2023 goals

Goals for 2023! I feel good about this list. It's a mix of project-based and more habit-based goals, and stuff that is more serious and stuff that's just for fun.

1. Plan a wedding. Get married. This is the big one. If this doesn't happen we are in trouble. But as long as we make it to the altar, I am going to trust that everything else will come together. In the meantime, this is the big project that I anticipate will continue to fill my nights and weekends.

2. Get into individual therapy and premarital counseling. I've been meaning to see a therapist for a while and getting married feels like a good commitment device to do so—I'd like a mental and emotional tune-up as I enter this new life phase. And I'd also really value some kind of premarital counseling. After 15 years together, we've talked about everything under the sun, but I imagine there are some conversations that we haven't had explicitly. 

3. Handle other health stuff. A boring but important one. After a year of getting health care through MIT Medical, I am mainly looking for new Cleveland-based providers. I'm due for a new glasses prescription. I'd like to do a sleep study (I recently learned that some people wake up feeling refreshed, whereas I wake up feeling like I've been run over by a garbage truck, so I'd like to look into that) which I think means finding a PCP. I also want to find a dermatologist (driven by vanity with the October wedding) or a very good facialist.  

4. Advance on a few priority house projects. I am paring this down from the broad "declutter and decorate" goal that I set and only partly accomplished in 2022. With the wedding planning, I don't have the bandwidth to make this a focus in 2023, but I would love to finish up the walls (after painting my office in 2021). I have paint and wallpaper choices in mind, I just need to execute (or maybe find a contractor to execute). Austin has been leading on a couple bigger-ticket items, including installing solar panels on the roof and creating a parking pad, that I will benefit from too. 

Now for the fun ones!

5. Read 36 books, 25% of them from my shelves. I've set a Goodreads goal for the past few years, reading 36 books in 2020 and 40 books in 2021. I got a bit overambitious in 2022 and shot for 44 books (since it's a multiple of 22), and fell a bit short, so I'm going for a more realistic target this year. The "from my shelves" goal is just a nudge to read the books I buy. I am a huge fan of the library—our neighborhood branch reopened recently after being closed for renovation—and I love that I can learn about a book and have it waiting for me on the holds shelf, for free, a couple days later. But I also occasionally buy books that I know I will love, only for them to sit on my shelves while I'm filling my holds queue with the new hotness. I also want 2023 to be the year I finally finish Fistful of Shells, which I started reading in 2020. This might be my most ambitious goal of all.

6. Watch all new NPR Tiny Desk Concerts. I've had the idea in the past that it would be fun to set an "artist of the month" goal where I do a deep dive each month into the discography of an artist that I think I might like. This has always ended up feeling like homework so I've never done it. But when we drove to DC for Christmas, Austin put on Stromae's amazing Tiny Desk Concert and this idea popped into my head. They are short, just 15 or 20 minutes, so it's a low time commitment, I can put them on in the background, and I'll be exposed to a much wider range of artists than I would have otherwise. 

7. Stay up-to-date with 2023 Project Life and line-a-day journal. When I moved back from Liberia, I started scrapbooking using Project Life. As of this writing I have 2021 done (I just did the second half) and nada for 2022. I am hoping to keep up with my 2023 album and come back to 2022 after the wedding. I also keep a line-a-day journal—I'm now on my second. It's one of my most valued possessions and my most treasured practices, but it's also easy to get lazy and fall behind and then it's hard to catch back up.

8. Earlier wake-ups, better work hours, healthier morning routine. This one is less measurable but I would like to fix my daily routine. Unless I have an early call, I tend to start work a little late (not noon, more like 9:30 or 10am), which means I end work a little late (typically after 7), which means I eat dinner late, which means I go to bed late, and then the cycle continues. On the one hand this is not a big deal—the benefit of remote work and flexible hours is that I can fit my schedule to my circadian rhythm—but I don't like that I end up feeling behind all day, and I don't like working late to compensate. I have a few ideas (and a new sunrise alarm), but I think I am eventually going to have to bite the bullet and start going to bed earlier.

And that's it! Three months in, I've made progress on most of these and am still finding them relevant and inspiring—which already feels like a win.

2022 in review

A few years ago, I realized that I have really good years on years that end in 2 or 7. 2007 brought the very fun spring semester of my senior year of high school, a summer where I got to hang out nonstop with my friends, and the world-expanding start of my college career. In 2012, I moved to Palestine, WWOOFed through Turkey, and generally traveled the world, and then moved back to DC to land a dream job and move into my first apartment. In 2017, I left that dream job, backpacked through France and Morocco, moved to Cambridge, and enjoyed the very fun first semester of grad school. So I've expected for a while that 2022 would be a good year, and as I was loosely mapping my path out of grad school, I realized there was a decent chance that I would get married this year. 

As with all fairy tales, the prophecy came true, but with a twist. I had correctly foreseen that 2022 would be a wedding year, but rather than my own, it brought the weddings of so many people I love—almost everyone I’m close to who was in a serious relationship and intended to be married but wasn’t yet, the combination of a pandemic backlog and just being in our late 20s / early 30s. Getting to be there to celebrate their love, and our friendships, was such a joy.

The seven weddings I was lucky to attend were a high point of a wonderful year. (I calculated that nearly 20% of my weekends were spent at a wedding or bachelorette party.) It was a big milestone year overall, as my parents celebrated 50 years of marriage, my sister graduated from Chapman University, and (more trivially) I marked my 15-year high school reunion.

As the wedding count would imply, the year also brought so. much. travel. I took 80 flights in total and spent 46% of my time away from my Cleveland home. That was in large part because, for the first half of the year, I divided my time between Cleveland and Cambridge, where my organization is based and where technically I was based as well.

(The longer story is: I knew when I accepted this job in spring 2021 that the expectation was that I would work from Cambridge at least a few days a week. I was (and am!) very excited about the job. But after Austin and I lived on different continents during a global pandemic I was not willing to be truly long-distance. So I hatched a scheme that was both technically workable and quite harebrained—commuting back and forth from the Midwest to the East Coast on a weekly basis). 

From September 2021 through March 2022, with a break during omicron, we were required to be in the office one day a week, and I would often fly in and out the same day. At the end of March, the expectation ramped up to two-three days a week. This entailed bouncing between a series of sublets that friends, colleagues, and people on the Harvard grad student Facebook group were kind to open up to me, with a big suitcase full of bedding, toiletries, and hand weights that served as my "apartment-in-a-box." For an extra layer of complication, all the wedding and other travel meant that some weeks I'd go to Cambridge for two days, and others I'd leave Cleveland for two-three weeks at a time since I'd have weekend travel to other cities mixed in there.

By mid-summer I felt totally exhausted and worn down and vowed that I would learn to say no to myself in 2023. (Ha!) But I don't really have regrets: looking back, there's nothing I would have skipped to give myself more breathing space. (Maybe with the exception of my high school reunion. It was wonderful as always to see friends and classmates but that gluten-free parsley pasta was a travesty.) 

