tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41062336461042869262024-03-13T18:10:22.165-04:00Anna MiceAnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.comBlogger162125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-57787262974307557352023-04-03T09:00:00.001-04:002023-04-03T09:00:00.175-04:002023 goals<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTvYAnSHlyDQBHPGGGQp5Ufre2xjFWT3OeAhFquIJT-UhpZtXAXKs0kNAg5COHKhfY6RbuHj5z11hr2UC2-7fuQUroj8QXIADq1O6KWAdiqHOn3N3PF5lyHaCT5KXqtQEcPkdd7PGpCgv02uPpre3AGMcH4R2IIQP6ydQbA6RHePtU0h-W2lfxI4lE9w/s4032/IMG_4580.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTvYAnSHlyDQBHPGGGQp5Ufre2xjFWT3OeAhFquIJT-UhpZtXAXKs0kNAg5COHKhfY6RbuHj5z11hr2UC2-7fuQUroj8QXIADq1O6KWAdiqHOn3N3PF5lyHaCT5KXqtQEcPkdd7PGpCgv02uPpre3AGMcH4R2IIQP6ydQbA6RHePtU0h-W2lfxI4lE9w/s16000/IMG_4580.jpg" /></a></div><br />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.<p></p><p>1. <b>Plan a wedding. Get married. </b>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.</p><p>2. <b>Get into individual therapy and premarital counseling. </b>I've been meaning to see a therapist for a while and getting married feels like a good commitment device to do so<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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. </p><p>3. <b>Handle other health stuff</b>. 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. </p><p>4. <b>Advance on a few priority house projects. </b>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. </p><p>Now for the fun ones!</p><p>5. <b>Read 36 books, 25% of them from my shelves.</b> I've set a Goodreads goal for the past few years, reading 36 books in <a href="https://www.annamice.com/2023/01/2020-in-books.html">2020</a> 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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>our neighborhood branch reopened recently after being closed for renovation<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40048953">Fistful of Shells</a>, which I started reading in 2020. This might be my most ambitious goal of all.</p><p>6. <b>Watch all new NPR Tiny Desk Concerts. </b>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 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dkDepLX0rk">Tiny Desk Concert</a> 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. </p><p><b>7. Stay up-to-date with 2023 Project Life and line-a-day journal.</b> When I moved back from Liberia, I started scrapbooking using <a href="https://www.beckyhiggins.com/project-life">Project Life</a>. 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 <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2019/12/on-line-day-journal.html">line-a-day journal</a><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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.</p><p><b>8. Earlier wake-ups, better work hours, healthier morning routine. </b>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>the benefit of remote work and flexible hours is that I can fit my schedule to my circadian rhythm<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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.</p><p>And that's it! Three months in, I've made progress on most of these and am still finding them relevant and inspiring<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>which already feels like a win.</p>AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-30411583856715094442023-03-24T09:00:00.001-04:002023-03-24T09:00:00.155-04:002022 in review<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6k_9Y0tD2AD2fZn5KxX0S6yoOFAP_ewZQlzW1ITBqQ5EeLbFFeQyQwQ-MhrrWCHdzz2pcIvcBOXe4Er208X4-i7y6AfPw1dmIErvi2pqAd6f3Eny288Ovv0J5-K0st0U6OL0isUeHNozYeQqErcrQgGzsW9r937YPyeDzcqO0iirm1ED47TDdckcDvw/s2048/1J8A6091.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6k_9Y0tD2AD2fZn5KxX0S6yoOFAP_ewZQlzW1ITBqQ5EeLbFFeQyQwQ-MhrrWCHdzz2pcIvcBOXe4Er208X4-i7y6AfPw1dmIErvi2pqAd6f3Eny288Ovv0J5-K0st0U6OL0isUeHNozYeQqErcrQgGzsW9r937YPyeDzcqO0iirm1ED47TDdckcDvw/s16000/1J8A6091.jpg" /></a></div><br />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 <a href="https://www.annamice.com/2017/06/the-end-of-beginning.html">dream job</a> 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. <p></p><p>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.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisyRnbYeXDbLH09ed-gSSBP5fkCnWf2NzY8ou2Iax8n74MAUuhK9N9aI-IWd9ulNDiUD7EsBbr3Wx2Mj0PLPoPAiPgGZ48-xtJheIIvJzjSKnzi9tb-yrpUsP3wZ-OotiwgUQC1ewAb-qaSzRaL2n2dMcMsuCnQQWGyoYYvEXnr05HndiZ9kOcdUT7Gw/s1086/6AF28581-4760-4027-B951-26FC19F8A48C_1_105_c.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="724" data-original-width="1086" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisyRnbYeXDbLH09ed-gSSBP5fkCnWf2NzY8ou2Iax8n74MAUuhK9N9aI-IWd9ulNDiUD7EsBbr3Wx2Mj0PLPoPAiPgGZ48-xtJheIIvJzjSKnzi9tb-yrpUsP3wZ-OotiwgUQC1ewAb-qaSzRaL2n2dMcMsuCnQQWGyoYYvEXnr05HndiZ9kOcdUT7Gw/s16000/6AF28581-4760-4027-B951-26FC19F8A48C_1_105_c.jpeg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>(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). </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSqyVdpaUzBXlejkrfWqpyYRRCef-H-Z_hSoA2NIcrsdyytm3XT376IXrbb5rEk4CDq3Jw6tjM9V_k2FbEZN-PdFwlqZWJXufxidYwxXxApyDFzAtcjaRtyiiNcOjgYTPM_lMk7j3AO7vQbWr3_c_pA8HWLQAVpWPpD1ts2qcfQmnDaa7_wIyQQfLSMw/s2048/IMG_0099.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSqyVdpaUzBXlejkrfWqpyYRRCef-H-Z_hSoA2NIcrsdyytm3XT376IXrbb5rEk4CDq3Jw6tjM9V_k2FbEZN-PdFwlqZWJXufxidYwxXxApyDFzAtcjaRtyiiNcOjgYTPM_lMk7j3AO7vQbWr3_c_pA8HWLQAVpWPpD1ts2qcfQmnDaa7_wIyQQfLSMw/s16000/IMG_0099.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPeklHeBdmCOm6A4hYHv20eiJ6wiQ6UbGQHBAAnG2eibkoEgygOqFJyFTe62iTaskYtt2gHfzYL_VrQUFfX44SUa1Ye-yMpq4vvalVCjE03tVRNJWT7R1sGYnTn14eKXhKMQb6_QmzUxah8uR2g11eUiy2qKzVoySZuCRPrseZnEL_4outBJo6eh6Ddw/s2049/IMG_0068.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2049" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPeklHeBdmCOm6A4hYHv20eiJ6wiQ6UbGQHBAAnG2eibkoEgygOqFJyFTe62iTaskYtt2gHfzYL_VrQUFfX44SUa1Ye-yMpq4vvalVCjE03tVRNJWT7R1sGYnTn14eKXhKMQb6_QmzUxah8uR2g11eUiy2qKzVoySZuCRPrseZnEL_4outBJo6eh6Ddw/s16000/IMG_0068.jpg" /></a></div><p>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.</p><p>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.) </p><p>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. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiWHCVJk0KIEdiuVZqudra2w359ccTTUIjZif59aiUy5O-cKUf2ZqxdHIP_Z_lhtb8z5N59IrHKbnuQHDnYBqoJyGdQtA97jeIqieqs-OoosSt8XVs9kbqIiFpFQPePnL4Tcneqe9_UqctebmSou0e6QWZswvtESHFaUDNf4O2QbFHjwRS5xk8dOqYJQ/s4032/IMG_7381.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiWHCVJk0KIEdiuVZqudra2w359ccTTUIjZif59aiUy5O-cKUf2ZqxdHIP_Z_lhtb8z5N59IrHKbnuQHDnYBqoJyGdQtA97jeIqieqs-OoosSt8XVs9kbqIiFpFQPePnL4Tcneqe9_UqctebmSou0e6QWZswvtESHFaUDNf4O2QbFHjwRS5xk8dOqYJQ/s16000/IMG_7381.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4H1r1_QpKXD2Giomcrk1bQfCx8RGDDPH4Ho6ZJXAM7GsQio6ncPo2ziP8_K3SkqItTdNn49s57oIQAzAJPUaAJoQSaKnRlmncCGF-W-Z8HYkNxpnggpYARLBnYIHGdfuCPFVDx4pR4FeltNm0Ds1MkFskbtzCqs32bdajHv2bqd3zfAC2UdBfjoodsg/s5568/rafting12.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3712" data-original-width="5568" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4H1r1_QpKXD2Giomcrk1bQfCx8RGDDPH4Ho6ZJXAM7GsQio6ncPo2ziP8_K3SkqItTdNn49s57oIQAzAJPUaAJoQSaKnRlmncCGF-W-Z8HYkNxpnggpYARLBnYIHGdfuCPFVDx4pR4FeltNm0Ds1MkFskbtzCqs32bdajHv2bqd3zfAC2UdBfjoodsg/s16000/rafting12.jpeg" /></a></div><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKooj3EnUZQh2g9YeEwepJigLYcS_kICoTwax1dICbt75WS1VLfWMy4MOxkzGZj8nvXtmZz4fsZhcVfSw6sHMjunSpQB7Smn2FlxnGKQFfG42kJh5hr5il_8Etv1UPoLLW_vwpalLvE3VjpaZRea7FkXplSQau5YWz9DF7D0DLRfY5M4mPNphmVGZhCQ/s4032/IMG_1929.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKooj3EnUZQh2g9YeEwepJigLYcS_kICoTwax1dICbt75WS1VLfWMy4MOxkzGZj8nvXtmZz4fsZhcVfSw6sHMjunSpQB7Smn2FlxnGKQFfG42kJh5hr5il_8Etv1UPoLLW_vwpalLvE3VjpaZRea7FkXplSQau5YWz9DF7D0DLRfY5M4mPNphmVGZhCQ/s16000/IMG_1929.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>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 <a href="https://www.annamice.com/2023/03/my-first-half-marathon.html">half-marathon</a>. 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJMfx2IXu2kJQej0-AdFuVlJoiWy87JHl5BeAoVDxFU_9qSq_vi2sp2vUBtbJL7321u5u2UG4Oif7uvD2gk3JGrYM1_RkkAdlKhCvWTQBD2Xi-4I-hZ8N_mB2RXR2rJ61YIiHK7Ej021iH6UGO0VbBbB-j98s8BKyxAroqR-0cQje3BkNi7vrSjgTbHg/s2560/PXL_20221014_235635438.NIGHT.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="2560" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJMfx2IXu2kJQej0-AdFuVlJoiWy87JHl5BeAoVDxFU_9qSq_vi2sp2vUBtbJL7321u5u2UG4Oif7uvD2gk3JGrYM1_RkkAdlKhCvWTQBD2Xi-4I-hZ8N_mB2RXR2rJ61YIiHK7Ej021iH6UGO0VbBbB-j98s8BKyxAroqR-0cQje3BkNi7vrSjgTbHg/s16000/PXL_20221014_235635438.NIGHT.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p>AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-35827836186239607472023-03-13T09:00:00.010-04:002023-03-15T09:28:17.292-04:00My first half-marathon<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVcZfaqOEL4JErJHP2mPMFy9upHlRsEy3aDY1neGhnpB9_BHVuVC7PMmrGK0DFgf6TIYzP1bWgqC3xwzLgUN9mjWrQmtIxD686ebvX1ADEpQRLI0c09tE90GUp1u75xfo_qJ9QrmG9nB1qcO9PaTDT57hZHsxn6yW0gO0DM2bUujWyu45681c8KGc7Tw/s3000/running%20collage.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="3000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVcZfaqOEL4JErJHP2mPMFy9upHlRsEy3aDY1neGhnpB9_BHVuVC7PMmrGK0DFgf6TIYzP1bWgqC3xwzLgUN9mjWrQmtIxD686ebvX1ADEpQRLI0c09tE90GUp1u75xfo_qJ9QrmG9nB1qcO9PaTDT57hZHsxn6yW0gO0DM2bUujWyu45681c8KGc7Tw/s16000/running%20collage.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Before my first 5k in 2014 and after my first half-marathon in 2022, both at the St. Michaels Running Festival.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p>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 <a href="https://www.runstm.com/">St. Michaels Running Festival</a> in May 2014, followed by a 10k with friends at the same event in May 2015, and then the <a href="https://www.thebaybridgerun.com/Race/MD/Annapolis/BayBridgeRun">Across the Bay 10k</a> 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.</p><p>(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.) </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjf6cJj1XgSbndmBoTzCipz-ePvX2dKfGYrPkrl9HcCZaczjsTOAGoBNoqu5XDJgJpgL5JdqDl132egErJerPWDP9QR7yHVIez4xIgIJmb7OK8Rp4fPQbuu-5s0POODGi66EWFHr8s7Gb6l-CFN4KFvkoeolhfdy1LkOK2fR7HSDIGpWQZUxlA9nie6pg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="789" data-original-width="1183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjf6cJj1XgSbndmBoTzCipz-ePvX2dKfGYrPkrl9HcCZaczjsTOAGoBNoqu5XDJgJpgL5JdqDl132egErJerPWDP9QR7yHVIez4xIgIJmb7OK8Rp4fPQbuu-5s0POODGi66EWFHr8s7Gb6l-CFN4KFvkoeolhfdy1LkOK2fR7HSDIGpWQZUxlA9nie6pg=s16000" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>I don't love treadmills and running outside would have meant contending with heat and traffic<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>and instead threw myself into barre3 and, later, swimming laps in the pool in my compound. </p><p>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. </p><p>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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.</p><p>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>all while nervously watching the clock count down to May 14.</p><p>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. <i>Oh</i>, I realized. <i>If I'm doing this, I need to get serious and potentially rearrange my life to make it possible</i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span><i>not just run when it's convenient. </i>When I got to Cleveland I created a training plan and got started, with exactly two months to go.</p><p>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.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGqPW_rTTmoK0TtwLEy58eLubPD8nE8OpQrcPzk_W5S9vei27RdeykGXPx-r29o54pbztYvkDgY5c5WeL1pleTHGidh6JVD4o6LgCXoBReVBxUjbnGqYfEBvNMOGoCok0OEu41LrY7UUFO-L5u65aRd8G3CnrrF2PZfyL0ABwLBGHQc9fIXndZLqicpg/s740/training%20schedule.jpeg" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="291" data-original-width="740" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGqPW_rTTmoK0TtwLEy58eLubPD8nE8OpQrcPzk_W5S9vei27RdeykGXPx-r29o54pbztYvkDgY5c5WeL1pleTHGidh6JVD4o6LgCXoBReVBxUjbnGqYfEBvNMOGoCok0OEu41LrY7UUFO-L5u65aRd8G3CnrrF2PZfyL0ABwLBGHQc9fIXndZLqicpg/s16000/training%20schedule.jpeg" /></a></p>I decided I wasn't going to worry about any speedwork for this first half-marathon<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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. <br /><p>The two months I spent training were honestly kind of magic. Though of course it's not really magic at all<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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. </p><p>I loved that I got stronger and ran for longer as the weather got warmer and the world woke up<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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.