Lately I've been looking for a new place to live. Living on Hawthorne has been an incredibly valuable experience and I have grown a lot in the two years since I moved to my lovely but very expensive apartment building, but there are so many other things I would rather spend that rent money on. Nevertheless, moving away from the richness of that experience tears at my soul a little bit. I'm not sure what awaits me in this new chapter, whether I will hate moving away and immediately start saving up to move back or whether I will find new things to love, new challenges to respond to. Maybe a little of both.
Alongside my ambivalence about moving comes the gut-wrenchingness that is moving itself. First there's the pressure of finding just the right place, where William and I both feel comfortably at home and have enough space to live our lives without being all up in each other's business. Then there are other requirements, like a neighborhood where we can walk to things and a yard or some kind of outdoor space so I can try my hand at growing things. Then you have to filter out everything that's too expensive or doesn't allow pets or thinks only dogs less than 25 pounds are acceptable tenants. Unsurprisingly, that leaves very little for us to choose from, which means compromise. Oh, the horror!
We're on our third round of applying now. The first apartment we applied for decided they didn't want to allow dogs at all. The second one was being leased by a fairly squirrely guy who said he was going to continue to take a few applications after we turned ours in, which made us a little uneasy. So last night we went out looking again. I spent the day sifting through the same listings I had pored over and rejected over the past few weeks, trying to decide if maybe I really could live in that less-desirable neighborhood or deal with coin-op laundry or find a way to pay a little bit more every month. I came up with several options, none of them perfect on paper, but all worth a drive-by at the very least.
We fell in love with the second place we looked at. The junior-high, butterflies in the pit of your stomach, heart-racing kind of love. We ran around peeking in all the windows we could reach (and when we couldn't reach we stood on things) and though we tried to keep our cool and act like grown-ups about the whole thing, inside our minds were racing with ideas. We're still both flying high a day later, despite the fact that we don't know if the house already has apps on it or if we will even be approved. Despite the fact that we haven't actually been inside the place yet.
Tonight we're meeting with the owner and filling out applications after taking a look inside. My every instinct is telling me relax, prepare for the worst, don't like this place so much because then you probably won't get it. And chances are that someone else has already applied, will soon be living in OUR house. But the romantic in me wants to believe that our feelings are real, that the fact that we connected with this one house so quickly means something. That once, just once, in 30+ years of life's ordinary disappointments, this one will go our way.
Fingers crossed.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Americorps
Stressful times at work are going to be coming to a head soon. My boss is interviewing candidates for the supervisor job I applied for and I have a sinking feeling that they're going to hire from outside rather than promote from within. Sure, some of that feeling is paranoia and my own insecurity, but the fact remains that I have no idea how this is actually going to go. And when the future looks murky and unclear I usually have a pretty powerful urge to unmurkify it by choosing some other direction for my life to go in, focusing on something else. This week it was Americorps.
My supervisor at Richmond Place is an Americorps volunteer, as was the supervisor before her, so I know a little bit about the program and how it works. Basically you work for next to no money on a volunteer project for a year or so and then afterward you get a small scholarship to help you pay for your student loans (or you can opt for a stipend). Of course you get a year of experiences and helping people as well, which is the part that makes it enticing. In certain circumstances you also get to try living in a new city for a year, always an interesting option.
I've been talking to my RP supervisors about it for a few months and thinking about it in an abstract way, but this week when I was feeling all uncertain about the future I finally decided to go ahead and submit an application. I applied for a few programs that looked interesting to me and one of them sent me some more information. The part I looked at first was the money because you have to be able to make that work. The money is very, very little, in this case about minimum wage. They do that, I'm sure, because it's a social government program so they probably don't have much money to give out to begin with. They sell it as you living at the same wage level as the people you are helping, which makes it kind of awesome.
