What It Means to Tell the Truth

When I was little, I was very insistent about the fact that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up—but not a journalist. An author, yes; a novelist, yes. As the fiercely independent daughter of a longtime newspaper editor, I wanted to follow my own dream, not just in his footsteps.

When I took a journalism class my freshman year in high school, I was turned off by all of its rules, the legality of it, and what I perceived to be the utter squashing of creativity. After a year writing journalism-style pieces for my high school's yearbook, I quit yearbook staff to help cull art and poetry for the literary magazine instead.

I spent my college years writing poetry and short stories, wrangling the nuances of the English language, honing the craft of storytelling. To my surprise, though, of all the writing workshops I took, my 300-level creative nonfiction workshop was my favorite. Family and friends asked me, But, what IS creative nonfiction? Isn't that an oxymoron? Or, Isn't that just journalism?

Well, for me, no. When I was 19, "creative nonfiction" was really just a glorified term for "writing therapy." In other words, I wrote a lot of either (1) angsty, teen memoir-style babble, or (2) David Sedaris-esque attempts to poke fun at my own experiences, my relationships, my family. Not that anything was wrong with those approaches; I was, after all, just writing what I knew at the time. I got plenty of practice fine-tuning my wordsmithing abilities through those writing projects. Above all, writing about my own experiences instead of others' seemed a good way to avoid becoming a journalist.

Fast forward to the past year of my life, during which I've found the books that most capture my attention are not the novels I used to so love, but rather, investigative nonfiction stories like Tom Kizzia's 'Pilgrim's Wilderness,' Nicholas Kristof's 'Half the Sky,' Laura Hillenbrand's 'Unbroken.' And, due to the nature of at least some of the writing projects I've tackled in my professional life, it seems that I have become a journalist after all.

In August, I ran the historic Leadville Trail 100 race, in anticipation of writing an upcoming feature story on it for Trail Runner. Aside from sharing a few anecdotes from my own experience, though, I am not all that interested in telling my own same-old, same-old ultramarathon narrative (i.e. I ran for a long time! It hurt a lot! I fell apart at mile 75 and thought I'd never make it to the finish line, but with the support of my amazing pacer and crew, I did!)

Rather, I am compelled to (attempt to) tell a much bigger, far-reaching story about Leadville, its history and what happened at this year's race—a situation that has already sparked widespread controversy throughout the blogosphere and injected some real ugliness in the greater trail-running community. I'm not interested in joining the personal jabs back and forth; what I want to do is uncover the truth.

But, what I've been reminded of over the past few months is that "the truth" is more subjective than we often think. I recently finished reading two very different feminist books. One is Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead"—essentially, a treatise encouraging women to "lean in" to their careers, combat lingering sexism in the workplace and ascend to more leadership positions in their companies. Sandberg interviews many highly educated, upper-middle-class women who've managed to balance full-time jobs with motherhood, and derive deep satisfaction from such.

The other book I just finished reading is Harvard graduate and writer Emily Matchar's "Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity"—which examines the opposite phenomenon among the same (perhaps slightly younger) demographic: highly educated, upper-middle-class women who've decided to "opt out" of the full-time, working world in exchange for pursuing a simpler, more DIY life at home. The Etsy generation, the urban homesteaders, the corporate-dropout-turned-organic-farmers, the lifestyle bloggers.

Both books were terrific, thought-provoking reads, full of women speaking their own personal truths. For many of those interviewed by Sandberg, their truth is, "Women are better off having rewarding careers outside of the home." For many of those interviewed by Matchar, their truth is, "Women are better off stepping outside the traditional full-time work paradigm." Is one more right than the other?

Interestingly, both books arrived at pretty much the same conclusion: Women should do whatever the hell they want with their lives. More specifically, women should not fall prey to societal expectations, whatever they may be, and instead heed their own intuition and pursue their personal dreams with rigor. Although both authors, Sandberg and Matchar, interspersed their books with their own personal experiences, I appreciated that neither presumed to know "the truth" about what's best for women. Rather, they allowed the stories and ideas of the women they interviewed to be heard. They listened.

For my Leadville article, I interviewed runners who loved this year's race, and I interviewed those who said it was the worst race of their life. I interviewed Leadville locals who think the race is the best thing that's ever happened to the town, and I interviewed those who feel it's a monster. Certainly, after running it this year, I had my own thoughts about Leadville, some of which I do express in my article—but thanks to invaluable input from my editor, I did my best to let those take a backseat to the diverse voices of those I interviewed.

As a journalist, you have incredible (terrifying) power in your hands to pick and choose the words, the quotes, the details you include, or exclude, in your story. It's all too easy to editorialize, to let your own biases creep in. When I was 19, I was interviewed by a newspaper journalist about hurricane relief work I'd done in New Orleans; her questions to me were deeply biased, interrogating, from the moment we got on the phone. I felt disappointed that my words were ultimately twisted to fit her agenda—a chastisement of young people traveling to volunteer, thereby abandoning needs in their home communities. It was a valuable idea worth exploring, but the fact that she approached our interview (and eventually, her readers) with the mentality of a prosecutor rather than a listener, seemed a reckless use of her power as a journalist.

In the age of instant Facebook and Twitter status updates, of blogs and comment threads that rapidly devolve from productive dialogues into personal attacks, we're all the more accustomed to flash-broadcasting our opinions in lieu of being patient enough to ask questions, to complicate our understanding by seeking out opposing ideas. Social media and the kind of inflammatory headlines that sites like Gawker and Jezebel thrive on encourage us all to react before anything else; we already have an opinion, a sense of outrage, before we've even read the article. Confirmation bias is rampant. Is listening to one another—particularly those we don't already agree with—becoming a lost art?

Taking the time to explore contradictions in what "the truth" is, rather than shuttling readers high-speed toward an uncomplicated conclusion, is at the heart of all good journalism. I wouldn't proclaim to be anywhere near mastering this yet, but it's a principle I'm grateful to be working on every day.

Cheating my inner productivity-drill-sergeant

I intended to sit down and write an entry about habits, but I got so sidetracked elaborating on the first one I wanted to discuss - reading - that I guess I need to resign this entry to being solely about that. I'm all right with that.

Reading has been huge for me this year! I'm thrilled, because I struggled for a long time with giving myself permission to read. Curling up with a book often felt like too much of an indulgence. It still does, sometimes, but I've found a few ways to cheat my inner productivity-drill-sergeant and allow myself the indulgence anyway.

1. Track books I read on GoodReads. That way, even when I'm snuggled up in my papasan chair with my cat, a mug of tea, and a ratty paperback, I can feel like I'm making progress toward a goal - and I'll have something to show for it at the end.
2. Read while "hiking" on the treadmill. In training for the White River 50 this year, I was advised by the wise White River veteran Major Shark to get myself on the treadmill to train my legs for steady, steady climbing. Prior to this, I'd never done anything but run on the treadmill...mile repeats, check; 16-mile runs, check; Yasso 800's, check. But crank it up to a 15% grade and walk briskly for 6 uphill miles? Never before. Lo and behold, it's been great. Not only have I gotten in great shape, I can easily read half a book in one workout.
3. Vanpool! James and I got a new vanpool off the ground that runs from Seattle to Kent. (One of these days, I will devote an entire blog entry to the amazing vanpool program in King County.) We share driving duties, but when I'm not driving, it's a great opportunity to read. What better way to start the morning than being immersed in a fabulous novel for half an hour before even checking my email?
4. God bless the iPhone. After reading The Shallows a couple years ago and being quite sure I'd never find a place in my heart for ebooks...well, I've gone and done it anyway. Mostly because I can log on to the Seattle Public library's website on my phone and within 30 seconds, download a complete book - for free - onto my phone. Then, best of all, unlike regular books or even a Kindle, it's literally in my pocket all day long, ready to be pulled out and read while I'm waiting in lines, riding the bus, eating lunch, etc. I find all sorts of ways throughout my day to sneak reading a page here, a page there. I love it!

