Real World Trials and Tribulations

that I time I graduated college and tried to figure out what to do from here

[sagoods]

30

I turned 30 as quietly as I could. Not one to want to force attention on myself for my birthday on a normal year, I felt that much more inclined to take the fact of the day and roll it up. To hide it in a corner where other people didn’t need to acknowledge it. Where the day could be just like the day before and the one before that - full of people and yet empty of action, swirling with repetition, weighed down with everyone’s unshareable thoughts.

I woke up that morning in a bed that was familiar but not my own, in a state that was familiar but not my own, in a house thick with grief that was familiar but not my own. I woke up thinking I should feel something specific about making it to this milestone, and instead acutely aware of feeling absent. Stuck in my body and in a place where suddenly mundane chores had become insurmountable, and where I would watch my partner fill his day with endless lists of tasks and not know how to help.

So instead I got up and went downstairs to the kitchen that seemed to be forever filled with people, even at early hours of the morning. No one was sleeping very well. And I made eggs - something I had been finding myself doing every morning. A small part of me chafed at the gender roles we had so naturally fallen into during the week. When I wasn’t standing around feeling useless, I was helping with cooking and cleaning. On the other side of the house he sorted bills and made arrangements - constantly on his computer, calling people, sending emails, identifying new tasks to add to his endless list. While I was still, he was ever moving. And neither of us were okay.

And I didn’t know how to help. So I made eggs. They gave me something to do, made me feel like maybe I was making someone else’s day a tiny bit easier by doing so. And part of me knew that the only person I was really making feel better was myself, and I wasn’t doing that great a job at that either. I couldn’t stop myself wishing someone was giving me more direction, helping me navigate the empty spaces.

Tired eyes greeted me as I came into the kitchen, wishing me a happy birthday with ghosts of smiles. I felt bad making people put on a happy face for me, having to acknowledge something outside of themselves. It starkly highlighted the new reality - that for every joyful occasion there would be an accompanying feeling of loss.

I got calls throughout the day wishing me a happy birthday. I ran into corners of the house to take them, not wanting anyone else to have to hear. Trying to coach my voice into enthusiasm, shake off the dark. My cousin called, her voice infused with infectious energy like it always is - asking me how I was going to celebrate. The question felt loud and coarse, highlighting the hollow feeling in my body. She told me to go out to dinner to celebrate. I told her I might.

Ultimately it wasn’t the lack of celebration that made me sad. It was that the day made me feel isolated, during a week where I already felt out of my depth and scrambling for purchase. All I wanted was to connect with my increasingly insular partner, to try to take on some of what he was feeling - but all he could do was sit at the dining room table and make ever expanding lists of things he was taking responsibility for. He needed to help his mom with her credit cards, with insurance, with the funeral home. He had to make decisions, set up appointments, write emails to former colleagues, make endless numbers of tough phone calls. And I didn’t know how to share that with him.

I wondered if the roles were reversed if I would need him to do the exact same things - helping change accounts and track paperwork down. If he would always default to being the rock during a crisis, the responsible adult, even if it was my family rather than his. I think I probably would, and I wish I had more of that inside of me to give back to him.

My parents called me towards the end of the day, their voices sounded far away - the distance highlighted by the emotional gulf that surrounded everyone in the house. They very clearly did not know what sort of tone they should be using - working to cover over the lingering sadness with something brighter. The layer it added was insubstantial and translucent, and it only seemed to highlight the loneliness of the day. And as they sang happy birthday to me I couldn’t stop myself from crying.

[sagoods]

What’s in a Last Name

I got engaged almost a year ago. A lot has happened in my life since that point. The now fiance moved out to Madison to live with me and study for the Bar, we went on a prolonged vacation overseas on my company’s extravagant sabbatical program, and then I packed up my life - got rid of lots of extraneous things that I had accumulated - and shoved it into the cozy NYC apartment we now live in. Over the last couple of months we’ve worked pretty successfully on making this apartment feel like our own space.

And during that time I’ve tried to get a handle on how I feel about the wedding industry.

Which is to say - I still don’t know how to feel about it. 

There are the obvious things - my mom and I have been struggling over the weight of expectations for the event just because it’s a wedding. No, we actually don’t need to buy all of the flowers in the state of Vermont in order to decorate properly. No, we don’t need a wedding cake if none of us think cake is the best dessert ever. Nope - don’t need perfectly curated wedding party outfits, or single gender parties.

At this point I know which traditional wedding things I’m nixing, which I feel like I’ve been over so many times that I’m starting to become a parody of my liberal arts millennial self.

I know I don’t want to toss a bouquet or do anything public with garters. I think both tosses say weird things about gender roles and expectations around single people. I always felt like I was being coerced into participating when I attended weddings - though I suppose I’m out of the woods on that one for future weddings I attend. Phew.

I don’t want to be presented to my fiance at the alter like a gift being handed over to him. Or even like the only one of us who is taking a final step. Or even like it is a final step. I like parents being included in the ceremony, allowing for space for them to give their public approval - but shouldn’t we both be doing that? 

I know I don’t want to be referred to as the Mrs tacked onto my partner’s name. There’s something that makes me feel deeply uncomfortable with rolling a marriage identity into the man. ie Mr and Mrs John Smith. Why does he get the personalization and she get tucked away between the lines? Don’t I exist on my own? I have up to this point, I don’t see why I would disappear once married. And why are formal invitations supposed to be addressed this way? I’m sorry, but huge no to that on my end.

And it’s along these lines that I’ve been struggling with my personal identify as it relates to marriage - specifically the question around if I’ll keep my last name.

This question is hard for me because I’m not particularly tied to my last name, but I don’t like the idea that only one of us is changing for the marriage. I like defining a family that we are creating through a shared name - but I also like the idea of forming a union with two separate individuals who are defined within themselves and happen to choose to coexist and make a life together.

But then what if we have kids? What becomes the default there if we keep separate names?

