Dear Universe

I thought we already talked about this whole teaching-me-a-lesson-about-patience thing when I had to spend 6 weeks teaching rowdy 8th graders last semester! We're supposed to be even, universe! Remember? I decided to change my thinking and RIGHT THEN you (Universe) got me out of that job. Everything worked out!

But now...

In January I took a job teaching reading to students in grades 4, 5, and 6. This was a stretch for me but I needed something that could pay bills more consistently than subbing sometimes does. Ugh. I'm really not built to work with the young ones. I don't sing songs or do little dances. Ew. Gross.

And now -AND NOW! - Now I've been assigned two new students who don't even really qualify as youngin's or littluns. One kindergartener and one first grader. 5 and 6 years old! OMG. I'm gonna die.

First this: How can a kindergartener be considered "behind" in reading? How is that even possible?

Second: I teach HIGH SCHOOL. The kids I work with are 10 years older than the babies I'm supposed to practice letters with now.

When I was first assigned these embryonic students, Joe suggested that I should just think of them as "older Eva"s... I'm gonna have to try...

Wish me luck!

26

If you've never heard of a quarterlife crisis or are murky on its meaning, it may be useful (and entertaining) to check this out first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis

There is a common misconception that the so-called "quarter-life crisis" happens when a woman turns 25. This is a myth. In my experience, the true crisis starts when a woman hits 26. To most (men) it will seem like a difference of details. One year. Not a big deal. But in the lives of the women I know, it is the most significant shift so far. Congratulations, 25 year-olds, you can rest easy for one additional year.

26, however, is when photos of engagement rings, weddings, and preggo bellies become suddenly (and disturbingly for some of us) dominant on a girl's Facebook NewsFeed. 26 is when your ability to claim that you are still in your "early twenties" is officially over.

The crisis begins at 25 when a woman realizes that her high-school-self imagined her 25-year-old-self would be in a very different place by now. (My high-school-self, for example, earnestly believed that my 25-year-old-self would be married to a handsome and truly fabulous man, would be teaching full time, and would have one - maybe 2 - babies.) The crisis is averted at 25, though, because even though the woman does not have all the things she "thought she wanted" she has realized that grown up life is different than she'd expected and she is still, officially, in her "early twenties" anyway. No cause for panic. Still another year or two before she should be concerned.

But then, one by one, a woman's friends start falling off the cliff and into their decidedly

adult lives. There are weddings. There are babies. There are awesome jobs and interesting vacations. These things have all been happening for years, officially, but the woman was able to justify them in her mind as the "early ones." That friend who got married at 20 was religious... or pregnant... which also explains the babies. But at 26 it no longer seems unreasonable for so many of a woman's friends to be engaged/married/cohabitating/preggo/fabulous. And the issue is really in the sheer ABUNDANCE of bridal shower and baby shower and house warming gifts she is heading to the store to buy. (Respectively, mixing bowls and colorful utensils, a whale of a tub, awesome wine.)

The crisis is fueled when a woman realizes, possibly for the first time, that Hollywood's new talent is all younger than she is. Hottie McHottie Vampire RPattz is - what?!?!? - 23 years old! Zac Efron is 22. Miley Cyrus was born in the 90s for pete's sake! Seriously?? And the one I was the most upset by for reasons I cannot explain - Scarlet Johansson is a full year and a half younger than I am. (Sincere relief washed over my whole body when I read that Zooey Deschanel, who I love and would look like if I could, is 30. Whew!)

Suddenly, the job you have that isn't perfect is just a symptom of everything else in your life that isn't perfect. Suddenly it's no longer okay to date Mr. Right Now because the excuse "I'm not looking for a husband right now" doesn't seem as reasonable as it did at 22. Suddenly the women who are in relationships wonder if those are the right relationships and if there is a proposal on the horizon. The married ones want babies. The ones with babies wonder why they aren't still out partying with their friends and enjoying what's left of their 20s.

This is not an exaggeration at all - I could put a name of a specific person I know with each one of these situations. At 25 two of my friends were waiting for engagement rings in relationships that had last several years already. By 26 they would both be married. At 25 two different friends both began trying for babies. Both succeeded, followed closely by one who had just turned 26 and all had babies by age 27. This has left the rest of my friends in their 26th years with the persistent question, "Did I miss the boat or something?"