Did all that type-A stuff just spoil the romanticism of my bibliophilia? I hope not. I love books all the same - which is to say, very, very much.

It's just that...young adulthood has a way of making time accelerate, and that acceleration prompts a kind of nostalgia for the languid summers of childhood, swaths of unscheduled, uninterrupted free time to pursue whatever creative pursuits struck your fancy. Then you grow up, and time doesn't come around like that anymore. At some point, the question is no longer the presumptuous 'When shall I do this thing I really want to do?', but rather, an urgent, half-desperate 'Will I ever do this thing I really want to do?'

I believed, at twelve, that I could be a scientist. I believed I could be a writer, an actress, a professor of English in Rome, an acrobat in a purple spangled outfit. Days opened for me like the pulling apart of curtains at a play you've been dying to see. I had a microscope on my desk, shelves full of books and treasures that I found outside: rocks, wood, abandoned nests of hornets and birds, notes to myself for things to do tomorrow because I hadn't had the time today. I believed the way to ride bareback was to get on and go, the rising heat of the horse against your bare legs the only instruction you'd need. The how of everything was simply in the doing of it. - From The Pull of the Moon, by Elizabeth Berg

I miss having the time to pursue all the how's that pique my interest - to write a novel in my afternoons, to design my own board game for the heck of it, to teach myself to juggle in front of a mirror in my basement with hand towels and plastic bowling pins. I miss the limitless ambitions of the young imagination.

But I also recognize that simply missing free time doesn't make it magically appear. So instead of going around mumbling all the time about how I wished I had more time to read, I'm reading on treadmills and in vans and on my fancy phone. Pardon the pragmatism of growing up in the modern world.

Of course, there are limits to the number of things that you can "make time for", no matter how passionate and committed you may be to them. What I have learned so far, though, is that it's no good to throw your hands up in the air about it all. You can set new priorities, small ones, one by one, and eventually (I'm talking years here) they weasel their way into your daily life and eek out a little bit of room for new ones.

So. Reading, juicing, running, career building, today. Social life, PHP wrangling, banjo playing, new blog launch, book proposal, sleeping, traveling, tomorrow*. Ah life!

*figuratively speaking

Figuring out this life

Fall in Seattle is nice.
I don't often share things online that I write in my own journal, but I wrote the this a couple weeks ago, and I think it's worth a share (if you can stand the long-winded navel-gazing that these self-indulgent entries inevitably feature).

Nov. 4 - I don't have enough time and energy to tackle everything in my life that I want, to pursue all the paths that entice me. Every time I meet or read about someone on one of those paths, I think, "Yes! That's the thing I want to devote myself to!" I read a great novel, I want to be a novelist. I read Sedaris, I want to tell stories about my life that make people laugh. I stumble on an interesting blog that generates revenue, I'm sure that's what I'm cut out to do. I run a trail race, and suddenly running is all I care about excelling at. I go to a good bluegrass show and I'm obsessed with picking my banjo. I read an interview with a successful young entrepreneur and I'm sure I want to start my own business.

My parents can attest to the fact that this extreme enthusiasm for mimicry started early in my life. A visit to the circus inevitably inspired a homespun version in our basement in Kansas when we got home in the evening. I'd rope in my stuffed animals, my dog Sasha, my hula hoops. I taught myself to juggle plastic bowling pins, practiced enough gymnastics to pull off one-handed cartwheels and front handsprings. The rodeo, the Olympics, the carnival...anywhere fun and exciting my parents took me, I took home with me and recreated in the basement for an audience of two.

If I watched a game show, I'd make up my own version at home; pretending to ask my parents questions for a school project, I'd interview them individually about their favorite and least favorite things, then challenge them against each other later in game show format to see who knew whom best. If I visited my dad at his office at the Kansas City Star and he took me down to see the massive, noisy, ink-stained printing presses, I'd draw up my own family newspaper by the end of the week. I kept up the W Family Gazette for an impressive number of issues, flying down the stairs in excitement to deliver my product to the hands of my parents, crying out "Hot off the press!" and charging them a quarter apiece for their issues.

Believe me, I treasure this quality in myself. Creativity and a constant hunger for learning and trying new things certainly keep life interesting, and usually pretty darn fun. But it's not without its frustrations, too. My journal entry from two weeks ago continues:

I exhaust myself! I can't decide. Not that my decision needs to last forever, of course, but nothing's ever going to happen in my life if I spread myself too thin. I can't do the New York Times crossword every day, prepare great meals, read at least a book a week, keep up on current events, maintain my blog, have enough time for all the people I love, volunteer regularly, make time to write in my own journal, continue working on my Dutch, take web design classes, teach myself a half dozen programming languages, run 50 miles a week, keep the apartment clean, work on transitioning to a high-raw diet, do yoga, lift weights, ride my bike, meditate and develop a stronger spiritual core, build a photography portfolio, travel regularly, submit more of my writing for freelance publication, hike, snowboard in the winter, write letters to friends, maintain a social life that involves going out at least a few nights a week, stay in touch on Facebook, work and earn enough money to afford living in Seattle...and still get enough sleep! It's ridiculous, now that I've written all that down, how much I actually expect myself to do in my day-to-day life. Obviously, I have to make some choices.

And those aren't even the BIG goals. Those are just the average daily life goals, the stepping stones to the big goals. Big goals are things like: summiting Mt. Rainier, running a 100-mile race, publishing a book, making the world a better place in a really big way...

So, where does that leave me? The two weeks in Holland gave me the incredible gift of time for reflection on what passions continue to stoke my fire the most - and (surprise!) running and writing both emerged high. I've been looking into volunteering with local chapters of several nonprofits (you know, in my copious amounts of free time!), and I've been torn between 826 Seattle, a center that offers youth after-school mentoring, tutoring and writing workshops - and Girls on the Run, a program that helps young girls feel empowered and develop healthy habits and self esteem through running.

I use my deliberation over the volunteering choice as a metaphor for the greater internal debate - whether, at this point in my life, to make running or writing my bigger priority. Neither passion, obviously, will ever fall completely out of my daily life - but I've been doing a little of both for many years, and I'm ready to do a lot of one of them for awhile to see what happens. I'm fortunate, of course, that I've been able to do a good amount of writing in my working life so far - this debate is really about what my "after-work" hours will look like (until, of course, I can figure out how to get paid to run all day and then write about it!)

With this question nagging at me since I've been back in the states, it's no wonder that the following quote jumped out at me from a book I've been reading, Matt Fitzgerald's RUN: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel. Deena Kastor, America's fastest and most accomplished female marathoner, said to Matt in an interview that in 1995,"I didn't feel like I had done everything for my running. I felt I had much more potential and I didn't want to walk away from it. I could open up a bakery or write a book at any time in my life, but I wanted to make sure that I got that running fever out while I was still young and energetic enough to do it."

And guess what? That spoke to me. I met Deena at the 2008 Chicago Marathon, after taking an impromptu solo road trip and obtaining a press pass to chat it up with the elite runners. She was softspoken, kind and every bit as inspiring in person as when I'd read about her in articles.


