Piled on, one right on top of another, years themselves simply accumulate for adults. Significant moments happen in the midst of those years, but the years themselves pass before we've even had a chance to take stock in them. For a baby, however, one year can hold so many developmental firsts and changes: first solid food, first crawling, first pulling up to standing, first steps, first words. For a baby, one year is like a lifetime: they begin it in the womb, and end it moving toward becoming independently mobile.
I feel like 2008 has passed for me with the same huge developmental steps. This New Year's Eve, I am so far from where I was last New Year's Eve (even though, ironically, I'm currently less than a mile away), that 2007 NYE Kate wouldn't even recognize the Kate of today. I wonder if knowing my fate back then would have caused me to make different decisions. But of course even if I had, I would have missed out on so much - and there's something to be said about the bad times, too. I am stronger because of them, and to have skipped them would have skipped some good times too. I shouldn't regret it any more than a baby regrets learning to crawl. After all, we all have to make these developmental changes in order to...well...develop.
So Happy New Year, everyone. Here's to a 2009 that's so great that, looking back, the 2010 Kate looks back and just can't believe how much she's grown.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
What Christmas Spirit?
This morning I emerged, empty, onto Tremont Street an hour after my interview began. Sure, the man at the temp agency said I possessed many of the desirable qualities that employers looked for in a candidate. But it was different. I thought I would emerge with myriad ideas about breaking into the editing and publishing world. Instead, I had been told that if anything, I would need to beef up my resume to reveal my secretarial experience.
Secretarial experience?
It hit me as I gazed out onto the frozen ground of the commons that I was going to have to take any job I could get. And that might mean becoming someone’s Pam: too smart, funny, and talented for the reception chair, but possessing little experience to do much else. My only consolation was that perhaps I would find my own Jim sitting only a few chairs away.
This was not what I pictured when I packed almost everything I owned into my little Beetle months ago. I was leaving a Midwestern town of little opportunity for a cosmopolitan East-coast city of intellectuals. If there was anything better out there, it would be in Boston: city of writers, editors, colleges, and think tanks. City of arts and culture, insane sports fans and more coffee shops than I’d probably ever seen in my whole life combined. I had high hopes for this place.
Too bad coffee shops and think tanks are just as susceptible to economic downturns as the rest of the world.
So, beaten, I slumped in my seat on the train back to Harvard Square. The recorded announcement was stuck and so every stop was “Charles MGH.” Attempting to cheer myself up, I looked up at the mistaken speaker and smiled. But no one else seemed to notice. I couldn’t help but wonder if I had been in the Midwest they would have smiled back.
At lunch I half-heartedly read over a delicious roast beef sandwich at Au Bon Pain, thinking about being stuck behind a desk and a phone, editing no more than the occasional office memo. The real world isn’t like The Office. My boss probably won’t be crazy like Michael Scott, and I probably won’t meet the love of my life at the next desk over. I will be bored, get high on copier toner, and want to drink my weight in wine upon arriving home every night.
Just as it’s hard to imagine being in love with anyone else again, it is now impossible to think about being happy doing what I love anytime in the near future. My interview and realization this morning was necessary – yes, I need to pay my bills, and I realize that to do that I might just have to take what I can get. But I am now feeling more lost than ever. I came out here for my future, and was beginning to build it in my mind grain by grain. But now everything is fuzzy again.
My only consolation at this point is that as a member of the Lost Generation, I am not alone. We’re all struggling out there. And all we can do is wait for the economy to pick back up and shove us back onto our feet again. I think only then will Boston blossom into the wonderful place I arrived to find, and I will be able to be more confident in my life choices.
Secretarial experience?
It hit me as I gazed out onto the frozen ground of the commons that I was going to have to take any job I could get. And that might mean becoming someone’s Pam: too smart, funny, and talented for the reception chair, but possessing little experience to do much else. My only consolation was that perhaps I would find my own Jim sitting only a few chairs away.
This was not what I pictured when I packed almost everything I owned into my little Beetle months ago. I was leaving a Midwestern town of little opportunity for a cosmopolitan East-coast city of intellectuals. If there was anything better out there, it would be in Boston: city of writers, editors, colleges, and think tanks. City of arts and culture, insane sports fans and more coffee shops than I’d probably ever seen in my whole life combined. I had high hopes for this place.
