mikialynn

[mikialynn]

2022 Reflection

Overall, I can say I feel a bit better than last year. I am slightly more in control of my feelings and am a little less listless.

Some important hurdles that I think I have made progress on:

I am better about separating the sense of responsibility over Stewart’s happiness from myself. Though his mood still greatly affects me and I am always willing to help, it is not my failure and it is not my job to always keep him happy. And I think that is an important lesson for any long-term relationship, and something I will always struggle with because of my personality. He is wrestling with his own experiences and I can exist next to that and support him in that without letting it overtake me.

Losing my grandma has forever altered the way I experience life - the fleeting and finite nature of everything is so much more forward in my mind and much more tangible - but the physical ache of losing her has passed. I still think about her every day. Death and loss are at the forefront of my mind each morning I wake up. The sudden and irrevocable change that came from losing her adds weight to the experiences I have with my parents and with everyone I love. Nothing lasts has never felt more real. But I can think about grandma without tearing up, which was impossible last year.

I am also still wrestling with the nagging feeling that I’ve made the wrong choices in life, not cultivated the right interests early enough, and have somehow wasted any gifts I might have had. I know these are not unique existential thoughts for someone my age to be having and that you can have impact and reinvent yourself at any age. I know that, but I don’t feel it. I’m struggling to really believe it. There is so much I know now about who I am and what the world – particularly the working world – is like now that I wish I’d known when I was younger. I try not to dwell on it, but it’s hard not to when the pending next step is solidifying the next step in life after this hiatus back home.

And that brings me to my biggest struggle. How do I leave my aging parents? My rapidly-growing nieces? While also making sure Stewart is satisfied with his environment and his professional achievements? How do I build a life that allows me to meet all of these competing needs? I’m happy being with my loved ones and I love Hawaii. But I don’t feel I’m experiencing new things in life. And experiencing new things in life is how I derive value and a sense of purpose. Learning and growing and getting a taste of as much of everything as I can in the short time I have is what drives me. But then I have to check myself and think what a privilege it is to even have this dilemma. So where do you go from that tangent?

On a positive note, this year was great in terms of getting back into traveling. Stewart and I did a backpacking trip along the Lost Coast in California, which had some of the most beautiful campsites on bluffs along the shore, expansive fiery sunsets over the ocean, and close encounters with wildlife like deer, elephant seals, and a whale carcass. We also did our first international trip together to Israel for my college roommate’s wedding. Frankly, it was a rough trip. My back went out the day of our 14-hour flight and it was the most painful experience having to sit still for that flight. I was in constant pain having to shift my weight continuously to alleviate the building pressure and having every little move hurt. Stewart would help support my weight as I tried to sit up or turn on my side, but I could feel his growing frustration with the situation. Thankfully we had the seat next to us open otherwise I know I would have had to be on the ground. As far as Israel itself, I’m always grateful to see new places and there were some ancient ruins that were incredible to walk through, but a lot of the experience wasn’t that pleasant. Israel has some real extremes – extreme nationalism, extreme development, extreme crowds, extreme traffic, and obviously extreme and contentious religious beliefs. Arielle’s wedding was beautifully planned and a gathering of very nice people, but it was also during a heat wave. And then to top it off we got Covid and were not allowed to leave the country 10 days. It meant spending a little more time with Arielle as she kindly hosted us in her neighbor’s house, but we were also stuck in a kibbutz next to a dairy farm unable to do anything. And then we got turned away at the airport the second time we tried to leave because of different interpretations of the covid policy. Overall, it wasn’t a trip to be described as a holiday, but it was a challenge that I shared with my partner and that we overcame together and even found humor in. And because of it, we canceled our flight back to Hawaii and just flew to Maine for a trip that had been planned the following month, so we got to have an extended stay with Stewart’s family. On that trip, I got to see Stewart’s special cabin in Prince Edward Island for the first time (which actually had me thinking about my grandma’s house a lot and was a little emotional) and the spot in Nova Scotia where his dad is building his new cabin. There was another challenge when Mark, Kendall, and Stewart’s mom got covid in PEI, and Mark’s reaction and expectations in that period left an unfortunate lasting impression, but ultimately things worked out. Because Stewart and I had covid earlier, we were actually immune and were able to keep our Nova Scotia plans and spend time with his dad and Dale. It felt good to be a part of the origins of what may become a new special place in our lives. And there were so many clams! We also traveled to Banff, Canada for my Princeton friend’s wedding. She invited me to be her bridesmaid, which was a pleasant surprise for me. The wedding and the hiking were all wonderful. Lots of scary bear poop, but beautiful lakes and mountains.

And of course, the real biggie of the year, I became an aunt to my two lovely nieces. My fire breathing dragon niece, Lana, and my sweet Snow White niece, Neve. It’s been interesting to see two such different personalities developing in them. It’s also interesting to see different parenting styles develop in my siblings, particularly when it comes to Joe/Trisa’s more wary approach toward typical medical practices and doctors. I remember the constant texting with everyone and staying up to hear about both births, worried for Mariah because she had so many medical issues trying to have Lana and worried for Joe because they decided to have a home birth. I remember never really letting myself get too hopeful about Lana, even after the gender reveal party and truly not until the day she born, because of all fertility problems and let downs that had come before. I remember also all genuinely worrying that Neve might not make it after she was born because she was so under-weight and unresponsive, and had extremely low glucose levels and unstable temperature. But everyone got through those worrying times and, when we came together for Christmas for the first time with grandchildren present, it really did feel like heralding in a new era. It didn’t escape me that, in our first Christmas without grandma alive, we now had two new life forces with us. It’s sad but also poetic in a sense.

For me as an aunt, it’s also been really nice to have this peripheral role where I don’t have the full responsibility and life change of becoming a parent, but I get to learn about the fundamentals of raising a kid—what to expect, what happens when, what common issues there are, what babies look like at different ages, what development happens when, how to hold them, how to entertain them, how to put them to sleep—the list goes on. I’ve seen the personality really kick in around the 6-month mark and the kids become so much more interactive. It’s my favorite break of the day going down to play with Lana for a bit, and give my mom a break from her babysitting duties. On that note, it’s been quite a bonding experience helping mom tackle babysitting, which really did take over her life this past year because it is so draining. It felt somewhat like navigating sharing a parenting role with my own mom, with some compromise and a lot of unique shared memories. We will never forget Lana’s love of tearing up grass and flowers, copy my “wipe wipe” of the ground, figuring out how to splash in puddles in barracks 2, swaying to the music of her toys (on demand), and learning the words and signs for dogs (“deg”), birds, and airplanes.

The year also ended with two medical events with my dad. First, he had an unexpected skin infection that became a serious episode because of his lymphedema. Stewart and I had to drive him to the hospital at night and he was immediately put on antibiotics and pain killers. Through that experience I had a practice run of what I needed to be prepared for with his knee replacement surgery – driving him to appointments and wheeling him around on a wheelchair, helping to clear his trailer area to support him being there 24/7 (along with a new electric adjustable bed and a peace lily!), setting him up for emergency bathroom needs if he couldn’t make it to the outhouse, making his outhouse and shower situation more handicap accessible, assuming all the farm responsibilities, tracking the timing of his pills, making his meals and washing his dishes, etc.

The second medical event was of course his planned knee replacement surgery, which had been delayed because of his skin infection, so it ended up happening the day after his birthday. The knee replacement recovery had the added work of helping him to do his physical therapy – at first because he was too stiff to do a lot of the movements on his own, and then because he wasn’t consistent and didn’t have good form unless I was there. The lymphedema definitely played a bigger role in his recovery than I think he’d originally understood, but that we’d somewhat learned from the skin infection. His whole leg was just prone to swelling, and swelling causes pain, and pain makes it hard to do the necessary PT and to start resuming normal life. For a little while it wasn’t certain if he’d be able to get out of his trailer for Christmas. But like a little Christmas miracle, he progressed enough where we were able to walk him to the barracks and find a position to rest his leg on the couch just in time, and everyone was able to come over to celebrate Christmas.

So that was the year! For now I’m continuing this flexible lifestyle, but I’m going to hold myself to more rigid goals. Last year it was enough to just stay afloat. This year I feel like I have enough control to direct my life a little more. Also, I want to keep reminding myself to by happy and appreciate these moments. I will probably never get to live with parents or spend this much time with my siblings and their families again. I don’t want those memories and experiences to be marred by stress or anxiety. You can be motivated and happy at the same time. That is how I used to operate, and I’d like to see myself get back to that more peaceful and optimistic place.

[mikialynn]

2021 Reflection

Yet again, I am writing this reflection a bit past the New Year mark. I had told myself explicitly as the New Year approached that I needed to write this reflection promptly because of how volatile and unexpected the changes in 2021 had been…and I was right! I missed my deadline by just a month, but in that time, both my siblings caught covid, I attended my grandma’s funeral, I had surgery, my brother and his wife announced they were pregnant, my good friend visited and announced she was pregnant, I got asked to be a bridesmaid, and I put in my notice at my consulting job. So, before any other life changing things happen, let’s try to reflect on 2021.

I already know the tone that I’m writing this reflection in now will be a bit calmer than how it would have poured out of me if I’d written this earlier. Just to give you a taste of where I was emotionally as 2021 was winding down, here are some of the notes I had been jotting down for my reflection:

-The world is absurd

-I'm more serious and angry than I’ve ever been

-Loss

Clearly not a great year. It was year of highs, lows, and prolonged limbos that chipped away at my resiliency and positivity. At the start of the year, we had the excitement of a vaccine – a possible end to the restrictions on normalcy that we’d been accommodating for over a year. This enabled little changes that, because of how routine and basic life had become, added so much joy. Stewart and I stopped sanitizing our groceries and recooking take-out food, hooray! I started joining my roommates in eating out—discovering the outdoor dining experience that had established during the pandemic with its makeshift wooden booths, wind barriers, outdoor heating and QR codes. I booked a trip to visit home. For my birthday, I even dined indoors without a mask.