And what if we don’t have kids and I’ve just made a decision about my own identity based around a concept that doesn’t happen?

If my partner didn’t like his last name so much, I’d try to convince him to pick a new name with me - something like a maternal grandmother’s last name that has since died out. Something that still connects you to previous family history, but can mean something new to both of you. This is probably my ideal concept, but I haven’t been able to get him on board with it.

So without both of us picking a new name, it’s up to me to either change or commit to separate names. And there just seems to be so much expectation and pressure packed into that - connection to his family, separation from mine. And honestly I haven’t figured out what I should do. I keep hoping that I’ll wake up one day with a clear direction in mind, but that’s fairly unlikely. 

I guess I’ll just have to make a game-day decision. As I’ve heard it, there is typically no stress leading up to a wedding, so adding another decision will be no big deal.

Right?

[sagoods]

Guilty

I struggled to keep my eyes open. This was the second straight day of being talked at. Of trying to pay attention to the pertinent facts. Of sitting in a somewhat comfortable chair, bolted to the ground, penned in with thirteen other pre-selected strangers. Of being charged with participating in the criminal justice system and having someone’s fate laid before us.

You would think I’d be able to stay awake. To pay attention.

Never have I been in a circumstance that inserted itself so much into the crossroads of importance and mundaneness. On breaks the fourteen of us (twelve after two are sent home prior to deliberation) would be shuffled into a side room which would later become our holding cage while we argued the case details over and over. We would sit at the round table in silence, the only real noise coming from my keyboard as I tried to catch up on emails. Looking around I was always surprised that I was the only one trying to stay on top of the work I was missing. 

But then again the jury skewed young. So impossibly young. 

Among our ranks were two kids who had just graduated high school a few weeks earlier, and just barely eligible to participate in this rite of citizenship, four were hovering around the age of 21, and then there were a smattering of older folks. At the ancient age of 26, I was at the median age of the group. 

We never learned each other’s names. 

On breaks we were cautioned not to talk about the case with anyone else - so instead we talked about nothing. 

We had two days stuck to our chairs, silent observers to the pairing of drama and the plodding speed the questions seemed to take. Two days of the lawyers passionately, or matter-of-factly, stating their cases. Of the judge turning on white noise when the lawyers were asked to approach the bench, letting us sit in the middle of an empty tv channel from the 1950s. Two days of the same questions being asked over and over, in different ways, to a varied cast of characters.

But at the end of it all- it was just the twelve of us, our phones and computers taken away, the door locked. Just the twelve of us, the notes we had taken during the trial, an empty white board, and a sheet of paper that was our ticket out once we had unanimously agreed to a sentence. 

And looking around, I felt that we were unqualified. Who were we to decide another person’s fate? It just felt so arbitrary. And justice shouldn’t be arbitrary. 

But I don’t know how else we would do it.

There are parts of our legal system that I think are truly effective. The fact that we had to prove to ourselves, beyond reasonable doubt, that the man on trial was guilty of the charges. That is the measure of guilt vs innocence - to be beyond a reasonable doubt. 

But what’s reasonable? 

And as someone who feels that the prison system is broken, that the amount of people we put behind bars is unreasonable, that the United States has a criminalization culture so deep and ingrained that I’m not sure it can be fixed, it felt dishonest to play my part in it. But we were charged to judge the man based on the law, not based on what we think the law should be. And we were not responsible for the sentencing, which I suppose is a silver lining. 

But maybe that’s just removing yourself from the accountability that comes from handing down a sentence. 

Once we were sequestered, we talked in circles for hours. We spelled out the facts of the case over and over again. We wrote down only the things we could consider truth, and asked each other if that was enough. Was it enough to convict? Was it enough to overpower reasonable doubt? The hours ticked by, the bailiff came in and asked us if he needed to order pizza. We looked at each other and told him yes. We would probably be talking for another hour or more. 

We gave everyone the space to speak. The discussion was honest, it was respectful, it was truly engaging. It was like a puzzle. What can we take as fact - what doesn’t have enough evidence behind it. Which witnesses could we trust, which ones stumbled over their facts so much that we couldn’t take anything they said as truth. 

And it all came down to doubt. Doubt and whether or not we could get behind ever facet of every charge. 

Eventually we did come to a decision. We looked around at each other, at the decision before us, and agreed that we were finally done. We were ushered back into the court room, back to those same chairs we had been in for two days. The sun had gone down, the rest of the court building was empty, and it felt for a moment like the room was an island to itself. The judge read the verdict and then asked us each by name if we agreed with what was written on that piece of paper. 

Our identities were no longer anonymous. Our names were tied to those handful of sentences. To words that would get wrapped into the larger legal system. That would feed into our broken system.

I did not have reasonable doubt. But that doesn’t mean that when I walked out of the court house into the night air, splitting off from the eleven other people whose names I never learned, that my heart was clear. 

[sagoods]

For my dad, on Father’s Day

I remember distinctly the moment I realized you were funny. I’m not sure what I thought you were like before. Contemplative, serious, soft spoken, steady. Where my mother was a rollercoaster through my childhood, always up and down and everywhere in-between, my father was a tree. Constant, but not easily excitable. It was just the three of us, you, me, and Brian, sitting in the kitchen and we were talking about something ridiculous, probably a funny scenario that Brian or I came up with. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, you started ratcheting the joke up to the next level, coming up with more and more ridiculous scenarios as Brian and I howled with laughter. Mom came into the room and I turned to her and told her how I never realized how funny you were. It took me by surprise and I wanted to share it with her, assuming that she must not know that about you either.

