BUT YOU'RE BARELY SCRAPING BY!!!

Yeah. So I can't tell if I'm killing this adulthood stuff or if I'm barely getting by and messing up everything I can along the way. Somehow I decided that studying for the FE, a superhuman feat that I barely touched during the 2 months leading up to my exam, gave me license to blow off all other worldly responsibilities and deadlines.

Bad adult example #1: put off renewing my car registration until it was already 2 weeks late. (In my defense, I never received a renewal notice BECAUSE I NEVER UPDATED THE RESIDENCE ADDRESS).  Fun fact - the DMV will not tell you ANYTHING if you admit to not being the owner of the car and just being the driver. The insurance company, on the other hand, will tell you approximately 50% of the information you need if you start to cry and yell and bitch about the DMV while on the phone with them. Unfortunately, neither agency is really up-to-date with the latest information being paraded on their website, so 50% of the dirty details that you get by pulling teeth and having a breakdown while on the phone with them will be lies anyway.

Good adult solution #1: Wait sufficiently long to hope that the first person I talked to at the DMV has gone to lunch, call back, impersonate my mother and announce that I am traveling and therefore must have my daughter submit the registration form for me, and she is a shit show and is already 2 weeks behind on doing it. Note that I gave the DMV no other information than the same license plate number and a different first name, and suddenly everything I have to do is crystal clear and they walk me through the process of having "my daughter" renew the registration for me instead of saying "I'm sorry madam, we can't help you, your mother has to do everything." So basically I can do everything and supposedly it won't accrue any more late fees than it already has, so my stupidity has only cost me $52. What is $52 to a broke grad school student than a mere two nice sushi meals at a semi nice restaurant?!

Bad adult example #2: Wait until the last possible day that I can to get my graduation gown. Little did I realize this might not be the best strategy since apparently they do not have an endless supply of gowns in every size and have been known to run out.  At least I had the foresight to exacerbate this problem by not pre-ordering a gown!

Why did I not do any of this, you ask? Again, while "studying for the FE" I blew off even finding out how many dress-up items I need to wear on my body so that they let me into the auditorium to receive my diploma. (In case you're still wondering, the answer is 4).

Good adult solution #2: Show up at the bookstore without a plan, find out they still have my size, and not having preordered makes it easier for the employee because she doesn't have to look for my order on a form.

The other examples are less dramatic, but similarly involve running around and doing a thousand errands (by a thousand I mean two more, who are we kidding?!) at the last minute, if not after.

Soo… it all got done somehow, and it seems so haphazard, yet it did come together, and in this day and age, what more can we really ask for? Is it the journey or the eventual, 2 week delayed, $52 fined destination? And does anybody else really do this any better at this point?

Before I met you, did I write!

For some reason, my bike ride today reminded me of Alaska in a way more intense than anything else has reminded me about Alaska for a long time. Perhaps it was the evening light, which seemed practically eternal when cast by the sun's low angle. Maybe it was the smell of sweat mixed with sunscreen on my skin, or maybe the fact that I was just a little too tired, but enjoying the experience nonetheless.

Maybe it's because this month, one of the inner voices I always used to have has been coming back in a big way. The one that always made me feel so inspired, the one that finds strength in introspection, the one that goes crazy over vast landscapes.  THE VOICE THAT PUT POEMS IN MY HEAD. I had the shocking realization just last week that I stopped writing when I got back from Alaska. Let that sink in for a minute.

Sure, that artist's voice dominated when I was traveling, but in a different way.  Then, it made me what I diagnosed as idealistic, naive, and desperately spiritual, what with all the yoga and meditation that I thought would help me have an authentic experience and somehow make the wider world sphere.

And you know what? I've been doing yoga at least once a week for the past month and I feel like my brain has been swept clean with a broom. But I don't know if it's all the revelations I've had this past month that have made space for me to motivate myself to go to yoga, or if going to yoga has cleared up the space in my brain that allowed the revelations to enter.

After all, space is a landscape in two conceptually distinct ways, and we love and fear both of them. Literally, human beings are not evolved to live without large open spaces in our lives (think Peninsula rolling hills as you go on a pre-sunset bike ride), and these spaces are very powerful. Also, we need space in our minds, space from too much human interaction, space whist in our romantic endeavors in order to experience all those things that make us unique and loveable. But too much space from others makes us lonely and depressed, and too much space in our surroundings creates vertigo.

Like Tereza and Tomas, I maintain that vertigo is not the fear of falling, but the fear of our desire to fall - so we need the open spaces, yet we live in constant fear of getting sucked into them. Quoting a "Women of Dartmouth" speaker - "Of course I think about death in that 'Are you ever driving and think you could just not turn here' way." And when climbing, why are we afraid of falling? The falling itself is fine. It is the decision to fall (or lack of decision) that is terrifying, and the aftermath can be quite gnarly. Back to Alaska, when one of our teachers said that he had horizontal vertigo in Antarctica - the landscape was so identical that if he started off running in one direction, he would never find his way back to the base.

My relationship with open space has always been clear and uncomplicated. My relationship of emotional space, on the other hand, has been playing a perpetual cat-and-mouse game with all the other things going on in my life.  Rebuilding that relationship has been one hell of a ride, and it's been so interesting and rewarding to watch it coming together this past month.

After I spent the winter feeling like everything around me was happening to me without my control, this spring it feels like everything is coming together with my control and I can take an active role in it. There are years that ask questions, and years that are answers. The year whose first anniversary it is on May 20th is definitely a year that was an answer!! 

In Four Years' Time

I had an inadvertently intense over-coffee conversation this week. Not only did it almost make me late for class, but it made me completely unprepared to sit in class. Yes, how could I sit there and blink and nod and pay attention when I really needed to be sitting under a tree, doing my best Buddha impression while trying to process the heaviness of information had had just been bestowed on me? Bestowed by someone pretty damn qualified, to say the least.

It's been a pensive couple of months, actually a pensive year.

It's been a hard year, hard year for love

Some really good conversations have come out of it, and I think the underlying question that we all probe at is this:

How can we define self-actualization for ourselves, and what life events have influenced us to settle upon that particular definition?

On that subject, I will leave you with 2 pearls of wisdom that are both in code.

1) Flowers grow from shit.
2) You are probably a lot stronger than you think, and if you think you're weak, maybe you're lucky!