[unitedstatesofholly]

Leaving is hard. Leaving people, leaving places, leaving memories. Leaving the person you are now, leaving this moment, because you will never be exactly who you are in this moment ever again.

The past few weeks have been anchored by a complicated swing of emotions. There is an indescribable feeling of eagerness and excitement about what lies ahead. There is an undeniable sense of pride in having been patient, in having been chosen, both here and there. There is a certainty and confidence that working alongside the best and brightest team of calculated misfits has prepared me for what's next. There is giddy enthusiasm to finally be closing the canyon of miles between me and the people who kept my heart rooted in the familiar zip code I should tattoo across my wrists.

But there is also an unexpected sadness to be leaving this place. To be leaving my team, my friends and my mentors and the appreciation for how they transformed me – how we hopefully transformed each other - with our humor, our creativity and our flippant disregard for the path others chose before us. We weren’t always perfect (although real genius rarely is) but together, we were perfect enough to make a difference and make some noise. Perfect enough to leave a mark and be remembered in these halls. I spent 3 and a half years with a legacy brand and a legacy team and I am grateful for the reprogramming.  

For now, I’ve landed on the term embraceable grief. It’s like holding the person you were in one hand and the person you’ve become in another and realizing in that moment - when you lace your fingers together and bow your head in thanks – that you truly understand the baptism of change that’s occurred. It’s allowing fear to coexist with fearlessness in the belief that anything and everything is possible from here. It’s embracing the power of choice and grimacing that you alone bear the responsibility for deciding how you want to be remembered. It’s driving yourself forward in the direction you want your life to be about, even when (especially when) that means change and uncertainty. It’s about allowing yourself to spend an entire afternoon heartbroken, sobbing uncontrollably in your driveway because you’ve finally figured out that you’ll need to give up things you really care about in order to do other things you really care about. It’s about giving time, time to grieve and love and appreciate how lucky you are to even have this choice at all. 

I’m leaving my best friend and the best company I’ve ever known and there is a profound sadness in that. But if there’s anything I’ve perfected with effort and frequency of travel in the past three years, it’s the art of The Reunion. The French call it Retroivailles and it describes the happiness of meeting again after a long time. To Dick & Jane and my family in Minnesota – save me a seat at the supper table because I’ll be home soon and to Ben & Julie and my family in Maryland – thank you for being my anchors and my lifeline. Thank you for sharing your hearts, your homes and all the milestones in your children’s lives with me. Your energy, fire and commitment to being the very best humans to one another is my compass and your patience and unflinching resilience is my North. 

As it turns out, the jetways that separate us are the same jetways that connect us. Perspective and the belief that our worlds will continue to clash and collide in the good fight for good beer and good people prevails.

The miles are - as they have always been - merely an inconvenience in the thread that connects us.

[unitedstatesofholly]

You can't take it with you when you go. I mean, you can, but the going rate for movers is $1 a pound so that would be stupid. Buy my stuff instead.

[unitedstatesofholly]

1 BR/1 BA in Chevy Chase, MD - Available August 1

$1,450 a month gets you 750 square feet of all the living space you could want or need. One bedroom. One bathroom. One kitchen. One living room. Plenty of closet space. Lots of windows and natural light. Did I mention the free utilities and incredible neighbors?

* A 3-story converted mid-century brick home, divided into 3 apartments (each with private access) with free parking in the circular driveway. (Yes, exactly like royalty.)

* Located in a quiet & safe neighborhood (CC, I mean come on) on a tree-lined street, backed up to Norwood City Park (where eager dudes play Ultimate on Friday mornings, lots of small humans chase soccer balls on the weekend and you can sun bathe or let your dog chase tennis balls or take fly fishing lessons on land, among other things.)

* ALL utilities are included (cable TV, wireless internet, electric, gas forced heat & trash.) I mean COME ON HOW IS THIS EVEN A REAL THING. But it is.)

* Free storage and free access to a shared washer and dryer located in the common area basement. (Occasional scary bugs down here, not gonna lie.)

* Backyard herb garden and patio. (Neglected by non-green thumbs like me; Needs your help.)

* 0.8 miles to the Bethesda Metro Stop; 0.5 miles to the Bethesda swimming pool; 0.4 miles to downtown Bethesda shops & restaurants;

* Incredibly cool and considerate first floor neighbors. Top floor studio is currently also vacant - phone your friends.