There are other moments that stick out to me as I’ve grown up. Little pinpoints of memories where you surprised me. Like how you got so invested in my acting that you bought three long panel mirrors and hung them in our basement for me. I don’t remember asking for them or even considering how they could be useful, but that’s what made them so nice. That you were serious enough about this hobby of mine that you thought through what would be helpful and went out on your own to get them for me. I often snuck to the basement at night when people had gone to bed to practice lines and work on facial expressions for the current show I was in. Just me and my reflection trying to figure out how to be another person. Or the weekend you convinced the whole family to come up for me senior project reading in college, and the fact that you took the time to make the 4 hours drive four times in the course of two days. I’m pretty sure that will forever be in the list of top five nicest moments in my life. The sweet recognition of my family being there to support my artistic endeavors, however silly or small they may be. Especially when paired with the fact that so few of my friends were able to make it. 

I’m not sure I’ll ever stop telling you how nice that was.

It seems to me the times that stick out most to children about their parents are the moments where their individual personalities have the chance to peak out from the parenting exterior. The little times where they are no longer the voice of authority or the ultimate source of knowledge, but a real person. They are allowed to have their own quirks and personality traits, like your ability to seamlessly bounce between falling asleep and jumping out of your skin at movies, the intensity you have in discussing color and art, the sort of goofy disconnected way you swing a tennis racquet, or the earnestly hokey questions you would ask all of us around the dining room table. They were meant to be a foolproof conversation starter, but they often just brought on eye rolls. I remember being defensive of you, even though I thought the questions were weird too. 

“If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” 

Except we all know they were never quite as silly as that.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve appreciated how much easier I find it to talk to you. It’s possible that your conversation style was never meant to connect as well with a child. You always seemed to be on a higher conversational level than I was. All precise language and intense questions. It was why you were such a great resource when I wanted essay help. You have an uncanny way of being able to ask such insightful and interesting questions, even without knowledge of the source material, which helped me find a deeper place to take my essay topics. It’s something that I’ve always admired about you. But as I’ve grown older, I appreciate the one-on-one time we have been able to have. The times we’ve had through high school and beyond, breakfasting at various points in my academic career, were wonderful moments of connection for me. I’ve never been great at diving into deep conversations at a seconds notice, but breakfast with you has always been a nice, languid opportunity for that. And, more often than not, just far too short. There is always so much more for us to talk about.

I’m sorry I can’t be in Boston to spend this day with you today, but know that I am sending you my love all the same.

Happy Father’s Day

[sagoods]

On sushi and being alone

My apartment has recently been stripped of much of its clutter, dog hair, extra kitchen appliances, frisbee apparel and one very large cast iron skillet. They were packed into a car while I was on a work trip and driven back to Massachusetts - without fanfare, and without me there to help pack or wave from the front door as the car drove away. The home I came back to was quiet and empty. 

My brother left things behind - a bed frame, books, a bike hanging from the wall with only one tire, a chin-up bar - but for the most part the apartment is just me now. It has an element of being peaceful and orderly. The apartment I leave for the day is the same one I come back to. The kitchen is clean or dirty because of my own doing. I've settled back into the type of living situation I moved from a year and half ago. It's almost nostalgic, while also being sad. 

I had a harder time adjusting the first time around. The emptiness felt too quiet.

I suppose moving to a new city and settling into a one-bedroom apartment to live alone for the first time in my life was a bigger change than I thought it would be. I spent a lot of time watching television and eating sushi in my apartment. I'm already a bit of a loner - so pair that with the ability to order sushi for delivery, and no one around to yell at me to be social (like my brother proved very good at doing), and you produce an individual who could be found on most evenings tucked away into her pocket of the world alone.

Sushi and television became a thing to look forward to during the week. It carried me through all of 30 Rock and Battlestar Galactica, as well as my first several months on the job. There was one sushi place, doing terrible business it seemed, that would deliver to me. They became such a staple in my week - as I seemed to order from them on at least a weekly basis - that they started to know me by name. I would call to order sushi and about halfway through the order, the man on the phone would go "is this Sarah?" and I would begrudgingly acknowledge that it was. 

I had my first date outside of college, and basically second date ever, at that sushi restaurant. The two of us sitting by the window of an otherwise empty restaurant. I should have known the relationship wouldn't last when the boy told me later that he got food poisoning that night. 

It was comforting that this restaurant was there for me. I knew I could order online right before I left work and it would get to my house around the same time I did. When that same boy with the food poisoning asked if he could come over to see me, and surprised me by telling me he didn't think it was working out - and I was reeling from being ripped out of my established friend group and tossed aside by the person I had grown closest to in the first couple of months of being a real adult - sushi and television were reliably there for me. 

After months and months of patronage so loyal it could be considered embarrassing, the sole delivery guy, who I had almost developed a rapport with by this point, gave me a gift certificate to the restaurant for being such a loyal customer. I was touched.

Two years into living in Madison, my brother moved out here and we decided to rent a place together. I packed up my little one-bedroom and moved across town to what could reasonably be called an "adult apartment" with a garage, a fireplace, and a roomy kitchen. We bought a tree, a fancy kitchen table, an apple tv, and a dog. It was a true upgrade in living my situation - but it tragically lacked sushi. 

I was no longer in their delivery range. 

I told the manager and he said he would make an exception for me - but after ordering like this a few times, I felt guilty making the delivery guy trek so far. I felt needy and demanding. My ordering habits tapered off as the weeks and months passed.

Eventually enough time went by that I felt I could no longer order from them because then I would have to explain where I had been. Why hadn't I ordered sushi in so long? Did I find a new and better sushi restaurant to replace them? Had I been living abroad? Did I forswear modern technology - giving up my phone and internet? I thought- if I stopped calling forever, at least they could assume I had moved far away, but that I still loved them. That I had found an exciting new job elsewhere and I didn't have time to inform them of my life change. That it wasn't personal, and if I could keep ordering from them I would. I didn't want to pick up the phone and have them say "is this Sarah? it's been awhile." And I didn't want to pick up the phone and have them not recognize me at all. 

And so time went by. My gift card from them sitting on my dresser gathering dust. Like a memory. 

