2014: A Terrible Year! Thanks for being a part of it!

At approximately 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 31, 2014, I came down with a head cold.

The next week various shades of radioactive yellow oozed from my face.  I like to think it was the last remaining toxins of 2014 eliminating themselves from my body, shedding the curse of that godforsaken year in an incredibly visceral sense.

Oh 2014, Auld Lang Syne and good riddance.

New Year's Eve 2014 was clear and bright.  Taylor and I drove around the capitol building in Salt Lake City, taking in the passage of time with the high point and spectacular views.  I might have been foggy thanks to the new head cold, but it was nice to welcome a new year from a high point, looking out over possibilities.

New Year's Eve 2013 was spent in a basement in DC.  It was a fun time, but I started 2014 from a dark hole in the ground and I don't think I ever left.

2014 is the year that broke me into pieces.  The difficulties started in fall of 2013, when I moved to Boston and started grad school and everything in life was thrown into question.  What was I doing?  Why was I here?  What am I doing to my family?  Those worries eventually abated, replaced with a comfort in my surroundings and a sense of purpose in my studies. But they still gave way to a deep, dark depression.

I wrote about my sadness before, but it lasted so much longer.  It marked the year with a pall, a listlessness and sorrow I could not shake.  This year, my depression caused me to:

• Wake up every morning dreading the day.  This was partially because I was an idiot at one point and had three jobs along with full-time school schedule.  Constant heart palpitations at the thought of my "to do" list, I swear.
• Meddle with my hair, just so I could control something in my life.  This year, I went from long red hair, to short red hair, to short blue-green hair (that promptly faded to gray), back to red, culminating in an undercut mohawk—shaved sides and back, long on top.  Reverse mullet, if you will.  

• Come home from days of doing the bare minimum for survival and sit on the couch, staring straight ahead.  I couldn't even watch TV or movies.  The thought of any action made me want to cry.  Speaking of which...
• Sit by the T station and cry.  I so wish this was a one time thing, but no.  This happened multiple times.  Sometimes it was because I was coming back from a defeating day of school/work.  Sometimes it was because I felt lost and lonely.  Sometimes it was because I was on my way to interact with others socially, something I knew I needed but which terrified me.  Definite moments of huge anxiety and self-loathing there.  And sometimes it was just because it was cold.  Sweet mercy, it got so cold in Boston.
• Curl up in my closet and cry.  Because it was a dark, cramped space.  Just like my psyche.  Just like my soul.
• Dramatically take long walks outside, crying.  Sometimes I'd get too overwhelmed while walking, and I'd sit on the nearest curb and sob.  Those poor, rich suburbanites in my neighborhood, forced to endure the sight of a 25-year-old urchin weeping outside their houses.  I'm sure I totally ruined the view.
• There was a lot of crying, OK? 

Despite the oppressive cloud that marked my 2014, this year was full of beauty.  There was good adventure, good food, and good company.  My goal in moving to Boston, in participating in this crazy grad program, was to suck the marrow out of life.  To completely drain everything I could from school and East Coast living.  I think I succeeded in that goal, because in 2014, I:

• Traveled.  January I drove home from D.C., stopping to visit Baltimore (Poe's grave!) and Philadelphia (Independence Hall!).  In March I spent a blissful week in D.C. with my favoritest Ashley.  Taylor and I celebrated our second anniversary with lobster rolls in Portland, ME.  We went to the Hill Cumorah pageant in upstate New York, an event I fell asleep ten minutes into, and woke up right as people were taking their bows.* My brother got married in October, so I was able to return to the Utah mountains for a bit.  I watched two friends get married in New Jersey.  I witnessed the opulence of titans in Newport, Rhode Island. I spent a ton of time in New York City: a May getaway with the Cowan women, a July move-in with newly-minted East Coaster Mary, BFFF weekend in October, Thanksgiving and assorted visits with the NYC McCarreys. I went from hating New York City to appreciating it, and I actually will miss being so close.  The street art, the constant clash of culture, those tasty Prosperity Dumplings.  I couldn't live there, but I'm back to loving a visit now and then. And there was that whole cross country drive back to Seattle, where I hit Virgina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, etc., etc.

The cutting table at Coolidge.

• Got to hang out in the projection booth at Coolidge Corner Theatre, and even climbed on the outside of the building to reach the upper booth.  This was all done for a piece on film projection versus digital.  It was the first story I actually enjoyed working on, and inspiration from that experience fueled me through another nine months of school.
• Won my Oscars pool, beating Taylor by one category.
• Spent a party sitting on a piano bench with Amy O'Leary, plucking out Beatles tunes and singing to those basic chords.
• Ate falafel.  And cannoli.  And bagels.  And a cronut.  And ramen.  And nachos.  And far too much McDonalds (their baby cheeseburger are delicious, and everyone knows that nothing beats a McFlurry).  And tacos in a vampire dungeon that offered pop rock cotton candy with the check.
• Made challah.
• Communed with my spirit sister, Isabella Stewart Gardner, at her wonderful museum.  
• Said goodbye to my first car, and to my treasured Seve vs. Evan sticker on it's back window.
• Watched fireworks over the Charles River and listened to Keith Lockhart conduct the Boston Pops. Subsequently got caught in a wall of water while masses fled from the rainstorm that directly followed the firework display.
• Hiked the "mountains" in New Hampshire.  I mean, they were cute and all, but mountains?  Kind of a stretch.
• Taught journalism to a bunch of high schoolers, and remembered how much I enjoy teaching.  Even when the kids are little turds, as they always are.  This also helped me find an ideal schedule of morning teaching, afternoon writing/adventure.  
• Kayaked down the Charles River.
• Went to two killer concerts. Kishi Bashi, who put on a high energy show full of dancing and awesomeness.  And Queens of the Stone Age, where I was about ten feet away from Josh Homme and I died and fainted and head-banged to my little heart's content.
• Wrote film reviews for the Daily Free Press.  This was the best job I've ever had, and the only one that never bored me.
• Spent a week as a beach bum.  I didn't really understand the appeal of New England until I sat in the softest sand near warm blue water.