After I marked my one-year anniversary at the end of July, I was able to go fully remote, with about quarterly travel to Cambridge. With the transition, the pace of life felt way more sustainable. Still lots of travel—I was only home for a few weekends all fall, and when I calculated it, I was surprised to learn I was away from home as often in the second half in the year as I was in the first half—but no longer exhausting. On the first Monday of being fully remote, I sat in my home office and realized I would be there all week and let out a giant exhale. 

The upside of this travel is that I had a ton of fun. The downside is that I didn't invest as much as I would have liked in my home or community. One of my goals for 2022 was "declutter and decorate the house." When I moved here in July 2021, there were so many projects I was raring to take on—paint every room! wallpaper accent wall! put doors on the bathrooms! buy new furniture! hang curtains!—and very few of them got done. There was some progress—I painted my office over a long weekend, and scored a perfect midcentury dresser to use as a TV stand on Facebook marketplace—but a lot of those projects remain unfinished. (Including, regrettably, the bathroom doors.) With planning a wedding, I doubt this will be the main focus in 2023, but I'm hoping to make some progress.

I would love to cultivate more local friendships, which traveling so often made it hard to do. Mainly through Austin, I know some wonderful people in Cleveland and am looking forward to putting down more roots here. 

But I accomplished a few big goals and reached some exciting milestones. After setting the goal almost annually for nearly 10 years, I succeeded in running a total of 365 miles, including my first half-marathon. I trained for the marathon between mid-March and mid-May, during a peak travel season, so while it was challenging at points to fit in long runs, it was a nice touchstone during a chaotic time—something that was constant no matter what city I was in.

Going remote freed up the space in my schedule to take on a regular volunteer gig—tutoring a local Afghani family in English through the Refugee Response. They are lovely and funny, learning how to teach English has been a fun challenge, and it has made me feel more connected to my community.

Even better than working remotely is the fact that I really enjoy and feel increasingly confident in my job, and can see myself growing in my organization over the next few years. It's a challenging but very fun role—I get to read academic research and call it work—where I've gotten to build a portfolio that speaks to my diverse interests (democracy and governance! the Middle East! scaling evidence-based programs!) And learning to manage people has stretched me in the best ways.

And a big one: I got engaged and started planning a wedding! ("Get engaged" was one of my goals for 2022.) We spent the first part of the year working with an amazing local jeweler to turn diamonds from Austin's grandmother into a custom engagement ring, officially booked a venue on my 33rd birthday this summer, and have gotten deeper and deeper into the planning trenches ever since. After knowing for years that we wanted to get married, it’s exciting that the ball is rolling towards this big milestone. We're in a great place in our relationship and I’m thrilled to be working towards a marriage.

I realized recently that we're in the place we've been working towards for years—at least since we started grad school, and really even before that, when Austin started voicing his hope of moving back to Cleveland (and I started voicing my hesitation). (The short version of his year-in-review is, he successfully off-ramped from Big Law to a position working with Cleveland's new millennial mayor, where he's taking on all sorts of challenging but worthwhile policy issues.) I finagled a way to live in Cleveland while continuing to build a career in international development; we're both doing public-sector work that (most of the time) feels meaningful; we own a house and are planning a wedding and, better yet, a marriage. What a tremendous joy it is to be here.

My first half-marathon

Before my first 5k in 2014 and after my first half-marathon in 2022, both at the St. Michaels Running Festival.

Running has been part of my exercise routine for almost ten years and I have wanted to run a half-marathon for almost that long. I am thrilled to have finally accomplished that goal in 2022. Here is the story (in way too many words) of how I got there.

I always saw the half-marathon as something I would gradually work my way up to over a long period of time, running shorter distances along the way. Towards that goal, I did my first 5k at the St. Michaels Running Festival in May 2014, followed by a 10k with friends at the same event in May 2015, and then the Across the Bay 10k in November 2015. Emboldened by those experiences, I even registered for a couple half-marathons during this period, but always ended up cancelling for work travel and never seriously started training for them.

(I wouldn't say I seriously trained for anything during this period. I felt like I was running pretty often, but wasn't particularly disciplined about it. On weeknights I would jog around my neighborhood of Columbia Heights and on weekends I took long meandering runs through Rock Creek Park, where I would alternate between walking and jogging, but with no rhyme or reason. It was good times.) 

I took a hiatus from races, and ran less often in general, when I went to grad school, but still logged some miles. When I moved to Liberia after grad school, I decided I would take totally off from running—I don't love treadmills and running outside would have meant contending with heat and traffic—and instead threw myself into barre3 and, later, swimming laps in the pool in my compound.  

I moved back to the US in July 2021 and by the time fall rolled around, was ready for a new challenge. My first step was downloading a couch to 5k app. I had never done the program before, due to never really identifying as "couch," but after nearly two years without running, my pride was finally ready to admit that I was effectively starting from scratch. 

Soon thereafter I decided to go for it and sign up for the St. Michaels half-marathon in May. "Working my way up to it" had never worked—despite logging plenty of miles, I never really felt half-marathon-ready. So why not set the goal, tie my own hands, and then get ready? Seven months felt like plenty of time to train and the paid-for race registration would serve as a commitment device.

I had not quite finished the C25K program when winter hit Cleveland. We got feet of snow on MLK weekend and for weeks it didn't melt. While I don't mind running in cold weather, I am a little too wimpy to run in snow and ice, and too cheap to pay for a gym membership to get access to a treadmill, so I effectively took a couple months off—all while nervously watching the clock count down to May 14.

My friend got married in Kansas City on March 12. That Friday night, another of our friends turned in a bit early after the welcome party because she needed to wake up early the next morning to log some miles in preparation for the Cherry Blossom ten-miler in DC. Oh, I realized. If I'm doing this, I need to get serious and potentially rearrange my life to make it possible—not just run when it's convenient. When I got to Cleveland I created a training plan and got started, with exactly two months to go.

I wanted to maintain my barre3 practice so I googled and found this very basic one. (PB refers to Pure Barre here). I had more like eight weeks so I modified a bit.

I decided I wasn't going to worry about any speedwork for this first half-marathon—I took off any pressure to "run fast" (there is no way I was going to run fast) and just focused on racking up the miles. 

The two months I spent training were honestly kind of magic. Though of course it's not really magic at all—the beauty of a training plan is that if you work the plan, you become able to do the plan. But it was so cool to experience firsthand. At the beginning, I couldn't run two consecutive miles without walking (I was still finishing off Couch to 5K). Just a couple weeks later, I did my first 10k, running from my house to Edgewater Beach and back, and feeling so good that I practically bounded through Ohio City when "Jerusalema" came on over my headphones. It was so exciting to watch what was my "long run" one week turn into a medium and sometimes even short run in subsequent weeks. 

I loved that I got stronger and ran for longer as the weather got warmer and the world woke up—it felt like I was shaking off the winter. I loved exploring the area more. I drove to Edgewater and to the Rocky River Reservation for a couple of longer runs and discovered the Red Line Greenway hiding in plain sight (behind a dive bar to be specific). After a long workday, I came to crave the feeling of freedom that came with running alongside the Cuyahoga River with the proverbial wind in my hair.

