Intro to Strategic Floundering

Yes, I’m floundering but aren’t we all? I never thought I’d be where I am today, but they say “never say never” so maybe the same can be said for “never think never.”

In some countries they call a year abroad a gap year I kinda assume this means a year of pause between what you’re “really supposed to be doing.” But what if your gap year turns into more than one? Does that mean you’re irresponsible and floundering because you’re not doing what you’re “supposed to be doing?” Or is it responsible because you refuse to live your life like you’re following a recipe? What if living a life of adventure, discovery and travel is what you’re supposed to do?

In an attempt to not feel pathetic about my life right now, I’ve tried to add a positive spin to it ‘cause that’s what PR majors do and added the word “strategic” to floundering to convey that there is something strategic in this floundering I am in. Clearly, I have been and am a bit lost in what I’m supposed to be doing for a living, but if I didn’t take these gap years to strategically flounder I would have just sat and dreamed and wondered, all the while still being miserable (and still floundering, just in a not-so-noticeable way).

One of my best moments of strategic floundering happened right before I turned 30. Instead of looking at my life and thinking, “Shit, I don’t have a husband, some kids, a home, a career I believe in, I thought what have I always wanted to do?” The six months leading up to my leaving San Francisco were some really good times of doing exactly what I had wanted to do for years. I promised to go to Italy before I turned 30 and I did. I was taking guitar lessons and classes to figure out what I was meant to do for a career, as well as taking Spanish classes. I was also working out a lot and somehow I made it all work in my schedule. In addition, I was spending less time with unhealthy people, more time was being spent being choosy about what I’d do and wouldn’t do. I was okay with being alone. It may have been a bit of career floundering because I was unhappy with my job but it was strategic in that it helped me come face to face with what I loved and hated about myself.

I took a year to live in Barcelona, attempt to learn Spanish and try my hand at teaching. What I learned was a bit more Spanish, a whole re-learning of English, and that I loved teaching. Strategic floundering in that year was a success. I was told by a wise friend that I would be more miserable the second time in Reno because I would be without a goal, a dream, a plan. Although I didn’t want to believe it, he was right! But not so much miserable as I have been frustrated. I have always had a goal, a dream, a plan, so since returning to Reno last July I’ve felt a little empty. And since I’ve been back I’ve tried to approach it with a little optimism and so I came up with strategic floundering. It is a state of being in between where you choose to spend time doing things that will maybe expand your mind in ways you didn’t think were possible, do things you were resistant to in hopes of finding something that shocks you out of your funk and into meaningful and fulfilling work. Or maybe it’s finding fulfillment and/or balance in life both inside and outside of work.

When I got back in July I tried to take a strategic approach to this floundering with attempting to practice Spanish vocabulary words, memorizing and writing drinking toasts (see my other blog), spending time with my family and teaching English to Korean students online. But then I got too comfortable in my floundering and gave up some of the strategicness of it. But I’m hoping that I get back to the strategic core of it. I’ll report back to you all on my progress soon. Until then — Happy Strategic Floundering to you!!

An Enduring Love

My Mother’s Day wish for my Grandma is that she can recover quickly so she can be at my cousin’s wedding next weekend and share in what I hope is the beginning of another enduring love…

For Christmas I gave my Grandma a book of questions that spurs on memories.  She filled it up pretty quickly as it was ready to read on our visit to her in mid-January. To the question “What do you miss about the good ole days?” She answered with several things and at the end she wrote, “I miss Bud always.” Bud is my grandpa who passed away about 20 years ago. I teared up.

On the next page she said that she wears the locket with my grandpa’s picture in it to every family event so that he can come along too.  I lost it and hoped no one at the table noticed. Then in the car I told my mom, sister and niece about it and I started crying again. There was a moment of silence and we put the windows down.  Linnette said we did that to let the emotions out. My mom agreed that she misses him (her dad) all the time, too.

A couple months later, I watched a movie and they said that continuing your life after you lose someone is like losing a limb. You can continue on but it’s just never the same – something’s always missing.

I’m sure both sets of my grandparents had their issues, but their marriages are something I envy.  Generations after theirs won’t be able to live out for better or for worse, for richer or poorer. I want that kind of love, but don’t know if it’s possible for our generation. It’s not a Hollywood romance, where conflicts are wrapped up in a nice pretty bow at the end or a Disney film where they live happily ever after. It’s real. It’s a love that lasts for decades, a friendship, a partnership, a romance that ebbs and flows with the good and the bad – that’s the kind of love I want!