Deena, right before my starstruck-fan ambush.
So I'm doing it. I'm taking advantage of my youth and energy, and making running my top priority for 2012. My plans include: (hopefully) snagging a coaching spot with Girls on the Run, volunteering at as many trail runs as I can fit into my schedule, running higher mileage than ever before, training for my first 50-miler, qualifying for Boston, and above all, logging my second totally injury-free year in a row! Cheers for finding both form and footwear that work for me.


Three beautiful fall runs, three different pairs of shoes...can you tell I'm turning into a junkie?

Living it up on the other side of the world

Oh, what a trip this has been already! One full week here now, and happily, it feels as though I've been able to pack in a lot of great adventures, without completely overwhelming myself. Still plenty of time to relax, read, catch up with my mom and catch up on sleep.

With the exception of a few cold, rainy days at the beginning, we've had great fall weather here. Loads of sunshine, crisp air, picturesque clouds. I arrived via a 9-hour direct flight (the first time I've ever been able to fly nonstop from home to Amsterdam! Thank you, Seattle!) last Tuesday. I made a futile attempt to ward off jetlag by sleeping only 3.5 hours the night before my flight, thinking I'd be able to just pass out on the plane and wake up refreshed and ready to roll when I arrived in Amsterdam at 8:20 a.m. local Dutch time. Unfortunately, I decided to finally take the fancy-phone plunge and purchase an iPhone for myself right before leaving - and the thrills of being able to play with a new mobile toy in airplane mode on my flight, combined with chatting it up with a sweet German woman whom I sat next to, prevented me from sleeping much at all on the flight.


Almost full moon! Trippy to watch a sunset, moonrise, and sunrise all in the course of one flight.
My mom came to meet me at the airport, and we immediately hopped on the train back to Nijverdal, the small town in the east where she lives. Upon arrival in Nijverdal, I barely made it through the tour of her cozy, new little house before collapsing in bed for an all-day nap. Woke up for dinner and passed back out again shortly thereafter, for a total of 17 hours of sleep. Oi vey!

The next few days, we had a relaxing few days at home in Nijverdal. I got to know her daily environs a bit more - the neighbors (who fielded a few complaints about our rowdy storytelling and laughing into the wee hours of my first few jetlagged nights here!), the local thrift shops, the newly renovated town square, and what I remember best about my last visit to Nijverdal...the beautiful woods and heather fields on the edge of town. For my last few training runs before the Amsterdam marathon, my mom and I set out for the woods, and she walked one loop on various routes while I ran the same loop twice. We really lucked out with the blue skies and sun-spackled trails.


On Saturday morning, we set out for Amsterdam again by train - arriving to slightly warmer weather, and a sunny, glorious weekend day in the city. A longtime friend of my mom's is vacationing in Uzbekistan for a few weeks; generously, he left us the keys to his centrally-located Amsterdam apartment, as well as two ratty old bikes for us to ride around the city. Truly a blessing - I can't imagine being in A'dam without a bike!


Saturday afternoon, my mom and I biked to the marathon expo in the south of the city to pick up my marathon bib and t-shirt, then on to the house of Cinta - my host during my semester abroad in Amsterdam. Cinta, a longtime marathon runner herself, prepared a delicious, vegetarian pre-race meal for me (and herself! She ran as an official Runner's World pacer for runners trying to get a time of 3:45) of pasta with fennel, mushrooms, walnuts and cheese. Her girlfriend Tanja joined us, and the four of us had a wonderful time making up for lost time.


Me with Cinta and Tanja
We biked home at the end of the night, through the lovely Vondelpark, of which I have many fond memories of nighttime biking with Taryn (my fellow housemate at Cinta's from study abroad). It's really peaceful there at night, the darkness punctuated only by other bike lights, the silence broken by the steady whirr of your bike light on your front wheel...on many Dutch bikes, your bike light at night is powered by the energy of your actual pedaling - innovative indeed! I fell into bed at Gustaaf's flat, stayed up awhile reading the latest Jeffrey Eugenides novel on my iPhone before dropping off to sleep. Amazing, technology. (On a total sidenote, I'm halfway through it now and really enjoying the read, contrary to many of the early negative reviews.)

Sunday was the big day - Marathon Day! I think I'll save most of my ramblings about the marathon itself for a separate entry (because we've all witnessed how capable of rambling about running I am!), but suffice to say that it was a gorgeous day with a beautiful, flat course, and I ran about as fast as I hoped to.


Sunday evening, we celebrated by getting together for tea, and later dinner, with one of my mom's close friends from 40+ years ago when they shared their first apartment in Amsterdam together, and her husband and daughter Sabrina. A good evening, full of many stories and laughs too! My mom and Sabrina worked on devising a plan to keep me in Holland longterm :)

Monday, my mom and I hopped on our bikes and headed for the "Amsterdamse Bos" - perhaps my favorite, most cherished part of the city, and one of which few people, even lifelong Amsterdam residents, seem to be aware.


It's a big wooded area just a kilometer or two outside of the city, with an expansive trail system (both semi-paved bike trails and unpaved walking/running trails), lots of lakes and creeks, scenic farmland, and even - as I learned with surprise on a solo run there four years ago - wild boar-ish animals called "Schotse Hooglanders".


One such mellow fellow, just hanging out next to the trail.
The intention was to bike to my favorite restaurant in all of Amsterdam, a Dutch pannenkoekenhuis (pancake house!) with a pancake menu reminiscent of the indulgent breadth of options available at the Cheesecake Factory. Dutch pancakes can be sweet or savory, and include a wealth of ingredients we Americans typically only thing of putting in omelets or crepes...but we're talking full-blown, thick, bigger-than-your-face pancakes here, with any ingredient or combination you desire cooked right into the middle of the batter.


The Boerderij Meerzicht (roughly translated: Farm with a Lake View) is situated in the middle of the forest. Though we found it without trouble, we were disappointed to discover that it's not open on Mondays. Talk about a bummer! Happily, though, we biked back to the city and found ourselves some solid Dutch pancakes there instead.

Sunday evening I was able to get together with a fellow marathoner and friend from my semester abroad, whom I'd originally gotten to know through interviewing for my thesis paper. Over a pot of tea, a few glasses of port, and a block of aged Dutch cheese, we had quite the time catching up, too!

Today, my mom and I spent a relaxed morning wandering around the famous, outdoor Albert Cuyp market, enjoying some traditional Dutch "patat met" (fat french fries doused in mayonnaise and served in a paper funnel with a fork) before making our way back to Amsterdam's Central Station and on the train back to Nijverdal...


...which brings me to tonight! More updates to follow. Namely, the marathon report :)

Yoga and black bean fudge brownies? Yes please.

Favorite salad of late: chopped Swiss chard, topped with quinoa, orange slices, mushrooms, and homemade dressing
Ironically, I am writing this blog entry on wellness while battling a bit of a cold. Nevertheless, health and wellness are on my mind, and I've done some fun projects lately I feel like writing about here.

First of all: A little over a week ago, I hosted a "Wellness Wednesday" for a few friends. I invited them over early-ish in the day, and made green smoothies - pineapple, kiwi, mango, spinach, etc. - for all. Then we cleared the furniture out of my living room and rolled out yoga mats for a solid 45 minutes or so of gentle vinyasa yoga.

Back in Kansas City, I had a wonderful yoga teacher named Martha, who led yoga classes several mornings a week, for free (with a recommended $5 donation, but truly a no-obligation, contribute-when-you-can set up, most of which was donated to local charities anyway) in a neighborhood church. I think it was Lu who invited me the first time, and soon after, I brought my mom along, and Martha Yoga became tradition - 90 minutes, three times a week, of blissful stretching, muscle awakening, meditation, and fun, too.

