sophie

blah blah blag

[sophho]

on most nights, but not for a while, because we’ve been out of town for a while, one of us will cook dinner while the other one hovers around nervously trying to help. In the case that I cook, I’ll do so, sometimes asking Nathan to make rice or grab me a bowl or could you please grab that thing in the upper cupboard, thanks. we’ll eat on the couch and watch a show or we’ll eat at the table and watch each other and we gripe about our days. we’ll leave our bowls on the table and then sit again on the couch, or I’ll lie on my side and nathan will sit down near the edge and I’ll curl my body around his for a moment and maybe fall asleep for half an hour as he plays video games or watches a show that would be too stressful for me to watch if I were awake. After a while he’ll wake me up again and then we’ll clean up, pack our lunch, prep breakfast and then go to our bed and actually sleep. 

it is so interesting to feel so safe in a place with a person, because who knew? I had hints here and there that it might happen but it’s different to read and read it and another thing to fall asleep next to someone and know that they will try their utmost to stay still until you wake up. 

When I was still an intern, Margaret Sullivan once told us at a work lunch - in answer to a question from a female intern on how she balanced work and life - that she didn’t, and that in fact, “you can have it all - just not at the same time.” What that means is you can have a family, you can have a career, but when you kick ass at work maybe you’ll think about being a better parent, or when you’re taking care of your kid you’ll yearn for work. It is a balance that when she spoke about it, all the women in the room leaned forward because they assume that is their reality, while the eyes of the men politely glazed over. Caretakers versus the ones they care for; women who, on the cusp of their career, really do have to think about what it’ll be like to have a family years ahead of when they do. 

But to have it all, all at the same time. If we didn’t have it all - a family, or companionship; work; social life; friends - at the same time, would it matter, or even count as it being all? It seems a confirmation, if not having “it all at the same time”, that there are discrete stages in a woman’s life where she does one thing but not the other. Observe: ages 23 to 30 - career Sophie. Ages 30-35: married Sophie balances career. Ages 35 on: mother Sophie. Could mother, married, career be the same me, at the same time? 

I hardly let my mind jump that far ahead very often because I think I owe it to myself to be 23. And to be new and inexperienced and figure out what exactly I want to do and if I’m okay with changing it. Work has been good and it challenges me. I recently got promoted which is dope. I clown around with my coworkers and am able to talk about things with more authority and feel more and more in my skin every day. 

I miss California and I think that is okay. I miss my friends who are far away and I know that is okay too. It feels good to stretch my toes and lay down my own roots in D.C., even though I’m set on not being here forever. It’s nice to feel settled in a place far from home because it takes away the fear of leaving. 

And when I walk to the bus and ride it back home after a long day at work, and I go home and eat dinner with Nathan and lie down on the couch with him, how can I not feel like I have it all, at least right now? 

[sophho]

life lately

life lately is a lot a lot of work and what that means is that I spend most of my days staring at numbers and data and doing analysis and talking with my coworkers about ideas and strategy and realize day in and day out that I don’t know that much, but that I am ready to learn a lot more and that’s exciting, if not exhausting, but I’m sure life will always be a mixture of the both, always 

had a sit down with the managing editor and he’s happy with my work, teases me a lot about not being intimidating enough but I know it’s in good fun and really, I am getting there. I am getting to the point to be able to say authoritatively that I know some things and I know these things well. The Post is very much pushing me to grow and it feels good to be in a place where I realize I will always be the least experienced in the room. It’s humbling and it’s fun. 

life lately is also a lot of running around and trying new things and trying to be with people as much as possible. nathan and I joined a soccer league (social, not competitive) so that means a lot of fun running around on the weekends and playing a sport that I haven’t touched in five years. We play on the mall, so it’s just about the most D.C. thing we could do, but it’s something nice too, when you can play some silly sports game in an alcove next to the Lincoln memorial, and then take the metro to eat cuban food right after. Nathan sprained his ankle last week though so that’s not been the best.

I spend so little of my time writing nowadays. So much of my time is spent doing other internet things or texting my faraway friends in some wild gambit to stay clued in their lives. long distance friendships are really hard and they hurt sometime but I feel okay for the most part about it. 

We cook food almost every night and Nathan and I will take turns cooking and cleaning and the other day after we showered we had a deep discussion about the effectiveness of our drain cleaner and it was about the most domestic thing I could have imagined talking about age 23. 

In July I’m going to his father’s wedding and then later I’m going to meet his entire family at a family reunion so that’s a thing and I’m thinking of it as something that happens at July and that doesn’t affect my life now 

I think a lot about people and past and the exact emotions I felt this time last year - lots of nostalgia and sadness and wistfulness, as if something was always squeezing my heart - but now I feel completely...fine? As if everything is where it’s supposed to be? As if work and my life and my relationship are exactly where they should be and it feels settled and good and natural. 

