I'm Alive: A Quick Update and My First Published Non-Sciency Article

Hey everyone, I know it has been a long silence here; much going on and much to write about. After some misadventures that have me laying low for medical care I seem to have ample time on my hands to catch up with the blogging. I'll start out by posting an article that was published by my friends over at Joshua Tree Skin Care who are now sponsoring my surf adventures! You can check them out at JTreeLife.com

Take three cars, two dogs, six paddleboards, twelve people, one seven months pregnant, mix them together and turn them out at the mouth of a Cayman infested river on a remote beach on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it actually turned out to be a pretty awesome weekend and honestly pretty standard fare for my time down here. Six months ago when I set out on this trip fresh out of my second college degree with nothing but the contents of my 70 L hiking pack, a vague idea of the general location of the rural surf town I was looking for and hopes of catching a few waves, I made a promise to myself that I would not say ´No´ to any opportunity that crossed my path unless it was clearly going to result in loss of life, limb, or general physical or mental health: no small goal for someone coming from the well planned, straight and narrow that has often been my life.

From the moment I touched down in San Jose the unexpected has become the norm. A routine trip from the airport to the bus station became a two day tour of wilds of Costa Rica after some poor directions landed me lost in the middle of the red-light district and too late to make my bus. A local man in town visiting his mother happened to find me and, stressing the fact that a small white girl with broken spanish could not stay there overnight, invited me to stay with his family and visit some properties he was buying. Over the next 48 hours I visited my first open air butcher shop, met several CIA agents, swam in a volcanic river, toured a teak mill, fished for tilapia, dove off a 25-foot cliff with kids from the local village, picked mango, starfruit, and pipa straight from the trees, and politely turned down my host’s marriage proposal before catching the bus to the coast.

 I arrived in Santa Teresa six hours, two buses and one ferry later to discover an incredible, rough and tumble surf village full of monkeys, iguanas, and people from around the world chasing waves. In true Costa Rican form, my first week´s simple mission to find a surfboard ended up being an adventure that set the stage for months to come. Although I didn't know it at the time, I managed to meet my roommate, find an apartment, and stumble up the woman who would eventually end up employing me as a surf instructor and the surfboard shaper who would take me on as an apprentice at his shop. A day that started with plans to wander around a few local surf shops found me watching the sunset from a pool at the top of the hills overlooking the ocean after a crazy motorcycle ride through the jungle. The only thing that did not happen was finding a board.

I eventually did find a board and proceeded to spend hours every day paddling, getting thrashed, and occasionally getting a glorious few seconds on a turquoise blue curl. After a few weeks of hostel life, having decided I was in no hurry to move on, my French-Canadien surfing buddy and I moved to a tiny one room place that we rented from a local guy and shared with his eight dogs. Over the next few months I started teaching surf lessons and guiding stand-up paddleboard river tours, discovered several climbable boulders along the coast, spent nights around bonfires and dancing to local bands, and convinced the local board shaper to teach me leading to an offer to stay for a year repairing boards and apprenticing at his shop.When my roommate returned to Canada, a friend of the shaper asked me to take care of his hotel while he went on a trip back to Italy. Besides a minor incident of an exploding water heater and minor burns, I got an awesome place to stay just in time for my best friend from the States to visit and spend a few days trading surf and motorcycle lessons and introducing him my new friends and favorite places.

Life here is a lot like the surfing; you might pick your wave, but after that all you can do is ride it. Around here they call it Pura Vida, which translates to ‘Pure Life’ or ‘Life is Good’. You might set out to pick up supplies in the next town over and end up jumping off a 50 foot waterfall with the taxi driver instead. A weekend out might involve falling off a paddle board into a river full of Cayman crocodiles while trying to help the 7 months pregnant woman who fell off ahead of you and then doing SUP yoga with her a quarter mile down river. A weekday might mean pushing students into waves, teaching long division, or helping a supermodel and her NFL player husband get their surfboards repaired.  Every day is an adventure and what started as a personal challenge to  my personal challenge. It is a different way of living and now that I am here I can’t imagine wanting it  any other way. What started as a personal challenge to say yes to whatever came up on my quick trip to Central America has somehow become a fresh start and a new lifestyle for me. It doesn’t get much more unexpected than that.

