Daily Allowance

I just made a killer homemade, sugar-free, dirty chai latte with almond milk (okay, so maybe it was actually with heavy cream because I was out of almond milk.  Sue me. It was delicious).

If it didn't have so much to do today, I'd consider cashing it in on this and calling today a "win."  But as I'm wont to do, I used Yogi tea for the chai portion and, of course, have to consider the snapple-like wisp of wisdom on the little tea bag tab.  In the old days, I had a bunch of those taped everywhere.  Unlike Wendy the Snapple Lady, the Yogi tea wisdoms actually do make me think.

As I sipped on my beautiful, hand-spun latte (this sound so precious...it wasn't...I dunked a tea bag in a cup of coffee...still I was so proud I didn't spend $4) I reflected on:

If you let yourself be successful, you shall be successful.

 I was so ready to write this off.  "Yeah, sure," I could hear my little snarly inner voice growl, "it sounds so easy."  But the truth of it, I think, is that it might be that easy.

There's something very compelling to me personally about "the struggle."  I do value work a lot, so a struggle is awesome because it makes the work visible.  If I'm struggling to do something, I'm not giving up on it: I'm wrestling, sparring, climbing, trekking, slogging.  There's effort there.  And effort, in my book, is always noble.  And I know I'm not alone there.  Many, many of our everyday systems reward effort.  That's the very foundation on which the idea of success, careers, the American Dream, and just any old meritocracy are based.  It's Amurica.

If I go down even further, toward my own person and body in the success-driven place, I know I've internalized the idea of struggle as noble.  I do crazy diets, I've gone on nutso fitness binges, and maybe even sometimes I've OD'd on the idea of a journey to happiness.  (For a while I tried to be chipper.  It was no good.  I'm not built for that).  If I'm walking away from something sweaty and out of breath, chances are I'm a happy camper.

When the belief that the only road to success is struggle to the point it becomes a paradigm for everything, the idea that you might be your own impediment to success can blow. your. mind. I just because I used the fashionable three-word-punctuated-to-sound-like-Oprah-talking shouldn't detract from how uncomfortable that is.  When everything you've done in your life tells you struggle is right, the suggestion that, in fact, allowance can get you to the same ends sounds like complete anarchy.

The problem is, a quick review of the high level goals of my life tells me there could've been another way.  I do believe in some things, the hard road is the right road: becoming compassionate (especially towards oneself), the road to tolerance (true empathy and not just the agreement that in public we'll say something because we'll look really bad if we say something else), love are all very hard.  There will be challenge.  But I guess the question is "Where is the line between challenge and struggle?"  At what point does the effort begin to edge out the challenge as the focus?

Whenever I've been confronted with the idea of allowance and I allow myself to sit with it and truly contemplate it and imagine exactly what it would feel like in my skin, I become very humbled.  In those moments, I can begin to see how my struggle has been perpetrated by me.  In many cases, more than I'd like to admit, I myself  have been the reason I couldn't find what I desired.  I sabotaged, I threw up barriers, I caved in a moment of weakness, I was stubborn and/or stupid and/or not compassionate.  All of these, of course, are born of fear.

So the idea that I hold the key to my success and that I've been the obstacle to that for myself creates so much guilt.  In some senses, I've doomed myself to whatever fate I have that doesn't please me at the moment.  On the other hand, the power I have to exact the changes I hope for myself is overwhelming.  All I need, we need, to find the change we seek is to be able to honestly ask these questions of ourselves.

Do I want happiness?  What does that look like?  Do I want [insert  your dream here]?  What does that look like?  

When those answers are simply "yes," our biggest challenge is to be brave on the path to that.  There will always be challenge and the fruit of stepping up to that will always be worthwhile.  But I'm coming to grips with the fact that struggle need not be necessary.  Simply allowing may be just enough.