My grandma also wrote in that book that she hopes all her kids, grandkids, and great grandkids will find someone to share their lives with like she did. She says often that she has had a good life with a great husband. I’m hoping that — from her lips to God’s ears —  it’ll happen for me!

Your Train is Coming!

My writing prompt was this: “Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance. Everybody thinks it’s true.” This is what I wrote…

The sound of a train is reminiscent of something new and exciting coming and everyone thinks it’s coming for them. Some may think it’s a baby – a new addition to their family, someone they think will make them feel whole. Some may think it’s travel – a newfound adventure on its heels waiting to pounce. Some may think it’s a job that will fulfill them while they’re also being paid. Some may think it’s love – the kind that they’ve been reading about and viewing on movie screens. 

All of these people thinking their train is going to come in are brimming with hope. Hoping for something more than what they have. Hoping that it’s quite possible that their lives could get better.  I believe that all that could be true if only they get to the train station to pick up whatever is coming to them. It all doesn’t mean a damn thing unless they stop whatever they’re doing and do their part to make hopes and dreams more than just hopes and dreams. Otherwise that new  bouncing baby or profound love or wild adventure or great job is just going to roll right through town and opportunity will slip right out of their grasp.

Now, make sure to get to the train station to pick up what you’re expecting and run with it!

On the Road

I wrote this poemish sorta thing for a contest that esurance was having but never submitted it. I guess my reward will be for you to read and enjoy it!

On the road like Jack Kerouac, so many adventures to discover,
Singing Beach Boys songs with my dad on the way to see family,
Singing TV theme songs with Aine to stay awake after a mid-week concert to the edge of the earth.

On the road like a road runner speeding to get there fast,
Always in the pursuit to have the perfect answer to “Did you make good time?”

Feels like I’ve spent half my life sliding down the spine of California
to visit family and then climbing back up, each mile marker a vertebrae.

Or criss-crossing from San Francisco to Reno,
the dreaded sprawl of Sacramento traffic,
the beloved Sierra Nevada range to curve through.

To soccer tourneys, to visit family, to hang out with friends
and then to make the dreaded trip back home –
home to responsibility and bills and work.
Vacation, puente’s* over.

“Go home” I said in jest to my Grandpa at 3 years old
after he trekked the CA spine,
always had a teasy-mean streak….guess where I get that from?

Burning rubber, burning dollars on gas,
burning bridges as you watch the miles pass.

On the road, on the prowl, searching for more, than the boy left in your rearview.
Can’t be found by following the GPS,
maybe the map of your heart will get you closer.

Arrive on time, arrive too late, all that matters is that you arrive.
The open road is your embrace from the tedium of today.
Speed into its arms – let its comfort find you and bind you
and may your car and love carry you home.

*In Spanish, puente means bridge, but in this context it means long weekend. An expression that I love and doesn’t really have the same meaning and feeling in English’s only lame translation “long weekend.” Sorry English, you win in other categories, I assure you!

Still Don’t Know

This isn’t about anyone in particular but a condition that I’ve gotten pretty used to being in….

I have known you for a lifetime and still don’t know what your lips feel like on mine. I know about you in generalities in the highs and lows of your life, but not in the creases of your everyday. I don’t know the simple things – like which leg you start with when putting on your pants or how your face contorts when flossing your teeth. I’ve heard when you speak when you’re eloquent and prepared to speak or act socially but not when you’re delirious from exhaustion and not making sense anymore, but I’m sure even that is adorable. Because everything about you is adorable and admirable, sweet and spicy, riveting and racy. You are my North Pole. I’m intrinsically drawn to you and for some reason you do not feel the same way about me. And this is the most excruciating kind of love – the unrequited kind.

The Definition of Home

I’ve really tried to wrap my head around the idea of home for the last three years, because if I could have an answer to that maybe I’d have an answer to all of my questions. And instead of accepting one answer to the questions — where is home, what makes a home– as only having only one correct answer, I’ve decided that all are the correct answers.