Not Keeping Score

I started out tonight thinking I was going to write about language and my experience living in a very multicultural town where there are more languages spoken than I could ever hope to learn. I was going to write about how it affects my life, how different it is, and so on. I've been thinking about it for a while, but now that I'm sitting here, it's not what my mind is on. It will have to wait. Tonight I've been thinking a lot about things I left behind; things I miss and miss doing. At the same time I'm aware of all of the things that I love about where I am and what I'm doing now. Part of me is wanting to go into engineer/problem solver mode and tally them all up in columns, assign numbers, maybe invent some weighted point system to determine whether I'm breaking even or not. I'm glad that this thought makes me laugh. I'm pretty sure at some point in my life that would have seemed like a sane, logical, and perfectly responsible thing to do. Now it's just a bit of self deprecating humor that makes me feel a little better when I'm starting to feel the need to fix things.So instead of categorizing the things I have, the things I had and so on and so forth, I'm going to take a few minutes to write about the things that I like. Pure and simple. Some I have now, some I'll have to wait to have again some day, some aren't things you actually have or do, they just are.

1) I like being uncomfortable. Seriously. I like being pushed beyond my comfort zone; challenged, scared. It doesn't matter if it's physical, mental, emotional. It's not always pretty, but I can honestly say the best days of my life, the ones most worth living, have been the ones on which I was scared shitless at some point. I admit that sometimes it's just for the adrenaline rush, but there's more to it than that. I like finding my limits, or more often than not finding I underestimated them. I always feel like I know myself a little better afterward and for someone with my particular issues, that's a very nice feeling.

2) I like sports. Partly this ties into the first thing I listed, but it's also about the people and the settings. I love being outdoors or even at the gym sharing something I love with other people who appreciate it. Whether it's climbing, surfing, mountain biking, running, snowboarding, or pick-up team sports I enjoy spending the time. Of course I also like sweating like a pig, getting my heart racing, and ending the day physically exhausted. I like being fit and strong. It makes me feel capable, gives me confidence, and gives me one solid thing to fall back on when other things in life are uncertain or I just need a win.

3) I like sleeping. Particularly when it's cold and or raining, and preferably with a lot of blankets. My 8 years of University and all-nighters made this a pretty obvious one. It's easy to identify things you miss. This one could easily segue into some rated R likes, but I"ll keep it to the fact that waking up next to someone can really top a good sleep off. Unless  of course it's New Years day at a frat house after a few too many drinks (I only remember making it to 3...) and your friends are pulling a prank on you, in which case waking up next someone is a good way to have a heart attack.  But you know what I meant.

4) I like lightening bugs. I don't care where I am or what my day has been like, they always make me happy. It's just a little bit of magic. (Yeah I know how it works and can write the chemical formula for the reaction, but it's still magic.) Coincidentally luciérnaga (firefly) is also my favorite Spanish word.

5) I like stripper boots. Knee high, black leather, preferably with platforms and a stiletto heel. The higher the better. And yes I can walk in them. And dance. They're also one of the few things I actually enjoy shopping for. If I'm really honest about it I kind of have a thing for shoes in general. It's my one really stereotypically feminine vice I guess. I think the stripper boots balances out the fact that almost all of the rest of them are specific to some sport or another.

6) I like dancing. With said boots or not. Alone, on stage, or out with friends. It doesn't really matter.

7) I like music. I'm not much of a musician. I played clarinet in the middle school band and that's about the extent of it. I'm not a bad singer, but I suppose that could just be my opinion. I have a tendency to go for periods without listening to anything, often when I'm struggling with something emotionally. I tend to use music to control my emotions and as a result I listen to a lot of things. You'll find everything from latin rap to James Taylor to 80s rock, Old Crow, and peruvian pan-pipes on my playlist. Mostly you will find Linkin Park. And never, ever, under any circumstances pop country. Songs about dead dogs, rusted pick up trucks, and drunk ex-boyfriends do not elicit anything but my gag reflex.

8) I like beer. I don't drink much anymore, but a good cold microbrew is a great thing. Especially if it's wheat and shared with friends after a long day on the rock wall or some other adventure.