My Best Year 2017

So I've had this little niggling idea scratching at the back and inside of my brain for awhile.  I can't say the idea out loud yet as it's not ready for the rigors of everyday life outside of the dark and cozy corners of my gray matter.  Let's just say, since the first minute I realized the horrors of writing a dissertation are fading into blood-streaked sepia tones, I've been gearing up for a project.  The problem: I didn't have anything specific in mind.

Recently, though, I've become enamored with the quiet energy of entrepreneurialism.  Seems like we're in its hey day right now--everyone has a YouTube channel linked to Twitter accounts and Pinterest boards.  Despite my last note, espousing the notion of unplugging, there's something new and fresh about a digital landscape that is waiting to be cultivated with anything you want to put out there that, in many ways, is fail-safe.  As long as you don't mind it being captured forever by the NSA on some server somewhere, if a venture on the web fails--[delete]. And you start over.

So I've hooked in and become fascinated with some of these web-preneurs.  People who have managed to figure out how to live completely fulfilling lives blogging.  Ten years ago, that word didn't exist; now it's a verb and an industry.

How do I get a piece of that?!?! Sounds like the best job in the world.

Obviously, it has it's ups and downs.  I just watched a YouTube video of a girl who was "hurt" by all the "mean things" internet trolls say.  These first world problems make for a very, very hard life.  But it feels like the energy that the pioneers had.  The ether is awash in the musk of digital manifest destiny and like a bitcoin panhandler, I'm hooking up wagon to my oxen, dressing June in a sunbonnet, and setting off on a trail into the great black void.

It's like Oregon Trail but not if you see what I mean.

Anyway, I'm exciting to give this a shot:

First of all, it's a workbook.  The last one of those I had was in phonics in the 3rd grade.  I'm down and pumped.  Second, though, it's making a plan for the next year.  I feel like this will help me sleep the slumber of a person once possessed by demons that have been excised.  It's a weird phantom sensation of loss after such a huge project is over and one day you face that fact that, yes, you have no plan.  That's fun for weeks or months.  When the time ticks into years, it's too long.  I need a plan.  Third, I think I'm *full* of awesome ideas and now I finally feel like it's worth gathering up my guts and taking some risks.  I've felt the keen sting of significant failure enough now that I can truly appreciate the non-risk of losing nothing. There's literally no down side to doing something like this.

And finally, it's time to actualize.  Every day I think more and more about how I have somehow, errantly bought in to the concept of time ticking away being a good thing...like each minute is an accomplishment I can cross off my list.  That is the worst possible way to live.  You cannot seize a moment from behind it.  That's grasping at a moment.  Seizing requires planning.  And risk.  And luck.  And night sweats, I'm sure.

At one point in time, those things terrified me.  Now...that sounds like a pretty exciting group of circumstances.

It's go time.  And I'm ready for it.  I do think this is going to be my very best year ever.  Now I just need to make it happen.

June is Busting Out All Over

June has always been a favorite month for me.  When I was in school, it marked the start of summer vacation.  Now that that monumental joy is felt a little less because I work 12 months a year, at least I can say that June's weather is usually pretty amazing.

This year, June was made awesome by this little girl:

This is Junebug...whom I casually call June.

I've been hoping for a dog for a LOOOONG time.  Dogs are magical to me in a lot of ways and not so much for the reasons people always list off.  Yes, they love you conditionally (because you feed them).  Yes, they are darn cute.  But I have been increasingly feeling that I need a friend who can help me stay in the moment.  I need a pal who is much more spontaneous than I am.  I need a pet who I can watch over.  All of these great caretaking tendencies in me, qualities I think are gifts, have not only gone wasted for probably 10 years but have started to turn in on themselves.  Over the past years I've felt myself harden, becoming edgier, crankier, and finding laughs fewer and farther between.  I've known for a long time, I could not nor did I want to continue this way.

So, magically, when my building suddenly wrote and said dogs were allowed, I started saving.  And about two months ago, when the aftershocks of change I wasn't expected hit particularly hard, I got online and got serious about a dog.  I needed something in my life that would be somewhat of a constant.

