaving and knowing my friends won't be within two hours of me. Granted, I'm ultimately comforted by the fact that my friends are growing and experiencing amazing things in their new lives--but that doesn't make it easier.
Jackie just graduated and moved to New York to pursue her dream job of public relations for Broadway and theater-related places. After graduation and before going to New York, she had to go home to Chicago, and I accompanied her.
We spent time in her suburban home town as well as the big city, and took ample time scoping out the picturesque train station where I eventually boarded an Amtrak to cross the country. We cried big ugly alligator tears as we hugged goodbye, and she cried in the taxi to her podiatrist and I cried in the station waiting to board my train.
We've only been friends for three years, but in those three years of tight knit friendship, we've never lived far apart for a long span of time. Our friendship blossomed in the craziest way--we were randomly matched together to be roommates at ASU after I signed up to live in the dorms a few days after the cutoff, and after a few of her previous roommate plans had fallen through. We knew nothing of each other, but we bonded over an intricately made music video that piqued our interests.
Hannah, who I helped move to Dallas in January, is my closest friend. We've known each other for 20 years (give or take a few months). She moved away for a lucrative job offer, and now she's enjoying eating at Velvet Taco all the time.
We were blubbering messes when she dropped me off at the airport to fly back to Phoenix. I cried all the way through the TSA lines, and the TSA employee was surprisingly sympathetic for someone who is so often associated with long lines and terse interactions.
I finally stopped crying about her being gone once I landed in Phoenix (no joke--in all the years of our friendship, she and I have never lived in a different state. I cried off and on the whole way home). Occasionally she comes back to Phoenix (but not while I'm in town) and I also plan to go visit her on my way to Tulsa soon (more on that later).
Brenna, the first friend I helped move across state lines, is also one of my oldest friends (but, long story short, we weren't close until about 2011.) Two years ago, I drove up to Portland with her, her brother Ben, and our best friend Raquel. There was one moment in the car ride when I realized that I'd be leaving her there, and I was overwhelmed with sadness.
We made the most of the day and a half we had in Portland, and then left to return to Phoenix. The ride back was sad and filled with stomach aches because I missed her so much already. Now, two years later, she is doing swell and my upset stomach finally subsided. She's got a good job at a local Portland, Oregon shoe store and she's almost done with her Bachelor's degree.
While it hurts to see three of my four best friends scattered across the country, I'm encouraged by them. They all moved away to pursue what they thought was best for themselves--Brenna left to experience something new and begin an adventure; Hannah left to start her "adult" life at her first "big girl job" in a city with an amazing food scene; and Jackie went to New York to pursue a life long dream of working in theater (and there is no better place to do that than Broadway.)
Now, these ladies' dreams may change someday. Their priorities may shift and they may find themselves back in Phoenix (or, you know, Chicago for Jackie.) But if they do end up back here, I have no doubt it would not be because they gave up, but rather because they wanted to pursue a new dream.
For now, even though I miss them and hated leaving them in their different new cities, I'm so incredibly proud of them for chasing their dreams, turning them into plans, and making those plans reality.
Holy schneikes. I'm embarking on the final week at my job and realizing what is ahead of me.
This summer is going to be crazy.
For starters, I'm going to spend a month in Tulsa for the Teach for America summer institute. I'm going to be spending a week in Ecuador on a mission trip. I'm going to spend nearly two weeks on a Midwest train trip. And, to cap it all off, I have to take a huge standardized test and complete a 45-hour online course before the end of May.
I will be home, at my apartment in Phoenix, for three weeks total in the next three months. That's really hard for me to process. I'm not a homebody, per se, but I like having a physical location to come back to and drop things off at.
On the other hand, I've spent time traveling and housesitting and living out of a backpack, so this is nothing new--it's just something I didn't expect myself to be doing so much of this summer.
The more I think about it, my apprehension and anxiousness is replaced by curiosity and excitement.
In six months from now, I will have grown so much I'll probably be an entirely different person.
I will have lived in a city where I don't know a single soul (albeit only for a month and a week).
I will have gone through an effective yet condensed training program and placed in a classroom as a teaching intern.