I was driving around recently and passed by the restaurant. I looked over at it fondly, thinking of all of the good times we had had together - and I saw that while the name was still on the building, there was a For Rent sign in the window. It turns out that while I wasn't looking, they had closed up shop.

It seems that everyone leaves, eventually.

[sagoods]

Words

It took me more than thirty minutes to not say I love you.

It was Christmas- or at least it was fake Christmas for us before we left Madison to go to our respective childhood houses for the holiday. We decided, that first year, it would be our tradition to stay in and eat Chinese food and open presents on the 23rd. I felt mildly bad about this chosen date because it’s the same date as my brother’s birthday, but I figured he’d forgive me. We watched The Snowman, which both of us had seen as kids, and we sat on the floor of my apartment under the tree that I went out to buy thinking it would be from a real tree farm, but ended up being from a greenhouse that sold pre-cut trees.

It had been eight months since we first met on the porch of his apartment building before meandering along a bike path into the city. I had bone marrow for the first time, worked an above average amount of nerdy television shows into the conversation, and awkwardly paid for 37% of the check, give or take.

It had been five months since we road-tripped to Michigan to spend an extended weekend with my family, all of who he was meeting for the first time. It felt quick, but living half the country away from my family meant that there weren’t a lot of opportunities for this sort of meeting. He was roped into pictures and I wasn’t sure what to make of the permanence family photos gave to a relationship that was only a couple of months old. 

I guess I’m not exactly one to lose myself in a relationship. 

It had been three months since he had seen me perform for the first time, playing the sassy side character part that I often seem to land. After the show I came out with the other actors and scanned the crowd nervously for him. He was nowhere to be seen and as I spotted another friend I joked that he didn’t know theater etiquette and had gone home, though I was a little disappointed. A minute or two later I saw him come back into the school carrying flowers. He had told me he looked up what to do on the internet, but didn’t know how to send flowers to my dressing room. I laughed because we were in a high school auditorium and the dressing room was a crowded affair and not a safe environment for flowers.

It had been two month since he had shown up one day to tell me that he was taking me on a date to celebrate our 6 month anniversary. I reminded him that the date was not the one we had agreed upon - as we had had a very pointed conversation about the date to pick, but he waved that away, as he had decided before that point that we should really count the first day we met. He gave me a little tardis that would light up and spin when I got a text. I didn’t give him anything because I didn’t know the anniversary celebration was happening, but I think he was okay with that.

The words had buzzed around my head without ever being said. Eight months is by all accounts a pretty languid pace, but I guess he wasn’t one to lose himself in a relationship either.

There was a decision made sometime during that night that I wanted to say it, but every upcoming moment seemed wrong. The words felt foreign in my head, even though they were so easily used with family and friends. 

I told him I wanted to tell him something, and then couldn’t do it. He looked at me expectantly and when I started several sentences and only got about a word out of each one he started to get worried. I had to assure him it was a good thing. But sometimes good things are even harder to say than bad ones.

I kept half-referencing that scene in Love Actually where the guy holds up signs to his best friend’s wife proclaiming his love without saying a word. It wasn’t much of a hint of what I was trying to say because he had never seen the movie, and I wasn’t exactly describing it very elaborately. 

But I’ve always felt better at expressing myself in writing. There’s a power in being able to carefully select your words, composing them on your own, and then sending them out into the world. Especially when your words hold power and frighten you. You allow yourself to second-guess and work up the courage beforehand. And then it affords you the chance to lose the courage afterwards as your words make their way to someone else.

I started and failed to say the sentence a million times over. He kept saying he had to leave if I wasn’t actually going to tell him and I kept wanting him to stay. But the words never came.

After an embarrassingly long time my hints got a little less vague and he caught on to what I was stumbling around. And just to prove that he is the calm and collected one between the two of us he stopped me and told me he loved me.

And all I could do was nod.

[sagoods]

Marriage and Reality Television

There is a new reality tv show out there that some folks may have heard of called “Married at First Sight.” The premise might be obvious from the title, but it’s such a ridiculous concept that I might as well lay it out for you. I will preface this with the fact that I have never actually seen an episode of this show, but I have seen a promo video and had a friend explain the show in some detail to me recently, so clearly I’m an expert now on it.

The premise is that there are a number of applicants who have yet to find that special someone and are willing to have strangers pair them up with the hope of finding love. The show then employs different professionals (two psychologists, a sexologist, and a spiritualist) to create three perfect couples out of the available applicants. Pretty standard fare when compared to lots of other love-based reality tv shows up to that point. But of course, the show has to distinguish itself, and thus raises the stakes. The pairs of folks must then agree to get married without ever having met each other. The first time they see each other is right there in the church, a moment before they both say “I do.”

While the show confounds me, I can understand how it came about in our current culture of both online dating and easily attained fame. The concept of the show is so ridiculous that it almost seems like a spoof- a show that would be proposed on 30 Rock as a grab for viewers on a fading network. But at the same time, we live during a time where more often than not people are turning to outside forces to find love. Online dating is built on the concept that you input data on yourself, others do the same, and then a magical algorithm spins in the background and produces perfect matches for you. And hey, who am I to get down on it? My current relationship of over 2 years was started in the anonymity of an online dating site. It was a way for someone as picky as me to churn through tons of first dates to find someone I felt like I clicked with.

But there was still trial and error there, and that’s where I am baffled by this show. Because when you get down to it, people aren’t equations. Two individuals can look perfect on paper and have nothing to talk about in real life. In fact, I met up with lots of guys that okcupid thought I was 85-96% compatible with, and our dates were perfectly pleasant, but I knew pretty quickly that there wouldn’t be a second one. And the relationship I ended up in only had a 74% compatibility chance according to the background calculations. If that percent showed up as a grade for me in school I would be appalled, but he was funny and seemed nice so I thought what the hell. And probably only halfway through the date I knew I wanted there to be a second one – going so far as to text him about meeting up again by the time I got home that night. I hear that isn’t cool to do, but I never claimed to be cool.

