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. 

The end of the beginning

From top to bottom: Tunisia, Mauritania, Turkey/Syria, DC

"It was strange how you could be something and then not be that something so easily." (source)

This past year has been full of transitions. This was largely thanks to my very gradual "move to Boston for graduate school" plan (enroll in one school in Boston, defer for a year, move out of our DC apartment and home to the MD suburbs, move boyfriend to Boston, visit a few times, get accepted in and enroll in a different school, move to Boston and start graduate school). Austin and I moved from living out our lives together every day to staying connected by text and sometimes-spotty Skype connection. I started taking on more responsibility in my job and working on Syria.

All this transition came to a head on May 19, when I left the job where I've been for almost five years. One day I was enmeshed in our operations in Syria and Tunisia and the next I had 0 responsibilities and no email access. It was the right time for me to move on - I'm ready to learn new skills and to consider my career and the world from new angles. But it still felt weird to suddenly extricate myself from a place that has been such a big part of my post-college life.

This job was my first out of college and the one that launched whatever career I am building towards. I've been in this job since I was 23 and along the way I grew up not only as a professional, but as a person. (I look at my fresh-out-of-college colleagues and simultaneously think that they're so young and am surprised to find that I'm not one of them anymore.) I learned how to do ace accounting with a liberal arts degree, how to goal-seek on a budget, how to choose the best focus group report names, how to find synonyms for "workshop" and "participant," how to play shuffleboard, how to properly balance your intake of shawarma and Nespresso to keep yourself going on an election observation mission all-nighter, how to stay cool when the air conditioning is broken and the Nouakchott forecast is 113 F and "dust," how (not) to navigate the Turkish highways on Google maps, how to cheat on team Fitbit challenges, and how to save face when staring down a displeased election observer. (I also learned how to write one good thing on a topic and then endlessly repurpose the language, so this post is borrowing heavily from the goodbye email I sent to my colleagues on my last day.) 

Four years after I wrote this post, I am indeed looking back and wondering where the time has gone. It's true that in some ways the days between then and now were similar. But there was also so much growth within that time period. During that time I worked on three country programs and moved up in the ranks from an intern to someone who is able to sign stuff and make decisions. Even though I've been in the same job for almost five years, my day-to-day work, the people I'm doing it with, and my surrounding life circumstances have changed - imperceptibly at times, but enough that it looks and feels totally different now than it did when I first started.

Back then, I described it as a "dream job for right now" and while some days and weeks (and maneuverings through the bureaucracy of a giant nonprofit) were less dreamy than others, it has been a true adventure. I started my job in the heady days following the Arab Spring when it seemed like democracy might finally be taking hold in the Middle East, and even as dictators have reasserted themselves and conflict has spread, I feel lucky to have played a small part in a pivotal period in the region's history. I feel lucky to have been able to travel abroad for work so early in my career. Above all, I feel lucky to have worked with and learned from so many inspiring people - especially so many strong women - around the world.

It's hard to talk about my job without sounding a bit like I'm about to go drink the Kool-Aid but man, there is nothing better than working alongside smart, dedicated people towards a big, idealistic goal. I feel lucky to have launched my career in such a special place and excited to see what's next.

An elections retrospective

In  2008, I got to vote in my first election, amidst the excitement of hope and change and getting to elect our first black president (and the ugliness that arises when people other than white men run for office). I remember watching Clinton and Obama debate in a living room full of my college friends on Feb break. My boyfriend and I had just gotten together, I was surrounded by new friends, and the world felt fresh and promising. I seriously weighed the choice of candidates in the primaries, but ultimately got swept up in Obama fever. (A choice that I would occasionally doubt over the next eight years when the going got tough for Obama.) On election day, we got Thai food for lunch in our small Vermont college town and watched Obama crush McCain as the returns came in at the student center.

In 2010... I have no recollection. The midterm elections fell during the crazy fall semester of my senior year in college, when I had decided it would be a good idea to take two senior seminars in political science while preparing to write a senior thesis. But I am pretty sure I didn't vote because when a political consultant showed me my profile in the Democrat voter database at an NDI event a couple years later, it showed that I was an inconsistent voter, to my great embarrassment. I'm sure I excused it by the fact that I would be voting absentee in Maryland, a reliably blue state.

