OK, so I'm not fit by any stretch of the imagination, as both my ever-present belly and my consistently low cardiovascular endurance demonstrate. But I also feel like I'm a reasonably active person; I get around to many places by walking, and I have to go up that darn hill to my house every single day. Not to mention, while other very fit people are doing that with only 120-160 pounds on them, I'm carrying 200+ with me all the time.
I've always wondered: why doesn't the simple act of hauling myself around count for more towards my fitness? I mean, I'm not slouching around on a couch or in a car all the time; I walk, I take stairs, I still have to run for that bus or train and I can usually make it. I can walk 2-3 miles on a whim when I decide it's a nice day and I want the fresh air ... I feel like I should be much more fit than I appear.
Mind you, I'm also firmly convinced that I'm a very muscular person - it's just hidden under a mostly opaque layer of fat. I swear, if you took away my belly, my abs are like a rock. :-)
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Match
I just watched a screening of a very good movie, (500) Days of Summer, which I highly recommend seeing. It's a relationships movie, and a surprisingly accurate one - sometimes painfully so. I saw the ghosts of my own dating history in more than one scene.
[Please note: I will try to write the following without giving away too much plot, but if you're one of those people who absolutely hates even the hint of spoilers and might want to see this movie, don't keep reading. But do go see it - it's good!]
It's funny: I loved the movie, but I also kind of hated it for that accuracy, and at the end I felt sad. I suppose it wasn't a movie that helped along my desire to believe in happy endings, the way I want my romantic comedies to do (but I also at the same time hate them for giving me hopes that are never matched by reality). I didn't want to be reminded of my relationship misfires, and to wonder even now if I'm in another one but I just haven't had that moment of realization yet. There is a message intertwined in the movie about how right it is when you know you found the one ... but I think I'd feel much better about that message if I was already sitting in that place of certainty.
I couldn't help but think of all the men I've dated in my life, most of whom have found life partners - ironically, those are the ones who squashed my heart like a pancake. It's not that I wished them evil, or an eternity without finding happiness in love (at least, not after I sufficiently recovered from the heartbreak); but I certainly didn't want them to find it before me. It seems unfair somehow that they should go so quickly - sometimes directly - from my misery to their destined mate, while I am still left wondering.
It also kind of made me want to have a "future" conversation with my boyfriend, which I had just gotten comfortable with the idea of not having for a while. If we already know that we have major differences in some of the things we believe and want, should I cut my losses before I get even more invested than I already am? Can I still manage to get out without getting hurt? Our relationship seems so good right now, and has always felt open and honest and comfortable and peaceful and consistently enjoyable and pretty matched in caring - not like my others - but I am a) historically prone to ignoring big red flashing signals that say "Turn back from this relationship!" and b) used to having the rug pulled out from under me just when I think a relationship is making good progress.
I think I've been pretty cautious this time, and I don't think I have my rose-colored glasses on; but that doesn't mean I'm not still waiting to find out exactly how and when this will end. While I try not t be such a downer in my daily interactions, I feel somewhere in the back of my mind that the best I can hope for I that the end doesn't totally suck, and that I get over it fast. Much like one of the characters in the movie, I am pretty sure that this soulmates/true love/find your life partner nonsense is a big pile of stinky poopy. I do have friends whose marriages seem to suggest otherwise ... but I think I am not destined to share their happy fate.
Gee whiz - from my description, you'd think this was a terribly depressing movie! It's not, though ... it's very cute and funny and smart and you should absolutely go see it; despite my mournful reflections, I truly enjoyed the film. And my dire prophecies probably have much more to do with fear of the past than any particular prediction of future behavior. While I don't know how long my boyfriend and I will be together, I am thoroughly thankful for the wonderful time that we've had so far, and I plan to enjoy all the good times that remain for us. I do hope that one day I can let go of that bad history, that it will lose its power to rise up, remind me, and run me over all over again.