</p><p>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8jQ4xh7Xu6xE4tQUqUYDr-PZhKBCCUl8nL4Q06SxspGPiVFExshqOo4W10EwwmOqdtd_9yjwBWwstF-BX3JmeXQAI1Cbc2RFLLIQaSGUTBnKuzCsSRH_3-ZI45ir4l67yy9XWnD5IgtH8FQiWFYFnQCJhaqikHJs6YMoPJ_TdvFIMk-AOEWEYkw88Hg/s4032/IMG_3264.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8jQ4xh7Xu6xE4tQUqUYDr-PZhKBCCUl8nL4Q06SxspGPiVFExshqOo4W10EwwmOqdtd_9yjwBWwstF-BX3JmeXQAI1Cbc2RFLLIQaSGUTBnKuzCsSRH_3-ZI45ir4l67yy9XWnD5IgtH8FQiWFYFnQCJhaqikHJs6YMoPJ_TdvFIMk-AOEWEYkw88Hg/s16000/IMG_3264.jpg" /></a></p><p>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>this feels hard and I am going to be doing it for a long time. And often something hurts<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>not horribly but enough to be apprehensive about how long I can make it on my weird-feeling foot or knee.</p><p>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.</p><p>I read <i>Born to Run</i> 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."</p><p>Ahhh, yes. <i>Relaxing into it</i>. 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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>though I know there are benefits to alternating walking and running<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>there are no more choices to make. Add in some nice long podcasts (I had <i>Maintenance Phase </i>and <i>The Dropout </i>on rotation during this period) and some decent scenery and it even became enjoyable. </p><p>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!)</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmm8pymKpLBLsS89ZpyD3aiY9x7b2oX0Nekhy0A8zx0MF_P6VV4G3nDzzyvznPF9FywvN8QA95iBtXKTgtqQDSL-INKfgcTl3ZLDTdYUWN4728fD8uvKEi-mKeU5eUxJkg__ZHvH0TDUT9C-MmtzEbkaFRp1ZYyyfOs0XWULsa2ssGhJJPMoeknjS_Rg/s4032/IMG_8354.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmm8pymKpLBLsS89ZpyD3aiY9x7b2oX0Nekhy0A8zx0MF_P6VV4G3nDzzyvznPF9FywvN8QA95iBtXKTgtqQDSL-INKfgcTl3ZLDTdYUWN4728fD8uvKEi-mKeU5eUxJkg__ZHvH0TDUT9C-MmtzEbkaFRp1ZYyyfOs0XWULsa2ssGhJJPMoeknjS_Rg/s16000/IMG_8354.jpg" /></a></div><br />As the half-marathon approached, I felt great. I could run for 8+ miles at a time and feel good<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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. <p></p><p>A couple days before the race, my right leg started hurting<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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.</p><p>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.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Z5A-lpheUk2LSn8HSebPNg4RJ0Md7b57VD32GyiRq6Nqc3i3rQnPy6qxKjQ_AxF4a26N9-LnbpWpeG17iieuA4hCZWkGHHf_jngi08ItTZ7Xs4aEOWoHWkycNLIcPgFUGLb3I2bv5ABnHmbPRX7pSbIflOx4OtXJJUt5VOcNdsKyS0zgmu4jt8SxZQ/s4032/IMG_1755.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Z5A-lpheUk2LSn8HSebPNg4RJ0Md7b57VD32GyiRq6Nqc3i3rQnPy6qxKjQ_AxF4a26N9-LnbpWpeG17iieuA4hCZWkGHHf_jngi08ItTZ7Xs4aEOWoHWkycNLIcPgFUGLb3I2bv5ABnHmbPRX7pSbIflOx4OtXJJUt5VOcNdsKyS0zgmu4jt8SxZQ/s16000/IMG_1755.jpg" /></a></div><p>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>realizing that I had run further than I ever had before and that I'd brought myself to this moment.</p><p>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,<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;"> </span>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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? </p><p>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.<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif9fxlwxfIhIZyILOZ0WATcg5K8uy3DaTtPb1TK14ieC-EldN079GrXEhNTBq3ju1270zch2dsFDwGrxE2ti2Uwg7AzdEswtVJd1asi3vzgRfsln2ZiZWXdlQWMh3952FcyU6j9LM3XFdZ-yW7q4i1eIEBvBrl1Oaa_jVlTntqrRnI7Rd7FLr9KF_-3Q/s3000/running%20collage%20v2.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="3000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif9fxlwxfIhIZyILOZ0WATcg5K8uy3DaTtPb1TK14ieC-EldN079GrXEhNTBq3ju1270zch2dsFDwGrxE2ti2Uwg7AzdEswtVJd1asi3vzgRfsln2ZiZWXdlQWMh3952FcyU6j9LM3XFdZ-yW7q4i1eIEBvBrl1Oaa_jVlTntqrRnI7Rd7FLr9KF_-3Q/s16000/running%20collage%20v2.png" /></a></div><br />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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>hence my never accomplishing it before<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>ha!)<p></p><p>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. )</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzvodUnzNSEQzZwzLl-hrR3FGmK7SiKUjc8bCsnFoLjSlfggguiexLZ9Qi8g74ARC9YU3gryl7sSaMY0UVCmjxYD7fC1Nr-5PMUoBYFSaI1RogP2DsZG0RoF1HI7VR0wnxU62hGvmkyJtfQ9ewjf6iYzndOutm55Owafu0LRh2pzBCsRF2MoOnAZK_Zw/s4032/IMG_0585.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzvodUnzNSEQzZwzLl-hrR3FGmK7SiKUjc8bCsnFoLjSlfggguiexLZ9Qi8g74ARC9YU3gryl7sSaMY0UVCmjxYD7fC1Nr-5PMUoBYFSaI1RogP2DsZG0RoF1HI7VR0wnxU62hGvmkyJtfQ9ewjf6iYzndOutm55Owafu0LRh2pzBCsRF2MoOnAZK_Zw/s16000/IMG_0585.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><i>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.</i></p>AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-85812359364618212112023-02-28T11:25:00.001-05:002023-02-28T11:34:45.761-05:00The third Sunday in ordinary time<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDkggrB08AF7idTdAKbGTxggQzaGiA2CEGVY045G1DvT3_PiEGqMVFMb3-2qCmH_hC0PFTVg_lqAQvveGlDJgdAPBrYk1DT_YUqtdorpMfwbGJBP-VY75OiFKr5FKNpKGmILnK6ExThw1Iv8QhGpQ4TfhwFWsud0J6l7w-KDRQZ5XjHUuuGHUArYnAEg/s4032/IMG_7674.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDkggrB08AF7idTdAKbGTxggQzaGiA2CEGVY045G1DvT3_PiEGqMVFMb3-2qCmH_hC0PFTVg_lqAQvveGlDJgdAPBrYk1DT_YUqtdorpMfwbGJBP-VY75OiFKr5FKNpKGmILnK6ExThw1Iv8QhGpQ4TfhwFWsud0J6l7w-KDRQZ5XjHUuuGHUArYnAEg/s16000/IMG_7674.jpeg" /></a></div><br />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.*<p></p><p>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>since I was a) a teenager who didn't want to go to church and b) stressed about finishing my assignments<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>and secretly enjoyed the enforced break.</p><p>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.</p><p>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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>grad school meant very little downtime and Liberia meant endless summer<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 13px;">—</span>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.</p><p>This January and February have not felt like that. With our wedding in October (simultaneously <strike>nine</strike> 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.</p><p>So when I saw that program, I thought, <i>man, I can't wait for this time next year when the wedding is over and we'll be in ordinary time again.</i></p><p>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?</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>* 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.</p>AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-73669042556262704232023-01-06T08:00:00.000-05:002023-02-28T11:35:27.714-05:002020 in (the) books<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sZhM4bLExzM/YD1ilnzwPvI/AAAAAAAEgGE/JRYRntkqZZoFltW8Li8BdJrYGGYjTufvQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/2020%2Bin%2Bthe%2Bbooks.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sZhM4bLExzM/YD1ilnzwPvI/AAAAAAAEgGE/JRYRntkqZZoFltW8Li8BdJrYGGYjTufvQCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/2020%2Bin%2Bthe%2Bbooks.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><i>Hitting "publish" on a few older posts that have been sitting, mostly complete, in my drafts. Originally wrote this at the end of 2020.</i></p><p>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 <a href="https://www.annamice.com/2020/03/fall-in-love-with-cleveland.html">moved</a>, 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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. </p><p>I read a lot of great books in 2020, but a few stand out as favorites.</p><p><b>The Glass Hotel. </b>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. </p><p><b>Trick Mirror. </b>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.</p><p><b>The Dutch House. </b>I heard a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/kelswharton/">podcaster</a> 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.</p><p><b>Little Fires Everywhere. </b>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.</p><p><b>Heating and Cooling. </b>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.</p><p><b>Stories of Your Life. </b>I read this because I loved the movie <i>Arrival</i>, and the story it's based on was just as amazing.<b> </b>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.</p><p><b>Homegoing. </b>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.)</p><p><b>She Would Be King. </b>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.</p>AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-78163444940982246992021-08-07T12:49:00.000-04:002021-08-07T12:49:17.126-04:00I want to remember: Liberia<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-amUaVi5g2dY/YQ6tbEM2mxI/AAAAAAAEut8/zaffu5ZOQ94vu0t3BmFo4alps6oNoJD8gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/liberia2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-amUaVi5g2dY/YQ6tbEM2mxI/AAAAAAAEut8/zaffu5ZOQ94vu0t3BmFo4alps6oNoJD8gCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/liberia2.jpg" /></a></div><br />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.<p></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--jvB2CG445s/YQ6tndHjDKI/AAAAAAAEuuA/gEKgYrjkqjMq5IpcLSABzo7qujfbvb2FACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_7292%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--jvB2CG445s/YQ6tndHjDKI/AAAAAAAEuuA/gEKgYrjkqjMq5IpcLSABzo7qujfbvb2FACLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/IMG_7292%2Bcopy.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>I want to remember seeing storms roll in across the ocean.</p><p>I want to remember becoming a connoisseur of sunsets and how I could tell when it was going to be a great one.</p><p>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. </p><p>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. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IcswzrRWOOw/YQ6t6UkjxNI/AAAAAAAEuuM/xsYXoqqURMwHd-GwqMEOxM3T2Cf3WS3SACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/liberia1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IcswzrRWOOw/YQ6t6UkjxNI/AAAAAAAEuuM/xsYXoqqURMwHd-GwqMEOxM3T2Cf3WS3SACLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/liberia1.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>I want to remember family dinners and the joy of sitting down together around the table after helping (or "helping") to cook.</p><p>I want to remember beering the margs.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-07NWONxn1SU/YQ6ueR_VvvI/AAAAAAAEuuU/n1z0-FQhNwkg1yxAO_tkEKc_vMjpYe1wACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_7722%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-07NWONxn1SU/YQ6ueR_VvvI/AAAAAAAEuuU/n1z0-FQhNwkg1yxAO_tkEKc_vMjpYe1wACLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/IMG_7722%2Bcopy.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>I want to remember stopping for Korean on the way back from Robertsport: sunburned, dirty, slap-happy, and ravenous for pork and bibimbap.</p><p>I want to remember bobbing in the ocean and making jokes.</p><p>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.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--_p47p4nwqs/YQ6un9gaOwI/AAAAAAAEuuY/77rHk9pFpgcAXF1VqX9qivIWX4jv9zG6QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/liberia4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--_p47p4nwqs/YQ6un9gaOwI/AAAAAAAEuuY/77rHk9pFpgcAXF1VqX9qivIWX4jv9zG6QCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/liberia4.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>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). </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zrCLoRHfLdA/YQ6xqsgInaI/AAAAAAAEuvM/jXgGgs1fQNQhne_Rx3TP5pXitU0meQhjQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/a197c7aa-cd4d-4c69-a279-e4272101a126%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zrCLoRHfLdA/YQ6xqsgInaI/AAAAAAAEuvM/jXgGgs1fQNQhne_Rx3TP5pXitU0meQhjQCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/a197c7aa-cd4d-4c69-a279-e4272101a126%2Bcopy.