Too bad coffee shops and think tanks are just as susceptible to economic downturns as the rest of the world.
So, beaten, I slumped in my seat on the train back to Harvard Square. The recorded announcement was stuck and so every stop was “Charles MGH.” Attempting to cheer myself up, I looked up at the mistaken speaker and smiled. But no one else seemed to notice. I couldn’t help but wonder if I had been in the Midwest they would have smiled back.
At lunch I half-heartedly read over a delicious roast beef sandwich at Au Bon Pain, thinking about being stuck behind a desk and a phone, editing no more than the occasional office memo. The real world isn’t like The Office. My boss probably won’t be crazy like Michael Scott, and I probably won’t meet the love of my life at the next desk over. I will be bored, get high on copier toner, and want to drink my weight in wine upon arriving home every night.
Just as it’s hard to imagine being in love with anyone else again, it is now impossible to think about being happy doing what I love anytime in the near future. My interview and realization this morning was necessary – yes, I need to pay my bills, and I realize that to do that I might just have to take what I can get. But I am now feeling more lost than ever. I came out here for my future, and was beginning to build it in my mind grain by grain. But now everything is fuzzy again.
My only consolation at this point is that as a member of the Lost Generation, I am not alone. We’re all struggling out there. And all we can do is wait for the economy to pick back up and shove us back onto our feet again. I think only then will Boston blossom into the wonderful place I arrived to find, and I will be able to be more confident in my life choices.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Kate's Christmas Card 2008
‘Twas the week before Christmas and, hanging my head,
I realized I was frightfully short on the bread.
With the world in the crapper I know I’m not alone
but I felt bad, all the same, as I applied for more loans.
With dollar signs floating above my warm bed,
I could not fall asleep, because all through my head
I was trying to think of just what I could get
for my friends and my family, gifts they wouldn’t forget.
I knew that the mall was beyond my cash flow
and besides, it was just too damned crowded to go.
I could bake, though I’m horrid, and give everyone treats
though I knew they would melt under my airplane seat.
All my beads, and my paper, and craft-making things
are still sitting in Michigan, so no help do those bring.
Excuses! Thought I, as I surfed through the net,
there must be some good, thoughtful gifts I could get!
Everything that I thought of just sounded so lame.
I’d be handed a present, and hand back none of the same!
Oh what could I do, I was filled with much stress.
How could I get out of this holiday mess?
After thinking, and thinking, and lamenting my woe,
I’ve not thought of a direction in which I can go.
So please, friends and family, don’t think I forgot.
Please remember – the thing that counts most is the thought!
And much thoughts I do have for your holiday cheer –
Have the Merriest of Merry, and a Happy New Year!
I realized I was frightfully short on the bread.
With the world in the crapper I know I’m not alone
but I felt bad, all the same, as I applied for more loans.
With dollar signs floating above my warm bed,
I could not fall asleep, because all through my head
I was trying to think of just what I could get
for my friends and my family, gifts they wouldn’t forget.
I knew that the mall was beyond my cash flow
and besides, it was just too damned crowded to go.
I could bake, though I’m horrid, and give everyone treats
though I knew they would melt under my airplane seat.
All my beads, and my paper, and craft-making things
are still sitting in Michigan, so no help do those bring.
Excuses! Thought I, as I surfed through the net,
there must be some good, thoughtful gifts I could get!
Everything that I thought of just sounded so lame.
I’d be handed a present, and hand back none of the same!
Oh what could I do, I was filled with much stress.
How could I get out of this holiday mess?
After thinking, and thinking, and lamenting my woe,
I’ve not thought of a direction in which I can go.
So please, friends and family, don’t think I forgot.
Please remember – the thing that counts most is the thought!
And much thoughts I do have for your holiday cheer –
Have the Merriest of Merry, and a Happy New Year!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Coffee Shop Therapy
I love my therapist, but sometimes I can feel just as good after spending two hours at my favorite coffee shop as I do after I've spent $70 on the couch.