I really can't answer that question for anyone but myself. I know that personally, I wasn't as ready for my grown-up life at 22 as I would've claimed I was. I know that the soul searching I did at 25 helped me clarify myself and my priorities by the time I turned 26. I know my mom began dating my dad at 26. I know I'm happy even though most of the things I imagined for myself 10 years ago are not part of the real life I'm living now. Or maybe I'm only thinking about all of this because I've read two chicklit books in a row in the last 2 weeks.

The Circus

Last week I posted many facebook status updates that included words like "packing," "homeless," and "being kicked out of house and home." For this reason I received several concerned messages about whether or not I was moving from my mom's house or if something dramatic had happened. Here is the answer:

Termites took over and needed to be eradicated.

Life Like Fiction

Happiness isn't entertaining. What I mean is that being happy isn't interesting to write about. It doesn't create intrigue or suspense. It doesn't make good TV or movies. No one goes to the theatre to see happy people, they go to see drama and passion and obstacles and action. Unhappy people, or maybe I should say unsatisfied people, are the ones with the excitement, the gossip, the STORIES. People who are unsatisfied have things to write about because every event could be the first stone on a path toward satisfaction. The pursuit of happiness involves a twisted cast of players whose every action and reaction can be analyzed, dissected, observed and written about. Heartache is ever-changing and evolving.

Happiness, on the other hand, is relatively stagnant. It's wonderful and fantastic and beautiful and full of glitter and hearts and roses. It's great and I'm not complaining. But it's also calm and certain and stable. I am currently happy with consistancy. Because of this overall sense of happiness, I don't feel the urge to write about what's going on in my head nearly as much. There is no necessity for "working things out in writing." How many hours can I legitimately spend expressing joy? Answer: Not half as many as I can spend ruminating on situations that confuse or frustrate me. Writers be honest: An ambiguous text message is a much better muse than a sweet one.

So herein lies the problem.

Six or seven months ago I was truly inspired to start a novel. Between my own experiences and those of my book club friends, I had plenty of material to start a novel about modern dating life in a metropolitan (but not exactly centralized) city like San Diego. I used my time almost exclusively to read, write, and "collect ideas" about the difficulties of dating in a time when meeting a potential life partner in an organic way seems less and less likely every year. The characters were fabulous reincarnations of people I know whose statuses ranged from happily married and pregnant to dating like mad. The plan was to write about relationships in all stages and create insightful situations to express the frustrations of trying to find real, lasting happiness.

But then the worst possible thing happened to my plans - I got Plans instead. Dating someone takes all the fun out of writing funny but bitter anecdotes about dating. Suddenly instead of writing about relationships and love and the desire for intimacy, I was curled up with Plans enjoying the honeymoon months of a brand new romance. Writing and even reading have dropped down to minor priorities and the ideas I had about ridiculous pick-up lines, speed dating, wine tastings and meetings for SD Young Professionals were part of a distant memory of plans gone by.

Still, I know it can be done. Happily married people still have successful careers as authors, right? Maybe in a few months the inspiration will spark again. Maybe Plans will do something annoying or we'll pass the honeymoon stage and I'll be able to concentrate on incorporating the story about the home-tattooed, unemployed, divorced, scummy guy who hit on my friend the other day into a relatable narrative describing the Pursuit of Passion in the Big Bad World of Dating.

Eat, Pray, Love: Indonesia

(I probably should postpone my last Eat, Pray, Love post until mid-February as my book club has decided to swap our original February selection for this book and now all of my favorite quotes and ideas are already advertised, but oh well. Indonesia is more quotes I love and don't have commentary on anyway.)

Page 260

...people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment.

I love this idea. Happiness is absolutely a right for everyone, but that doesn't mean that everyone gets it. Not everyone chooses to be happy. Not everyone puts in the effort necessary to find their own happiness or maintain it. How sad but also revolutionary.

All the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people.

