Shining Light Into the New Year

Welcome to the first post of 2017! This week has been moved me in a positive direction and I hope it has for yourself as well. I realize that many people do not keep their New Years Resolutions but seeing people do the work required to set out goals for themselves…it brings joy to my heart.

New Year’s Resolution

This year I have resolved to strengthen my friendships. I posted to following on Facebook:

“Happy New Year friends!

My new years "resolution" is, in part, to strengthen my relationships and thus strengthen my world. I set this past Jewish New Year with the goal of focusing on "tikun olam" which loosely translates to "healing/fixing the world." I am choosing at this point of the secular year to re-prioritize my relationships and allow space for my relationship to myself to remain #1. I look forward to including you in this journey.

I hope this new year finds you peace, prosperity and happiness!!

With love,

Sara Be”

The way I hope to enact this is very methodical so I’d like to break it down in case anyone would like to copy and/or join me on this journey. The first step was that I identified about 140 people I would like to remain close with or get closer to. This is inspired by Dunbar’s Number of how many people humans can realistically be close with. I then broke down levels of intimacy based on what my current relationships are. For example, PartnerPenguin is on my “Every day” list. The categories of intimacy are thus:

·       Every day

·       Every week

·       Every 2 weeks

·       Every month

·       Quarterly

In some ways I am doing this to track the way my energy currently flows. I have found that in a lot of habit building/dismantling I have succeeded when I have allowed myself a period of judgment free observation. My motivation for working on relationships is specifically instigated by the changes I have already seen in my friends’ lives since the election. I may not be able to realistically change the world for the better but I can change my friends’ lives for the better by being there for them. In order to best do this, I need to care for myself and make sure that the energy I’m spending on helping others isn’t ruining my own ability to enjoy my life. I feel like this is something that’s been a very difficult balance for me, in the course of my life.

I will certainly also continue to write my blog as I have received a lot of positive feedback that folks who regularly read my blog enjoy feeling connected via this medium. Y’all might be getting some new characters to read about!

New Year’s Eve, the Party

W00t. What a great adventure. New Years being on a weekend this year meant party central! PartnerPenguin and I were invited to at least five parties, which made me feel super popular. Also a little sad that I had to turn down an opportunity to party. 

The party we chose was well attended and had a hot tub. And best of all, The Outdoorsy Sage and her new Beau attended!! It felt really wonderful, albeit anxiety producing, to introduce one of the non-assholes I met at TLoTH to my broader friend group. She talked hydrology with one of my incidental geonerd friends. [I have intentional geonerd friends, those whom I went to college and worked with. Then there are my incidental geonerd friends because I attract geologists, surveyors and civic engineers. Must be my cologne. Which is odd because that cologne comes from Cologne, Germany. And I’ve only had it for ten months. Yet the incidental geonerds I’ve had for much longer…]

The Outdoorsy Sage, her Beau and I all went hot tubbing. PartnerPenguin joined for a bit but left most of his clothes on so he looked ridiculous. I like being in hot, preferably ionically saturated water. The party got a bit raucous and I re-discovered that when those around me are drunk I could just dial back my filter and just be myself. I don’t mind being sober around dunk people in that way. I have worked hard on building my filter and it’s continues to be a lot of work. It feels nice to be able to take it off for a bit.

The next morning we all went out to Dim Sum. Two years running, we might have to solidify this into an actual tradition. 0_0. Dim Sum turns out to be excellent hangover food that was good because the other friends were all hungover.  I like the part where you get endless tea and the texture of the BBQ Pork buns. So fluffy!!

We all parted ways and presumably went to take naps and good poops.

However, New Years day was that day that PartnerPenguin and I got:

The Haul of History!

Anyone who has ever visited our home or gone on walks with PartnerPenguin knows that he likes to…find things. (We are both such Hufflepuffs.) We used to have a great many milk crates that I joked were very expensive furniture, due to the fines we could potentially pay on them. We have a bunch of hipster weird stuff like a cold-brew coffee system and a toaster with “a bit more” button (did not pay list price) that we’ve found or bought along our street or in the neighborhood. One of PartnerPenguin’s favorite pastimes is to go “Sale-ing” which is what he calls going around neighborhoods on a Sunday morning and hitting garage and estate sales.