9) I love the outdoors. I grew up on the Great Lakes and in the Rockies and have traveled all over the U.S. Now I live on the Pacific ocean in the jungles of Costa Rica. I never get tired of seeing new places outdoors. My mesa back in Golden will always have a special place in my heart though, no matter what spectacular places I visit.

10) I like teaching. I really enjoy sharing my enthusiasm for things I enjoy doing. I've taught surfing, climbing, wrestling. I've also been a tutor and while teaching pre-algebra may sound like the world's worst way to spend a day, I have to say that having a girl who started out thinking math was something she would never need and hated leave my lessons excited to show her mom how she uses formulas every day is a really great feeling.

11) I like grilling. Food should be cooked over an open flame. Period. If said food is turkey, asparagus, and sweet corn and the flame is somewhere in the vicinity of Maybee, MI, all the better. Oh, and Barbeque sauce. I really like barbeque sauce.

12) I like building things. Or fixing things. More accurately I like Jerry-rigging things from whatever pile of crap I have on hand. I also like taking things apart, but that's usually just so I can figure out how it was made so I can either make it better, or so I can steal parts for something else. On a related note I really really like tools. It's very satisfying to have the right tools for a job and incredibly irritating when I can't do a simple task myself because I don't. I'm pretty well known for trying to do it anyway with whatever I have on hand, resulting in blood and broken parts more often than not. I definitely like tools.

13) I like mud. maybe it comes from growing up in a rainy state like Michigan, but there's nothing quite like going for a run in the rain and coming back filthy. Maybe it's just the feeling of giving up on trying to be careful and stay dry and clean that I like; the permission to make a mess.

14) I like performing. Whether it's dancing, public speaking, or acting, I enjoy being on the spot in front of an audience. Usually anyway.

15) I like playing 20 questions. Maybe more accurately I like getting to know people and getting beyond the polite and mundane. I like being real and seeing people without the pretenses. I also like people who are blunt, abrasive, and borderline offensive. And dirty jokes. I guess this item could also be titled 'I don't like PC', but I'm going with the affirmative on this one. And yes there is someone out there who understands this one. Someone other than me. I swear.

16) I like tattoos. As a general thing. There are a lot of bad tattoos out there, but even a bad tattoo can be interesting. I don't have any myself, bad or good, but I'm working on that.

17) I like heights. Always have. If there's a big tree or a rock in my general vicinity I will feel a compulsion to climb it. If there is a 3000 foot sheer cliff nearby I will go stand at the edge. It's not a death wish really, it's more a sense of mortality. The only heights that scare me are then mid range ones. The ones that you would probably survive falling from, but would leave you disabled for life. So I'm not scared of heights really. It's the inability to use my body anymore that gets me.

I also like prime numbers, which seems like a good enough reason to stop at 17 to me. I could keep going but things are starting to get either too obscure or specific and some are seeming like they're repeats. That and I'm tired and ready to get some sleep before an early surf tomorrow. Did I mention I like morning surf sessions? Hopefully this was more fun to read than the table and scoring system I was considering earlier.

A Different Kind of Life

It has been a long time since I have written. Sorry about that. I am still living in Costa Rica. I've picked up a few more jobs, learned a lot, and lived a lot. I've learned that I don't have to force things or fight all of the time. It is possible for things to work out without that level of anxiety. That doesn't mean that things take care of themselves, only that I cannot hurry them along by stressing and worrying. If I am doing the work to be prepared, if I am watching and talking to people, if I am exploring actively, the opportunities show up. They don't do it on my time and they are rarely exactly what I was looking for. Sometimes they are better. Sometimes good enough. Sometimes they don't fit at all but they are a means to an end or a stop-gap. Where I run into trouble is the situations where I mentally have no flexibility in what I am looking for. Looking for perfect doesn't work. Looking for yes or no, black or white, have or have not... Those are the the things that leave me frustrated and disappointed. True to my new surfer girl life, I can think of no better metaphor than this: If you go out surfing with the image of the perfect wave, looking for that specific wave, you will never find what you are looking for. You will never get exactly that one left-hand bomb with the perfect shape, just the right speed, and the clean, glassy face held up by a light off-shore breeze. And if you are attached to the idea of riding that one wave, you will be disappointed, even if just a little, by every other wave out there. Anyone who surfs knows that a good surf day is what you make of it. You learn to ride it all, left, right, mushy, pitching, blown out, stormy, small, big, open, or closed out, because the more you can ride, the better and the more joy there is to be had on any given day.