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>I want to remember grilled staffed fish, oregano grilled wraps, potato greens, and sushi pizza.</p><p>I want to remember driving at 90 down those country lanes.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rH0ZmXQWCUk/YQ6xMiz32hI/AAAAAAAEuvE/RXr87RN0coEF22jhjPBzL9HoTxMTBzzaACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/liberia5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rH0ZmXQWCUk/YQ6xMiz32hI/AAAAAAAEuvE/RXr87RN0coEF22jhjPBzL9HoTxMTBzzaACLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/liberia5.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p>I want to remember stopping for a coconut at every chance I had and how it made daily life feel like a tropical vacation.</p><p>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. </p><p>I want to remember keke rides to drop off lappa at Michelle's tailoring shop or to buy produce on Benson Street.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b0AFtMGs9-o/YQ6v4d6WfaI/AAAAAAAEuu0/VPS2-1iJ-OAVj5AGa2qVPmP1CH5Caxd2ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/f9265fbd-8ed4-469d-81e2-eab2fcee2e51%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b0AFtMGs9-o/YQ6v4d6WfaI/AAAAAAAEuu0/VPS2-1iJ-OAVj5AGa2qVPmP1CH5Caxd2ACLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/f9265fbd-8ed4-469d-81e2-eab2fcee2e51%2Bcopy.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>I want to remember the rolling hills on the drive to Nimba and the joy of seeing mountains again.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZW2hoEqL5ro/YQ6v_SB8SrI/AAAAAAAEuu4/DIRAg88GGKIOVDbZMWH1iQk36LZYBlRKgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/liberia3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZW2hoEqL5ro/YQ6v_SB8SrI/AAAAAAAEuu4/DIRAg88GGKIOVDbZMWH1iQk36LZYBlRKgCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/liberia3.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p>I want to remember the joy of getting to do something I'd long dreamed of.</p><p>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.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lZz1afuX_to/YQ6x1TDqveI/AAAAAAAEuvQ/T7yBJYW4N6cuhO97k3jtcwMqCmNHNeKkACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/9bbf8e06-954d-4de2-ae1b-edcbd32f0672%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lZz1afuX_to/YQ6x1TDqveI/AAAAAAAEuvQ/T7yBJYW4N6cuhO97k3jtcwMqCmNHNeKkACLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/9bbf8e06-954d-4de2-ae1b-edcbd32f0672%2Bcopy.jpg" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i><p></p><p><i>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.</i></p>AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-20696572714042668512020-07-15T20:43:00.000-04:002020-07-15T20:45:29.170-04:00At 30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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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 <i>Comptine d'un autre été</i> 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.</div>
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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." </div>
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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? </div>
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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.</div>
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The story of my 20s has been the story of learning how to choose.</div>
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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 <a href="https://www.salon.com/2011/01/15/feminist_obsessed_with_mormon_blogs/" rev="en_rl_none" textcontent="this article">this article</a> that led me to my favorites.)</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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." </div>
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In 2015, I decorated a <a href="http://www.annamice.com/search/label/daily%20card" rev="en_rl_none" textcontent="card ">card </a>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 <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2015/07/the-daily-card-week-27.html">read</a> "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?</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.)</div>
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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. </div>
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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. </div>
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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. </div>
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AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-26791237860123572112020-03-26T04:52:00.000-04:002020-03-27T15:28:15.451-04:00Record scratch<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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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. </div>
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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. </div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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). </div>
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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. </div>
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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.</div>
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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?)</div>
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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. </div>
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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.</div>
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On the bright side - in some ways being abroad has me well-prepared for this. After all, I <i>chose</i> 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.</div>
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I recently read <i>The Dutch House </i>and was indulging in my hobby of reading book reviews after finishing the book. One of them <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/21/books/review-dutch-house-ann-patchett.html">included</a> 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." </div>
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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. </div>
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AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-1054115475049671562020-03-11T09:39:00.003-04:002020-03-11T09:40:25.498-04:00Arriving<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u5sBWETrMgI/Xmjo5d4XygI/AAAAAAAD9So/QZ2ihKIK_GwQSh2w7T1KuxoNQyqvqFnGgCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/IMG_3903.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u5sBWETrMgI/Xmjo5d4XygI/AAAAAAAD9So/QZ2ihKIK_GwQSh2w7T1KuxoNQyqvqFnGgCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/IMG_3903.jpg" /></a>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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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?</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-77358546868819785182020-03-02T15:30:00.000-05:002020-03-11T09:40:43.704-04:00Fall in (love with) Cleveland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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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.)</div>
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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.</div>
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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."</div>
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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. </div>
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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. </div>
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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.</div>
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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.)</div>
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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. </div>
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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.</div>
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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. </div>
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AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-64209963063477899432019-12-23T10:00:00.000-05:002019-12-23T10:00:07.797-05:00On the line-a-day journal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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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).<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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+ 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.<br />
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+ 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!<br />
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+ 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.<br />
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+ 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.<br />
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+ 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.<br />
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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 <a href="http://www.annamice.com/search/label/daily%20card">daily cards</a> weren't specifically intended to document my life, but looking back now they capture the year so evocatively. In 2016 and 2017, I did <a href="https://1se.co/">1 Second Everyday</a> 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.</div>
AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-77418461574190753692019-12-16T13:49:00.000-05:002019-12-16T13:49:18.486-05:0028 favorite moments<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Seeing the sun rise over the Erg Chebbi dunes in Morocco<br />
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Seeing the sun rise from Jebel Toubkal, the highest peak in the High Atlas (after surviving the hike to the top!)<br />
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Eating lobster rolls over several great bottles of wine with my dad, Austin, and Austin's parents in the North End after moving to Cambridge<div>
<br />Dancing to Despacito and playing endless rounds of Secret Hitler in Denver </div>
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<br />Exchanging phone numbers with my first new grad school friend</div>
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<br />Drinking pumpkin beers in the sunshine on the party flotilla on a lake in New Hampshire </div>
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<br />When Mashrou' Leila played Shim El-Yasmine as their second encore and something in my heart cracked open</div>
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<br />Biking around Cambridge in the fall, feeling like a real-life Harvard student, knowing I would see my parents later that day, and thinking that life would never get better than this </div>
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<br />Winning at the Seeport negotiation and then celebrating/commiserating at Grendel's afterwards</div>
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<br />Visiting a CSA farm with my Food and Agriculture class after my first math test in ten years (a statistics midterm) </div>
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<br />Watching a campy movie our professor was in at our cohort retreat, yelling at the TV, and teasing him about it afterwards</div>
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<br />Wandering the Golden Temple in Amritsar in the morning and at night, surrounded by believers chanting and cleaning</div>
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<br />Drinking beers and dancing on the bus on the way to the Taj Mahal</div>
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<br />That first glimpse of the Taj Mahal on the way to the bathroom</div>