So this week, when we hit the Haul of History, it made him ecstatic. What happened was that this guy posted on Twitter that he was selling all of his stuff. First, we checked to make sure he wasn’t planning on committing suicide. When he assured us he wasn’t, we circled in. All in all, we figure we probably got about $1500 worth of stuff for $300.

Inventory of what we got:

·      Very nice bicycle, aluminum frame ($600ish) Has brakes! And gears!

·      iPhone 6s plus w/cracked screen ($300 used, $500 new)

·      Magic Bullet blender with 10 cups and cup lids

·      Bag of cables, ranging from mini extension cords, microphone, stickers (necessary), those weird non-velcro thingies that are imminently useful, charging cables, a dsl modem,

·      Swiffer with 2 boxes of Swiffer pads

·      6 qt crock pot ($60)

·      hooks for walls and pads for feet of furniture

·      a towel

·      a giant transit map of The Golden State

·      goose neck kettle

·      3 cookie drying sheets

·      ceramic pour over thing for hipster coffee

·      Towel rack for bathroom

·      Unused $25 Apple Gift card

DUUUUDES. Eating blended food is the smuggest way to consume food! I have using the blender and drinking out of all the fun cups for 4 days and I already feel at least 30% morally superior to everyone I meet. ^___^ The hipter-ization is setting in!

But seriously, the best thing about this haul is that PartnerPenguin and I can now go for bike rides together. His previous bicycle didn’t have gears or brakes. Gears are kinda take it or leave it, but no brakes + literal sawed off handlebars=Murderbike. New bike comes with 70% less murder! Always wear a helmet, children because even if your bike doesn’t kill you, some driver mindlessly opening their door can.

Career Check In

I haven’t posted about my unemployment as much because it’s not interesting to me and stresses me the fuck out. But I wanted to just do a check in on where I’m at in case people reading this blog know someone.

My current career goals are to work in a environmental consulting firm for 3-5 years and obtain my PG license. I would like to pair this with a Masters in Public Policy (probably going to apply next year for grad school) done in my off time: bye bye social life for a while. Hence part of why I want to strengthen relationships now so some of my friendships will hopefully survive that. From there, I would like to work in environmental policy making or possibly enforcing. Please keep in mind (and stay gentle) that these are new-ish goals and I am sharing so that friends can support me. I’m not sure if I’m ready for real accountability quite yet, but I’m working towards that.

Another goal is that I am seriously committing to writing my novel. I feel like even uttering that sentence makes me come across as someone whom I want to detest. So I still gotta do a bunch of work on that internal attitude. But have set aside time and space to do the research. This will be a work of historical fiction about geology.  

With this goal in mind: are there any scientists, former or current academics who would like to be interviewed for source material? I would like to use this book as a voice for those who have not fared well in a man dominated world of science. The book is going to be from the point of view of a woman who gets her research stolen and is written out of history. I have some personal experience but I would really love more source material. I know this is an incredibly delicate and painful subject so please contact me privately and we can talk about how to talk about this matter.

Well that about wraps up this tardy post. Here is Duane Allman’s “Little Martha” as a quiet and chill close to the day, close to the week and opening into the year.

Disuse Leads to Collecting Butter

I have a…pattern. It has happened more than once, but is not quite yet at the point where I would consider it a habit.

I let things collect butter.

It is considerably worse than letting things collect dust as the stains are considerably more difficult to remove. Fortunately only one cloth garment has been the victim of this pattern. Unfortunately it was my favorite purse.

This is how it happens: I leave butter out so that it can be at room temperature when I need it. For important things: like grilled cheese sandwiches. Sometimes I am not careful with where I place things (eg. the mail, my purse, my keys, etc) and I only realize it has sat in butter for the past twenty minutes when I go back outside. It is extraordinarily messy and a pain in the ass to clean up. Oftentimes I just let the thing go. Unless it’s my purse. Then I look up Talkin’ Dirty with the Queen of Clean.

Recently I had a metaphorical butter collection moment. I thought I had gotten all the mess off but it turns out the situation was un-save-able. I feel really betrayed and hurt but I think I’m going to need to let it go.

Here’s the sitch: When I was in undergrad I was hella good at creating student research positions for myself. I bargained with the department to let me use my work-study financial aid in a novel way to work in the lab. I generated a new position, funded by the NSF. I am good at mineralogy so all of these positions loosely focused on my ability to tell microcline from plagioclase.

