Year in Review

It may be a day or two early, but today I looked through my 2007 planner from beginning to end, and relived the entire year.

In January, I was still living at my parents house. A few months after landing back home from abroad, I was still looking for a job that wasn't in a restaurant. I had applied to numerous administrative jobs with no luck. But finally, at the end of the month, I interviewed for a Night Associate position at Gaffney Funeral Home in Tacoma. And on February 2, I moved into my new apartment located conveniently a half-block behind the funeral home. This "arrangement," free apartment with all utilities included in exchange for working one night a week and one weekend a month fit very well with the rest of my life. The schedule still allowed me to fill in for Tim every now and then at the Greenroom, and by the end of the month I added a couple shifts at the Sunset Grill to supplement my income. Soon, I had lots of money coming in, and barely any money going out! I could afford to buy bookshelves and take a class at Pratt Fine Arts Center and parties and concerts in Seattle all the time. Life was good.

And it continued like this through the end of May. Little notes in my planner allude to little distractions, like on February 17, I scrawled, "Kinetic @ Pacific Science Center," and March 7, "Danny-Gateway to India." That was a blind date with a guy I met on itsjustcoffee.com, a self-proclaimed dating site for nerds (and crunchy granola eating hippies). Danny was great, the date went well, but I just wasn't attracted to him. It was one of the first times I realized that maybe the anatomy was the problem. I think that I was also beginning my addiction to the "L Word" around this time as well, which most certainly prompted this idea.

Scattered repeatedly throughout almost every week were hastily written "Clean Mauso," and "Pratt," reminders. Part of my funeral home job was to clean part of the Tacoma Mortuary and Mausoleum. I had a section of the Mauso to clean once a week. Between my three jobs and my insistence at a social life, this was rarely done on a weekly basis. My Tuesday Intro to Flameworking class at Pratt Fine Arts Center came with free Friday access to the warm glass studio. I made it to Seattle every Friday for a chance to experiment and play with ultra-hot liquefied glass.

Sometime in the beginning of March I was notified that I won a fellowship to the Academy for Alternative Journalism. When I applied in February I never dreamed I would actually get it. Only 10 people were chosen from a national pool of applicants, and they wanted me! I couldn't believe it. So it would appear that I would be spending the summer in Chicago. And that I would have to quit my jobs. All of them.

Sometime in May I bought all second-hand glass blowing equipment and set up a studio in my dad's mostly unused auto shop. Throughout the month of May "blow glass" is scheduled into my days and weeks. I devoted entire days to perfecting my techniques, as well as before, after, and between work. But very soon, it was June, and I was leaving for Chicago. I moved out of the funeral home, and stored all my stuff at my dad's shop. I flew to Chicago on June 15 for a summer fellowship, and was due to move back home in August. Little would I realize as I was boarding the plane that I was flying to what would be my home for the rest of the year.

Once in Chicago, I arrived at Haymarket House, a housing co-op on the southside. My first night also happened to be Kate's last night, as she was leaving for San Francisco in the morning. This kind of thing ensues obligatory partying, and every co-oper, University of Chicago student, and a few hipsters were drinking, smoking, dancing and debating all over Haymarket long into the night. After sitting around an (unlit) fire pit for much of the evening conversing with Germans, Americans born overseas, and a Cuban-African-American Jew, I knew that I had found where I wanted to be. After backpacking through Asia the previous fall and meeting friends from all over the world where instant friendships are created over a drink, I had been craving a more diverse crowd. I wanted to be somewhere that I could meet people from all over the world. I thought that I had to leave the United States to get that, and when I realized that I could have it all in Chicago, I decided then and there that I wasn't going back to the Northwest when the summer was over. I was relocating myself to the Midwest.

I did go back home in August, as the fellowship had purchased my round-trip plane ticket (and I had to pack the rest of my shit). But I didn't stay long. I was home for a mere week before taking off for Burning Man with a friend at the end of the month. I returned from this in early September, and spent a week or so packing and tying up loose ends (such as buying a car to drive my stuff across the country) before hitting the road, solo-style (again) driving 3 days for 15 hours a day to get back to Chicago before my money ran out. Again, as in January, I was broke, unemployed, recently landed from another adventure, but ready for something different.

After playing the same job search game as before, I desperately searched for something not food/beverage related. I very quickly landed a gig transcribing videotaped psychotherapy sessions. When this woman told me that there was traumatic content, I had no idea what I was really getting myself into. I thought, no big deal, I can deal with whatever content she can throw at me. But once the first video opened with her (and only her) talking to a camera (and herself) using three different voices to represent her different parts, I was baffled. And then came the traumatic content. Satanic rituals, memories of being left hanging in a closet until her father would come to molest her, being buried alive, all these painful memories pricked their way inside of me until I began to question my own memories. Thoroughly fucked up after a couple weeks, I stopped doing transcriptions. I just couldn't handle listening to her memories and thoughts any longer.