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<br />Taking photos with the surliest mall Santa ever at a mall in Kolkata on an adventure to rat park</div>
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<br />Genevieve remembering us when we went to Bad Saint over Christmas</div>
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<br />Playing mafia around the campfire while staying overnight in Wadi Rum during a field study course in Jordan</div>
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<br />Getting invited to a private roundtable on the Syrian crisis and feeling like I had begun to find my place at HKS</div>
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<br />Nailing the last speech in Arts of Communication</div>
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<br />Eating fried chicken and playing drinking games in Seoul</div>
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<br />Getting chased by a horse on a hike in Jeju Island</div>
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<br />Making fun of Sleep No More with my college girlfriends</div>
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<br />Landing an internship offer and knowing I had a new adventure ahead (plus feeling a ton of relief after a stressful process)</div>
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<br />Lounging by the pool all day with Austin in the dry Palm Springs heat</div>
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<br />Watching the sunset and reading ghost stories from our cabin in Joshua Tree</div>
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<br />Flying down dark Bangladeshi country roads on my first motorcycle ride</div>
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<br />Eating cow brain at a baby-naming ceremony in Rajshahi and offering up a silent homage to Anthony Bourdain</div>
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<br />Running for cover when a downpour hit while wandering around a hilly tea plantation in Srimangal<br /><ol>
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<i>Favorite moments of previous years blogged <a href="http://www.annamice.com/search/label/favorite%20moments">here</a>. </i></div>
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AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-21944560662250905522018-07-02T09:00:00.000-04:002018-07-02T09:00:03.685-04:00An ode to Columbia Heights<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>I drafted most of this in October 2016, not long after packing up my DC apartment to move in with my parents for a year. I came across it when I was clearing out my drafts - most of which were not published for good reason (I'm looking at you, 1,300-word incoherent hot take written a week after the 2016 election). But this post fits in the sweet spot of "journal entry that I want in an easy-for-me-to-find location that is not too embarrassing to share with the world." </i><br />
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In August 2016, Austin moved to Boston for law school and I moved in with my parents in the Maryland suburbs - bringing a definitive coda to the four-year post-college era of living in DC. (Even though I was in the DC area (on and off) for the next year, and commuted into the city for work and play, I felt pretty out of touch with actual DC.)<br />
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For our first year in DC, we lived in a group house near the Fort Totten metro. It was cute (read: small) and cheap and had great Metro and community garden access. But there wasn't much there, so we would take the 64 bus into Petworth and Columbia Heights to go out (and go grocery shopping - something I hope I never have to rely on public transit for again). For year two, we accomplished our goal of getting closer to the action and lived above a 7-11 at the busiest intersection of Columbia Heights. It was great until we got burglarized in the process of getting ready to move out so our landlord could move back in.<br />
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We were in our next apartment - a well-lit basement apartment close to the action, but not quite as smack-dab-in-the-center-of-it - for two years, and it was my favorite of everywhere we lived. (Two years after moving out, it's still the place that pops into my head when I think of "home.") We accomplished our goal of having a backyard terrace -- full of rats, mosquitos, and magic in varying proportions. We also accomplished our goal of not getting burglarized.<br />
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It occurred to me in my last few months of living in DC that my life might not ever be that easy or convenient again. I lived on the same block as a Metro stop. I had a grocery store and Target within a few minutes walk. My commute was 20 minutes door to door. Unless I wanted to go hiking or wine-tasting or something outside the city, I never needed a car. Despite living in a smallish city apartment, I had ample outside space between my little backyard terrace and public parks and pools.<br />
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So here are some of the things that I loved about living in Columbia Heights. Maybe this will have some usefulness as recommendations to someone who stumbles across it, but mostly this is what made the neighborhood special to me.<br />
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<i>Food & Drink</i><br />
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Each Peach - this is in Mt. Pleasant so a bit of a walk from my apartment, plus it was too expensive to shop there regularly. But every now and then I would stop by after work to pick up a loaf of bread or an ingredient for dinner, and felt like I was living that sweet Parisian life.<br />
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Mt Pleasant and Columbia Heights farmers markets - You can get artisanal popsicles and steamed buns in Mt. Pleasant, and excellent tacos in Columbia Heights. We also picked up our CSA at the Mt. Pleasant market for one summer. The Columbia Heights market is also open on Wednesday evenings - there are fewer vendors but also much less foot traffic, so we would often stop there to stock up on veggies mid-week.<br />
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Giant and Target - like death and taxes, Giant is more a fact of life than a "recommendation." Completely jam-packed on weekends and likely to be out of half the things you want. But you can't beat the fact that it was open 24 hours and a five minute walk from my apartment. I do not need to expound on its virtues here but how amazing was it that I used to live across the street from a Target???<br />
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All the restaurants on 11th street - so many choices here! Our favorite for brunch was probably Kangaroo Boxing Club, a University of Michigan-themed bar with amazing barbecue and a great brunch (which the owners have since turned into some other restaurant "concept"). Our favorite for happy hour was El Chucho - their draft margaritas are cheap and their tacos are tasty. Back in the day, they had happy hour on weekends too which was a real plus.<br />
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Our favorites for drinking on the patio were Room 11 and Maple, and Maple was also great for a fancy-ish dinner (I think other than the cheese plates, the food at Room 11 is just okay). We have a love-hate relationship with the Coupe (which is to say that I love it and Austin hates it), but it's definitely a good covers-the-bases type place for a group. We didn't frequent them as often, but Red Rocks also has a great patio and delish pizza, and you can't beat the beer selection at Meridian Pint.<br />
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Bad Saint - this is the one thing that I get DC pretentious about. I think we've been 5 or 6 times between the two of us. I can't say "we liked it before it was cool" because it was cool as soon as it opened, but we started going very early in its tenure before the lines were quite as insane as they are now. It was just a few blocks away from us, so we could put in our names and hang out at home until our table was ready. Genevieve, the owner who does the seating, is one of the nicest people ever, and always remembers us when we come in.<br />
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For coffee - in nice weather, you can't beat the Room 11 patio for French press and people-watching. See above re the Coupe. We also liked Flying Fish, though it was a gamble on whether you could find seating. (In the time that I sat on this post, Flying Fish is no more - its space got taken over by Each Peach.) Tyvana is less cute but you can't beat the location and there's plenty of seating. We also have a Starbucks, but I think the only time I went was when I needed to swipe a Starbucks card to jimmy the lock and break back into my apartment. #goodtimes<br />
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For treats - we loved Sticky Fingers, a gluten-free bakery. Once, I popped in to buy myself a cupcake to get my strength for grocery-shopping - only to run into Austin who popped in a few minutes later. We only went to Le Caprice a couple times but the French pastries are just fantastic.<br />
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<i>Places and Activities</i><br />
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Mt Pleasant Library - it's open till nine most weekdays, and I loved walking through Mt. Pleasant to pick up my holds and getting a few extra Fitbit steps in after work. The DC library system is just fantastic.<br />
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Rock Creek Park - you can probably access some section of Rock Creek Park from every area in DC, but I felt particularly well-placed in our old neighborhood. We were just about a mile away from great running/biking paths plus trails through the woods, which led to horse pastures and secluded spots by the creek. There were many times I set off for a sweaty run and instead ended up on a meandering hike through the park. I would go wander in the woods sometimes when I needed to clear my head or make a big decision.<br />
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Banneker Pool - this is closer to Shaw/Howard, about a 15-minute walk from the Columbia Heights metro stop. The DC pool scene is very extra - to get a lounge chair you have to be in line before it opens at noon, and then you must aggressively guard it. But the people-watching is great and the whole experience just screams "DC Summer Saturday."<br />
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All Souls Unitarian Church - I went to services infrequently here, but always loved them. It's a mainstay of the DC progressive religious community - they offer ESL, take on initiatives for fair housing, and have fly a Black Lives Matter banner. The choir is just fantastic and the sermons always gave me a lot to ponder. I wish I had appreciated it more when I was there - the Cambridge Unitarian church is meh by comparison.<br />
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Meridian Hill Park - we watched the Fourth of July fireworks in 2014 here. My 26th birthday barbecue picnic was here. I would bring a book and picnic blanket and squeeze in some outside time here. I explored it when it was a winter wonderland during Snowzilla. When I was in running phases, I would do laps around it several times a week. There is also a drummer's circle every Sunday afternoon, better known to me as "white people trying too hard." It was amazing to have this big sprawling green space so close to my apartment.<br />
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I could do a much longer post about favorite stuff even just by expanding north to Petworth or south to U Street, let alone to the whole city, so I will leave it there for now. Columbia Heights, I still miss you.</div>
AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-86587311588198432442018-06-25T09:00:00.000-04:002019-01-04T14:08:43.952-05:0027 favorite moments<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Oh man. Coming up on my 29th birthday in a few weeks which means it's high time to post my favorite memories of year 27. I jot these down every few months throughout my birthday year, but am terrible about posting them. So without further ado:<br />
