New Years Resolutions: the 2012 Edition

I am really excited about my New Year’s Resolutions this year.  Since I’ve decided that I no longer subscribe to the notion that resolutions should wait for a new year, or even a new day, I’m starting them immediately.   While I have in the past sworn off resolutions, made a list of 20 resolutions (to increase the likelihood of success), and had one all-important resolution (also to increase the likelihood of success), this year I am going to have four.  I’ve already written them down, and in the interest of full disclosure, I feel that I should note that they’re in outline form.  My whole mind works in outline form.

First, I’m going to read every day.  If you know me at all and are now laughing, you hush your mouth.  I have loved reading every since I learned how, and I almost do read every day.  However, the convergence of a few factors have made me decide to make it a goal to put aside a minimum of fifteen minutes every day for reading. One factor was the fact that it’s taken me a good three months to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Given, LOTR is a thousand pages of relatively slow reading.  However, and this will only make sense if you love reading too, I’ve now spent a fourth of my year reading it, and the only thing that really scares me about the concept of mortality is that I can only read so many books in one lifetime. I’ve loved LOTR, but I did not intend to spend a fourth of the year reading it.  In reality, I’ve read it in large chunks, with often two or six days in between (ok, and a whole other book.  I cheated.)  This to say, I love reading and there are so many hundreds of books that I want to read and dozens of books that I want to reread reread and I want to make better progress.  More than likely, intentionally setting aside fifteen minutes a day to read means that I will usually spend a lot longer than fifteen minutes a day reading, and that sounds good to me. 

Next (my little sister recently informed me that the word “secondly” is not actually a word.  I don’t know if this is true or not, but I’m now afraid to use it), I’m going to write every day.  I love writing.  About a year and a half ago, I started this blog, and I updated it a good bit, and I loved it.  I love words, and staring at a sentence until it rearranges itself in a way that makes me happy.  I love the idea put forth in a college writing class that “there is only ever one right word”, and I love finding that word and hearing the satisfying mental click as the sentence finally expresses what I really mean in the most beautiful way possible.  I have learned in the past few years that in order to truly appreciate reading you must write, and that to truly appreciate writing, you must read.  My writing comes in bursts to a much greater degree than does my reading, so I think that this resolution will be a little more of a stretch.  I make this resolution in hopes that writing truly is like exercising a muscle, and that practice will make it easier and better.  I will write by hand, which is easily my favorite, and I will write online.  This is preferable for potential readers, because if you keep up with my blog, you don’t have to read all of it! 

I gave the next resolution away early- I’m going to blog again.  I’m going to blog because I like it.  I’m going to blog because I’m going to be reading a lot and I love to tell people what I’m reading and why I love it and why they should read it, and then get really offended when they don’t immediately rush out, buy the book, and read it all in one sitting.  I’m going to blog because I like posting things that I write on my blog, and then getting a disproportional ego boost when someone comments that they love it, or that they like it, or that they find reading it slightly better than studying.  I’m going to blog because I want to show you my thoroughly amateur photographs, and tell you what I think, and give you updates on my life, and show you things I’ve seen, and share with you my endless, endless lists.  I’m going to blog because everyone I love is not in the same place, and I don’t have time to talk to all of you on the phone.

I know you’ve been waiting for it, and it’s finally here – the obligatory “get in shape” New Year’s resolution.  Well, I’m not calling it that, because I’ve made it before and it doesn’t work.  This year, and I am going to start this one on January 1, I’m going to run 365 miles. You’re right, that is one for every day! I promise not to update you about it more than once a month. 

            So read my blog, if you want. Maybe you could even start one that I could keep up with? If you have one, let me know.  I’m going to post mine on wordpress and tumblr for the time being, until I decide which one I like better.  I have some pretty interesting and significant life changes coming up in the next few weeks (omgz cliffhanger!), so maybe it will even be interesting.  Then again, maybe it will just be about how much I’m obsessed with my dog.   
              You never can tell.