Cheers! ;-)
[Please note: I will try to write the following without giving away too much plot, but if you're one of those people who absolutely hates even the hint of spoilers and might want to see this movie, don't keep reading. But do go see it - it's good!]
It's funny: I loved the movie, but I also kind of hated it for that accuracy, and at the end I felt sad. I suppose it wasn't a movie that helped along my desire to believe in happy endings, the way I want my romantic comedies to do (but I also at the same time hate them for giving me hopes that are never matched by reality). I didn't want to be reminded of my relationship misfires, and to wonder even now if I'm in another one but I just haven't had that moment of realization yet. There is a message intertwined in the movie about how right it is when you know you found the one ... but I think I'd feel much better about that message if I was already sitting in that place of certainty.
I couldn't help but think of all the men I've dated in my life, most of whom have found life partners - ironically, those are the ones who squashed my heart like a pancake. It's not that I wished them evil, or an eternity without finding happiness in love (at least, not after I sufficiently recovered from the heartbreak); but I certainly didn't want them to find it before me. It seems unfair somehow that they should go so quickly - sometimes directly - from my misery to their destined mate, while I am still left wondering.
It also kind of made me want to have a "future" conversation with my boyfriend, which I had just gotten comfortable with the idea of not having for a while. If we already know that we have major differences in some of the things we believe and want, should I cut my losses before I get even more invested than I already am? Can I still manage to get out without getting hurt? Our relationship seems so good right now, and has always felt open and honest and comfortable and peaceful and consistently enjoyable and pretty matched in caring - not like my others - but I am a) historically prone to ignoring big red flashing signals that say "Turn back from this relationship!" and b) used to having the rug pulled out from under me just when I think a relationship is making good progress.
I think I've been pretty cautious this time, and I don't think I have my rose-colored glasses on; but that doesn't mean I'm not still waiting to find out exactly how and when this will end. While I try not t be such a downer in my daily interactions, I feel somewhere in the back of my mind that the best I can hope for I that the end doesn't totally suck, and that I get over it fast. Much like one of the characters in the movie, I am pretty sure that this soulmates/true love/find your life partner nonsense is a big pile of stinky poopy. I do have friends whose marriages seem to suggest otherwise ... but I think I am not destined to share their happy fate.
Gee whiz - from my description, you'd think this was a terribly depressing movie! It's not, though ... it's very cute and funny and smart and you should absolutely go see it; despite my mournful reflections, I truly enjoyed the film. And my dire prophecies probably have much more to do with fear of the past than any particular prediction of future behavior. While I don't know how long my boyfriend and I will be together, I am thoroughly thankful for the wonderful time that we've had so far, and I plan to enjoy all the good times that remain for us. I do hope that one day I can let go of that bad history, that it will lose its power to rise up, remind me, and run me over all over again.
Cheers! ;-)
Labels:
Inner Life,
Life with People
Friday, June 05, 2009
Solving poverty
This may be an incredibly naïve - not to mention completely unoriginal - post; I'm putting that right out front, in the hopes that I'll get a pass if this turns out to be pure nonsense.
I'm at my second conference in 3 weeks, as my high-travel post-employment period draws to a close and my schedule-free period begins. I'm listening to the panelists and responders in a fabulous presentation on community food systems and environmental justice, which is a topic that has grown increasingly near to my heart over the past couple years. And as I've been attending all these sessions at these two conferences about improving cities and designing communities and engaging all stakeholders, this recurring question of addressing poverty and its affects seems to lurk just below the surface of many discussions.
I mentioned tongue-in-cheek in a previous post that, following my rant against and intellectual non-producer class, I had also come up with a simple solution to poverty. This was only half in jest; as I was sitting in sessions later that day, I really started thinking about what poverty is and how we define it. We typically define it by income - but as with pretty much everything about money, that measurement is merely a proxy for the real issue at hand. To wit, I asked a friend: if you lived in the US and made only $15,000/year but you had secure access to safe, healthy, good quality housing, food, health care and education, are you actually poor? I'd argue not; poverty is not about any specific amount of wealth you have, but about whether your available resources allow you to reliably meet your basic needs.