It was on June 9 that I saw this face online...and it wasn't love at first sight which was weird.  I was actually somewhat ambivalent but decided going to get a look in person at a shelter that was new to me would be worth the trip, if not just to get myself started.  2 1/2 hours later, this (shedding) furball climbed into the front seat of my car and we were heading home.  I'm not sure exactly what it was that moved me.  In some ways, I think I knew that I had to overcome any sense of hesitation that would always be there.  In other ways, when she came over to me and ever so gently but her head on my lap, I knew we had to be some kind of kindred spirits.  In a shelter that was nothing less than chaos, I found this one sleepy and gentle. "Okay," I thought. "The message won't get much clearer than this. Just do it"

It's now been more than a couple weeks and we're settling in.  Junie's a big personality in a smallish but very long body.  I like her.  And I think she likes me.  She now is the proud owner of a bark collar and a Furminator among a cadre of other squeaky chewy toys.  She is NUTS about peanut butter--both punny and adorable.  She does not love garbage trucks.  But every day that she's been here, I've gotten up with a purpose.  Maybe that, truly, was what I was seeking.

And with a face like this, how can I not sign on every day to this friendship?  

I feel like my old self again, before graduate school or dissertation, or failed jobs and failed friendships.  I think I've been given a chance to start over.  I'm taking it.  To Junie.  We'll have fun.

Thoughts on "Contemplating Being Too Much" and the Single Life

I've never had a period in my life that I haven't seriously (okay, obsessively) self-reflected.  I think this is a symptom of living a perpetually single life: I feel the need to "check in" or "check things off the list" to make sure I'm still normal.  I guarantee not all single people do this and, in fact, if I could let it go, I'd be happier.  If I could embrace the fact that I'm not normal at all but still living a fulfilling life, I'd actually be content.  That's a lot of big "if's."  Suffice it to say: I wrestle with wanting to be normal when, in fact, my life is not that typically experienced by most people...or even enough to say I can even qualify for normal.

So, that's a morass as I've adequately demonstrated above.  But I found an essay on this very thing that made me feel really much better about everything.  Say what you will about Blossom, Mayim Bialik interests me.  She's wicked smart, also cannot make claims to any kind of normalcy, and says some crazy shit sometimes.  But her essay on GrokNation entitled "Contemplating Being Too Much" articulately reflected on a lot of my most current worries.

I have always feared that I, like Mayim (and apparently lots of other women), have fallen into the "too much" category.  In fact, the list she ticks off including "too intense," "too loud," and "too opinionated" are all things I question myself on regularly.  Add to that list that I'm too curious, too serious, too intellectual, too funny...possibly too much of all of these things all at once...I also come to the conclusion that I am, likely, too much.  Yes, there are a lot of ways I can back it down.

But that's the rub, isn't it?  Backing it down isn't natural to me.  I'm "too much" in so many ways just being who I am (and I want more than that sometimes) that I can't even imagine what to pick to back down on first.  And when I imagine doing that or, on the rare occasion actually back down, it's exhausting.  I throw myself off balance.  It's not my natural state. Because of that, all the other parts of me also get thrown off balance and before too long...I'm miserable...and I can't get out of it. 

This is part of the constant conundrum, isn't it?  I'm not sure why.  It's pretty clear to me that the consequences of being too much are generally awesome in that, theoretically, birds of a feather will flock together.  Too much will find itself.  BUT, that also means giving up on the dream of normalcy.  (Wait, why is that a dream again?  Because it's secure?  Because it seems secure?)

For me, there's always a fear that if I fully embrace single life, that I'll go over the edge into craziness.  "The Cat Lady" is mere degrees away from where I find myself in this world right now.  Does the end of "too much" always lead to "too many cats"? (figuratively, of course, because I hate cats...)  And then there's also the fear that fully embracing single life is giving up on some of the things that fall into the normal "palette" that I might really want.  Have I "given up" anything simple because my life doesn't look like it "should" to have those things?