In  2012, I had just started interning at NDI - long enough to feel like I had a front row seat on some of the action as we held our big conference in tandem with the DNC, but not quite long enough to get the campaigning itch in time to really get involved. In the days leading up to the election, we hosted a group of young North African party activists for a study mission to learn about how the democratic process works in the US and to get a front-row seat for the campaign. We visited Democratic and Republican campaign headquarters and saw Tim Kaine speak at a campaign stop when he was "just" running for the Senate. On election night, we watched the returns come in from a hotel near our office, and when they called it for Obama, we paraded jubilantly down to the White House as the North Africans shouted Obama a gagne!

I had come to NDI interested in working in international development in the Middle East, and somewhat agnostic about NDI's particular focus on democracy and politics, but that week was a turning point for me - I got to see our work up close as democratic practitioners from across the world shared and debated about political processes.

I was also on pins and needles the whole time because I had applied for a full-time opening on my team. The Friday after the election, I learned I got the job, went to my part-time SAT tutoring gig after work, picked up Chipotle for dinner, then greeted my boyfriend who had driven to DC from Ohio to move in with me and find a job - kicking off four years there together. I remember thinking, giddily, that Obama and I found out in the same week that we would both get to keep our jobs.

In  2014... I shamefully did not vote. Working for NDI brought me to Tunisia for most of the fall to work on programming for their legislative and presidential elections, and I messed up my application for a DC absentee ballot. So the great irony was that as I was working (indirectly) to encourage people to participate in elections in Tunisia, I had failed to participate in my own. I reassured myself that I would be voting absentee in DC, a reliably blue non-state.

In  2016, I was again abroad for election day, this time working in Turkey for NDI. But this time I was prepared. I knew I'd be heading out of the country, so I was vigilant in ensuring that I got an absentee ballot - no way was I going to miss voting for our first woman president, even if in the flurry of packing for Turkey I neglected to get an absentee ballot selfie.

Before I left, I also did a couple days of door-knocking in Philly with the DC for Hillary team, and a couple evenings of phone-banking to contact other volunteers. Once in Turkey, I used the campaign's online call tool to help get out the vote in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Arizona when people in those states were awake. All together, I made 200 calls. In the scheme of things it wasn't much, but it did ease my election anxiety.

I really wish I had gotten involved during the Obama campaigns, but I am proud that did what I could and glad that I've broken the ice. I also learned a lot in my brief canvassing experience. How to make the hard sell and not offer people an easy way out. How to not take rejection personally. And how to talk on the phone even though you hate it.

With the time difference, on election day I made a bunch of GOTV calls between finishing my NDI work, slept for a couple of hours, then woke up at 6:30 am to CNN and a text from my boyfriend saying "this is not going our way." At first it seemed like a solvable problem - some swing states had gone for Trump, but surely the pendulum would swing back and others would go for her - but by the time I left for work a couple of hours later, a Trump victory was all but assured. I went through the day stunned, refreshing Facebook for reactions from friends and #pantsuitnation and receiving condolences from friends and colleagues from across the world and thinking about all the ways this will affect my life.

I have so many thoughts about the outcome of the election that I will not weigh down this post with. But yesterday, I listened to the Keepin' it 1600 podcast - run by dudes from the Obama administration who have been confident in a Hillary victory - as they apologized for being smug and wrong. Throughout the campaign season, they have poked fun at "bed-wetters" wringing their hands about the outcome - and they reiterated that they did so not to allow people to be complacent, but to encourage them to channel those feelings into action. That politics are not a spectator sport.

People often roll their eyes or shut down the conversation when it comes to politics, but if anything is clear these days, it's that politics are deeply personal, and that they matter. I, like I know a lot of people are, am resolving to be much more active in them in the years ahead.

Decisions and revisions

Hello hello! It's been a minute. And it's been a busy few months around here.

It never made the blog, but in between making daily cards, I spent most of last fall applying to graduate school. I don't know what it's like for other people, but for me it was an intense process - I applied to 16 schools in total, including a mix of PhD programs in political science and master's programs in international affairs. I hit "submit" on the last application in mid-January, and I fully expected the first few months of the year to be much more relaxed as I waited to hear back from schools and then eventually to make decisions. I did get a couple weeks for drinking red wine on the couch and watching Girls, but I feel like I've been going more or less nonstop since then.