Well, duh. Who would argue with that? But while we might all agree on that basic definition of poverty, I think we generally put our resources and efforts in the wrong place. The error starts with money, actually; we've forgotten that money is a proxy for real things, not a real thing itself. So we focus on solving poverty through "wealth creation": giving people ways to earn money to buy their basic needs. We think this is a much better long term alternative than just giving people food, housing, etc., directly ... and I'd agree with the idea that we don't want people to be dependent on others to get their basic needs and unable to be more self-sufficient.
Except: the phrase is "Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime," not "Teach a man to work a job that gets him money to buy fish and he eats for a lifetime." The fallacy is that having money to purchase the goods we need makes us independent; but it actually makes us totally dependent on a production and distribution system for basic goods that most of us don't understand and aren't involved in except at the very end stages. Not to mention that we are also dependent on the vagaries of the employment market to provide our income, over which we also have very little control.
I think a real solution to poverty and dependency would take out the money proxy and the middle man's profit that raises the barrier to goods, as much as could possibly be done. My solution to poverty has three pretty simple stages:
1) Provide basic necessities to those who lack them, immediately. Rent all the high-quality housing on the market for everyone currently defined as poor. Hire doctors, rent space to increase clinic capacity and buy equipent and supplies to provide free care for their medical needs. Buy all the food we can from local and organic farmers and distribute it for free to those who need it. Get everyone clothes and shoes appropriate for the climate they live in. Do all necessary school repairs for immediate health and safety, hire a huge number of the best teachers we can find and purchase all the up-to-date materials they need to teach the best classes to the poorest students. And don't tell me we lack the money to do it; we can always find money for whatever we decide is important enough to fund. We just dropped uncountable billions on the most asinine bailouts of the most irresponsible companies in the world; we could feed, house, heal and educate everyone in the country if we actually wanted to.
2) Once folks are initially settled into their homes, having regular healthy meals, receiving medical care and basic education, now we can start skills building, teaching people how to meet these basic needs for themselves: how to grow food; build; keep healthy and treat the sick; make clothes, furniture, and other household goods and tools; and how to share knowledge and civic responsibility with others in their community. I absolutely agree that it's critical to establish a level of independence and self-sufficiency where people can do as much as they can for themselves. I also agree with another principle behind "welfare-to-work" efforts: the time where you can depend on others to keep providing for you should be limited, and extended only in rare circumstances. Let's use 2 years as a time frame to start with, although it might not be the right one; during that time, after basic needs are initially met, anyone receiving services has to be actively participating in training toward being able to provide those services for themselves and others. Over the two years, they should move from being service provider trainees to the highly competent leaders and organizers of these services for their community. They should be building the new homes, schools, shops, clinics or hospitals, and governing and knowledge-transfer systems that they will need for themselves; and the outside helpers who were initially needed to provide those services will increasingly release responsibility and involvement to the people themselves.
3) In order to move from the emergency systems that were initially established to opportunities for ongoing self- and community-sufficiency, people need access to space and initial materials to build from. It's the 40 acres and a mule principle, which we're still paying for not properly implementing at the time: you can't just set someone loose from a position of systemic oppression, not give them some resources that can generate their future, and expect them not to end up back in a system of oppression in the near future. I actaully think the more difficult part of this process won't be the material goods, but rather the space question. Our conception of land and property ownership and its conncetion to status make us loath to consider giving it to others without making them pay for it, to say nothing of yielding up what we've already laid claim to. Land control and exclusion have been key tools for those who are in power (or want to be) to maintain dominance over another person or group. Sharing and/or giving back use, rights and control over land is a critical component of addressing poverty in the US and abroad, and without recognizing and responding to that, we will never solve the problem.