But it didn’t take long for the first major variant to emerge and the world to lock down again. And this time, on top of the normal covid worries that returned, there was the sinking realization that the lifespan of the pandemic had suddenly expanded indefinitely. We now understood that this was the time of variants. Of cycles with peaks and lows. Of having the opportunity to live with slightly more normalcy, but only with heightened vigilance, greater nuance, and more real-time strategic thinking in a context of rapidly changing risks. A decision to go to a family party or eat out was based on how long since you’d had a booster and where on the caseload curve of this particular variant your town stood. Trips and visits could be planned, but one had to plot out in advance the timing of potential exposure, incubation days, ideal testing windows, and cautious quarantining until the results came in. Finding testing centers and administering swabs became commonplace.

As the Delta variant was establishing itself outside of the U.S., three particularly stressful life changes were happening.

The first – my roommate Asha had set a move out date from our apartment, which triggered my other roommate Kenzie and I deciding to align our departure with hers. I loved that apartment and our little family unit. I loved our corner shops, our nearby parks, my big bay windows, the tall ceilings, the open kitchen and the soft blue and pink walls. My first year in San Francisco was one of my favorites. I felt on top of the world biking past the city capital with the backdrop of the orange sunrise, hopping on the bus and crossing over the beautiful San Francisco Bay on the fog-covered Golden Gate Bridge every day on my way to work. I lived as a young adult, fully independent and open to the world. I was going to random art events, concerts and film festivals. I went on dates just for the fun of it for the first time. I joined a singing chorus and ended up falling in love with the community center – the retired folks and young people I met looking to chase a passion like myself. It felt like I was living fully as myself.

On top of that, I inherited the apartment from its former occupants and was able to select my new roommates. I found two people who I absolutely adored. For a couple months there, Kenzie and I hung out all the time going out dancing and to secret basement music events. Her Spanish friends even commented that we did everything together. And then I met Stewart and I had that magical experience of falling in love in that city. We also started going on trips that opened up California to me—fishing adventures along the coast and backpacking trips in the Sierras. And, at the end of the day, I’d come home to my happy place, plop on the couch to download to Kenzie and Asha, and maybe end the day with a group crossword. That was me happy.

But COVID changed things—as I talked about in my last reflection—and in 2021 I had to finally accept letting go of that world completely, even though I felt like time in that phase of life had been cut short. And I was really sad. I didn’t want it to end. I think I also knew that I’d probably live with Stewart next and, while that’s an exciting next chapter in life, it is the end of living with friends and that whole roommate dynamic. I’ve been lucky in that basically everyone I’ve ever lived with has become a best friend. I enjoy that balance of having friends to come home to. That effortless way of keeping up friendships, especially since it’s not as natural for me to keep up friendships when they aren’t physically in the same space. So it was hard imagining never having that environment for forging a friendship again, and hard accepting what that indicated about my age and stage in life.

And of course, the act of moving out was also challenging. Furniture, random junk, and a whole lot of dust had been accumulating in that apartment for over a decade, and we were responsible for emptying it all. It was a constant barrage of craigslist and facebook ads and weekly filling of trash bins and dropping off useful goods on the sidewalks. Some of the things I had major anxiety about being able to lift or fit out the door (in fact, one couch required removing the door and having 3 young men assist us). The stress and the allergies that came with that process resulted in my first full-body episode of eczema. We said goodbye to Asha first, and then to Kenzie. And then finally came the day where it was just me in the apartment doing the final sweep. I walked through the empty rooms, down our stairs onto the street past the playground and the restaurants, across the civic center and into the BART station for the last time. I honestly felt heartbroken. And in the coming weeks while Stewart and I hopped between airbnbs and his aunt’s place in Mill Valley, I would feel the strange sensation as we would drive by San Francisco of no longer being a part of it and not having a home to go to in it.

The second major stressor at that time was that Stewart and I were wrestling with the commitment to and timing of our departure from WRA, the consulting job we had both been generally unhappy with. I was ready to leave and had been for over a year. I was pretty burnt out and stuck in a 9-to-5 work experience that I did not want to waste any more of my life on. Stewart’s situation was not as cut-and-dry, and he was much less comfortable with the ambiguity of the next step. The plan was to give ourselves the space and flexibility to figure out the next long-term step by working for a period of time at my parent’s fish farm. But it wasn’t easy coming up with a game plan that we both were comfortable with. And, even if I felt sure it was the right thing to do, I didn’t want to be responsible for pushing someone I loved into a situation that would make them unhappy. So all I could do was give him the space, listen to his concerns, and try to assuage them without biasing him. I experienced how complicated it is to have your life wrapped up with someone else’s.

After a couple of months of feeling it out and some second guessing, we made our announcement to WRA. In the end, they offered to keep us on part-time with the plan to check in after 6 months to see if we wanted to return as full-time employees. As an aside, one of the programs our departure most disrupted was the drone program, and the company quickly pulled together a short list of people to train as their new drone pilots. I am proud to say that I emailed the CEO and told him that I had noticed the list was exclusively male despite my understanding that several equally qualified women had applied. He responded positively saying he had overlooked that and that they were now planning to add one more female candidate (though in reality no one ended up going their drone license in the ensuing 6 months).

The third stressor that creeped up was that, during a routine pap smear, I had an abnormal result. Because I was just about to move to Hawaii and wouldn’t be able to get a follow-up appointment until after I was supposed to have already left California, I had to leave that up in the air until I was settled in Hawaii. For the most part I tucked that away in the back of my brain, but it was an underlying stress with a dash of extra worry because I was postponing follow-up and hoping that didn’t have repercussions I’d regret.

Once Stewart and I did finally overcome the hurdle of giving our notice to WRA, it felt like a weight had been lifted and for a brief period we hit another high in the year. We road-tripped across the country to make an adventure of getting to Maine, where we’d spend some time with Stewart’s family and drop off his things. Our first stop was Big Sur where I was a bridesmaid in Barb’s wedding. Then it was through the southwest to the Grand Canyon, south through Texas to the coast, along the gulf with a stop in New Orleans, and then north along the Appalachians. There was a fair bit of stress and arguing with all of the daily logistics of figuring out where to go and where to stay with a Prius stacked full of valuables. We were also juggling doing the I-Corps program with my parents for a grant and WRA work. But overall there were also a lot of cool firsts and new sights.

After a brief stop in Vermont to meet Stewart’s uncle & aunt, we finally settled in Maine for the next month. It was very pleasant time just making meals and hanging out with his parents. In particular I loved a weekend trip to Monhegan Island with its water color landscape and fairy-filled forests. We also did a road trip down to Virginia for his brother’s wedding where I met a lot more of his family. I had a lot of fun with his cousin Nan, who was crushing on Stewart’s classmate and bumbling along with her guitar drunk at night certain she’d somehow find a way home despite not knowing anyone and not able to get an uber.

I finally flew home in October to set up the living space for Stewart and I and to spend some quality time with my parents. I proudly transformed the upstairs of the two-story building into a livable space. I also made some improvements to my parent’s living situation, but ended up also fighting with them, in particular my mom, quite a bit as I took in how much things had gone so awry since I’d left for SF. The pandemic was to blame for a lot of their isolation from external pressures that kept things in check, as was some unpredictable changes like my mom’s craft’s class instructor passing away and her hula class getting more competitive and nudging her out. But still, things had gotten bad. Mom was no longer able to even go in a long walk without cramping and the house was covered in a layer of grime. Dad was limping around on crocs that were worn down to almost nothing, unable to wear shoes because of his intense swelling but also unwilling to prioritize initiating medical care, and sleeping on an uneven surface of a cot and twin mattress with a wedged pillow that his feet would slide off of. I was angry at them for not taking care of themselves, and overwhelmed with how many things I saw around me that needed to be fixed. I felt myself getting easily frustrated and triggered by their justifications, and it was still so fresh for me that I wasn’t yet able to filter out what things to react to and which to patiently work on over time.

It was within that context that Stewart arrived. In addition, at this point, we’d been working parttime for almost two months, and the awareness of feeling unemployed and the open-endedness of our arrangement was heightening. I felt a strong sense of pressure and responsibility to make sure the HFC arrangement provided a sense of stability, and that also made me very sensitive to Stewart’s assessment of our living quarters and HFC work dynamic. I was also sharing my home and my parents with him, as well as some very messy but cherished and vulnerable parts of my past with him, which made me very sensitive to his opinions. I found myself very wrapped up in his mood and very easily stressed by anything that seemed to come across as unhappiness or dissatisfaction, which to be honest is something he’s much more outwardly expressive of than I’m used to. I felt a combination of guilt and embarrassment about things he didn’t like since the farm was very much part of me and my past, and an indignant reaction to his dissatisfaction—anger and resentment for his inability to be more appreciative and positive and kind when he knew this was my special place and I was obviously trying so hard to make things better for everyone. All in all, it was not a great combination of circumstances, and I found myself very reactive to everyone around me.

During this time, I also did my follow-up to my abnormal pap-smear and found I had severe dysplasia, or pre-cancerous cells, in my cervix. It was the first time the word “cancer” had ever applied to me and, though I knew the procedure was fairly routine and my odds were good, it was a scare. Ultimately I had 1.5 cm removed from my cervix, which puts me at a higher risk for premature births. And ultimately the sample they removed showed that the dysplasia was clearing up on its own and I didn’t need to remove part of my cervix—but there was not way to know that would happen between the time of the diagnosis and the surgery, and we went with the safest option. So that’s that. I feel like I was mostly disconnected from that experience emotionally. It felt very step-by-step and I was never really scared but also didn’t try to think about it too deeply.