A Love Letter to a Friend

I wrote this several months ago for no good reason. I just found it on my computer and it made me smile, so here it is.

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I apologize for my blogging hiatus, if it is anything to apologize for. I imagine that it is not. As it turns out, I appear to have forgotten how to write, excluding only really horrible stuff. If you would like to read pages upon pages about how I feel when I can’t sleep, what I think when I’m looking at a room upside down, my ideas on the stages of major transitions, or my thoughts on my various relationships, let me know.

You don’t actually need to let me know, because there’s no way I’ll let you read that stuff. It’s awful, and since I’m not Taylor Swift no one is going to give me millions of dollars for being pathetic in a public forum.

I’ve decided to jump back into the deep end of blogging by doing something a little bit different. Stages in which you spend a great deal of time reflecting, such as the one I am currently coming out of (please), inevitably cause you to think about the people that are important to you. Like it or not, we are wont to define ourselves in terms of those around us. I am going to describe to you one of the most important people in my life, a person who is part of that group of people by which I define myself.

The mind games start, of course, when you think about how this is a person by whom, in part, I define myself. However, all of my stories are from my perspective and therefore pre-filtered through my perception of the world and myself that is in part due to my relationship with this person.

I hope for your own sake that you skipped that last paragraph. It makes sense, just not on this exact planet.

So here goes. To protect this person’s privacy, I will call her Lauren P. Whitton.

Lauren P. Whitton was born one month and two days before I was, and I like to tell people that we’ve been friends since then. Having spent the past weekend with a set of infant twins who I’m relatively sure don’t know that the other one exists, I know that this is untrue. However, I’m finding lately that truth is in and of itself quite relative and, with regards to my life, sometimes rather irrelevant.

We’ve been friends since we were born.

A lot of my vague memories from my early childhood that were more than likely created from pictures I’ve seen a lot in lieu of actual memories are of myself and Lauren. When we were three, we were dressed up as clowns together. (My parents felt the need to dye my hair red for the costume. I vividly remember the dye being washed out later that night. Perhaps this partly explains my fascination with the Ginger). Later that year, I would have my first sleepover with Lauren when my parents rushed off to the hospital to have my little sister (I think I have previously mentioned that this was a fake out and she was not actually born that night). We had matching Little Mermaid sleeping bags, and life was idyllic.

I knew from a very early age that Lauren had some sort of innate coolness that I was utterly without. Retrospectively, I think it may have been due to the combination of her being the youngest child and having older brothers, while I was the oldest, slowly gaining sisters as I aged. She just knew things that I didn’t.

Lauren was also very athletic from a young age, and I was anything but. I was infinitely jealous. We decided at an early age that our Indian names were “Running Feet” for Lauren and “Running Mouth” for myself. They did and still do apply quite nicely, I think. She was an excellent soccer player from sometime around age four and actually went on to play for a while in college. I played for two years and was harassed by a member of my own team for my inability to take the ball up the field and score (incidentally, that girl has now had a baby, and I have not. I think I won)* Lauren and I played church basketball together for six years, in which I scored as many goals. I was also harassed by a member of that team (I’m just now realizing that that’s a theme, and I’ve felt better about myself). I distinctly remember Lauren yelling at her during practice “Shut up. We are on the same team.” Incidentally, that girl has had a baby too (and not a cute one).**

I read back over that last paragraph and realized that perhaps the best description of our relationship is that Lauren and I have always been on the same team. That won’t change. I think that knowledge, that we’ll always be friends, is what will enable us to always be friends. I know that her love is something that I will never have to work for, and that nothing could ever make me not love her back. This is the way things are.