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Hitting three countries in one day (USVI, BVI, and French West Indies - we are island-hopping in the Caribbean) and getting a new passport stamp to celebrate my 27th birthday<br />
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Sundowners at Le Shambala and dinner at Le Tastevin on St. Martin to officially celebrate my birthday<br />
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Daily kayak adventures with Austin during our week in St. Michaels<br />
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Drinking cocktails out of a pail and suspecting we were in for a fun evening at Eve and Matt's wedding<br />
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When the live band pulled off Nicki Minaj's Starships and knowing for sure we were in for a fun evening<br />
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Watching Outlander, drinking gin and juice, and eating Magnum bars on Friday evenings in Gaziantep<br />
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Rolling the dice for a D&D-themed cocktail experience at Parla after a blustery ferry ride in Boston Harbor<br />
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The moment I stepped off camera after leading my first training session via Google Hangouts in Gaziantep<br />
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When I realized that I was successfully navigating an 8km solo hike in Cyprus and I felt 22 again<br />
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Watching the Countdown Cod drop on First Night in Chatham with Austin<br />
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Stepping off Metro onto the platform and being immediately surrounded by Women's Marchers (probably the only time Metro has figured into someone's favorite moments)<br />
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Stepping off the T to Harvard Square turned into a frozen wasteland in February (probably the only time the T has figured into someone's favorite moments)<br />
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Hitting the highways for a Turkish road trip and then accidentally crashing a Kurdish wedding<br />
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Learning I had gotten into HKS in my Gaziantep apartment<br />
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Seeing Chevrel and Alan (my host parents from my very first WWOOF site in Turkey in 2012) in Istanbul because of the craziest coincidence ever<br />
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Sneaking on board a whale-watching excursion in the nick of time - and then following a family of whales the entire time<br />
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Eating breakfast and drinking fantastic coffee with my family on the slopes of a volcano<br />
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Keeping my cousin's kids entertained for hours making sandballs<br />
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Celebrating Mothers Day with multiple bottles of wine in the sunshine at Rocklands Farm<br />
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Skipping the liturgy in favor of drinking champagne and taking photos of ourselves for our ten-year high school reunion<br />
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The first time I held the first baby among my group of friends<br />
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Feeling the love of colleagues past and present during a MENA meeting trivia about my time at NDI<br />
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Listening to a live rendition of "Landslide" in a Mississippi dive bar<br />
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Jumping into the pool after working in the fields in Provence<br />
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Successfully carrying on a conversation in French with a saxophonist at a concert-apéritif about French and American politics<br />
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Flying down the hills of Beaujolais on a bike<br />
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Seeing the sunset over the Erg Chebbi dunes on the last day of 27 and feeling totally content and ready for what's next<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>See also: <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2017/02/26-favorite-moments.html">26 favorite moments</a> and <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2015/08/25-favorite-moments.html">25 favorite moments</a>. Photo is from the day before my 28th birthday.</i></div>
AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-12474548812267847072018-04-04T23:41:00.001-04:002018-04-04T23:41:27.246-04:00In the thick of it<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It's been a while since I've written. And in that while I quit my job, spent six weeks traveling in France and Morocco, moved to Cambridge, and started graduate school in public policy. That last endeavor has absorbed all my energy in a way that's sometimes thrilling (running into Ban Ki-moon in the hallways!) and sometimes just draining (so much homework!). And so I've been quiet on the Internet.<br />
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Right now, it's cold and dreary in New England. I'm in the home stretch of my courses and struggling to learn regressions and working on group projects. And on the top of my mind right now is the internship search - both getting them and then juggling the bird-in-the-hand, bird-in-the-bush problem when their hiring timelines don't sync up. Not that big a deal in the real world but a very big deal when you're elbows-deep in grad school and all the anxieties it provokes about what you're going to do with the rest of your life. And so I've been stressing.<br />
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During orientation in August, our orientation leaders had us write letters to our future selves. Tonight they bought us a bunch of tater tots and beer and gave them back to us. I was reluctant to read mine, for fear that I'd written a detailed checklist about everything that I wanted to have accomplished by now. I was not in the mood today to come up short.<br />
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Instead, there was a nice, vague note from past Anna about her big picture hopes for the year. After some opening pleasantries about how I probably couldn't believe it was already the end of the year (I can't), I'd written: "You're in the thick of it now."<br />
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And that stopped me in my tracks a bit. Because boy, am I. It was nice to be reminded that the thick of it is what I signed up for, that being <i>in it </i>is where you struggle and learn and grow, that the middle is the least flashy but most important part of any journey. That even though it doesn't always feel fun, <i>in the thick of it </i>is a good place to be.</div>
AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-17930952070413206772017-06-12T07:00:00.000-04:002017-06-12T07:00:17.254-04:00The end of the beginning<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From top to bottom: Tunisia, Mauritania, Turkey/Syria, DC</td></tr>
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"It was strange how you could be something and then not be that something so easily." (<a href="http://www.annamice.com/2015/09/book-review-end-of-world-as-we-know-it_21.html?m=0">source</a>)<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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This job was my first out of college and the one that launched whatever career I am building towards. <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">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.) </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">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.) </span><br />
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Four years after I wrote <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2013/03/living-with-certainty.html">this post</a>, 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.<br />
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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, <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">I feel lucky to have worked with and learned from so many inspiring people - especially so many strong women - around the world.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">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.</span></div>
AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-48097670430072025912017-06-06T13:07:00.002-04:002017-06-07T17:37:49.544-04:00What's up?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Of all the ways to ask someone how they are doing, my least favorite is "What's up?" Because the default response - at least my default response - is a hearty "Not too much!" Which is kind of a conversation ender (what do you talk about after you've declared that nothing very interesting is happening in your life?) and also often emphatically not the case. But it also feels weird to launch right into a detailed description of the many exciting things happening in your life as soon as you see someone.<br />
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So what's been up? Well, many exciting things have happened since I last wrote here.<br />
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+ <b>Trump became president.</b> Starting on kind of a bummer note, I know. I will hold back on sharing my full thoughts and feelings on this (like everyone else's, they could fill reams of blog posts and tweets). But in short, we spent Inauguration Day making signs for what ended up being a crazy-inspiring (and MASSIVE) Women's March on Saturday. The march gave me a burst of energy to resist and take action that has unfortunately abated somewhat since I've been traveling - I need to find ways to reengage. The insane new political reality has been a thread running through everything else that has happened this year. When I was in Turkey, the time difference meant that the crazy news would drop right as I was going to sleep or waking up, when my defenses were down. Once I was back in the DC office, I would check the TVs in the kitchen every day at 5 or 6 to see the latest Russia scoop revealed. And all throughout, I've been listening to political podcasts that become outdated in the hours between when they're recorded and when they're aired.<br />
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+ <b>I cut my hair off.</b> A pixie cut! It's the shortest I've ever gone and something I've been wanting to do for a while now. I don't get too squeamish about changing my hair (hair grows! the stakes are super low!) (though oddly I have never had it colored or even highlighted). I literally told my hairstylist that I wanted to look like Claire Underwood from House of Cards and she nailed it. I'm not sure the Claire Underwood is the exact right style for me, but I love having short hair. I especially love how easy it is to take care of (though the fact that it sticks up in 1,000 different directions when I sleep on it wet makes me a bit more careful in timing my showers.) I didn't really have an exit strategy when I cut it - my hair grows fast so I sort of thought I could snap my fingers and it would grow out - but I will probably keep it short long enough to play with a few different pixie cuts.<br />
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+ <b>I worked in Turkey for a month</b>, similar to <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2016/11/currently-turkey-edition.html">what I did</a> in the fall. This time around, I was helping out with public opinion research we conducted on sexual and gender-based violence in Syria. Working abroad is a very immersive experience and as always, I learned a ton - about Syria, about survey research, about violence against women, about working under pressure. This trip I visited Sanliurfa and Pamukkale for the first time, and hit Istanbul for the first time in five years. (My initial attitude was "been there, done that, can skip it" but as soon as I stepped off the subway I remembered how special that city is to me.) This was my fourth trip to Turkey and it's been fun to slowly chip away cities on the map of that diverse country.<br />