My half-marathon training coincided with a particularly busy time of the year, as my office summoned us back to work in-person 2-3 days a week, which meant travel to Cambridge during the workweek, with weekend trips up and down the East Coast sprinkled in. I kept up my training plan while popcorning between Cleveland and Boston and DC, running after early-morning flights, after getting home from a bachelorette weekend, when mildly hungover from my 15-year high school reunion. I ran along the Charles River, through Rock Creek Park, on the Somerville City Path. Running became a nice touchstone—something that stayed the same regardless of where I was and something I could control when life felt chaotic. I am proud of myself for pulling it off during a crazy period.

I learned so much during this period. I found that the first mile is in some ways the hardest; I feel like I'm watching the clock and it felt like it took forever to get to Runkeeper's first five-minute audio stats. The first three or four steps are the worst of all—I can hear my body yelling WHAT THE HELL as it processes the shock of being in motion. Somewhere during the first mile I get a pang of chest-tightening anxiety—this feels hard and I am going to be doing it for a long time. And often something hurts—not horribly but enough to be apprehensive about how long I can make it on my weird-feeling foot or knee.

But gradually, my body would get used to it. The anxiety would lift. The minor aches and pains would work themselves out. I would get absorbed in my music or podcast and be surprised when Runkeeper told me another five minutes had passed. The downside of this is that every run has a first mile. The upside is that adding miles doesn't feel as hard as it would if every subsequent mile felt harder or even equally hard. I just needed to remember not to freak out and not to give up.

I read Born to Run during this period and loved it. For one, it was fun to pretend that I was in the same league as ultra-marathoners. There were a bunch of gems but one of my favorite was: "For [other people], running was a miserable two miles motivated solely by size 6 jeans... But you can't muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it, like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it."

Ahhh, yes. Relaxing into it. That is exactly what it felt like. The biggest improvement to my running life this year was to drop the walk/run habit and commit to running the whole time. This was probably good for my physical fitness—though I know there are benefits to alternating walking and running—but it was everything mentally. When my expectation is that I'll run until I'm tired and can then take a walking break, a run is a constant negotiation with myself: "can you make it to that lamp post before you walk? actually can you make it to the lamp post after that?" When my expectation is that I'll run until I hit my mileage goal, I can just relax into it, knowing that I'll be running for a while—there are no more choices to make. Add in some nice long podcasts (I had Maintenance Phase and The Dropout on rotation during this period) and some decent scenery and it even became enjoyable. 

The other big attitude shift was internalizing that being a runner doesn't have to look a particular way. I had made my peace long ago with the idea that most runners are much faster than me. But more than that, in my mind a "real" runner was someone who wakes up early to log their miles before breakfast. I am just not a morning person and I feel way better running later in the afternoons. I went to a bachelorette party in Rhode Island where a friend of the bride was a real-deal runner who had done the Boston Marathon and woke at sunrise to run along the cliff walk. I, with a twinge of guilt, spent the morning in my pajamas catching up with girlfriends... and then logged my eight miles in the early evening, fueled by clam chowder, once we got back to Cambridge. (Ha!)

As the half-marathon approached, I felt great. I could run for 8+ miles at a time and feel good—not like I had gone for a walk in the park, but not like I was about to collapse, either. Even in just the eight weeks of training, I'd gone from about a 12:30 pace to about 11:30 and sometimes even 11:00, even on long runs. 

A couple days before the race, my right leg started hurting—humming in the background at first and then more noticeably. I am not sure what it was, but I remember telling my mom that it felt like my thigh was not attached properly to my hip. After picking up my packet, I tried jogging a few paces and my leg yelled at me. So while I felt good about my training, I was nervous that this mysterious minor ailment was going to eff things up. On race day, I loaded up on coffee, water, a banana, and Gu and then headed to the start line at the local high school. As I crossed the starting line, I was thrilled to find that I could run without pain.

The route wound through the town of St. Michaels and then through various neighborhoods and golf courses, with glimpses of the water throughout. It had been six+ years since I'd done an organized race and I remembered how cool they are. I love that there are all kinds of people, bedecked in the Maryland flag or in matching t-shirts declaring it a girls' weekend. I love the fact that there is very little correlation between what someone looks like and how fast they are. I particularly love seeing older women and kindling a hope that this hobby can last me a lifetime. The route doubled back on itself at some points and it was cool intersecting with the front of the pack and seeing up-close how fast humans can go.

I would say overall the race felt okay, but not fantastic. It was cool and grey and wet, so it felt a bit like running through a cold soup. Some miles felt harder and some felt easier, though nearly a year later, I couldn't tell you which ones. I do remember that when I hit mile 12 I got a little teary—realizing that I had run further than I ever had before and that I'd brought myself to this moment.

I didn't feel the sense of bounding ease that I had gotten on some of my training runs. In theory you are supposed to run faster on race day than during your training runs, but I ran much slower than I had expected. This was made particularly apparent by the fact that I spent the whole race leapfrogging a gentleman who was doing a run/walk strategy. It's funny, I felt like I was running as fast as I possibly could, but I saw a video of myself and it looks like a shuffle—like the gag in movies when someone is moving fast in their own mind but then the camera zooms out and they are actually moving in slo-mo. Maybe I was subconsciously holding back to hold off the pain? 

In the end I came in around 12:36, much closer to my status quo pace than to what I had worked up to while training. (In retrospect I think I probably got a little over-confident after just eight weeks of training.) I was both super proud to have accomplished this huge goal and a little sheepish to have done it at a snail's pace. But mostly I was relieved to have finished the training plan.

After the half-marathon was over, I turned my sights to my corollary running goal: run 365 miles in 2022. No joke, I had been setting this goal on and off since 2014 and had never accomplished it. It always felt like a good goal because, in addition to the satisfying cleanness of running the equivalent of one mile a day, it is totally achievable if you're running consistently. (And totally impossible if you're not—hence my never accomplishing it before—ha!)

But half-marathon training put me over 180 miles before the halfway point of the year, so all of a sudden it seemed within reach. I ran inconsistently over the summer, maybe once or twice a week when the mood struck and the weather wasn't too hot. As fall rolled around, I realized it was once again Get Serious time so I signed up for the 10k Bay Bridge Run as motivation to keep my mileage up. (It worked well for my running life and my 365-mile goal this year to have spring and fall running "seasons," motivated by races, rather than trying to keep up a consistent habit all year. )

Particularly after the half-marathon, I wasn't inherently intimidated by the sheer distance of six miles, so I decided to experiment with seeing if I could run faster. I set up a training plan in Runkeeper that incorporated some surges and interval training. It made for a fun challenge.

It was so cool to see it pay off on race day. I had a slow start, in part because the start line was very congested (note to self, try to be at the front of the block when there are a lot of walkers), and probably in part because the first leg of a bridge run is obviously uphill. Once I was on top of the bridge and had snapped my photo and shed my top layer, a favorite song came on over my headphones and I realized I could pick up the pace. I think the speedwork both gave me the actual ability to run faster, but even more than that, showed me that speed is something I can control (at least to some extent), not something that just happens to me. I felt like I flew the rest of the race (in reality I came in right at 11-minute miles) and was excited to find myself passing people as the finish line approached.