After I finished my applications, I spent a month in Tunisia in February and March, working on public opinion research and an awesome event for political activists from across the Middle East. Then I got into grad school, came home, and spent the next month thinking and discussing and stressing about where I should go to school next year and what that means for my career and future. (No big deal.) There were four options that quickly got whittled down to two, and then slowly to one, when I decided to go to grad school in Boston. That came just in time for things to ramp up at work with a multi-million dollar grant proposal to write.

And just as that was wrapping up, I notified my colleagues of my plans to go to grad school - and they threw me a curveball, offering me a promotion and an appealing new portfolio, including time working abroad, if I were to defer graduate school for a year. Even though this sort of thing is not uncommon, I was entirely unprepared for it - but I thought it through and, somewhat to my surprise, ultimately decided to accept their offer and dive into something new. I am excited - it means more responsibility and the opportunity for field experience in one of my favorite countries. It also means being away from my boyfriend for a year as he moves up to Boston for law school. I still wake up some mornings with this feeling of holy crap, what have I done? I still wonder sometimes, am I crazy to be doing this? And maybe I am. But most of the time I don't think so.

So there were two decision points this spring. The first decision felt gut-wrenchingly hard - even if, in retrospect, one option was clearly better than the other. The second decision came easy - much easier than I expected under the circumstances. I often think back to choosing a college, the first major decision of my young life. In retrospect, that was an easy one; I was choosing between two small, comparably-tuitioned liberal arts colleges in New England. I've made a number of decisions since then. And some of the ones that ended up most influencing my life, in ways I've been very happy about, were no-brainers at the time. Studying Arabic. Dating Austin. Accepting my current job. And all of that gives me confidence that I did the right thing.

For both the grad school vs. grad school and the grad school vs. totally unanticipated career move decisions, I weighed the options. I made pro and con lists and tried to visualize what was balancing on each side of the scale. I talked to anyone who would listen or might be able to tell me which was the better choice (alas, no one stepped in to make the decision for me). I quizzed colleagues and professors and current students and other prospective students looking at the same options I was. And I went for a lot of walks in the woods.

One of my favorite things about living in Columbia Heights is that I am just about a mile from an entrance to Rock Creek Park, a sprawling forest right in the heart of DC. At a certain point in the path, you come to a fork where a sign lays out two trail options. The one marked "strenuous" rolls out flat as far as the eye can see; the one marked "moderate" heads steeply up. But just as promised, the "strenuous" path leads to a cliff that you have to scramble over, while the "moderate" path slopes gradually up and down. As I walked through the woods and thought about my decisions and everything felt very heavy, that fork seemed profound in a way I couldn't quite articulate. It's about not knowing where each path may lead. Or about choices that seem to make your life easier at first, that actually make them harder in the end - or going through tough patches that clear the way for a smoother path down the road. Or making the best use of the clues and information you have now and trusting the input of people smarter and wiser than you.

This past fall, full of writing and applications and deciding what to reach for, was full of growth, as I worked long evenings on polishing my resume and personal statement after working long days on democracy in North Africa, as I sharpened my time management skills and worked the side hustle. But this spring saw even more growth as my labors bore fruit and I had to step back and decide which path I actually want to go down, not just apply to. It has seen a shift in my thinking from "what is the perfect path for the rest of my life?" to "what's a good next step?" From "which is incontrovertibly the BEST decision" to "can I accept the trade-offs involved in this choice, and are they worth it?" It's been realizing that you don't have to, and in fact you can't, map out your entire life, but you can think ahead and position yourself for where you might want to go. Finding that balance between having a plan and goals in mind and staying open to new possibilities. I know (and hope) that that is going to be something I work on for a long time. Here's to new adventures and next steps.

A seat at the table

There has been a lot of chatter lately about how women, especially young women, speak and present ourselves and what that means for us in professional environments. We say too many "justs." We apologize for everything going around anywhere in our vicinity that may have displeased someone, regardless of whether or not we were the cause. And vocal fry is the up-talking of our day.

