Tag Archives: growing up

Relationships

The Impending 2nd Anniversary of my 10th Birthday (and Other Concerns)

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My parents got married when they were twenty-two years young. Growing up, for whatever reason, I always knew this to be a fact and I was never informed that twenty-two is actually considered to be on the young side of marriageability. They spoke fondly and often about their blissful road trip out to California and the exciting early days of their careers, both of them riding the tech wave raging across the Silicon Valley to lucrative careers before they hit the big 3-0. To me, twenty-two was the age at which you officially became an adult and were expected to have it together. That’s the way it was for them, so that’s how it was supposed to be. So, when my twenty-second birthday rolled around a few years ago and I found myself newly graduated with absolutely zero job prospects, painfully single, and totally clueless as to how I could possibly ever have “it all”… well, needless to say, I got my quarter-life crisis out of the way early, like a kid who was forced to get chicken pox before starting Kindergarten. But then I got over it. Because I was twenty-two.

I got a dog. And a job. I moved to a new city. I met nice boys. Things have been a-okay. But just when I thought it was safe, just as I’m getting comfortable with where I’m at in life, another milestone on the horizon is ominously creeping into view: my 30th birthday.

Here’s what flips me out about thirty—similar to what flipped me out about twenty-two. It’s this idea that, as I approach that number, I’m supposed to feel differently. I’m supposed to, therefore, do things differently. I’m supposed to approach things with an empowered sense of maturity. But I expect, just like my twenty-second birthday, my thirtieth won’t really usher in any new revelations. But there is one difference between my impending thirtieth birthday and my twenty-second; by the time you’re thirty, you pretty much know whether or not you want to have kids. Right now, I have no idea. And I don’t know what’s going to change (if anything) over the next three years.

My mom was thirty when I was born. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances close to my age with children. I don’t know how I feel about the prospect of having my own kids, but I do know that I’m probably supposed to know by the time I’m thirty.

Sometimes I think that I can’t possibly be the only female in her mid-to-late twenties who has these conflicting emotions about motherhood. But lately I’ve been getting sidelong glances when I broach the subject with my family members and like-minded lady friends. “Oh, you still aren’t sure? If you don’t know by now that you for-sure want to have kids, you probably won’t ever know. I mean, we’re gonna be thirty soon.”

The worst, though, is this exchange:

“I don’t know—maybe I’ll decide in a couple years that I’m just not cut out for the baby-making thing.”

“Awww, I’m so sorry!”

As if I just lost my phone to a tragic back-pocket-toilet-plunkage incident.

Whatever that biological tick-tock is supposed to sound like… I just don’t hear it. And to be honest, it kind of thrills me just as much as it deeply concerns me. It concerns me because I often worry that I’m going to shoot myself in the foot and wait too long if I’m holding out for a very specific emotional impulse (that may or may not even exist—who knows). More than one aunt of mine on more than one occasion has not-so-jokingly suggested that I look into freezing my eggs. But on the flipside, it thrills me because I haven’t tethered my entire future to this impending event. Some recent psychological studies have shown that a lot of women spaz in their late-twenties / early-thirties over their dating prospects and career potential because they are racing against time—against their biological clocks. As in, “Okay, so I’m twenty-six now. I want to have my first child when I’m thirty-one. That means I only have three to five years to meet a solid partner, get the career I want off the ground, save enough cash, buy a house, have a wedding, and SAVE ME I’M DROWNING, BRING ME MY WINE.” But I haven’t enforced that type of expiration date for myself, and to say that that’s liberating would be the understatement of the century. But as my thirtieth looms, I’m terrified that one day I’m going to wake up in the morning and find my entire brain has been rewired, that I will become the kind of woman I fear becoming the most—a woman with a shelf life.

Recently, I voiced these concerns to a few close family members of mine to very unexpected results. The shifty eye-contact, that forcibly gentle tone of voice used to point out to me that children are “who we build our futures for” and the blatant “you’ll get over it in a couple years” were all heartbreaking to me. I wanted them to understand, especially my female family members, that this is a source of serious inner conflict for me. I wanted them to comfort me, to tell me that it would be 100% okay if I decided not to duplicate my DNA to create future generations of freckle-faced perpetually sunburned kids with two left feet and terrible sinuses. I wanted them to hug me and tell me how badass my career would be and how jealous they would be of all the insane traveling I would get to do. Instead, my words fell to the uneasy clink of forks against plates as I broached what I realize now was a painfully uncomfortable topic for them. They all had kids in their early thirties. They had those kids because they wanted them, of course—but twenty-five years (or more) ago, they might have wanted them because they were told that they were supposed to want them. I was questioning that. Apparently, you don’t do that.

But here I am. I’m questioning it and I’m writing about it and I’m putting it on the internet. I’m not an evil barren ice queen with a heart of steel (quite the opposite—I’ve been told I’m more of an Anna than an Elsa, generally speaking). It’s just that I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about this subject when the clock strikes twelve on my thirtieth birthday. I don’t know if there’s a magical switch in my brain that some mysterious force will pull between now and then. I don’t know if I’m going to start reacting to babies in strollers the same way I react to Corgis wearing raincoats. I don’t know if my relationship with some yet-unknown potential family member is going to dictate all of my decision making for the next five to ten years of my life.

But even though everything I’ve said so far essentially contradicts this—right now, I’m actually pretty okay with not knowing. And I hope that that’s okay. I’ll get back to you in a couple years or so.

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Career

Office Drama, or #WHATSHOULDWECALLTOXICJOB

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How many times do you need to come home from work in tears before you start considering a new job? My last job was terrible almost from the moment it started, but I stayed for nine months trying to make it work, and then trying to hoard enough cash to get out. Looking back on this past year, all I can see is the slow buildup of quiet-yet-demeaning incidents that made me question my worth, my abilities, and my general sense of why I am at all interested in do what I do.