Getting licensed to lead yoga classes costs upwards of $3500. Not in my budget for now, but I do feel pretty knowledgeable about yoga, pose modifications, proper form, and breathing techniques in general - enough to at least reasonably lead sessions for friends. I have always admired and envied what Martha was able to do for a community of people back in Kansas: grant us a space to come together with others, relax, reflect, and rejuvenate. She was able to give so much, and at so little cost. I aspire to do the same in my life...what more can we ask of ourselves but to share with others everything we have to offer?

Martha would always finish our sessions by having us gather in a circle, and by reading to us a passage from a book that had spoken to her that week - often some sort of meditation or anecdote intended to inspire self-reflection. Again, I always admired the effort that I knew she must put in every week to selecting meaningful passages to share with us. I knew I wanted to do the same for my trio of wellness-seekers last week, and I felt surprised the night before at what an incredible pleasure it was to comb through dusty books from my shelves...books on spirituality and wellness that I hadn't really looked at in a long time, but books, nevertheless, with the capacity to inspire truly transformative thoughts. Books are powerful.

I settled on a passage from Seyeon's favorite book, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear - an excerpt from Mary Catherine Bateson's "Composing a Life Story." However, there was another passage that I came across in John Heider's "The Tao of Leadership" that I want especially to share here now on my blog. My mom gave me this book of 81 Taoist principles for my 18th birthday. #54 is The Ripple Effect.

Do you want to be a positive influence in the world? First, get your own life in order. Ground yourself in the single principle so that your behavior is wholesome and effective.
If your life works, you influence your family.
If your family works, your family influences the community.
If your community works, your community influences the nation.
If your nation works, your nation influences the world.
If your world works, the ripple effect spreads throughout the cosmos.
Remember that your influence begins with you and ripples outward. All growth spreads outward from a fertile and potent nucleus. You are a nucleus.

Amen. After yoga, we had tea, and I made a giant pot of quinoa porridge (recipe courtesy of Trail Runner magazine!) with diced apple, dried fruits, flax seed, almond milk, walnuts, and more yummy things. All vegan and gluten-free mouthwatering deliciousness.


I also made my favorite raw/vegan/gluten-free energy bar recipe ever, for my guests to take as to-go goodies:


So how, after all my greens and focus on wellness, did I wind up with this minor cold? A few things happened, I guess:
1. The virtual knock on wood must not have been good enough, when I wrote that blog entry on never calling in sick to work. The good thing about being friends with my coworkers, is that word gets out fast when you're sick, and friends come bring you pho at home. Friends are splendid.
2. I was on this pretty clean diet for awhile, but last weekend derailed me: the extravagant sushi and ice cream on Friday night, eating glutenous pasta Saturday night, rewarding myself post-half-marathon with a DQ Blizzard and more dairy over the course of a couple hours than I'd put in my body in the last month altogether, more ice cream (Molly Moon's salted caramel, yum!) after dinner with Ruth on Monday, and finally...late at night on Tuesday, baked deliciously scrumptious browned butter toasted coconut chocolate chip cookies, ala Joy the Baker, to bring to work the next day...


I halved Joy's recipe, and remembered to half everything except the butter. Whoops. Mine look nothing like hers, but an extra stick of butter, shockingly, didn't hurt the taste too much.
...but I popped a couple the night before and felt dizzingly drunk off the butter/sugar rush. Whew.
3. So when Seyeon came over Wednesday night with a bit of a cold, I think it just did me in. My poor immune system was down, from lack of the usual antioxidant-packed goods, and I woke up feeling not so hot.

Today, as I've been snacking away at home while trying to let my health make a recovery, I've been utilizing awesome recipes in my latest issue of Women's Running to pack in as many nutrients as possible. Below: homemade kale chips, a blueberry/chard/almond milk/flaxseed/pinapple smoothie, and an amaaazing fudge brownie made with black beans (!), Dutch cocoa powder, and sweetened purely with agave nectar. No refined sugar whatsoever. Incredible stuff.


Come on, body, work with me. I'd like to be able to run tomorrow.

Book Blog: My Reading List, Pt I

First of all, thank you again Nicholas Carr, for your wonderful wake up call with The Shallows, which reminded me that reading books is, and always will be, a valuable use of my time.

I went through a long, not-reading-so-much lull. It started in college, when of course, I was reading plenty of books and other materials for my classes - and it was wonderful reading indeed: international novels, political treatises, historically resonant works, compelling nonfiction, poetry, translations, essays about translations, translations of essays about translations...the world of academia was indeed a rich one.

At the same time, it left me little time to peruse books on my own. I'm pleased to say that even though I objectively still don't have the time for huge swaths of leisure reading, I'm carving out the moments for it nonetheless, and it's heavenly. Last night, I went out for drinks with a couple women in my javascript class to celebrate the end of our quarter (or, in my case, mourn...I will miss that javascript class dearly). One of the women mentioned that she has a weakness for high heels, and treats herself with a new pair every month - many of which she admitted just sit in her closet untouched, but the process of buying them is so exciting and rewarding that she can't help herself. I guess I'm like that with books; I buy books and check them out from the library at a rate that far exceeds my ability to read them - and yet I indulge in the pleasure of acquiring them, and am comforted by their presence in my home.

So what exactly have I been reading lately?

ChiRunning, by Danny Dreyer

I've recommended this one to tons of customers at REI looking for a more technical manual on how to adapt their form to more of a midfoot strike (vs. the traditional heavy heel strike), which often helps runners cut down on their injuries...and yet I've never read it myself until now! Man, what a tremendously insightful and valuable read this one's turning out to be. It draws on principles from Tai Chi, and encourages runners to derive their power from their core, rather than their legs. Just keeping some simple principles described in the first few chapters of this book in mind while running has already allowed me to have some tremendously enjoyable and surprisingly effortless-feeling runs lately, including a 17-miler one way run to Kenmore, a 20-miler out-and-back along Lake Washington last weekend, and a few powerful sprint workouts as well. So far, so good...none of those pesky old shin splints flaring up this time around! I'm excited about the possibilities here, and would absolutely recommend this to all runners.

The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell

Rachel's mom loaned this one to me when I was 17, and I just couldn't get myself to read it...sci fi? I thought skeptically. So the loaned copy sat on my bookshelf until I graduated and gave it back untouched. Then a couple months ago, I saw the same book on my friend Lauren's bookshelf, recognized it, inquired about it. Once again, the book was pressed into my hands, and it was demanded I read it. What a gem of a novel! In and out of chronological order, it tells the story of a Jesuit mission from Earth to explore an inhabited planet 17 light years away. The characters are spectacularly developed, and the story wonderfully told. Don't wait as long as I did to read it.

Racing Weight, by Matt Fitzgerald

This one's a bit of a guilty admittance, since it is essentially a weight loss book, and weight loss has such a strange stigma in our society. Every doctor I've ever had until now has either (1) told me I'm borderline overweight (because of that silly BMI nonsense, like that number matters more than the fact that I maintain a ridiculously healthy diet and lead a very active lifestyle), or (2) worried that I'm anorexic (because of my obsession with running...surely that level of enthusiasm for exercise must indicate mental illness, right?!) My doctor in Seattle is a triathlete, and for the first time ever, I have a doctor who isn't trying to diagnose imaginary problems with my body. She gets it! (It's kind of a coincidence, but not really, that of the hundreds if not thousands of doctors in this city, my trail running friend Elodie settled on the exact same one as me - both of us entirely independently of one another.) Anyway. With all that said, I do worry about my knees with all the running I do, and I also admit I have a secret pipe dream of being a semi-professional sponsored ultrarunner someday- and dropping a few pounds could certainly help on both those fronts. I am way, way over worrying about what I look like in a bikini or fitting into a certain size of pants...but I AM interested in being the best, most-injury-free runner I can be. This book is for me! Guidelines for weight loss and maintenance for endurance athletes just looking to perform at their best. Vashon 50K, here I come again.