 To get you up to speed, in the past few months since I have written I have accumulated at least 4 jobs and counting. I don't always break even, especially now that the tourism has slowed down. I teach surf lessons every chance I get. I have a talent for it apparently, or so my students say. Actually so say my employers and even some of the locals who have just watched me teaching. This is good because I love teaching. I get a lot of repeat customers too which is the best since it give me a chance to really be a part of people's surfing experience and I feel like I've really given them something of value. I also teach math lessons here. While it may not sound as exciting as spending a few hours in the surf on a beautiful beach teaching people to ride, I have to admit it feels really good to work with a girl who had decided math just wasn't for her and to suddenly have her not only excelling at it, but being excited and curious about new topics as well.

I also work at a surf shop, mostly just manning the counter, helping people pick out their new stick, waxing up rental boards, arguing about prices... (I am so not used to prices being negotiable, and I don't own the shop so quit asking me!) The owner of the shop is a talented local board shaper and for who knows what reason when I asked him if he'd teach me he agreed to show me the ropes. I've started the process doing ding repair, meaning I am learning to work with epoxy and poly foam boards, patch fiberglass and sand the repairs back into the original shape. It's dusty, messy work and there is something inherently nerve-wracking about going at someone's several hundred dollar chunk of glass covered foam with an electric sander, but I love it. I've always liked working with my hands, so it's not a bad fit for me at all. I've just started doing boards for paying customers and I have to admit I'm still a little scared when people show up to pick up their boards, and then relieved when they are happy with them. I've gotten a lot better, but I still oversand, end up with air bubbles in the resin, or don't quite get the resin-wax-catalyst ratio right and have to retouch or even redo steps. Like my surfing though, it gets better every time and I feel good about the process (most of the time).

 
I feel like I'm building a life here. I have opportunities I doubt I could have hoped for back in the States and  definitely wasn't finding in Michigan. I love the community here. Above all I love the surfing. I've had so many sports and activities in my life that I enjoyed, but nothing has come close to what surfing has been for me. There is so much here that feels right for me, but at the same time I'm incredibly torn. You see, I've always been a huge believer that the people in our lives make the difference; that it is always the people and not the place that make a life or an experience rich and happy. I still believe that, but I find myself looking at a life that I love, that feels so much better than it has for years, but that centers around a small remote surf town in Costa Rica while the most important person in my life, my best friend, and the person I have loved more than anyone else is back in Michigan for the foreseeable, long term future.

 I feel like I've been given a box of jigsaw pieces that come from two different puzzles and they won't fit together no matter how badly I want them to match up. For months I've been cycling between ignoring it and hoping something comes up to make it work and feeling like I have to choose and struggling with the guilt that I selfishly do not want to leave what I have here. I worry knowing that if I were to go back I would be doing it knowing that I would be trading a lifestyle that I love with good people, work I find fulfilling (but not lucrative enough to afford to make the trips to sustain a long distance relationship long term), opportunities to learn and do things I'm interested in, and far more freedom in almost every aspect of life than I had stateside, for a single, incredible person. I don't want to place the burden of my happiness on one person like that. I truly believe that that cannot be sustainable no matter how strong the relationship is. And I don't want to hurt him or mislead him. I don't know what I am doing or where life is taking me and he deserves better than to be strung along indefinitely. I want him to be happy and I know that I can't do that for him right now. I don't know if I ever will. I do hope that someday I will be at a point in my life that I can. Maybe if I am incredibly lucky he will still be there when I am. I hope he knows that I love him even though I'm not able to show it like I want to now. I don't know how to live in two worlds, but I don't know how to choose between them either.

Oddly No Means No In Spanish Too...