What this all means, the argument goes, is that we are constantly trying to minimize ourselves, to take up less space in the world. I have totally seen this in action. Whenever I need to bug any one at work, by default almost always more senior than me, about something I need from them, I definitely tend to preface it with "just wanted to check in."

But there has also been a very well-argued, feminist backlash to the Sheryl Sandbergs (making you a straw man here, sorry Sheryl) who would have us believe that if we just talked better, we could level the playing field for women. Ann Friedman said it best: we need to stop policing how women talk and listen to what they are saying.

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I agree that there is - obviously! - some sexism inherent to the argument that women sound dumb. But on the other hand, I also think it's good to be conscious of how we come across - and I like the reminder that you don't have to apologize for doing your job. And plus, I really do hate (the more glaring instances of) vocal fry, whether it's men or women doing it.

All of this brings me to an experience I had in Mauritania this spring. We were at a large roundtable with women members of one of Mauritania's political parties, talking about their initiatives and what kind of training we could offer them. During the introductions - of senior political party leaders, of our experienced trainers - the chair turned to me and asked me to introduce myself.

"I'm just the rapporteur." I cringed as soon as I said it. I was caught off-guard and working in French, but it would have been so easy to say something to the effect that we were looking forward to working with them. I should have been prepared, going into the meeting, to speak. Even if no one would be calling on my expertise in my political party organizing, I am still a representative of my organization, with expertise in what we have to offer. I see it in the group photo, too, where I tried to take as unobtrusive a spot as possible - so much so that when Austin saw the picture, his response was "are you a ghost that haunts political trainings?!"

One of Sheryl Sandberg's tenets in Lean In is to sit at the table, not at the edges of the room, and to participate in the conversation. But I learned that even when you are literally sitting at the table, it is still possible to opt yourself out, to assume you don't have anything significant to add and thereby cut yourself off from adding something. I think of this as "intern mentality" - where your job is to stay out of the way and quietly execute the duties assigned to you until the summer's over and you're back to school.

But I'm not an intern anymore. I am a valuable member of my team - and I'm slowly carving out a career for myself. So I resolved, after this experience, to go into meetings expecting to contribute instead of just expecting to take notes. No ifs, ands, justs, or sorries about it.

I'm off!

May is going to be super crazy and super fun. On Monday, I'm flying out to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania for work. (I work in democratic development in North Africa.) I haven't been in just about two years now so I'm so thrilled to be headed back. Photos are from my last trip in April 2013. I'm excited to hang out at the port de pêche, to drink camel milk, and to support our programs with political parties and civil society - this time with two more years of professional experience under my belt and slightly less rusty French. These work trips can be intense but are definitely a huge perk of my job.

I'll be in Nouakchott for about ten days, then I'll fly from Paris to Houston for a long weekend with the fam. (Luckily the climates of Mauritania and Texas are very similar so packing will be a cinch. I'm excited for some serious beach time.) Then I'll have about ten days in DC - long enough to check on my new backyard garden, run a 10k I am bound to be unprepared for, and get things in order at work before heading off for a ten-day adventure in Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico. (I.e. more beach time. It's a tough life.) I'm so excited to explore a new-to-me part of the world and I think I'll definitely be ready for a vacation at that point.

So that's all to say, posting is going to be a bit irregular here for the next month - though I'll still try to get daily cards up on Wednesdays since I'll still be making daily cards. But I will hopefully be able to pop in occasionally with pictures and thoughts from my travels. I think it'll be a good chance to step back a bit and write a bit more off-the-cuff.

Here's to adventure!

To and from my 22-year-old self

A couple weeks ago, my mom brought over some mail for me, including some old alumni magazines from my high school. I was flipping through absentmindedly, looking for art journaling material, when I got to the Class Notes section. The magazine was from 2012 and I was just starting to think, "look at all these dorks who wrote in" when I stumbled across my own submission.

Almost nothing is as cringeworthy as discovering things you wrote about yourself a short few years ago. Like the alt-text of a favorite old xkcd comic says: "I'm glad I'm not the clueless person I was five years ago, but now I don't want to get any older."