Also during this time, the highly contagious omicron variant began to emerge, and I watched as Covid case numbers became the highest they had ever been during the whole pandemic. And yet people did not react. Long gone were the days of taking a wide birth on a sidewalk to avoid walking near someone, or only dining outdoors. People had acclimatized to the pandemic even though it was the worst it had ever been. It frustrated me. While we were all vaccinated and the death rate wasn’t as high with this variant, I still operated under the assumption that if my mom were to get any strain of covid, even the mildest form, she would be at high risk of death. So the “mildness” of the variant doesn’t change my behavior or alleviate any of my stress over, it’s still the probability of catching covid that I track. This was also during the holidays when a number of family gatherings, including Christmas, were happening. So I had to serve as the bad guy with my family forcing people to keep masks on and hang out outside. I didn’t like playing that role and my brother even poked fun at me and sent me a photo of his covid vaccination card to ask if he had permission to visit with us. But I stand by what I did, because my parents and I didn’t get Covid, and my siblings did. And I believe strongly that every day my parents don’t get Covid—particularly if we can avoid it during peak times so hospitals aren’t spread thin—the higher their chances of survival are. Because more people are getting immunity every day and treatments are improving.

And then, out of nowhere and with no kindness or sympathy for how hard things already were or for how much I’d been looking forward to seeing her, life took grandma away. And it just seemed like – when is it enough?

I felt both that the world had let me down and I, in my failure to have achieved some societal impact or transformation of some personal passion into a professional endeavor, had somehow let the world down too. How silly to feel so self important, right? But at the same time, we only experience one life, so isn’t everything life or death? Isn’t me wasting the opportunity to utilize myself for something meaningful the most monumental failure? Life just felt too big and too fast and too disappointing. It was the first time in my life I was really struggling with the thought of ‘what’s the point?’ I know I’ve been lucky in that, for most of my life, I had the privilege of feeling amazed. Amazed at how beautiful my home was, amazed by places I had the privilege to see. I always felt a little like my life had this movie-like quality. Last year was the first year I can remember just not loving my life. And, because I felt responsible for these let downs and, on a higher level, because I was upset at myself for getting stuck in such a bad attitude and perspective, it was also my first time really not loving myself.

And then while I was lost in all that ego, to then unexpectedly lose grandma, and to feel the guilt of not having realized I should have been thinking more of her. I should have been prioritizing visiting her over everything else. I had been talking about her to Stewart, and to his parents. I had been . And yet I was so wrapped up in fixing things and getting stressed about thigs that I didn’t just visit her. I’ll never forget that the week before she passed, I had been talking about visiting her, and Stewart said “let’s just go then. We can just go for a few days”. And then the next week she died. I’ll never forget that she had called mom the month before, and I knowing it was difficult to talk with her on the phone and not having nailed down when we might visit her with mom and thinking I’d be visiting her soon, just continued walking out the door and doing something else. I should have stopped and said hi to her.

I have never felt so much anger at myself before. I was angry at myself for not being able to help my parents in a way that seems sustainable for them. I was angry at myself for putting Stewart in a position that he might be unhappy in. I was angry at myself for being so emotional, for being so embarrassingly quick to argue and lash out. And now I was angry at myself and so overwhelmingly guilty for not having visited grandma right away. For not having visited her the last Christmas in Hawaii before COVID hit.

I was also just devastatingly sad.

Grandma's house was my happy place. It is a fixture of my childhood. Sliding down the stairs, memorizing every bridge and curly fern in their anthrium patch, seeing grandpa out with his machete clearing the veg, the smells of ginger and garlic, the early morning sounds of mom and grandma sitting at the kitchen talking downstairs.

Going to grandma's was like going to camp in the summer, and it was as much a part of the winter holidays as putting up the tree. She was an anchor in my life, and as an adult a refuge where my siblings and I could live under the same house and be kids again. losing her is the the type of loss where you look forward and you're not sure what normal is supposed to be any more.

To grandma I want to say, thank you for giving me the most uncomplicated love. I thought I did, but now realize I did not grasp enough how much I relied on and cherished that love.

My previous reflections have been centered on a worry of getting older. My perspective has shifted slightly. I'm feeling older not because I'm getting physically older or feel that I no longer considered young, but because things of my past that were constant and cherished are going away. Because there is a state of things I can't hold on to, and the time has come where I am witnessing it change and disappear.

There is a sweet window of time where the constants that have been in your life are in no immediate danger of going anywhere. Where you can enjoy the new and exciting with the comfort of the existing being stable. Now it feels like the new heralds the old. That one gives way for the other. I feel myself transitioning into a life that is not like the one I grew up in. That I have to find new normals. It’s sad and scary.

I’ve found some closure in helping to accomplish grandma’s funeral—in giving people an opportunity to grieve and in pushing myself to do something uncomfortable and growth-enabling as my tribute to grandma, to show her that I’ll keep pushing forward for her. And the ability to work full days under Kupu funds seems to also have alleviated some of the stress I felt as a mediator between HFC, my parents, and Stewart.

But I’m not trying to wrap up 2021 in a tidy bow. I think 2021 will go down in my memory as a rough year, and that’s fine. Life isn’t a reasonable character. It’s not going to hold back a bad life event just because you’re already dealing with other struggles. It unfolds with no sympathy and no agency. I’ve learned that. And I also know that the hardest parts of my life are yet to come. I have underlying anxieties now that took root from experiencing this deep sadness that I don’t think will ever go away. But I do think I will continue to improve on how I cope with stress and worries about the future. I am going to actively work on being less quick to react, on misdirecting my stresses into unnecessary arguments, and on feeling less responsible for the way things happen and other people’s lives. Though at the same time, I am going to push back on the fact that I’m someone who does care about other people’s needs and feelings, and that should not be treated as a negative quality. So for now, I’m going to help my parents get through this big push on the farm, and just trust my future self to figure out the rest when the time comes.

[mikialynn]

2020 Reflection

I haven’t been great about completing my reflections the past couple of years. Parts of them do exist, and I will create finished versions. However, 2020 is a year that I absolutely cannot miss reflecting on. Especially since it seems at any moment these days, something significant and perspective-altering can just happen. So I want to preserve where I am right at this moment.

At a historical level, on a global scale, 2020 has been the most important year I have ever lived through. The events of the past year have been on a scale that is so immense, I feel like I can’t even connect with them most of the time. But then there are flashes where it hits – where I have a digestible bit of life experience that taps me into the larger emotional current. And it overwhelms and terrifies me just long enough to push it away again.

We are approaching two million deaths in the world, with thousands dying every day. California has ordered dozens of refrigerated trucks just to hold the overflow of dead bodies. I have for the first in my life experienced truly believing that my parents might die within the year. I’ve had to sit through several instances where the chances of them being exposed were high and just hold my breath waiting for the events to unfold. It reminded me a bit of that stomach-dropping moment I realized I could have contracted rabies, and that it was a fatal situation if left untreated. Only this wasn’t for myself, this was for people I love, and for a virus that had no vaccine or guaranteed treatment, and so it came with added layers of helplessness, fear, and frustration.

We have an unbridled President stoking division in the country for a power-grabbing, personal-gain agenda that is unprecedented. It’s a reality you can’t help but shake your head to in disbelief thinking this just can’t exist in this day and age in this country. And yet there it is. Confederate flags in the Capitol. The inflammatory speeches. The unchecked, unabashed lies. The shockingly amoral willingness to appeal to people with such twisted, racist, fearful views of people and the world. The childish recklessness of undermining a democracy just to deflect and rationalize a loss.

We had the Black Lives Matter protests erupt across the nation. Unlike the Women’s Rights or Climate Change marches I’ve participated in before that are organized well in advance and have a designated time, these were often spontaneous protests sparked by a real personal and immediate anger and frustration. Protests that continued for months. Protests that, though mostly peaceful, sometimes did shut down cities and burn down buildings. And we saw an aggressive and often unjustifiable containment of those protests that is also unprecedented in my lifetime. For the first time, I’ve experienced city curfews and lock downs.

Just walking down the street, the evidence of how the world has changed is everywhere. People casually walking around in masks (at least in San Francisco, though clearly this varies by city, county, and state) that at this point have developed their own fashion of patterns and styles. People veer away to give each other a wide berth, even stepping off of the sidewalk into the road to avoid getting close. And none of that is considered rude. Busy streets are seen sectioned off for pedestrian use. Streets with restaurants are now lined with a collection of makeshift outdoor seating—the prototypical wooden walls and strung up garden lights. There are circles sprayed onto parks so people sit in their designated bubbles six feet apart. Shops are boarded up, either because the store went under or as a temporary fix to the break ins that happened during the protests. Markers are on the ground outside of grocery stores to indicate where to stand in line to be six feet apart. Plexiglass erected between yourself and the cashier. Hand sanitizers in every backpack and car, at the opening to every shop. Masks tucked into pockets and purses and car doors. The routine of disinfecting groceries. It all seems so normal now.

Despite so much erupting on the global stage, in that poetic contradictory fashion, I feel like in my personal bubble 2020 has been defined by how little has happened. With the exception of 2018, which I spent moving to San Francisco and living on the West Coast for the first time, 2020 is the first year since I was 17 years old that I haven’t traveled abroad. It is a year truly characterized by being stagnant and still.