I will (hopefully) have been accepted to and started grad school at ASU.
I will have stopped draining my savings and relying on my credit card and finally will have a paycheck after going all summer without one.
I haven't blogged in about a month for a few reasons, one of which being that I felt I had nothing new to say. A lot of my past posts had the theme of uncertainty and alluded to big changes up ahead-- and that's all I was ruminating on for the past month.
I was stuck in a holding pattern waiting to hear back about some exciting news that would potentially bring about major change.
If that photo didn't load for you, it's me holding a sign that says "I'm going to be an English teacher!"
That's right, folks. I'm finally pursuing teaching as a career after dreaming about it since I was in junior high, and it's a totally crazy story how it worked out.
I'd been looking into a few certification + Masters programs including (but not limited to) the San Francisco Teacher's Residency at the University of San Francisco. I was in looooooove with the program, in which you attend USF for two years, obtain your Masters of Arts in Teaching, and then are placed in a San Francisco area school for three years.
That program sounded (and honestly still sounds like) a dream to me, except for one thing: I didn't (and still kinda don't) want to leave my city. Other than that, SFTR was the plan and the goal. I would spend the next year building up a savings account and then move to the Bay Area and pursue a MaT and join SFTR.
At least that was the plan until I learned about the Teach for America and Arizona State partnership program. If you're unfamilar with Teach for America, the dealio is relatively similar to SFTR: You commit to teaching for two years and at the end of the two years you will have earned your teaching certificate and, if you choose, a Masters degree in Education.
I started my Teach for America application one week before the final deadline to apply to join the 2016-2017 corps. Nearly two months and a lot of tears and a lot of prayers later (and after a very rigorous application and interview process) I found out I was accepted and placed in Phoenix as a secondary education level English teacher.
This summer will be full of training and practice teaching at a summer school, and then POOF, I'll be a certified teaching intern with a classroom of my own in a Phoenix-area school in the fall!
Now, it's really not all that simple. I have a two courses and one big test I need to take before I even get to begin the summer training institute, and I also need to figure out which training institute I'll be attending. I'll be in Ecuador during the first week of the Phoenix institute, so I'm hopefully transferring to either Tulsa or the Delta training institute for the summer...but no matter how it works out, God's brought me this far. He'll take me through the rest of this.
They used to call me Cactus. I was tall; a desert native.
They could find me dusty, dirty, outside from sun up to sun down. The owls found their home in me, hooting late into the night and the mice made their bed at my feet.
They saw me stare into the dark night sky speckled with stars, arms lifted high above my head in praise. They hugged my strong core, praised my nimble structure.
They would laugh joyfully when they found the gecko on my arm and were delightfully surprised when they felt the prickles of my legs.
They knew they could find a camera wherever I was. The sun would hit me just right, the nuances of my body visible in the desert sunlight and eternally etched into a frame of film.
They depended on my strength and ability to hold my own, to survive in drought, to provide for other desert dwellers.
With all this looking ahead, I need to stop, take stock, and be thankful where I am.
I'm functioning perfectly fine as an adult. I'm paying my bills on time, I'm devoting attention to my closest friends, and I'm balancing a need for peace and quiet with my desire to be out and about with people all the time. The ambivert struggle is real, y'all.
I'm exploring exciting opportunities for the future (can you say "grad school?") and thoughtfully and intentionally trying to decide what path is the wisest. Meanwhile, I'm blessed with a job that pays me enough to live comfortably while saving up for the future.
But let's be real: I have a hard time being thankful for those things. When things are good on the homefront, I get an urge to gooooooo somewhere. Not long term, of course. Just a vacation.
The day-to-day adult life gets very boring, very quickly. I enjoy having a routine, but I like to be able to change that routine up on a dime, and a desk job really doesn't give you room to do that. Without the ability to say "nah, I'm going to work on this from 8-11 pm instead of this morning," I lose a bit of freedom. And day after day of losing that freedom feels very constraining and makes me want to swing the pendulum from being stuck in an office all day to doing some extreme travel.