Here is a list of the major red flags.

  1. When I started my job, there was no training. None! They actually said: “Here is your computer!” and then left me on my own.
  2. My supervisors act like they don’t trust me, and revise deadlines without telling me. Once, after seeing the timeline for the interviews that I manage, my supervisor approved and implemented it, and then scheduled all the interviews and emailed the schedule to me. She never addressed whether I had done them wrong or late, or any reason why she had done my job for me, even though it was a full week before we had agreed it needed to be done.
  3. There are three people whom I report to. Every time I ask for clarification on whom I go to for what (even things like time off and emergency situations), they tell me that I was hired because I could “work independently.”
  4. And then when I ask one of them for help with one of the other departments, they usually fail to answer the question because they get sidetracked, ranting about how pretentious the other department is.
  5. Once, in a committee meeting, I had an older co-worker stop mid-discussion, turn to me and say “who are you?” I responded with my name and title, and he said, “Oh! I thought you were a student spying on us. Are you even on this committee?” He checked on his phone, found I was, and said, “Oh, well, what can you do?” We had met multiple times.
  6. When I was introduced to one of the departments, which was formerly all-male, and I’m a young woman, several comments were made to the effect of “Well, now we can’t curse in meetings.”
  7. Recently, one of my supervisors has been asking me to help her with Excel spreadsheets, and when I turned in a draft (like she asked me to), she brought me into her office and pointed at a column without borders and yelled at me, “Where is the column?! Where is the COLUMN?!? There is no column there!” and then had me redo it.
  8. I am required to have an autoreply message on my email instructing students how to make appointments. I have gotten back multiple emails from coworkers who are outraged that I would send them appointment instructions. The first sentence is “This is an autoreply.”
  9. This year, one of my papers was accepted to a prestigious conference. When I asked that same supervisor if there was any funding I could apply for, she said “If you get funding, we might as well add a budget line for my cats.” That was about two months into the position.
  10. I am frequently asked when I am planning on having children. These are not subtle hints from people I am close with. Coworkers who I rarely interact with have come into my office specifically to ask me when I am planning on getting pregnant.
  11. After having congratulated me for improving our numbers so much that a particular department might not be at risk anymore, one supervisor came in and told me that the numbers should go up even more because “we haven’t worked that hard

What I’ve learned from this experience is that—surprise!—my happiness really is affected by being treated poorly by the people whom I spend the majority of my day with. I’m really not sure when the turning point was… when I knew I needed to GTFO. I wish I had known when to say something, because maybe things would have gotten better. But by the time I left, I trusted no one that I worked with or for, and I dreaded going to work. I worry I’ll run into coworkers around town and I feel like I’ve developed some really bad work habits (like hiding from my supervisors) that will affect me in the future. My job was affecting my relationships outside of work as well, I was so emotionally drained that I wasn’t myself.

The worst part was that this was supposed to be my dream job—working with exactly the right population in exactly the right role. But my coworkers and terrible supervision ruined it. I put in my two weeks’ notice despite not having something else lined up because not knowing what was coming next was better than being unhappy every day.

Much to my surprise though, leaving my toxic job felt just like a really bad breakup. It probably should have not been surprising, but ah well. My last two weeks were full of utter insanity, and all I could do was hold on to my end date, knowing that it would be over soon. A small sample: My two weeks’ notice was initially rejected so they could “think” (is this legal?). I had more than 12 meetings with all levels of my supervision, where the second question was always “but, your partner isn’t leaving too, is he?” driving home the point that in their minds I was only there because of him. They told me that I would have had a better time in the job if I were “friendlier.” On my last day, none of my supervisors even showed up, wrote an email or left a voice message saying goodbye. And then, as if to tie a big bow on the whole package, about a week after I left, one supervisor sent an email to my personal address about job searching in my field, and how to know if a job is a good fit.

I’ve been free of this job for three full weeks, and let me tell you, life is so much better. If any of the above sounds like your job, get out. ASAP. Don’t wait. If you don’t have a cushion that will let you bail, start sending your resumes faster, network more, do something. It’s not worth being unhappy every day. I also highly recommend just reading the entire archives of Ask a Manager: this helped me figure out the difference between what was simply strange and what actually crossed a boundary, so that I could work up the courage to leave.

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Home, Relationships

Lessons From My Mom

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As the only girl and the youngest child, I will admit I was spoiled for a good share of my life.  I looked up to my mother as a child and, in my teens, while most of my girlfriends “hated” or fought with their moms, my mom and I were friends.  Yes, of course we had our fights and tiffs, just like many mothers and daughters, but that is not what stuck out about our relationship.

I was fortunate to learn at such a young age how important a good relationship with my mother was.  Not only do I enjoy doing our one-on-one mother-daughter things, but I have learned so much about life just by watching my mother interact with the world around her. She didn’t just sit me down and talk at me, she showed me. I learned by observing her capability, attitude, and reactions.  I’m not even sure she knows the qualities she has shown me: like her kindness, her work ethic, and putting others first, to name a few. Most people see these in my mother just by talking to her. And while she did pass down to me a few unwanted qualities, such as compulsively re-checking everything is unplugged multiple times before leaving the house, she has passed down an uncountable amount of good qualities that made me the person I am today.

She and my father taught me the importance of a good work ethic. They both worked so hard, and carried multiple jobs, just to give everything they earned to my brothers and me. I look back at my childhood and how I made friends with the kids, who would get picked on, or ones with learning disabilities, or ones from bad homes, because my mother encouraged me to love and appreciate every person. I watched her kindness shine through as I saw how she cared for others above herself. It was her who taught me to love and befriend the unloved and friendless. People can tell you over and over how important these qualities are, but it isn’t until you see them first-hand that you know why they’re so important.