To keep myself rolling towards the 365 goal, I signed up for the Cleveland Turkey Trot a couple weeks later, a fun and sunny morning where I was thrilled to come in around 10:40—still not "fast" by any objective measure, but fast for me. I had a work trip to Morocco in early December and crammed my last few miles in before I left, in case cold weather made for less pleasant conditions upon my return. I was thrilled to hit the 365-mile mark on December 1.

As I write this, I am starting to train for my second half-marathon this May. (The very clever organizers gave you a big discount if you signed up at the post-race party when you were feeling the runner's high.) I am a little nervous. Everything about my first half-marathon experience feels a little bit rose-colored, but running is hard. I don't have the benefit of novelty on my side this year, and my expectations for myself are higher, now that I know I can make it 13.1 miles and stay standing. But there is still so much I have to learn about this hobby and I am excited to keep going.

PS: I am always impressed by people who manage to look cute in their running gear but as the photos in this post show, am totally unable to pull it off myself.

The third Sunday in ordinary time

I have always loved the concept of ordinary time: the parts of the liturgical year outside of the seasons of Advent and Lent and the holidays of Christmas and Easter. Mostly because it sounds poetic, and because I love the idea that even prosaic things are worth naming and recognizing.*

When I was home in DC a few weeks ago, I took a break from catching up on work and planning my wedding to go to the 5:30 Sunday Mass. It made me nostalgic for being in high school and spending Sunday afternoon on homework and then getting pulled away to go to Mass. I both resented it—since I was a) a teenager who didn't want to go to church and b) stressed about finishing my assignments—and secretly enjoyed the enforced break.

Since I graduated from high school, I haven't gone to church as consistently, but I will pop in every now and then. Somewhere along the way, I came to enjoy the Mass as a meditative space. It's quiet, outside the hubbub of ordinary life. The service is repetitive enough week to week that your mind can wander, but with enough novelty (the readings, the homily) to give your brain something to work with. And high ceilings feel conducive to deep thoughts.

This last time, I glimpsed a program that announced it as the third Sunday in ordinary time. I remembered how much I love that phrase. I thought of how January and February often feel like the very definition of ordinary time. After summer travel, fall bucket lists, and winter holidays, they feel like back-to-normal, like a deep breath. I love the feeling of hibernating. When I lived in DC and had a community garden plot, I loved that the garden was hibernating too and I could take a break. After a few years without that lull—grad school meant very little downtime and Liberia meant endless summer—last January and February brought feet of snow and a welcome pause before the crazy travel schedule of the rest of the year. (Along with omicron and seasonal depression but we are going to gloss over that.) So even though they are cold and dark and boring, they are secretly some my favorite months of the year.

This January and February have not felt like that. With our wedding in October (simultaneously nine eight months away and right around the corner), it feels like a crucial period to make sure we have our key vendors in place, and I've been stressed about everything we still have to do. Plus this year I have already traveled to Cambridge for strategic planning, DC for a final wedding dress decision, and Egypt to visit our office there.

So when I saw that program, I thought, man, I can't wait for this time next year when the wedding is over and we'll be in ordinary time again.

And then almost immediately I realized that's not how I want to be thinking. I don't want to wish away the time between now and the wedding, or anything after that. If we are lucky, the next few years will bring extraordinary times as we embark on starting a family. Why would I want to wish away these years, which promise to be full of celebration and transition and newness?

I realized I sometimes see activities and projects and events as hurdles on my way toward a quiet, peaceful, obligation-free life where there's nothing to be stressed about. Because as much as I love travel and adventure, I also love routine and normalcy. But so much joy lives in those activities and projects and events. I want to lead a full life, even when it stresses me out.

We had a good conversation the other night about how it's easy (particularly for me) to feel like all my free time should be spent wedding planning, like I am only allowed to relax once I've made it to the end of my list. But adulthood, in some sense, is an endless list. The trick is embracing it, and setting it down at some points to enjoy yourself. (Or, as a sign on a former coworker's desk read, "Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, but learning to dance in the rain.") We are fortunate that our lists are full of good things that we chose. And I am going to choose to enjoy this full season.

* In writing this post, I googled it and apparently "ordinary" in this context comes from "ordinal numbers," not "opposite of extraordinary." Which ruins it a little bit so I am sticking with my definition.

2020 in (the) books

Hitting "publish" on a few older posts that have been sitting, mostly complete, in my drafts. Originally wrote this at the end of 2020.

Ever since I finished graduate school in May 2019, I've been on a reading bender. I turned in my final paper and was thrilled to have evening and weekend hours back. In between looking for jobs, I read by the pool in Cambridge, savoring the long summer days with no homework. After we moved, I read on the couch in Cleveland, savoring the quiet that came from living in a city where I knew almost no one instead of in the action-packed fish bowl of graduate school.

And then I moved across the world from my friends and family. Among the expats in Monrovia, it's practically a requirement for your residency permit that you go to the beach on Sunday. When you have friends, you go with your friends. But for the first few weeks I was there, I did not have friends, so I went with my Kindle. I'd get a couple beers and cycle through a few books between dips in the ocean.

Then Covid hit and I went into lockdown in a church apartment. Turns out that being across the ocean from everyone you know during a global pandemic will do wonders for your reading time. For three months I was alone almost all the time. I read in bed on slow weekend mornings. I read on the back porch with a Club beer and a selection of different flavors of Pringles (which I would refer to as a charcuterie board) as the sun set.

I emerged from quarantine and made friends and, to my absolute joy, discovered that one of their main leisure activities was going to the beach or pool, playing a few rounds of Quirkle or Rummikub, and then settling in with books and beers. So I maintained my reading pace and finished the year having read 36 books - well above my original goal of 20 and even my updated goal of 30 books.

***

Falling back in love with reading has been nothing short of magic. Finishing grad school had a lot to do with it. But I had that "school's out forever!" experience when I finished undergrad, too, and I didn't tear through books at the rate I did in 2020 - between college and grad school, I read just about 12 books a year.

I am not totally sure why my reading "base pace" has increased so much. Other than just having more time, there have been a few other game-changers. For my 30th birthday, I bought myself a Kindle Paperwhite and find it very enjoyable to use. Even better, I used Overdrive to hook it up to the library. The library system was good in Cambridge, but fantastic in Cleveland- I can get most Kindle books in a matter of days rather than weeks. My favorite game is to check out a bunch of ebooks, load them onto my Kindle, and turn it on airplane mode so they don't get deleted off my Kindle but someone else can still take them out from the library. 

Social media has been a big factor too. Goodreads has become by far my favorite social media platform- I've added so much to my list based on what my friends and Roxane Gay are reading. I joined a reading group on Facebook, run by a small scale influencer I follow on Instagram. I feel like I see more books on my Instagram feed than I did a few years ago. All together, I feel like I'm more conscious of both buzzy new releases and older books I've been meaning to catch up on, which has increased my motivation to keep reading. 

I read a lot of great books in 2020, but a few stand out as favorites.