I'm dreaming about taking a 4,000 mile road trip looping through the southwest and northwest, touching ten different states and finally getting to go to Canada. It'd be by myself because I'm craving a lot of alone time right now.
I don't know if it will actually happen, though. I'd also really like to go to Chicago/New York with my friend Jackie when she goes back home after graduation and then moves to NYC.
I also really want to go on a cruise to Cuba, but gosh--that's a really expensive dream.
There's a lot I want to do, and I know I can't do it all. I'm incredibly grateful for where I am and what I'm doing, but being cooped up in an office is grating on my soul and I really just want to go.
A lot of crazy things are happening; and what's worse, I can't really talk about them en masse. It's personal stuff compounded with adulthood mashed up with some really hard decisions I need to make.
Shoot. I wish I hadn't picked up blogging as a hobby, because I can't share much more than that on the internet.
But what I can share with you is the Bible verse I came across on Easter. I wasn't able to make it to church (long story short, I placed a larger value on sleep than on being surrounded by a few hundred other people hearing a lesson I've heard a hundred times before and already know. I kinda hate going to church on big holidays, but we can talk about that another time).
As I was saying, I wasn't able to make it to church, but I did spend a considerable portion of the morning reading my Bible and journaling, and a large portion of the evening in community with my cousin and best friend Raquel, both of whom love Jesus.
In the morning when I woke up, I remembered a painting my friend Ben made for me a few years ago. It's pretty abstract, but has 2 Timothy 1:9 on it:
For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love and self-discipline.
I'm not sure why it came to mind. I haven't seen that painting in months (sorry Ben. It's somewhere in my room, I promise...I just don't know where I packed it.) and I haven't thought of that verse in a while, but it is so so perfect for my life right now.
We weren't created to be scared. We weren't made to be timid, or fearful. Incapacity, hate and indulgence are not the trademarks of our spirits. We're intended to have a heart that is powerful, that is loving, and that is self-disciplined.
In the midst of the growing pains I'm experiencing, with overwhelming options and intimidating situations, I'm working toward a powerful, loving, disciplined spirit.
My shirt says "Vote or we're sending you somewhere you don't get the right to."
I'm that nerdy, nerdy kid who wanted to vote from the time she was in second grade.
I remember walking from the playground to Mrs. Rexall's classroom with my friend Alicia in the year 2000, when President George W. Bush was up for his first presidential election. Alicia said she would vote for him because his last name was Bush, and squirrels are cute with bushy tails.
But, as you've probably guessed, I want you to feel that way.
I want you to wantto vote.
I will not accept "my vote won't matter" or "my vote will be wasted and cancelled out by everyone else who votes" as an excuse. There's no room for pettiness like that in my generation.
I vote because I believe it indicates I am a responsible, thoughtful citizen who appreciates having the privilege of voting. I desire to see my country succeed, so I research the candidates who will potentially run it at a state and federal level, research the facts candidates share, and vote when the time comes--and I'm telling you to do it, too.
Research the candidates.
I'm not going to tell you, the internet, who* to vote for. I don't think that's proper to do in an online forum such as this--but I will tell you to check out all of the candidates. Watch debates on both sides of the aisle. Google their names and stances, and check out their websites. If you're overwhelmed, you can find out which politicians you side closely with using the I Side With quiz (which grossly simplifies politics, but hey--it's better than nothing.)
*and while I said I'm not telling you who to vote for, I am going to tell you to please back a politician who is decent, exhibits a loving character, and has experience in politics on some level. I feel this all ~should~ go without saying but probably needs to be said anyway.
Maybe these are statistics you don't care too much about. That's okay. But in order to be a well-informed voter, you need to know if what the politicians are saying is true. My favorite tools for fact-checking are PolitiFact, which live-checks debates; and the AZ Central fact check, which looks at local news. If you live outside Arizona, your local news organization probably has something similar.
Get registered and join PEVL.
This is probably the gosh darn easiest part of voting. If you live in Arizona, you can do it online. And look, I even gave you the link. And here's the link again. Go ahead, just click here and do it. It takes an incredibly short amount of time to register to vote, and you can even join the Permanent Early Voting List or "PEVL." PEVL is great because you'll receive your ballot in the mail before elections so you can fill it out and send it right on back to the ballot counters without even putting pants on.