Why We Run: A Natural History, by Bernd Heinrich

This is an interesting one. It used to be called "Racing the Antelope", which always caught my eye in the bookstore, because Seyeon and I have always nicknamed ourselves the Cheetah and the Antelope, respectively, when it comes to our running styles. Seyeon has these crazy muscles when she runs, and she can get into this powerful jet-sprinting mode that's almost scary intense (in an awesome way!) to watch. I tend to prance more, I suppose :P, when I run, light and happy and free like an antelope. Anyway, apparently the author got sued by some Phish fan turned author for supposedly ripping off the Antelope title, so he changed his book's title to "Why We Run." Bernd is both a biologist and an ultrarunner, so he tackles the subject of endurance from a biology standpoint, discussing all the unique qualities of various animals that allow them to be endurance athletes in their own ways - everything from camels to hummingbirds to frogs. It's kind of a meandering narrative, interspersed, too, with the author's own running anecdotes - but overall an enjoyable and educational read, if not a sometimes seemingly aimless one. Not done with it yet, so not sure yet whether I recommend it for sure - but certainly a fun, quirky read.

Poke the Box, by Seth Godin

This is a short read - for me, an impulsive Kindle buy that lasted about the duration of my light rail ride to the airport when I went to Salt Lake City a couple weeks ago - but a great one! I've become a big fan of Seth Godin's blog for daily common sense and business musings about the new information age economy. This book is just the latest in his prodigious list of published writings, but it's a good one - short, to the point, and totally motivating. How do programmers create things, Godin asks? They just write the code and see what happens, and keep tweaking it until it finally works; they poke the box. The world needs more people who start things, not just people who follow directions. We need innovators. We need people who aren't afraid to fail at things. And boy does Seth make me want to be one of them. Highly recommended, too. I shelled out the bucks to buy a print copy of it, too, to give as a gift, because if I've got one big complaint about the Kindle, it's that I can't turn around and immediately share with others what I've just read. Loaning my books to friends is on par pleasure-wise with procuring new ones for myself.

Well, I'm only 50% of the way through the list of books I wanted to write about, and it's definitely sleepytime now. Stay tuned for the other five soon. (And don't worry, they're not all running books...)

Getting my priorities straight

Things I love: kitchens and bookcases.

Do I spend (much) money on clothes or cars or jewelry or beauty products or movies or music or TV or a fancy phone? Nope. But after a year of tracking my finances on Mint, I've noticed that the budget I'm willing to justify for books and kitchen supplies (appliances, groceries, and dishes all included) seems to be relatively sprawling.

I've also noticed that kitchens and bookcases are inevitably the places I gravitate toward when I'm in other people's homes - the nooks I find myself nosing around in to learn about other people. And when I notice the same book on the bookshelves of several different people I admire and respect, it's not long before I'm tracking it down at the library/Elliott Bay Books/Half Price/Amazon (my book distributors of choice, in no particular order; I think I do equal parts business at all four.)

So I've been reading David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (thanks, Tom and Brant.)


Me and Tom atop Mt. Si two weeks ago, having left Seattle at 5 a.m. with headlamps and snacks in tow to make it to the summit for sunrise!
Overall, the book is more corporate-jobby than is 100% relevant in my life right now - organizing my home office, ha! - but I've picked up a couple priceless concepts from it so far:

1. Stress comes from having "open loops" in your head. Getting them down on paper - every last one of them - clears up space in your head to relax and focus better, because you're not trying to juggle a hundred to-do's in the back of your mind at all times. I'm harnessing the power of the yellow notepad.

2. If anything on your to-do list will take less than two minutes to do, do it immediately. Amazing what a difference this simple change has already made for me!

I made a list of all the ongoing projects in my life - everything from specific work-related projects (the ONW website redesign, helping coordinate REI's annual running shoe expo) to school-related projects (designing a website for my comedian friend Quinn Patterson, applying for scholarships for next year) to ongoing self-education crusades (learning banjo, learning Dutch, learning PHP, learning about investments, learning about holistic wellness and alternative medicine, learning about social media and guerilla marketing) to strengthening personal relationships to training for ultramarathons to my ongoing book reading list to apartment maintenance to developing a freelance portfolio.


My Vision Board from a couple weeks ago.
It felt amazingly good to write it all down on paper. The process also reminded me of the five thousand or so blog entries that I haven't managed to write here yet but really want to! I know I tend to write disproportionately about running, the great outdoors in Washington state, and general life musings - and that makes sense, since those are largely the things that sustain my soul - but there are other unwritten entries itching to get out, too. In the works are: a serious food/cooking blog entry, a what I've been reading blog entry, a reflections on the Kindle blog entry, a music I've been listening to blog entry, a snowboarding in Salt Lake City blog entry, a 2011 bucket list entry, a gratitude blog entry, a tribute to good people in my life blog entry, an ode to my food processor blog entry, a tribute to my cat blog entry, a video blog featuring me on a snowboard and me playing banjo (not at the same time), and a likely-to-be-long-and-rambly blog entry reflecting on Sid, the lawyer I worked for one summer five years ago - a work experience that had a pretty profound effect in shaping the Me of today.


Beautiful footprints leading into the unknown.
Good God, it's a fascinating world we live in. Stay tuned.

Postscript: The following quote is painted in the employee stairwell at REI.

"Oh, let us always have a mountain within our soul with a peak so high that we never quite reach the top…for then we always strive for greater things and will not be content with merely climbing hills." - Ardath Rodale

She was and continues to be an inspiration to me. Indeed, let there always be a mountain within my soul!

Seek and you shall find.

This is about ice cream, and some other things.

Today was a long day. I left home at 6:30 a.m., made a quick pit stop at home again in the late afternoon to shovel down some mashed potatoes and an English muffin, and between work, school, and picking up new tabs for my car, didn't come home again until 9:30 at night. 15 hours makes for a long day.

But you can bet I'm appreciating my couch, my music, my cat, and my pint of pumpkin ice cream now.

Pumpkin ice cream, in fact, was all I could think about for the majority of my evening. I considered going to Trader Joe's after class, but it was pretty out of my way; QFC has better produce, and I also needed some greens for my morning Unpalatable Chlorophyll Juice.

I scanned the ice cream freezers long and hard for pumpkin ice cream, almost to no avail. The cases of Ben 'n Jerry's and Haagen Dazs both failed me utterly; no pumpkin anywhere. I thought I was going to have to settle for a vat of Edy's low-fat pumpkin stuff when suddenly my eyes landed on a modest little pint of pumpkin custard ice cream from a local company, Snoqualmie Gourmet. + On sale. + I got the last pint.

Fate, no doubt.

It's the second time recently that I've walked into a store with a very deliberate idea in mind of what I want to walk out with, and the universe has worked in my favor. Last time was an impulsive nighttime venture to Elliot Bay Books in the hopes of walking out with a new novel. I had a really specific sort of book in mind for myself, and I spent a good hour browsing, reading book jackets and first pages, and nothing seemed to be speaking to me.