At the risk of ranting, I'm going to write about a particular issue I seem to encounter every time I leave the house in Costa Rica: Men. I don't mean that in some feminist, war of the sexes type way. Anyone who knows me knows that's not my style. Back home I've always been just one of the guys. Most of my closest friends are men. I find them easier to get along with and more likely to enjoy the same things I do than most girls. I have girlfriends too of course, but I seem to find fewer I really connect with. I enjoy the banter and the bluntness I receive from my guy friends. I can give them shit and know I won't offend them and that they will do the same. And yeah, I'm sure that there's a little underlying sexual tension with a lot of them that keeps things interesting, but it's exactly that, underlying. I'm not uncomfortable. I don't have to worry that I'm being a tease by simply being me. I like to be able to go out for a beer or dinner with a friend without having to fucking explain that I don't want to sleep with them or trying to figure out how to let them down firmly, but without offending.

Here in CR, I guess I just can't hang out with most of the local guys. Even telling them I have a boyfriend doesn't work. It almost makes it worse. 'I have a boyfriend' here seems to mean 'Hey you can fuck me with no commitment whatsoever'. Most of them seem to have girlfriends somewhere in the world and just don't care much for the monogamy thing. The lines I've heard about just being free and having fun could probably be used for a whole series of corny pornos. (Is it rude that I can't help but burst out laughing? If it is consider me an ass.) . And if one more person tells me I'm traditional I'm going to choke them, and not in the way they're after.

It would be easier if these guys were all frat boy inspired assholes, but they aren't. I don't know what the difference is here. Maybe back home I did a better job of intimidating guys into thinking they had no chance so they didn't push their luck. Maybe I should wear more clothing here (it's f*ing hot, I shouldn't have to wear a shirt and pants). Or maybe it's just cultural (Worst excuse ever). Yes, it's a bit flattering sometimes when I can't go out without guys hollering at me or watching and whistling as I walk by. It is amusing for sure. I'm not a timid person. Like anyone I can appreciate a bit of attention. I'm not naive, and I am far from the traditional girl I keep being accused of being. But it gets old, especially when it's someone I know well enough to think we are friends. I get tired of having to constantly draw the lines every time I see them. I'm not saying no because I think I should. I'm saying no because I'm not attracted to you, because I have no desire to sleep with you, because the only thing you know about me is that you think I'm beautiful and I couldn't care less. And I shouldn't have to expalin that too you. You talk about just having fun? Telling someone you like enough to want to hang out that you dno't find them remotely sexually attractive is not fun. If I'm so great why isn't it enough to just spend some time. I don't understand why me being attractive means I want to go home with you or that no means try harder. You are not helping me get out of my own way. I'm not in my own way. You're just not what I want. Nor do I want to pick up whatever disease you got from the last 5 insecure, gullible chicks your crap worked on. I am not just a pretty face. I deserve better than someone who sees me as that.

Sometimes I swear I'm being paranoid or vain, but I have yet to be wrong. At least I'm not insecure and naive. This place makes short work of those girls. I guess the best way to look at it is as another sort of adventure. We will see how many egos I hurt and how many times I pass on an invite to go out when I'm lonely. It's something I need to learn anyway. Nobody could ever claim that no isn't in my vocabulary, that's for damn sure.

Faith and the Art of Winging It

It seems like most of my life I have been surrounded by people who were going places and doing great things. My father impressed upon me at a young age that one must always have goals and be relentless in pursuing them. He taught this by example more than anything and I spent much of my life struggling to live up to that standard and to achieve, achieve, achieve. My father taught me to be methodical; always having a plan and definite steps to take to reach my goals. Going to engineering school was more of the same. I learned to organize these things even more with project deliverables, Gantt charts breaking projects into phases and tasks with specific timetables and carefully ordered execution, bills of materials, and on and on and on. My life had about as much spontaneity and energy as a line of computer code. I was efficient, I achieved a lot. I have the resume to show it (and I have to leave half of it out because it won't fit on one page*).

When I reached the end of all of the preparation, completing both of my degrees with honors, earning awards and recognition for my projects and papers, I realized I had made several major mistakes. For all of my planning and hard work, I missed what was probably the most important step. I had not taken the time to find out what I wanted. I had done all of that work with no real idea of what my goal was and I had plowed through all of those years, filling them to the brim with tasks and work, that I found myself at the end with no idea of where I was or where to go next. My second mistake was that I had allowed myself to fall prey to the idea that all I had to do to get the job of my dreams, was to work hard and do my best in College etc. I did not take into account factors like the economy crashing, the possibility that I would not like traditional engineering jobs, or the simple fact that life isn't fair and it is very often a matter of who you know and not what you know or have done that will get you a job.

