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Murphy's Law states that when you get a rejection notice from your dream job, when you have a staff meeting that ends at 9:30pm on a Sunday 30 miles from your house, and when your student loans go into repayment, they will all, inevitably, occur on the same weekend.

I try to not make this a space for whining despite my obvious privileges (having a job, education, backup transportation options), but COME ON, WORLD.

reading fiction and missing home

Home is somewhat of a fluid concept for me. I have a lot of different homes, depending on the definition. My clothes are in Silicon Valley. My dentist is in the suburbs of Sacramento. My heart is, cliché though it may be, still in San Francisco. (Until it, too, gets priced out.) My stuff is... well, everywhere. But my hometown, where I spent the better part of two decades of life - that's Tacoma.

Right around this time of the year, I start missing Tacoma. Fiercely. I think there's something about the turn of the seasons - the colder air, the unspoken preparedness for the holidays, the frightening readjustment to waking up in the dark. And the rain. Oh my god, I actually miss the rain, and not even because of our worst-in-decades California drought. I would be thrilled to have just one gloomy, dreary, rainy 24 hours here. Because while I love the sun (and stretch out like a cat on my uncle's couch every time a patch lands in the house), seeing it every day still feels unnatural to me.

I think what I'm trying to say is this: I don't think I give due credit to my Pacific Northwest upbringing. I've been susceptible to amnesia when I'm in the middle of San Francisco, like I just arrived in the world as an 18-year old. A completely separate life. That's what it feels like. And that's partially because I don't visit home that often, and didn't keep in touch with many people up there. I'm not absolved of responsibility in this. But occasionally something will remind me of Tacoma and I'll think, Oh, yeah. That did happen.

I'm almost one month into a retail job in the Marina district of San Francisco, and living with my (extremely generous) uncle on the lower peninsula, just up the road from Stanford. My commute is about 2 hours each way. Now, I'm feeling so lucky AND privileged just to have a job and a (very cheap) living situation in the most expensive region in the entire f'ing country. But the commute sucks. Big time.

I finally bought some novels to keep me company, including Where'd You Go, Bernadette, which is set in Seattle. I finished it in two workdays. It was like falling down the rabbit hole and ending up in a surreal version of home. The rain, the blackberry bushes, the fleece and Gore-Tex, the introverted personalities. Every time I looked up from the book I was surprised to be in Silicon Valley. I had a moment on the train where I just missed home so much.

But I will be home, in Tacoma, in a month. I don't know if the feelings I have are constant, or just misplaced nostalgia, or some kind of grass-is-greener mentality. (Even though the grass is actually greener there. They don't call it the Evergreen State for nothin'.) But I will be so glad to feel rain, and to eat dinner with my mom, and to sit by the fire, and to be home.

If this isn't the most goddamn Pacific Northwest photo you've ever seen, I don't know what to say to you.

Things I think too much about: Jason Katims' obsession with putting at least one seitan joke in each of his shows.

(Friday Night Lights season 5, ep. 4; Parenthood season 2 ep. 17; About a Boy season 1 ep. 1.)

#jason katims #seitan #parenthood #about a boy #friday night lights

the following is an imperfect freeform on perfectionism.

My perfectionism is destroying me.

I realized this after meeting with a wonderful mentor late last week. Among other things, she reminded me that women are far less likely to believe that they are qualified for a job than their male-identified peers, so it is crucial to apply, apply, apply. She also assured me of my abilities - graduating summa cum laude, a track record of student affairs work as an undergrad, multiple club leaderships. I am capable of getting a job and kicking ass at it.

I left refreshed with a folder of bookmarked job postings, ready to sit down and write some cover letters, but also knowing that I had a few obligations during the next couple of days that needed my attention. Don't lose focus, I told myself. Finish what you need to do, then buckle down this weekend.

Saturday morning came and went, and so did the afternoon. I looked over the postings again, and the doubt crept in. Database management? Your Excel spreadsheet budget doesn't count. Unqualified. You could probably learn how to use Salesforce, but you've never seen the platform in person before. They won't look twice at you. Unqualified. You don't know anyone who knows anyone at this company/organization. You'll be another random person coming out of the woodwork. Unqualified. Within fifteen minutes, my list of seven definite job postings had been whittled down to two. Even then, I had bullet-pointed some accomplishments for my cover letters, but I couldn't make them into coherent sentences. I was stuck.