The essay Mayim writes concludes with the idea that there are a lot of powerful, interesting, fulfilled and fulfilling women that find themselves in the same boat and they need not worry: too much is actually just right.  That conclusion (so simple!) gave me the most solace because I don't need to be reminded of that.  I know that my "too muchness," in all of its forms, is an asset.  The truth is, I wouldn't be here where I am today if I didn't make choices that I believed in then and still believe in now that led me here.

I am my worst enemy in questioning that road.  But I am also my best friend in continuing to hope for a community of "too much" to surround myself with that will get me through when the going gets particularly rough.  It's just a road I hope not to walk alone.

We can all be too much together.  I hope.

Happiness is as Happiness Does

I feel like I start every blog with "so I was struggling..."

I mean, really, how much can one person possibly struggle before realizing just how much they're responsible for the struggle?  The answer to that is another post but suffice it to say, I've been in enough of a quandry about my own happiness that it's starting to seep out of my pores.  I've been made become aware that I look and act like I'm miserable.

That's just great.

It doesn't at all bother me to hear this news.  I'm not happy about it (do you see the conundrum?) but I'm glad that friends alert me to this. At least, they alert me to the fact they can see it...and I do believe its because they care.  But I'm never sure what it actually means.

Well, I wasn't until yesterday.

I got my hair done yesterday and I wanted to take a picture that would basically re-create my current facebook profile picture that's about 3 years old.  The process was an unexpected moment of enlightenment for me.  I took the first picture, recreating the pose as much as I could, and immediately saw it.

I did look miserable.

I was smiling the best I knew how.  I was doing everything I thought I did in the last picture.  I couldn't escape the fact that my eyes just look sad, my smile forced, my shoulders ever so slightly slumped.  As I took the picture, I felt "normal" for me these days.  And that was the reflection of normal--miserable and tired.  I took about 20 versions of that picture before I had to have a talk with myself that started something like, "Katie, you have to try to at least look happy."

Eventually, I did get a picture that doesn't look miserable.  Now, it doesn't look ecstatic.  But the smile looks genuine, the eyes are lit up at least a little.  But there is a definite change; it's not the same face of 3+ years ago.  I think this face has seen a lot in that time.  It's worried a lot, felt a lot of anxiety about a lot of things.  Those changes might be permanent.

It was a striking exercise for me.  I now know exactly what people mean when they say I look miserable.  But I think the lesson for me was in the process: I can get there, I can find something that makes me reflect happy, if I try.  And it might take me a long time, but I'll find it.  It's not negotiable, though, that I have to try.

I think it's so weird and unexpected for me that happiness is something practiced and sought after.  Especially now, our culture here tells us it's everywhere around us and all we need do is become aware of it.  That's true to a degree.  But that which keeps me up at night isn't not seeing flowers or getting hugs.  I'm worried about how to support myself.  I'm worried that my best years are behind me.  I'm worried that I've made irreparable mistakes in my life, that I haven't seized the moment enough.  I'm worried that I'm not a good person, that my intellectual pursuits have taken me far afield of where I should could be.

I'm sure to those older and wiser this seems like such a superficial set of worries.  Inevitably there will be some discussion of the soul and it'll surely be yearning for something.  But those are the waters I'm trying desperately to sail without capsizing...in my little dinghy...with what feels like one functional oar.

So I wonder now if I can actually make my way back to my own "youth" of 3+ years ago.  To that face that look so thrilled to get it's picture taken.  I do think I can.

Maybe I more hope that I can.
That's a start.

30 Day Yoga Commitment

A couple weeks ago, I was talking to a unique friend about feeling a longing for the next big project.  She asked me a question that kinda stopped me in my tracks: "Have you asked God to help you find it?"

Um, no, no I had not.

But the notion wasn't bad.  In fact, I feel like I talk to the Universe all the time.  Funny that I somehow left out that I was looking for something new that maybe, you know, the Universe could help with.  A little.  So I did.  I point blank asked the Universe to show me something that would be true and good for me.

Aaand, I landed back at yoga by way of a re-commitment of sorts to...committing.