So while I can get behind a show about two strangers trying to find love through a refined version of matchmaking, I cannot understand the plunge into marriage before even meeting the other person. To me it puts a casualness on the institution that makes me uncomfortable. I know modern divorce rates are high and marriages come and go, but in my mind we should still be expecting the decision to last for a lifetime – even if it doesn’t.

And the couples on this show are so young. In fact, none of the individuals are older than 33 years old. It’s as if they have all embraced an unhealthy combination of the Disney fairytale of love at first sight, along with the common movie trope that if you don’t snatch up a mate while you are young and hot, you are doomed forever to spinsterhood. You know- the one where the loveless woman feels like she will never find love now that she has reached the old age of, well, whatever Hollywood deems the right age to be a successful career-woman, while still looking hot when she ultimately ends up in her bra. She has put her career first and now can’t find a non-married, normal man to save her life. I know the trope exists, but I wouldn’t think that people would embrace it enough to get entangled in this show while they are still, for the most part, in their twenties.

And yet, at the age of 25, I concede that I am firmly immersed in the time of life where people get engaged left and right The topic casually comes up quite often when I am chatting with friends. And part of me thinks it makes perfect sense for this to be the time of life for that to happen. By this time you are out of college, hypothetically started off on a career path of some sort and starting to solidify what you want with your life. And if you are lucky enough to find someone who enriches your life, you might as well agree to stumble along the path of early adulthood together. The next major adult milestones typically revolve around things you do within the umbrella of couplehood anyway. But at the same time – marriage has the permanence that pretty much no other major decision you make during this time of life has (I’m not including having children in this line of thought because I cannot currently comprehend that in my life). Most other decisions you make – jobs you take, cities you move to etc, are editable ones. In fact, that’s often the point of your twenties, to make a lot of different decisions about what you want with your life, with the hope that you find one that works for you. But if you do it right, and I hope that I do, the decision of marriage will last you the rest of your life.

This is perhaps why more and more people my age are cohabitating first instead of getting engaged. It’s the chance to make a major change to your relationship, while allowing the decision to remain editable. And while I understand the trend and realize it makes a lot of sense for couples, I’m not sure I would love the way it puts the relationship in a bit of a stalled holding pattern. Living together gets you to the point of making lots of major decisions together, with none of the inherent permanence that comes with marriage. And at that point- what is even changing once you get engaged? I could see couples living together and never tying the knot because, at that point, why bother with all that hassle?

Maybe I’m influenced by a slightly more traditional view of marriage (though let’s be clear now, I’m a socially liberal gal from the East Coast and my traditional view only covers the concept and not the types of individuals allowed to partake), but I think I would want a sense of risk in the next step of my relationship. I don’t want to just take the path of least resistance. I want to actively make that choice, despite the fact that it will impact the rest of my life. I want the choice to allow for some scary uncertainty, and I want to be able to navigate that uncertainty with someone else I completely trust and who is as committed as I am to sticking it out with me. Because ultimately the choice of marriage can be taken as lightly as knowing absolutely nothing about the person you are marrying, but isn’t that a much scarier proposition?

[sagoods]

25

I watched North by Northwest last night with my family. For those who haven't seen it, it's about a well-meaning businessman (Cary Grant) who stumbles into the life of a spy, quite accidentally. There is also a female love interest, because of course there is, played by Eva Marie Saint. When you are introduced to her she is effortlessly composed, sultry, forward, and seems to be constantly ahead of the action (compared to our poor blundering leading man). She is also a self-proclaimed 25 year-old. 

Now watching her character tell Cary Grant's that she was 25 hit me weirdly in a variety of ways. Mainly in the fact that she didn't look, sound, or act like a 25-year-old. Or at least, she doesn't look, sound, or act like me. I was vindicated when I found out (through IMDBing her) that she was actually in her 30s when shooting this movie, but the fact that she was written as she was, as a 25-year-old, still stuck with me.

Now I could go into a whole spiel about the Hollywood complex of pairing younger women with older men, and how weird I find it that they didn't just have her be her actual age in the film- but that's a rant for another day. What I was struck by was how self-assured this woman was supposed to be at my age. Now, I know that the film takes place in another era, and maybe everyone grew up faster and were better adults by their mid-twenties then, but that doesn't help with the fact that I feel like I'm reaching the age where big adult milestones happen and I'm supposed to be a little more proactive at getting to them.

I know the subject of millennials reaching adulthood and not knowing how to navigate has been run into the ground at this point. That isn't really what I'm trying to talk about here. It isn't that I'm a floundering mess right now. I have all of the things I’m supposed to have by this point- a job, a boyfriend, a place to live, responsibilities I don’t shirk (for the most part). So far I've been plugging along and checking all of the boxes that I'm supposed to have figured out by now. But that doesn't mean I know what I want with my life. 

And I guess that was what struck me with this woman. She had the odd self-assured disposition, at least in her first scene, of someone who saw an encounter and knew how to approach it to get exactly what she wanted to out of it. I know part of the act was just the fact that we are in movie-land and action has to move forward and characters are allowed to meet and fall in love in an evening and then go on with their lives. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm now at the age where I'm supposed to at least have some sort of bearing on what kind of career I want to end up in and what kind of life I want for myself. I'm no longer the awkward 18 year-old who casually approached college without knowing what I wanted to get out of it. I stumbled into a major then, and I stumbled into a job after it, but I probably shouldn't allow myself to stumble through my entire life.

But stumble I do, and I haven't been making strides to change it anytime soon. Because unlike the millions of people who seem to know how to charter their own lives, who see that end goal and then line up opportunities in order to get there, that has never been the way I approach things. I’m a bit of a reactionary person in that way. I go along until an opportunity presents itself and then I go for it, without a lot of hemming and hawing about the consequences and future implications of my decisions. It makes me feel a little stationary up until that moment of change. I've been plugging along with the same company while one of my best friends who started work along with me redefined her career expectations about 20 different times, and has now finally settling on something specific and concrete that she wants. I admire how proactively she went about her search, while knowing that I probably will never approach my own career in the same way.