I’m surprised that I’m here at 23 but I’m excited to think of where I could be when I’m 24 or 25 or 26. Wouldn’t it be cool to move to a bigger apartment so I could adopt a dog? Or if I could move to New York with Nathan? Or if I could move into a house and paint its door red? Or go to France next year with Nathan and take him to Paris to get sassed by my grandma or to the south so we can eat oysters with my uncle? 

living with a significant other is a lot of fun too, more fun than I would have expected. It’s fun to pal around with someone all the time and when that someone is Nathan it’s extra fun. I get surprised sometimes with how natural and good it all feels, because I was used to something much less healthy in past instances. But it’s good - he is good, and I am good, and life is good. Surprisingly a lot goes into making that value judgment - that things are good. Life lately is good, thanks. 

[sixtinedano]

[sophho]

2016: 

even though most things in my life have changed, I’ve found it harder and harder to actually write about how I feel about anything. I don’t know if this is because I just think it’s less and less important for me to turn to writing as a way to understand my emotions, but it’s more likely that 2016 was a year of big changes that the small changes - the shifts in my mood, the memories I might fixate on - are manageable in comparison. There were a lot of nice things in 2016 for me, although in every political or global sense 2016 was a dumpster fire that kept on burning. And I hate to take a selfish or inward view, but there were bright moments that I am proud of from this year. If 2015 was a year of personal growth, 2016 was a year of seeing how far I was willing to push myself. And I am pleasantly surprised to find that I have plenty more runway to speed down for 2017 and beyond. Here are some of the nice things of 2016. 

I graduated UC Berkeley. It was scary and plagued me with nostalgia but ultimately sitting with my best friends in that stadium and realizing that it was all over was something special. 

I found a home in my friends and in myself. I found myself looking forward to the quiet, found it easier and easier to walk around without having music blasting in my ears. It became easier to sink into my thoughts.

I followed the itch that told me to get out of California, and moved to Washington D.C. for an internship at the Washington Post. Midway through the summer, they told me they wanted to hire me. A month later, they hired me. 

I moved permanently to Washington D.C. Three months in, my boyfriend Nathan moved in with me. 

I live in a cozy sunlit one-bedroom apartment with Nathan and we spend our days cooking soups and going to markets and walking around D.C.,  a city we both know we don’t want to be in forever, and we talk about what color we want to paint the door of our future house. We talk in bits of pieces of a future that we can imagine together down the line, and it feels good and right and natural. i fall asleep on the couch next to him almost every night and he’ll gently wake me up so we can sleep in our actual bed with its yellow sheets. 

I feel less unsure about calling people out when I believe they are wrong. I feel like 2016 was a year in which I could fully steer myself, and it feels good. 

I feel thankful for all that I learned this past year and every person who gave me more love and joy that I could have ever imagined. So, thank you thank you thank you. I’ll try to write more in 2017, but I’m trying to stay off my computer in the future. Thinking about making things and reading more books and cooking more soups and cuddling with Nathan and persuading him to adopt a cat. But perhaps that will wait for 2018. 

[sophho]

Keep reading

[sophho]

2015 ^ 

[kkinokko]

anemones

[sophho]

Life updates: 

- my move to D.C. is now semi-permanent. got hired on Wednesday by The Post. 

- my next step is to find a semi-permanent place to live. D.C. is not great in some ways but one way it beats the Bay Area is in housing availability and relative affordability. I moved from one bougie bubble to another, but at least this one isn’t exorbitant.

- I am moving in with my boyfriend (??!!) who is moving to D.C. (??!!) and booked his ticket today (??!!) 

- I am a little nervous about being a real person with health insurance 

- I am a little nervous about moving away from California for the forseeable future 

- I am a little nervous that I will not come back to California for years and years and years and years 

- I wonder what things will be like when I come back to visit. 

- I wonder if things will remain the same in the ways I hope they always do. But that is naiive, unrealistic. To hope for that beautiful little world to stay as little as it always has is an unfair request 

- did you know that the first thing my dad said when I told him I got the job was “So you’re not going to come back to California?” Later, when telling my mom this, she lets slip that this is the “worst thing to happen” to her, in that I will no longer be near her. They do not mean it as a way to make me feel guilty, or as a tool for me to come back. But it makes me feel sad nonetheless.

- I’m excited for my new life to start but also so desperately afraid of it, too. 

- Marty Baron looked at my Linkedin profile.

- I have yet to let myself feel excited or relaxed, partly because I’m in the middle of a fairly stressful project but mostly because I won’t believe things until they happen. I wonder if I am good at this, at forcing myself to delay my happiness. But hasn’t it paid off, in some ways? 