Get your friends to register.
Once you've caught the bug and understand how important it is to vote, don't shut up about it. Keep talking. Explain to your friends how awesome you feel now that you're making at least a small difference in the way your country operates.
Get your friends to register. And if that's not enough and you want to really make waves, get complete strangers to register.
Vote.
When the time comes--be it the Presidential Preference Election or the Presidential election on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November--go out and vote. Cast your ballot! Let your voice be heard!
This can pretty much all be summed up by a quote from one of my favorite script writers (Aaron Sorkin) and fictional Presidents (Jed Bartlet): Decisions are made by those who show up. So do your civic duty and show up.
I schedule rest into my planner by blocking out certain nights and weekends to just chill and spend by myself.
And I know this can't be good for me. I'm an ambivert who has a hard time striking a balance between tons of meaningful human interaction and a fair amount of solitude.
So, I'm pretty sure all the go-go-go I've been participating in lately has contributed to a gnarly cold that sent me home from work on Tuesday.
I really don't like missing work, but when I have a runny, stuffy nose, cough and can't focus--you better bet I'm going home. (That, and one of my coworkers actually told me I should go home to rest.)
Which means I got to practice resting yesterday. I drank a lot of hot lemon ginger water with honey, I diffused some essential oils (the internet said lavender, clove and peppermint are a good blend for colds, and I have to agree), I listened to my favorite Bon Iver album and I did a whole lot of napping.
Aaaaaaaand I finished the first season of West Wing.
While I wouldn't consider these things to be restful normally (I like participating in what some call "active rest," or doing things that are creative and replenishing as a form of rest), it was exactly what I needed.
If you're like me and don't know when to stop moving or doing things, take some time this week and just chill. Binge on your favorite Netflix show. Drink tea. Nap. Listen to music. Take a shower in the middle of the day just because you ~feel like it.~
However rest manifests itself to you, do it before you end up like me--exhausted with a cold--and are forced to stop and rest.
When I was a chubby, long-haired sixth grader, I swore I was moving to Alaska. I couldn't take any more of the darn Arizona heat. I wanted snow! Husky dogs! Polar bears! Ice fishing!
At least, I wanted all those things until my mom told me about giant mosquitoes living in Alaska. After that, I was content with the sunshine.
Come seventh grade, I wanted to go to California. I did a report on Pepperdine University in seventh grade. I toured Biola, California Baptist University and some other California college during the spring break of my sophomore year of high school.
Junior year, I started dating a boy and suddenly didn't want to leave anymore. He captured my heart and my focus shifted away from Biola and over to Northern Arizona University and Grand Canyon University. Relationships and feelings foiled my plans of escape!
Seriously, if I could go back and mentor eleventh grade Amanda, I would tell her "Don't change your plans for a boy. Go where you want to go, do what you want to do. Don't stay here for him," because that's life advice every high school student needs to hear.
And that's the story of how I ended up in Arizona and haven't left yet--but I've always wanted to leave. Deep down, I've always wanted to leave.
The reasons have changed. When I was young, I hated the sun and heat. When I was a little bit older, I wanted to get away from my parents and establish my independence by putting a few hundred miles between us.
Now that I enjoy the sunshine and have established independence from my parents (with only sixteen miles between us) I'm grappling with this question:
Why do I still want to leave?
I've actually, oddly, fallen in love with this city and state.
Phoenix is full of kind and quirky characters, from the owners of coffee shops to the managers of plant and oddity stores, to the kids who live and work in at an urban farmhouse down the street from my friends.
The art district has eaten me alive, but in the best way possible. It gobbled me up and spat me back out, covered in paint string glitter photographs guitars video footage ceramics and every other medium you could think of.
The roles are reversed when it comes to the food scene--I've gobbled it up, and nary have spat it back out. I've stuffed my face with doughnuts, drank plenty of $5 pitchers, and cried when Paz Taqueria's building was torn down.