The Glass Hotel. Station Eleven is one of my all-time favorites so I was excited for this. I think I just love St. John Mandel's storytelling. The plot in this is sort of random, but she can sure spin a yarn. 

Trick Mirror. I loved this one. Interesting insights on barre, weddings, social media and more. I found myself referencing this in conversations for months afterwards. I did feel like Tolentino didn't always totally conclude an argument before moving onto the next one, but maybe I'm too dumb.

The Dutch House. I heard a podcaster say "whenever I pick up an Ann Patchett book, I know I'm in good hands as a reader" and that's exactly how I felt about this. This is one of those wonderful books that doesn't have a lot of "plot" but still feels so rich. The phrase that came to mind when I finished this was "rich world-building" which is usually something you'd say about an epic fantasy novel- but here it's the world of two siblings that feels fully fleshed out and inhabited.

Little Fires Everywhere. As a newly-minted resident of the Land, I adored the Cleveland references but think I would have loved this one regardless. Nuanced and interesting story about motherhood and the allure of other people's lives and families.

Heating and Cooling. 52 micro-memoirs that literally had me crying on one page and laughing on the next. Now that I'm back in the US, I bought a hard copy of this and plan to re-read it once a year.

Stories of Your Life. I read this because I loved the movie Arrival, and the story it's based on was just as amazing. I liked some stories more than others, but am blown away by Chiang's ability to create a totally different world inside of each one.

Homegoing. This was the perfect combination of literary and page-turning- I curled up in bed every night excited for it. I loved how the chapters stood on their own - almost like short stories - but with threads and themes woven through the generations. (Fun fact, I usually glance at the jacket/synopsis when I add something to my TBR pile, but never re-read it when I actually pick up the book... so I was blown away in the second chapter when I realized the characters were related... which is literally the whole premise of the novel.)

She Would Be King. I loved this for the dive into the founding of Liberia and for some great writing. I read this early in my time in Liberia and got a kick out of the fact that I recognized some of the geographic and cultural references.

I want to remember: Liberia

I want to remember how music from the church filtered into my days when I lived on 9th street. It was too loud and too frequent, but I definitely ended up singing along to some bangers and it came to feel like home.

I want to remember my lockdown routines. Eating dinner on the back porch and watching Friday Night Lights, then coming in to wash dishes while listening to music from the aughts. Drinking a beer, eating Pringles, and reading a book at 6 o'clock on weekends. Dropping what I was doing to do barre3 classes when they started on Instagram live.

I want to remember the flow state that I sometimes got into when coding in Stata or programming surveys in SurveyCTO. I went from feeling like an imposter to a "technical influencer" to a genuine resource for other staff in my office on survey and data questions.

I want to remember how nervous I was at the start about whether I would be able to pull off the survey, and how nonstop I worked when we were preparing to launch.

I want to remember seeing storms roll in across the ocean.

I want to remember becoming a connoisseur of sunsets and how I could tell when it was going to be a great one.

I want to remember watching the water and how it changed from hour to hour and from day to day. I feel so lucky that I got to see the ocean every day (with literally just a small handful of exceptions) for a year and a half. 

I want to remember coming back from hot, stressful workdays in October and November - when we were trying to launch the survey and weren't allowed to use fans in the office - and jumping in the pool and just washing the entire day off. 

I want to remember family dinners and the joy of sitting down together around the table after helping (or "helping") to cook.

I want to remember beering the margs.

I want to remember coming over the last hill in Robertsport and seeing the ocean and how even though it happened about once a month, it made me giddy with happiness every time.

I want to remember arriving at the beach on Sunday and how even though we went once a week, it made me giddy with happiness every time.

I want to remember the joy of coming back from a weekend at the beach or a trip to the beach in a neighboring country and... still being at the beach.

I want to remember the relief I felt when preliminary results started coming in and making clear that I hadn't messed up the survey.

I want to remember the jokes. I don't know if I've ever had as many laughs per minute as I've had here. 

I want to remember stopping for Korean on the way back from Robertsport: sunburned, dirty, slap-happy, and ravenous for pork and bibimbap.

I want to remember bobbing in the ocean and making jokes.

I want to remember the Sunday routine: stopping at Kaldi's for coffee and croissants. Driving out to the beach. Swimming, chatting, reading a book, drinking a beer, playing Rummikub, eating lunch. Home for a face mask and a call to my parents.

I want to remember the Mohammeds, our Guinean drivers who brought us on so many adventures and tolerated us (and our music) so kindly. Who knew our names and didn't need to be told where we were going, just who we were picking up (and even that they could usually guess). 

I want to remember the ten-second calls to Mohammed to arrange a car and his three-second call when the driver arrived: "Yeah he's there" or "Yeah ousside." I normally hate talking on the phone. But I think about going home and calling an Uber and getting sent someone I've never seen before and will never see again and I get a little sad.

I want to remember the public taxi rides, where everyone greeted each other good morning, debated teh political news of the day, and was instantly on the side of the driver against anyone else on the road who may have wronged us.

I want to remember grilled staffed fish, oregano grilled wraps, potato greens, and sushi pizza.

I want to remember driving at 90 down those country lanes.

I want to remember the music of Liberian English. The "eh-HEH." The "ehyouknow." The "thank you ya." The "Ah!" The o's at the end of sentences.

I want to remember my colleagues- the jokes we shared, the kindness they showed me (especially when I was alone during lockdown), and what we were able to accomplish together.

I want to remember the feeling of community. Of spontaneously popping downstairs to eat dinner or watch a few episodes of something. Of playing Ligretto or Ticket to Ride and drinking wine and processing our workdays. Of running into friends or the Mohammeds when out and about.

I want to remember stopping for a coconut at every chance I had and how it made daily life feel like a tropical vacation.

I want to remember monitoring the survey in the field and racking up a fantastic step count, getting to experience parts of Monrovia that I would not have otherwise, winding through crowded markets trying not to knock produce off anyone's head, the field staff worrying about me getting lost or sunburnt. 

I want to remember keke rides to drop off lappa at Michelle's tailoring shop or to buy produce on Benson Street.

I want to remember the rolling hills on the drive to Nimba and the joy of seeing mountains again.

I want to remember the lush green - the palm trees and banana trees and so much more foliage that I don't know the names for.

I want to remember stepping out on the balcony or walking home from work or popping up for air during a swim and breathing in the salty ocean air.

I want to remember the sights and sounds of daily life in Liberia. The motorbike drivers with their snazzy jackets and the extra long umbrellas during rainy season. The guys selling fuel and gas out of mason jars by the side of the road. Folks playing checkers under a tree or drinking beers in a bar. Haircuts and manicures happening in open-air shops. Drivers washing their motorbikes and kekes on the weekend. The guys with megaphones walking down the street: "Orange data, Lonestar data. Orange minutes, Lonestar minutes. Rechaaaaarge your phone." The guys with a handful of chickens hanging by their feet.

I want to remember the joy of getting to do something I'd long dreamed of.

I want to remember how happy I was here. My life in Liberia had three key ingredients: a sense of community, challenging and meaningful work, and the novelty of living abroad among the unexpected. How lucky I am to have found that.