Wingaersheek Beach

• Had some lovely visitors (Lauren! Leo! Shannon and Lori!) and spent time with lovely locals.  The friend scene in Boston was a slow boil.  My first few months were lonely.  By the end I had a whole slew of people that I cherish, and who I severely miss.  You can say a lot of things about Boston, but you can't say that there's a dearth of interesting people.  Those I were lucky enough to associate with differed in age, vocation, interests, but they were all absolutely scintillating.  I was constantly learning new things, and I'm grateful for the tribe I found.

2014 was a year of growth.  And with all growing pains, it stretched me in uncomfortable ways, ways that made me weep at the sudden spurts of advancement forced on me.  I was dragged into a sense of self, and came out the other side sadder, wiser, and a whole lot more sure of myself.  This is the year I decided I don't care what other people think.  It's the year I learned what I want.  It's the year I pushed myself to my limits, striving for the best writing and work I could offer.

I hope that 2015 is the year of settling.  

Settling has such negative connotation.  You settled for a significant other that didn't challenge you.  You settle for the job that sounds easier.  To be settled is to be set in ways, to be boring.  To be settled is to lose momentum and sink into the earth.

But for this moment in life, nothing sounds more appealing than being settled.  Taylor and I just moved to Seattle, a place and community that's comfortable and familiar and full of potential longevity.  I want to find a job that lasts more than a year, where I can join a united force working towards a greater goal.  I want unpack my books and scatter them around an apartment, somewhere they can nestle into, where dust has time to gather on their spines.  I want furniture that sits long enough to leave divots in the carpet.  I want to befriend others without a ticking clock on our association.  I want to plant my feet into the ground and sprout roots, to start building something that can last.

I want to wriggle around in 2015, to become entrenched in the life of Cat McCarrey.  I'm OK with settling in for a while.  It's time for me to breath.  To stand straighter.  To see what life looks like beyond the grad school blinders, and what those new skills will create.

* I highly recommend that viewing experience—it's really the only way to see something as cringeworthy as the Hill Cumorah pageant.  

Take Note

Being the nostalgia slave that I am—and trust me, with my pack rat ways and my love of anything tinged with melancholic atmosphere, I am a slave to the nostalgia—I sometimes enjoy going back through past notebooks.  During college, I would use the back pages of my notebooks to scribble less-than-stellar poetry/lyrics, angsty paragraphs about the state of my relationships at the time, and quick rants about my classes.  Today, in lieu of a freshly-written post, I present a sampling of notebook scribbles.  These date between January and April 2011.  This was a tumultuous time.  It was my last on-campus semester of college, an experience I was ready to leave behind.  I officially broke up with the boy my world revolved around.  I started dating the man I would marry.  

There was a lot going on.

Some of these quick writings are strangely prescient now.  It's also odd to look back and see that even though I have completely changed, at the core my self, my views, and my experience remains the same.  

I was so organized back in the day.
Now I use smaller, soft-backed books.
When I take notes at all.  Heh.

CLIP ONE: ANGST.  SUSPECTED DATE - JANUARY/FEBRUARY.

I am in a dark hole with dirt walls.  There is a hint of sunshine above, but I can't be sure.  All I know is that I want to get out of the hole.  I start climbing the walls, grabbing fistfuls of earth and digging platforms, but instead of elevating me further it's burying me.  My throat is closing, filling up with mud and gravel, and yet I'm still scrabbling away at the walls, desperate for some breath of air.

CLIP TWO: FRUSTRATION IN POETIC FORM.  SUSPECTED DATE - MARCH.

He loves to play the martyr,

He loves to play the fool,

He loves to play the one that was abandoned, it's his rule.

He loves to play the slighted, 

The one destined to lose,

The one....

CLIP THREE: PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS.  SUSPECTED DATE - LATE JANUARY, PROBABLY THE 26th.

In one of my education classes this morning, we had a topical writing essay.  The front of the class is littered with a heady array of composition books—gray, red, blue, marbled covers—each with a topic printed in Sharpie on the corner.  I grabbed "TV" and scribbled away, waxing poetic about Bryan Fuller, Aaron Sorkin, and J.J. Abrams.