Maybe I have Stockholm Syndrome.
I've spent so much time living in Phoenix--captive--I grew to love the place. I had no choice but to make the best of what I had, where I was--and I can't help but think this dusty sprawl town has done the same.
Now, as I look into routes of escape (aka grad school plans for 2017; see the giant white envelopes in the photo above), I can't help but notice all of the little signs telling me to stay in state.
Up until today, I was looking into two different graduate schools--University of San Francisco and St Mary's College of California. Both offer a Masters' of Art in Teaching with single-subject credentials and an emphasis in social justice. USF goes a step further and is participating in a program called the San Francisco Teachers Residency, where program participants attend a year of graduate school and are then employed in the San Francisco School System for three years. Living and working with schools in the Bay Area sounds like a dream to me--I love it. I've only visited once extensively but I love it.
But there are so many tiny reminders pushing me to stay here, stay home, devote myself to a life in Phoenix.
I had coffee with my friend Claire a few weeks ago. She's graduating soon and is also looking at becoming a teacher after graduation. Neither of us majored in education, so we're looking at alternate routes together.
Earlier today, I was sitting in my office with my feet kicked up, cup of coffee in hand, staring out the window behind my desk. The sound of cars speeding in front of me mixed with "Bitter Memory" by Bahamas as it played behind me.
If anyone would have asked what I was doing, the answer would have been "brainstorming."
Half true; half false.
I was devoting some of my attention to brainstorming the March newsletter (which I probably should have finished earlier this week, but my bosses had other things for me to do so c'est la vie) but I was definitely also thinking about other things. Life things.
My brain was a literal storm.
Thoughts of fulfillment rumbled and dumped rain upon plains of emptiness. Waves of confidence crashed upon cliffs of uncertainty.
I don't know what I'm doing with my life right now, and it's driving me up the wall. I miss learning things in school. I miss spending all day outdoors and in the sun working at camp. I miss interacting with and helping students at the Writing Center. I'm longing for fulfillment and enjoyment of things I've experienced in the past because I'm not finding fulfillment right now.
Have I ever found fulfillment in a job? Maybe.
When I worked at camp, I worked upwards of 60 hours a week and the people I worked with were amazing and the kids I got to hang out with were inspiring. At the writing center, I helped non-traditional students, freshmen and refugees understand the nuances of the English language. Every time I saw the face of a student as he or she understood the difference between a contraction and a plural for the first time, I lit up and knew I changed a little bit of that student's life.
Even when I was an unpaid intern at Roosevelt Row CDC, I felt like I had purpose. People engaged with our Facebook page. They went crazy for adaptive reuse and walkability, which are also two things I go crazy for. I also got to spend a lot of my required working hours taking photos for the Monday Mural campaign and for First and Third Fridays. I wasn't making money, but I was only working 25 hours a week and totally had a great opportunity to collaborate with my supervisor, learn new marketing skills, and interact with the community.
And I really miss all of that.
My fulfillment doesn't come from money. It doesn't come from job security. It isn't buried in my 401k, or the promise of a comfortable retirement where I'll be able to travel.
Fulfillment, to me, is the ability to engage others and encourage others to care about something important while investing in those around me. Fulfillment is being able to enjoy life now rather than waiting to enjoy it when I'm older.
I don't see a lot of this fulfillment in my life right now, and I'm trying to figure out what to do about that.
Check out Leah Flores' Ed Abbey stuff on RedBubble. I got my Nalgene sticker here.
It was my favorite author's birthday last week. January 29th, to be exact.
I first found Edward Abbey through my friend Ben, who is an artist incredibly interested in the preservation of natural resources. He's also super adventurous.
We hiked the Grand Canyon four years ago this May (amazing how quickly time flies) and I had forgotten to bring a book. Ben grabbed me and insisted I read The Monkey Wrench Gang, which is one of Abbey's most popular books.
It's about a gang of four activists who wreak total havoc on development and billboards and local law enforcement in the southwest in the name of preservation and keeping nature the way God intended it to be. I think it took me a grand total of three sentences to get hooked on the book.
