The same boat.

So, I've been hanging out at Karma Cafe this week (as evidenced here) working on job-hunting, resume-updating and the like.

I also bought a domain name for my own website, which has no content yet. If you want to see the digital nakedness, it's here. Want to help me with the website? Get in touch with me. I'll welcome the input.

In my attempts to finish the resume today, I hit a formatting hiccup that had me frustrated. I emailed several friends, and one of them was able to help, thank goodness.

Another of my friends wasn't able to solve the issue, but she provided me with the following email exchange, which I found encouraging and enjoyable. Names and some details have been changed or omitted--sometimes anonymity helps.

I feel like I am in the same spot with what you said about goals and passions for my life. So you are truly not alone if that helps at all. 

Someone told me the other day they thought that my life went off course when I went to Seminary.

Now I answer phones.

So trust me, you are not alone and this may be terrible of me but it makes me feel a bit better that although most people cannot really empathize with what I'm feeling; you can.

I think that you need to either write humorist essays (which I have recently decided is my dream career) or host your own radio show. Perhaps both.  I would be a sponsor.


I replied: 

Write me a check, sister. I'll go on the air tomorrow. 

This will be my opening song (on the radio at this very moment, and I feel like the very sound of it--not even the words--is my life right now. A little hopeful, a little urgent, a little desperate, a little driven, a little aimless. 

I included a link to my favorite song of the moment--it's Young the Giant's "Cough Syrup". Pretty much encapsulates things. Enjoy:

 

 In the meantime, I'm accepting donations for my new radio show/first essay collection.

STOP.

Stop. Sometimes I just have to tell myself to stop it.

Heather, stop it.

Life is good right now. It's getting a little better with each step. So, Heather, let's stop looking backwards, however lovely the view; let's stop picking scabs. It's not moving on. It's moving, and not spinning.

Stop. Stop. Stop. Don't beat yourself to death over it, but stop all the same.

I'm going to bed--I just wanted to commit that somewhere. Sometimes it helps to talk to myself in the third person--or I pretend it does.

A proper blog is coming soon--probably something about music.

Life is good, and getting better. It's always grace.

Know how to change a tire?

So, this is kind of a picture of my day.

Originally, I was rolling away from my house and instantly heard the thunkathunkathunk that told me something was wrong. Stopped my car where it was, and saw that the tire was flat. When I rolled the car back to the curb (a distance of maybe seven feet), I found what you see--the tire had actually come off the wheel.

I'll call somebody tomorrow, and it'll all eventually work out fine. But in that moment, my brain did the dramatic thing it always does, and I thought, This is pretty much like your life right now. 


Shut up, brain, I said. Stop being dramatic. 


It's true, though, the brain said. Things are sort of flat, and they're slipping.


Grr, I said.

And it's not like it's life or death, I mean, you'll be okay--fine, even. But it's not exactly good. 

As a result, I am in a bit of a pity party today. And really looking forward to something good happening soon, whenever soon is. 

It's late!

I have officially missed my deadline for the WordCount Blogathon 2010. Technically, this is the second time I have missed my deadline, since I didn't officially write a post on the first of May.

Call me lazy (go ahead, do it), but I think sometimes the act of missing deadlines is important.

I visited with a friend today who, for reasons both in her control and out of it, has been struggling with anxiety. As we talked, I heard her saying that every activity she had, every bit of time she spent, had a purpose.

For the record, I am all for having structure and purpose and a plan for your day. But sometimes you just need to hang out and be dumb. My advice to this friend was to find some women she could hang around and not have to grow with, not have to learn from, not have to work her brain over.

"Sit and talk about purses if you want," I said.

And tonight, I could have stayed home and written one of those deep, thoughtful posts that has been brewing, but I went to Eric's and watched The Wire instead. And the time, I think, was well spent. I brought key lime pie.

You can't (or at least it's not wise to) be lazy every day. But by the same token, you can't have every moment scheduled and planned and full of opportunities for growth. Sometimes things have to calm down, lay still, and chill out. And as luck would have it, we grow in that.

What about you? What's your favorite way to be lazy? What do you wish you worked at less?

And by the way, the Bipartisan Cafe, on SE 78th and Stark in Portland, makes the best key lime pie I've ever had.

This movie gave me way too much to say.

I just finished watching the movie "Julie & Julia", after about a hundred recommendations from friends and loved ones ("It'll make you want to write a book!" "It'll make you want to eat a stick of butter!" "It'll make you want to move in with Meryl Streep and copy everything she does!"), and it is indeed very good, and if you haven't seen it yet, you should, even if you're a movie snob like me who usually stays away from popular films that aren't focused on death or post-apocalyptic slow-moving doom.

We all know that sometimes we read into things. In every experience, be it a painting, a hike, a conversation, or anything, someone can take from it a lesson or a message that may never have been the creator's original intent. And as I watched this movie, I kept seeing how much of both of these women's lives were, in a sense, about starts and stops.

Julia Child married late, faced opposition and negativity when she first entered cooking school, and had her landmark cookbook delayed and delayed and then rejected. By the time it was published, she was nearly 50 years old.

Julie Powell, the movie's other protagonist, is about to turn 30 before she launches the blog, and though she is happily married, she has an unfulfilling job and a less-than-ideal apartment, and is constantly comparing herself to her ridiculously successful friends.

I don't have friends who are senior vice presidents, and none of my friends have personal assistants (although, if they're hiring...). But for the most part, my friends and I are all circling that dreaded 30... some of us closer in than others. And for the most part, I think they would all agree that the age of 30 is not what it was when our parents reached it. Whether it's the new 20 or not... that's another blog.

I do know that many of my friends, as they approach and surpass the 30 mark, feel an immense pressure from any number of sources. Lord knows we all can pressure ourselves enough as it is, minds racing with "what if"' scenarios until fear renders us virtually catatonic. We can give it any number of names or attachments (career, spouse, house, kids), but it's basically a pressure for successful stability. I have seen so many friends (and even myself at times) marching through each year as though there is a gun to their heads, so great is the pressure, and what could rob someone of more joy?

I don't mean to paint Julia Child as a saint (as the Julie of the movie does), but seeing her story, however fictionalized, it reminded me that there really is no point of no return. Jobs come and go or stay, relationships fade, explode or remain, and even the people we count on as our basic support systems will disappear or let us down.

But!

There is hope.

It sounds cliche' to use the "everything is an opportunity" bit for the millionth time, but really, it's true. There won't ever be a time in my life, regardless of how old I get, when every door is closed forever. Things will almost certainly not work out as I had envisioned them (they already haven't, on a small scale), but they will eventually work out. The right things will come at the right time, and who's to say when that time will be? People publish novels (or cookbooks) after years of waiting and strings of bizarre jobs. People find love at every point in life. People discover redemption in the most unlikely of places and at the most unlikely of times.

I know this is true for me, and I'm going to venture to say that it's true for you.

A friend of mine, who is just past thirty, single, and contemplating some new changes in her life, said recently (and this is a very loose quote, so be nice to me, and her), "You know, it's possible that I could be 40 and single, or that life won't play out as I would like, but I know that I can take today for what it is, and say, 'Today, I have what I need, and today I am loved'. And if you can say that every day, then no matter what, you're doing pretty well."

And so, we don't sit on our hands and lament. We wake in the morning, we pursue what we love in at least small ways, and then we do what's next, not knowing what exactly will come of it. But today, you and I have what we need, and you and I are loved. And believe it or not, that's a stable place to be.