The significance of traveling for me stems from a few places. The notion of how quickly time is used up and how limited our supply of it is has always been a fundamental motivator for me in how I approach life. It’s what drives me to learn and try and explore. How else should one spend a life if not trying to fit as many different experiences and gain as much perspective as one possibly can? To that end, I think being a good person is correlated to being exposed to as many types of people, places, and life experiences as possible. To me, traveling feels like connecting myself to the larger fabric of humanity and improving myself as a person. Travelling also helps me to keep perspective. One of my greatest fears is complacency. Getting into a routine that doesn’t really move or fulfill you but allows you to get by, and thinking that is enough while your life disappears. I feel like we have to be vigilant about reminding ourselves how valuable life is and how much we can do with our time as long as we keep pushing. Travelling to new places really gives me that reset and renewed energy. So, when I emphasize how 2020 was the first year I didn’t travel, what I’m really highlighting is how a major source of what fuels me and gives me a sense of value was missing. With everything horrible going on in the world, not having that safety net to pull me back and keep me mentally healthy enabled a sort of listlessness I hadn’t experienced before.    

I also couldn’t do any of my usual music or dance classes. I didn’t get to explore a new city and interact with its communities. Often times, I had to cancel planned camping and hiking trips because new lock down orders would come into place. I remember in 2018 as the year was coming to a close, I had it in my mind that my year-end reflection would be about the importance of being aimless. It was my year of having no plan, having no serious commitments, and just letting myself inhabit new versions of myself. I felt experimental, a little reckless, and free. The year 2020 is in such stark contrast.    

Here are some notable sad memories from 2020. My grandfather passed away. I was supposed to fly back for his funeral in March, but Covid-19 began hitting the U.S. in a noticeable way just before that trip. I remember just the week before, I had flown to visit my friend Barb in Vegas. I remember feeling the situation escalate as that trip unfolded – from Barb telling me she was feeling sick and me realizing she could be contagious with Covid, to wearing a mask for a prolonged time for the first time as I traveled through the airport, to ultimately booking an earlier flight home once I got to Las Vegas because I no longer felt it was safe. When I got back, I remember Stewart and I were driving back from work to his place, having just picked up our things to start working from home based on the new company policy (a week before a city order mandated it) and both of us reaching that turning point as we talked in the car. Up until that point, it was if we were slowly realizing the severity of the situation in bits and pieces. On that ride as we talked about how it would be irresponsible and unsafe to travel back to see my family, it escalated to the point of realization: things were not normal anymore. Things were going to change. And they were going to change for a while.

We had already booked and planned this extended trip back to Hawaii. My friend Winnie was going to travel to San Francisco the week after we got back. I had been working hard in preparation of taking the next month to be with friends and family. I’d been looking forward to the summer, when Stewart and I had planned to visit his family on the east coast and attend my college reunion. And then suddenly it was snatched away. I remember crying coming to grips with the immediate loss of those experiences, but also with the heaviness of what was happening around me. And then making the phone call to my parents. At the time, Hawaii was nowhere near the stage of fear and seriousness that we were at in California, and I remember having to convince them that it wasn’t a good idea to come home. I remember the tension of texting and emailing my aunts and uncles and cousins trying to get them to post-pone or scale down grandpa’s funeral to Big Island residents only. Tracking the Covid cases in Hawaii and watching as each day they increased exponentially. I remember my aunt’s comments about not wanting to put hand sanitizer out or have the immediate family seated away from the audience because she didn’t want to make people feel uncomfortable. It was a silly thought then, and has not aged well. Even looking back at the funeral photos where basically no one was wearing masks except my mom and grandma (because I sent them masks) is just unconceivable from this vantage point. But that’s the thing—everyone needed to have that moment of realization. And it came to people at different times for different reasons. And to some people sadly and frustratingly, it never came.

I remember the week following my grandpa’s funeral, my dad called to tell me had accidentally hit Nala with the truck, and that when they took her to the vet they discovered a tumor in her mouth. It was a rapid decline from there, and we put her to sleep soon after. I hadn’t experienced putting a dog to sleep since I was a kid. We also invested so much more individual attention to Nala because she lived during a time when she was the only dog. So losing her was just heartbreaking. And it was heartbreaking imagining my dad feeling any sort of guilt about it, and knowing my parents had to care for her as she declined. It still hurts me to imagine Hoku, our puppy, apparently jumping in the truck looking for Nala after she was put down, trying to track her down by her scent.

I cried a lot during that beginning period of the Covid experience. I was also staying at Stewart’s place in Berkeley, which up until that time I hadn’t spent much time at. So I felt disconnected from things that felt comfortable and normal in multiple ways. I also had an underlying stress about my brother’s wedding during that time, since at that point they were still planning to go through with it in October. Ultimately, they did decide to post-pone the wedding to the following year.

Eventually Stewart and I started taking action to combat the monotony that comes from having your work and social life confined to your home by planning some camping trips. But as fate would have it, once we started doing that, California had a record-breaking year in wildfires. And so we watched as the smoke rolled in, bringing us the worst air quality levels in the world at the time, and turning the sky orange. Never before have I had to constantly monitor air quality to decide if I could go outside or not, or jump in a car to use its filtration system while waiting out a period of particularly bad smoke.

Then, to close off the year, a worker on our farm had an overnight guest that tested positive for Covid, and I had to convince my parents to get tests. I went tense and numb for a week as we awaited the results, which were thankfully all negative. And on the very same day we found out about our worker’s exposure to Covid, I found out in a mix of frantic messages from my sister and friends that a fire had broken out on the farm. No one was hurt, but the container and building that stored many of my siblings belongings (and possibly some of mine that I’m not aware of) including my sister’s wedding dress, our Christmas decorations, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm equipment were completely destroyed.

But there were some good things that came from 2020! Motivated by wanting to take advantage of the time I have with my family when everyone is alive and well, I started scheduling weekly Zoom calls, which is the most remote communication my family has ever had. It also pushed me to have dad chip in for a smart phone for my mom’s birthday. We also got them an antenna for the internet, so it is now much easier to be in touch.

Another happenstance of 2020 is that it forced a lot of people to be more domestic. Clearly, given the shortage of flour at grocery stores at the start of the pandemic. It was fun reading my 2016 reflection where I talk about how I’m struggling to see myself as an adult since I still just cook with premade sauces, I have never held a job for more than a year, and my largest investment is my laptop. I can now safely say that I feel like an adult! I have a sourdough starter baby that I regularly make pizza dough and crackers from, and I have helped to put on Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. I’ve been at this job for over 2 and a half years, and my savings have gone from zero to half my income. I often feel like I am the mother of 667 Fell St. Oh, and I also turned 30 this year (which would probably have been a cornerstone of this reflection in a normal year, but is just an afterthought in this one).  

I think another shared experience a portion of society has had is the self-reflection on whether or not we are happy with what we are doing in our lives. With all the social opportunities taken away, everyone fortunate enough to maintain their jobs has had their work be the focal activity of the year. And for those of us dissatisfied with our jobs, the lack of distractions outside of work to sustain us has made it clear that this is not a path to continue down further. The stress of the constant billable time to the 15-minute increment, the energy drain of the monotonous work, the emptiness of feeling like your life and time and potential is being wasted on work that has no meaning. It’s not enough to sustain me. While this isn’t blatantly a positive thought, I think it’s a clarity that will lead to a positive outcome in the long run. I don’t have the time and energy to do the things I enjoy with my current job, and I don’t have an interest in building on the skills this job requires. I want to support communities and people more directly, and I want to have creativity and writing play a larger role in the work I do. Where to go from here, I’m not sure, but I don’t want to waste another year not pursuing those opportunities.

Similarly, I can say that I have shared what has been a difficult but important life experience with my partner this year. And, despite both of us sharing the same living space and working at the same job together—which amounts to spending almost 24/7 together—we are still doing well. We aren’t in the happiest place given all that’s going on in the world and dissatisfaction with our jobs. But I’ve seen that we can share in difficult times together and still find ways to maintain a sense of fun and love. I certainly did not plan on living with a partner less than one year into a relationship, but the times have pushed us to accelerate things and we stayed strong through it. It was fun getting to know Berkeley—the neighborhoods and the trails. Stewart and I also shared in coastal foraging and fishing excursions, squeezed in a beautiful backpacking trip to Kennedy Lake (where Stewart even carried my backpack for me when I had some sort of elevation sickness), went on a roadtrip through Nevada, Utah, and Arizona to visit Barb and David, and even bought a boat and went boat-in camping at Tomales Bay. While I didn’t add new countries to the list of places I’ve been, I did manage to add national parks and forests like Stanislaus, Arches, Zion, and Death Valley.

Other perks of the year have been not having to waste time commuting to work, and therefore spending most of the year not having to wake up to an alarm. It was also nice sharing this bonding experience with my roommates, who I’m very grateful to have found in 2019. I also joined in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion group at WRA and was able to be a judge for a middle school science competition, which brought me a lot of joy and inspiration to find similar work to do full time. Lastly, Biden thankfully won the presidential election. It was as if I had been holding my breath for four years and finally, when it seemed like even a contested result wouldn’t undo the margin that Biden had won by, all that tension came pouring out. Stewart and I pulled over in the car on our way to do some fishing as the results flashed on our phones and celebrated. I can’t imagine how hopeless it would have felt stepping into 2021 knowing we had another four years of the Trump administration.

I also want to note some things I meant to do but didn’t (and to say that it’s okay that I didn’t do them, because 2020 was not an easy year, and we all had to learn to be patient with ourselves throughout it). I’d stopped taking vocal classes with the intention of doing dance classes, but then never did because of Covid (the disclaimer, I’m currently signed up for a month-long class this January). Stewart bought me a keyboard, but I barely played it. I planned on quitting my job but, albeit for reasonable concerns about the economy and job market, never left it. There was video footage that I never edited and interview ideas that I didn’t get around to doing. I didn’t start building a communications body of work. I was never able to maintain good exercise habits. I didn’t finish and post my 2018 and 2019 reflections.