4) Almost finally, there has to be the flexibility to determine the kinds of exchange systems that people want to establish related to meeting their basic needs. Beyond a fairly basic level, it's highly likely that any one person or family will need help from other members of their community in continuing to meet basic needs. (None of us are actually self-sufficient, even the most wealthy.) There should be a variety of accepted and easily facilitated ways to exchange between communities members - and preference should be placed on those systems that don't require money. Money not only represents distance between people and the goods or services they consume, but also between people themselves; it's a way to make exchange possible between people who don't know or trust each other enough to exchanges goods and services directly. We should encourage communities to form relationships that allow exchanges of trust with one another; this is true social capital, the stuff we're always trying to create in our communities.
5) Really finally, while a traditional capitalist market for manufacture and exchange may arise and thrive for non-essential/luxury goods, certain things must be protected from the vagaries of markets and ensured for our citizens at all times. This sounds like total blasphemy to our capitalist ears, but we already do this with one important aspect of essential citizen services - public education. We've made a societal commitment to providing public schools for every child no matter where they live or how rich they are, rather than leaving that up to someone's ability to generate a certain level of income. (Mind you, we've tied quality to income through the way that we fund and maintain said schools ... but at least part of the system was trying to head in the right direction.) What's odd is that we seem completely unwilling to provide that same universal assurance of access for other services even more essential, and without which it's unreasonably difficult to take advantage of public education: we recognize a right to education that must be protected, but not to housing, food, clothing or medical care. How do we expect a homeless, hungry, naked and sick person to get through schooling or training well?
I call this solution simple, and I think it is. It's tempting to say that we're going to need a huge new bureaucracy to manage all of this; but I'd argue that we have plenty of existing bureaucracy that can not only be used, but also simplified to focus on easily and quickly meeting these goals. The problem may not be so much complicated as just plain difficult, because of the radical change in our priorities and will to achieve them that all of the above assumes. (Yes, I'm back to radicalism again.)
At any rate, I've been writing this post all day, and missing pieces of conference sessions, so it's time to close out. I'll be thinking about this some more ... People may call me crazy, and hypocritical because my life doesn't look like this yet - but I still think there's a gem of truth here to be dug out and shared, and that it's important to shake it free.
I'm at my second conference in 3 weeks, as my high-travel post-employment period draws to a close and my schedule-free period begins. I'm listening to the panelists and responders in a fabulous presentation on community food systems and environmental justice, which is a topic that has grown increasingly near to my heart over the past couple years. And as I've been attending all these sessions at these two conferences about improving cities and designing communities and engaging all stakeholders, this recurring question of addressing poverty and its affects seems to lurk just below the surface of many discussions.
I mentioned tongue-in-cheek in a previous post that, following my rant against and intellectual non-producer class, I had also come up with a simple solution to poverty. This was only half in jest; as I was sitting in sessions later that day, I really started thinking about what poverty is and how we define it. We typically define it by income - but as with pretty much everything about money, that measurement is merely a proxy for the real issue at hand. To wit, I asked a friend: if you lived in the US and made only $15,000/year but you had secure access to safe, healthy, good quality housing, food, health care and education, are you actually poor? I'd argue not; poverty is not about any specific amount of wealth you have, but about whether your available resources allow you to reliably meet your basic needs.
Well, duh. Who would argue with that? But while we might all agree on that basic definition of poverty, I think we generally put our resources and efforts in the wrong place. The error starts with money, actually; we've forgotten that money is a proxy for real things, not a real thing itself. So we focus on solving poverty through "wealth creation": giving people ways to earn money to buy their basic needs. We think this is a much better long term alternative than just giving people food, housing, etc., directly ... and I'd agree with the idea that we don't want people to be dependent on others to get their basic needs and unable to be more self-sufficient.
Except: the phrase is "Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime," not "Teach a man to work a job that gets him money to buy fish and he eats for a lifetime." The fallacy is that having money to purchase the goods we need makes us independent; but it actually makes us totally dependent on a production and distribution system for basic goods that most of us don't understand and aren't involved in except at the very end stages. Not to mention that we are also dependent on the vagaries of the employment market to provide our income, over which we also have very little control.
I think a real solution to poverty and dependency would take out the money proxy and the middle man's profit that raises the barrier to goods, as much as could possibly be done. My solution to poverty has three pretty simple stages:
1) Provide basic necessities to those who lack them, immediately. Rent all the high-quality housing on the market for everyone currently defined as poor. Hire doctors, rent space to increase clinic capacity and buy equipent and supplies to provide free care for their medical needs. Buy all the food we can from local and organic farmers and distribute it for free to those who need it. Get everyone clothes and shoes appropriate for the climate they live in. Do all necessary school repairs for immediate health and safety, hire a huge number of the best teachers we can find and purchase all the up-to-date materials they need to teach the best classes to the poorest students. And don't tell me we lack the money to do it; we can always find money for whatever we decide is important enough to fund. We just dropped uncountable billions on the most asinine bailouts of the most irresponsible companies in the world; we could feed, house, heal and educate everyone in the country if we actually wanted to.
2) Once folks are initially settled into their homes, having regular healthy meals, receiving medical care and basic education, now we can start skills building, teaching people how to meet these basic needs for themselves: how to grow food; build; keep healthy and treat the sick; make clothes, furniture, and other household goods and tools; and how to share knowledge and civic responsibility with others in their community. I absolutely agree that it's critical to establish a level of independence and self-sufficiency where people can do as much as they can for themselves. I also agree with another principle behind "welfare-to-work" efforts: the time where you can depend on others to keep providing for you should be limited, and extended only in rare circumstances. Let's use 2 years as a time frame to start with, although it might not be the right one; during that time, after basic needs are initially met, anyone receiving services has to be actively participating in training toward being able to provide those services for themselves and others. Over the two years, they should move from being service provider trainees to the highly competent leaders and organizers of these services for their community. They should be building the new homes, schools, shops, clinics or hospitals, and governing and knowledge-transfer systems that they will need for themselves; and the outside helpers who were initially needed to provide those services will increasingly release responsibility and involvement to the people themselves.
3) In order to move from the emergency systems that were initially established to opportunities for ongoing self- and community-sufficiency, people need access to space and initial materials to build from. It's the 40 acres and a mule principle, which we're still paying for not properly implementing at the time: you can't just set someone loose from a position of systemic oppression, not give them some resources that can generate their future, and expect them not to end up back in a system of oppression in the near future. I actaully think the more difficult part of this process won't be the material goods, but rather the space question. Our conception of land and property ownership and its conncetion to status make us loath to consider giving it to others without making them pay for it, to say nothing of yielding up what we've already laid claim to. Land control and exclusion have been key tools for those who are in power (or want to be) to maintain dominance over another person or group. Sharing and/or giving back use, rights and control over land is a critical component of addressing poverty in the US and abroad, and without recognizing and responding to that, we will never solve the problem.
4) Almost finally, there has to be the flexibility to determine the kinds of exchange systems that people want to establish related to meeting their basic needs. Beyond a fairly basic level, it's highly likely that any one person or family will need help from other members of their community in continuing to meet basic needs. (None of us are actually self-sufficient, even the most wealthy.) There should be a variety of accepted and easily facilitated ways to exchange between communities members - and preference should be placed on those systems that don't require money. Money not only represents distance between people and the goods or services they consume, but also between people themselves; it's a way to make exchange possible between people who don't know or trust each other enough to exchanges goods and services directly. We should encourage communities to form relationships that allow exchanges of trust with one another; this is true social capital, the stuff we're always trying to create in our communities.
5) Really finally, while a traditional capitalist market for manufacture and exchange may arise and thrive for non-essential/luxury goods, certain things must be protected from the vagaries of markets and ensured for our citizens at all times. This sounds like total blasphemy to our capitalist ears, but we already do this with one important aspect of essential citizen services - public education. We've made a societal commitment to providing public schools for every child no matter where they live or how rich they are, rather than leaving that up to someone's ability to generate a certain level of income. (Mind you, we've tied quality to income through the way that we fund and maintain said schools ... but at least part of the system was trying to head in the right direction.) What's odd is that we seem completely unwilling to provide that same universal assurance of access for other services even more essential, and without which it's unreasonably difficult to take advantage of public education: we recognize a right to education that must be protected, but not to housing, food, clothing or medical care. How do we expect a homeless, hungry, naked and sick person to get through schooling or training well?
I call this solution simple, and I think it is. It's tempting to say that we're going to need a huge new bureaucracy to manage all of this; but I'd argue that we have plenty of existing bureaucracy that can not only be used, but also simplified to focus on easily and quickly meeting these goals. The problem may not be so much complicated as just plain difficult, because of the radical change in our priorities and will to achieve them that all of the above assumes. (Yes, I'm back to radicalism again.)
At any rate, I've been writing this post all day, and missing pieces of conference sessions, so it's time to close out. I'll be thinking about this some more ... People may call me crazy, and hypocritical because my life doesn't look like this yet - but I still think there's a gem of truth here to be dug out and shared, and that it's important to shake it free.
Labels:
Public Life,
Sustainability
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
The Plan
(No, not the Cylon plan to destroy the human race ... for that, you'll have to wait for the upcoming BSG movie!!)
Things are quickly settling down as to where I'll be and what I'll be doing in the coming months; this period of my life is quite exciting and fun, as it combines the peace and enjoyment of resting and waiting to see what God puts into place with the surprise of discovering exactly what those next pieces will be. It's like Christmas presents: I know what I put on my wish list, but I never know what gifts I've gotten until the day comes and the package is opened.
Gift #1: I got into grad school! Full time in the Master in Public Administration program at Suffolk University. I found out just a day or two before I went down to see my family in DC/VA, after anxiously watching the mail for weeks.
Gift #2: I got money for grad school! About half of my tuition is covered by a grant/employment fellowship, which totally rocks and makes school quite feasible. I'll still have to take out some loans, but not nearly what I was afraid I might have to do. I'm also going to see if I can try to get another on campus job a few hours a week (ideally, in some way related to what I'm studying) or, alternatively, a little outside job (again, hopefully related to my field, but not so involved that it distracts from my studies) to help with the bills. But the bottom line (no pun intended) is that I should be able to stay in Boston and in my current apartment for the fall.
Gift #3: I still get to spend time in VA with my family! Killing two birds with one stone, I'm going to help my sister out by watching my nephew in July and August (eliminating day care costs and allowing her to work an extra job during those months), and I help myself out by subletting my place so I don't have to worry about paying rent and utilities out of my limited cash reserve for that same period. In a special bonus benefit, I get to be near my other sister while I'm helping her with the wedding planning, and I'll get to see my parents and youngest sister all throughout the summer. So, if you know anyone looking for a July and August sublet, drop me a line! :-)
All in all, it's been a delight to keep seeing what happens next, and to do it in a different way than my normal angsty, trying to figure out how to make everything work, trying to create the options for myself kind of way. I have the blessed luxury of resting - not being lazy or inattentive, but being content in where I am at the moment and knowing that when the next step comes, it will be clear to me and I'll be ready and able to take action. There are still some things that I get nervous about at times - will I find the right sub-letter? do I have enough money to get all the way to September? will I have enough time to get back to Boston and settle in before school? will my relationship with my boyfriend change because of the time apart? - but I'm doing pretty well at turning those worries back over when they pop up. And I remain very, very happy; there's no doubt in my mind that I left my job at the right time, and everything I've done since then has been wonderful time with family, friends and new people I meet. My mom's still a bit concerned for me, but I think she's getting used to my new-found free-time status.