I recognized this pattern from every essay I'd written in college. I'd procrastinate, claiming that I was working through the arguments in my head, but was really mulling over the looming deadline. Eventually I would hammer something out in the 18-24 hours before it was due, look over it once for spelling/grammar errors, then turn it in. Writing was always a fraught, private activity. I never shared my work with parents or peers. But the next week, I'd get the essay back with an A, so I didn't see a need to change my behavior. Despite the occasional praise of my writing, I always saw my work coming to light in spite of my bad habits, not because of my skill.

My friend recently lent me a book called The Rise by Sarah Lewis. In the introduction, Lewis examines the phenomenon of archers who can collect bullseyes one day and completely miss the target the next, often because they lose focus on their process and only see the "gold," the win, in front of them. I grew up with the privilege of excelling at academics consistently - not so much from being "smart" (which is an entirely subjective measure), but from having a learning style that gelled with the school structure of read-lecture-test. In college, I had to work much harder, but not always with the goal of learning more. In many cases, my "gold" was the A and the respect of my professors and bosses. Some examples:

I remember being relieved when my first-semester freshman grades came back and I got a single B+, since it had taken off the pressure of scoring a 4.0. However, as my professors came to know me as a "strong student," that pressure returned.

During my junior year, a midterm essay earned a B- and caused me to weep for hours. The next morning, I was in my professor's office, practically begging for ways to do better next time.

(The more I write about this, the more hesitant I am to post this. My academic privilege is glaring. Am I only writing about how hard it's made my life?)

Well, no, now that I think about it. My learning style and perceived writing strength have made my life much, much easier. It's the unfair expectations, the weight of failures and missteps, the doubts, that are hurting me. It's the thinking pattern I picked up somewhere that told me that receiving criticism is a bad thing (to avoid) that makes a bad person (to avoid becoming).

But by building a wall between myself and the world, how much growth have I denied myself? How many connections have I missed by refusing vulnerability?

Anyway. This is the story that leads to me sitting in a café in San Francisco, unable to write a page-long cover letter.

The first step is recognizing the problem.

The second step is learning and asking for help.

The third step is making conscious choices to make a change.

Here's to making some sort of progress in a struggle that will probably last the rest of my life. But I've got to start somewhere.

Today I've been back in the States for one month. Whether or not I'll continue to write in this blog, I've yet to decide, but I need to put down my thoughts at least one more time to close out this experience that I will never have again.

When I left Florence, I didn't look back. An eleven-hour flight gives you a long time to think, but my one recurring thought was that when I landed, I would be home. And I was really, really happy to be home. I cried in baggage claim. I cried again when I cleared customs and saw my dad. He drove straight to my old apartment in the city and selflessly got coffee while I caught up with my best friend for an hour. I cried again when my dog greeted me. (Dogs will always make me cry.) I was even happy to hang out in the suburbs for a few weeks, which is usually a surefire sign that something in my life is wrong.

And the funniest thing was that when I walked down my old street, it was like the last four months of my life had been erased. It felt not only thousands of miles away, but in a different lifetime as well. Going abroad is a strange phenomenon in the age of social media. Some days it felt like I had just removed myself from my life and watched it go on without me. And just like I had idealized romantic relationships that were free of conflicts, San Francisco became one big dream, full of possibilities when I returned. I don't recommend doing this. Idealizing anything leads to a lot of disappointment.

But this experience made me appreciate the life that I have here, in this city, so much more. And I am making a commitment to be easier on myself, and reduce the stress in my life, and to be a little more brave. My best friend and I took a walk to clear our thoughts and ended up two and a half miles away at the beach. I am going to be patient with myself as I step out of school and into the 9-to-5 life for good. I'm going to tell the people who I love that I love them. I am going to make the best of the next five months of my life. Who knows what could happen?

Grazie per la lettura. Tutti voi siete importante per me.

Arrividerci,

Shea

Homeward bound.

It's 6:30am and I have just short of 24 hours left in this apartment. Tomorrow morning I'm headed home. Wow.