The trouble came when we exchanged books and responded to others.  I was cornered by the girl I secretly refer to as "my nemesis."  That girl who has to raise her hand and comment on everything, whether she is qualified to voice an opinion or not.  The girl who spent the first five minutes of class quoting racist anti-Obama bumper stickers and dismissing the State of the Union as drivel.  The girl who, after we responded to each other's writing, turned to me and smugly commented on how interesting it was that she chose reading and I chose TV, clearly implying that her choice made her intellectually superior.  The girl who, after reading my ode to worthwhile TV, dismissed my arguments and points for quality TV shows and stated that she didn't like TV, that it "rots your brain," and as such should be condemned.

I just love people who live in a box and refuse to learn from others, don't you?

See, it just frustrated me that she so carelessly tossed aside television, because I think that certain shows can be incredibly stimulating, that some can raise intellectual debate and foster learning.  And I don't like that some snot-faced brown-noser can waltz in and claim that her voracious reading of Jane Austen and fantasy makes her more intelligent than my watching "Dead Like Me" and "The West Wing."  Because that is wrong.  It's false.

CLIP FOUR: I SHOULD LISTEN TO MYSELF.  DATED 4-24-11, MY 22nd BIRTHDAY.

Here's why I never would have made a good journalist—I want people to like me.  That's what attracted me to the field.  Meeting interesting people, talking, it all sounds great.  Except for the part about asking questions.  I'm too cautious to be curious.  Shame, really.

Also—I suspect I am like Chuck Klosterman.  My fiction is meticulous, labored, and overly self-conscious.  Observation is my medium, and I should embrace it.

Desperate Times

My last semester of grad school starts two weeks from today.

Image by Jillian Fleck, found here

This is terrifying.

I had a month-long break between my last two semesters, a blissful December-January hybrid where it was too cold to live, so I coped by roadtripping to DC, where the temperature was slightly less punishing.  The time in Boston during the break was spent wrapped in a several-blanket burrito, watching movies and trying to move as little as possible, curled on the couch while cold air seeped through the might-as-well-not-exist-for-all-the-good-they-do-protecting-against-the-elements windows.  

One thing notably missing from that list of activities?  Writing.

When I returned to school after a month-long hiatus, muscles that could churn out interviews and articles in one day had atrophied.  The thought of pitching story ideas made me freeze.  During the night, I would fitfully toss and stare at the ceiling, mentally listing all my assignments and all the reasons I was completely incapable of doing them.  Eventually the typing fingers stretched out a little, but it was still a tumultuous adjustment from my bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first semester, where I was so eager to write and read and think and do something that wasn't teaching.

At the start of this summer break, I had grand plans for all the writing I would do, the projects that would be completed and the headway that would be made with my writerly aspirations.  And where did this lead to, at this moment, two weeks before I head back into the abyss?

Yep.  I've written nothing.  

Just look at that selection!

In my defense, Amazon Prime has both Orphan Black and a new partnership with HBO, so prestige TV is at my fingertips.

I need to shock my system into writing again.  So I'm making this blog my two week boot camp.  Every day. Some writing. Maybe I'll dig through all those drafts that never got published.  Maybe I'll finally reveal the anxiously-awaited list of my spirit animals (spoiler--most if not all are cartoons of humans). Maybe it will get all surreal with stream of consciousness up in here.  And hopefully in two weeks I'll remember how this stuff gets done.

The Fickle Edge of Female Friendships

MacKenzie grabbed my arm and dragged me to her parent’s bathroom, where she began vigorously digging through her mother’s makeup bag. I was seven, a worldly few months older than Kenzie’s six-year-old self. We were having a carefully-arranged playdate, a regular occurrence set up by loving mothers. Kenzie’s younger neighbor was there. I immediately took her as a friend, full of the blind assumption of childhood.

Kenzie held up a tube of lipstick in victory. Solemnly, she turned to us and laid down the new law. We had to wear the lipstick. Otherwise we wouldn’t be in the club.

This was my nightmare.

I had already banned my mother from using any beauty products on me—no hairsprays, nothing. They felt gross, with their slimy stickiness and nasty smells. And yet here was a friend, telling me I couldn’t be included unless I played by her rules. I took the lipstick and tried, inexpertly smearing bright red across my top lip. I hated it. It wasn’t me. It felt wrong. I wiped it off on her mother’s towel, leaving a bright gash across the cottony surface. Kenzie and the neighborhood girl skipped away. Their fluorescent mouths widened with laughter. I walked home. The walk was long and uphill, as these things are.

***

It was my first experience with female exclusion, and definitely not my last. Soon the world of female friendships revealed itself as a treacherous battlefield, a shifting sea of changing alliances and unspoken rules I was always breaking.

But who to blame? Myself—which I did often? The other girls—which I also did, with bitterness and hatred? Or is there something else, something more nefarious and far-reaching?

I propose that conditioning is to blame. Girls are bombarded from birth with messages about not only our body, but how we are supposed to act. Cartoons transmit messages of women as ditzy blonds and comic-relief characters, the commercial breaks saturate us with images of popularity in the form of material possessions over personality, and even childhood movies depict untouchable princesses that only exist within the sphere of romantic relationships. Is it any wonder girls don’t know how to navigate friendships? All their cultural ingestion, from programming to advertising campaigns, is poisoning the waters of female camaraderie.