One of the long-term research projects I worked on turned into my Senior Thesis. I owned this project, in some capacity, from start to what I thought would be finish. I came up with a hypothesis. I designated the days fieldwork would happen and organized the transportation to get there. I collected my samples, observed the evidence, synthesized my information. In my last week of college, I worked nearly 100 hours so that all of the data visualization and writing would be complete on time for grading to happen. I met my deadline.

I got an A because the professor (call them Prof 1) grading the paper does not believe in A+s on principle. Ok, fine.

I wound up staying at Big American University for some time after I graduated. I cleaned up some of my writing. I cleaned up some of my visuals. I refined what conclusions I drew based on new information I’d previously been missing.

The consortium I did my research under invited me to share during a full team meeting. This was the first real presentation of my data and I was thrilled. The data seemed to be really important to the consortium and the room was full with positive energy. I shared my research (I went over time, for which a colleague never forgave me) and everyone was very excited at the discoveries I’d made and what that meant for the project at large. One young professor whom I did not work with asked me what my plans for publication were. Prof 1 cut in very curtly and stated simply, “She’s not publishing.”

This statement has always confused me. Prof 1 never explained their motivation. My <headcannon> is that Prof 1 (and Prof 2, whom I worked with to a lesser extent) is a very high profile, famous scientist in multiple disciplines. My research was not groundbreaking. My discoveries were cute (literally, in my opinion) but they did not push the frontier of anything. They were not a paradigm shift. And when you live and die by publication, I suppose that the only things worth publishing are those things that are remarkable.

Grad Student 1 worked with me on the field work, the synthesis of information and the backlash of interacting with Profs 1&2. She helped me come to this conclusion, somewhat. I appreciated her and went to her PhD conferral ceremony. She helped keep in perspective the expectations of the department.

About a month ago, I got an email from Prof 1 asking me where I put certain visualization files. I really really really wanted to respond with “Here are the instructions to the files within Google Drive and I look forward to co-authorship with you.” I emailed Grad Student 1, who is now Prof 3 (different uni) with my impulse response to Prof 1. In response I got a 6 paragraph email from Prof 3 detailing how that was a bad idea. As Prof 3 has more experience in the department and in academia in general, I deferred to her judgment and accepted that I wasn’t going to publish.

Then this week, I was editing the Junior Ranger’s grad school apps and it just so happens she’s applying to the same school as Prof 3. So I go to Prof 3's website. My heart broke. It broke pretty hard. Then I melted to a puddle and spent the rest of the night as a puddle.

In the carousel at the top of her Professor page she had the following image as one of four images displayed:

The following was a figure in my (unpublished and, what I have grown to feel is unremarkable) thesis:

(note: bottom right, bottom swath. Also note: I had to hand-craft those scale bars in PowerPoint.)

 

 It felt like someone had taken my heart and stomped on it. It felt like it turned out the butter had, in fact, soaked into every pore of my favorite purse and there would be no way to get it out.

I decided that academia was not the place for me over the course of the past two years. It has been a painful and emotional journey. I may yet change my mind because I understand that many people have given me the well-intentioned advice that a BA is not a large enough stick to wave at a fly in scientific academia.

Yet I was frustrated and devastated by the power of the pain this action could induce in me. I thought I had surrendered. I thought I had let it go, moved on. Instead, I ran towards it and felt like I needed to fix it. To claim it. To give myself permission to give myself credit.

After an evening of allowing myself to feel through my discomfort and pain, it eventually passed. I have been trying to practice experiencing my emotions to their completion but damn is that exhausting and no wonder ain’t nobody got time for that shit. Emoting and processing all of my emotions like a well-adjusted human being is a FUCKING STEEP learning curve.

*  *  *  *

Let’s switch topics for a moment so I’m not totally bumming you out this morning!

Hrm.

PartnerPenguin and I have been kitty sitting a big tomcat named Tofu. He is thusly named because he has too many toes. Observe:

Other things: I kidsat the Bear this week! I think there may be a cognitive switch between 5.5 and 5.6 years old where children become lawyers. There was really only one argument I had no case against her, which was “but I need to figure out how this dirt works!” I swear; the kid knows exactly how to play to my weaknesses.

I had a full itinerary of errands that suck to run alone planned for our day.

1.     Lunch. I swear, if there is one thing that I have mourned more than anything else about not having regular work, it’s that I eat lunch alone every day. That is the worst to me.