Tonight (last night) we had a dinner party to celebrate the end of finals and, more importantly, to use up the rest of the food in our refrigerator. The place has become a sort of haven in a world that is still very new to me. I've come to realize that this semester has been an exercise in constantly being uncomfortable. Not unsafe or unhealthy, but rather a quiet, enduring sense of just not feeling at home. And maybe this was just because I knew I'd only be here for four months, so I never tried to visualize this as a permanent reality. I started thinking about the expatriate blogs I'd read to prepare myself for life here. How did they do it?

I write all this as it becomes clear how much I will miss about Italy. Sure, it wasn't the experience I imagined. But could I have imagined anything like it turned out to be before I made the leap? Of course not. That's the fun of it.

So, as promised in an earlier entry, here is an incomplete list of the things that have made my experience here all the sweeter:

The food. Obvious choice for obvious reasons. The food is just so incredibly fresh here. Milk is rarely refrigerated until it's opened, because it's not optimized to spend weeks on a shelf. Every food item I've bought has a maximum shelf life of three to four days. Most of the available produce is grown locally, and therefore cheaper. And the emphasis is on making the food yourself. At home, I would eat a minimum of four Trader Joe's microwave meals per week. Easy? Yes. Healthy? Not always.

The philosophy of food. Meal time is meal time, not study time or travel time or sit-in-front-of-the-TV time. Food is not just here to feed us. It's an experience that requires a certain amount of focus. And I've noticed ever since I've put everything away while I eat, I taste more. I think about what I'm putting into my body. And eating while walking is a total no-no, except for gelato at a leisurely pace. It's true that I'm not as busy here, but how necessary was it for me to eat a breakfast burrito while power-walking to the bus stop? Also, Italians always like to have a barrier between their hands and their food (either a utensil or a napkin), which appeals nicely to my germophobia.

The expectation of knowing another language. This one's already rooted in the States' amount of power in the world and its subsequent nationalism that has made English emerge as the new "international language." Every time someone has switched between Italian and English languages with me (usually because my Italian proficiency is crap), I am reminded of the different ways that multilingualism affects our lives. In the States it's a nice thing to have on the resume. You don't need to demonstrate any kind of fluency to go to college, you just need to show that you took a couple classes. Here, it's necessary for business, for communication beyond this tiny little peninsula. And after only having studied Latin languages, English is a hard f'ing language to learn. I've tried not to ever take that communication for granted here, because it takes a lot more effort than non-multilingual Americans generally put into it.

High-speed trains. So efficient.

Cappuccino vending machines. Efficient and delicious.

My roommate Carlotta. Not only was she our first friend, but also our door to actual Italian life. She welcomed us into her circle of friends. She spoke only Italian to me to help me practice. Oh, and she's balancing a singing career while getting her Master's in biology. You know, no big deal. She's just an incredible person. (And a fantastic baker. How did I start talking about food again?)

No matter how excited I am to be home, I will be thinking and processing about this experience for months to come. And I'm really grateful for the fun but incredibly challenging time here. It has probably changed me in ways I haven't seen yet. Vediamo.

#all'estero

Galleria delle Carte Geografiche in the Vatican Museums. Lined from one end to the other with frescoed maps of the Italian peninsula. One of the most breathtaking rooms I've ever seen.

#galleria delle carte geografiche #musei vaticani #rome #all'estero

6 dicembre 2013, Roma.

Pope Francis does office hours in front of the Forum.

#rome #all'estero

This is the Statue of Imperia in Konstanz, Germany, known locally as the "Konstanzia." It has been in the harbor of Bodensee (Lake Konstanz) since 1993.

But the story behind it, according to my friend who is finishing her Master's at University of Konstanz, dates back to the 15th century when Pope Martin V was elected in the town. The artist wasn't the biggest fan of the Catholic church's morals - the statue depicts Imperia, an Italian courtesan, holding the tiny naked Pope and the Emperor in her hands. If putting the statue at the foot of the harbor wasn't enough, it also rotates.

Naturally, I fell in love with Konstanz.

#all'estero

le famiglie all'estero.