But you see, what I’ve realized is that when you’re not happy, it’s hard to do all the things you want to. I’m grateful that I even had a job, I’m grateful I genuinely like the people I was quarantined with, and I’m grateful for the money I was able to save during this past year. But it was a hard year and an unsatisfying year professionally. My hope for the coming year is that the clarity gained in what type of job I don’t want, and the financial buffer I now have, will allow me to transition to something more sustainable in the coming year. Something more fulfilling and more enjoyable. It’s the big ask, I know, to find a job that you also love. But I’m narrowed in on environmental communications or education, and I think one of the two will pan out.  

So I’m going to continue to be patient and forgiving with myself in these trying times, but hopefully this past year will be a year I can always draw from. When I’m making an excuse to call my mom later, that I remember how scared I was when she got on the plane to the Big Island and thought she truly might be taken away from me, and then decide to call. When I’m choosing jobs, that I remember how the way you feel about the work you do seeps into all other aspects of your life, and that I choose passion over stability. I hope 2020 will always serve to remind me to be grateful.  

[mikialynn]

2017 Reflection

The year 2017 was just one of those years.

I reflected a couple of years ago about wanting to get to that place where I can just sit back on the train and enjoy the ride without thinking about where it’s been and where it’s going. I did that. That was the year 2016, and it was blissful.

My life up until that point had existed in one of two extreme worlds. On one end was my rural upbringing in Hawaii where my entire world could fit into my small town. Where my cares and thoughts were strong but simple, and all the people and places beyond the shoreline were a hazy idea shrouded from view. My subsequent reality was vastly different—an ever-expanding world full of people who thought so critically and so intensely about life, a world full of overwhelming burdens from impossible social and environmental issues, of the full spectrum of human emotions from failure to love, heartbreak to forgiveness. It was a time of discovering the inner strength born from taking those last breathless, painful steps onto a mountain summit or navigating through a chaotic foreign city with nothing but my own wit and curiosity. I went from a world of one island to a world of 25 countries in the span of ten years. It was a beautiful, exhausting journey.

Whether it was just the natural place we reach at this point in life or the setting I was in I’m not sure—it was probably a mix of both—but while I was at Duke I found this wonderfully refreshing balance between those extremes. Life slowed down a bit. Both myself and the people around me existed somewhere between the domains of the highly informed, well-to-do, thrill-seekers and the normal, imperfect, happiness-seekers. It was enough to not be the person that changes the world, but just to do some good in it. And it was enough to not dedicate every minute of your time to traveling or studying or cultivating noteworthy skillsets, but to just playing games and cooking food with loved ones. Life was not too intense, not too easy, but just right. I was happy.

That lovely train derailed in 2017. And in the wreckage, I lost sight of the valuable qualities in myself that I know have carried me through my journey and that I am proud to possess. I let someone else deflate my sense of self. And, maybe worst of all, I reacted to that pressure by pushing and pulling and refusing to embrace the present to the point that I let myself become someone else. Someone I’m not proud of. It was an experience that forced me to put a pause on everything and to deeply reflect on who I am. To sort out which of my qualities were real and which I’d tricked myself into believing were true about me. To recognize the difference between which aspects of me are fundamental and which are malleable. And then, to decide which parts to keep and which I was ready to truly work on.

Oddly enough, trying to help my parents better their lives since I’ve been living and working on the farm has been a continuation of some of the same lessons I’ve grappled with this year in ending my relationship— seeing again how destructive I can be if I push too hard, learning the value of giving people space and stepping away, understanding how differently people react to conflict, and focusing on love and larger goals to help you let words roll off your back and be a better person.

I have done a lot of reflecting throughout this year, and I cannot include it all in this reflection. The processing took many months and many pages. However, the conclusions are concise: I have learned the value of not trying to control things and the need to be fearless. I am shifting my gaze from outward at the world to discovering and understanding what’s within myself.

Moving forward, this is what I have decided. I will have the self-assuredness to not feel the need to explain or defend or justify myself. I will have the patience, trust and independence to just let others be—to know when to push and when to let go. I will not try to control things that aren’t meant to be controlled, and will not stress or berate myself over those circumstances and their outcomes. I have learned that trying to help someone too forcefully can do more harm than good, and that there’s true value in just stepping away and giving things time. I will never forget that feeling of how precariousness and temporary things can be, and I will let that fill me with the desire to be fearless and present in my life. I will care for myself foremost, and those who care for me, and know when to remove myself from situations that make me undervalue myself.

I’m looking forward to the coming year. It seems a little complicated—multiple career interests, conflicting emotions about being close to home and continuing to see the world, and a fragile door I’m halfheartedly keeping shut on someone I care about deeply who needs to figure out his path and feelings. If I was trying to juggle all the pieces, it would be impossible to do. But I’m not. I’m just following what feels right to me and what makes me happy. Right now, that’s helping my parents. It’s being here for the farm that has given so much to me at this time that is so critical in deciding its future. It’s sitting out in the cool breeze under the warm sun with this smiling affectionate dog, taking it all in. It’s feeling present. Feeling like myself again.

It’s cliché, but it feels like coming full circle. I’ve been living at home now for the longest period of time since I left for college ten years ago. I am not at all the over-confident, unaware, dreamer I was before I left. The shroud along the shoreline has been removed, and I know how much lies beyond. How tough and unrelenting it can be, as well as how magical and connected everything is. I am also no longer the tireless, self-critical, insatiable explorer I was in the intense years following. I was on a burn-out trajectory, and I needed to think not just about what I wanted to achieve, but the quality of life I wanted to live. 

I am glad that 2017 forced me to stop focusing on my external world and to look closely at myself. I feel I am a much more secure and better person now than I was at the start of the year. It was a trying year. It was a year with a lot of lows. But there’s something liberating about hitting rock bottom. There’s a clarity and an excitement about choosing how to get back up. The train derailed. I’m having to walk on-foot for a bit. I’ll probably get a little lost. But hey, I’ve always been up for an impromptu hike. And the scenery on-foot always turns out to be the best.

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For prosperity, the non-abstract version of this year’s highlights included: Traveling with my then-boyfriend in Mexico, to Seattle and to my 5th year college reunion, graduating as valedictorian from my master’s program, travelling around Europe on my own for 5 weeks, ending a relationship, being a 4-year bridesmaid at Brittney’s wedding, doing legitimate work on my parent’s farm while trying my best to improve their lives, and reconnecting with my local community as an adult with new classes and activities (eg hula, hip-hop and crafts classes with my mom and sister!).

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[mikialynn]

2016 Reflection

I turned twenty-six this year--strode past that quarter century mark in what really is turning out to be an ever-hastening pace forward. Recognizing that I'm still young and should be focused on enjoying my present instead of getting nostalgic over it, I do think that age, growing up and defining "adulthood" were major themes of this year that can't be ignored. It feels like I've hit a second round of awkward pubescent years--the adultweeens. It's as if I had a major growth spurt into my mid/late twenties and am now expected to know how to embody this oversized and uncomfortable role. Obviously I don't. And obviously many of my peers don't. We commezirate over being expected to take on adult responsibilities while still feeling like we're college kids. However, despite what I think is clearly a fact that we're not adults, I have friends who are getting married and having babies! I've been a bridesmaid three times! We're children playing this adult version of house. It's surreal.

It is true that I am at least more adult than I have ever been, but that's not saying much. I can now comfortably cook chicken without worrying that it'll turn out raw, but all my sauces and pastes are still premade. I do my taxes, but it still feels as new and stressful as the first time everytime (and for the most part I just email friends for help). I'm en route to a master's degree, yet I've never held a job for more than one year and my largest investment is still my laptop.

I've also seen a change in how people react to me--how the world is labeling me even though I haven't really changed. Before, when I'd say my age or talk about what I'm doing, I could read their faces: How sweet and exciting! Such potential. So much ahead of her. Now I see a much more muted reaction: Oh okay twenty-six, not a kid then. I see, you do environmental management. Do I? How does one do environmental management? I apply for one to two year gigs. I make new friends and fall in love. I travel. I learn about my world and myself. That's what I do. I like to think about society and the environment and what can be done to improve our relationship. But so far that's not what I do. I have absolutely no idea what kind of job I want to have. Or where I want to live. Or how I could ever be satisfied with a  9 to 5 job that wasn't just a temporary situation.

I guess that's the major tension of this year. I can see that I am reaching a point where certain important decisions about lifestyle and career often happen, but I'm reluctant to make decisions that have long-term effects. As far as I can tell, growing up seems to mean a loss of flexibility. I'm just not ready for that.

But there are consequences to my resistance that I struggle with. My parents are getting older and are not in their best health. It makes seense to be home in Hawaii to take care of them. But selfishly, I wish it wasn't at that point yet. I wish I had a few more years to travel and live freely. And relationships--how many am I going to end because I refuse to live somewhere based on secure jobs rather than interesting locations? When will the benefits of my lifestyle be outweighed by the losses I suffer from not staying within one community and building on the relationships I already have in those places?  

If I think on these things--especically on my parents--than I do get a little overwhelmed. For the most part though, I'd say it's been a good year. It's been a full year of not having to make any hard decisions. I sense that I'm in an important transition, but for at least this year, I have been able to enjoy just being at this stage. All I had to do was do work for my classes, say yes to social events that were just handed to me, and get to know this dude with a beard--all very enjoyable things.