I kind of love that I came right out and said that I had no idea what I was doing - there's a brassiness in that that I admire, especially coming from the high school valedictorian. At the same time, I want to say Dude. Relax. You do not need to justify the fact that you don't have a job, or justify the fact that you have no plans to head to grad school anytime soon. It is not "a reprieve from formal education." It is just living.

It is refreshing, though, to realize that I really am different at 25 than at 22. It can be hard to see those changes piling up from close-in, and sometimes I think I haven't changed much. In some ways, what I feared at 23 has come to pass - time has indeed moved very quickly since starting that job. So I appreciate the reminder that I express myself differently and interact with the world in different ways than I did when I was 22. I am not completely transformed, but I am just a bit more grown-up.

It's also oddly liberating to think that no matter what I write these days, chances are I will be embarrassed by it in three or five or twenty years. The goal can't be to polish everything to absolute flawlessness - because what sounds perfect to me now may very well sound stilted or forced or cringe-worthy in the future anyway. So I've just gotta keep doing my best where I am with what I have - and let my future self decide what to make of it all.

easy to be heavy, hard to be light

Bardo Museum, Tunis, April 2014; Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, April 2012

Wednesday was a rough day for two places that I care deeply about.

Most of all, my heart is heavy after the terrorist attack at the Bardo Museum - which I've visited - in Tunis. All my friends and colleagues in Tunisia are in my thoughts. Je serai à Tunis dès que possible. I just finished writing about how hopeful and optimistic the elections this fall were. How, despite all the challenges, Tunisia is a bright spot in the Arab Spring. And while the attack doesn't erase that, it's going to make things much harder as the country tries to get its economy back on its feet and reassure tourists and investors. On top of the tragic loss of life, I'm crushed to think about what this could mean for Tunisians.

It's not comparable in terms of tragedy, but I'm also bummed out about the results of the parliamentary elections in Israel and what they will mean for Palestine. I am not taking a stand here on where I would fall along the Israeli political landscape or who I would have voted for. But during the campaign period, Netanyahu has moved further and further to the right, to the point of proclaiming that he will not allow a Palestinian state to form under his watch. It's bad news for the peace process and for peace in the region. It moves us even further away from the two-state solution that already seemed near-impossible to achieve.

And combined with those, there's the ongoing catastrophe of the Islamic State's advance across the Middle East and the destruction they've meted on human life and human history, and the ongoing war in Syria that has ended or damaged so many innocent lives. It all adds up to make me feel a bit heavy and hopeless about the region I love so much.

I don't have policy solutions or life lessons or a cute, bloggy way to wrap this up. These issues are hard and entrenched and maybe unsolvable. They are certainly much bigger than my involvement with them. And I am certainly not the first person to feel pessimistic about the future of the Middle East. Cynicism - about the Middle East and about democracy assistance - is the flavor of the month in DC at the moment.

But I do remember something a Tunisian civil society activist - a dynamic woman working hard to advance women's political participation - said at one point. That it's easy to be cynical from far away, but when it's your country, when you're in it, you don't have the luxury of losing hope and giving up. You just have to forge on.

I'll be keeping that in mind as we continue doing our best to support the transition in Tunisia and as I figure out what part I'll play in this part of the world.

It happened.

(Or, life on the other side of this post.)

I realized that I have referenced that the elections in Tunisia this fall had a big impact on my personal and professional life, but never really explained why. So I wanted to write it all out - mostly to get some thoughts down while they're still relatively fresh. Because big international trips have an odd effect. As life-changing as they feel at the time, they are book-ended by your normal life at home - and so after a few weeks they start to feel like a dream. It's like coming back for the beginning of the school year - as soon as you're back on school property, you feel like you were gone for a weekend instead of a summer.

In the fall, Tunisia voted to elected a new parliament and president. The elections were split over three election dates - one each at the end of October, November, and December - which made for a crazy fall. Long story short, my organization works to support democracy around the world, including through observing elections to ensure that they are free and fair. In Tunisia, as in other places, we accomplish this both through supporting local groups to conduct observation and through bringing in a small delegation of international observers.

I was lucky enough to be in Tunisia for about two months total during the election season to support the international delegation. (I flew back to DC for two weeks between the November and December election - just long enough to get a bit discombobulated and to get in the Christmas spirit.) I was thrilled not just that I was involved in the election observation, but that I got to spend an extended time in Tunis. It was wonderful to develop a more personal connection with the country and our team there - and pretty fun to play expat for a few weeks.