But still, there are practical problems with living at minimum wage, like how one pays their car payment, perhaps. I got out my calculator and did the math and no matter what I tried I couldn't make it work. Just couldn't do it. And that was frustrating and sad, but in a way also a positive thing. Because I really think Americorps is something I could do, something where I can go have an adventure and help people and try new things and learn a lot and I won't need to get my degree first. All I need to do is save up some scratch. That's the kind of situation that can not only give me something to look forward to, but imbue my tough, sometimes soulless corporate job with some kind of purpose, the very thing it has been lacking. Suddenly the future is looking brighter indeed.
My supervisor at Richmond Place is an Americorps volunteer, as was the supervisor before her, so I know a little bit about the program and how it works. Basically you work for next to no money on a volunteer project for a year or so and then afterward you get a small scholarship to help you pay for your student loans (or you can opt for a stipend). Of course you get a year of experiences and helping people as well, which is the part that makes it enticing. In certain circumstances you also get to try living in a new city for a year, always an interesting option.
I've been talking to my RP supervisors about it for a few months and thinking about it in an abstract way, but this week when I was feeling all uncertain about the future I finally decided to go ahead and submit an application. I applied for a few programs that looked interesting to me and one of them sent me some more information. The part I looked at first was the money because you have to be able to make that work. The money is very, very little, in this case about minimum wage. They do that, I'm sure, because it's a social government program so they probably don't have much money to give out to begin with. They sell it as you living at the same wage level as the people you are helping, which makes it kind of awesome.
But still, there are practical problems with living at minimum wage, like how one pays their car payment, perhaps. I got out my calculator and did the math and no matter what I tried I couldn't make it work. Just couldn't do it. And that was frustrating and sad, but in a way also a positive thing. Because I really think Americorps is something I could do, something where I can go have an adventure and help people and try new things and learn a lot and I won't need to get my degree first. All I need to do is save up some scratch. That's the kind of situation that can not only give me something to look forward to, but imbue my tough, sometimes soulless corporate job with some kind of purpose, the very thing it has been lacking. Suddenly the future is looking brighter indeed.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
About that tattoo...
You know, I've tried to put my Big Sur trip into words and it's just not happening, like how I couldn't write about Yellowstone that time (I still can't). Suffice it to say that I had an incredible, dynamic, life-changing time at Esalen and I will definitely be going back next year if I can.
The tattoo was borne of a short essay I wrote in one of the workshops, on my mother and perfectionism. She's a very "just so" kind of person and I realized on that trip that as her daughter I had internalized those expectations to the point where I was expecting perfection out of myself in everything I did. Just writing it down and seeing it there on the page made me realize that that's not how I want to live. On the drive back home (a wonderful time to puzzle things out) I started thinking about rejecting perfection and how beautiful imperfections are in all of us. At a truck stop, I pulled a sharpie out of my bag and wrote the word 'imperfectly' on my arm, thinking I would sit with it for a week or so and see how it felt to broadcast my feelings on my skin. A few hours of driving later I made a call to a Portland tattoo parlor to inquire about an appointment for a consultation. They asked if I wanted to just do it today and, seizing the moment, I said okay.
So this is what I got. Afterward I had a few minutes of quietly freaking out, feeling like I had made a huge mistake that couldn't be taken back, but now that it's healed I really love it. And that's the tattoo story.
The tattoo was borne of a short essay I wrote in one of the workshops, on my mother and perfectionism. She's a very "just so" kind of person and I realized on that trip that as her daughter I had internalized those expectations to the point where I was expecting perfection out of myself in everything I did. Just writing it down and seeing it there on the page made me realize that that's not how I want to live. On the drive back home (a wonderful time to puzzle things out) I started thinking about rejecting perfection and how beautiful imperfections are in all of us. At a truck stop, I pulled a sharpie out of my bag and wrote the word 'imperfectly' on my arm, thinking I would sit with it for a week or so and see how it felt to broadcast my feelings on my skin. A few hours of driving later I made a call to a Portland tattoo parlor to inquire about an appointment for a consultation. They asked if I wanted to just do it today and, seizing the moment, I said okay.
So this is what I got. Afterward I had a few minutes of quietly freaking out, feeling like I had made a huge mistake that couldn't be taken back, but now that it's healed I really love it. And that's the tattoo story.
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