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.

Case of the winter blues

Bah humbug. It's the last day of November, and I sit here wondering where it went. Working, working, working. After I get home from the restaurant, all I want to do is relax, and I tend to do so with a bottle of wine. Or it's 2 am when I get home and all I want to do is sleep. I feel like I don't have a life anymore. And the blessing and the curse is that I live at Haymarket, where a life isn't really necessary. I have 13 other people in the house to amuse me. I love living here, I love my housemates, but....I miss my friends. I miss going out with my friends. I miss dressing up in crazy costumes and going to parties, I miss lake houses and beaches and mountains and Canada and yummy herbs and good, ol' northwest peeps. Lately I've been feeling like I'm living in some self-imposed exile, and I find myself wondering why. Why am I here? What is my purpose? I feel like my purpose was to grow some roots somewhere other than the place I grew up, to learn a bunch about co-ops, and the thing I didn't expect, to have a rekindled passion for activist and non-profit work. But now that I've achieved these things, I feel restless. Bored. Kind of lonely. Sometimes I feel like I'm missing out on stuff back home. And I can't wait to go back! I just want to be surrounded by my friends. Granted, I have friends here, but they are all co-workers or housemates. And that's all fine and dandy, but I need more. I need Jessica and Karen and Alex and Zach and Jack and all the people I've grown closest to over the past 10 years. I miss them, and cannot live without them.

So....I'm leaving Chicago. When? I don't know. Maybe in March? I'm not quite ready to leave, yet. I'd like to pay off more of my credit card while I have a job, since once I leave here I will be unemployed for an indeterminate amount of time. Hopefully it will give me a chance to catch up on my writing and art. You know, I took a mindless job in a restaurant so I would have time for art and writing....and it just doesn't happen as often as I'd like. And, it's getting really effin cold and windy here, neither of which makes for ideal conditions for spinning fire (outside) or blowing glass (in the shed with the door open for ventilation). So here I sit, in the common room, doing random board stuff and trying to figure out why I feel so lonely and what I'm doing in Chicago, so far away from my family and friends. Am I just causing myself unnecessary pain? Most people who hail from faraway lands that are living in Chicago are doing so for a reason. School usually, for others, it could be the blues scene. For me, it was the lure of the city energy, the diversity, the co-op. But there are other co-ops! In Washington even! And, now I feel confident enough to start my own.

I would leave Chicago right now, except for that I want to pay off more of my credit card, and I still have to find someone to take over my lease, which runs through August.

Now the question is, will coming back to Washington for a while take care of this lonely feeling? Or will it bring up old feelings of restlessness and being trapped? I seem to remember last time I lived in Washington, all I wanted to do is leave it. Now, let's get one thing straight here. I am not moving back to Washington. I am going to come back and visit for a month or so, then head on to New Orleans, and at some point in the near future, Portland. I've been planning on Portland for a while now, and I do believe that it's time. I think that I had to do this midwest thing so I could appreciate just how wonderful and amazing the pacific northwest really is. And especially Portland. It's within a days drive of all my family and friends, and it's (hopefully) far enough away from my hometown to make me feel like I've escaped.

My first fire spin!

I just did my first fire spin! Ahhh!! It was great! Didn't light myself on fire :) didn't even touch myself once with the poi. It was so great and the poi I got from home of poi were SO COOL. They burned beautifully, and a rather larger flame than I expected. It was great! Pictures and video to be released shortly :)

NASCO Institute

Well! I got home from NASCO Institute last night, crashed out, and now I'm awake and beginning to process the metric fuck ton load of information that I learned over the weekend.