This is even worse! Just as sneezes and yawns and hiccups are contagious, our attitudes are, too. When you are around a person who complains a lot, sometimes the tendency is to compete for the spotlight. "You think that's bad? Well I have a story about something that happened to me that's worse!" Girls do this a lot because we talk and compare and rate just about everything. "Oh, your boyfriend is being a jackass? Well let me tell you about this guy I dated who was more of a jackass than your jackass!" We constantly reinforce the mood around us. Attitude is our own fault. We choose to enjoy our lives or complain about them. (This is even more reinforced by things like Facebook that ask people to post their "status" on a weekly, daily or sometimes hourly basis. I find that I look forward to reading what my positive friends have to say, whether it be about how much they enjoy their jobs, the funny things their kids have done, or some random positive thing they found about their day. On the other hand, it becomes wearisome to constantly read updates from friends who use their Facebook to status to complain about everything from the weather to the traffic.)

Page 262

The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in one lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same old addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma (and also of Western psychology, by the way) -- take care of the problems now, of else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering -- that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding -- there's where you'll find heaven.

Page 325

The Yogic sages say that all the pain of human life is caused by words, as is all the joy.

As a teacher of language who spends abundant time literally jumping up and down trying to convince 15 year-olds that words are important, ALL words are important, I am in love with this quote. I will most likely make my next poor class do a journal on it. What a profound idea. Maybe I'll even turn it into a placard in my classroom or a pillow in my house. Ugh. LOVE it!

Eat, Pray, Love: India (Soulmates)

Page 149

Liz's friend Richard on soul mates:

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave.

This is exactly how I have always thought of soul mates. I believe that people are brought into your life at certain times for specific reasons. There are some people who stay with you because they can constantly continue to teach you things. Soul mates are people who understand you, at the most basic level, completely and immediately.

You may not understand right away why you are drawn to a particular person. People think soul mates are romantic, and how lucky it is when they are, but I think soul mates are people who are connected in a way that is totally unrelated to romantic love. Soul mates are people who challenge us, who see through to the parts of ourselves we don't want to face and make us face them. Soul mates force us to see ourselves. I had a soul mate a few years ago who forced me to see that I was approaching romance in a way that would never yield the results I said I wanted. He was in my life for just 2 months and he ripped me wide open. It was heart-wrenching. But he changed the way I thought about a lot of my own goals and ideals. He served his purpose in my life and then he was gone. I think it happens like this a lot.

Eat, Pray, Love: India (I)

Page 132

You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

After my Dad died, my Mom and I made a conscious effort to "think positively" as much as possible. We were in the middle of the most intense grief either of us had ever experienced (very different types of grief, of course, but still) and we knew that if we didn't deliberately choose positive thoughts over our negative ones, we would each slip into a dangerous depression. It takes a lot of practice to control your own thoughts like that, but I wrote many journal entries trying to focus on the things for which I was thankful instead of the things about my life I wished I could change. For example:

Journal entry from 11/3/2008: "Substituting is not the ideal situation, but I get to go to work every day in a place where I hang out with teenagers and talk about books. For better or worse I am a teacher and this job allows me to keep doing that. I'm lucky to be so sure of my purpose and to have a passion that so readily translates into a career."

After 2 years of practice it has become much easier to think positively. (Plans is even better at it than I am and the reinforcement of being around him and always finding the "bright side" also helps.) Even more than that, it has become harder to be around people who do not try to find the positive in their own lives. The phenomena of Facebook is that people are constantly projecting themselves to the world. I can't help but start to categorize my Facebook contacts into The Complainers and The Thankful. I am drawn to the people who find joy in their lives, especially in small things. I grow weary of people who consistently choose to post status updates that are negative. When I want to whine about something that went wrong in my life that day, I try to get a little perspective and then post the "bright side" instead.

From A Return To Love: "Love in your mind produces love in your life. This is the meaning of heaven. Fear in your mind produces fear in your life. This is the meaning of hell."

The more you repeat negative thoughts, the more powerful they become. The more you concentrate on finding beauty and joy in your environment, the easier they become to spot. I could complain that my boyfriend lives in another state, that I am financially dependent on my parent, that I had to get a second job and I don't have the career I want yet. But instead I am happy that I have people in my life who love me, that I live with my best friend, that I still get to function as a teacher even if it's not in the most ideal way, and that I am healthy and living in a beautiful place. (And when I'm getting away from these thoughts, which happens often enough, I revisit the Vision Board. The vision board is ALL positive. Again, "If you don't have one, get one!")

Page 177

There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I eat and read and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in life -- whether I will see them as curses or opportunities (and on the occasions when I can't rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, because I'm feeling too damn sorry for myself, I can choose to keep trying to change my outlook). I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.