This is what Jean Kilbourne, creator of the lecture series “Killing us Softly,” calls a “‘toxic cultural environment’—an environment that surrounds us with unhealthy images and sacrifices our health and our sense of well-being for the sake of profit.” In her presentation, she presents images of the female in advertising, noting that the form promotes unrealistic standards of beauty. When those bodes are all a young girl sees in advertising, she can interpret them as the correct appearance, and the correctly subservient and objectified behavior. Kilbourne continues to describe this method of advertising, saying that “women learn from a very early age that we must spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and above all money striving to achieve this look, and feeling ashamed and guilty when we fail. And failure is inevitable because the ideal is based on absolute flawlessness.”

So we have this precedence and predilection for self-dissatisfaction. The shame and guilt Kilbourne discusses is a key proponent of the problem. We are taught to immediately shift blame to ourselves. Things are never the fault of the ad creators, or of the bullies who demand more from our appearance. Their criticisms are completely internalized, consumed and morphed into a mantra of “never good enough,” dragging women further down towards despair and depression. Even the greatest accomplishments are brushed aside because every aspect in life is not radiant perfection.

With the individual demanding such an unattainable reality for themselves, the natural progression is to take that need for perfection and scrutinize it outwards. In that sense, other women become a means of comparison, rather than a potential source of friendship and support. Possible friends are held to the same unflinching standard we hold ourselves to. They must also be beautiful, talented, and poised. But here comes the double edged sword—they are not allowed to be more so than we are. Their achievements prompt reflection about our own flaws and weaknesses, contributing to the cycle of self-hatred.

This results in a nasty competition with other women. Girls are trained to see what should be friends as enemies, constantly measuring themselves against this girl’s perfect nose, or that girl’s flat abs, or the fact that Suzie got first place in the Spelling Bee.

The media has accepted this phenomenon as fact. The cattiness of women is so universal that advertising makes it a basis for campaigns. The hamburger joint Wendy’s introduced their new salads by having two women fight over one, with one stealing the salad because its high quality suited her better than her co-worker. The latest ad campaign for Cascade dishwasher detergent is completely built around the idea that women resort to passive aggressive digs at each other, even within friendships. It features two women standing at a dishwasher. One loads, and the other says (with an overly practiced false grin), “Marjorie, I can’t stand you! You’re too perfect. Even the inside of your dishwasher sparkles.” This dissolves into petty sniping that requires a Kitchen Counselor to step in and fix their “dirty fighting” with the cleansing power of Cascade.

In-fighting and comparisons happen so early that as girls mature, their ability to form social relationships with other women through adulthood is stunted. There is now a pervasive mistrust of others. It’s immediately assumed that women judge each other from first encounter. Forming friendships becomes too much of a risk to personal health and safety.

One method many women form to cope with this is through quickly and brutally rejecting other women. This serves as protection from vulnerability. It can also be used in adolescence to impress another group of girls, as it shows an exertion of power and confidence that may or may not exist.  Psychological scientist Joyce F. Benenson calls this “preemptive social exclusion.” In her study “Mean Girls and Queen Bees,” Benenson says that “preemptive social exclusion appears to be a valuable strategy for women because it allows them to protect their relationships by keeping an outsider at bay.” In such a way, women protect their social standing with pre-existing friends, they protect their romantic relationships from potential threats, and they keep themselves at the top of a precarious tower of worth, a tower built on comparison to others rather than self-satisfaction.

With such a wealth of pre-conditioning teaching women to mistrust other women and to base self-worth on material goods and outward appearance, moving beyond that to make genuine friendships can be a daunting task. In a 2011 article for Examiner.com, author Micah Tutay encourages personal responsibility as the perfect weapon to strike against insidious messages in advertising. She states, “even if we don't believe we can have an impact in changing society as a whole, we can be sure that we do have the ability to change how much we let it influence our relationships, our sexuality, our spending habits, and so on. It is up to each of us to take back our dignity and self respect."

Taking back that dignity is difficult. It requires a conscious over-riding of basic instincts that have built up over time, layer over protective layer hardening into a tense shell of deflection and wariness. But how sweet are the rewards! Fighting against the system will send a message to the agencies responsible for the conditioning ads. It will show that women can demand respect, and will not accept their down-sizing of the strength of female relationships. But more importantly, it can create a thriving community where the first instinct is love, not evaluation.

Out of the Mouth of Swanson

Ron Swanson.  The ultimate wise man.

Right now, I'm doing a piss-poor job of living by this advice.  I've upped this ante by 100 percent, splitting my time and concentration between four things (well, technically seven if you count each individual class).

I might have made some errors in judgment this semester.

Conceived by Mommybloggers

This is a quick check-in, to make sure that this still works.  And also because I'm having thoughts, and it's either a really long Facebook statues (UGH) or a blog, and this setting works much better.

I have a ton of big projects and articles coming up and, as I always do in times of stress, I've been procrastinating by obsessively reading blogs that I would normally never read.  Like, Stay At Home Mommy blogs.  Blogs of women who have nothing in common with me, and whose opinions and views I do not always agree with.  I mean, I cherish motherhood.  The thought of having a child of my own is slowly becoming a reality to me, and it's a notion that does not fill my soul with dread.  In fact, it's generally a quite nice notion, as babies have suddenly started looking soft and squishy and good-smelling.  (Sidenote- IknowIknow, that's not all the time, but don't burst my bubble now!  I worked so hard for that illusion).

