Dear Yoda,

Probably one of the worst parts about being young is being aware of it.

It makes it really, really hard to enjoy your own sweet youth when you're conscious of the fact that in 2-5 years - or even in one year, in the case of you really unlucky bastards - you'll be so much better at what you're so fucking excited about now. This realization paralyzes you. It takes the naivety from your youth and makes you want to just sleep that time off, rather than being wide-awake on a nightmare ferris-wheel of alternating enthusiasm and failure.

Lately, I've been interested in writing, editing, publishing, and I screw up ALL THE TIME. I get upset at the staff of my 'zine for forgetting to do things or bring things, then twenty minutes later am scrambling to cover up the fact that I've just forgotten the same thing. I forget to mention the name of the company who paid us $1500 to mention them (nearly double our yearly budget). I have ignored my gut and paid the price. I have asked one person to do a project, then gotten somebody else to do the exact same project, just in case, and offered to pay only one of them. I'm always late. I have ambitious ideas and overlook the fact that they are not financially viable. I forget to book the caterers. I have made my share of mistakes, and will continue making them, because I'm young, and I suck.

But I love what I do: whether it's apparent or not, I care deeply for my staff and for the writers I help publish, and for the content of my own writing. I just wish I could fast-forward to the time when I'll be able to really do them justice and to when my mind won't be a buzzing swarm of "coulda, woulda, shoulda"s.
It's like running as fast as you can with a black sack over your head - you don't even really know what you're running towards or in what direction you should be running, you're just running, aimlessly, and you know it.

You bump into shit and you knock over old ladies and you wish someone would either intercept you and pull the sack off saying "Hey! STOOPID. It's that way," or do you a real fucking favour and knock you out cold. Because it's not the running around that sucks - that's the kind of blind faith in the universe which you'll look back on in 10 years and be filled with misty-eyed yearnings for your adorable former self - it's the being aware of it that robs you of the chance to enjoy your youth.

That, and the being made aware of it.

There are some older, more experienced sages whose luxurious, immobile apathy mocks you quietly as you scramble through the bookfair, gathering business cards like plastic-wrapped collectors' items, and talking for thirty minutes to the guy who runs the newspaper written by animals (not in the point of view of animals, by them) for a chance at five with the guy at the next table who you've deemed 'really matters'.

The kind thing for these sage individuals to do would be to take you aside, gently, under their wing and say, "Listen, that guy you're suffering to talk to? His ideas are shit and he jacks off his dogs. He's in cahoots with the animal newspaper guy, don't talk to him, save your precious time. The real guru is the deadhead at the corner table." Yet, instead of letting you enjoy your idiocy or of helping you maximize your youth and vigor by giving it a little direction, they sit and sneer as you knowingly humiliate yourself for lack of better alternatives, glaring in a way that says "you're doing something wrong, but I'm not going to tell you what it is."

One does well to remember from time to time, however, that this guy used to be just like you, and that, just because he's employed his selective amnesia to make you temporarily feel like shit, it won't stop you from using that blinding, ruthless zeal to get hired as an intern at his magazine, get a hold of the tax records, and take that shit down from the inside.

So green-leaves take heart: the day is fast approaching when you'll either figure it out or get better at disguising the fact you know nothing.

And yodas, stop giving me that 'I'm going to roll my eyes at you as soon as you turn your back or sooner' gaze. I can't help it; and it's not so many millennia ago that you were just as green on the inside as out. Strain to remember. Use the fucking force if you have to. And, after all that, if you still aren't going to help a sister out, at least put a fucking smile on your face and restore to my glorious youth what little dignity it has.

Stranger Danger

It's odd to hear someone flashing back to when s/he was in university, and from a similarly libral-directioned stage in life; it makes me anxious to figure out what the story is right this second, to choose my life path and choose it right to avoid any looking-back crises down the road. And while I realize this a a futile and juvenile fear, potentially stunting present growth in ironic anticipation of future stagnation, I have gleaned some pieces of wisdom from the search this anxiety inspired.

I have engaged several professors in mentoral roles, in the hopes that I may preempt any future 'grown up crises' by reliving theirs, so as not to become a 'looking back' girl myself, but rather someone able to move comfortably in the future from their grounded position in the past and present.

This is incredibly unrealistic.

Yet, I've been given some real gems, so far.

As I waited for Joanne outside of one of the only vegetarian restaurant on-campus (still trying to impress my ultimate role-model, the woman I hope to one day become 1/16th of), panic darted through my mind thinking she was so important and busy that she'd forgotten our lunch date set nearly three weeks prior. I called my boss, "Do you have to confirm on lunch dates? What's the cut-off - one month? Should I have sent her an emai- I should have sent her an email." "No, no, no," she cooed, "I'm sure she's just running late."

As it was a sunny day, I pulled out a cigarette and decided to make the best of the situation by leaning against the building looking bad-ass, smoking and reviewing the edits on a piece I was working on.

These, I thought, are the moments when I am truly grateful for cigarettes/cigarillos/whathaveyou, in that they give you the opportunity to appear as though you're doing something, ie. smoking, when in reality you're just getting stood up.

And just as I extinguished my smoke, Joanne crossed the street, remplis avec apologies for being so tardy. I waved my hand, made faces and said, "Nooo! Don't worry about it!"

And I meant it - I love this woman. She could take me on a guided tour of hell and I'd say 'Thank you!' (but, of course, she would never actually do that, which is also why I love her).

After a brief recounting of some poor sod she'd met on her last plane ride (going to meet his internet bride in China - "I hope his children are either greedy, or love him," she said, "because that poor bastard's gonna be broke and left for dead this side of two years."), we launched into my life questions.

I began to explain to her my agorophobia at having so many options open after graduation, and the accompanying anxiety marked by the need to have to first lay out the next seven years before making a decision about a summer job, my fall course-load, or a pair of dress-pants.

I told her my big three - journalism, publishing, teaching - and the most profound and eloquent advice proceeded to flow from her for the better part of an hour, during which time I sat quietly gazing at her, misty-eyed, enchanted, feverishly battling my desire to pull out the cassette recorder in my purse:

"You should change careers based on the option that you think you will be happy with for the next 1-3 years," she said. "Only ever plan that far in advance, no master plan needed.

"And choose it based on the skills it will require you to exercise to perform the job's daily tasks - if a job only gives you the chance to encounter or exercise your passion once every 6 months, that one opportunity will not be worth the 100-some days of tiny, precise torture til you get there."

I began thinking that this may be a bit idealistic, an option for those who perpetually have options; yet I suppose that just makes the main fulcrum on which this advice revolves 'keep your options open', something anyone considering a career choice or change should remember.

"I never planned my career," she said, "though in retrospect each move looks quite calculated. I merely chose the option that excited me, and that most closely matched not just what I was good at doing, but what I loved doing."

And she's absolutely fine now. She's set, in fact. One of the most saught-after lecturers in the world, an expert in various fields (though she says she did not choose these fields either, that they were merely areas that interested her and that she yearned to know more about, building up her knowledge slowly until she hears herself introduced as "Joanne, expert in the Charter" or "Joanne, a leading researcher in race-relations" and thinks 'Really? Huh.'), Joanne is just so fully in-touch with her passions and what she needs from an activity she'll spend the majority of her day doing that she's not afraid to demand what she needs from a position, and gets it.

And even though she has what I would call one of the most demanding, emotionally-draining jobs in the world, she's able to balance her rights-championing hard-ass self with this aura of 'I'll be fine-ness' and an ability to laugh that's contagious. And I start thinking, I will be fine. So I choose the wrong job, it's not a one-way street, I can have more than one career in my life, because what I like and what I think will make me happy now may not satisfy me in the same way five or ten years down the line. The only way I truly would not be happy would be if my choices neglected my current passions and favoured the projected feelings of this ten-years-later-stranger. If one puts those blinders on now, the rest of her life could be lived looking ahead, as one giant 'process', and will never be appreciated for its uncanny moments of being exactly where one wants to be (physically, emotionally, etc.) in that moment, of getting caught up in an achievement or an occurance merely for the feeling it gives one in that second, and not for how it will look on a resume.

These are the moments you'll look back on and love as a forty-something flasher-backer and, like a future crisis, their occurrance can't be scheduled.

our house, in the middle of the street (read:crisis)

I've recently come upon a blog of a rather well-known woman trying to find herself (in my books, being known by VF's James Wolcott is well-known - and no, it's not Virginia Woolf) and I became inspired. In one day I've discovered her blog (thanks again, Wolcott), mulled over the concept, created several of my own (yes, several - titles continued to allude me by sounding either like outgrown expressions of teen angst or like chick-lit novels), until finally, inspiration struck:
this evening, catching up on past entries of her Elizabeth Gilbert-esque journey of culture, couture, confit, and self-contemplation, I felt dreadfully sad at her lamentations of directionlessness. Sad, and strangely sympathetic. For, while this self-seeking woman is much more well read, well travelled and, quite definitely, better fed than I, and while our situations, nationalities, ages and professions are or seem entirely different (and this comparison is definitely not meant to discount her, quite the opposite), I couldn't help but think, this woman is not lost; I've found her, and she's sitting in front of my computer... only she got to go to France.

Different women, different ages, same questions, same space. As she sits, in the next apartment, surrounded by old transcripts, letters of recommendation, essays and projects, I'm sitting in my own small apartment, in a room just like yours, and quite like hers (though I'd imagine her musing is conducted in a much chiquer space), surrounded by my own recent print history of sleepless nights and 'well done' s, and wondering, what the hell for? Et voila! L'inspiration, she strikes, comme ça: while it's a comfort to know that the 'where am I going' crisis is not limited to twenty-somethings, it's also quite haunting to know that question can remain unanswered.

So, as in the golden days of literature when a rose was still a rose and inspiration wasn't copyrighted, I propose a similar project - in my quest for direction and a reasonable plan comrpising a reasonable length of time, I'll share any guidance or gems of advice received, and any small revelations I've had while staring at soup or waiting for the bus, all the while getting back in the habits of writing and reflection, trying to find what's definitively me. And perhaps, from one dame to another, with two blogs from two rooms, we can make sense of this mess, find what we love and, some day, get paid for it.

And hopefully I'll be blessed with the gift of concision somewhere along the way.