So let's go through the highlights. Technically I started the year off single, though I'd been talking with Esteban a bit and had gone out on a date. I remember the start of the year being very exciting. I had settled into schoolwork at Duke and was feeling good about the continued ease of doing well in my classes. January had a bit of drama, which I would have never voluntarily stepped into. It culminated at Winter Formal, and ended with a sweet walk to the Duke water retention pond where Esteban and I cleared the air and I accidentally almost spoiled Christmas for a little girl by declaring loudly that Santa wasn't real.

In January I also visited Mexico City with Ani and his friends. We officially stayed in separate hostels and did a very mature, civilized trip as just friends. It was harder for him post-trip though, so I think I realized I needed to cut back on communication after that. I visited him and Sojung one last time in DC over the summer before they both (funnily enough, as they can't stand each other) headed to Rwanda for new jobs. The next highlight was my Puerto Rico trip with Barb. It was fun driving around the island, seeing a biolumenescent bay, and making memories with Barb. I realized she is definitely a forgetful traveler (eg having to unscrew a locker to get to her keys for the lock she'd locked the locker with), but she's probably the closest friend I'll take away from Duke.

I also got my top choice for my master's project and summer internship. I am working with the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association to prioritize parcel acquisition for green space and upstream green infrastructure retrofits with Mahima, an excellent partner and one of my favorite people at Duke. For my intership, I was assigned the Urban Water intern with The Nature Conservancy. While the summer job didn't turn out great--I was given vague direction to research storwater in North Carolina and I wasn't sure how to best do, and I also didn't have the best relationship with my supervisor--overall the organization let me do fun conferences and outdoors activities and I had a great impression of them.

Also over the summer I traveled to India with Esteban. I hadn't expected to do such a big trip over the summer, but his push for India got me to plan for it. It was nice to see the balance of our two travel desires result in that trip. He wanted to see a lot of places, but I knew it wasn't feasible without planning. However, he also stopped me from planning too much so we'd still have the flexibility to find our hostels and short-distance transport when we were there. The trip was also kind of a make it or break it for us in my mind. Prior to the trip, we'd had a difficult coversation where I realized we were not on the same page about the relationship and I very nearly ended it. Unfortunately going into the New Year that conversation is still something that lingers with me, but for the most part I think we've grown a lot closer since then. And yes, we did survive the trip! We hiked across living root bridges, rode camels in the desert, hiked in the himalayas, and braved the crowds of Delhi and Mathura. Other summer highlights include deciding to take a hip hop dance class at Ninth Street Dance Studio, switching to a bike as my mode of transport, and the cultural phenomenon of Pokemon Go. Also, my sister got married and I was her maid of honor! And lastly, communication with Ani basically dropped to zero by the time I left for India and he moved to Rwanda.

My second year at Duke was a little different than the first. Both Barb and I had boyfriends, so we weren't at home as often and have had some problems making time for each other. We did a hip hop class together though! We also had two new roommates-both first years. I felt a little bad about not being as present with them as they may have liked for a nice home dynamic, but in the end I just didn't have enough time. Classes plus the MP, boyfriend, and a host of new hobbies (working out more regularly, hip hop with Barb and Blues dance with Esteban, and some of Esteban's hobbies like Magic The Gathering) kept me busy enough to just add on the occassional social event. But I was fine with that--I naturally only invest in a few key people and my studies after the initial excitement of a new environment wears off.

On the note of studies, it's been interesting. I definitely enjoy certain classes like my geospatial anaysis and statistics classes, but I always wonder how much I'll actually use those skills outside of school. I know they're good so that I can be conversant in them even if I don't take on those technical roles, but sometimes I wonder if I'm choosing the right classes. Maybe I should have focused more on business, finance or policy? Or strictly on some fun science like marine biology? It's so hard to know. The future is a complete mystery to me. I'm struggling to envision a job that allows me the lifestyle I want and that is also related to the issues I find most compelling. Unfortunatly, it sometimes feel like the two just don't go together.

Currently I'm in Mexico City staying with Esteban's family to celebrate New Years and his dad's birthday. Before this we were in Hawaii for over two weeks. I could have gone with my Princeton friends to Kenya and Tanzania for our first college friends getaway, but the pricetag was too high for my current situation. It's a bit sad seeing them posting photos, but I feel like I've grown more distant from my college friends this past year than every before. There's a certain level of maintaining appearances and intellectual competitiveness with that crowd that sometimes just overwhelms me. It's a bit sad, but I also feel like I'm settling into myself this year. Settling into my interests, my hobbies and the type of people I like to surround myself with.

Anyway, the trip is going reall well! Hawaii involved visiting grandma, hiking to lava, seeing manta rays, whales and tons of fishies, fishing, swimming with turtles and doing pretty hikes. It was also a lot of family time, including sleeping over at both my sister's and brother's, tagging along on Joe and his new girlfriend (Trisa's) marathon, and moving fish feed bags. So far in Mexico we've stayed at his grandma's house, I've gotten to know his mother, younger brother, and a few uncles, aunts and cousins. I'm currently at his father and stepmother's place, and am gradually getting to know them. There have been a lot of fun similarities between our families--sweet mothers that both frustrate us, brothers with new girlfriends who haven't seen Star Wars, dogs with cones who keep liking themselves, issues with water and electricity. There will be a few more days of family festivities and then it'll turn into more tourist activities. Being unable to participate in a number of situations because I can't speak Spanish has been frustrating at times--especially since I like to make good impressions--but I think things are settling into an alright routine.

So the year has been overall really enjoyable. I've got to travel again, which always makes me feel excited about life. I definitely feel more mature, though I'm not at the stage I think some might expect of me at this age. Next year will probably involve some big decisions, so I'm just going to enjoy this next semester as much as possible. For the first time, I really have no idea what might happen next. I don't have a fellowship telling me where to live. I don't have a scholarship forcing me to go back to school (or at least I don't think it makes sense to pursue the PhD right now). I can live anywhere. I can do anything. It's pretty exciting.

In summary, I think the reality is I'm perfectly on track. No rush. I'm just going to enjoy the phase of life I'm in. Just what to do about my parents?

[mikialynn]

2015 Reflection

[whoops I had this posted on the wrong tumblr]

So I know I haven’t posted my 2014 reflection yet. In my defense I have partially written it…but I think it’s more important to honestly capture what this past year looks like from my current vantage point—the precipice between 2015 and 2016.

This year was definitely different than all the years I’ve reflected on before. There is no adventure or first life experience to build an exciting narrative of meaning and discovery around. I’ve had to make some truly difficult decisions but, unlike in the past when decisions felt right soon after making them, this time I still feel doubtful. I’ve had to stand still, which is something I haven’t really done since I was 18 and first left Hawaii.

It kind of feels like all of the momentum that has been carrying me since I was a child has come to a halting stop. Like I’d just been happily gazing out the window of a train this whole time, appreciating the scenery regardless of how beautiful or desolate it was.  And then for some reason I looked too far ahead or broke my gaze or something, and now I can’t just sit back and enjoy myself. I can’t look out the window without straining to see ahead, to guess at the destination. And I keep looking behind, remembering and missing what the ride used to feel like.

I’m aware that this sounds a little premature for a 25 year old. I am young—the twenties are really an extension of your childhood, which somehow everyone fails to convey to you when you’re a kid and labeling twenty-something year olds as full-fledged adults. But the ride doesn’t feel like this endless journey of adventures anymore. The number of tracks you get to choose between at each fork is dwindling. The number of people you get to pick up and take with you is nearing capacity. The number of stops you get to make in the time you have is perceptibly limited. It all feels so depressingly overwhelming.

I know I’m still at an early stage in the ride, but I also know the scenery is losing its happy-go-lucky luster. In this approaching landscape, the people you love grow old. Your friends and family settle down in remote regions that you realistically can’t travel to—places that become just holiday card addresses. And you have to make decisions about things that limit the possibilities of what you can become. Permanency—the kryptonite to a dreamer. The first solid step onto a finite path.

Now let’s not confuse this anxiety with a fear of commitment or settling down, at least not with the idea of those things. I lived in the same little ol’ town for the first 18 years of my life, and the need for a sense of community and stability is deeply imprinted on me. But I’ve always loved dreaming. I love beginnings. I enjoy the anticipation of a surprise more than the surprise itself. I’m saddened by things way before they happened. As a positive side-effect, I usually have the foresight to capitalize on the things I have and recover quickly after something ends because I’ve processed it all early on. But in this case, I think that penchant for beginnings and for overthinking is going to work against me. I’m going to leech away the enjoyment of my present if I can’t learn to stop myself from gauging how much track lies behind and ahead of me.

Anyway, I’ve said a lot without saying very much. Let’s back off from the abstract for a bit and add some detail to those broad strokes.

The year started off back home in Hawaii. I was supposed to finish my job at UNESCO in January, but had managed to get off early and move home before Christmas (a most excellent surprise orchestrated by my brother and myself). At that point I’d applied to a couple of graduate schools, and was putting the finishing touches on a few applications while enjoying myself on the Big Island. I then entered a holiday period between commitments. I had no real motivation to look for another job, so I dedicated myself mostly to helping my parents out on the farm—getting my mom walking, helping dad improve his office, sorting through pots and other piles of accumulated farm trash, sorting fish in the pond, and whatever else I was needed for.

With that though, I also took on the stress of worrying about my parents, both their health and the farm they’ve poured themselves into. The farm is my home and the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, but it always comes with its dark side—the setbacks, the broken this or that, the impending deadlines, the fear of what might happen if I look away for a second. Being at home without anything pressing to keep my mind occupied, surrounded by my parents and the responsibility I felt for them, waiting for grad school decisions that—whether appropriate or not—would help me evaluate whether I’d succeeded at Princeton or if those few hits to my GPA were going to hang over me forever…let’s just say it primed me for a little quarter-life crisis.  But I don’t think the break down happened until I had to make a decision on a grad school.        