But.  Back to the point.

Which is--I have an awfully good life.  I'm living the relatively low-stakes life of a student.  I'm doing that and making (a very, very little) money, working at jobs that I love and which are opening all kinds of avenues for me.  Seriously.  Check out the people I'm working for and things I'm working on.  And on top of all that, I get to write non-stop, I get to interview people on things I'm passionate about, I get to manipulate words and come to comfortable terms with my writing voice, and I get to come home to a small suburban apartment and a husband who's kicking trash and taking names as a family therapist.  That in itself is pretty dang cool.

So even though my heart still yearns for West Coast life, I've managed to find some good people, and more importantly, some good food. I consider myself awfully lucky that I get to stretch my writing muscles, and that I have this blessedly uninterrupted time to develop my talents and make them work for me.  I've only been here for roughly six months, and my Seattle self is already a distant memory.  Let's not even discuss my Provo self ( who? what? selfish/insecure/lazy-much?).  I'm proud of the person this place has made me.  I'm proud of the family Taylor and I have created.   I'm proud of my university, and how ridiculously supportive and wonderful it is. And I'm proud that I can say that we did it, that we are here and living in the city of our dreams.

This is all to say--I'm doing just fine.  I realized my good fortune.  And sometimes, that's a needed realization.

Now back to writing.  I have two articles due in the next sixteen hours.  It's all just part of the adventure.

Right.  Write.  I'm on it.

Return and Report

Part the First: Reflection

Well, 2013 has been a crap-bucket of a year.

Or so I thought when I initially sat down to write this, my yearly recap.*

Then I realized how much the extreme, soul-crushing suckitude of the past four months has colored my views.  Just because the latter third of the year drained me of all optimism and hope doesn't mean that good ol' 2013 has been a total wash.  In fact, it was a magical year in many ways.

Because this

In 2012, I fell in love with Seattle.  In 2013, Seattle became my home—a sad fact I didn't fully understand until I left it behind for the rocky coldness of the East Coast.  Somewhere along the road, despite the gray skies and the truly horrific traffic, Seattle snuck into my heart and settled down.  It packed up Thai food, Alki beach, the lighthouse at Discovery Park, the house in Queen Anne, the apartment by Silver Platters, the car full of educators starting and stopping down the 90 blasting music along the way.  It smuggled in memories of barbecues on the patio, where my fingers picked charred lamb off the cutting board, where I drank ginger beer and feasted on the best damn guacamole I've ever had.  Thoughts of Menchie's runs and reading on sunny days by Green Lake.  The sunsets—sweet mercy, the sunsets!—viewed from rocky beaches or Pike Place or the top of Cougar Mountain as I finished work and headed out to carpool.

Gorgeous view above the clouds

One of the best parts of having a place you love is sharing it with others, and Taylor and I got to share Seattle with many people this year (Paige, Ryan, James, Jihad, Sarah, Leo, my parents, Lauren).  We had the tour down pat—dinner at Orrapin on Queen Anne or Bengal Tiger down the street from our apartment.  Desserts from Menchie's, Trophy Cupcakes, Top Pot, or one of the many, many incredible bakeries.  One day had to be spent at Pike Place, going to Golden Age Collectables and wandering through secondhand bookstores.  Stopping for soda at the Pear Delicatessen.  If the lines weren't too long, maybe grabbing some Piroshky Piroshky pastries,  Beecher's mac 'n cheese, or the meatball sub at the Pasta Bar (a personal favorite).  Sometimes I would take people to wander around Capitol Hill, stepping into Eliott Bay Book Company or any of the shops on Broadway.  Often, I'd talk someone into visiting my happy place at the EMP and then checking out Seattle Center.  At some point, Taylor would take visitors on a driving loop on Queen Anne, where we'd point out sites from Seattle history and our own personal backstories.

Basically, the first two-thirds of this year were spent soaking up Seattle.  Taylor worked hard to finish school, graduating with his Masters.  I worked hard to save up money for the move to Boston, and despite some bratty kids I mostly enjoyed teaching history and journalism and mythology, going on some great field trips (NCI!) and interacting with six-year-olds for the first time at summer camp.

The North Cascades

That was before we packed up everything and headed out to Boston.  The road trip back was amazing.  In Montana I finally learned the truth of the phrase "purple mountain majesty."  I felt a sacred peace in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  I drove through the Badlands in a lightening storm and was completely alive.  Taylor and I braved the staid cornfields of Iowa to visit Scholte, and in Chicago we met with rain and blues and Gary and Giordano's.  We cozied up in an Eerie bed and breakfast, feeling nervous about the move for the first time and trying desperately to lose ourselves in the beauty of a small town.

And then came Boston.  And grad school.  While we've enjoyed exploring this city, exploring revolutionary history and cemeteries packed with my literary heroes, and while I have loved going to classes and constantly writing and the people I've met through articles and stories, I can't quite talk about Boston without bitterness in my voice.  Because I miss the happiness I left behind.

But that's OK.  Because now, on to 2014.  The year of endurance.

This is the year I put my head down and work.  Where I take Boston and feast on all it offers me.  And then next year, once I have sucked out all the education and experiences possible, I can leave this withered husk behind me and move on to real life.