Soon it was October, and I was out of money. I applied for a job in a downtown coffee house and was offered the job the next day over the phone. A week later I was offered a serving job at a restaurant in my neighborhood. I worked both for a while, leaving the house at 5 am and arriving home past midnight. That obviously didn't last long, and when I quit the Coffee Beanery, I was promoted to Lead Server at Chant.

Chant was great. A brand new Hyde Park restaurant, the chic atmosphere and tasty appetizers (and full bar) set it apart from the abundance of the other take-out and delivery options on 53rd. We had a small staff, and when the restaurant opened we all worked out asses off to make things work. Things were a bit rough in the beginning, but we were doing well, and getting better every day. Until the owner hired an independent consultant to do customer service training with the staff. A tall, insecure African-American woman with a horse-hair weave, bright red lipstick, tight clothes and a faint hint of a lisp, Kimberley arrived on the scene with unknown intentions. She said she was here to do training with the servers, but soon it turned into her organizing events for the restaurant (that inevitably flopped), taking out her control-freak tendencies on the mostly non-English speaking kitchen staff, and generally terrorizing everyone, including the customers. How the owner, a very intelligent and genuinely nice Thai woman, could be so blind to all of this was beyond us, the staff. Kimberley very rudely corrected us in the most condescending manner, and took every opportunity to tell us about her many years of experience in the restaurant industry (whose number changed every time she told us), all the "famous" people she's worked with (none of who we'd ever heard of) and about how we could all be replaced with snap of her fingers. Every day I came to work dreading to see her face. If she was there, I would almost surely have a bad night. I would leave pissed off and angry that someone could speak to me the way that she did, and I would buy a bottle (or two) of wine and drink every last drop. And probably smoke a joint too.

A month of this shit and I had turned into a bitter, bitchy, drunk. I hated my job, and on top of all of that, I was really homesick for the Northwest. I missed going to clubs and concerts and parties with my friends. I missed my friends. I missed the trees, mountains, oceans and lakes. I missed the glass blowing scene of Seattle. I missed the burner community. I missed my best friend. I wanted to practice poi with her and take a glass blowing class and go hiking and kayaking and smoke blunts on the beach. I decided that these things were more important than living far, far away from the town I lived in most of my life, and planned to return to the Northwest as soon as possible. I budgeted that I could pay off my credit card by February and leave the Midwest in March. I thought that I could stick it out at Chant with the crazy martyr bitch, and then I reached my breaking point with Kimberley.

After a heated meeting where Kimberley wouldn't let any of us speak, probably because she knew we wanted to express our concerns and dissatisfaction with her, I sat down with her and the owner. I told Kimberley that the way that she spoke to members of the staff was unacceptable. It was hostile, condescending, and rude. With a sugary sweet demeanor that only appeared when in the owner's presence, she asked for examples. And I gave her some. After numerous examples (all of which she tried to tear down) I told her that the way she was speaking to me right now was the way I always wanted to be spoken to. And the owner said that she couldn't afford for her to speak to me that way! Once they could no longer deny the fact that Kimberley is a bitch who has no business in customer service, the owner actually told me that she thought it was valuable experience for me, as a manager (a title they only used when it suited them, most of the time I was merely Lead Server), to be spoken to in this manner. That I would have to learn to deal with people like Kimberley. So I told them to fuck off. I said fuck your valuable experience, I don't have to put up with this bullshit. And I quit.

Well, not exactly. I pretty much gave up at the meeting, so internally pissed off that I could no longer speak, and ended the meeting. The next day while walking to work, I decided that this restaurant job was simply no longer worth it. I took a serving job because I didn't want to think. I wanted to just go to work and when I left work, I really left it. If I wanted a job that stayed with my 24/7, I would have taken a writing job. So I worked my shift, and at 5 pm when the other manager came to relieve me, I handed her my keys, apologized, and told her that Chant was no longer a place that I saw myself working. She gave me a hug and said, "good for you!" Walking out of there, I'd never felt freer. Free from the bullshit of manipulative people, of blind ownership and people that take the bullshit without complaint.

Now it was days before Christmas and I was again without a job. This time, however, I was very happily unemployed. I went home to Gig Harbor for a week-long X-mas holiday. It was the greatest week! I spent time with friends and family and partied so hard that I'm still recovering. The week only reinforced the feeling that I had to return to the Northwest as soon as possible. My best friend Jessica happened to have a week off in the middle of January, so we made plans for her to fly to Chicago and drive back with me.

After returning to Chicago on December 27, I realized I only had two and a half more weeks of living at Haymarket, of living in Chicago, of living halfway across the country from anything I've ever known. And I grew sad. And still am. But I'm also ecstatically happy to be returning to the place that I didn't realize was home until I left it. So today, on December 30, I have approximately 15 more days of living here. 15 days to clean my shit, pack, ship books home, and all the while, spending quality time with the best housemates that could ever exist, anywhere. Haymarket showed me how to live in a community. It showed me how to learn from each other, how to work together and how great it is to live in such a diverse yet unified place. I became a better cook, learned how to start and run a co-op, be more sustainable and eco-friendly, and was shown how to live by values that I've always held dear but didn't always know how to stand by. I will forever consider Haymarket my home, one of many that I've created for myself around the world.