As I grow, my relationship with my mother grows too. When I was younger, I couldn’t exactly appreciate what she had done for me and the rest of our family.  I couldn’t see how special the relationship between my parents was. They showed me what a beautiful relationship looks like and how to keep it strong for over 35 years.  While I am not a mother yet, I’ve learned so many things to prepare me for motherhood and I know what I want my relationship with my daughter to look like. My dad used to work over nights, so my mom had a queen bed all to herself and she would occasionally let me sneak in to have a girls’ sleepover.  As a child it was one of my favorite things, and when I grew up we would still have the occasional girls’ night sleepover together.

When I was a teenager, I thought I knew everything, obviously. I couldn’t have been more wrong and eventually, like (most) of us do, I grew out of that and came to realize that my parents were right about pretty much everything.

The older I get, I earn more respect for my mother and all mothers out there.  I cannot think it is an easy job to take on.  There may be many parenting books on the shelves, but nothing can tell you an exact formula on how to be a perfect mother, or how to make a perfect child.  Often times, we put the blame on our mothers, but for most of us, being the child is the easy part, being the mother is what is difficult.  My mom always trusted me and had faith that I would make good decisions.  My curfew as a teen was usually 1 AM and my mother always said it was because she trusted me and the people I was with.  She treated me with respect because she knew me, and that she and my father instilled in me the qualities I needed to make good decisions.  My friends also grew close to my parents, so close in fact that they would call her mom (or “ma” as we say in New York), and they would confide in her. Not only did she take care of my family and friends, but also the numerous pets I begged and pleaded for—the ones I promised I would look after and clean-up for.

It has become harder now that I live across the country from my parents—I look back on all the things that I didn’t necessarily take for granted, but didn’t realize how important they were to me.  How the simple things are the things I enjoyed the most. Like sitting in the afternoon and having a cup of coffee with my mom while watching House Hunters. Or watching “our shows” together at night.  It’s difficult to no longer have those moments in my life on a regular basis, but it also makes them more precious.  To me the little things in life mean the most and when I sit alone on the couch, across the country, I wish my mom was sitting next to me.

So I raise a glass to all the amazing mothers out there raising and instilling their highest qualities in us and preparing us for children of our own. Who teach us how to make a mean cup of coffee, killer eggplant parm, and amazing meatballs and still always have the recipes on hand for whenever we call to tell them we’ve lost it… again.  It scares me how quickly life seems to pass by, but what I’ve come to learn from both my parents is that no matter what we have thought about family before, it is the most important thing and we have to appreciate it while it’s here.

Photo by Remi Coin

Photo by Remi Coin

Relationships

She’s not Dead, She’s Sleeping (And Other New Mom Lessons)

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I always knew I wanted to be a mother, I just never really thought it would happen as soon as it did. When I graduated from college, my boyfriend and I decided that in a year and a half, when I turned 25, we would start seriously talking about having a baby. Who would have thought that a year and a half later, and ten days before my twenty-fifth birthday, we would welcome our daughter M.

My boyfriend is a little bit older than I am (only sixteen little years), grew up around babies at his mother’s in-home daycare, and helped raise his ex-wife’s daughter (long story). I, on the other hand, am an only child who never babysat an actual baby, but always had an overwhelming maternal instinct and a love of children. When we found out we were expecting, the unwarranted advice started rolling in. People will give you tons of advice when you’re pregnant and a new parent (look, I’m doing it right now, and you’re probably not even pregnant). They mean well, but you will never truly understand what it is like to be a parent until that little bundle of joy comes barreling into your life and changes it forever.

As a new parent, it is almost impossible not to constantly worry. The small foreign creature you brought home from the hospital appears so fragile and delicate and every cough, rash, and change in bowel movement seems like the end of the world. But let me tell you, babies are quite resilient. I remember M’s first diaper rash and thinking it was so horrible that I started Googling images of diaper rashes and immediately concluded that she needed antibiotics and to see the doctor ASAP. I consulted my boyfriend who recommended we put some rash ointment on it and check on it in the morning. I begrudgingly agreed, but if it was still there we were headed straight to the pediatrician! The next morning it was practically gone and I vowed never to Google images of any ailment or disease I self-diagnosed my daughter with. Although, I did slip recently and thought she had hepatitis or aluminum poisoning because her poop was clay colored. The pediatrician did not agree with my diagnosis.

Another thing I found myself worrying about was her growth and milestones, compared to what is considered “normal” for babies her age. Pediatricians tend to freak out if your baby loses too much weight initially and M has always been much smaller than her peers and not-at-all comparable to the giant baby I was. I consulted websites describing the week-by-week progress for infants to research what she should be doing, when she should be doing it, and what to expect her to do next. Heaven forbid she started rolling over a few weeks late or not start solids at the appropriate time! After a while, I forced myself to stop the worrying and had to trust that she was developing at the speed that was right for her. I needed to stop thinking she was dead if her nap went a little longer than usual, and just enjoy the unexpected extra alone time that day.

Alone time. How I miss it. Solitary confinement is vital to one’s sanity when it comes to being a parent. I miss going to the bathroom by myself. Now I have to keep the door open so she can come in and close the door herself (one of her favorite past times) or else she sits outside the door and whines until I come out. My non-parent readers, enjoy your silent potty time while you still have it because soon a little person will want to watch you while you do your business and you will call it “potty training.” (And don’t even get me started on how intimately I know my own child’s butthole.)  Once you become a parent, your life and the world doesn’t revolve around you anymore, it is all about the little one. I treat myself to a monthly massage and try to pawn the baby off on daddy for a girl’s night whenever I can. While taking care of yourself is important, it is mutually beneficial to make time for your partner (especially sexy time). Intimacy after childbirth is another article in itself.

