two.eight

a year ago i started this tumblr to stop time. i was entering what seemed like a big year, following up on the what-just-happened-ness of 27 and vowing to slow everything down out of fear of losing another year in a whirlwind.

i was reading "goodbye to all that" the other day and came across that line:

that was the year, my twenty-eighth, when i was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.

i feel half like that is a perfect summation of year 28, and half like i need to explain that this discovery is great, great news and not, in fact, a death sentence. sorry, joan. i refuse to feel the dread and longing for my early twenties naivete i think you’re trying to get me to feel. i've come to the conclusion that dread and longing are for suckers.

here's the deal, if i've come to terms with anything over the past year, it is this: the embarrassments, the failures, the stupid moves, the busted hearts of past lives are  everywhere in the present--especially after a decade in a tiny city where no one feels particularly new and untouched. there are moments for panicking about losing time and missing chances, but mostly moments for realizing that time at 29 or 57 or 84 is, still, time--mostly malleable and for the taking.   

so, i find myself lately drawn to people who put more faith in time, because i want to be one of them. one of the people who have the moxie to move on and trust that the way things were isn't necessarily the metric for the way things will be down the line.

it is hard! it is hard to be 28 and turn down someone you love for reasons that amount to "gut feelings" and put faith in time to figure out the logic. it's hard to sit still for a while and trust that there will be time for the things you can't focus on now as you focus intently on this one important thing. that is hard. and while i think i am still consumed by what-i-could've-dones at least 24 hours of each week, that is surely better than 168.

this is all to say, 300 and some odd days later, i have mostly failed at chronicling my year, stopping time, and also giving most of a fuck about either one of those things. being a year older is more great than not, more full of things that make sense than things that are blurry, and has left me feeling more like the mover and less like the moved.

what do you do when, after seven years of living beyond your no-means, you find yourself with a savings account and a nearly gone credit card balance?

i’m in that place. hi, that place. it took me five years and a lot of $1 bags of frozen broccoli to get to you, but hello! do you sell postcards? i would like some sort of memento to prove to my future self that i was here. because here i am—and all i want to do is leave again! i’m so sorry! your wallpaper makes me panic.

the last time i had a savings account that was larger than half a paycheck was when i was nineteen. a few months into my nineteenth year, i met a professor who—while in the process of trying to convince me to blow my entire savings account on a trip to europe (it worked)—said the nine words that, unfortunately, became the financial mantra of my twenties: “money? you can always get more of that."

i say “unfortunately" but i only half mean it. that mantra will take you places! actually take you places! i went to so many places. places in different hemispheres. i lived in some really cool places and ate at some cool places. places cost money, and, hey, you can always get more of that.

until you can’t. until you really have to get serious about that last twenty-five dollars because there are no dollars after that. that is considerably more stressful than the cool places. that was 2008-2011.

o grr; ;olr o

, pom vtsvu

i stopped to take a picture of a pumpkin on the street today and iphone told me i needed to clear some space. the rest of the walk back to work, i flipped through my photos. as i was deleting, i saw that i'd unknowingly collected a strange bunch of snapshots of people and places in my old neighborhood in brooklyn.

i was talking earlier this week about new york. something about the change in season is making being away from it almost unbearable right now. some days i can't believe it's been a year. i still wake up in the morning expecting to jump on the f train. i don't think a day has passed in the last 13 months that i haven't thought about it.

so, purging and thinking about new york, here are a handful of odd iphone photos of the one and only 11231--things i loved and miss.

the view from my bedroom was epic. there was no better place to watch the sky split right before a thunderstorm.

i used to wander around cobble hill awe-struck by my neighbors' brownstones. living there for two years now seems like some brilliant stroke of luck.

that street in brooklyn heights. with the doors that look like this, you know? that street that makes you consider doing very illegal things to raise $6m so you could maybe one day maybe somehow live here?

park benches at cobble hill park. my summer weeknight station, blue marble softserve in hand.

watching the snow pile up on the roof of the cinema, from my window. i swore someday it was going to buckle and fall.

that woman who sells the amazing kitchenware at the bk flea on sundays--the second stop in my sunday routine.

the bergen street stop. i began and ended so many days here.

the characters riding the f train between cobble hill and chinatown everyday were unparalleled. i referred to this guy as the asian dwight schrute.

find me a better running route and i'll give you a dollar. every night i ran down the promenade, i felt like the luckiest person in the world.

nothing smells more like new york than flooded storm drains.

i read this article the other day and haven’t been able to get it out of my head. [full disclosure: there’s a hard copy of it sitting on my desk at home, right next to the spot where i drop my keys and pocket junk, so i’m not really pushing it out either.]

i never really envisioned myself turning into the kind of 28-year-old who Thinks About Being Single. as she says in this article, "a decade ago, luck didn’t even cross my mind. i’d been in love before, and i’d be in love again. this wasn’t hubris so much as naïveté … that we would marry, and that there would always be men we wanted to marry, we took on faith."

over the last year, though, my party line has started to shift—and only half driven by self-preservation, i swear.

miles ridden on bike with metal music stand strapped to back: 4.1 music teachers employed: 2 hours consumed by chromatic scales: 7+ fleetwood mac songs transcribed: 3

local unemployment rate: 9.3% times considered quitting job: 6 times reconsidered quitting job out of fear of losing orca pass: 6 vacation days taken to brunch with friends: 1

toiletries belonging to exboyfriends discarded: 3 text messages regretted: 30+

bartenders befriended: 1 earnest hugs received from said bartender: 1 i saw u ads posted: 1

photos of young stevie nicks framed: 2 desserts baked: 7 friends fed: 18

and just like that, it's fall again.

i stood at the bus stop on 45th and stone way tonight and shivered. a true moment of teeth-chattering shivers. when did this happen, this cold? i'm not ready.

i remember this time last year. i'd been back in seattle for just three weeks and was acclimating poorly. from a dry, indian summer in brooklyn to a sudden, damp fall in seattle. i stepped off the plane with the chills--and couldn't shake them for nine months.

now, as then, i'm entering this stretch of ever-shortening days nursing a heartache. a less severe spell this time than last, but a genuine bummer, nonetheless. i made a comment to a coworker about sleeping with a pillow wrapped in a heating pad. i think she thought i was joking--i thought i was sharing a very practical tip for staying warm in a half-empty bed.

i have enough sense to know that two falls do not all falls make. some year, october will feel less like a sentence and more like a welcome wind-down.