2.     Turn in e-waste to Best Buy.

3.     Buy dirt. And a pot.

4.     Pot a plant.

I made a minor discovery, more like a shift in articulation, while waiting in line to drop off the e-waste. Bear was really into the OcculusRift (a virtual reality [VR] addition to gaming systems) display and was watching it with rapt attention. She said she wanted to play the games and went through which games she would like most. She which game I’d like most and I just internally went “playing/doing/being in VR would be my own personal hell.” This thought surprised me so I very quickly had to satiate the little lawyer with a wimpy answer of  “Aunty Sara doesn’t like this kind of game.” As is the nature of tiny lawyer children, she naturally followed it with “But why!” I shrugged it off but it has been simmering in the back of my brain.

Later in the week a friend’s housemate came out from playing what looked to be a very good workout with a VR setup. He was describing the merits of such a system. It finally clicked for me.

“That sounds really cool but unfortunately I don’t think I’ll also be able to enjoy this gaming platform. I really struggle with dissociation and I don’t feel comfortable inducing a state like that without a concrete path out.” I have never been able to articulate (or even consider than anyone else experienced) dissociation, specifically as it relates to depression. PartnerPenguin helped me find this article that validates my concerns.

Ok, I think I’m about done for now. Thanks for following along this week!

I feel like this song “Secrets” by Mary Lambert feels just right tonight. And for the love of Glob if someone knows where to get her dress, please tell me. I would look SUPER cute in it.

PseudoWinter Tidings

Cassian Andor: I'm not used to people sticking around when things go bad.

Jyn Erso: Welcome home.

-Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One was an excellent movie. I loved it. I loved it so much. I loved that there was no explicit romance in it. I loved that a woman was the commander of an impossible mission and everyone respected her exactly for the leader she was. I loved the martial arts. I loved the scenery: like seriously, A+ rocks. But the above quote was one of the things I loved most about it. In 13 words it encapsulates something I have been struggling with for 11 years.  

Recently I was out to dinner with a friend who asked if I go home for the holidays. I responded by looking at her with an absolutely blank expression. I completely forgot that was a thing that someone would choose to do. Friends of mine are starting to interact with the mortality of their parents, the loss (usually to due to downsizing) of family homes, the general dissolution of stability that happens as people age and become more of a burden than a provider. I am grateful when I can be supportive as they process these things, yet some of my friends’ fresh wounds reflect such old and healed-over wounds of mine that it perplexes me. The Rogue One quote condenses an explanation of the “presence” or “absence” of having a home in the past decade. I can strive towards being present for my friends and family who need me to be their home as it happens, that’s all I can do.

 Aaaaaaaaanywayyyyyy…

After last week’s insanitypants conference I took SUPER easy for quite a few days.

An exciting thing that happened was that Dr. Genderqueer met my Fourth-Cousin-Twice-Removed!! It just so happens that coffee shops in this part of Oroenpaz city are the exact intersection of cool and awesome to make this happen. My Fourth-Cousin-Twice-Removed and I are planning a Punk Rock Shabbat and I am already 1000% on board to record a fantastic version of  “Lecha Dodi” to the tune of “London Calling” by the Clash. Coming soon to a YouTube channel near you, hopefully.

Saturday was unremarkable day because we literally did nothing. It was so glorious. PartnerPenguin correctly intuited that I needed to get some exercise before the day was out so we went to the market. Mum calls markets like these “Dunno Stores” because she has had the experience of asking an employee “what’s this?” they respond “Dunno!” So we went to a DunnoStore and explored 750 varieties of soy sauce, 60 types of kimchi, and an isle of noodles.  I tried partially dehydrated and frozen persimmons. Delish.

One thing I did this weekend was melt down my crystalized honey and put it in a smaller jar. I just needed to share that because it is so beautiful when the sun shines through it:

It’s been really really cold in the Key Route City these past couple weeks. I had hoped that being from somewhere that has Winters I would be ok with the cold every now and then. Nope. Nope. Nopity nope. Can’t deal. Reason 1: I don’t own anything Winter Worthy. All of my clothes are (generously) fashionably targeted for a mild chill on the cold end and a balmy sundress at the other end. Reason 2: My circulation sucks and my extremities have been known to suck the homeostatis-life-force out of those I love by wiggling my toes under their bottom. PartnerPenguin hypothesizes that my heart must be on fire because my nose is so cold. Reason 3: Structures here are not built for cold. They do not have insulation. They do not have double-paned windows. There are not end-caps at Home Depot of that special saran wrap for windows and families do not have a designated hair dryer for shrinking it.