So about that. I got in to my top grad schools—Yale and Michigan (Duke would follow after I’d starting visited schools), so I set up a trip to visit programs while using Ani’s place in Cambridge as a home base. It was a great arrangement—a little New Orleans visit to check out Tulane, a stay with Candice (PiA fellow from Singapore) in Ann Arbor while I visited Michigan, a visit with Selena (Hawaii Yale student) and the girl I’d met in Samoa while I checked out Yale. Oh and that surprise Air BnB stay with the guys at Duke when I found out a week before their admitted students weekend that I’d gotten in. And in between I met up with friends in Boston and DC, and Ani and I got to hang out. We even squeezed in a trip to Quebec to visit his housemate’s maple sugar farm, a couple Red Sox games, and a retrospectively fitting (and dramatic) trip to Walden Pond.    

The problem with getting in to all of your top schools is that they’re all great. They all have very complex pros and cons and there truly is no right answer. There are just guesses and decisions about how you want your life to turn out. And, as we have established, these are thoughts that I am poorly equipped to contemplate on. Michigan was out for financial decisions, so it was between Yale and Duke. I was 100% certain I was going with Yale for about 49% of the day, and 100% certain I was going with Duke for about 51%. That Duke advantage happened to occur just before midnight when the decision was due. I chose Duke, and almost immediately felt a tightness in my chest like it had been the wrong choice. Duke was definitely a riskier move, as the Nicholas School is not nearly as well-regarded and connected as Yale’s forestry school. But the professors and research and approach I liked were at Duke. Also, if I’m being completely honest, which one should during a reflection, some rebellious side of me was instinctively opposed to the idea of having an education that was exclusively Ivy. I wanted to do it to prove a point. But the funny thing is, the point I’ve proven is that I’m as susceptible to that Ivy yearning as anyone else.  Now when I tell people I go to Duke and I don’t get that Princeton reaction that I’ve, admittedly and ashamedly, become accustomed to, I do feel this strange urge to say “And I also got into Yale.” Isn’t that weird? The exclusivity of the Ivies is partially what drove me away from Yale, yet here I am secretly wishing that Ivy stamp was on my resume. Humans are so absurdly backwards.

Anyway, it was the first decision I’ve made that I really have continued to wrestle with, and that I don’t ever think I’ll feel resolved about. Yale definitely would have given me more options because of its extensive network and because it would have opened doors to a larger variety of jobs, whereas my Duke path is pretty specialized. If I don’t end up staying interested in the type of research I chose Duke for, then I’m worse off than if I’d chosen Yale. I think since then, there’s been this underlying level of anxiety about my future. This persistent stress about whether or not I’m doing what I really want to do. Didn’t I love writing when I was younger? Isn’t it true that I can spend hours and hours video editing and putting together stories? Isn’t my strongest skill my ability to connect with people? Yet here I am forcing myself to spit out scientific papers that I already know are mostly used for the punch of an in-text citation at the end of a sentence. Also, are these issues that I’m studying simply things I find interesting? Do I actually want to work in those fields? Are these the types of jobs I want to spend my life doing? What do I imagine for the future? How much of what I’m doing now is the effect of my college peers and what they’ve helped me decide is an appropriate way to spend a life versus my own opinion? Will I be happy?

I can pacify myself by just thinking of my time at Duke as a freebie period—no financial loss, another set of experiences and friends, and a masters degree, regardless of what it’s in. But that doesn’t stop the anxiety. The nagging. The worrying. Am I screwing things up?

And then of course, the other big decision—whether or not to keep going with a relationship that has been 2+ years of long-distance with no end in sight. So here’s a recap of my relationship life: I’ve more or less been in a relationship since I was 19. The time between the first serious relationship and meeting the guy in my second relationship was two weeks. I’ve changed considerably since I was 19, but have never really been single long enough to embrace those changes. I’ve also spent roughly 4 years of that time doing long distance. I am 25 and I feel like most of my early 20s has been consumed by Gchat, Skype and Whatsapp. There are things as a single woman I’ve imagined that I’d do, a type of life I’d lead, experiences I’d have. Yet somehow I’ve managed to put myself in a position where I can neither fully enjoy the perks of a relationship (having that person with you) or being single (being more free, selfish, and present in your life). And to add to that, I know that, if this guy wasn’t with me, he’d be making very different decisions about jobs and where he wants to live. The sad, honest truth is that we were both making compromises in our lives, but not even getting the reward of living in the same place as each other.

So after overwhelming myself with trying to figure out what the best move was and when it should be made, I finally decided I couldn’t do limbo anymore. I couldn’t have every conversation feel like it was deciding our future. Every talk turning into someone crying--that someone almost always being me. Yet here I am, once again, with that tightness in the chest, unsure what decision will actually be best in the long run. Once again worried that I’m screwing things up.

Obviously there have also been some positive parts to this year that I should highlight.  I really do get along well with the students at the Nic School. They’re all nerdy and outdoorsy. Really it’s like hanging out with copies of myself. Durham is an up-and-coming, hip little town. My roommates are an endearing, fun bunch. I’ve become close friends with a girl (peeing in the woods together anyone?) who I’d really like to keep as a friend post-Duke. I found that gaggle of guys that I always seem to find and befriend. I’ve chased storms for my urban streams research and I’ve swing-danced the night away in the gardens. I got to spend Thanksgiving in Teaneck and NYC with my college friends (and Ani) who I haven’t really hung out with since college. Abcde, one of my best friends, got married in Hawaii, making it my second turn as a bridesmaid in two years. Her eldest son loves me, and his little voice calling out “Kiiaa” is now one of my favorite sounds. My sister got engaged, so we’re bowling for a possible bridesmaid turkey. I also got to see my brother evolve into a marathon runner in under a year. Albeit, the motivation for this change was somewhat tragic, but I’m excited to see who he will become as a single man entering his thirties.

I’m also, and this one is important to me for self-esteem reasons, consistently one of the top students in my classes. I handle problem sets on my own, something that I was always too scared or unable to do at Princeton. People come to me for help. I aced all of my classes. Whatever confidence I lost by sometimes struggling at Princeton, which I acknowledge was not necessarily because I wasn’t smart but was in some ways due to certain educational disadvantages, I’ve gained back at Duke. It’s reassuring to know that I am actually pretty capable. It’s uplifting to be one of the more vocal and opinionated students in a class again. In fact, one of my roommates complains that I’m too optimistic and that I make things look too easy. Hah, she should probably read this reflection.

So yeah, it was a year of ups and downs as usual, but with a touch of anxiety that I haven’t had before. A year of having to make impossible decisions in the present based on mere guesses about what I’ll want in the future. I don’t know if I made the right decision about my school. I don’t know if letting go of a relationship that was so full of love is something that I’m going to regret. I don’t know what I’m doing. I think I need to get out of the train for a second. I think I need to slow down, go for a walk, and get inspired by what’s around me again. I know we have to just make decisions and that we can’t predict or control their outcomes. I just don’t know how to not try so hard to make the best ones. How to tell my mind to turn off. How to just be okay with how things are.

So here’s to 2016 being just a normal year in my life—not a year where I feel like I have to decide between relationships and my what I want to do with my life, or what kind of career I’m going to have. Here’s to not having it all figured out. To not trying to see the larger plan and not thinking too hard on the decisions I make. I know I’ll have to find an internship and that I’ll probably be thinking about post-graduate plans by the end of the year. But I’m going to do my best to find that seat where I can enjoy the ride again. To see out the train window from that angle where the light is soft and warm and the landscape looks inviting.

[mikialynn]

2013 Reflection

I’d like to write a reflection on the year 2014, but I can’t seem to get my thoughts straight until I revisit 2013. For a few years now, Ihave been trying to write a reflection at the end of every year. In part I decided to do this because having these mental keepsakes is a fun way to document and eventually revisit how I felt and thought about things in the past, and in part because I found it was a useful tool for squeezing out all the lessons I could gain from a year’s worth of experiences. Also, to be honest, it just felt good—kind of like taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling. Anyway, when 2013 ended I was “too busy” to get around to it and then to guilty to try and do it later. I’ll do my best to not let my persuasive need to do things perfectly or not do them at all allow me to miss a reflection again.

So these are my thoughts on the year 2013, written in the year 2015 as a precursor to my reflection on 2014 –try not to get confused.

To recap: The year of 2012 had been a big one full of changes—I graduated from college, ended a roughly three-year relationship, and lived abroad long-term for the first time. I also began my existence as an “adult,” removing the training wheels I got to keep in college by taking on the responsibilities of a full-time job, an apartment with rent, cell phone bills, credit cards, taxes, etc. I don’t think at the time I felt like I was that much older—that would be a hallmark of 2014 (hold your breath)—but I was certainly wary of the impending change.

For example, I can distinctly recall standing around backstage at Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s Life Sciences & Chemical Technology talent show. My colleagues and I were fulfilling the school’s tradition of having new staff members perform for the LSCT students. With my PiA friends, I’d helped teach the staff High School Musical’s “We’re all in this together” and the infectious Gangam Style dance. That bit was pretty effortless, and felt quite a bit like leading the choreography for the class homecoming skit like I used to do in high school. But standing behind the curtains watching these students rehearse their break dancing and singing acts with their colorfully dyed hair and miniskirts as I fidgeted with my khakis and red-collared LSCT T-shirt, I do remember noticing the divide that now existed between myself and those just a few years younger than me.