I always sit at the counter, what I think of as the front row seat to an audience-participation show: The barsitas sing. They dance. They make inappropriate puns. They ask me where the heck I've been for the last few weeks. And the loneliness I felt while driving here melts away as I enjoy a veggie omelet and coffee, and listen to the green-haired barista (the one with the wide smile that always makes me smile back) sing, "It Takes Two" in falsetto.
A fellow customer asked me why I drove all the way here while there are so many great cafes in Cambridge. But I haven't found the same warmth there. I haven't found a place I can always get a seat, sit at the counter, enjoy free wi-fi and amazing crepes (and eye candy to boot). Sure, it's a 15 minute drive. But to feel my heavy heart lift in the same amount of time it takes to make an omelet is more than worth the gas.
I thank the Taste in Newtonville crew for always raising my spirits, and tell anyone and everyone who has a car and is willing to make the trip that this, among all the others clumped together in Cambridge, is second to none.
I always sit at the counter, what I think of as the front row seat to an audience-participation show: The barsitas sing. They dance. They make inappropriate puns. They ask me where the heck I've been for the last few weeks. And the loneliness I felt while driving here melts away as I enjoy a veggie omelet and coffee, and listen to the green-haired barista (the one with the wide smile that always makes me smile back) sing, "It Takes Two" in falsetto.
A fellow customer asked me why I drove all the way here while there are so many great cafes in Cambridge. But I haven't found the same warmth there. I haven't found a place I can always get a seat, sit at the counter, enjoy free wi-fi and amazing crepes (and eye candy to boot). Sure, it's a 15 minute drive. But to feel my heavy heart lift in the same amount of time it takes to make an omelet is more than worth the gas.
I thank the Taste in Newtonville crew for always raising my spirits, and tell anyone and everyone who has a car and is willing to make the trip that this, among all the others clumped together in Cambridge, is second to none.
Friday, December 12, 2008
My Favorite Things
For some reason, this classic song from The Sound of Music has been associated with the holiday season (it must be the "brown paper packages tied up with strings" and "sleighbells"). So, I thought, since it is now the holiday season and I myself am doing little to prepare for it (no tree, no cards, minimal present buying - sorry guys), I might make myself a little list of my current Favorite Things, a la Oprah.
Yes, I could have made this list singable. But I didn't feel like it.
Bruegger's Egg and Cheese Bagel
Blue Moon with an Orange Wedge
Sleeping in under soft sheets
Discovering new episodes of my favorite shows
Drawing
Finding new favorite Indigo Girls songs
Brand new Office Supplies
Reconnecting with old classmates (even from elem. school!)
Laughing on the phone with long-distance friends
Editing (yes, I'm not kidding!)
Writing stories that don't have to be good
The look in my tutees' eyes when they finally "get" something
Writing dirty limericks and bad haiku
Stopping to pet dogs on the street
That rogue warm day in the middle of winter
A stranger's smile
Coffee with my roommates
Bookstores
My Therapist
Taking the T
Coffee Shops
Smelling my body wash on my skin
Making real goals
Journaling
And Learning
Maybe you should make a list of your favorite things, especially if you're feeling down. The fact that I'm doing a couple of these today makes me smile - and I'll be okay.
Yes, I could have made this list singable. But I didn't feel like it.
Bruegger's Egg and Cheese Bagel
Blue Moon with an Orange Wedge
Sleeping in under soft sheets
Discovering new episodes of my favorite shows
Drawing
Finding new favorite Indigo Girls songs
Brand new Office Supplies
Reconnecting with old classmates (even from elem. school!)
Laughing on the phone with long-distance friends
Editing (yes, I'm not kidding!)
Writing stories that don't have to be good
The look in my tutees' eyes when they finally "get" something
Writing dirty limericks and bad haiku
Stopping to pet dogs on the street
That rogue warm day in the middle of winter
A stranger's smile
Coffee with my roommates
Bookstores
My Therapist
Taking the T
Coffee Shops
Smelling my body wash on my skin
Making real goals
Journaling
And Learning
Maybe you should make a list of your favorite things, especially if you're feeling down. The fact that I'm doing a couple of these today makes me smile - and I'll be okay.
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