During the past four years, I've read at least six of his books (The Monkey Wrench Gang, Hayduke Lives, The Brave Cowboy, Good News, Earth Apples and Beyond the Wall are the ones I can remember) and have oogled and drooled and obsessed over the profile and video work my home newspaper, the Arizona Republic, published last year on Abbey's death in Tucson in 1989. I also named my cat after a character from The Monkey Wrench Gang because why not. She wreaks just as much havoc as George Hayduke.
Abbey does what many authors are unable to do--he addresses important topics with humor. I could just as easily have picked up a book about preservation and land ethics (re: Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac) and read it, but let me tell you--Sand County Almanac doesn't have the zest or spice of Edward Abbey's books.
His books build dynamic characters who are placed in otherworldly situations (especially Good News which is sort of set in a futuristic Phoenix). The characters are actual characters and do active things in the novels, which is more than I can say about a lot of other books that would be classified as environmental literature, probably because Abbey never set out to be an activist or a world-changer--he just wanted to be a novelist.
And he was a novelist. Abbey achieved that goal. He surpassed that goal. He has exceptional novels which address real issues in the world in a way that makes the reader want to make a change. I highly recommend his books to anyone with a passion for reversing apathy and a desire to see and enact revolution.
Like, it may legitimately be a little bit too much love. You could almost call it vanity. I prefer to label it as self-appreciation.
I love how it looks when I let it air dry after I wash it. I love the curls. I love the natural ombre I have from spending all summer in the sun but then having my hair grow in naturally darker season by season. I love that I can get away with not washing it for three or four days (provided I don't work out or produce sweat or whatever).
But I also have another problem--I have horrible dead and split ends. You can't tell in these photos because they're a year old...and my last haircut was about a week after these photos.
That's right folks. I've committed the sin of not having my hair cut for a year, and now I need to pay my dues or serve penance or whatever.
I need a haircut, and I need a haircut bad. But I don't want to just get the dead ends chopped off. That's going to leave my hair at an awkward below the collar bone but above the armpit length, and I hate that length.
So I'm actually thinking about chopping most of it off.
After posting this photo on Instagram, one of my friends mentioned how cute she thinks I'd look with short hair.
grrr. how dare you say that. i love my long hair.
But that got me thinking--I can love my long hair and live without it. Right?
Hair is hair. It grows back, unless you die before it gets the chance to. If I die young, please buy me a wig for my funeral and it better look as damn good and natural as the top photo in this blog post, and then donate it to a young adult with cancer.
As I was saying...I've been thinking about cutting it short. The last time I had it short (shoulder length, or just a little bit above the shoulder) was three years ago, and I liked it a lot then.
I was also a very different person, then. And I feel like my long hair is more indicative of my current personality. But I also want to try something new, as this haircut is incredibly similar to the one I had at sixteen when I had my photo taken for my drivers license.
So, readers--I'm actually going to put this in your hands. I want your opinion. Should I cut my hair? Should I not? Why? Vote on twitter or comment below.
Should I cut my hair short, like shoulder length short?
I wish I had asked to take his photo, but here's a photo of the light rail I shot a while ago instead.
I moved to uptown Phoenix on Wednesday, and Friday night I was reminded why I love the area so much.
My friend walked me to the Central and Van Buren light rail station after attending a show at Valley Bar. Right after I hugged her goodbye, I saw him.
He was sitting on the bench, propping his bicycle up with one hand as I stood nearby.
"Good evening!" he said eagerly and energetically, the way many homeless people do in the hopes of being acknowledged and thus validated.
"Hello! How are you?" I replied.
I like talking to strangers and nobody likes being ignored.
He said something along the lines of "I'm doing well," and quickly began telling me about his exciting day dumpster diving.
He was of average height, average build, was missing his front teeth and looked relatively cohesive. I try not to judge people but I also keep my safety in mind when engaging with someone on the light rail.
I sat next to him on the bench, enamored by the story he began telling.
Dumpster diving is his passion, he said. He continued talking about the amazing things he had found in the past, from laptops to a clean title to a car that was disposed of after the owner died with no family to receive her possessions.