I'd just about given up when I cycled back to the original table of bargain books I'd been browsing and my eyes lit upon the One. (I'm about 70 pages in, and it's wonderful so far.)

So often, it can feel as though the universe is conspiring against us.

But I'm trying, more and more, to consciously acknowledge and appreciate it when it's not - which, honestly, is most of the time. After all...I do not have cancer! I have no broken bones! I'm on good terms (I think) with everybody in my life! My car did not break down today! I did not get in any accidents! While traffic was frustrating, and my schedule exhausting, and getting new car tabs a hassle, I have a home, and a job (or 3ish), and a vehicle, and I can afford to go to school. I did not lose anything important today. So many horrible things didn't happen to me today!

There ARE, in fact, things - good things - that have happened to me, things I should be writing about: the glorious ten days in a row Alan and I got to spend together, the plethora of amazing dinner parties attended and hosted this week, Thanksgiving awesomeness at Seyeon and Andrea's lake house, the crazy snowstorm and the giant car accident pile up on our icy hill of a street, the amazing snowy hike Jeff and Kate and I did a couple weeks ago, the usual Seattle love stuff...

...but it'll wait for another time. Tomorrow's a (more modest) 12 hour day, but I need my sleep. Good night, good world!

Unearthing secret geekdoms

I guess the last word of my last blog entry wasn't entirely accurate.

I'm having that feeling now where I'm so behind on my blog - too many stories that need telling, too many thoughts that need sharing, too many musings that need processing - that I've no idea where to begin.

As with my personal journal, there's always the conflict between wanting to relay tangible events in my life for the purposes of chronicling and memory preservation and urgency to somehow render my experiences permanent, less ephemeral than they really are - and the desire to just elaborate indulgently on all the crazy thoughts and ideas that have been spinning around in my head lately. I always tend toward the latter.

But for the sake of posterity, the tangibles include: being 4 weeks into school now...Alan and his daughter Kristin being in town for a week and a half of Seattle sight-seeing, great meals and many trips to Old School Frozen Custard, cozy evenings of cooking and board game-playing and movie-watching...road-tripping to Leavenworth for Oktoberfest...pumpkin-carving parties and art parties and fancy schmancy wine and cheese parties with good friends...the increasingly regular Seyeon-and-Yitka get-togethers of frenzied TED-talk, UTNE Reader, and book sharing...Cam and Avey's gorgeous wedding in beautiful, wild Washington...multiple visits to Seattle's homegrown chocolate factory, Theo Chocolate. The list goes on and on; it's been a gorgeous month here, of sunshine and stunning colors and crisp autumn air and wonderful adventure.


As for the intangibles? I can't even believe how much my life has felt lately like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces flying into place at light speed. I'm sure there's a better, less hackneyed metaphor out there for what I've been feeling lately, but the puzzle one really tells it like it is.

Here's the deal: I can't imagine myself having majored in anything but creative writing at Oberlin. Creative writing was the reason I ever even looked at Oberlin in the first place. I met "my people" in the creative writing department. I unearthed a love for creative nonfiction there. Nothing, absolutely nothing, sets me on fire the way putting words on paper does.


But.

My grammar and vocabulary and storytelling geekdom is not my only geekdom. I'm a geek about other things, too: hex codes, acronyms like XHTML and PHP and MySQL, obscure keyboard shortcuts, feeling a warm affinity for people who recognize "& n b s p ;" as a meaningful combinations of characters.

Now, not only do I readily point out shoes and grammatical examples in every day life to people who could care less (e.g. "Hey random stranger, how do you like those Salomon XA Pro 3D's on your feet?", or "Damn you, grocery store, it's 10 Items or FEWER, not less!"), I've also begun pointing out typefaces to my poor unsuspecting friends and loved ones. (e.g. "That pilates studio is branded with Helvetica Neue Light...nice.") Thank you, Typography class. Bored, finally, of keeping a daily Subaru sighting count in Seattle, I've started tracking Papyrus sightings on business signs and posters instead. Atrocious...

I guess I'd just forgotten how unbelievably fired up geeking out about tech stuff gets me - and how being in school for an IT field now makes me feel like so many threads in my life are all coming together in big, exciting ways.


Seamless connections between disparate aspects of my life crop up everywhere:

In my how-to-be-a-webmaster/web designer/web programmer/content manager/project manager/freelance business owner class (not its official name, of course, but that pretty well sums it up), my teacher Mike shows us a website he designed for David Lemley - the man behind major corporate rebranding projects for Starbucks, Home Depot, and...REI. I read about his work, fascinated by the driving forces behind this company I work for and admire that's succeeded in maintaining a pretty darn loyal, happy base of employees. How? Rebranding efforts a few years ago.

I have some rebranding(ish) ideas for Outdoors NW, even though it's on a completely different level. Yet truly, the skills I'm garnering in school, week by week, I get to turn around and apply immediately in my creative work for the magazine. As well as in building an art portfolio website for my friend Jenica. Jenica hosted an art party several weeks ago in a big art space basement studio on Capitol Hill. When I got to the party, I found none other than Oberlin's semi-famed Kalan Sherrard chopping vegetables in the kitchen, talking about Oberlin-nostalgia-friendly topics, but with a Seattle touch: dumpster diving at Pike Place Market, doing puppet shows and performance art on the streets of Capitol Hill...


See how it works? Web design -> REI -> Outdoors NW -> Seattle -> Oberlin -> Creative writing -> Web design...Full circle; small world.

My friend Tom (originally met at REI) recommended to me the blog zenhabits.net several weeks ago. I didn't make the connection then, but the author of it, Leo Babauta, has written "The Power of Less" - a book for which I'd just put a special order request in with the King County library system, independent of Tom's recommendation to me. Got the book last week, plowed through half of it, called Seyeon to rave about it to her. Turns out she'd put a special order request for the exact same book from the Seattle Public library system, and was in the middle of reading it when I called.

Seattle's an awesome city. It's an unbelievable hot bed of amazing energy and creativity and inspiration. Every time I stumble across another blog or website or book that completely changes the way I look at the world, I swear, 90% of the time, the author is either from Seattle or lives here now. So many incredible people here with big ideas living out big lives...I want to be a part of it all. Life doesn't feel long enough.


That's probably one of the top ten best problems in the world to feel like you have, though.

Booklust: Another long one.

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
- Franz Kafka
Less than one month ago, I finally picked up a copy of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, by Nicholas Carr - a book I'd heard much about, picked up every time I wandered into Elliott Bay, and tried to chase down at libraries and used bookstores all over - before making the plunge. I read it in two days, and it's been a serious wake up call.

Flipping open my laptop first thing in the morning, starting my days with internet, and punctuating most of my free moments with mindless web browsing is NOT good for the soul. Nor for the mind. I've justified it, telling myself that it's important to read the news and stay up on current events, that Facebook is a pleasantly mindless, relaxing pleasure at the end of an exhausting work day, that the internet is crucial to being connected in this modern world, that most careers are web-based anyway, that it's far more interactive than TV anyway and hey, at least I don't own a TV.

All those things are true - but it doesn't mean that constantly being connected is a positive thing in my life.

I should know, right? As a lifelong devotee to the great outdoors, I've written plenty of journal entries that attest to the mystical powers of disconnecting from the daily grind, of immersing oneself entirely in the natural world and just living in the moment.