*Previous recaps: 2012, 2011, 2010

Part the Second: Reporting

Last year, I set a few goals.  Here's how they went.

1. Get published.

Well, not so much.  Not officially.  BUT!  This year I started the television review site Lightbox Heroes with dear friends Mary and Rosemary.  It has been the single most beneficial thing I could have done for my writing, and it is several steps closer to what I want to be doing.  I feel pretty good about this one.

2. Get into grad school.

Done.  Masters of Journalism at Boston University, scheduled to be finished January 2015.

3. Stop eating food in the faculty room.

Ha. That's cute.

4. Keep track of the media I consumed.  Consume more media.

Done and done, and reported below.  While I don't know for certain that I consumed more media than last year, it certainly felt like I did.  And I was much more conscious of actively working to watch more movies and read more books.

One huge milestone I overcame was being comfortable with mass media consumption.  For many people, these types of activities are methods for release or ways to laze about, and so I would always be self-conscious about how frequently I would partake in these activities.  But considering that this is what I want to do—write about pop culture—this is precisely what I should be doing with my time.  So this year was a time for throwing off the shackles of what other people thought and growing my portfolio of expertise.  Making up for lost time, if you will.

5. Write reviews for every book I read.

Another negative.  But I recorded all the books I read, and I am working on slowly making up for lost time.  Writing for Lightbox Heroes showed me how easy it can be to write reviews, I just have to do them immediately and not let them pile up.  So with that in mind, I should be much more reliable this year.

Now without further ado, the media stats. 

MOVIES

-Jurassic Park                                                          -Justice League: Doom

-Spiderman                                                              -The Untouchables

-Django Unchained                                                  -The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

-Inglourious Basterds                                                -Escape From Alcatraz

-Two Mules for Sister Sara                                       -Pale Rider

-National Geographic Explorer: 25 Years                    -The Fountain

-Good Will Hunting                                                   -Naked Gun 2 1/2 

-Objectified                                                              -T2

-Serenity                                                                  -Safety Not Guaranteed

-Raising Arizona                                                       -Last of the Mohicans

-The Departed                                                          -The Godfather 2

-Side by Side                                                            -Batman Beyond: The Return of the Joker

-Capote                                                                    -Into the Wild

-Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037          -Zero Dark Thirty

-Reality Bites                                                            -Once

-NFFTY Opening Night                                            -Slacker

-Legends of the Fall                                                  -V for Vendetta

-Ironman 3                                                               -The Great Gatsby

-Watchmen                                                               -Bachelorette

-Willow                                                                    -Reservoir Dogs

-Akira                                                                      -Psycho

-The Town                                                                -Snatch

-Mystery Men                                                           -The Iceman Tapes

-Clerks                                                                     -Training Day

-Ronin                                                                       -Ninja Scroll

-Pitch Perfect                                                            -13 Assassins

-James and the Giant Peach                                       -Let it Be

-The Bling Ring                                                         -Chinatown

-Paranorman                                                             -Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

-Chasing Amy                                                           -Oldboy

-Pacific Rim                                                              -Butter

-Goldfinger                                                                -Johnny Carson: King of Late Night

-The Way Way Back                                                 -Cloud Atlas

-The Breakfast Club                                                   -Shaolin Soccer

-Rifftrax: Titanic                                                         -Wristcutters

-Hang 'Em High                                                          -SLC Punk

-Paranoid: Black Sabbath                                            -Rifftrax: Starship Troopers

-The World's End                                                       -The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

-Hero                                                                         -The Elephant Man

-Dr. Strangelove                                                         -East of Eden

-Who Framed Roger Rabbit                                         -The Other F Word

-Before Sunrise                                                           -Before Sunset

-In a World                                                                 -Tombstone

-My Kid Could Paint That                                           -Escape From Tomorrow

-Hocus Pocus                                                             -Boondock Saints

-Dances With Wolves                                                 -Muscle Shoals

-Shattered Glass                                                         -Baraka

-Hitchcock                                                                 -Se7en

-Inside Llewyn Davis                                                  -Absence of Malice

-No Country for Old Men                                           -Night of the Living Dead

-Rifftrax: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians               -Star Trek: First Contact

-The Master                                                              -Justice League: Flashpoint Paradox

-A Brady Bunch Movie                                              -White House Down

-The Patriot                                                               -Fargo

-Brave                                                                       -Brick

TOTAL: 110

Favorite Discoveries: The Fountain. The Departed. Snatch. Paranorman. The World's End. The Elephant Man. Dr. Strangelove.

Most Uncomfortable Movies: Oldboy. The Master. Bachelorette. Escape from Tomorrow.

Movies That Made Me Angry: Watchmen. Pacific Rim.

Movies Whose Popularity Flummoxed Me: Ronin. The Boondock Saints.

Movies That Were An Unexpected Delight: 13 Assassins. White House Down. Justice League: Flashpoint Paradox.

Clint Eastwood Movies: Escape From Alcatraz. Pale Rider. Two Mules for Sister Sara. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Hang 'Em High.