I’m over Pseudowinter and I’m glad that the Solstice has passed. Winter Solstice is one of my happiest days of the year because it means that the sun is going to start winning again and we can get back to business being happy. I had a really good Solstice this year and appreciated being surrounded by folks who are friendly and care. I made applesauce, which is labor intensive but simple to make. It helps me eat apples because I don’t really like apples. 0_o. I guess I don’t like the middle of the road apples or Red Delicious. Or any apples that are mealy. It’s really hit or miss. But applesauce. That’s where it’s at.

Probably the biggest thing that happened this week was I actually found job I’m properly qualified for and I applied the hell out of that job. The pros: It’s a job! Yay! Pays moneys, good benefits, and decent (from what I can tell) co-workers. It would be a good path to getting a PG license; which is a stick I’d be happier to wield at this point than a PhD. The con: 80% fieldwork with 50% overnight travel. I see the con as an opportunity to invest in some great new gear (it’s a job so it will pay moneys!) and get to explore more of the wonderful land of this country. We’ll deal with how to get through the PTSD about large North American mammals when we get there.

I also talked for a long time with some publishing companies at the tail end of the conference last week. At least one of the dudes thinks my skillset is super transferable and would have been interested in hiring me if I lived closer or was willing to relocate. That gives me hope.

I finally went through my LinkedIn account and made it more accurately reflect myself professionally. There is a category to include GPA and I poked back to find my GPA from Big American University was 3.60. I started listing the awards I won, the funding I secured. I started listing my volunteer activities that have been prolific and varied in the past…since the start of high school. Trying to sell myself more accurately. Trying to make myself more available, more present and more whole as a person. This process has been so slow that it has been painful to literally everyone around me so the more I deal with it, the less agony all around.

Breakthrough work

Sparkles and I had another session and we built a beautiful shared analogy. She asked me what I thought of when she said the word “Closed.” After a bit of exploring, I came to the mental image of a restaurant. A little mom and pop joint (probably Italian) like the places my family would sometimes go to on Fridays and I would eat ravioli for comparison. I imagined this place closed, with the chairs on the tables, the floors mopped, the tablecloths fresh, kitchen quiet. It felt safe. It felt so nice that there were no messes. She asked me how I could know whether the place was prospering or barely scraping by. Would it open the next day?

She asked me then to put the chairs down on the floor. What else did the tables need? Flowers, I said. The plastic kind. And compostable, yet disposable tablecloths so messes could be cleaned up. She asked me could I delegate any of the work for keeping messes under control to someone, like a busser. I said yes, of course.

We talked about what hours my restaurant would be open. 5-10pm. Would I have a day off? Saturday. Even though that’s bad business but this is a metaphor restaurant so I took the day per week I’d like off. Could I commit to having “Open” hours and know that they would be constrained? Could I hire people and we come to a mutual agreement about what  I expected them to do, yet let them actually do the thing? I said that I wanted everyone in the restaurant to be allowed to offer a dish for the “special” of the evening. This way everyone felt included.

Sparkles talked me through opening my metaphorical restaurant. She asked me how I felt, I said “disbelief.” I didn’t think anyone would be there but there were already customers. How long would it be until I believed that this would be ok? Two months. Two months would be long enough to establish regular regulars and occasional regulars. That, combined with seasonal, I would probably be ok.

I was so surprised in doing this exercise at how sad I felt. I just cried for a while, even though things were positive. I cried because the safety of being closed and clean isn’t how I can move forward any more. I cried because I know how to delegate tasks but I don’t know how to delegate parts of my day so that I can be the best me there is. I cried because there were bits of college where I thought I’d figured it out and really I was just killing myself bit by bit to graduate with honors: only to never credit myself for the work. I cried because of how scared I am to change and how little faith I have that if I change, others will stay with me.

To lighten the mood, I will close out with two songs that are upbeat in different ways. The first is called “Seagulls” which is a Bad Lip Reading of Empire Strikes Back. Yoda’s little dancing has been making my life this week. 

The other was introduced to me by Raptor. It’s an a capella mash up of Carol of the Bells and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Can’t say I didn’t spread some holiday cheer!