And while we are on the subject of bedroom activities: You never truly realize how important sleep is until you’re not getting it. When M turned four months old, we decided enough was enough, she was going to sleep through the night in her own bed, whether she wanted to or not. We chose to do sleep training, and it was not easy. There are many different approaches and techniques for conducting sleep training, but most fall in to two different strategies: non-crying and cry-it-out.  We chose the latter because sometimes babies just need to cry and learn to get over it. Sleep training is not necessarily the right choice for everyone. I recommend it, but not all parents, doctors, psychologists or babies agree on the best way to go about it or if one should subject their child to it. What I can say is that it took less than a week to get M sleeping through the night, and she goes to bed at roughly eight o’clock and wakes up around seven in the morning. She does have the occasional late night wake up when she’s sick, but those are few and far between.

Being a parent has its challenges, but there are special moments in between that make it all worthwhile; like first words and steps, tickle sessions that make you both roll in laughter, and snuggles that make you not want to ever let go. In the end, it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t crawl until she is ten months old, or that you haven’t had a good night sleep in who knows how long… what matters is that she is a healthy and happy baby who waves and smiles at everyone, loves books, and gives you kisses in the morning.

Photo by Jenny Butler

Photo by Jenny Butler

Geekery

Nerd Knows No Age

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Full disclosure: I am a full-blown adult nerd.

Nerd is a pretty broad term—sometimes it’s science nerds, or book nerds, or fandom nerds. But really it just means that you’re extremely passionate about something and you like to show it. You exhibit your emotions and feelings about what you love and that’s okay.

For me, being an adult nerd has been a great way to relieve stress and have fun. I’m a pretty enormous Harry Potter nerd, as well as a social media nerd (do I have fellow Tumblr friends out there?), a young adult novel nerd, not to mention the dozens of other fandoms (fan communities) I dabble in. I love getting into passionate discussions with my friends about the intricacies of the house system at Hogwarts or the latest Vlogbrothers video on YouTube. It’s a hobby that’s not only fun for me, but also engaging and empowering.

When I was 22, I jumped head first into the world of fandoms. Through a few chance encounters, my need to have something to do outside of work, a roommate with a common love of Harry Potter, and a desire to not hide my own nerdy obsessions any longer, I quickly found myself knee-deep in fandom. I started volunteering for The Harry Potter Alliance, an organization that engages youth and fandom communities in social justice through parallels from the Harry Potter books and other novels, TV shows, and movies. What I found within that organization was not only a cause I could believe in and enjoy simultaneously, but also a group of friends and colleagues who helped me realize how indulging in our passions improves our daily lives. This encouragement has pushed me to find my other passions, and more than three years later I am heavily involved in many communities.

Through things such as The Harry Potter Alliance, Nerdfighteria, Tumblr communities, LeakyCon, and so much more, I have come to find networks of friends that I would have never been exposed to otherwise. They are friends I would have never been exposed to just through college and work—friends who make YouTube videos for a living, who work for entirely online non-profits, who go to conventions all over the country and get paid to do it. We live all over the world and yet we are able to form true, close friendships based entirely off of our shared enthusiasm. I never thought I’d meet some of my best friends online but it only makes sense now considering how much we have in common.

As an adult, however, I can often see the more difficult sides of nerd communities. Sexism, ableism, and racism are not uncommon, especially in communities heavily dominated by a specific group—cosplayers constantly face discrimination based on body type, gamers are often pegged as mysognyistic for how they treat women who try to join the traditionally all male community, and comic fans are defensive of anyone who claims to be a true fan but doesn’t know every single detail of a story. Every community has them, even the most inclusive and welcoming of them. Assimilating into the cultures we love can take a lot of conviction, especially when we don’t always fit the mold. Not to mention that the social aspect of these communities can be difficult to break into, especially if you don’t know what to expect. But the more atypical members who join these communities, the more changes will permeate them.

To me, being an adult nerd is about not allowing ourselves to hide from who we are. For those who have been nerds all our lives: our passions as teenagers are still part of our passions as adults and it’s okay to keep those interests alive even as we age. At twenty-five I’m more enthusiastic than ever about my nerdy passions and I don’t see that going away anytime soon. I look forward to the day I get to pass those passions on to my own children and share in them as they too learn the world of fandom, stories, and nerdy obsessions. For those who are just now discovering geekdom, don’t be pressured away from finding new interests and new ways to express yourself—it only goes up from here!

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Health

A Healthier Alternative to the New Year’s Resolution

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Happy New Year, everyone. Please allow me to state my unpopular opinion: I consider New Year’s resolutions to be the devil. Yes, I realize that resolving to accomplish certain goals every January can really help people have a positive outlook on their futures and motivate themselves, but: 1) People very rarely have the wherewithal to stick with them (which is the most obvious drawback) and 2) New Year’s resolutions cause you to reflect upon the past year and think of all the shit you did not accomplish. As in, “Oh God, there goes another year and I didn’t change careers / put myself out there in the dating world / lose ten pounds…” You fill in the blank. Woe is you. You messed up this year, huh? But that’s okay, because next year you will do all those things! Right? Right! Except there’s a chance you might not. Because point #1.

But what if, instead of making New Year’s resolutions, we did Past Year’s reflections? I think this method is a healthier, glass-half-full approach to prepare for the next 365 days. Sure, there are some things you wish you could have done this past year, things you really hope you’ll do next year. But why not catalog all the really cool, life-changing things that you did do? It can feel like time is speeding up in all sorts of odd ways as we age, and it’s easy to lose track of the milestones as the year flies by. Reflecting upon the past twelve months reminds me how long a year actually is, and I wind up realizing that I have made progress as a human being.