In short - it was a crazy, amazing, exhausting, inspiring, round-the-clock, all-cylinders-firing, highlight-of-my-career-so-far couple of months.

 

On a political level, these elections were a huge milestone in Tunisia's democratic transition - so far, it's the only real success story of the Arab Spring. Tunisians freely elected a president and parliament for the first time in the country's history, leading to a peaceful transfer of power. Despite a lot of political drama in the months leading up to the election, and some minor issues on election day, everything went smoothly and everyone accepted the results.

The most impressive work was done by the Tunisian observer groups. One of our partners used advanced statistically based methodology, known as a "quick count," that enabled them to prove that the results released by the election commission were an accurate representation of the votes cast. Their findings were widely reported in the Tunisian press, and we think they made a huge difference in the fact that political parties and the public accepted the results. Meanwhile, members of the international delegation shared experiences from their own countries and took back lessons from the Tunisian experience.

I was so lucky to get to be involved. It was a huge learning experience in managing a huge operation, in working round the clock, in putting your best foot forward, and in learning quickly from mistakes - not to mention in observing elections. I also learned a tremendous amount about Tunisian politics, though I still feel like I've just barely scratched the surface. It was so cool to be a small part of that historic moment.

Best of all, I met fascinating people from all over the world. The international delegation was full of people with diverse experience in politics, civil society, and business. We also brought in local staff from our other offices in the Middle East and North Africa, which made it feel like one big family party where you meet a lot of relatives for the first time. And whenever I'm in Tunisia, I feel so welcomed by my Tunisian colleagues. It is so wonderful to work with them in real life instead of over a Skype connection.

On a personal level - as important as the historic moment was, the elections, for me, were as much about the silly little memories as the big headline news. It was not just walking Avenue Bourguiba on election day, going to presidential campaign rallies, chatting with my Tunisian colleagues as they figured out who to vote for, or hearing the honking in the streets as soon as it was announced that Essebsi had won the presidency, it was also in the everyday moments over those three months. It was walking home from work as the streets darkened listening to the Serial podcast. It was getting loopy late on election night when everyone in the organization, from me to the president, was awake at 3am. It was Fitbit challenges and eating far too much shawarma from Tunistanbul and the drone of the Nespresso machine at all hours.

It is so rewarding to work hard with people you like and admire towards one big goal. It must recapture a bit of how it felt when the whole tribe worked together to bring down a woolly mammoth. All together, it was a crazy, amazing experience and while I don't miss the sleepless nights, I absolutely miss getting to work with so many amazing people on something so meaningful.

The genius of April and Andy

Photo credit NBC

I, along with everyone I know, am on a huge Parks and Rec high at the moment. They are ending it on such a high note - harkening back to some of the series' most memorable jokes without getting too heavy-handed. (Exhibit A: Treat Yoself 2017!) And the characters have all developed in believable ways since the show left off three years previous.

But I think my favorite part of the season so far is April and Andy and how they've evolved over the course of the series. When they first got together, April, for all her anti-social quirks, was the responsible one with a steady job. Andy was a sort of dopey guy who mostly wanted to play with his band and shine the occasional shoe. Now, a few years later, Andy has parlayed his childlike sense of fun and imagination into a successful, fulfilling creative career. He's doing a grown-up version of what he’s always loved. April, on the other hand, is fumbling a bit, feeling like she's wasted ten years of her life on a job that's not her real passion, but unsure what her real passion is. And along the way, they each made a few attempts at new careers that didn't pan out – Andy with the police academy and April with veterinary school.

That portrayal of a young couple figuring out their careers feels so realistic to me. The roles can reverse, over time, with regards to who is secure and confident in their path and who is searching and struggling. It’s not that there are some people who always have their shit together and some people who never do. Instead, it’s a constantly evolving process as we all go through periods of stability and periods of questioning in our career paths. It rings true with what I’ve learned about life and career so far – that periods of feeling lost and uncertain can lead to greater growth and fulfillment (and, apparently, TV gigs as Johnny Karate). And that just because you know what you're doing now doesn't mean you always will.