I was skeptical of it all, and even more so when he said he found an original Ted DeGrazia in a dumpster that very day.
"Really? That's so awesome!" I chirped in, smiling probably a little bit too much to hide my skepticism.
"Yeah," he responded, "Do you want to see it?"
He proceeded to reach for a bag tied to the handlebars of his bicycle, and I shrugged and said "Sure."
Thoughts raced through my head. Could it be real? Is he pulling my leg? Maybe he found a print, but not an original.
"I've been thinking about donating it. I usually do that when I find art in dumpsters," he continued.
Usually donate? Does this happen that often?
He unzipped the outer bag and removed a small, black plastic bag with a canvas in it.
Okay. So he had a painting. Maybe not a DeGrazia, but definitely a painting.
His rough, darkened fingers gingerly untied the bag and removed an 8 by 10 canvas painting of a boy holding flowers. It was a darn good painting, too.
I stared--eyes wide, jaw dropped--as he flipped the painting over to reveal an authentic DeGrazia signature and note.
So it was real. So I was amazed.
"Hey, what's your name?" I asked.
"Wendell," he said.
We shook hands as the light rail came to the station and I spent the ensuing ride listening as he imparted 54 years of wisdom upon me. We ended our time together when he disembarked at the Thomas and Central station and agreed to hopefully run into each other another time.
A photo posted by 🌵 A M A N D A 🌵 (@mandalyn93) on
Together we embarked on a 14-16 hour drive that left her in Texas and left me bawling my eyes out at the airport.
She accepted a job with Geico which meant she needed to move from Arizona to Texas, the land of the oil fields and smelly flatlands.
I was (obviously) super bummed to be leaving her in a different state. She's my oldest and closest friend, and also the fifth or sixth of my friends to move out of state in the past two years. Arizona is starting to feel pretty lonely.
But, on the flip side of the loneliness, it was really cool to help her move and be a part of that life event. She even let me decorate her wall <3
Helping Hannah move made me even more excited to move. I got to think about how I'll decorate my room and get an idea of how little stuff I actually need in my new apartment (hello, minimal chic?) It was definitely a bummer leaving her in Texas (even the TSA agent sympathized with me while I was bawling at the security checkpoint) but I got a sweet, simple taste of moving.
Hi! Happy Thursday. I just wanted to share this playlist with you. It's the embodiment of the type of morning I'd liketo be having--laying in bed with a cup of tea and my cat and a book, with the window slightly open to let in the smell of rain.
My grandma's old house in Michigan. Basically nothing to do with this post, but it's nostalgic.
I'm not afraid of change. I actually really enjoy change. I embrace the adventure that comes with change. I hate being in one place or doing one thing for too long--I like the challenge and newness that comes with change. It's transition that gets to me. I hate waiting to get from phase A to phase B. The up-in-the-air moments when you're still not sure if your plan is going to go through, or if it's going to fall through. Currently, I've got two plans that are up in the air. Suspended by dental floss. Ready to come crashing down at any moment. One: I could be going to Dallas this weekend. I should be going to Dallas this weekend. I'm supposed to be helping my closest, longest-held friend move there for her first big-girl job, but her employer called her yesterday and said they might push her start date back two weeks, leaving her in Dallas for a month without a paycheck. But we won't know for sure until Friday, when we're supposed to be leaving at 3 am Saturday. Can you say #frustrated? Two: I'm moving into an apartment in 14 days. That's two weeks! And I have so little packed and so little ready to go. I have to disassemble my bed and buy a mattress and my cousin still has to get a job (knock on wood--she almost has one!) and there's just so much to do, but I don't want to/can't pack a ton because I have to use my toiletries and wear my clothes and use my computer and stuff. So what even am I supposed to be packing? It's a bit stressful.
So in this frustrating state of transition, I'm kicking back. Listening to Kendrick Lamar. Realizing it's gonna be alright and that there's literally nothing I can do about any of it. *update: as I was writing this post, news came through that her start date is remaining the same and I'm going to Dallas this weekend. TRAVEL STOKE!