Ready? Awesome, I’ll start, and I’ll start by being perfectly honest. This past year wasn’t one of my favorites. There were a lot of personal hurdles to confront family-wise, work-wise, self-wise, money-wise, pet-ownership-wise… pretty much all of the wises. But every time an obstacle cropped up, the way I ultimately chose to deal with it was with the pat on the back I gifted myself. I might not have compiled all the Facebook-friendly accolades that usually qualify as “milestones.” This year, mine were quieter and more personal but no less valuable.

Sure, there were a few big moments: I moved in with a significant other. We adopted a rescue dog and showered her with love. I left my Hollywood assistant job and launched my freelancing career, ignoring how much the prospect terrified me. I finished writing my first book. Then I rewrote it. And rewrote it again. (I’m still rewriting it again.) So, yeah, these are big, important things! But the moments in between these big, important things, when life was definitely not throwing me a Get-it-Girl parade, are the moments in which I feel I grew the most. And they’re the moments I think I’m proudest of.

I learned how to enrich my relationship with my family from afar when someone close to me confronted a health crisis. There was a lot of flying back and forth to New York for a few months, and I had to really weigh the pros and cons of my life on the opposite coast. That was scary. So was the realization that the healthy status-quo of your parents is not permanent by any means: it’s something we all know on a very basic level, but it’s different when you really start to know it. I’m not proud of how much I yo-yoed emotionally during that time. But I’m proud of and happy with my decision to stay on the West Coast. By even suggesting that I’d move back East, I was giving my family the impression that the situation we were in might be worse than it actually was. They wanted me to keep on keeping on so that we could establish a new normal. So I did. And they did, too. That was a huge thing to have learned. Life is full of establishing “New Normals” when something doesn’t go as planned.

Another “New Normal” (and yes, I’m sensing a pattern here) that I had to establish was in regard to my dog Sydney—the peanut butter to my jelly, the Hobbes to my Calvin. Sydney underwent major surgery on both her eyes and went completely blind due to glaucoma. I had to teach her how to “see” her world in a new way, and boy… it was tough. For weeks, I couldn’t even get her to walk to the front gate of our apartment complex. But every day I set a goal for the two of us to accomplish, however small, and every day, she achieved that goal with my help. Eventually, “Today, we’ll take five steps to the water bowl” turned into “Today, we’ll run up the stairs for a treat.” And I also finally paid off that enormous vet bill. We definitely have a new normal in our household, but I don’t think I’ve ever learned so much about patience as it relates to adaptability in all living things.

“Patience and Adaptability” could totally be the theme song for my recent career move as well. After several years of working different assistant jobs throughout the entertainment industry, I decided to strike out on my own and start freelancing as a writer. I prepared for it. I gave myself a financial cushion. I pulled together a portfolio that I was proud of. I forced myself to take on projects that I didn’t really think were up my alley, just to see if I could broaden my range. Yes, I was super nervous and had daily panic attacks for a month or so. And yeah, money is tight when you do this. It’s unpredictable. But like I said, patience, adaptability, and establishing a new normal have been my jam for 2013. And I’m happier. I might not be exactly where I want to be career-wise at the moment, but I’ll be damned if I’m not pleased as punch with my decision to go for it.

And what’s that they say about long-term goals? That they’re long-term, right? Patience and discipline pays off, little by little. Before you know it, a year has gone by, and that “little-by-little” has started to look like pretty awesome progress. I think pursuing long-term career goals is a lot like climbing a tree (which 8-year-old Liz was definitely the authority on). You don’t realize how high you’ve climbed ‘till you look down, and by then, it’s usually a lot easier to keep climbing than to try to make your way back to the ground. The only difference is that once you reach the top of your career-goals tree, you won’t be yelling for your dad to come out with the ladder and help you get back down before it gets dark out.

To those of you who are suffocating yourselves with New Year’s resolutions in light of all the things you think you didn’t accomplish in 2013—cut yourself some slack. Reflect upon this past year and take stock of how you changed personally. I feel great after writing this, much better than I would have in February 2014 after realizing that I hadn’t even scratched the surface of whatever my New Year’s resolution was. Even if you had a tough year and you don’t think your milestones actually look like milestones… look closer. Not all progress is heralded by 100 “likes” and a tornado of congratulatory texts.

Move ahead with each passing year, but don’t beat yourself up over goals you were unable to accomplish when life got in the way. If you did your best with the circumstances you were dealt this past year and you know it, then guess what? You just won New Year’s.

Relationships

The End of a Girl Crush

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I met B on one of my family trips to China.  I was 16, she was 17, but B was already so much more mature and sophisticated than me.  She was a bit of a socialite, honestly, and handled everything with an easy grace that clung to her like perfume.

Her dad and mine were good friends and, since I was in China by myself, she had been tasked with making sure I didn’t get bored or accidentally sell myself to the Triads.  To my surprise, instead of being annoyed or half-assing her guardianship duties, B threw herself into them. I found myself bewildered by the amount of excited attention I was getting from this very wealthy, vividly charming, porcelain doll of a “young woman.”  Not “girl,” a distinction that I noticed was made by all of the adults around us.

In case you couldn’t tell, I had a bit of a girl-crush on B.  And since I can already hear my friend Alex saying “Lez be honest,” let me clarify what a “girl-crush” actually entails to me.  Basically it’s another girl in whom you recognize a bit of yourself, whether it’s her sense of humor or her interests or whatever but she’s somehow managed to amplify herself with some secret quality that you can sense hovering just beyond your grasp.  You want her as your best friend because secretly, part of you kinda sorta wants to be her.  A little creepy, sure, but in my definition, it’s not a romantic attraction.