Lauren and I have had too many adventures and misadventures to chronicle here. I’ve broken my clavicle at her house trying to wrestle her older cousin without any knowledge of what wrestling actually was. Since we were the only girls in the 6th grade at our church, we went to Six Flags over Dallas with her mom (who I affectionately call my evil step mother) and called it the sixth grade church trip. We stopped to pee every fifty miles or so and she sang Don McLean’s “American Pie” the whole way. Ten years later, that song is still stuck in my head. I almost pushed her out of the car. We nearly burned the house down trying to make a message written in orange juice show up when held over a fire (turns out Sunny D is not an appropriate substitution for orange juice in this equation). We’ve watched the Lion King about fourteen million times, the last one probably being much more recent than it should’ve been. We’ve talked each other through horrible relationships and great ones, knowing all the while that we’d be there for each other longer than any boy would. We’ve had fist fights**** and we’ve sat in my driveway and cried. We’ve gone to school dances and the beach and everywhere.

I’ve read back over this five times and it seems ill written and inconclusive. This is in part due to the fact that I will never be able to convey why I love Lauren, how much I love Lauren, or what all we’ve been and done together. There is not time or space.





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*I am a horrible person.
**Think about this before you are mean to me.***
*** Really, really horrible.
****My version of a fist fight is not nearly as violent or as effective as what you’re probably imagining.

A Peek into Brecken's Brain (alternate title: Into the Abyss)

Last Thanksgiving, in one of many moments of exasperated disbelief that accompany any trip home, I pulled my middle sister, Brecken, aside.

“I think you’re weird,” I told her, “and that a lot of stuff is wrong with you.” 

Her expression didn’t waver.  After all, it can’t have been the first time she’s been told that.

“But,” I continued, “hanging out with our family right now, I just want to let you know that you’ve turned out about as well as you could, and that I’m proud of you.”

She looked at me with an expression of actual appreciation on her face, validating every facet of my just-made point.  She opened her mouth to speak.

“Meow!” she said, and hugged me.

A Modern Girl's Guide To Homelessness

    For me, 2010 had some pretty standard ups and a lot of surprising downs.  Downs are downs and no one likes them, but at the very least mine were interesting.  I rang in 2010 by being sick in bed for an astoundingly long period of twelve days.  I am fairly certain that at some point I requested to be put down like an elderly house pet.  The doctor opted not to comply, rambling along with some long speech about euthanasia that I could barely understand through my codeine-addled fog.  I went through an awful living situation that made me feel uncomfortable to even be in my own home, and learned the value of both being a positive person and removing myself from negativity.  That situation ended in my eventually becoming estranged from someone I used to love, without ever knowing what really even happened, or why it happened. In April, I broke my fifth metatarsal by stepping out of bed while my foot was asleep. I put all my weight on my right food when my toes were curled under my foot and my bone snapped in my half on top of itself.  Surprise!   

    Of all of the downs, the most surprising by far has been homelessness.  I certainly mean no offense to anyone who is homeless, but I really just didn’t seem like the type.  Wrong again.  The week after the fall semester ended, I moved from the dorm into a small house with two good friends.  I was excited, since I’d lived on campus all four years and was just ready to have my own room, a real kitchen, and a driveway.  I spent a lot of time making my room the perfect room for me.  It was bird themed, bright, quiet, and smelled like vanilla.  I got Netflix instant streaming on my television and decided never to leave my little haven again. 

    Unfortunately, I did have to leave it for a little while in order to go home for Christmas.  I had a nice Christmas with my family but headed back to Nashville as soon as possible, on December thirtieth.  When I was about an hour outside of Nashville, I got a call from one of my roommates, who was also coming back into town that day. 

    She was hysterical. 

    “Our roof caved in,” she sobbed. “All of our things are ruined.”