[posthawk]

Pierrot le Fou (1965), dir. Jean-Luc Godard

[iraffiruse]

[urbnite]

[sophho]

week of June 4-11

moved to Washington, D.C. 

started working at The Washington Post 

shook Marty Baron’s hand 

thought of projects I want to work on this summer 

went to pride and it was 95 degrees outside (I am not joking one bit) 

sat on the roof of my friend Robin’s house and looked at fireworks

ate ramen 

got tacos and swung on swings 

received a letter from Nathan that was a card he had prepared weeks ago because he’s now in Peru but he sent it and forgot to write anything inside 

walked down some streets and felt that D.C. is a small town with a big image 

[jaydubbb]

Nothing is set in stone, especially your fears.

[sophho]

on my last day and night in Berkeley, I: 

woke up at 5:30 a.m. and made Nathan and me eggs for breakfast

took BART with Nathan to drop him off at the airport 

proceeded to try and not cry as I watched him walk through security. He texted me later saying he cried throughout security. 

got back to my apartment, put on one of his shirts he gave me to sleep in and lay in my bed.

moved out bags of my shit from my apartment. Grumpy and sad throughout. Took off all the photos on my walls. Remembered what it was like when I moved into the apartment and lived by myself so I printed out 70 pictures of people I love and friends I cherish so I would feel less lonely. 

Feeling as though I was taking everything off and realizing everyone and thing I was going to be leaving behind.

Grumpy. 

Go to Jupiter with some dear friends. Eat food. Try to be less sad. Frustrated that the girl who was supposed to pick up and buy my furniture was late by 4 hours. Drink beer. Think about how singular Berkeley is.

Friends come back to my apartment. We sit in a circle and listen to music. I think about when all these people will be in the same place at the same time, because I think that’s what I’m going to miss. Less the physical space but more the people who share it. 

Friends leave, one by one. Take a hot shower. Watch the last episode of Parks and Rec with Jennie and Luis even though I’m not even that far into season 7, because there’s no place I’d rather finish that show than in this apartment. 

Can hardly keep my eyes open when the series finishes. Fall asleep in Nathan’s shirt in my nearly empty room feeling all kinds of sadness and happiness and feeling full from it all. 

[peterboyden]

Francis Pienaar

[sophho]

leaving a place, and missing it, is only a testament to how much you love it still

imagine, instead, leaving for place to place and feeling nothing from it: feeling as you had nothing there left for you. 

seems almost lonely.

[sophho]

some thoughts: 

In about two hours I’ll be taking my last exam of college. Potentially my last exam ever, and frustratingly for a class that I’m not even taking for a letter grade. The class is Soviet history, and for months I complained to my friends about the class, the dry lectures, the fact that its final is the last possible exam time slot before I graduate. To an extent, my friends have commiserated with me, but I’m about to take this exam and I feel sort of happy that I’m drawing out my time here at Berkeley for just a little longer.

Because that’s what I’ve wanted, but haven’t wanted to admit for these past two weeks. Ever since finding out and solidifying my plans for after graduation, I’ve been consumed with the anxiety and the excitement about leaving. It doesn’t feel like moving on so much as it is moving forward. I know Berkeley will always be here. But goddamn, every sunset and every afternoon spent in Berkeley’s cafes feels like a memory even as I’m experiencing them. In the way that I’ll enjoy the moment and feel myself very quietly tucking it away in my mind to remind myself that this is what it feels like to be happy, to be comfortable, to have made my own space. 

For the past two weeks I’ve had minor migraines (the side effects of which cause me to go partially blind in one eye). When this first happened, I panicked, the anxiety and stress about some long term problem eating me up in small ways. But my friends calmed down, and after three days it went away. I went partially blind again this week, but rolled with it, thinking that I knew Berkeley and my friends well enough to not have to see them clearly. This place is so comfortable. Maybe it takes a temporary blindness to remind me how well I’ve situated myself here. 

Nathan handed me a bottle of wine and a wrapped present when I left his house this morning. The bottle is a gift for the reception that my roommate Jennie and I are hosting in our little home for our parents, a little get-together with snacks and drinks and hopefully an opportunity for us to say thank you to our families for everything they’ve done. Nathan and his family are coming too, because for some reason his mom wants to meet my parents. The gift-wrapped present (which I’m 100% sure is a book) is something he emphasized that I can’t open until after we graduate. When I walked home with the wine in my backpack and the present in my hand, I thought how interesting how these next two weeks will be filled with the celebrations of what’s to come and what’s next, for me and for every person I care about here. How the last two weeks, by contrast, was filled with almost-crushing nostalgia. 

We mark these celebrations with champagne, with wine, with tear-filled speeches. With pictures, and songs, and goodbyes that we promise to ourselves won’t be forever. Yet after everything, I think maybe it’s a little hard to truly demarcate what’s present and what’s future — we’ve always been moving forward, bit by bit, and there are just some times when we’re more aware of it than others. 

I’m about to head into my last exam and I’ve barely studied. But that’s okay. Because I know this last exam is hardly a milestone, a tipping point that suddenly marks the end of my education. There’s no need to make this exam into a big deal. I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning. 

Thank you for everything, Berkeley. 

[infinitamente-azul]

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) dir. Wes Anderson