Photos are favorites from the last few months. All are mine except for the sixth and last, which were taken by my friend Erik Jorgensen, and whoever self-timered that big group shot.

At 30

For a while, there was one moment in my life that I pinpointed as the happiest. I was a senior in high school, driving home from a party with a couple of my best friends. We were listening to Comptine d'un autre été from the Amélie soundtrack, and as we drove, I could see the moon through the sunroof, disappearing and reappearing from the trees above. I felt enshrouded in friendship and deeply content.

Shortly after I graduated from college, I was driving back from Baltimore to DC on a sunny day, feeling content, when I flashed back to that earlier drive, that formerly happiest moment. "Wow," I thought. "I had no idea then how much better it would get."

I had had many happiest moments between those two, but I wasn't thinking of any in particular. I wasn't at a particular pinnacle - I was still flopping around and applying to jobs. The party the night before and the brunch that morning had been fun, but not life-changing - so why was I so happy?

On one level, it was just the basic pleasure of adulthood (a Bloody Mary, yelling above the music as I was introduced to new people). But underneath that was the even greater pleasure of autonomy. The realization, as I drove, that I was steering the ship that had brought me to this moment.

+

The story of my 20s has been the story of learning how to choose.

In my senior year of college, while I was writing my thesis and trying not to think about what I would do after graduation, my procrastination method of choice was to read Mormon mommy blogs, which were in their heyday at the time. (Because everything on the Internet exists forever, it was this article that led me to my favorites.)

The bloggers' lives seemed... easy. Not just because they didn't need to write a thesis or find a job, but because their belief system made clear which path they should value and pursue - marriage and motherhood. They didn't really have to choose. There was a clear metric by which they could succeed. I didn't actually want to get married or have kids right out of college, and I knew intellectually that a life with fewer choices was not something to envy - but I was jealous of what seemed like a simpler path.

I hated choosing. In my senior year of high school, I agonized over where to go to college - to the point that I stood at the post office on the day of the deadline with two envelopes in hand. There was a ton of tears and suffering for everyone around me. (I remember sobbing to my college counselor: "this is going to affect who I marry!") My life up till then had been all possibility and few real choices. It was the first time I could see the paths branching ahead of me and realized going down one meant losing all the possibilities of the others.

In my early 20s, as I worked at my first real job and jetted between DC and North Africa and found my first real hobbies and worried about what I should do for grad school, there was a trail of bread crumbs. A sermon from Reverend Hardies at All Souls Unitarian about choice - the first time I'd heard a religious leader speak about "choice" without meaning "abortion." A poster I bought with the Harry Potter quote "It is our choices that define us far more than our abilities." A spirituality retreat at my alma mater where a nun spoke about developing our "choicefulness."

In 2015, I decorated a card every day and I applied to PhD programs. The cards came to include a number of pep talks and mantras as I worked through that overwhelming process. One of my favorites read "learn to let the future excite and not terrify you," which felt like a tall order at the time. How could I choose one out of so many possible paths?

And then I got rejected from most of the programs I applied to. It felt like my most spectacular failure to date. But while disappointing, it was also a turning point. I had tried something and it hadn't worked - but life had gone on and now I had an opportunity to try something new. The future started to excite me a little more and terrify me a little less.

+

Since then, I choose to defer grad school and instead headed to southern Turkey to work on democracy programs in Syria, while my boyfriend started law school in Cambridge. I chose to pursue a Masters in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and to spend a summer interning in agricultural development in Bangladesh. I chose to get excited about living in Cleveland but to go on an adventure in Liberia first.

And along the way, I have become more choiceful. I have developed a much greater ability to check with my gut on what I want to do. I have learned that if something is not the right fit, I can backtrack and pivot - decisions are rarely final. And I have realized that none of the paths branching in front of me is necessarily better or worse than the others - each offers its own adventure. (I mean, I'm sure one of the million paths leads to a Nobel Prize and another leads to destitution, but you know what I mean.)

It has helped that as you get older, the paths naturally get winnowed down. And decisions still stress me out, probably more than most people. (Just ask any of the ten people with whom I consulted about whether to evacuate Liberia during the pandemic.) But alongside the stress, there is the thrill of charting my own course. And so far, life keeps getting better and better. It keeps rolling right on.

I think back on all the experiences I've had over the last ten years - things I couldn't have imagined at 20 - and I get excited about all the future happenings I can't imagine today, all the different twists and turns my path may take, all the different experiences my life can expand to include. 

Steering this ship feels scary at times. But - much more than Bloody Marys or international travel - it is also far more fulfilling than I had imagined.  

Record scratch

A week ago, I was flying high. I was coming up on two months in Liberia and feeling settled, challenged, and happy. On one of our weekly Skype calls, my dad asked me about the highs and the lows... and it was hard to think of serious lows. Sure, there were annoyances and frustrations. My air conditioner broke in the middle of the night, leaving me panting in front of an open window, and stayed broke for a week. The washing machine once took four hours to finish a load of my laundry... and then broke for a week. ATMs sometimes ran out of cash. Work had its tough moments, as I navigated a new environment and tried to learn enough Stata to avoid being found out as the imposter I am.  

But overall, if I had written this a week ago, it would have been a chirpy update about how well things were going. I faced a steep learning curve at work, but it was a curve I wanted to be on. The challenging work was balanced out by lazy Sundays reading on the beach. In lieu of a one-bedroom apartment, I had opted for a room in a shared apartment rented out by a church, the Monrovia Christian Fellowship, and what it lacked in luxury it made up for in community. 

There were seven other people living here and, as introverted as I am, I found I really enjoyed having folks to chat with while I was cooking or to drink Club Beers with while sitting on the porch. It was a nice group of people who were all excited about exploring Liberia. We walked to the market in Central Monrovia and saw the chimpanzees at Monkey Island and had plans to spend a weekend in the surf town of Robertsport. Coronavirus was a frequent topic of conversation, but it was mostly humming in the background, like the weather.

Last weekend I joined a group for a trip to Mt. Nimba, the tallest peak in Liberia, which sits at the border with Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire. It was carved up for mining and the nearest town is still basically run by ArcelorMittal. For our meals, we drove up to a guarded gate, walked through rows of identical shipping containers housing miners, and ate in a company canteen. It felt very post-apocalyptic and I joked that I wouldn't be surprised if we came down from the mountain and found that civilization had ended.

Of course, you know how this story ends, because you're living some version of it too. In the course of a six-hour car ride on our way back from Nimba, as I bumped over a dirt road in the back of a 4x4, the ground shifted beneath us. We read news that Liberia had had its first case. President Weah addressed the nation. We learned that Brussels Airlines and Royal Air Maroc, the two major international airlines connecting Liberia to Europe and onwards, were suspending their flights. The Peace Corps announced its decision to evacuate volunteers worldwide (there went one roommate). And the Netherlands and Sweden strongly advised students abroad to come home (there went four more). 

To be clear, most of those falling dominoes were connected to the global state of affairs, not specifically to the situation in Liberia. Liberia still has just three cases (all of them named-and-shamed in press releases), but the government has taken the ebola experience to heart and is taking it incredibly seriously. Liberia has closed schools, churches, restaurants, and beaches and will soon suspend the remaining West African flights, from what I understand. Many motorcycle and taxi drivers are wearing face masks, there are hand-washing stations outside most buildings, and someone takes your temperature before you enter the grocery store. 