To give myself some credit, I realized these things a few years ago, maybe sooner, but had no idea what to do with them as I was already around 4 years into my degree program. The idea of taking time off to reassess things and the possibility of realizing that I might want to abandon my path and waste the time and money spent was too much. And all of it conflicted with the values I'd grown up working to achieve. When I finished my first degree I signed on for the second largely because I had nowhere to go, no job, no destination, and I was stalling for time to figure things out. I had started spending time with a a different group of people, mostly climbers and friends outside of the Engineering lifestyle. These were people who had lived and thought about things far differently than my family. They essentially worked to live as opposed to living to work. They were people I loved and respected, but they didn't fit into the narrow minded ideal of 'success' that I had been indoctrinated into. In retrospect I think that I will look back years from now and know that these people saved my life by planting the idea that I had other options.

I spent my last year of college working at a gear shop, spending all of my time at the local climbing gym, joining my friends in all sorts of outdoor adventure sports, and hanging out and working with my best friend helping with every sort of project you could imagine from planting agarden to refinishing a log cabin, cutting down trees, and even a bit of motorcycle maintenance. I found myself surrounded by people who were doing things and going places and doing it in a way that I had been told was irresponsible. In my family one didn't take a semester off to travel or take a break between degrees. You certainly didn't do things like booking a flight to Costa Rica, leaving everything behind, without a job or a plan. Yet here I am.

When I made the decision to leave, all I really knew was that I had no idea what I was in for. A good friend of mine has told me often that when you put things out to the world, it has a way of bringing things back to you. I tried that a bit before I left and found that it might be true. Costa Rica to that was a bit like dipping your toe in the river to check the temperature and then throwing yourself off the 50 foot waterfall downstream. My friend is always right though. Things have worked out. Since I have been here I was 'rescued' from the red-light district of San Jose and found myself on an incredible tour of the rural areas of CR where I got to see people and things no tourist would have ever gotten to experience. I stumbled upon one of the most incredible and little known surfing Meccas in CR chasing after a lead the same friend had drummed up for me before I left the state. At the hostel i stayed at the first week I met JP who became one of my best friends here and my roommate and surf buddy. A friend of a friend introduced me to Luis who I now rent a room from, and who constantly teaches me things about CR and surfing, and who shows up at the oddest times with exactly what I needed (a bike, a possible job). I got a job as a surf instructor through a friend, found a surf board shaper who is now asking me to work at his shop and might teach me how to shape. I got nominated for a modeling contest and found a photographer here through my surfing contacts. I couldn't plan any of this if I tried.



I haven't made a plan in months and yet here I am. I have an incredible job where I get to work with interesting people, I get to be outside, I get paid to surf! It is the most rewarding thing I have done in a long time and it's supporting me being out here. (Well mostly, I do dip into the savings now and then, but that's what they are for right?) I have a place to stay with good friends. I have opportunities to pursue. And above all I am having fun every day. The anxiety I lived with day in and day out is mostly gone. My life feels not only manageable, but enjoyable. And it is all completely out of my control; unplanned, unforced, unpredictable. I love that. I love the spontaneity and the fact that I can have faith that things will work out. I've never had that before. At the risk of overusing my surfing metaphors, I feel like I did when I realized that I couldn't plan taking a wave. I had to ride what I was given and react. I can't fight the ocean and win anymore than I can fight life and change it. Years ago that would have been terrifying for me; realizing I wasn't in control. Now it's a relief. There's a sense of freedom in it and a excitement and anticipation of taking on the challenge of taking what comes to me and riding it and seeing where I end up.

Zooming Out: Seeing My Relationships at a Distance

The past month has been eventful in a somewhat different way. It hasn't felt dramatic, there has been plenty of emotion, but little anxiety. There are things that need to be done. I hesitate to say fixed. I haven't screwed things up; they're just still in progress. I have a new job as a surf instructor. It doesn't quite pay my bills, but I'm not draining my savings every day I'm here now and I'm getting paid to surf and share something I love. I'm getting used to the pace of life here, although I still get crazy bored during the midday lull. I'm surfing a lot and getting better at it, but I've discovered I'd be better suited for a different board and I haven't been able to justify buying another. It's too hot to run here most days. I go occasionally and spend the next day recovering from the dehydration and sun exposure, but I don't trip out over not running regularly as often.