BOOKS

-Moon Over Manifest                                               -Y the Last Man: Girl on Girl
-Y the Last Man: Paper Dolls                                    -Y the Last Man: Kimono Dragons
-Y the Last Man: Motherland                                    -Y the Last Man: Whys and Wherefores
-Perks of Being a Wallflower                                     -That Summer
-Confessions of a Serial Kisser                                   -The Running Diaries
-Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway                     -Chew: Flambe
-Astonishing X-men: Dangerous                                 -Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale
-I,Q: Independence Hall                                            -One Crazy Summer
-Watchmen                                                               -Anna Karenina
-The Road                                                                -A Gathering of Days
-The Paris Wife                                                        -A Girl of the Limberlost
-Think Tank, Vol. 1                                                  -Good Omens
-Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore                         -Habibi
-Me, the Missing, and the Dead                                 -Court of Owls
-East of Eden                                                            -1602
-Cloud Atlas                                                             -Island in the Sea of Time
-Covering America                                                    -American Vampire, Vol. 5
-Gods Like Us                                                          -Z: a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
-Attachments                                                            -Eleanor and Park
-Black Hole                                                              -Wanted
-Relish                                                                      -Court of Owls (2nd time)
-The Game of Thrones                                              -The Black Mirror
-A Clash of Kings                                                      -Ex Machina: the First Hundred Days
-Ex Machina: Tag                                                      -Ex Machina: Fact v. Fiction
-Ex Machina: March to War                                       -Ex Machina: Smoke Smoke
-Ex Machina: Power Down                                        -All-Star Superman
-Joker: Death in the Family                                        -A Storm of Swords
-Hawkeye 1                                                               -Fangirl
-Such a Pretty Fat                                                      -The Elements of Journalism

TOTAL: 58

New Favorite Books: Perks of Being a Wallflower.  Anna Karenina.  East of Eden.

What I'd Recommend: The Paris Wife.  Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.  Attachments.  Good Omens.  The Y the Last Man series.  Relish.

Favorite Discovery: Rainbow Rowell, the author of Attachments, Eleanor and Park, and Fangirl.

Biggest Surprise: How addicting the Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) books are.

TELEVISION

Completed series watched in entirety: 

-Bunheads                                                                 -Firefly
-Stephen Fry in America                                             -Terriers
-Breaking Bad                                                            -30 Rock
-Welcome to the Family**

Ongoing series watched faithfully:
-Mad Men                                                                  -Parks and Recreation
-Community                                                              -Nashville
-Sleepy Hollow**                                                        -Brooklyn Nine-Nine**
-The Crazy Ones**                                                     -Dracula**
-The Goldbergs**                                                       -The Millers**
-Reign**                                                                     -Arrested Development

Series with a significant portion of episodes watched:
-Buffy the Vampire Slayer                                           -Friday Night Lights
-Don't Trust the B in Apt. 23                                       -The Carrie Diaries
-The IT Crowd                                                           -It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
-Futurama                                                                   -Saturday Night Live
-The Walking Dead                                                     -Felicity
-How I Met Your Mother                                            -Robot Chicken
-Full Metal Alchemist                                                   -Greg the Bunny
-The Following                                                            -Batman Beyond
-Fringe                                                                        -The Vicar of Dibley
-Gossip Girl                                                                -The Michael J. Fox Show
-Game of Thrones                                                       -Avatar: the Last Airbender

Series with one or two episodes watched:
-Ben and Kate                                                             -Hannibal
-Workaholics                                                               -MythQuest
-The Black Donnelly's                                                  -Orange is the New Black
-Freaks and Geeks                                                       -Boy Meets World
-The Simpsons

**signifies a show watched for Lightbox Heroes 

Ready, Set, BREAK

And just like that, as sure as the sun rises over the east and sets in the golden melted pools of western skies, I am done.  

One semester of grad school annihilated, two more to go.

Now on to one month of blessed rest.

Truth be told, I'm pretty proud of how this last semester passed.  Yes, moving here has been hard, and yes, I still had more annoying student habits than I wanted, but for the most part I was able to defeat the worst of my under-achieving demons.  True, my nasty procrastination habit is not completely gone. But I did kick it into submission about eighty percent of the time (the less said about that other twenty percent, the better).  Most importantly, I was able to finish finals with less stress and in a more timely fashion than ever before.  No last minute cramming for me this semester!  As an undergrad, I would usually frantically write my papers the morning they were due, finishing them with fifteen minutes to run to campus, print, and hand them in.  I am not lying when I say I was a lazy student.

So this is a pretty big deal.

This semester, every paper was finished at least by the night before class, and sometimes with a wider margin than that.  Let's check the timer and see how much time I granted myself, shall we?

Principles and Techniques of Journalism: 14.5 hours

Journalism Research: 18 hours

Arts Criticism: 29.5 hours

Media Law and Ethics: 66 hours

Might not seem like much, but to me that's solid progress.  Actual growth.  So eat that, all those people who stood up to violence or proved the Higgs boson particle or what have you.  I decreased my procrastination!  Victory is mine!

And now I can curl up and spend my break doing all those things I've wanted to do for weeks but have been delaying in favor of doing my work.  So over the next month, I'll be....

Reading these books:

Watching these TV shows:

And these movies:

And writing more on here (shameless plugging):

LIGHTBOX HEROES, a blog dedicated to reviewing new network TV shows.
Check us out at: lightboxheroes.weebly.com

I have a new project coming up.  Stay tuned.