Anyway, so I was pretty fascinated by her and when she suggested we jump on a bus tour to one of the neighboring provinces, I was completely on board.  I was also completely out of my depth. I’d never really traveled on my own before and, even though I could speak Mandarin fluently, I was going to be facing a bit of a language barrier. All of the rural provinces preferred to use their native dialects (many of which are incomprehensible even to Mandarin speakers) and I was (am) illiterate in Chinese.  Thank goodness for B, who obviously had the language proficiency but also proved herself very capable of handling all sorts of scenarios.  She knew exactly how to walk the line between demanding and gracious with hotel concierges, how to be just the right amount of stubborn when haggling with artisans from the local tribes, and how to judge whether or not jade was “ripe” enough (don’t ask, I still have no idea what she was talking about.)

While we marveled at the breathtaking sights, B told me about all the places that her eternal wanderlust took her.  While she was at it, she’d dump loads of advice and personal research into our conversations. I soaked this up like a sponge, all the while thinking to myself, “I’ve always wanted an older sister.”  I cringe a little when I think about it but I took to every one of her ideas like she was handing me a secret guidebook to enlightenment.  She just seemed so certain of everything.  Every choice was so thoughtfully yet effortlessly made.  Next to her, I felt so manic and so restlessly lost inside my own head.

I was hitting that point in life when you first realize that the world is much larger than you could’ve ever imagined and more daunting than you could ever be prepared for.  And yes, I was freaking the fuck out, but—in true Tiger Cub fashion—very very quietly.  God forbid anyone get the sense that I was actually an adolescent, ya know?  Point being, I latched onto B because I thought she could soothe all those worries away and tell me everything would be okay because I very badly wanted to hear that.  Like, “Girl, please.  This is how you deal.”

Now, of course, I’m aware that this was/is impossible.  That, even at 25, I can’t tell my 18-year-old sister what shape her life should take in order for it to be “okay.”  In fact, I can’t even say I want her life to be “okay” because there is nothing beautiful or glorious or epic about “okay.”  But I can commiserate with what she’s going through and we help each other along—usually pretty gracelessly, but with love and humor.  Ironically, I might have had that experience with B back in the day.  Except I never once opened up to her.  Not really, just gossip about boys and parents, but nothing of true weight.  I was always too worried that these burning, wordless questions I had would feel needy.  And that my neediness would be repulsive to her.  So I clamped my mouth shut and tried to decipher the secrets she seemed to hide in her eyes.

I guess she did the same thing.  Looking back, I realize that there was much about her that didn’t feel quite…okay.  There were holes and crooked lines that whispered about a deeper, more complex ache within her that I was too young to fully understand.  Like when she’d push her bangle down her forearm until it dug angry, red ruts into her skin while she murmured dreamily that she longed to lose enough weight so that the bangle would just slip all the way down to her elbow.  Or when she’d idly pull lacy scraps of lingerie out of her suitcase and talk about the things she’d wear for the boyfriend, whose love for her—she was certain—had grown to an obsessive fever pitch despite the fact that she was equally certain she didn’t love him back.

Nothing really alarmed me though until our last night of the trip.  She and I were wandering around the (tourist trap of a) rustic town on our own when she pulled me into a bar and immediately ordered two whiskey drinks before sitting us down at a four-top table.  I asked her who was joining us and she simply winked and told me to drink up.

This wasn’t my first time drinking alcohol or anything.  One time, when I was 11 and we were on our annual family Christmas trip to Vegas (because Christmas in Vegas is as Asian as dumplings), my dad handed me “Sprite”, which was actually gin, and laughed until he was crying after I spat it across the hotel room.  I had always hated the taste of alcohol and my dad had enjoyed grossing me out with it since I was about 6.  So why did I drink the whiskey?  The promise of enlightenment, that’s why.

Our surprise guest soon showed up—our 27-year-old tour guide, who proceeded to get us very wasted very quickly (not difficult with 5’2” Asian girls.)  I can’t remember much of the conversation but it definitely included 1) criticism of my lack of Chinese culture and 2) sex talk.  To their glee, I was still a virgin and they took this as an opportunity to educate me while trying to one-up each other with…hm…highly detailed stories with a healthy dose of hentai references (look it up.  BUT NOT AT WORK.)  Our guide then dragged us from the bar to a club and then, around 3 am, to a private karaoke room.

I was fading fast by then and I think I dozed off on the couch because I remembered waking up with the tour guide’s arm around me—petting my hair familiarly—while B was singing her heart out to an early 90’s Andy Lau power ballad. I abruptly stood up and teetered over to B’s side.  While the tour guide took his turn on the mic, I asked her if we could go back to the hotel.

I remember her smile, eyes glittering with a strange, innocent mischief as she whispered, “I told him that you like him.”  Aghast, I asked her, “Why?” With a shrug, she replied, “I thought it could be fun.”

I just stared at her, under all that neon and shadow, and realized that she wasn’t going to get us home.

I made up some blatant lies about feeling like I was going to throw up, or pass out, or do both simultaneously, and got them both into a cab that took us back to the hotel.  When we arrived, B was the first out the door and the tour guide took that opportunity to grab my arm and tell me he wanted to take me to “the most beautiful place in the city.”  “Thanks, that’s nice of you, but really.  I’m gonna throw up.” I answered as I scrambled backwards out of the cab.

B didn’t talk about it the next day so neither did I. After all, she hadn’t been malicious in any way, just impulsive.  The tour guide was really just a harmless dweeb. I wanted to ask what she had been thinking but never quite managed to find the moment.  Or the courage, for that matter.