    In what I like to think (read: hope (read: wish)) is a manner characteristic of my personality, I tried to stay calm and called our other roommate to inform her.  We finally got in touch with our landlord (lesson: have your landlord‘s cell phone number. you may need it.) and his wife came over to help my roommate.  By the time I arrived, no one was there.  I stepped inside the door and felt my stomach sink, slowly.  The roof wasn’t actually caved in, but a pipe had burst and almost all of the ceilings had become saturated and fallen down, leaving piles of soaked wood and insulation filled with fiberglass (lesson: there is fiberglass in insulation and it hurts if you touch it and later rub your face) everywhere in our house.  It was heartbreaking.  So much of the ceiling in my room had fallen that the door couldn’t even be opened.  (lesson: get renter’s insurance).

    We were legitimately homeless.  I began my tour of friends’ couches.  (dear Emily Hogan and Tim Rosko, I love you. you are wonderful, wonderful lifesavers and I am forever indebted to you.)  Homelessness didn’t sink in until the next day.  I met the landlord and some house gutters at the house that morning, went to the gym to shower (I know.), and then went to a job interview.  After that, it hit me: I had nowhere to go.  I had no place to be.  Most of my friends were not in town yet, and it was New Year’s Eve so coffee shops in which I am often found lurking were closed.   It’s a bad, desperate sort of feeling to have no place to go.  Even for someone who technically has a home, albeit in another city, that she could go to if absolutely necessary.  For the first time in my life, I wanted to just leave Nashville and not come back. 

The next morning, I picked up my roommate Lauren from the airport and we set about rectifying our situation.  This to say, we went to waffle house with Tim (the aforementioned lifesaver).  After that, I took her to see the house, and joined right in as she stared at the place we’d lived with a look of shock that had glazed over and cooled off (I played with this sentence a lot and just couldn’t think of a way to phrase it that didn’t instantly conjure the image of a donut. my apologies).  While moving some of my nonessential things into the basement and putting others in my car, I began to adapt. I began to organize. I began to embrace homelessness.   

After a somehow disturbingly short period of time, I realized that I’d taken to homelessness like a bird to flight, a fish to water, myself to Waffle House.  It was by no means preferable,  but I was doing it right. 

I would like to credit two different mottos for these skills.  The first is the motto on my high school’s crest: inveniemus viam aut faciemus. (I know, we have a crest/motto, we’re pretentious. not new.) It’s Latin for “we will find a way or make one.” I am unsure if this is ridiculous or not, but I love that motto.  I think of it all the time.  It may or may not actually help, but I love it either way.  The second motto is that of a man named Hank Flick, who I had the opportunity to hear speak several times in my sophomore year of high school during a leadership program.  His perscription for all situations was the same: adapt, improvise, and overcome.  Again, possibly cheesy, but it’s altogether possible that our lives are not quite cheesy enough these days.  Do with this what you will. 

I have assembled a list of tips to help the modern girl adapt to homelessness, should it befall her as it did me.  As someone who made the transition quite easily, I feel that it is my duty to share my knowledge.

#1 - It won’t do to dwell on the fact that you’re now homeless.  Accept it, and get busy embracing it.  Inveniemus viam aut faciemus.  Adapt, improvise, overcome. 

#2 - Make a schedule.

-Sit down a few days in advance and make a shower schedule.  Map out possible dates, locations, and available products.  Do not forget the gym as a resource.  
-On a related note, use the bathroom whenever possible. Never hold it! You now have no idea when your next chance might be.  Gas stations are your friend.
-Plan ahead as to where you’re going to sleep! Avoid staying with one person for too long, as your friends probably love you but also probably don’t want you installed permanently on their couch.  This is a great time to make new friends.
-Parking: If you’re forced to sleep in your car, find a suitable location.  This may be especially necessary for napping, as the people on whose couches you’re crashing probably have real lives that they have to live during the day. Choose a low traffic area in which to nap. Avoid businesses, parking lots with high turnover rates, and places frequented by those homeless people. 