Admittedly, I have been adrift in a sea of new possibility.  Not adrift in the romantic, castaway sense.  Adrift like tattered, freezing, and my raft is coming apart with each second.  This feels like gritty, nasty adrift.  It's unsettling.

[Sidebar: what's going on with the dogs recently?  I've never heard barking like I have the past couple days....is it a full moon?  Seriously...I love dogs but there's a limit.  End of sidebar].

Alright, the other problem with being adrift is that you're working only on survival.  Stress is high for no apparent reason.  Fear rules the day.  There is no plan.  There is only chaos.  And scattered thoughts while you grasp at straws.

So, right after making my grand request to the Universe, an add for a pen-and-paper calendar/planner popped up that appealed so much to me it almost made me cry.  It's built around the idea of 30 day projects.  Now, one might say, "Katie, that's...a calendar."  Right, yes, I know.  30 days does a month make.  But this felt revolutionary to me in two distinct ways.  First, I hadn't thought much about it up until that point but writing words on paper feels much more real than writing things on a calendar in my phone.  That's fake planning.  I can change that it 2 seconds with a swipe of the delete key.  Pen, though, requires scratching out and a permanent reminder that a different plan than "lay on my couch all day playing games" once existed.  And it was better than the couch plan.  Second, it's taken those convenient pre-existing 30-day months and made them into distinct containers for finite projects.  This is one of those things that appeals solely because the last project I took on was a seemingly never ending 6 year nightmare.  You forget that you can do practically anything for 30 days and that's the only expectation out there.  

So, the calendar showed up at my door today and I picked it up on my way out this morning.  Since then, I've been thinking about it.  And it reignited my question to the Universe: "So now that I've got 9 months worth of 30-day projects, what should I do?" I then proceeded to have not such a great day and, frankly, felt pretty terrible upon arriving home tonight.  In search of something that made me feel better, I casually asked the Universe, "What should I do that would make me feel better?"  

Lo and behold, the answer was yoga.  And I did a practice that was way too hard (ironically or not called perseverance).  I did persevere which is all I needed to worry about there. Job done.  And of course, I feel so much better [EXCEPT FOR THIS EFFING DOG BARKING]. And it made the think while I was lying in savasana, "Why not make this your first 30 day project?"  

Done.

So I'm gong to do yoga and then I'm going to write about whatever comes up.  I'm committing to it for 30 days.  Let's see what happens.

No excuses.

Where the Past No Longer Serves

It's been an interesting couple weeks.

First, to report back on the reflection I was going to try during Lent: that was a total bust.  In fact, not only have I been less reflective, I've been much more irritable than usual.  I'm not sure if the initial reflection opened up Pandora's Box or there have been other things going on but, suffice to say, I've been concerned about this latest downturn in my own world view.

What is happening?

In part, I feel like there's some something brewing in the ether.  My annoyance is a symptom of perhaps the realization of something larger going on.  I generally believe this to be true: when I'm feeling really off-kilter, I start looking around to figure out what the pressure points are.  When I did this, I began to see, left and right, things changing in big ways.  People I have known for years just dropping out of sight.  People (and places) I once counted on suddenly folding or changing into things I no longer knew.  Roads closed where once they had been so unapologetically open.  Shifting sands.

Of course, that's the normal course of things.  I can't begrudge anyone or anything that.  But what I also realized was how sad I felt about it.  Truly sad. And my own ignorance or acknowledgement of that feeling, I do begrudge myself.  How could I have not listened to that al all?  One day in the shower, I found myself actually pining for what seemed like older, better days...before things had been scattered about.  Before people changed forever.  Before doors closed.