Home is where your heart is. This answer has some flaws. First of all, when I hear this saying I think of a made-up game Hilary and I used to play when we were younger. We were weird kids and this involved solving a mystery amidst different dimensions. The saying was cross-stitched on a sign at her house and was a creepy key in unlocking the dimensions or something like that. To this day, that saying creeps me out. In addition to this saying being tainted because of this imaginative game we used to play, there is another flaw in it – What happens when your heart is everywhere? It’s in a friend’s home in Callao, Peru, partying with your friend’s family until dawn. It’s with your close friend on the banks of the Seine. It’s with your students in Barcelona or with everything in Barcelona that is/was beautiful and horrible about your experience there. It’s in Sparks laughing with your family and cuddling with your dogs. It’s hiking and lounging with your niece in a place you’ve wanted to see for years –Positano, Italy, on the beautiful Amalfi Coast. Or your heart is found re-beating when you see San Francisco from the Oakland Bay Bridge like you’re seeing it for the very first time and remembering all the great memories you made when you lived there and first claimed your independence. Or home, and hence your heart, is everywhere you’ve been and everywhere you still want to be.

Home is where you lay your head. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before on this blog but it bears repeating. I read a description of a Sagittarius that said, “To you, home is where you lay your head.” And although that didn’t always seem true in Barcelona because I wasn’t really made to feel “at home” in the three places I lived there, I did learn a valuable lesson while there. You make it feel as “at home” as you possibly can either where you take to the streets, the parks, the beaches of where you’re at or find “home” in the other things that do bring comfort and joy. I hope this doesn’t sound too cheesy but you carry your home with you and no matter how rude and unaccommodating roommates, landladies and hotel clerks can be, you change the definition of home to be something that’s totable, finding comfort in a to-go cup per se (but not in an alcoholic way).

Home is where your mom is. I also believe this saying. I am really lucky and have an amazing mom who is my biggest fan. Because she lives in Sparks, Nevada, that’s also where I call home. I would add to that my sister, niece, dad and brother-in-law make that definition of home complete (Well, when Linnette is “home”….she is also redefining the word “home,” too).

Home is where your dogs are. I think my sister coined this phrase. After a 5-day trip to Forest Grove, Oregon and me joking that I detest green and I couldn’t wait to get back to the brown (at first, I meant the brown hills surrounding Reno/Sparks) instead of the luscious green outside of Portland. When we got into the car from the Reno airport to go home I said, “What I meant about getting back to the brown is ‘I can’t wait to get back to our brown dogs’.” The next morning our beloved G.G. died. It still feels like home without her, but it sure is missing a big and important part of what made this feel like home for all of us.

And so, as I struggle to understand what and where home is and decide where I’ll go next I wonder: If I change location does that means I’m changing the meaning of home again or is it simply a location change? I then let it settle on this. I accept all these definitions and this one: Home is what we make of it. It is not necessarily the place you grew up or where you sleep at night but it’s what you bring to it. The memories of the ones you love most and calling them frequently enough to not lose sight of your true North. It’s refusing to let people ruin your experience because you are a temporary fixture in “their home” and a dollar/euro sign of how they’re going to make their mortgage payment. It’s finding comfort and confidence within your own shell, regardless of your current and changeable address, because just like a turtle that is your only real home.

Ode to Dr. Seuss

I love Dr. Seuss, his clever made-up words, his silly rhymes. And sometimes I like to pretend I am him, so here are a couple attempts. The first one is boderline plagiarism. The second is colors in the style of the Dr.

Oh the places you’ll go but you’ll never know unless you get started.

Oh the places you’ll see if you’d only believe in the talents inside you.

—

It was the greenest green I’ve ever seen,

It was the purest kind of clean,

It was the coolest cool I’ve ever known

It was the highest plane I’ve ever flown

It was the kind of red that is real deep

The kind that reminds of love that you’d take great leaps

Red of love, life and death and how to enjoy every breath

The sun that gives off the toastiest yellow

creates the most calming mellow

The sun rays reach your very core

Rich in vitamin D, you don’t care if otherwise you’re poor

It was a blue so crisp and cool.

It makes you think of a swimming pool

or a tropic locale with all the trimmings –

flowers, animals and growth everywhere brimming.

It was the orange of pumpkins and leaves

The crispness of fall that breeds

Cooler temps and more homeward bound

Where trick or treaters come ‘round.

It was the rainbow of the best kind,

The beautiful colors that overtake my mind.

I’d hate to be blind and miss this

Varied colors in the world are bliss.