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+ <b>I had a family reunion in Maui.</b> It was my first time in Hawaii and needless to say, I loved it. The vacation snowballed until there were more than 20 people in our party, a web of parents and children and siblings and cousins and in-laws and friends where almost no one knew everyone but everyone knew someone. The group was divided among a few spots on the island - I stayed in the big house on the beach in Lahaina that served as the hub of activity for our crew. The week was the perfect blend of excursioning around the island and lounging on the beach and spending time with family. We drove the road to Hana, caught the very end of the whale-watching season, kayaked out to snorkel at a sea turtle cleaning station, went horseback-riding alongside the most stunning cliffs I have ever seen, enjoyed the Hawaii tourist ritual of a luau, ate breakfast on a coffee farm on the slopes of a volcano, and played with baby cousins on the beach. I also "learned how to surf" (because while my cousins were great teachers, you have to round up pretty far to call what I did surfing). (I fell off the surfboard but thankfully not the horse.) This vacation could be a giant blog post full of photos and Maui recommendations - but suffice it to say that an amazing time was had by all and I hope to be back someday.<br />
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+ <b>I made a decision about graduate school.</b> After hemming and hawing over how to move forward <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2016/07/decisions-and-revisions.html">last year</a> (not to mention with choosing a <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2014/09/the-search.html">college</a> and most other big decisions I've made), I was fairly decisive this time around. After thinking it over while traipsing around Pamukkale and pacing the beach in Maui and drifting in and out of consciousness on airplanes and talking to my parents and Austin, it's official - I'm headed to the Harvard Kennedy School in the fall! There were serious checkmarks in the "pro" columns for both schools I was considering, but for a variety of reasons, I'm confident that I'm landing in the right place for me.<br />
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+ <b>I celebrated my 10-year high school reunion!</b> We convened at a bar Friday night with just the class of 2007 and then went to the big shindig in the school gym on Saturday night for all the classes ending in 2s and 7s. It was equally fun chatting with girls I haven't seen in ten years, and getting ready and spending quality time with my BFFs who don't get together nearly often enough. Suffice it to say that we ended up skipping the pre-reunion liturgy (because Catholic school) to drink more champagne and perfect our "laughing while clinking glasses" pose. The only wrinkle in a magic weekend was the fact that we lost out on a free champagne bar (awarded to the class with the highest participation rate) to the class of 1972 (who comes to a 45-year reunion???). We'll beat those betches next time around. It is crazy that it's been ten years, but high school doesn't feel like "just yesterday" anymore - there has been a lot of growth and experience and good times in those years. I'm just glad that our bond is still strong.<br />
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+ <b>I announced an end date and then left my job of 4.75 years. </b>(Just three months shy of getting my five-year certificate). After lots of soul-searching and calendar-examining, I ultimately decided to leave a few months before grad school starts to have time to recharge and travel this summer. This was a big milestone for me and there are many more thoughts and feelings on this to come.<br />
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Suffice it to say that it's been a full and interesting year so far - one where my daily life has often looked totally different from one month to the next. What it all comes down to is - I am very blessed. With friends and family and opportunities of all kinds. I've been reminded often of a favorite quote from <i>The Hours:</i> "There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult." Life lately has been bursting open and giving me everything I've ever imagined (with the major exception of political leadership that is not bent on destroying the planet). I'm in a full, exciting, happy season of life right now and I'm very grateful for that.<br />
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AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-89343953431717992932017-03-12T08:16:00.003-04:002017-03-12T08:17:05.243-04:00Looking back on 2016<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Common themes in my Instagram best nine of 2016 - water, mountains, sunsets, Austin. Sounds about right.</td></tr>
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On January 1, 2016, I felt like I was getting on a train ride that I didn't know where it would take me. I knew there would be some serious ups and downs, but couldn't picture the destination. I knew I would be in grad school in a new-to-me part of the United States -- but there were a lot of details missing from that picture.<br />
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And it turned out that the train was a rollercoaster (how far can I stretch this metaphor??) Because like a rollercoaster, I ended up in much the same place that I started -- still in DC, still at my job -- but my insides feel all different after the ride.<br />
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To recap-- January saw me submitting my last few graduate applications, then I heard back from schools when I was in Tunisia in February and March, decided on Fletcher in April, gave my notice at work in May and then accepted their offer of a promotion and a new portfolio if I deferred for a year. Over a summer of weddings and travel, we packed up our DC apartment and in August, we moved Austin to Cambridge for law school while I moved in with my parents. From October to December, I worked in southern Turkey on our programs in Syria. </div>
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All in all it was a very good year for me personally (as much as that feels out of step with the mood of the country and the horror of a Trump presidency sneaking in at the end). While there were highs and lows, they were all in the service of growth. <br />
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<b>Lessons learned</b><br />
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+ <i>that I can trust myself to do the right thing when the right moment comes</i>. I didn't consciously reference <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2016/01/my-word-for-2016.html">my word</a> very often, but it was humming in the background. What I am taking away from 2016 is a deeper well of trust in myself, in my ability to make decisions and to steer my own life.<br />
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+ <i>that while you can't control how people respond to you, you can act in a way that you can be proud of</i>. I, like everyone else, am constantly learning that I can't control everything - but I have a new appreciation for the fact that I can put my best foot forward and let my satisfaction come from the knowledge that I did my best.<br />
<br />
+ <i>there is no "ready" and no "perfect time."</i> This is a theme that came up repeatedly in conversations with my friends and Austin. Life is always going to be crazy, and it is only going to get crazier as we accumulate responsibilities. The things any of us want to do are always going to be at least a bit inconvenient. There is no sense in waiting for a quieter time or a more opportune moment to dive in.</div>
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<b>Successes. </b><br />
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Professionally, this was a good and busy year for me. I got promoted to a position that, for the first time in my career, does not have the words "intern" or "assistant" in the title. I authored (or played a major role in) two public opinion research reports. I took the lead on two major proposals that landed us more money. And I spent nearly three months working abroad in Tunisia and Turkey, the most in any year since I started this job. Like everyone, I sometimes get bogged down in the day-to-day and so it's cool to look back and realize that I'm now doing things I've wanted to do since the beginning of my career.<br />
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This was one of the funnest years ever. We went to four of our best friends' weddings, nicely spaced throughout the summer, and had a blast. While I feel like I worked more than ever before, I also took more vacation time.</div>
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<i>New countries visited -- </i> British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Cyprus. The fun part about these is that I would not have guessed them at the beginning of the year. And between the Caribbean and Cyprus, I visited eight islands total.<br />
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<b>Failures. </b><br />
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With everything else going on this year, I didn't too much creatively. Ironically, I did more blogging and creating even while balancing the grad school application process last year than I did this year, when I was excited to have more time and bandwidth for that. I am resolving to get back into the habit of finding little pockets of time to be creative because as referenced above, I am never going to magically have more time.</div>
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<i>More miles, fewer races</i>. I was 2/2 for signing up for races (the DC Rock and Roll half marathon and the St. Michaels Running Festival) and then being out of town and not running them. As I've done the last three years, I tried and failed to run 365 miles-- but I did run more miles (about 180) than I had since I started keeping track, so that was a win.<br />
<br />
+++<br />
<br />
So long to 2016! You were a trip. And with more travel and a move to Boston (for real this time!) on the horizon, 2017 promises to match it for adventure.</div>
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AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-51959127734477869112017-02-21T07:00:00.000-05:002019-01-04T14:08:43.803-05:0026 favorite moments<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In the midst of my belated end-of-year blogging, I remembered that my birthday was back in July and I had yet to publish my list of 26 favorite moments of 26. Compiling these is one of my favorite exercises each year. It's always interesting to see that some of the moments I thought would make the list - some of the flashy, big-headline, gotta-be-important moments - had faded into the background and quieter, sweeter memories had bubbled up in their place. 26 was a good one - full of a lot of growth and a lot of fun. (And no spoilers, but we're six months in and 27 just might top it.)<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Drinking beer on the dock and reading <i>Station Eleven </i>in
beautiful Northern Michigan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">A private ferris wheel ride in Newport Beach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">An extremely fancy sushi tasting in Newport Beach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">When Austin got startled by a sea lion and fell off his kayak in
Newport Beach. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Running across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge feeling strong. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Walking on the beach in Mauritania feeling like I was on the edge
of something big.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Submitting my second-to-last PhD application right before I got on
a flight from Nouakchott to Paris and then the very last right before getting
on the flight from Paris to DC and (most importantly) getting to watch in-flight movies guilt-free.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Watching home movies with my family on Christmas Eve. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Finishing the <a href="http://www.annamice.com/search/label/daily%20card">daily card project</a> strong... and realizing on January
1 that I did not have to make a card.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Trudging through the snow and listening to podcasts during
#snowzilla.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Drinking at a wine bar, eating at Maketto, and brainstorming about