* Basically the best, most wonderful Super you could ever hope to rent an apartment from. Responsive and reasonable, caring and kind - like your uncle, but probably nicer. 

Chances are also better than good the fridge will be full of beer when you move in. The End.

[maya-contreras-ddd]

“It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There’s almost no such thing as ready. There’s only now. And you may as well do it now. I mean, I say that confidently as if I’m about to go bungee jumping or something - I’m not. I’m not a crazed risk taker. But I do think that, generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.”

- Hugh Laurie

[unitedstatesofholly]

Then again, who needs horoscopes when you've got Hugh Laurie.

[unitedstatesofholly]

It's a cucumber jello salad with olives. God bless the Midwest.

[therumpus]

The Rumblr’s in-house astrologer, Madame Clairevoyant, presents her latest dispatch from the stars:

Aquarius: Even when you aren’t ready and even when you aren’t sure, this is a week for just letting go of some of the things that have gotten too heavy for you. This is a week for letting go of some of the things that have lived inside you for too long. The world is in motion and you are in motion and you don’t have to keep carrying everything you’ve ever touched. The world will be full of bright days and surprises. You don’t have to keep carrying every person you’ve ever been.

[unitedstatesofholly]

It's okay to be humble and let the stars explain the kind of universe that leaves us speechless.

Sometimes it's necessary to let go of things simply because they are too heavy.  

[unitedstatesofholly]

#stillkickinthis harder than ever for @purmort & @noraborealis.

Cancer is expensive, you guys. This t-shirt is not.

Get yours at @cottonbureau. Do it now.

[unitedstatesofholly]

Visit Original Link

Annabel // The Duhks

So I've gotten into this television program. It's a Western series on AMC about the construction of the first transcontinental railroad. It follows the lives of all the people who powered its production - the laborers, surveyors, immigrants, saloon-owners, mercenaries, pastors and prostitutes who helped blaze the western trail.

So that's the plot, if you care, but the real sweet spot rests in the impossibly beautiful cinematography, the intimately rich character development and in discovering the mystery in songs like this.

[unitedstatesofholly]

Hoppy American Wheat debuts tonight. This is my baby. Vote hard, America.

[wordsthat-speak]

Is it possible for home to be a person and not a place?

- Stephanie Perkins

[unitedstatesofholly]

[unitedstatesofholly]

Drinking Buddies: The Real Thing

Once upon a time, a wild assortment of misfit brewers and marketing evangelists gather atop a modest rural Maryland mountain range to talk about beer. Once a year, usually at the peak of the summer's suffocating heat, we aim our cars West in the direction of the setting sun and we drive until the air grows cooler and the roads shrink smaller until we arrive at a log cabin perched high above the blinking lights of a rural, unincorporated town below.

Up here, we unwind. For a day, we leave behind the hurdles and the handicaps of moving beer through the system. The pushing and pulling, the prodding and the positioning. With vendors, with customers, with distributors, with each other. Up here, we embody everything you actually wanted Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson to be.

We are friends, but we are so much more. We are kite runners. We are beach stormers. We are architects and authors. We live the stories the world reluctantly paid a $11 matinee pricing to see. We live your dream and we dream of a world where unremarkable beers should be banished, flung like clay pigeons from the stoney edge of the log cabin lookout where we stand. Up here, we dream big. We pitch proud, we sell our stories, we sell ourselves.

Up here, veteran brewers and amateur accountants unite to create something beautiful. In the valley between dry hop proficiency and malt bill efficiency, we settle into something real. It's the closest thing to being artists some of us will ever know. An exercise of balance and restraint. A theoretic and literal formula for greatness, if you've done it right. And hopefully, it's better than right, it's practically human. A child, a labor, a creation of patience and persistence.  Because we give it life the moment we give it to you.

[therumpus]

The world around you might seem very wild, this week. The sky above you might seem too big or too bright. The road in front of you might look too long, too strange, too dark. It’s all going to be okay, and all you have to do right now is keep living, however you can. You don’t have to worry about everything in your life, right now. You don’t have to worry about futures and stories and plans. Just drink enough water. Get enough sleep. Call your friends when you need them. Eat foods that make you strong.