And last but not least, doing LOTS of this:

Garfield is my spirit animal

Have a wonderful holiday season, dear world.  Enjoy the rest of this year.  I know I will.

More than a Feeling

When Taylor and I were preparing to come to Boston, it was with the giddy excitement of children waiting for Christmas.  Look at all those brick buildings!  Look at how palpable the history is!  Look at the leaves, the seasons, the air, that crisp East Coast feeling we've created from books and songs and movies!

When we got to Boston, that blown-glass image shattered fairly quickly.  The apartment full of light and hope wasn't ready for us when we got there, and instead we were greeted with paint cans and drop cloths and an infestation of crickets.  We slept on an air mattress, dying in the heat, lost and confused in a city that was much further from our dream than we had realized.

That was two months ago, and while we've gotten our bearings a little, it's come at a cost.  The autumnal spirit here is as beautiful as we imagined, but we can't enjoy it.  School started quickly and fiercely, and my life has become a long line of T rides to the COM building and back to the little house in the suburbs, removed from the bustling, shining city of promise.  Taylor's life I can only imagine, after spending a month in a ridiculously oppressive work environment, and now returned to long, empty days in a long, empty apartment.

There are days where I love Boston.  Where I look at my "Why I Like it Here" list and feel calm, remembering the large rocks at my T station, the smushed, Irish-looking faces of Southies on the street, the bookstores and cobblestones and abundance of graveyards Downtown and in Cambridge, the trees that create tunnels of orange and red.

But far more often are the days when I think I won't ever stop hating myself for bringing us here.

Education is a terribly selfish thing.  When I was doing my undergrad, I used my selfishness like a badge of honor.  I would look at all those poor little engaged girls I knew with pity.  They were squandering a prime opportunity in their life. When else would you have an excuse to just be concerned with yourself?  When else can a person be wholly self-absorbed in their own learning and growth?

When I decided to go back to school, it was after I'd gotten married and had halfway tried on a career for size.  It seemed like the time to do this.  I had always wanted a masters, I felt like I had to give this writing thing a try, and it was now or never.  Taylor was more supportive than I could imagine, pushing me to make this decision for me and for me alone, assuring me that he would follow me anywhere and that our family would flourish wherever I chose to go.

I don't think he knew what that was implying.  I don't think either of us did.

He couldn't have seen the gut-wrenching loneliness that would occur.  While we knew moving was hard--the first time we moved to Seattle almost destroyed us--I think we thought we had grown.  We had each other now.  We knew how to work as a team.  We had qualifications and life would happen quickly.   Ha.  How naive.

Instead, I found myself regressing into the selfishness of schooling.  This grad school experience was a chance to redeem myself as a student.  It was a chance to finally push myself, to stop being lazy and see what happens when I exhaust all my potential.  Even though I'm studenting better than ever, the extreme soul-crushing guilt that I inflict upon myself when I don't live up to the impossible standard I'm aiming for is incredibly destructive.  It leads to a weariness and disappointment I couldn't have foreseen. And while I'm concentrating on how to school better, I can't ignore the fact that the house is in disarray, that I'm cooking dinner less, that I'm not being as caring and tender with Taylor's emotional needs.

Which makes me feel even worse.  Thinking about what I've done to Taylor.  I can't help but think about what life would be like if we stayed in Seattle.  Seattle, the gloomy, wonderful jewel of a city that we idiotically couldn't get away from fast enough.  If we were in Seattle right now, I would be teaching.  And I would probably be loving it.  If we were in Seattle, Taylor would have a job.  He'd be able to practice, he'd have spent the past two months making money and ticking off licensure hours, each week coming closer to the dream he's harbored.

Instead, I took us away from financial and job security, and dragged us across the country, to a place that might be breaking us.  That's a whole ton of guilt to be living with.  The dream of Boston has shattered, and now I'm wondering how to make the pieces fit together again.

My Kind of Valentine

Behold, the fruits of my morning's labors:

To you, dear blog world, with all the sincere love I can muster.

Over the Whelm

While carpooling to work today, I became embroiled in one of those retrospective conversations.  The topic on today's menu?  College.  As my carpooling compatriot and I swapped stories from the underbelly of our undergraduate years, told stories of nightmare professors and all-nighters, something happened.  My heart gained weight, became a grenade with the pin half-pulled, ready to either explode or lie dormant.

I'm pretty sure this image is from Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, the first book in the series.

The wheels are in motion for me to go to grad school.  Applications are in order or almost in order. I've detached from Seattle and allowed myself to experience the sweet taste of wanderlust, my feet and possessions becoming eager to see a new location.  I've made my intentions clear at work, gently side-stepping possible/likely job advancements.  And I'm ready.  I'm ready to push my life further.

But then.  The memories of being a student.  The apathetic lethargy that came with my university experience. The feelings of being drained, being frustrated, being uninspired.  One of the things that encouraged me to return to school was a recent burst of inspiration, a desire to investigate things, to create things.  I'm starting to worry that school will once again sap me of passion.

So yeah.  Tl;dr (which means too long; didn't read for all you non-Reddit initiated folk)(I learned Reddit abbreviations recently and I'm really excited about it, that's all)(no judgement)?  Blah blah blah nervous fear blah.

Luckily I've found solace by looking at pictures of deserts, listening to this ad nauseum, and watching a whole ton of this: