Salir/Irse/Dejar

A photo posted by A M A N D A 🌵 (@mandalyn93) on Sep 1, 2015 at 6:14pm PDT

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.

If you know me, you know I love mail...and I got a lot of exciting stuff today 😁

A photo posted by A M A N D A 🌵 (@mandalyn93) on Feb 19, 2016 at 4:34pm PST

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.

While I expressed my passion and desire to move out of state, she shared her desire to do the exact opposite--she wants to stay in state and work here because of how badly Phoenix schools need help.

Example: Program to funnel kids out of the public school system and into private schools rather than improving public schools. 

And as Claire was saying this, my heart went ~boom~

Who else wants to invest in her community? Me.
Who know the needs of her community? Me.
Who loves this dusty little city with most of her heart? Me.

So why would I want to leave?

Brainstorm

A photo posted by A M A N D A 🌵 (@mandalyn93) on Mar 2, 2015 at 7:41am PST

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.

Happy Birthday, Ed Abbey!

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.

Rain, greenery and a good book.

A photo posted by A M A N D A 🌵 (@mandalyn93) on Jan 29, 2015 at 2:55pm PST

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.