the future on H Street.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Austin getting into Harvard Law and spending the weekend toasting
him with visiting friends. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Going to our favorite neighborhood Mexican place at midnight after
Austin finished a long night on Trump (working to defeat Trump, that is).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Dinner clubs with my friends where we lingered after dinner with
wine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Driving through the Tunisian countryside listening to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv4S3TCi9uo">Manazel</a> (and
many other songs, but that's the one I remember) on repeat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Racing through a zombie book over solo dinners in Tunisia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Learning about a full scholarship to graduate school (after a
series of defeats on PhD programs) and laughing out loud to myself in
my hotel room in Tunis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The birthday/mini-bachelorette party/dinner party/night at
Wonderland with my girlfriends before the first of us got married.</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Submitting the first grant proposal that I drafted all by myself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Getting wooed by my organization to defer grad school and stay for another year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">When the rain stopped and the clouds parted for Raf and Ashley's
sunshiney wedding ceremony in Roanoke.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Every moment of being back in Vermont - especially driving up Route 7 to Vergennes, drinking on a dock by sparkly Lake Champlain, and learning that there was a Bloody Mary bar at the post-wedding brunch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Singing along to Like a Prayer at the top of my lungs with my best
high school and college friends... at three separate weddings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">When the lights dimmed and the opening bars of <i>Hamilton </i>played
at the Richard Rodgers theater. (Not to call it too early but that could
possibly be the top moment of my 20s.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Listening to Mashrou' Leila play an old favorite, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv4S3TCi9uo">Fasateen</a>, the day
after the Orlando club shooting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">That first day in St. John's, jumping in the Jeep, driving on the
left side of the road, and happening to plunk down at one of the best beaches
in the Caribbean.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<i>PS: 25 favorite moments are <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2015/08/25-favorite-moments.html">here </a>and the original idea was borrowed from <a href="http://eliseblaha.typepad.com/">here</a>.</i></div>
AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-58154210576704152182017-02-16T07:00:00.000-05:002017-03-12T08:17:23.534-04:00'twas the season<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
A busy couple of months mean I am behind on that sacred rite of the blogosphere-- a recap of the last year and some goal-setting for the next. But first, December deserves a post of its own. Because oh man, December, you were one of the crazier months in recent memory and a fitting end to a full year. One that was somehow both packed with work but also full of travel and time off. One that will forevermore be my benchmark of how much can happen in a month and a reminder that busyness has the magical property of making time stretch.<br />
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On December 1, I submitted my application to the Harvard Kennedy School, then took off for a lovely solo weekend in North Cyprus - one of the few places you can reach by a direct flight from Gaziantep. The next weekend, I spent 24 hours in Istanbul for a policy forum for work and a few days after that, flew back from Gaziantep to DC. Austin came to down for a few days, then I celebrated Christmas in southern California with my family, then flew back to DC for a packed workweek between Christmas and New Years, then flew up to Boston so Austin and I could drive out to the Cape to ring in the New Year with the Countdown Cod. In total, I took 12 flights, one of which involved extended questioning by US Customs and Border Control and three of which landed me with an SSSS (Secondary Security Screening Selection) on my boarding pass and patdowns by TSA, thanks to extra scrutiny on travelers to southern Turkey.<br />
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This marks the third year that I've spent a good chunk of December abroad - Tunisia in 2014, Mauritania in 2015, Turkey in 2016. (And as crazy as that feels, it's even crazier that if I stick with the grad school plan, that won't be my life next year.) And all throughout the season, I felt the familiar tension between home & away, the desire to lean in to adventure at the same time that I crave a cozy nest. I was a little bummed that I didn't have a chance to keep up my own little <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2014/12/tis-season.html">Christmas traditions</a> this year, though equally glad that I didn't wait until life was more stable to start those. In that spirit, I was totally delighted to buy a grocery store poinsettia to enjoy for all of five days in my apartment in Turkey.<br />
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One of these days, I will have a cozy December at home, full of Christmas shopping, cookie baking, and ugly sweater parties. But I believe that life is long and, as long as we don't get stuck, there is plenty of time for everything we want to do. The flipside of missing the lead-up to "Christmastime in the city" this year is that I got to spend a weekend in the rolling hills of North Cyprus and to do some truly cool stuff professionally. I am grateful for all of it.</div>
AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-65594947209200979402016-11-30T14:37:00.001-05:002016-11-30T14:37:33.980-05:00Currently: Turkey edition<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've been working in southern Turkey for more than a month now (crazy!) so I figured it was high time to record a slice of what life looks like right now.<br />
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<i>Exploring:</i> the mosaic museum, the old castle, and the Euphrates River. This part of the country is not highly-touristed by international travelers and it doesn't have the flashy Mediterranean views or fairy chimneys of other part of the country, but the corners I have seen of it have been delightful. You can't really travel in the Middle East and North Africa without tripping over a Roman mosaic, so I thought I had seen them all, but the mosaic museum here is mind-blowingly good. And last weekend we drove down to a spot on the Euphrates River where you can take a boat ride past an ancient castle, man-made caves in the hills, and a city that sunk during the Birecik dam project, and eat dam fish in a delightful village.<br />
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<i>Enjoying:</i> doing work that's in that elusive sweet spot where I'm comfortable enough with what I'm doing that it's not totally overwhelming, but it's challenging enough that I'm learning. Where I have enough work that I need to keep a close eye on my to-do list but not so much that I want to cry.<br />
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<i>Writing:</i> like I'm running out of time. Which I am for submitting a couple of additional grad school applications to Boston-based schools.<br />
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<i>Eating: </i>so well. During the day, folks in the office often order in or go out for Turkish or Syrian food. It makes for a quick and delicious route to cultural tourism. Gaziantep is famous throughout Turkey for its kebab and baklava since we are in a major pistachio-going region. In the evenings, I generally cook for myself and it's nice to have that familiar routine to balance it out. As snacks, I've also been eating a ton of pomegranates and Magnum bars. When traveling I am much more likely to treat myself - unfamiliar and sometimes challenging circumstances demand comfort food. I only occasionally buy ice cream bars at home but here I eat one most nights and I am not sorry. Even better is the fact that they come in pistachio, hazelnut, and tahini flavors.<br />
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<i>Running:</i> a lot. I live conveniently very close to the gym within my already convenient gated community and I've gotten in a good habit of regularly going a few times a week. For the last three years I have set the goal of running 365 miles and then as my interest in running waxes and wanes over the year, I quickly fall behind. This year is no exception, but with no Bar Method to keep me away from the treadmill, at least I am finishing strong. Work trips often mean late nights, heavy food (so much shawarma!) and little opportunity to work out, the combination of which leave me feeling sluggish, so I'm glad I've been able to build in a consistent exercise routine here.<br />
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<i>Listening to</i>: Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. I am always reluctant to subscribe to a new podcast because I listen to so many, so new pods really have to prove themselves if they are going to stay in rotation. This is, as promised, a reading of Harry Potter as a sacred text. I initially thought that meant they would talk about the literary and biblical allegories ("Lupin means wolf!") in the text, which I feel like I've gotten plenty of over the years. Instead it's a close reading of Harry Potter with a view towards its spiritual lessons. done by folks pursuing non-traditional ministries at the Harvard Divinity School. It is like a balm for the soul, especially when my political podcasts have my heart racing and my head spinning. It reminds me a bit of <a href="http://www.all-souls.org/">Unitarian church</a> (where, appropriately enough, the head minister looks just like Harry Potter to me).<br />
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<i>Laughing: </i>at myself for writing more in the Harry Potter paragraph than anywhere else in this post.<br />
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<i>Watching:</i> Outlander. As a story of a 27-year-old stranger in a strange land, it's proving to be surprisingly resonant for me at the moment. And the Scottish scenery feels very cozy this time of year.<br />
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<i>Reading</i>: <i>Life after Life</i>. Loving it even if the passages on Hitler's rise to power are hitting a little too close to home these days.<br />
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<i>Buying</i>: a lamp, wine, and cheese. Even though Turkey stayed on summer time this year (i.e. did not end Daylight Savings Time) and the sun sets an hour later than it might otherwise, it still gets dark early. Better lighting and creature comforts are making all the difference on long winter evenings.<br />
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<i>Missing:</i> Halloween and then the election and now Thanksgiving. I'm so glad to be here but a little wistful about being far away during such an eventful time.<br />
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<i>Learning</i> a ton - just how I like it.</div>
AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-6298725774883873242016-11-25T07:00:00.000-05:002017-03-12T08:17:23.537-04:00Thanksgiving in Turkey<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thanksgiving at the Hagia Sophia seven years ago and Thanksgiving in my apartment elevator today.</td></tr>
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This was the second Thanksgiving I have spent in Turkey, with all the delightful pun opportunities that provides (plus the sad irony that Turkey the fowl is difficult to come across in Turkey the country). The first was Thanksgiving 2009, when I was studying abroad in Egypt and a few of us took advantage of the long weekend to get out of dodge. Turkey felt like a breath of fresh air after the chaos and challenges of Egypt and I completely imprinted on it. I don't remember exactly what we did on Thanksgiving day, but we were probably seeing the sights around Istanbul. When we were back in Alexandria, our cohort simulated a Thanksgiving dinner as best we could. I missed my boyfriend, whose studies abroad had been curtailed early.<br />