I attended lots of workshops, on things like Building Community, Social Change Fundraising, Incorporation and Non-profit Status, Kids in Co-ops, a caucus on Community Co-ops, the Annual General Meeting, and the NASCO Properties Board meeting. I met co-opers from around the country and Canada, and got so many great ideas from everyone and everything. My goals that have come out of this include:

1. Start a non-profit in Chicago to teach underprivileged kids glass arts

2. Possibly start a worker co-op in Chicago for the homeless, where they make christmas ornaments and other glass art out of recycled glass bottles

3. Get Qumbya more involved in the community by first educating the community on what it means to be a co-op, then holding workshops on how cooperation can be used in other arenas

4. Do a massive co-op road trip doing skillshares around the country at different co-ops

5. Create a social networking site for co-ops, cross between couchsurfing and tribe

6. When I get to Portland, create a live/work artists co-op

I know that I have so many other ideas, I just can't think of any more right now!

Tentative plans

So, I'm going to pay off my credit card by the end of the year so that I can begin working on building a savings to travel with again. But, before I travel, I really want to spend at least a month (preferably more) in New Orleans doing volunteer clean-up. I've already found some organizations I want to work with while I'm there. One is the Animal rescue, another is a women's shelter, another is gutting houses, and another is a fledgling student co-op. I've been wanting to go down there for a long time now, pretty much ever since Katrina, but time and financial resources haven't yet allowed for it. And come next spring/summer, I do believe that it will all finally line up for me.

After a couple months in NOLA, I'd like to finally move to Portland. I definitely want to start a co-op there, and study glass and fire dancing while I'm at it. And somewhere in between all of that I HAVE TO GO BACK TO NEPAL. I have a really intense urge to go trekking in the Himalayas again. This time I want to do the entire Annapurna Circuit. It takes a good 21 days. I can't wait. Afterwards, I want to mosy on down to India and spend 3 weeks backpacking around the country. Ideally, I will fly into China, overland it west to Tibet, then come into Nepal from the north, then south to India. Then, maybe I'll fly home. Or maybe I'll stay there. Who knows. Eventually I will come to Portland, I swear! It just seems that there is so much to do first. It feels like Portland is a place I want to settle down in, if I am ever able to actually settle down. Or maybe I just have a different way of settling. Hmm. There's just too much stuff that I want to and need to do in this life. I feel like I don't have enough time for any of it! And I'm constantly trying to figure out how to implement it all. In what order is it most efficient, time and money-wise? Can I start a co-op and then just leave it to teach english in the Marshall Islands for a year? Or should I do that first? It's so hard to choose! Although it's not really choosing, it's just putting it in order of importance. And the problem is, I don't know yet what is more important to me. I have this huge list of things I want to do, maybe I should write some out.

Teach English in the Marshall Islands
Teach English in China
Open a guesthouse in Bali
Start a co-op in Portland
Study glass in Seattle
Study fire arts in Portland/San Francisco
Acquire multiple Masters degrees
Backpack Asia-again
Backpack Latin America, every country, all in one trip
Do a round the world trip, hitting at least 3 continents in one
Fly one way somewhere and work my way across the world
Become an established freelance travel writer
Publish multiple books
Start a fire troupe
WWOOF it across New Zealand and Australia
Couch-surf on every continent
Did I mention visit every country in the world?
Sky dive into Burning Man

So many more....but I'm growing more tired by the minute, and I have to open the coffee place in...7 hours...g'nite.

No wrong path

Well! I am feeling a million and one times better than my last (long) blog. If you remember, I was feeling a bit down, unmotivated, and bored with everything. If I learned anything from that time, it was that I have to keep busy in order to feel accomplished and happy. I have to have things to do that make me feel like I am contributing to not only my own personal growth, but to the larger community as well. I have found that the more involved I get, such as within Qumbya co-ops, the better I feel. I took the webmaster position on the Board of Directors at Qumbya, and have since been getting more and more involved with the organization. I am attending NASCO institute next month, as an active member as well as the Annual Meeting Rep, and I will also be attending the NASCO Board meeting. I'm drafting a letter to the community about Qumbya, doing lots of website and listhost stuff, and organizing a Bollywood Music Video Film Festival. Co-op life is awesome. I am definitely starting a house in Portland once I (finally) get there. I've already started talking to our NASCO rep about what kind of resources are available to me to do this. And there are many! I'm super excited about that, and what I'm going to learn at Institute that is going to help me in that endeavor as well.