It was that feeling of loss that was actually causing the irritability.  Unaware, I was living in the past but dealing with the present.  Once I realized this and started trying to bring myself back into the present, I wish I could say I felt easier.  I did not.  I felt the ache of having to let go of the hope we could ever go back there again.  We cannot.  Back there is gone.  And when I knew I was starting to pull out of the initial pangs of letting go, righting my vision forward, I saw a path illuminated letting me know how to go.  What I also saw was how not perfect "back there" was.  How much of not great was contained there, softened in my own memories to be a gauzy time of only laughter and fulfillment.  I know for a fact that wasn't true.  Isn't it funny how the pressures of today make you want to believe that with all your heart?  Once I settled that score in my head, a weight on my chest lifted.  We can't go back but why would we want to?

I'd also like to say that I wished that path forward to be easier.  We have a funny way of assuming that once a path has made itself known, it becomes easier to traverse.  No.  What I saw was a path but not a road.  I could see the way but it still remains to be built.  And even then I could only see it to the horizon and not beyond.  This is a continuous cycle.  Maybe one I haven't paid enough attention to cultivating continuously in the past.  In looking backwards, I stopped building, developing, creating.  And so I'm back to some dirt and a plan.  In some ways, that's so frustrating.  In other ways, it's nothing but hope and light.

The last year feels like a bizarre cautionary love-letter to myself.  "This is what happens," it starts, "when you check out for awhile.  Things change and you don't notice it...until you go to find them and they're gone."

"Pay more attention," it warns.  "Enjoy today.  Tomorrow will offer that same chance then."

"Okay, I'm learning," I say back, making a swirl in the dirt path of today, planning how to cut it in a way that serves me anew.  At least until tomorrow.

Not Counting

I hate to be cliche, but I had a moment about it being a new year.  In every other part of my life, I give numbers the healthy skepticism they deserve.  Almost everything numerical, to me, is meaningless as an end to itself: my weight doesn't reflect who I am, my face doesn't reflect my age, the amount of money I make has no connection with my value to this world (in my most humble opinion).  Even in my job in which I look at numbers and what they mean a lot, I don't give them much credence....because there's always a story behind them that will surprise you.  Numbers are rarely a reflection of lived experience.

In many ways, numbers have failed me time and again.

But for some reason, they've been haunting me recently.  Perhaps I've turned the quantitative corner, never to look back, but I can't help but keep thinking about things in terms of quantified time: I finished grad school 2 years ago, I've lived in my apartment 7 years, I haven't had a haircut for almost 3 months, I quit 1 job last year, I have done 0 significantly impressive things in recent history, I should give myself 4289 breaks because I'm my own worst critic.  The more I try to observe life outside these United States, the more I believe this tendency obsession with quantifying to be "Amurican."  If I can count it significantly then it must be important and, thus, good.  Even if it's bad.

Despite all of these tallies, the one thing I can claim as countless is the number of times I've started something only to stop too soon. How many projects lay on the dining room table of my life incomplete?  How many self-help steps are left to check off the list? How many miles are left to be counted by my 12 fitness tracking apps?  Countless.  How many good ideas have I not made good on because I'm afraid of what will happen?  How many opinions have I not shared because I want people to like me for who I'm not?  Countless.

As I start really defining this "countless" genre, I can see that many of them are important...in their own ways, of course.  They could lead to things like being healthier, happier, sharper creatively, braver, generally a better person.  Those I give up on.  The stuff that doesn't really matter...like the number of years I've lived in one place...that I can give you an almost perfect accounting for.

Without quantifying or even summoning the word benchmark which is such an over-hyped, bullshitty buzzword, I'm making a pact with myself that in this year I will make good on a couple "countless" things...because they're worth it.  But the method, I think, is key.  And my method deliberately stays away from counting.  Ticking off a box or checking off on a list makes the content of that action so pointless.  All of life, then, becomes about hitting that next "mark."  I don't want to live life this way.  Maybe that is the only thing that I will choose to accomplish this year and that would be tremendous: giving up counting.

Everything I do, I want to count for something...just not for the meaningless tally it often becomes.  