*****
Speaking of free time status, I realized after two weeks of a rather variable waking-dressing-leaving the house routine, I have to give myself a bit more structure. For June, I'd like to make sure I get up, take an exercise walk around the neighborhood, fix myself breakfast and shower and dress before 11AM. For July and August, a friend just inspired me to plan some regular weekly activities for me and my nephew. Not necessarily getting up at the same time every day, but having a day where we go walking or biking around the neighborhood; a day where we go to the library; a day when we go visit my parents at their apartment (and take advantage of the pool in their complex); a day when we go into DC for activities at the museums or other cool places. Hopefully, it will keep us both from watching the Disney Channel and playing Xbox all day ... Although there's sure to be some of that, too!
Things are quickly settling down as to where I'll be and what I'll be doing in the coming months; this period of my life is quite exciting and fun, as it combines the peace and enjoyment of resting and waiting to see what God puts into place with the surprise of discovering exactly what those next pieces will be. It's like Christmas presents: I know what I put on my wish list, but I never know what gifts I've gotten until the day comes and the package is opened.
Gift #1: I got into grad school! Full time in the Master in Public Administration program at Suffolk University. I found out just a day or two before I went down to see my family in DC/VA, after anxiously watching the mail for weeks.
Gift #2: I got money for grad school! About half of my tuition is covered by a grant/employment fellowship, which totally rocks and makes school quite feasible. I'll still have to take out some loans, but not nearly what I was afraid I might have to do. I'm also going to see if I can try to get another on campus job a few hours a week (ideally, in some way related to what I'm studying) or, alternatively, a little outside job (again, hopefully related to my field, but not so involved that it distracts from my studies) to help with the bills. But the bottom line (no pun intended) is that I should be able to stay in Boston and in my current apartment for the fall.
Gift #3: I still get to spend time in VA with my family! Killing two birds with one stone, I'm going to help my sister out by watching my nephew in July and August (eliminating day care costs and allowing her to work an extra job during those months), and I help myself out by subletting my place so I don't have to worry about paying rent and utilities out of my limited cash reserve for that same period. In a special bonus benefit, I get to be near my other sister while I'm helping her with the wedding planning, and I'll get to see my parents and youngest sister all throughout the summer. So, if you know anyone looking for a July and August sublet, drop me a line! :-)
All in all, it's been a delight to keep seeing what happens next, and to do it in a different way than my normal angsty, trying to figure out how to make everything work, trying to create the options for myself kind of way. I have the blessed luxury of resting - not being lazy or inattentive, but being content in where I am at the moment and knowing that when the next step comes, it will be clear to me and I'll be ready and able to take action. There are still some things that I get nervous about at times - will I find the right sub-letter? do I have enough money to get all the way to September? will I have enough time to get back to Boston and settle in before school? will my relationship with my boyfriend change because of the time apart? - but I'm doing pretty well at turning those worries back over when they pop up. And I remain very, very happy; there's no doubt in my mind that I left my job at the right time, and everything I've done since then has been wonderful time with family, friends and new people I meet. My mom's still a bit concerned for me, but I think she's getting used to my new-found free-time status.
*****
Speaking of free time status, I realized after two weeks of a rather variable waking-dressing-leaving the house routine, I have to give myself a bit more structure. For June, I'd like to make sure I get up, take an exercise walk around the neighborhood, fix myself breakfast and shower and dress before 11AM. For July and August, a friend just inspired me to plan some regular weekly activities for me and my nephew. Not necessarily getting up at the same time every day, but having a day where we go walking or biking around the neighborhood; a day where we go to the library; a day when we go visit my parents at their apartment (and take advantage of the pool in their complex); a day when we go into DC for activities at the museums or other cool places. Hopefully, it will keep us both from watching the Disney Channel and playing Xbox all day ... Although there's sure to be some of that, too!
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