The Rumblr

Say what you will about horoscopes, but it's pretty hard to argue with Madame Clairevoyant this week.

[unitedstatesofholly]

Visit Original Link

My mother tells me I had a crush on Willie Nelson when I was 6 years old.  That I would sneak into the garage and into the passenger seat of our Oldsmobile wood paneled family station wagon to play Always On My Mind on repeat on the weathered and worn first audio cassette that I owned.

All these years later, spotify just introduced me to this and I’m in love all over again.

[wasbella102]

[unitedstatesofholly]

A Mottled Presence

A while back, we talked about the concept of feeling broken and you said you didn’t care for it. You asked me not to use that word and I can only assume how it rang hollow in your ears and felt vacant in your chest. I got defensive and I never told you that I paced the tennis court for hours that night, carefully selecting the words for my response, angry and hurt, convinced you could never understand the complexity of everything that came before you. I delicately tried to explain the nuance of how those dark years made me so much smarter and wiser and stronger. The clumsy collapse and the fleeting exodus was the story I tattooed across my chest, the rock I flexed my legs against, the distance I kept between us. But the story of the phoenix is the most beautiful story I know. When we grow out of ourselves. When we become our better selves. There is beauty in rebirth and sometimes it takes a fire to start over. That night, I tried to explain – slowly and deliberately, without attitude or contempt - that I chose that word intentionally. That my definition wasn’t one that solicited pity or aggrandized my failures. It did not proclaim hopelessness, nor phish for encouragement. It merely existed as a concept, a theory and an explanation of my humble (and sometimes stubborn) path to rebuild myself. So I would be ready for someone like you. So full of hope and grace and relentless positivity.

And here I am. And here we are. And we are giving this our very best effort and it’s working. We are in love. And it is fair to be crossing.  Thirteen days in the Motherland was enough to stimulate every last sentimental nerve ending, brushed with equal measures of bug spray, nostalgia and bona fide love, and my tank is full for the long distance commute that exists between us. Like the familiar John Ashbery poem branded into the cool blue steel that bridges the heart of the city, it stands as a reminder of progress, order and change. After we finished our teary, drawn-out goodbye, after my my father awkwardly closed the garage door on us (which my mother later confessed - he was not sure how to properly wish his grown daughter’s boyfriend goodnight, so naturally, closing the garage door was the most sensible and literal end to the evening), the last thing you said to me was, 'go inside and hug them'. You wanted to let them wrap me up and distract me from the discomfort of missing you and missing this town. I watched your taillights fade off into the distance and retreated inside with wet cheeks and a heavy heart, where my mother was doing the dishes, distant as the moon, talking about the humidity and the cost of peaches. And the room felt so silent and disconnected – quiet as a church, heavy like a chore.

She confessed she hadn’t seen me so in love and so undone in such a long time and I ducked my head from her eyes, still acclimating to this feeling of joyful heartache. She casually probed for more intimate details that questioned my own competence and preparation and I replied indignantly, like a child. And then I understood that she was actually protecting you from me - questioning my readiness for the attention and affection of a good man who had already won them over. Feelings of betrayal and doubt bowed to self-reflection and fear. My heart sank into my suitcase and I quietly crept upstairs into my childhood bedroom where I slept restlessly until my 6AM flight. I don’t blame her, though. I can’t blame her. She can’t unsee me. She can’t unremember where I failed before. She can’t hide her fear that I could fail at this again. How do we ever really know if we’re ready to try again. Any of us.

Regardless of age and income and maturity and success, there will always remain certain moments when our parents don’t understand our journey. When they can’t find the words to relate or respond. When the memory of the people we were throws holograms in front of the people we are. It’s a leap of faith for them, too. Trusting themselves to trust in us.

Everything that came before us is wire and dust, skin and bones. A messy confluence of our best selves. Perfectly imperfect, living moment to moment, preparing us for This Moment all along - a preamble to something bigger and more beautiful and more blissfully simple than we’ve ever known. This is the place where we always wanted to be.

[sofiacoppolaofficial]

“It’s about misunderstandings between people and places, being disconnected and looking for moments of connection. There are so many moments in life when people don’t say what they mean, when they are just missing each other, waiting to run into each other in a hallway.” — Sofia Coppola, on Lost in Translation