I suppose for now I’ll continue with the same strategy I’ve been employing since I've casually found myself in adulthood. Keep doing what I’m doing as long as I’m enjoying it, and once that runs out, I’ll look for something new. In my mind the world is too full of strange opportunities for me to be able to pin one down now anyway. It isn’t necessarily the strategy that will help me know what I’ll be doing 5, 10, or 15 years out, but I think that works for me. If I left no room for spontaneity in my life, I think I’d end up getting pretty bored. And that sounds like the worst fate of all.

[sagoods]

Our dog may have picked up a bad drinking habit over Thanksgiving. The holidays can do that to you.

[sagoods]

More Absurd Diagnoses

So the holidays are here! Which is always very exciting for me, but I've heard they can be crazy for other people. Lots of family, lots of stress, lots of booze... it can lead to heightened situations and also lots of injuries. Or so I've been told. Apparently the ER is a crazy place during the holidays. So, in preparation for these upcoming days I went through the list of ICD-9 codes again and picked out some (completely real) medical conditions/diagnoses that you can be glad don't apply to you:

Fear of cotton or cotton balls

Fear of activities in public (activities is pretty vague, but this sounds pretty debilitating)

Fear of appearing ridiculous (aren't we all?)

Fear of empty streets

Fear of feathers

Fear of hospitals (which is just a terrible thing to have to get diagnosed with in a hospital I would think)

Fear of oncoming retirement (don't tell my mom about this one)

Fear of saying the wrong thing

Fear of surgical masks (I wonder if they have to sedate you before you go into the operating room for this condition)

Fear of sweating

Fear of writing in public

  Accidentally caught in drying rack (how?)

Accidentally caught in letter box (only diagnosable in England?)

Accidentally knocked down while boxing (is it really an accident then?)

Accidentally struck by falling street furniture (what is street furniture? And where is it falling from?)

Accidentally struck by stationary object (but how???)

So anyway, there you have it. Some odd diagnoses you can be glad you don't have while you are trying to suffer through your Uncle Larry's mildly racist jokes or the fact that someone ate the last slice of pie before you could have any. 

Happy holidays everyone

[sagoods]

Love is Company

I’m a bit less than a week out from opening night of another show here in Madison. The current show is Company and if you don’t know it, it’s a delightful little musical about a single guy and all of his married friends. The story is told as a series of vignettes with several different couples who have very different relationships and illustrate Bobby's thoughts and worries about marriage.

Now, I’m not married and thus can’t really weigh in on the institution, but watching this musical every night makes me appreciate the commitment there. There is insanity and pettiness and confusion between the couples, but there is also tenderness and understanding and an undefinable connection, and it's those little moments that get me every night. What I think the show is so great at highlighting is the difference between Bobby's relationship with everyone and their relationships with each other. What is increasingly clear about Bobby (our single guy) as the show progresses is that he is much more a spectator than a participant in the action of the musical. He's in every scene, but rarely is the scene about him. He's the unassuming witness to the crazy drama happening around him. He is comfortable with his relationships with his married friends because he can be there when they need an outlet or someone to come over for some fun, but he doesn't have to put up with the tough aspects of the relationships they are in. He's a witness to their highs and lows, but ultimately is also a stranger to it.

One of my favorite songs of the show is a bittersweet reflection on marriage sung by a few of the husbands. After spending a night with one of the couples (Harry and Sarah), Bobby asks Harry if he is ever sorry if he got married. The answer he gets is:

You're always sorry You're always grateful You're always wondering what might have been Then she walks in

And still you're sorry And still you're grateful And still you wonder And still you doubt And she goes out

Everything's different Nothing's changed Only maybe slightly rearranged

You're sorry-grateful Regretful-happy Why look for answers Where none occur?

You always are What you always were Which has nothing to do with All to do with her

The song continues, and all of the lyrics are poignantly conflicting. But I think this song is a beautiful description of marriage, or how I imagine marriage must be. That a deep relationship like that is something that you can always be both grateful and sorry for. That every great decision you make in your life, especially the ones involving another person, is a complex entity that will never be fully good or bad. It lives in the contradiction that you can be glad you took your life in that direction, while at the same time wondering if there is something better out there that you never explored.

By the end of the show that's what Bobby has to decide. If he wants to keep drifting, unattached, or if he's ready to make a commitment and take all the scary, confusing, and rewarding uncertainty that comes with it. He has to make the choice to want something, and admit that he's ready to stop being a bystander to his life. His friends are there to encourage him and let him know that he shouldn't be afraid that it won't be perfect, the only thing he should be afraid of really is that it won't be.

  Suffice it to say, I'm excited for opening night next week. I think this is a really special show, and the cast is absolutely sensational.

[sagoods]

Nostalgia Senses

I had the radio on in my car last week. I don't normally do the radio. I hate ads and am addicted to my own music, but it was a lazy morning and I didn't feel like putting in the effort to plug in my iPhone. The song that came up almost immediately was this gem by the Black Eyed Peas.

I've Gotta Feeling is not, per se, what you would call a good song. It doesn't have particularly intelligent lyrics, nor is the melody very original or interesting. I mean, come on, the title isn't even grammatically correct. But dammit if I don't get a little bit happy when I hear that song because it pulls me into very distinct memories of spending my junior year in South Africa. We had a mix CD that we played basically anytime we went out, and this song was featured prominently on it. Possibly as track number one. It reminds me of getting dressed up and then cramming four or five of us into the backseat of a car and driving unsteadily off over huge speed bumps and through the security gate of Wits University. It gave a lot of wonderful possibility to every night out, which I suppose is what the song is trying to do. Normally I'm too jaded to give into that stuff, but I have a soft spot for this one.