As I watched all my roommates leave the country, I felt a bit like a person in a disaster movie who stands still and watches everyone running as the Godzilla slowly comes into view. It felt a bit like I should start running too. For now, my organization has advised us to stay in place, since there isn't really a safe place to travel right now. In terms of current case incidence, if not in terms of health system capacity, we're better off in Africa than in the United States or Europe. We of course had the individual choice to go home - a decision I had to make quickly because flights were shutting down fast. I opted to stay here. I hope I did the right thing, especially since I won't be able to leave, at least not easily, if I need to. The Level 4 Do Not Travel advisory that the State Department just issued made me particularly nervous.

In the course of the last week, I went from living with seven other people to living alone in the church. I went from working with a fun bunch of colleagues to working at home by myself. I went from hustling to launch a survey to having fieldwork postponed indefinitely. I went from weekly beach trips to looking forlornly at the beach from my balcony. In other words, I feel like the rug got pulled out from under me - just as I was beginning to really thrive in Monrovia, the kaleidoscope twisted and everything is different (how many more metaphors can I mix here?)

And you want to hear a bad joke? I decided to pursue jobs abroad in part because Austin was going to be working long hours as a first-year Big Law associate and so I wouldn't get to see much of him anyway. Now we're both sitting alone in apartments across an ocean from each other. If I was home, right now we could be playing one of the four different versions we own of the board game Pandemic. 

Though of course, all of this - my interrupted adventure abroad and the one-person pity party I've been throwing for it - pales in comparison to the terrifying slow-motion tragedy that is this pandemic. Every now and then I hit the panic button and worry about the health of my friends and family or (more trivially) that I won't be able to leave the country to come home for my friends' weddings in August and September. I read the articles about how long this could last and I worry that I won't be able to come home for another 18 months, a Rip Van Winkle reemerging after all my friends and family have long forgotten me.

On the bright side - in some ways being abroad has me well-prepared for this. After all, I chose to be socially distanced from my friends and family for a while. I already have a solid routine of online workout classes, a regular Skype habit, and a full queue on Overdrive for two libraries. In some ways this is a win for me, since my faraway friends are even more invested in keeping in touch than they were before. I've already done virtual happy hour and long-distance barre class and am looking forward to even more catch-ups going forward. I'm trying to focus on the good. Normally I love hanging out at home but feel guilty about not venturing out and exploring; now I have an opportunity to indulge in all my favorite introvert activities guilt-free.

I recently read The Dutch House and was indulging in my hobby of reading book reviews after finishing the book. One of them included a wonderful quote from Ann Patchett, on how all of her books are variations on the same story: "You're in one family, and all of a sudden, you're in another family and it's not your choice and you can't get out." 

I've thought of that often over the past few days. I thought I was in one story and now I'm in another. I went from "intrepid female traveller explores a new country" to "lonely girl waits out a global pandemic, one that could end civilization as we know it, on the other side of the world from everyone she loves." None of us are in the story we wanted to be in right now. I'm hoping that by taking this seriously we can write a better ending. 

Arriving

My ninth-grade trip to France with my French class was transformative in many ways, but there's one moment that, 16 years later, stands out more than any other. We arrived in Lille and were distributed to our host families and, once at the Bénys' house, I took a shower in a light-filled bathroom. Once the rituals of arrival were over and the shower was complete and I was out of reasons to delay, I knew I needed to go downstairs and greet my host family and begin the awkward task of integrating into their lives for a week. I so vividly remember the feeling of taking a deep breath and making the plunge - the seemingly insignificant act of walking down the stairs somehow more daunting than the entire trip across the ocean.

 

I've arrived and taken that plunge in many other places since then. In Turkey, after my internship in Palestine in 2012, I woke up in the hostel in Sultanahmet, where I'd arrived a few days before the friend I was going to go WWOOFing with. I realized I was in a new country, on my own, where almost no one knew exactly where I was. It was equally terrifying and thrilling to feel untethered, like there was no ground underneath me.

 

In Tunisia, where I first traveled for work in 2013, I remember getting into the hotel in the early evening and staying in my room for the rest of the night and, somewhat inexplicably, crying. My mom had sent me with a "Fearless" chocolate bar and a lovely note referencing my own fearlessness. But at that moment, I didn't feel fearless. I felt terrified. I was scared to go out and explore and ashamed to feel that way, because just six months before I had traveled around the world, and I'd spent plenty of times in Middle Eastern countries before, and shouldn't I be an expert at this by now and ready to plunge into life in Tunis?

 

In Bangladesh, where I traveled for an internship in 2018, I arrived in the middle of a downpour and was struck with an overwhelming sense of "what on earth am I doing here, in a country where I know literally no one?" I got to my guesthouse and slept on and off for hours and hours – partly because I was exhausted from travel and partly because I was disoriented and couldn’t imagine a time when I wouldn’t be. In my grey semi-wakefulness, I read the news about Anthony Bourdain and cried. In a weird way, I felt blessed that his death surfaced so much online writing about his life – about the enthusiasm he brought to the places he traveled and the food he ate – right at the beginning of my own travels. It felt like he was a guardian angel of my adventure, and I offered up a silent prayer to him when, two weeks later, I spent Ramadan in a rural village and ate cow brain at a baby blessing ceremony and knew this adventure would be a good one.

 

This time, arriving in Liberia, I reminded myself to be patient. By now I’ve learned that just because I've done it before doesn't make entering a new place, even one ostensibly similar to other places I've traveled, any easier. (And of course, now I’m in a place unlike anywhere I’ve been before.) This time I’m blessed with plenty of time to move slowly and ease my way in, to trust that I don’t need to master Monrovia immediately, to know I’m not a failure if I’m not out exploring every minute of every day. What a gift it will be to watch this new country slowly unfurl itself in front of me.

Fall in (love with) Cleveland

For as long as I have dated Austin, I have known that if we stayed together, there may be a move to Cleveland in my future. I fought and fretted about that possibility for a long time. How would I continue to grow an internationally-focused career outside of Washington? How would I have a fulfilling social life away from my friends and family on the East Coast? (As silly as it is, I pictured all my East Coast friends hanging out without me, even though in reality they're spread across 3+ different cities.)

Midway through law school, Austin landed a job with a law firm in Cleveland, in fulfillment of his destiny. We decided that after we graduated, he would move to Cleveland and I would move... somewhere else, and then in a year or two I would circle back and join him in the Land. Long story short, some job opportunities fell through and, by the time our lease in Cambridge ended in August, I didn't have anything full-time lined up. So I initiated my back-up plan which was to... follow my boyfriend to Ohio and crash at the bachelor pad he had rented for himself.