I lost touch with her after I returned to the US but I continued to hear rumors through what I refer to as the “Tiger Mother Grapevine.”  At 24, she’d been disowned when she ran away with a married photographer.  He was 30 years her senior, unattractive, and had abandoned his two-year-old son for her.  When I heard this news, I found myself wishing again—very deeply—I could call her up and ask her what she’d been thinking.  No judgment, just an old instinct to ask her what truth she’d thought she’d found.

Sometimes when I think about her, I imagine that I actually do call her up.  In this fantasy, she’s still that 17-year-old girl—beautifully and mysteriously sad.  But, luckily for both of us, I’m no longer my 17-year-old self.  I wouldn’t keep her at a distance.  I wouldn’t be afraid that my manic messiness would spill all over her.  I’d ask her what’s wrong and maybe she’d tell me and maybe I’d say something that would soothe her.  And then maybe I could get her home.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Photo by Sara Slattery

Career

That Time I Killed my Childhood Dream for the Sake of my Sanity

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As a kid, I was blessed with a hyperactive imagination and a dramatic sense of destiny.  These are both helpful once you’re older and trying to be assertive in your creativity… but if you’re at a stage in your life when you’re obligated to take an afternoon nap, it makes you a tiny lunatic.  I believed in Santa until I was prepubescent (who cares what other people said, I had the logic worked out), and nobody could prove that dragons didn’t actually exist so I inverse-propertied that shit and stubbornly held out (we just haven’t been looking in the right places).  This was just the more fantastical stuff—you can only imagine how I was about anything over which I actually thought I had control.

Photo Submitted by Emmy Yu

I started acting in films when I was 5.   Ask me some other time, and I can go into the details of how bittersweetly intoxicating it was—the intricacies of how quickly and willingly any child ruled by wild, hungry imagination would slip under that wave of magical make-believe.  For now though, let’s just suffice to say that set life was pretty sweet.  There was free food always, someone announced my presence over walkie-talkie whenever I was anywhere, and working meant having my face on all the monitors.  I fucking loooved it.  (I’m a Capricorn.  You know who else was a Capricorn?  Stalin.)  Point being, when I realized that this was something that I was getting paid to do and technically could get paid to do for the rest of my life and, therefore, not need to do anything else but this all the freaking time… well, I was in.

I turned 6. And chose what I (thought I) would do for the rest of my life.

It’s fascinating how attached you can become to even the most trivial choice.  You embrace it because it gives definition to that messy, inscrutable concept of “self” you have in your mind.  You lock it down in front of you so you can trace the shape of it with your eyes and claim that this is you.  It’s incredibly satisfying… until, of course, it’s not.  Heavy-hitters like Fight Club and Mad Men explore the “not” in a way that I can’t even attempt, but from my basic understanding of it, you either 1) start hating the shape you’re seeing or 2) someone (maybe everyone) starts telling you “Hey, you’re wrong.  That’s not you at all.”  And you’re expected to just let go.

The second was what happened to me and, honestly, it became clear pretty early on that I would not have a future in acting.  But this was the choice I had made—not a trivial one in the slightest—and I was so very deeply attached.  I closed my eyes to the (mostly well-intentioned, for the record) Dead End Ahead messages I was getting.

I turned 10, I turned 11, I turned 12.

It’s difficult for me to step into this next part.  Even with the time I’ve had to soften the light and mute the volume, I try not to dwell on the memories of this time because it’s so easy to linger and ask unheard, unanswerable questions.  To keep it brief, the auditions were torture.  The stifling hush of cattle-call waiting rooms, where I spent at least 45 minutes for every 5 I actually auditioned.  The canned “thank you” responses that I carefully memorized, word for word, so later I could pick them apart, turn them over in my fingers and see if they meant something else. The dwindling callbacks.  The incredible silence from the phone—undeniably the most judgmental silence I have ever experienced.

I turned 17.

I don’t believe that I was an unusually intense child; it was just an atypical context for someone of that age to find herself in.  So, with the logic of my years, I decided that this whole experience couldn’t simply be something that was just happening to me—it had to be as melodramatic as “destiny.”  How on earth could anyone expect me to let go?  It had been molded into my identity for as long as I could remember and, no, it wasn’t even a significant time investment out of my year anymore—much less my day to day—but it was part of me.  You may as well have asked me to hack my arms off.

I can make jokes about it now (armless kids are funny, guys) but really, I struggled with it.  So I gave myself a cheat and went off to film school that fall to study writing and directing.  I packed your usuals—you know: clothes, new laptop, headshots, kitchenware.  I gave myself a little hope.  I wasn’t letting go of acting entirely—I would just come back to it later, and everything I had ever known about myself would still be true.  Everything I had ever insisted to be true would be true.

Photo Submitted by Emmy Yu

Photo Submitted by Emmy Yu

There’s no dramatic, climactic ending to this story.  There was no eureka! moment when I suddenly said, “Hey, get over it,” and then I did.  College and post-grad life led to a natural diminishment in the time and energy I put into keeping acting on my mind.  Admittedly, at the time, this was a transition I ignored because it was too painful to accept.  Better to cover it up with dismissive jokes about “my acting days of yore.”  Even now, I find myself fighting my panicked instinct to minimize the significance—to look it in the eye, this darling, childish fantasy of mine, and say that acting was just a phase I went through.  But I’ve also wised up to the fact that this is a kind of denial—the emotional equivalent of smiling after you’ve knocked your own teeth out.

Somewhere between ages 5 and 18, I missed the memo that there is always a gap between who you are and who you want to be, and sometimes that gap is unbridgeable.  Acknowledging reality—that this thing I once thought was an everlasting part of my life would actually end up as a montage in my head—was a terribly painful but necessary step in growing up.  And I’m not even sure how it happened but I can say that it did.  I stopped paying my SAG/AFTRA dues.  I don’t even remember where my headshots are stored.