A Tiger in Sheep's Clothing

I'm not one of those "animal" people. I mean, I like dogs and...[awkward silence]...and...okay, I'm proving my own point. I really only like dogs. But I do think that animal metaphors as they're used in some mythologies are very helpful when trying to decide what one is going to be in life. When people liken me to different animals, it sticks with me. I was surprised when, in the midst of one of those What kind of animal are you? games, someone told me I was a shark. Never in my life have I considered myself 1) marine in any way 2) a fish 3) a killer fish 4) with three rows of teeth. I was taken aback at the violence of it all. But as this person was talking I kept thinking, "Well, you're a squirrel and I'm a shark so I win," which I suppose proved her point. I've also been likened to a rabid golden retriever and an owl and on one of those Buzzfeed quizzes I was very proud of getting an elephant for its wisdom. My most proud animal-related moment though was being called "Tiger" in Kindergarten and it has stuck with me for decades.

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was in the fall, I had just started Kindergarten and every Wednesday and Friday we would either go to the library and sit on the "whistle chairs" (the coolest bean-baggish, chairs in the shape of whistles) or go to the gym and run around. One of those days, the Independence Fire Department came in to do a "stop, drop, and roll" workshop. I was wearing my favorite maroon corduroys and what they're now calling a "ringer" t-shirt that you'd wear to play baseball. I had just gotten my first pair of glasses. For the early 80s, I was working it. And I got to do the "stop, drop, and roll" demonstration. And afterward, the Chief (who I also knew as Mr. Mack but he was actually Fire Chief Mack) clapped me on the back and said, "That's it Tiger. Way to go" and shook my hand...and I remember how much like a tree branch his arm was (even though in actual adult life, Mr. Mack was about 5'6" and very sinewy...I might call him "bandy"...he was a tough little guy...). Henceforth, I was Tiger in my head. And even in my most stress-filled moments throughout High School, when I needed to have a little talk with myself about digging in, would refer to myself in my own head as Tiger. Tigers win with efficient grace.

But over time, Tiger got lost. I think I realized it most pointedly about a year ago. I was grinding out my dissertation, completely alone, and when it was time for a dig in moment with myself, there was no Tiger in there. Even after finishing my graduate work, there was little light to find. Every day was another chapter of sleeplessness, restlessness, anxiety. It felt like my apartment walls were closing in on me but I was reticent to go anywhere because I knew I looked miserable. Now the bigger question pressed itself back at me, "What are you going to do with yourself?" "What's your purpose?" "What do you mean here?" The holidays I thought would be so full of joy and light felt very tenuous. I could feel the pressure of expectations. "Katie, why aren't you happier?"
There is nothing more heartbreaking than watching people who you know love you suffer on your behalf. They hang in there for you, they hope the best, the ask how they can be helpful and there is no answer for them except to hang in there a little longer. Keep calling even though I might not answer. Keep rooting for me even though I'm not giving you a good reason to right now. Some things you just need to walk through on your own. Even more heartbreaking than watching them suffer for you is knowing they'll keep doing what you ask because they're good and kind and they make you wonder if you'd do the same for them (and thank God for the momentary relief when that very small answer comes back "yes of course").

Never ever in my earlier life did I think I'd wrestle with depression. When you're an alpha "doer" the world is your oyster. All problems tackled to the ground and pinned in submission. There's a certain fearlessness that comes with achievement: the question is never "if" and always "how." Somewhere between my achiever years of my teens and this particular moment in my life, I became less brave. That happens, I know. It's so cliche. You become and adult and everything gets conservative. You have stuff to care for, like your reputation and your FICO credit score. Nothing good will come of you waggling your bravery in the face of financial America. You'll pay for that, literally, in the end. I think my depressedness (which should be pronounced de-press-ed-ness) came from a very deep, very small kernel of knowing that I was no longer Tiger. I was, in fact, a sheep: stupid, lazy, smelly, only good for my wool.

What to do? How does a tiger shed sheep's clothing? Are there ways to get back to the Tiger I want to be? Have I missed that chance? I haven't missed the chance. But the choices I start to make in the next year will be crucial...and they have to be tiger-oriented. Otherwise, I'm going to waste away into the herd...and I've got too much hunting left to do.