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I came back to Turkey for the second time in spring 2012, fresh off three months working in the West Bank and less than a year after graduating from college. Turkey again felt orderly and easy to navigate after the complications of life in Palestine. I stayed for six weeks, volunteering on organic farms near Yalova and Fethiye. I missed my boyfriend, who was on a fellowship having his own adventures around the world. I didn't know it then, but a few months later I would start working at NDI and begin the defining chapter of my twenties.<br />
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This year, I'm relearning Turkish phrases and paying careful attention to the security situation and focusing most of my attention southward. I'm remembering that travel, at best, lets us scratch the surface of a place. I celebrated Thanksgiving 2016 with friends from DC, roasted chicken and two kinds of stuffing, and a signature cocktail with pomegranate and rosemary. And I miss my boyfriend, who's embarking on his first year of law school.<br />
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Much has changed, much has stayed the same -- not least the regional environment and Turkish politics and foreign policy -- and I won't bore you with too much navel-gazing. Basically I have experienced the amount of growth and change that's only natural over the course of seven years in your twenties. But it strikes me that whenever I'm in Turkey, it's during a time of transition, of processing and figuring out next steps. For that reason and many others, it will always have a special place in my heart.</div>
AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-90097031522635738102016-11-13T07:00:00.000-05:002017-03-12T08:17:53.114-04:00An elections retrospective<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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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.</div>
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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.<br />
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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 <i>Obama a gagne</i>!<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.</div>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bSnzG6z4qR8/WCb9NNWWHII/AAAAAAABLdo/QNCPey8lgg4rpamisQCl0tDfC-b-M2oqQCLcB/s1600/elections%2B2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bSnzG6z4qR8/WCb9NNWWHII/AAAAAAABLdo/QNCPey8lgg4rpamisQCl0tDfC-b-M2oqQCLcB/s1600/elections%2B2016.jpg" /></a>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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.</div>
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AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-24908677912576578612016-10-10T07:00:00.000-04:002017-03-12T08:17:05.221-04:00Fun facts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Sometimes I wish I started blogging in the olden days of the Internet, when people tagged each other in interviews and questionnaires and everyone shared their personal quirks. So I'm throwing it back to 2008 and sharing some fun facts.<br />
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1. I appear to be through the season of horrible lower back pain that was aggravated by jumping for this picture and I am so relieved that that wasn't the start of a lifetime of deteriorating health.<br />
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2. The most important decision when packing for trips and vacations, in my view, is what books to bring. The idea that I might not have enough reading material, or books appropriately themed to the destination, on a trip makes my palms sweaty.<br />
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3. I have my debit card number memorized. But also my library card number and my passport number (<i>edit: </i>at least before I had to renew it). So hopefully that balances out.<br />
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4. When I was a kid, I would count stairs going up and down, and plan it so I would always end on the right foot. (If there's an even number of stairs you have to start on the left foot; if it's odd you start on the right.) I wrote about this in one of those mandatory journal exercises in eighth grade and my (no doubt well-meaning) teacher suggested I get screened for OCD. I walked through the world like a normal person for about ten years - until I got a Fitbit and started counting steps all over again.<br />
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5. Two things that separate me from the rest of my generation - I like Lena Dunham and I do not like getting guacamole with my Chipotle.<br />
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6. It seems like 99% of bloggers describe themselves as "planners" and "type-A." I think those are excellent qualities, and when everyone describes themselves a certain way it's easy to think that you fit the description too. But while I am very effective at getting things done, planning is not my strong suit, if I'm being honest. I can fill out a <a href="http://www.gettoworkbook.com/">planner</a> with the best of them but rarely do so in advance.<br />
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7. My biggest pet peeve is when I'm eavesdropping on a conversation, but one person is speaking much louder than the other and so I can only hear one side. I don't know what bothers me more: the impression that one person is dominating the conversation, or the fact that I can't get a full picture of what they're talking about.<br />
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8. I lead a charmed life. In a check-your-privilege, #blessed sense, for sure, but also in the sense that flights I'm running late for are inevitably delayed, and I always get chosen off the standby list, and things that really shouldn't have worked out in my favor often do.<br />
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9. I have a very long attention span for things I am interested in. This is great for staying focused on a task, but not great if you are at a museum with me.<br />
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10. I do my best blogging when I'm procrastinating on something else. (Doesn't everyone?) </div>
AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106233646104286926.post-69254180018809329472016-10-03T07:00:00.000-04:002017-03-12T08:17:05.240-04:00Currently: September 2016<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a7UdBtq3WYQ/V-8qcx5pS1I/AAAAAAABLTs/deV2aSyf7l8kgV3UqbzLqzcLO5cX_n8PACLcB/s1600/september5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a7UdBtq3WYQ/V-8qcx5pS1I/AAAAAAABLTs/deV2aSyf7l8kgV3UqbzLqzcLO5cX_n8PACLcB/s1600/september5.jpg" /></a></div>
<i>Adjusting </i>to life in the suburbs and a new routine. After a summer of lots of travel (I didn't spend more than a week in one place for all of July and August), September has been a long deep breath in some ways. The biggest change, on a practical level, is a commute that can be almost an hour long. The upside is that I have lots of time to listen to podcasts (current favorites are Invisibilia, More Perfect, and Keepin' it 1600). The downside is that it's no longer realistic to make it to Bar Method in the mornings. But after a couple days of bemoaning the fact that I could never exercise again, I got over myself and started going in the evenings. It's a much better fit for this season and a good reminder to be flexible. And on that note -<br />
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<i>Figuring out</i> where I should grasp onto my favorite aspects of life in DC and where I should use this as an opportunity to try new things.<br />
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<i>Remembering </i>what a long-distance relationship feels like. We've been through this rodeo a few times before across multiple different states and countries - that's just the reality of dating for eight years in your 20s when you have some moderate international aspirations. This round, while certainly challenging in some ways, feels like the easiest in others. The plus side is this time I have a Fitbit and I have gotten into a good pattern of evening walk-and-talks while pacing around my neighborhood - which is just getting more and more pleasant as the weather cools down. I did make it up to Boston for a visit a couple weeks ago and uncharacteristically took very few photos, except for this crazy-haired, windswept one.<br />
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<i>Wearing </i>lipstick. Since graduating college (when I pretty much rolled out of bed and down the hill to my 8 am Arabic classes) I have slowly been developing a makeup routine. But I have long had weird hang-ups about my lips. When I was in middle school, I would get horrible, painful, ugly lip rashes that would stick around for weeks at a time. Because of that I have never wanted to do anything that would make my lips look bigger, fuller, redder, or otherwise more prominent - which is sort of the point of lipstick. But a couple of years ago, I saw some photos of myself on the sidelines of a work event that a professional photographer had taken - my face looked super washed out. So I resolved to slap more color on it more frequently, and with four weddings this summer, I had an excuse to <strike>experiment with</strike> buy a bunch of lipstick. I've found that the trick is you just have to wear it long enough so you don't look weird to yourself anymore, because you probably never looked weird to anyone else to begin with.<br />
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<i>Mourning</i> my slowly fading tan. This summer I got probably the best tan since summer 2008 when I was a counselor at sailing camp and got super bronzed (albeit with the telltale lifejacket tan). I'm not sad about it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I did my decluttering on a solo weekend and it started to show in this Kondo-inspired gratitude photo shoot.</td></tr>
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<i>Marie-Kondo'ing </i>my childhood bedroom. As with juicing, essential oils, and a variety of other things that are popular on the Internet, I tend to be a little cynical about the minimalism craze. For one, I think it reflects a level of privilege (the principle being that if you get rid of something you need later, you can always buy a new one!) and for the other, I think it just offers a whole different way to obsess over material possessions. Moving back home, my temptation was to not deal with cleaning my room because this is just a temporary arrangement - but I am here for long enough to make the space work for where I am now. And it was time to let go of some of the stuff I haven't really touched since I was 17 or 22. (I say as I look at the decades worth of belongings surrounding me.)<br />
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Three other big thoughts: 1) If I don't get rid of this stuff now, I or someone else will have to eventually. 2) If you frequently get rid of stuff you are no longer using or enjoying regularly, it doesn't have time to get sentimental (which is probably not a bad thing if you tend to hold onto every. single. thing. like I do) and you can skip the emotional ordeal. 3) The point of holding onto stuff is to smile and remember on the rare occasions when you come across it - so if you do so when decluttering, maybe it has already served its nostalgic purpose and you can let it go. <br />
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<i>Learning</i> to live with uncertainty again (as I referenced in one of my <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2013/03/living-with-certainty.html">first-ever posts</a> here). What this next year looks like will continue to be something of a work in progress, and while that is a little stressful at times, I am determined to make it a good one. The upside of uncertainty is that it's pretty exhilarating to have your life crack open and offer opportunities you hadn't imagined.<br />
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(<i>Realizing </i>that it has been a year since I <a href="http://www.annamice.com/2015/09/currently-september-2015.html">last wrote</a> one of these posts.)</div>
AnnaMicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13187097004390434777noreply@blogger.com0