Sounds and smells - are there any other things that can instantly transport you somewhere so completely? It's why anytime I smell paint drying I think back to the kids theater I participated in from kindergarten through middle school. They had one stage that rose a tiny bit in height every year from the layers of paint smoothed over it for every production. In my head the walls and floor keep creeping towards each other as scores of children stumbled through the likes of Roald Dahl and EB White, from Shakespeare to Oklahoma, until eventually you will need a ladder to get up onto the stage, and it will only have room for a two person show. A simplified Waiting for Godot perhaps. How symbolic to set a piece with two men suspended in time on a stage that literally shows the passing of time through the uncomfortable dimensions of its space.

What strikes me about these types of memories is that they hit you so unexpectedly. You are going about your day not even thinking about these points in time and then you stumble across something that pulls you back. A specific candle that is exactly like the smell from your grandparent's house or a song that has the ability to encompass everything awkward you remember about middle school dances.

Side note: for me that was Stairway to Heaven because it was the last song of every dance we ever had. Know what is a terrible song for a middle school dance? Stairway to Heaven. It's long and half of it seems like a slow song and half picks up so that you are awkwardly swaying along to something going much faster than you would like. But you can't break away now because you've committed to slow dancing and in middle school that's a big deal.

But anyway, what interests me the most about these tiny sense moments is that there is no indication at the time of the memory that it has suddenly become hardcoded with that trigger, and you won't know it has until one day you come across something to unlock it. 

I wish, however, that memories could be plugged in at will. There are times that I want to link up a moment in such a way that I can hear something and suddenly be back there. Easy. But often the memories I want to keep around are the ones that are simple moments, unattached. Creating a silly video with a friend, or getting a surprise visit from my family, or just sitting in a car and chatting as miles and miles of orange-yellow fields wave past my window and the day is just a beautiful blur. 

But I guess the brain is just an unpredictable thing in that way.

[sagoods]

Last OOO excuses. I moved offices today to be closer to the folks I work with. Sad day

[sagoods]

The Countdown

By my last count, there are about two and a half weeks of time between me and a sudden change of relationship status quo. This is also known as the fun process of turning something that has previously been really easy and amazing into something requiring a lot more effort, a lot more concentration, a lot more scheduling, and a lot more flying around in airplanes.

18 days to be exact.

I feel really lame blogging about this actually, but you'll have to forgive me. I skipped this phase in middle school and high school. I was too busy being a complete and total spaz to bother with normal things like "having crushes" and "dating" and "making out in the backseat of your parents' car before curfew." Is that what the kids do these days? Maybe. I'm trying to wade through my adult version of it and I'm not sure how well I'm doing. But hey, I'm trying here. 

But seriously, I seem to have some kind of condition where I ask advice from anyone who will stop long enough to ask me how life is. I just had a doctor's appointment and she asked me how the year was going (we only see each other once a year, we have to do sweeping summaries) and I brought it up while barely talking about anything else that has been going on in my life. I'm pretty sure she was actually only asking about my physical health, but I can't seem to stop sharing this life fact of mine with anyone/everyone. And then of course she mentioned that her current relationship had a period of long distance and she thinks it's doable. I had to forcibly stop myself from asking for advice after that, because I figured maybe she wanted to, I don't know, check my blood pressure or make sure I still had reflexes or something. But anytime I learn that someone has experienced a long distance relationship I immediately have to turn the conversation into an in-depth look into their past (or current) relationship and have them talk through what worked and did not work. It's a condition I tell you. I should have gotten her to prescribe me something for it.

And it turns out, lots of things work and don't work. And the fickle nature of people is that what works for one person is terrible for another. I've talked to people who loved long distance and those who blamed it for breaking up their relationship. But people do not hesitate to give me advice when asked for it.

I've been given a lot of prescriptive advice. Talk every day, don't talk every day. Talk on the phone, write letters, write emails, text each other constantly, Skype. Talk even when you don't have a ton of time, wait until the moment feels right. Make sure you are carving out time in your lives for each other, but don't just wait by the phone for him to call you, keep living your life. You do you. (etc) And while in my head I know there is not a right answer to this question, I can't help myself from asking. 

It's like I'm cramming for a personality test. It's massive and important and could decide some things about my life, so naturally I've been trying to prepare. However, my strategy for preparing has been to ask everyone else how they would answer the questions if they were going to take the test. Or if they have already taken the test, how did they answered it then. Was there anything they would have answered differently, given what they know now? But you can't take a personality test with someone else's answers. And you can't actually prepare for it in any way except get some rest the night before and hope for the best. I assume in this fictional land where we all take lots of personality tests, falling asleep while taking the exam is frowned upon.

But I'm a planner, so I can't seem to stop. I'm great at making lists. To-do lists and I go way back. Not that I necessarily get everything done on my lists, but I like to see them there as a reminder of the things I still need to do. I like stepping back and looking at everything that needs to happen so I won't be surprised. Not that I don't like surprises, I do. I'm not completely devoid of spontaneity. But when there is something real on the line, not just some crazy Saturday brunch plans, I like to know what's up. 

Unfortunately the only way to plan for something like this is to make sure you are both on the same page, buy a few plane tickets, make sure you have working phones/computers, and hope for the best.

I'm very cautiously optimistic. I'm hoping that doesn't bite me in the ass.

18 days.

[sagoods]

How Enthusiasm Won Me An Apartment

When I was 9 I saw Annie for the first time. I feel like musical theater girls all have a similar experience centered around Annie. It’s something about seeing someone your age up there in lights and thinking, I can do that too! In fact, I’m amazing and super talented and too bad I didn’t go to that audition, because I would so totally be up there right now if I was! (Nine-year olds obviously think exclusively in exclamation points). Now that Matilda exists, there’s another show for girls to watch at an impressionable young age, but for me, it was Annie.