Eat, Pray, Love: Italy

I decided to read Eat, Pray, Love for the second time in December because I find it comforting to revisit books I liked. (Right after my Dad died I re-read the 7th Harry Potter because I wanted to be with characters who felt like friends. Coincidentally, I think Eat, Pray, Love might have been the next book I read.) It has been about 2 years since my last trip through Italy, India and Indonesia with Liz and, considering the VERY different personal space I am in, thought I may feel differently about the thoughts and revelations of that book. Here are my notes (I am such a student...):

Page 37

Total delight! Liz has been to the gelato place near the Pantheon in Rome that I have literally been raving about for a year and a half!

Il Gelato di San Crispino has some of the most original flavors of gelato I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot of extensive flavor selections between Italy and Spain). Liz even mentioned specially the cinnamon-ginger ice cream I craved (with McDonald's french fries of all things) for at least a year after my Italy trip with my students. I admit now that this is not the most enlightened note I have in the book. Lisa will be the only person who reads this and understands the truly transformative experience of this particular gelato.

(Note the picture is mine of the menu at San Crispino. That's how much I love this place; I took a picture of the MENU!)

Page 41

When I don't know what I'm doing, I look like I don't know what I'm doing. When I'm excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which I frequently am, I look lost. My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought. As David once put it, "You have the opposite of a poker face. You have, like... miniature golf face.

My thought: Oh! Me too! Me too! That's why I can't lie or pretend. It's why my students like me and sometimes my bosses think I'm not respectful enough - I can't hide anything. I can't fake it. I don't know how. I'm just ... me... all the time. For real. And real me thinks everyone should be able to share what they really feel. (I've found that this is not as well-received in the World of Work as I think it should be.) The only thing I would say differently is that when I am lost, which I too frequently am, I look so damn confident about where I am going that not only do I not necessarily look lost, but people with good senses of direction will actually follow me into the complete unknown assuming I know exactly where I am going. When traveling the confidence is good, the lack of direction is awful. The miniature golf face is a bit of a liability when traveling alone, too.

Page 62

For me, though, a major obstacle in my pursuit of pleasure was my ingrained sense of Puritan guilt. Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is very American, too - the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness.

I think one of the reasons I like this book so much is because I identify with Liz in many ways. I'm a good student, a good planner, someone who sits in the first row of class and takes genuine self-worth from whether or not my teachers (bosses, colleagues) like me. I'm good at following the rules and doing what I'm supposed to do. At an early age (I usually say 16, but 12 if I'm being honest) I put my life on a scheduled path of school and hard work and degrees and a job that would make it all worth while. I'm not good at idleness. Too much relaxation makes me feel lazy. My self worth is too closely tied to job performance and productivity. That's why unemployment was so difficult for me in the beginning. For about 4-6 months I suffered a kind of mild depression because without work I felt indulgent, irresponsible and lazy. How could I justify being happy if I wasn't doing my part to contribute to society?

But as I said in my 2009 blog, I realized that being happy itself is a contribution to society. Happiness is a natural right. You don't have to earn it. The size of my paycheck and the number of hours I spent slugging away at a job do not correlate to how much enjoyment I am allowed. This concept, expressed in just a few sentences, has taken about 2 years to really believe and there are still days when it slips my mind completely.

Page 95

It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.

They should make a bumper-sticker out of this one. It's just a great motto to live by. I want to hang it on a wall somewhere.

Page 115

You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.

My mom and I have discussed this concept at length in the last 2 years. Somehow in our Puritan society self-sacrifice has become the ideal many women strive for. "Look how successful I am! I do everything for my husband and kids and parents and friends and never think of myself at all!" Or, better phrased for my taste, when asked if she ever has needs of her own Jane (in 27 Dresses) says, "No. I'm Jesus."

But this ideal has it all wrong. You can only offer yourself to the people around you if there is something there to offer. Self-care is not a luxury, it's a necessity. If I don't take the me-time to rest, read, breathe, and do whatever I need to do to rejuvenate myself occasionally, what exactly am I offering to the people I love? Finding and experiencing beauty and joy and tranquility as often as possible is not indulgence. Living a life of balance is not something that we should feel guilty for, it is a basic human necessity.

Stay tuned for India...