Oct. 2006: Mammoth Cave National Park, KY
(Case in point: Journal entry, Oct. 22, 2006, after my first multi-day backpacking trip: As cliched as it is to say so, it was so refreshing to liberate myself from all the meaningless crap we fill our day-to-day lives with, the "free time" we create through microwaves and laptops and flush toilets, that we just, in turn, squander. Or, at least, I feel like I do. Even as I'm writing this entry, I'm multi-tasking a bit online...and I HATE that! I felt so very "in the moment" during our trip...I was just thinking about the woods, the rain, the people I was with, my body - "moments of being" as Virginia Woolf called them.) It's a powerful thing.

It's not just in nature. It happens, too, in deep, rich conversations with a close friend. Or on my morning walk to work, face turned to the sun's first rays over the building tops downtown. Or when I curl up in bed with my leather-bound journal and ink pen and let my thoughts flow. Or on a 15-minute break at work, the din of screaming kids and bad 80s music on XM radio in the background, as I lose myself, however temporarily, in the refuge of a good book. Or in dreams, or while cooking, or while riding my bike, or while stepping over a fallen leaf, or while photographing the full moon, or in those groggy, post-alarm clock, first few moments of a new day.


The moon last night.
It's in those moments that thoughts are born. Not just normal processing thoughts, but the fodder that gives rise to our best insights - the very stuff that makes us most human. That insight, those connections, is what separates the human brain from the computer brain, and what can be the saving grace of our species, if people can only not lose the ability to harness that power...the power of insight, from which we also derive the powers of compassion, of imagination, of free will and ambition and creation.

Since The Shallows, I've been in a reading frenzy (as I've mentioned in brief passing already in this blog, I know.) It's crazy that two months ago, I was saying, "I'd love to read more, but I just don't have the time." Wrong. I just wasn't making the time. I've had the same 24 hours in my day as before, the same crazy 50-60 hour work weeks, the same obligations, everything; I've just made reading priority again. As Gandhi once said, "Action expresses priorities." After all, I didn't seem to have a problem reading when I was at Oberlin. One (delightful!) semester's worth of reading then:


Here's my reading list from the past month, most of which, yes, I've read cover to cover...a few are still in progress.

Compelling Nonfiction: Because we live in a fascinating world.
The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr
Bait and Switch, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Framing Innocence, by Lynn Powell
UTNE Reader: The Best of the Alternative Press, Sept/Oct 2010 Issue

Business Books: To help me help the companies I'm proud to work for.
Raising the Bar: The Story of Clif Bar Inc., by Gary Erickson
The Power of Full Engagement, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
The New Rules of Marketing and PR, by David Meerman Scott
The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss

Personal Development Books To give the gifts of knowledge and motivation to myself.
Rich Brother, Rich Sister: Two Different Paths to God, Money, and Happiness, by Robert Kiyosaki
Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World, by Lama Surya Das
My Reality Check Bounced!, by Jason Ryan Dorsey
The Myth of Stress, by Andrew Bernstein
You're Broke Because You Want to Be, by Larry Winget
Poor Dad Rich Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki

Writing Books To give me a definitive shove toward my dream of being a published author.
Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott
Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg
Nonfiction Book Proposals Anyone Can Write, by Elizabeth Lyon
Writer's Digest, October 2010 Issue

Some samplings:

It seems to be that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube - and just so you don't think this is a generational thing, television and radio and magazines and even newspapers - are all ultimately just an elaborate excuse to run away from yourself. To avoid the difficult and troubling questions that being human throws in your way: Am I doing the right thing with my life? Do I believe the things I was taught as a child? What do the words I live by really mean? Am I happy? The problem...with Facebook and Twitter and The New York Times [is that] when you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now - you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people's thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people's reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice. - from "Solitude and Leadership" by William Deresiewicz, reprinted in UTNE

My favorite season is autumn; my favorite time of day is sunset. These are beautiful times - poignant and ever so fleeting. Isn't that true of many of life's loveliest moments? Everyday problems teach us to have a realistic attitude. They teach us that life is what life is: flawed, yet with tremendous potential for joy and fulfillment. Everything is workable. Until we fully learn this lesson, we are burned time and again by our unrealistic expectations. - from Awakening the Buddha Within

In an interview Writer's Digest did with Alice Walker, WD asked, "You've said that heaven should be a verb. What other words are underutilized?" Alice responded, "Bliss, ecstasy, joy. I live in Mexico part of the time, and my friend Yolanda always says that something is maravilloso. The word marvelous - especially when she says it about almost everything - reminds me that yes, indeed, that's the truth of it. Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

Word.

Thoughts on a rainy Friday

Changed my blog layout, as some of you non-RSS -feed readers may have noticed. Just needed a change of scenery, I suppose.

That's what autumn is all about anyway, right? Shifting seasons, changing colors, falling leaves, a new year beginning for the schoolbound, that cyclical creep of cool, crisp September air nosing its way into August heat. For Seattle, it's just meant a lot of rain the last few days. I keep thinking about Ruth, who just moved here a few weeks ago from New York, and how she must be calling home and telling everyone, "It's really true, this gray and rainy all the time business about Seattle!"

For now, though, I like it. Rain means books, fleece, butternut squash soup, music, snuggling with Chloe, Cozy Time socks, copious amounts of tea, and snowboarding season just around the corner. I guess that's how I know I moved to the right city...I can take my place among my Seattle friends whose Facebook statuses all echo my sentiments: James "likes that it's overcast today" and Gale wrote, "has anyone looked outside? Exquisite rain. Really. Top notch Seattle rain. I love it.", etc. Clearly I am in the right place. I was listening to some great music a minute ago, but I've turned it off, because I'd rather sit by my open window and just listen to the droplets splattering in the gutters. What a great sound!

Life's been interesting lately. I've read more books in the past month than I think I have in all my time since graduating. A bittersweet observation...completely awesome and tragic, all at once. Why did it take me until now to remember how much I love reading? How much richer my life feels when it's surrounded by words - real, thoughtfully crafted, deliberately transposed words - and not just Twitter posts? For once, I haven't held myself to one or two books at a time. I've checked out dozens from the library, spent afternoons lost in bookstores, placed exorbitant orders with Amazon (no, I don't think they're evil, just because they're an online retailer), and woken up every morning surrounded by books and let myself take to work the one or two that really appealed to me on that particular day - rather than holding myself to the one, necessarily, I was reading the night before. It's been fantastic.

I went for my first run in 6 weeks. I did about 3.5 miles, and it felt spectacular, but also hard (though not as hard as I was worried it might be.) But I was ready to be done by the end. It's sad to not be in the kind of running shape I was in just a couple months ago, but my body feels strong and rejuvenated and excited for all the rebuilding and strengthening that's possible when you're not already in tip-top shape. The fact that "going for a run" only takes half an hour now instead of three or four is also very productive for the book-reading habit.

Got together with three lovely Oberlin folk a few nights ago for tacos and a political discussion on the pros and cons of Katy Perry and her effect on American pop culture. Ah Oberlin...it's amazing how many fellow alumni have settled in the rainy city, too.

School starts in another week and a half. I'm excited for all the possibilities. And again, for change. Change is great. It's always been a positive driving force in my life. I've had so many ideas in the last few years, but with the modern technological age, it feels like a roadblock to not have the skills to build websites for my ideas. School will (hopefully) help me develop those skills, and for that, I'm infinitely grateful.

My eclectic soundtrack for the month:
Goodbye, Sean Fournier (his whole album if obtainable free at his website)
Jolene, Dolly Parton
Turns Out You Won, Meredith Bragg
Seminole Wind, James Taylor
Otherside, Macklemore
Alla This, Ani Difranco
In the Barrel of a Gun, Emily Wells
Cornflake Girl, Tori Amos
When You Come Back Down, Nickel Creek
Ain't No Reason, Brett Dennen
Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

That's all I got for now, folks.