The concept of “letting go” is a horrible, shrieking abomination—one of life’s unfortunate staples that will hold you down beneath the surface of all your expectations, breathless, drowning in your impotence.  What’s worse is that your instinct to fight it will cause you just as much pain—the lengths to which you will go so you can trick and manipulate yourself into thinking that it’s done or that it didn’t matter.  If you find yourself there, be honest with yourself but be gentle, too.  Be okay with the fact that you had hoped for something you couldn’t control and it ultimately disappointed you.  Paolo Coelho said “Everything will be okay in the end.  If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”  The end comes when you least expect it and will be much easier than you ever imagined.  You won’t even feel relief because you will have already floated on.

And if that’s too flowery to digest, just think of it as forcing yourself to throw up after a night of hard drinking.

Uncategorized

How to Turn 26

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In the weeks before I turned 26, a tide of nausea briefly rippled through my stomach. It was equal parts vanity, regret, and mortal terror. Turning 26 is not as easy as turning 25, 27, or even the dreaded 23 (when nobody likes you, because, what’s your age again?). There are no more additional perks that come with age—renting a car at reduced cost came at 25, and there is nothing else coming down the pike until Social Security (hah) and being able to get the senior discount at movie theaters and Denny’s (assuming your digestive tract somehow grows an iron coating, or perhaps you stop caring about having to buy new underwear). When you turn 26, you leave the 18-25 demographic—meaning that advertisers now care less about what you think because, statistically, you act and buy and think like a young person no longer.

Photo by Sara Slattery

I began to think of all the things I hadn’t done, all the plans I’d made and failed to live up to, all the ambition that couldn’t measure up to the demands of reality. The thought popped into my head “…what if I am turning 30/40/65/on my deathbed, and I still feel this regret?”

Suffice to say, I got quite inebriated that night. But, there is really nothing quite like existential terror to shake you out of your routines or thoughts or beliefs that are, for lack of an accurate and more polite term, bullshit. There is nothing quite like existential terror to make you really step back and evaluate what you are doing, why, and whether or not it’s the right thing to do.

1. Vanity – “I’m too old for this sh*t.” – Roger Murtaugh, Lethal Weapon

You have to take a look at the things you do and the things you did. Some folks can line up shots on Tuesday night and be fresh and ready to go for round two at 5 pm Wednesday. If you are 26, chances are you are not one of those people—I certainly am not.  Put down the Keystone Light and the shot of vodka if you know deep-down you’d rather have a pint of a microbrew or maybe a nice glass of red wine.

At first, when I had this epiphany, I just thought that it was about me getting old and boring, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It meant I cared more about the journey than the destination—less about getting messed up, and more about really enjoying a nice thing. Youth is turbulent and extreme, and this is just the curve of human experience normalizing. The volume on life doesn’t need to be at 11 all the time. Also, you may now come to understand that these types of volume-11 activities were stupid or embarrassing more often than you are comfortable admitting out loud.

2. Regret – “Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.” J. S. Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Life is a game in which you have a finite number of points to allocate to skills, and a finite amount of experience. You must understand that you cannot be both a cowboy and an astronaut—a choice must be made, and that pragmatism will do everything it can to micturate upon the rug that brings together the room that is your life. Money and your means of living will do everything they can to dominate your decision making, making them predicate to happiness—if you let them. It’s your job now, as a 26 year old, to carve out happiness from the charred husk of post–Great Recession America. This will require willpower, creativity, and periodic bursts of self-destruction borrowed from your youth (known prior to your 26th name day as “fun”). This project will take you roughly 30-40 years, so plan it out.

And speaking of “fun,” if you are still doing this stuff well into your 30s and it isn’t otherwise causing your life problems, then don’t listen to critics who’ve “grown up”—if you like doing it, find folks who also like doing it, and make them your friends. Don’t feel bad: remember, it’s keeping you sane and letting you live your life the way you’ve planned it. Unless it’s hurting your health or relationships, don’t be easily shamed by people, especially older critics. (If you feel particularly saucy, remind them that the economic meltdown was voted in by their generation, and that you are dealing as best as you can with the mess they made. It seems to be popular to hate on Millennials—don’t tolerate it. Stand up for yourself.) Eat. Drink. Be merry.

If you wanted to do something, take the time now. Nominally, you’re still young. Go on that adventure, that trip overseas, the road trip across America. Do that thing you always talked about doing, but never got around to doing. Do it now, and let no mortal stand in your way.

Most importantly, do away with the notion that you or anyone else in your peer group has this part of life figured out. If it looks like it, they’re only good at faking it. I’m pretty sure even Mark Zuckerberg went through a “what does it all mean” phase while sitting on a throne made of 100-dollar-bill bricks rubber-banded together and stacked like cocaine-stained legos. There is a relative scale, but more or less we all feel it. Don’t try to compare yourself to other people—they aren’t you. They don’t want what you want, and they haven’t been through what you’ve been through. I was surprised to find that some people I know who are happy on paper are filled with the same existential terror and they question themselves even harder than I did. If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, go out and find it.

3. Mortal Terror – “Someday, I am going to be dead.” Everyone ever on at least one night, staring at the bedroom ceiling

Yeah, you’re going to die. Unless humanity manages to pull its crap together and invent clinical/biological immortality (which, awesomely enough, exists in lobsters), you are probably going to feel the icy grip of death wrap around your chest and squeeze out your final breath. Did that make you uncomfortable? Good, that means you’re paying attention.

Let it inspire you. Let it motivate you. That mortal terror you feel is a fire underneath you that you need to transition through this phase and accomplish what you wish you had already done. You are down two touchdowns in the game of your 20s, and you need to rally a comeback.

Let your life be worthy of a bard’s song. Hit each day like it’s a good day to die (as if you were a Klingon). Your days aren’t long, and they’re getting shorter.