In other news, I finally got a job! Well, I got 2! Not to mention my transcribing gig (which I think may be causing me to go a bit crazy). I'm working at a coffee shop downtown, right on Michigan Ave (The Magnificent Mile) across from Millennium Park, and also at this super nice Asian restaurant 4 blocks from my house. I had tried really hard to get out of restaurants without succumbing to a 9-5 office job, and it just wasn't meant to be. I think that I would be entirely too bored, and probably way depressed if I worked in an office 5 days a week! At least in restaurants, things are always changing, busy, and crazy. And the place I'm serving at in my neighborhood is a brand spanking new restaurant, so there's plenty of stuff to be done and it's always changing. I've been working 60 hour weeks on top of my regular house duties and board duties, and LOVING IT.

Another thing that has really helped me get out of this funk I'd been in was an amazing 2 hour conversation I had with Alex last night. It really opened my eyes to a lot of things, and reminded me of things that I once knew very strongly, and kind of let myself forget. I was able to remember who I am spiritually, and what I have to give others. It made me remember that life will always work itself out, that you are taken down certain paths for a reason, and that there is a higher purpose to everything. For example: I returned from Asia last year broke (in debt actually) and unsure of what my next move was to be. I only knew I wanted to take it really easy for a while. So when I went to the Greenroom to get Karen a b-day present, I wasn't excepting to walk out with a job. But I did! And I began working at a super chill job while (still) trying to figure out my next move. It was while I was hanging out there reading the Stranger that I saw the ad for the Academy for Alternative Journalism fellowship. Immediately intrigued, I applied, not really thinking I would get it. While waiting for word back from them, I began working at the funeral home, where I got a free apartment in exchange for working a couple nights a week. With this new sweet set up, I decided I would stick around for 2 years and save the money I would normally spend on rent and at the end of two years, take my savings and travel for a year (or more). Now, I had originally vowed to never return to this place I grew up in, to move on to bigger and better things. With this job, however, it seemed I had forgotten this vow. But then....I won the fellowship! And that meant spending the summer in Chicago. Guess staying at the funeral home for two years was out. And so, I began working on finding a summer sublet to live at in Chicago. I ended up finding a housing cooperative. I had always wanted to live in some kind of intentional community, so this was perfect. I applied, went through phone interviews, and was accepted. I came to Chicago, did the fellowship (which taught me so much, not the least of it being that I am an artist, not a journalist), and fell in love with the co-op life and community, and decided that if I didn't win a previously applied for scholarship at Pratt Fine Arts in Seattle, that I would come back to Chicago after the summer was over. Consequently, I did not win the scholarship. So, I came home, packed my shit, went to Burning Man, then drove back to Chicago. Since I've been back, I've been building practical co-op experience for starting my own co-op, realized how amazing the northwest really is, and how much I like being involved in a community. So, to make a (very) long story short, if I had never gone to Asia and spent my life savings, I probably wouldn't have wandered into the Greenroom that day and gotten a job, I would have never seen the ad for the fellowship, which means I never would have come to Chicago, never lived in a co-op, never realized how much the northwest is like home, never planned to start my own co-op, and probably never (or at least for a while) realized how important it is being involved in not only your immediate community, but the larger community as well. All of these things have had HUGE parts in shaping the person that I have grown into over the past year, and each and every thing, however trivial at the time, has contributed to discovering the next curve in my path. I can put a higher sense of trust into the universe now, because I know that it will never steer me wrong. As long as I continue to follow my instincts and to strive for personal growth and involvement with the world around me, I know that everything will turn out for the best, and exactly the way it was meant to. There is no wrong path, because whatever path you are on is exactly where you're supposed to be.

I love the internet.

Oh the wonderful things we find on the web. Go here: http://www.shutdowntv.com/ for a fun dorky show that for some reason I can't stop watching.

And, just because you're so good, here's a special treat for you!


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net