We orchestrated what felt like the world's most complicated move (the movers came and packed everything up while we were on vacation in Italy so we came home to a mostly empty apartment, then we had a day to scrub it clean before Austin flew with three bags to Cleveland and I flew with one bag to Mexico City for a girls' trip, then I returned to Cleveland instead of to Boston). I remember waiting to board the plane during my layover in Houston and the man behind me (because Midwesterners are very friendly) asking if I lived in Cleveland. "Well," I said, "I'm about to."

At first, I was excited to explore a new place and determined to have a positive attitude. (Nothing worse than someone who makes a decision and then complains about it.) The apartment had tall ceilings and huge windows and (praise be) a dishwasher. Our neighborhood was super walkable - there was a grocery store right behind our building, yoga across the street, a library branch a short walk away, Cleveland's flagship brewery on our block, and bars and restaurants all around. With all the enthusiasm that comes with living in a new place, we made a point of doing fun stuff - musicals and museums and a Parks & Rec-themed happy hour.

I had a consulting gig and was working remotely. Some weeks it added up to a full-time job but most weeks it didn't, so I had lots of time to explore and to go for long runs and walks. And gradually, I started finding favorite places. I found new group fitness classes and spent way too much of my budget on them. I realized that I could easily see water everyday. I scootered to the beach and ran along Lake Erie. I found my way to the towpath along the Cuyahoga River and started to recognize the different boats passing through to the Great Lakes. I would walk along the path and listen to Unobscured (on the Salem Witch Trials) as the Cleveland skyline glowed during golden hour and lit up after dark.

And gradually, I made the mental switch from "looking for the best in this place" to "this is a place that could feel like home." I started to feel the pride, tinged with defensiveness, that seems to be all Clevelanders' birthright. I even bought, with my own money, a Cleveland shirt to accompany the one Austin's parents gave me as a welcome present.

All together, it was a quiet season. I enjoyed spending time with Austin's high school friends and law firm colleagues but didn't actively try to make new friends of my own. It wasn't lonely, exactly. After the nonstop stimulation of graduate school, it was nice to be a bit of a hermit and to spend my evenings catching up on TV and reading on the couch. And it was nice to spend time with Austin after feeling like ships in the night for much of the past three years. But I did spend a lot of time alone. Every time I left the house, I saw the Terminal Tower - lit up in the colors of the Cavs or Ohio State or something else that I would try to guess - and it came to feel like seeing a friend. (So much so that I felt a nostalgic pang when I saw it again on the Bachelor.)

In some ways the timing wasn't ideal. I would have liked to come to Cleveland when I knew I was there to stay, so there wasn't an asterisk to my excitement and so I could throw myself more fully into making it home. I didn't like the feeling of waiting for my next stage to start, of being in-between. But over the last few years, I've also gotten used to living for places in short stints and I really believe in embracing the current season as much as possible. And it also "left me wanting more," as they say. It gave me a taste of what life in Cleveland could be like and made me excited to go back.

As the fall went on, I got more serious about applying for other jobs. After Thanksgiving I started an interview process and right before Christmas, I accepted a position in Liberia. I got on a plane on January 21 and jumped into a different life. I now find myself living abroad and, while totally thrilled about it, feeling homesick for Cleveland which is not something I EVER thought would happen.

Where before I could see only the drawbacks of living in Cleveland, now I can see the possibilities - of buying a house, of investing meaningfully in a community, of figuring out ways to continue working internationally or to shift my focus. I'm grateful for a restorative fall and for a new attitude. I'm both enjoying the current adventure and looking forward to the next one. 

On the line-a-day journal

Sometimes I think it's the stuff you start on a whim and stick with that has the biggest impact on your life. For me those have included agreeing to go out with my boyfriend (turned into 11 years and counting), completing a 365-day creative project (made a daily card on January 1 and kept it up for 364 more days), and pursuing a career in the Middle East (wanted to start a new language in college and was intrigued by Arabic).

In October 2014, I came across this line-a-day journal (the battered one on the left) and thought it would be fun. Five years later, I've just recently finished my first journal (now onto the second!) and it has become one of my most treasured possessions. I wanted to share a few thoughts on documenting (almost) every day for five years along with some "secrets to success." Public journaling about my private journaling is about as navel-gazing as it gets so if you are reading this, thanks for indulging me.

The way mine is structured, you see everything you've written on that calendar date since you started the journal. So while I liked the daily journaling exercise for the first year, having years of entries to look back on made it so much richer as I kept going. It's honestly a bit overwhelming (though not in a bad way) to read through the old entries when I fill in a new one - so many memories are captured there. When I started in 2014, it was hard to imagine what life would be like in 2019. And now that I'm on the other side and working in a fresh new journal, it's crazy to think of all the life that will happen between now and 2024.

+ At the end of a day, it feels really important to make note of everything I did and accomplished, regardless of how monumental it actually is. It's as if I need to justify that it was a full and productive day. But two or three years later, I don't really care that I worked on a USAID budget and ate Chipotle - sometimes because that's just not very exciting and sometimes because I no longer remember the context that made those events meaningful. (Though sometimes boring stuff is more interesting later on than you'd expect.) I'm more interested in what I was thinking and feeling, even if it's just a random thought or insight. I try to remember that when I'm tempted to just write down the play-by-play of a day.

+ This is a journal for me, obviously, but for most of the last five years I've lived with my boyfriend and it is extra fun when I've jotted down a big milestone for him (like LSATs and Republican presidential primary debates) that I can share. There have definitely been times I've consulted the journal when we've been debating when some event went down!

+ Adapt as you go. I used to complete my entries before going to bed but lately have found that I'm too zonked - it's worked better for me to keep it on my desk and fill it out when I sit down to work, sometimes catching up on a few days at a time.

+ Something is better than nothing. In grad school, I fell out of the habit of filling in entries every day -- it felt overwhelming to sit down and summarize my whirling thoughts and full days into just a few lines, especially when there were problem sets to finish. I always reasoned I would go back when I had more energy - but I'm always surprised how quickly I forget the details of a day. Over the last few months I've made it my project to go back and fill in those entries, piecing things together based on photos and my planner. I'm moderately heartbroken that I can't remember more of my thoughts and feelings in addition to the events - but I'm glad to be noting down what I do remember before I forget more. And I'm glad that I never abandoned it even though I missed a bunch of entries.

+ I would have expected to draw a conclusion that every day matters - that whether the day was a fabulous wedding celebration or a humdrum workday, it still carries equal weight - just 24 hours.  The trend among scrapbookers is to capture everyday life, not just the Hallmark moments. But instead, I've found that some 24-hour periods "count" for more than others. Some days I could write pages and others I struggle to fill the six lines. And that's okay. Obviously it still matters tremendously to have a happy everyday life - but those exciting, top-of-the-world times make the daily grind worth it.

I've experimented with a couple other daily memory-keeping projects over the years. In 2015, I made a card every day as kind of a small-scale art journalling project. The daily cards weren't specifically intended to document my life, but looking back now they capture the year so evocatively. In 2016 and 2017, I did 1 Second Everyday and love the videos that resulted. (I ran out of steam on that project but would love to get back into it someday.) So the line-a-day journal has been my most consistent form of memory-keeping. I hope I keep it up for a long time - I can't imagine how cool it would be to have a whole shelf of these lined up at the end of my life.