Things aren't perfect, but the problems are mostly trivial day to day things. Yes, I occasionally wonder where I will be in 6 months. I am well aware of the lack of income I am generating and the limitations that creates. I still check the sports industry job postings every week and feel a bit of guilt or fear or whatever that feelings of 'holy-shit-I-better-do-something-with-my-life-soon' and 'am-I-really-wasting-8-years-of-kicking-my-own-ass-to-get-those-degrees?' would be classified as. I think it's called lingering neuroses from growing up in a narrow minded world view. Those things don't feel any better when they are in focus, but they aren't consuming me. There is less panic, maybe even less judgement, and I think most significantly I am able to move on and to not dwell on the things that cannot be fixed this moment. I've given up planning. I have had enough time to look back on how effective the incessant planning thing has been working for me. It was rather conclusive that it wasn't. My best decisions were always made intuitively in the moment and the ones that hurt me the most were the most premeditated.

The best and hardest part of being here is the perspective I've gotten surrounding some of the key relationships in my life. Distance and time have shown me some things I was doing a very good job of forcibly not seeing and some things I simply couldn't see because I was too entangled in them. Some of the things are painful. I realized how little of a relationship I have left with my father. I'm halfway across the world and I haven't had any contact with him and it feels no different than it has in years. I don't miss him, which sounds terrible. I just don't see him at the climbing gym every weekend to make fun of his climbing technique and make attempts on reassuring him that I'm a responsible adult. It's odd to step back and see that this man who I've spent so much of my life trying to meet his expectations and make him proud has in reality become such a marginalized figure in my life. The idea of him, or rather my idea of his expectations are what have been looming over me for so long. It's something I created.

I've also realized how hard my mother tries to keep the family functioning and how much anxiety and stress she creates for herself in the process. I know I took a lot of that on during high school. Not surprisingly it wasn't the best time of my life. I've actually taken on a lot of my Mom's personality. For instance she goes out of her way to help people and to do things to make others feel special. I admire that and tend to do it as well, but like her I've done it to the point that I feel used or jaded, or simply worn out. Seeing her from afar now as she struggles with my brothers recent legal problems, my father's retirement, his mother's estate, her sister's medical issues....you get my point... I suddenly understand why she sometimes seems to get overwhelmed or cranky at odd times. It's a valuable reminder for me.

Then there is my brother. I love my brother a lot. I don't see him much anymore, but when you grow up moving a lot like we did in a small family, there's no one who can understand your life experience better than a sibling. My brother and I have very little in common on the surface. Our personalities seem to contrast. In private though we're not all that different. We struggle with many of the same things, just with different presentations. My brother left college to go into union trade work, I buried myself in getting multiple degrees. He's currently dealing with some legal issues surrounding alcohol abuse, I've been in and out of rehab for my issues for over 14 years now. We're both struggling to find our places in the world we were raised in, or maybe more accurately the interpretation of the world we were raised to see. I used to envy my brother for bucking the preplanned path through college and doing his own thing. I've realized recently that it was just another version of not knowing what to do. True to form, when faced with uncertainty my default was to do what was expected, his was to dig in his heels and do the opposite. When I found out about my brother's legal problems while I was here I realized something else about our relationship. I recognized that I can't save him or help him. I want to and I think I used to try; covering for him with our parents, intervening when they fought, giving him pep talks. It seems idiotic now. If I did anything it was probably more harm than good. I didn't think of it as trying to save him at the time. I don't think I'm that egotistical. I just cared about him and knew he was struggling. maybe I focused on him because it was easier then focusing on me. Regardless, I know now that I can't help him and I have to let go of the impulse to get involved or upset when he faces the consequences of his struggles. Just like I have to face mine. Sometimes things just suck like that and I'm always going to worry about him a bit. I'm just grateful I'm not our parents. They can't help him either, but I can understand why it's harder for them to let go of the need to try than it is for me.