#3 - Stay Organized

-It’s time to see your car for what it really is: your brand spanking new mobile home.  Go ahead, run her through the car wash. 
-You are now living out of your car, and will need to stay hyper-organized in order to maintain your high standard of living.  Separate sections of your car with rubbermaids or hanging racks and assign each section a different purpose.  Examples include a closet section, a shoe section, a dirty clothes section, storage, hanging clothes, a pharmacy (you’re going to need more asprin), and perhaps a section for arts and crafts.  I certainly found knitting to be relaxing during this trying time. 
-Find a place for your nonessentials.  I used the only non flooded area of my ex home, the basement. You may have to be creative, as being homeless really limits your storage options.  Still got that key to your ex’s house? Sneak in when you know he’s at work and put stuff in his attic.  He’ll never figure it out, and you will have a more functional mobile home. If he catches you trying to retrieve it later, accuse him of trying to steal your things and flounce out in a huff.  
-Make careful choices about your bedding.  You’re going to want to keep an inflatable air mattress with you at all times, but don’t neglect the rest of your bedding.  A duvet cover and a couple of euro shams really brighten up the middle of a living room floor and should be considered a must.  You didn’t sleep with a single blanket before, and now is not the time to start. 
-Portable library: This is not the time to let your education slide.  Keep a selection of ten or so important books in your car and pull them out when you have some extra time (you’re going to have some extra time).  It’s important that you remember to be the type of homeless person that reads Poe in coffee shops, not the kind that drinks something from a brown paper bag at bus stops. 

#4 - Look Cute - This is very important, as your looks are now all you have.

-I cannot emphasize this enough.  People will not know that you are homeless by looking at you unless you let them. 
-Get a good nights sleep! If someone’s couch makes this an impossibility, embrace the fact that under eye concealer is your new best friend. 
-Make your outfits out of a small number of versatile items. You want to be able to mix and match, as well as to be able to change quickly in possibly conspicuous locations. 
-Find ways to make greasy hair work.  Invest in some dry shampoo or baby powder.  If your hair is darker, find yourself a cute cap and try to pull off the girl next door look. In my personal experience, this strategy probably won’t work.
-Keep your nails polished- that way you can’t see the dirt under your nails after you don’t shower for days at a time.  Dark colors are more opaque and therefore preferable.
-Just because you’re homeless doesn’t mean that wrinkled clothes are suddenly acceptable.  Don’t let it happen.
-Perfume masks a lot of weird smells. 

#5 - Stay comfortable

-You’re going to want to find some good sleeping pills, or (NOT and) alcohol. 
-Deodorant is a must, especially if you have a homeless companion (may I suggest Lauren Brumley? really. if you have to be homeless with someone, you want to be homeless with her. bonus: she wears deodorant. didn’t have to remind her once).
-Look for your more comfortably cute items, but if these two adjectives are mutually exclusive in your portable closet (car), err on the side of cute.  This is not the time to get sloppy. 
-Staying connected is key.  Just because you don’t have a home doesn’t mean that you’re not responsible for keeping your immense network of close friends updated via facebook, twitter, flickr, tumblr, linkedin, etc. 
So there you have it.  Follow these simple rules and homeless will be a detail, not a status.  You can do it!

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I’d like to end on two important points.  Firstly, this post is intended to make light of my recent unfortunate situation, not to downplay how awful it is for people who are really, truly homeless.  My situation was stressful and difficult but ultimately ended well (I have a new house!)  I plan to buy several issues of The Contributor this week in order to pay for my sins. It wouldn’t hurt you to do the same.  Secondly, possessions are not important.  People are important in your life.  Nothing teaches you this like homelessness, even if it is a moderately comfortable and temporary sort of homelessness.  Driving your car around with all your possessions in it and no place to go is not so bleak at all with a close friend in the passenger seat with whom you can laugh about the whole thing.  Sleeping on someone’s couch is not sad at all when you’ve stayed up half the night talking (and possibly knitting) with them.  Life is about who you love and who loves you, and nothing else really matters. Remember that.

Even when you’re not homeless, it might just save you anyway.