Of course, I also love the portrayal of Leslie and Ben addressing the challenge of balancing their relationship with their careers in politics and public service. But they're a bit further along than I am in their careers and family life. At this point, April and Andy are where it's at.

Recent work mantras

Recent mantras, home edition.

I love words. If I ever get a tattoo, I am SURE it will be word-based. I love pithy and, dare I say it, inspirational phrases that capture big ideas in a few short words. (And I love/hate the ones that make it to Pinterest). Lately I've developed a few mantras that keep coming up during my work day.

Do one thing. I don't have ADD (to my knowledge), but like everyone else, my attention span has suffered as Internet speeds have improved. I tend to load up a million tabs and click around between them when I'm waiting for a page on my ancient work computer to load, or to draft most of an email only to leave it in my drafts when I'm almooooost done. So I've been reminding myself to "do one thing" lately. Like to finish handling an email before I click out of it, because it takes more time to find it again and pick back up. Doing one thing at a time makes my mind feel calmer and (shocker) my work get done faster and less frantically. I also like this as a reminder, when I come in in the morning and start getting overwhelmed by my task list, that I don't have to tackle the whole thing right that minute. Just do one thing, and the second will follow after that. 

This isn't fun. This is sort of an anti-mantra. Since reading this post, It has been popping into my head when I have started digging into a project and whining to myself about how it's harrrrd. Whenever I think this, it signals to me that it's time to buckle down because this is where the magic is happening – where stuff is getting done and where I'm growing as a professional. It signals to me that I should dive deep rather than looking for something easier to do (like responding to an email or gasp! discreetly flicking through Instagram). It means I'm in the zone. And once I'm in the zone, it might not be fun exactly, but it becomes satisfying – whether I'm stringing together a narrative or solving the puzzle of a budget.

Two years into my first real job, there is still so much I'm learning. But I am realizing that I am in control during my workday, of my attitude and my task list. I don't choose my tasks, but I can choose how I prioritize and tackle them. Sometimes it seems that that's the exclusive domain of people who work for themselves. But even at a cubicle YOU are in control, to a large extent, of what your day looks like.

It's happening.

All of a sudden, everything is happening all at once, and fast. After lots of drafting and political infighting and two years of prospective election dates getting pushed back, Tunisia has a new constitution and an electoral law and a calendar for not one but three election dates this fall. The catch phrase in Tunisia these days is, apparently, "It's happening!"

It is super exciting - the culmination of lots of work on the part of Tunisian political players. Because my organization is supporting Tunisian groups that are observing the elections and bringing in international folks to observe as well, it also means that the pace is going to pick up at work.

Austin and I also found out recently that we're getting kicked out of our apartment because our landlord is moving back in after a few years in DC. It's a bummer because we (mostly) love the current apartment and even more of a bummer because we learned this time last year that we hate moving. We weren't totally sure that we wanted to stay in this place, but remember that little adage about wanting what you can't have? Apartment-hunting in DC is the worst. I get overwhelmed just thinking about it, and then again about moving in the midst of a busy work period.

As I can see over the peak of summer into the fall, it has also hit me that I may need to start doing some serious work if I have real intentions of going to grad school anytime soon. So at the back of my mind, I'm thinking that i need to spend some quality time with the GRE book.

And all of this amidst lots of fun summer travel plans that are going to be totally awesome but also mean time away from home. And it's the summer, so what I really want is to drink on a roof and swim in a pool. 

All told, it's going to be a busy few months, and I'm a little overwhelmed thinking about it. But it's also struck me that being overwhelmed is, on some level, a choice. It's a story you tell yourself, dwelling on the negative instead of the positive of having lots of fundamentally GOOD stuff going on, like great career opportunities and a chance to explore a new neighborhood. Just like, instead of saying you're crazy busy, you can say that you're "wildly productive and living the dream." Instead of "I'm overwhelmed" – "It's all happening!" 

So I am going to try to tell myself that story. I'm going to try to ride the wave and hold on tight. Ready, set, go.

(Fun fact: I wrote this on July 14. On July 15, our apartment got burglarized. A good reminder that no matter how crazy things seem, they can—and will—get crazier.)