After seeing that show in its traveling run to Boston, I was convinced I too was born to play that role. So much so that I would belt The Sun Will Come Out throughout my house for weeks on end (sorry family), and outside in my yard. All of my neighbors definitely knew of my Broadway ambitions. They loved me for it… or not (the more likely option).

The Boston Globe had auditions listed in their calendar section every Thursday. Wait, do they still do this? I haven’t lived in Boston for awhile, maybe they stopped. I had no idea this existed until a fourth grade friend told me about them. They were having auditions for extras in the touring company of The Wizard of Oz and they were looking for kids my age to play a few munchkins in one of the shows in Boston. She told me she was planning on going and invited me along with her. And obviously this was going to be my big break, so how could I not go?

Now, if I’m going to be honest with you, I can’t remember a ton about this audition. There were a lot of children. I mean a lot of them. We got numbers pinned on our shirts and were taught a song and dance and went up in groups. I think that’s how it happened. I’ve always been kind of weird about auditions. I don’t get as debilitatingly nervous as some people do, and this particular audition displayed this more than any other audition I may have ever had. I was so hyped up about the whole experience that I was practically hopping up and down, and I was certainly much more enthusiastic and outgoing than normal. After I performed with my group of kids, I was approached by a man with a clipboard and was asked my name again and my phone number. I took it as a good sign, but wasn’t about to start celebrating or anything. I was actually a fairly practical kid. I mean, I knew I was super talented and totally deserved to get it (I was destined for broadway after all), but I also saw how many kids were there, so I put my chances at 50/50.

A day or two passed and I heard nothing. It was heartbreaking. I mean, a man in a clipboard talked to me. Clipboards always represent power and importance! The casting men were fools! How could they waste such an obvious talent?? But then, a few days later (an eternity in nine-year-old time, let’s be serious) the phone rang and my mom called me into her office. Some man on the other line was telling me that all my Broadway dreams were coming true and I would get to be on the Wang Theater stage for a whole night with the cast of the Wizard of Oz. It was possibly one of the most exciting moments of my life up to that point. There was likely some jumping around my house after I heard the news. Unfortunately my friend did not get cast, and after that it became clear to me that we were actually just acquaintances and would probably not be anything more than that. It was cool, people can’t always handle others around them gaining fame and fortune, as I clearly was about to.

The night of the show I arrived at the theater and got fitted with a costume for the emerald city and got my makeup done. The woman who played Glinda came over to say hi to the three of us who were chosen to be in the show that night and she even spent some time teaching me the song that was sung during our scene. Being backstage was overwhelming and exciting and large and somehow also less magical than I expected. There was the Wicked Witch in full costume sitting in a folding chair in the wings, and behind her were some men on headsets waiting to fly actors, and off to the side a few chorus members were standing casually watching the stage, completely out of character. After the show I got a playbill signed by the leads in the cast, including Mickey Rooney, and I got to meet the three dogs who played Toto. Also, very importantly, I got to exit through the stage door. It was clearly a whirlwind night, and I believe I still had school the next day.

Why am I telling this story? Well, partly because I’m currently watching the Tony Awards and it just reminds me of the loveliness of live theater, the energy and beauty that comes with that community. And partly because my apartment hunt recently reminded me of this experience. See, at the time I was convinced the reason I was cast in the very important role of munchkin number 17 was because of my insane talent. But let’s be real, the show was doing a very cool thing about introducing a few neighborhood kids to the wonderful world of the theater, but they weren’t trying to find the next child star. They were trying to find a few kids who seemed like they might have stage presence and wouldn’t freeze up once they got out there under the lights. My insane enthusiasm was enough proof for whoever was stuck with casting these extras that I would be okay on stage.

And sometimes enthusiasm is kind of all you really need. I mean, talent is good, obviously, but if you show enough enthusiasm for something, I feel like you are already putting yourself out there in way that people really appreciate and sometimes even reward. Okay, to be fair, I only have one other example to back this claim up, but it still feels true to me. Last month I was desperately searching for apartments. I’ve been at the same place for two years now and I kind of want a change of scenery. However, throughout my search it felt like all of the places I went to see were getting snatched up before I even got done with the tours. It was super stressful even though I knew in the back of my head that it was like 0.01% of the stress that comes with finding an apartment in an actual city, like NYC. Seriously, how do you guys do it? I think I might have some kind of stress seizure and die. Maybe.

One particular townhouse came my way (via craigslist) that seemed absolutely perfect. I mean, two car garage, 2.5 baths, wood floors, fireplace, and (split two ways) less than what I’m currently paying perfect. But they set up appointments for probably half a dozen other people on the same day and I was very worried about my chances for getting the place. So, when I came for my showing, I heaped all of my enthusiasm on the person showing the place, going so far as telling him I would consider signing a two year lease rather than a one year, and would do so right there and then if that was kosher (it wasn’t). I almost promised him the head of medusa and gold spun out of hay, but I did stop myself before getting to that. I mean, the place is nice, but not nice enough to risk blinding myself and dying, you know?

About two weeks later, the night I was planning on mailing in a deposit for another place and give up on this apartment, the guy renting it called me in the supermarket and offered it to me. I thought at the time it was because of my stellar credit score and awesome references or something, but it turns out later that it was mainly because I was so over the top about the place that they decided I would most likely not turn it down when they offered to me. I would have thought you needed more than that, but apparently not.

Though I hear in NYC, it is common practice to promise away your firstborn child for a halfway decent apartment in a good location, so there’s that. I mean, depending on the situation, enthusiasm can really only get you so far.

[sagoods]

Shakespeare appreciate post. I'm so excited for Joss Whedon's Much Ado to come to theaters tomorow!!

[sagoods]

This is my friend Jon Fuller. He's going to be a rock star. 

...or you know, the same thing but with quieter, more contemplative music.

Jon. Come visit me in Madison. Music is very big here.