My time in Firenze would not have been the same without Sandra, Franco, Giorgio, and Ginevra (not pictured). I had clearer pictures of little G, but this one captures his energy more than the others. They took me in every other weekend for dinners and informal Italian lessons. This weekend I took the half-hour train ride out of the city to visit them one last time. I loved their neighborhood. It was more temperate, the fog reminded me of home, and it was free of the rattle of traffic that would roll past my window at all hours of the day. They were incredibly patient with my language skills (which have improved, but are still barely conversational). And they're excellent cooks. Pasta was on point every single time.

They made it clear that what I'll miss most about Italy is the people. Not all of my experiences have been positive, but there are so many friends and faculty members who have been saintly in their patience with us Americans. I can only hope that I've been able to give something back.

Oh, and then there's la gatta, Miscia.

"Leave me alone."

#all'estero

Finals week.

I promise to post some more after the toughest of my finals are over, but it's crunch time right now. I'm also in the library and painfully aware of the whistle that my nose makes when I breathe. That is all.

#all'estero

Zürich is ready for Christmas. (En route to Southern Germany. Neither a second European virus nor my embarrassing lack of German language skills will keep me down today.)

#all'estero

The view from atop the Duomo on a gorgeous November morning. Ciao, Firenze!

#all'estero

On the subject of the last post, over the weekend we found this! Tabasco is allegedly the oldest gay bar in Italy, and its location reflects that. You have to know that it’s there if you want to find it, nestled in a back alley near Palazzo Vecchio. We arrived before it opened and never ended up going inside. That might have been for the best - according to TripAdvisor, it’s no longer under queer management and acts mostly as a straight bar these days.

#all'estero

I walk past this wall a few times a week, and a couple days ago I managed to actually stop and read this poster that I had only seen out of the corner of my eye. To my surprise, it was advertising an anarcho-queer book reading.

For those who didn’t see me in San Francisco on a daily basis, I am hella queer. Queer-alliance-vice-presidenting, gender-and-sexuality-center-staffing, bisexual-erasure-fighting, questioning-everything queer. And because I’m a cisgender woman who is already feminine, I know I don’t always “look the part” (whatever that means). But my community is important to me, and I want to keep having conversations about what I - and other queer folks with privilege in other aspects of our lives - can do to serve our community better.

When I came to Florence, those conversations stopped. Or, rather, they went on without me. I knew from the beginning that if I left the Bay Area for anywhere else, I would have to adjust my expectations of outness at least a little. Moving to a country known for rampant machismo and, oh yeah, the slow-moving head of the Catholic Church? Yeah, that’s a little more different. But it ended up being more complicated than that, of course.

I am about 99% in the closet here. It’s not even for a lack of safety, but it just never came up in the conversation. Only one of my classmates has come out to me as somewhere on the queer spectrum, and only after being in class together for three months. I know there must be some more of us, but (understandably) no one wants to take the first leap. So I’ve felt somewhat isolated here. It feels a lot like high school, where I only talked about boys because my friends only talked about boys. My attraction to ladies was there, but I ignored it, because I knew that if I stated it then I would eventually have to defend it. And that defense is safer in some environments than some others. I am privileged to have never grown up in a hostile homophobic space, but heterosexist spaces come with their own challenges. Queerness is just not in the picture here.

Yet outside of my unfortunate American bubble, Florence is apparently Italy’s queer haven. The first taste of this came from a conversation I had with a culinary student at aperitivo. He claimed that there were “too many gays” for him to consider staying in Florence long-term. He mentioned that he had been hit on by gay men and it made him deeply uncomfortable, even afraid. “I’m literally homophobic,” were his words. I wanted to ask him if he had thought about that unwanted attention when he and his friends interrupted me and my friends in the middle of our conversation to “get to know” us (because the irony of that is hilarious), but at the moment I was so focused on this abundance of queer folks that I’d been unable to find.

So there are queer folks here? Yes, of course. And judging by the poster above and by Florence's queer org, IREOS, there is plenty of queer activism too. But it's definitely not accessible to those who are not Italian. And heterosexism is still the norm, of course.

But this begs the question: how accessible are our stateside queer communities to those from other countries? Are we willing to tackle language barriers and cultural differences in our own spaces, especially when those differences almost always manifest in varying levels of privilege and oppression?

#all'estero

It is so good to have my family here. This week has only solidified that the people I love are what I miss most about home. They're all that's irreplaceable.

#all'estero

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Ciao bella, fresher than mozzarella.