I've also realized how important certain friends have become in my life and how little it matters what the label placed on the relationship is or whether people think I'm bat-shit crazy when they ask me to explain it and I attempt to. I don't need to know where it's going or what our friendship will look like a year from now or 10 years. Of course I wonder. I hope that the life changes that I'm facing won't put distance between us. Worrying about it does me no good. I don't even have options to debate right now. I'm just lucky I have someone keeping me company as I muddle my way though this. It comes at the cost of some loneliness and a lot of uncertainty, but its a small price to pay.

I'm sure some of these things are obvious to onlookers or sound cliche or generic. (I am after all leaving out specifics). I guess that's the nature of growing up and going through life. I'm learning things a lot of people already know, experiencing things they've been through, but if they'd told me, I still wouldn't have really gotten it. I've got a lot to learn still, but luckily I've also got time and I finally feel like I can take it.

Shooting Stars and A Break in the Static

If you've been following my posts, or maybe if you've known me long enough to get through my tough-girl, overly organized, perhaps even confident alter-ego persona, you have probably figured out that I have some serious issues with identifying and knowing what I want or even need. Often even simple decisions with no consequences to speak of can be difficult for me; things like birthday wishes or playing 20 Questions. Decisions about more complex things can be downright terrifying. You see, I plan too much, so every potential option trickles down into more decisions and consequences and branches into whole new scenarios... waaay too much thinking, way too much commitment for someone who doesn't know what their ultimate goal is, where she wants to be, or what she wants to do. Being unable to make a decision to move towards something means that every decision feels more like an act of eliminating numerous opportunities than embracing one. It feels like backing yourself into a corner.

When I made the decision to take this trip, I made it on impulse and I made it so far ahead that it didn't feel real enough to have consequences. I didn't plan it, and I didn't really even think about it until a month before I left, at which point I did a fair amount of stressing out and second guessing. More significantly though, I started eliminating distractions, things I could use as an excuse to give up or prevent myself from becoming immersed in the experience. (Sometimes I think I should have left my laptop as well, but I'll leave that as it is for now. Somehow I don't think cutting all ties is any healthier than holding on to too many). Now that I am here with no job, no school to return to, no apartment needing to be sublet or appointments to be kept, I'm finding myself with very few contrived criteria to base my decisions on. I don't have a schedule, so I don't have to drag myself out of bed early to run in the dark and cold when my body wants none of it. I don't have to cram social events in between shifts at Moosejaw, job hunting, and study sessions (or vice versa).

I am facing having to make daily, simple decisions based upon how I feel and what I want, and it has been hard to get used to. I have used all sorts of strange criteria to try to have logical reasons for what I'm doing like 'The tide is too low to surf now.' as if I'm good enough for it to matter, or 'If I do that now I'll have to reapply sunscreen and it's expensive here' which erally meant I don';t feel like it and I'm judgmental so I'd feel lazy if I don't find some justification. The last couple of days I've started to feel just a bit more comfortable with this new pace of life. I've slept in. My roommate even commented to me that I seemed to have chilled out a bit. (Not that it takes a lot to meet that criteria, but I'm stoked it's even noticeable).

 Full moon in Santa Teresa

I didn't really notice things changing until last night though. I'd been talking to a friend online and after saying goodnight I suddenly felt this intense sadness, not an unpleasant feeling, just the kind of sadness that comes from missing someone you love. I was tired, but couldn't sleep so I went outside and laid in the hammock on the porch with a view of a clear night's sky through breaks in the trees. I sat for an hour or so with my thoughts drifting, listening to the roar of the distant surf and watching the sky. I almost missed the tiny streak of light passing through a gap in the palm fronds: a shooting star. Almost before I knew what I was seeing I had made a wish. There was no thinking involved, no logical reasoning. I knew exactly what I wanted in that moment. It may seem incredibly trivial,  we are talking after all about a child's tradition, but for me it is a notable change and a small triumph. Maybe this crazy quest I'm on is working. Maybe by eliminating some of the static, the artificial values and guidelines, I'm allowing myself to relearn how to know what I want. Childish or not, I'm taking that little glimmer of hope in the form of some burning space debris and I'm going to hold onto it. And if my wish does come true, that will just be a bonus.