Anyway, back to the highlights of 2013. It was my intent to utilize this occasion of fresh starts to exercise my independence and freedom. In a lot of ways, I accomplished just that. I filled an entire passport with stamps from across Southeast Asia creating what is sure to be one of my favorite collections of memories. That year I camped in the forests of Sumatra, swam at the base of an active volcano, and went SCUBA diving through the wreckage of an old ship. I journaled on the steps of ancient temples, ate snails while squatting on red, plastic stools crammed on small, decrepit sidewalks, and explored the busy neighborhoods of motorbike-filled cities armed with just a map, some cash, and a limited tuktuk-specific vocabulary.

I also had the first of what I hope is many travel adventures with my brother (and family in general), sleeping on overnight trains, enjoying the often odd company of our tour guides, and discovering hidden restaurants in our relentless search for the perfect noodles.

Without putting too much energy into building a social network, I somehow lucked into a cohort of young teachers who experience and appreciate the world in a way very similar to how I do. People who loved Pokemon, Criminal Minds and Settlers of Catan as much as they loved understanding human nature and traveling the world.

Though terrified and often overwhelmed, I also learned to adapt to the responsibilities of my job. I accepted my gauntlet of classes, each semester preparing for new subjects (Aquaculture? Sure. Organic Chemistry? Why not.) and finding ways to engage my disciplined yet disconnected Singaporean students. It was a sight to behold—large theater rooms filled with students listening intently to my microphone-enhanced voice, attempting questions when I instructed them to and putting their pencils down when I said to stop. I saw myself in a white lab coat explaining how to run a titration and create nylon from chemical reactions, speaking with a confidence that wasn’t necessarily fake but surely wasn’t entirely merited. I was the master of the Global Environmental Issues class I had designed from scratch with absolutely no guidance or oversight, free to antagonize my students to my heart’s content during our discussions about society and the environment. I was the stereotypical teacher pointing at raised hands and furiously scribbling and connecting ideas on a whiteboard.

Despite the difficulties of constantly grading students’ work and teaching subjects I barely knew myself, the year felt kind of effortless. I was happy in my present state, and didn’t have time to worry about or overthink my situation.

I did mess up my plan to for a selfish, independent lifestyle in one important way though. On what I thought would be the first of many casual dates, I met a pretty interesting guy—someone who fell somewhere on the spectrum between nerdy and laddish, stoic and emotional. It was an unexpectedly good fit. Too good in fact, as my first date as a newly single gal turned into a relationship that’s still going to this day.

But where did all this leave me at the end of 2013? What did I gain from that year? It’s hard to simplify it. It was a beautiful, chaotic, busy year. Looking back now, I don’t think it’s the new life lessons from that year that I want to preserve, it’s the application of old ones. For the first time in a while, I didn’t constantly feel like I was a step behind the people around me. No longer so intimidated by new experiences that I had to grapple for control, I was now confident enough to embrace uncertainty and appreciate my surroundings. This time, instead of following a boyfriend or best friend’s lead while traveling, I found myself unintentionally assuming the role of the leader. With an absent glance at a map, I’d guide my friends through the winding side streets of unknown cities, always taking us exactly where I intended to, often to their bewilderment. I’d hop off a plane with just the name and address of a PiA fellow I was supposed to meet, and I’d trust that I’d get where I needed to go and I’d have an experience of a lifetime—be it meeting up with strangers on a yacht in Hong Kong or running into a friend in Ho Chi Minh city and impulsively joining him for a weekend in the Mekong Delta. Instead of feeling hopelessly lost in a relationship, I was the one handing out advice to friends and patiently walking a partner through certain relationship milestones. People came to me for advice and perspective. According to other people, I was the one who had it together. It’s absurd, I know.

Thinking back, my role as a lecturer at LSCT is kind of fitting. I no longer felt like a student trying my best to get the right answers. I was a teacher, and I had opinions. Maybe my 2012 desire to “be the best version of myself” wasn’t so off. It’s hard to say what “best” means, but I definitely felt like my confident and hopeful self again.

Before I wrap this up, there is one particular experience I’d like to document that I think reflects the sort of confidence and maturity that defined my 2013, and that also just merits remembering.

As part of Ngee Ann Poly’s policy that each student travels abroad at some point during their schooling, I co-led a trip (with Suji bear, my grumpy British friend) to Wuhan, China for three weeks to teach our students Forensic Science (yes I said Forensic Science). While being a teacher, chaperone, and stand-in mother in a chaotic city to a rather sheltered group of kids certainly would have been a challenging enough experience on its own, there was another difficulty. One of my students had a mental illness that she had hidden in order to get on the trip, and she had an episode while we were abroad. I remember her boyfriend coming to get me late at night to tell me that she’d run into the forest up a hill and he couldn’t get her to come down. In that moment I had to be his rock, I had to become someone she could trust, and I had to be an authority figure representing my school. And I did it. I think I did it very well. I became the only person besides her boyfriend that she would talk to. And while over the course of the next couple of weeks things were touch and go, there were a number of sleepless nights, and there were tense moments between me, the school, and her mother, in the end it worked out as well as it could have. Appreciative of the guidance and support I had provided, the boyfriend continued to reach out to me after the trip, appointing me as his mentor.

I guess in summary, in 2013 I went from feeling inadequate and overwhelmed by the never-ending lessons there were to learn about the world, relationships, and academics to realizing I did know a thing or two about life. At some point, my experiences had translated into a bit of wisdom. That realization was pretty exciting for me.

[mikialynn]

The body is weird

I just had an intense craving for a vanilla popsicle I used to eat as a kid. We'd store it in the freezer in the building where we stored fish feed. I also liked the grape flavor, but the white vanilla popsicle had a distinct sweet creamy flavor I can still taste...with a hint of rock candy flavoring? Hard to describe. It was rectangular and I believe in paper packaging. I haven't thought about it in over a decade. Closer to two decades really. Yet while working on my computer choosing between different instrumental tracks for a video I'm making, I suddenly had an intense craving for that popsicle and a crystal clear memory of eating one. Strange.

[mikialynn]

Watch!!!! This is everything I care about!!

Society, home, human connection, stewardship, humility, the environment. How all of it - our day to day interactions with people, our careers, our spirituality - should be unified in this one perspective we have to discover, nurture and carry around with us. How it all comes from the same place. 

[mikialynn]

Let these little hubs lead the way in developing new technologies and techniques! Singapore, with its resource constraints, has been an amazing place to observe advancements in water technology. Let's see how Bhutan manages its Organic Country goal.

[mikialynn]

For the first time, an initiative on sanitation is being tabled by Singapore at the United Nations. The UN resolution calls for greater attention to be paid to the global sanitation crisis.

[mikialynn]

David Foster Wallace: This is Water

Someone recently sent me video and told me that it reminded him of how I think. Possibly one of the best compliments I've had. Here's the link:

https://vimeo.com/182430268

It's about choosing how we decide to frame our life experiences. Basically choosing between being happy or being unhappy. It's a topic I often think about and discuss with people, so I thought I'd share it here. I try my best to actively do this: keeping perspective, being sympathetic, realizing there's no since in getting annoyed or upset with situations that are beyond your control. You might as well find a way to frame it pleasantly. 

Take for instance getting stuck in traffic...I like to look at people and imagine their lives (which this video actually showed! so cool). And then I usually get overwhelmed thinking about how they are just as engaged in their own lives and have similar kinds of unique, strong, complex relationships with family and friends as I do. That every person has a life as complete and real to them as mine is to me...but that you'll only ever really know your life. You have to remember that everyone else isn't just a side character to your life, but is the main character in their own.

I like to look at the details of someone's car next to mine...a bumper sticker, a car seat in the back, a bit of mess on the car floor, a rusty patch on the car exterior, or some fuzzy something or other hanging from their rear view mirror...and think about what kind of life they have. What kind of family might they have? What might their home be like? Where are they coming from and where are they going to? What sort of life trials have they gone through? Do they have a favorite sports team? It's hard to get frustrated by people when they're so fully formulated in your mind. And it makes me kind of sad that there's no way I'll ever get to confirm these conjectures or understand all these lives. I work so hard on analyzing one car, and then I look around and see cars on all my sides, and cars in front of them and again in front of those cars, and I realize I'm surrounded by a flood of lives and personalities and complex worlds that I might only be able to glimpse--and most that I won't ever glimpse.  

I feel overwhelmed and saddened by the fact that I'm missing out on parts of what life is. That I can never fully know all those unique, dynamic life experiences. But it also makes me kind of happy to know that everyone is out there doing their own thing, and that it is as real to them as it is to me. That we are all experiencing life in such a similar way. Little ants in a big ant hill all doing their best, often forgetting to glance at the ones beside us helping us get by. We do different things. We have different lifestyles. We come from different backgrounds and make a living in different ways. But we all experience life similarly. We have connections to other people. We have our comfort zones. We have our insecurities. We have our home bases-- be it a physical location like a mansion, a suburban house, a tin-roofed barracks, or a collection of tarp and tree trunks on a beach, or a more ethereal home like being near family or near certain sights or smells.

And so, when I'm sitting in my car in traffic, it suddenly becomes an act of solidarity.  Like I'm sharing a test with dozens of others. And together we will prevail! And in that moment, for this one point in time, our lives have intersected. We will go separate ways after.  Some will go home and complain about it to their spouses. Some will go home and have a beer. Some are heading to the airport and will never be in that car on that road again.  But for that moment, we were all collecting information to add to our personal bank of life experiences. For that moment, we were all equally helpless. For that moment, we were all equally challenged, supporting each other with our controlled breaks and our blinkers as we switched from lane to lane. For that moment, we were not as dissimilar as we might have thought before. For that moment, our diverse lives had led us into the same place and same situation.

It makes traffic a lot more amusing.    

(full This is Water commencement speech here)

[mikialynn]

[mikialynn]

Buffalo + Mount Kenya

[mikialynn]

[mikialynn]

[mikialynn]

Giraffe + zebra