Ramblerambleramble on life.

Many years ago now, I initiated a huge, huge project that absorbed hours of my life every day - part journaling, part artwork, part web design, all with a huge dose of self-reflection - and I didn't tell a soul about it. To this date, until this moment in which I'm deciding to write about it on my public blog, nobody's really heard about it. Bear with me.

During my sophomore year in high school, I was fairly depressed and angsty. I was going through a devastating breakup in my young life, having lost my best friend and the person I'd been sure I was going to spend the rest of my life with it, all at once. My mom had gone back to school herself and my dad was getting crushed under his workload, so I felt like they were both too busy for me - and even when they weren't, I shut them out in the stubborn way that only 15-year-olds can. I hadn't really blossomed yet socially, and the word "shy" was still the dominant adjective people used to describe me. I was struggling with everything from my self esteem to my body image, from feelings of hopelessness to a serious exhaustion with life.

But I was good at hiding it.

At the same time, I recognized that I had to do something drastic to get myself out of the hole I felt like I was in. I credit my parents fully with having loaded up my emotional toolbox in childhood with tools to cope with challenging situations. I thought about what I'd read in my one of my favorite books at the time, "Succulent Wild Woman" by SARK: a story the author relayed about a male friend of hers who'd whined to his mother about not being able to meet the right woman. The mother told him to stop worrying about meeting the right woman (which was out of his control) and focus instead on making himself into the right man (which was within his control) so when he finally found her, he'd be ready for her.

That was my thinking when, at 15, I launched my secret project, which I dubbed DMTM - "Discovering Myself Through Myself." Using techniques Mike had taught me during our relationship plus a lot of research on my own, I built myself a website on my personal computer. I never uploaded it to the internet, but instead kept it buried on my PC for personal access only. I designed a main menu that led to a dozen pages and sub-menus. I moved my personal journal onto the site. I kept other writing I was proud of on it, too. I put up scans of my sketchbook pages. I kept record of any and all dreams I had and remembered. I showcased my budding web design projects - all with no audience in mind but myself.

The focus of my project was to redirect all my angsty energy into something productive - an investment in my own future. I refocused my journal entries on positive thoughts of change, of learning, of growth, rather than on negative ruminations about how stagnant and trapped and sad I felt at that point in my life. I meditated. I went running a lot. I tried to calm my soul, and recorded the entire process on DMTM as it was happening. On the first day of it, I wrote:

So many people spend their lives so desperately seeking their own purpose on this Earth, and they are seeking for it so intensely that they lose sight of what’s right in front of them. Life. Reality. Humanity. Being. Existence. This. Now. My purpose is to find myself and be true to that. I am forever changing myself, changing who I am, to make others happy. The few times I don’t do this are when I write in my journal with the confidence that no one is going to read what I’m writing and while I am running and my mind is completely centered on that.

In a world full of people screaming to be individuals, I’m just like everyone else. I want to leave my own unique imprint on the world. I want to be special, too. I want to inspire. I want to be an individual. But I’ve come to realize I can’t do that merely by dressing funky or writing band names on my backpack or posting my poetry in my AIM profile. I have to start small. Before I can even think of advertising who I am, I need to find out who that is. I don’t do that by trying a million different self-images out on my peers and seeing which one everyone else likes best. I have to start with myself.

Psychosocial scientist Erik Erickson acknowledged in his work that, indeed, identity formation is the most crucial task of adolescence. (Check!) The next steps of young adulthood and beyond include the searches for intimacy (vs. isolation) and "generativity" (vs. stagnation) - so I suppose those are naturally my next life projects. The point of writing about all this is that, first of all, I'm infinitely grateful to my 15-year-old self, and second of all, the amazing thing about personal development is that you can do it for free, anytime, anywhere, and it always, always yields results.

A few years ago, when I first began dreaming of moving to Seattle, I imagined myself securing from afar a full time job in publishing or editing. I certainly never imagined myself working in retail once I got here. And yet, "things not going as imagined" can be such an unforeseen asset. On the bright side, I work for three fantastic companies, doing diverse projects and work at each, generally loving it all - all the while getting to reflect a lot more on what aspects I appreciate most in each, plan for my future accordingly, learn about different business models, and develop my own life skills along the way. I love that REI pushes me constantly to be a better worker, a stronger communicator, a leader with positive drive and energy. I love that everything about my job with Kaplan is pretty far out of my comfort zone, and made me miserably scared at first, but sticking with it despite my anxieties has led me to grow into a confident, effective tutor. And I love that all my work at the magazine so far has helped illuminate for me this path I'm interested in pursuing further academically...the overlaps between print journalism and internet media. Hello world.

It almost feels like cheating to be reading books on personal success, because they're full of wisdom and lessons that people have taken entire lifetimes to earn - and I can access them all now, at this age. That's powerful. I've just been reading a ton of books lately. I've stopped checking my email or Facebook when I wake up, or on my breaks at work. I read books instead. It's completely transformed my energy levels throughout the day.

It's part of the reason Seyeon and I bonded so intensely when we met at Stanford the following year; I recognized instantly that disparate as our personalities were, we were made of the same clay. I emerged from conversations with her energized about life, about thinking, about learning, about planning for the future. We're both feeding off that energy again in each other now, and our reading/hiking seminar on Mt. Teneriffe last week was only the beginning. We're both going to school this fall; after Oberlin, I was burnt out on school and vowed not to do any more of it until my adult self figured out for sure what I wanted to study and could pay for it with my own money. That time has come.

Happily, Alan's on board, too. I know it's rare for me to do this much personal rambling on my public blog, and probably most of you won't make it this far anyway (web stats show that the average person reads only 18% of text on any given webpage), but I'd like to state for the record that I feel really lucky to be in a relationship with someone who loves and supports me as much as Alan does, and furthermore, is making purposeful tracks of his own in creating the future he wants. Motivational speaker Jim Rohn once said, "You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with." True story. I'm a lucky lady.

Let me know if you would like to share book recommendations. I'm in a reading frenzy, and would love to share in it with you. So, no awesome photos of beautiful Washington this week. Just a lot of enjoying being home, reading and writing and relaxing and catching up on both sleep and cuddle time with Chloe.


Thoughts always welcome, in the form of blog comments, emails, Facebook messages, handwritten letters, phone calls, in person, or whatever other crazy medium you can come up with.

100 Miles. Done.

Before my own ego gets too puffed up, I'd just like to point out that this past weekend, a handful of amazing folks covered 100 miles on foot...in less than 24 hours.

I did it in less than 31 days, which is cool, too. My shins and knees are pleased that this year, at least, I chose the latter of those two options :)

So, a confession: I've been composing an "I failed, and I'm trying to be okay with it" blog entry for the past two weeks. When I first set out to do this Hike-a-thon business, I had to set a mileage goal for August. My initial thought was to aim for 80 miles. It seemed ambitious, but doable. Then I reflected on how often I set "ambitious but doable" goals for myself...I'm a go-getter by nature, so even goals that sound crazy to most people (write a 50,000 word novel in a month, organize and direct my own road race, run an ultramarathon...) don't necessarily seem so crazy to me.

But, ambitious as some goals might appear to those on the outside, it's lame to create goals you already feel 100% confident you can achieve. What's the point? Even as you achieve them, it creates a false sense of satisfaction when, in fact, you haven't really pushed yourself to your limits at all. Hiking 80 miles in a month felt too readily attainable. So I upped my goal to 100 miles. And I genuinely spent all of August thinking there was no way I'd make it; I only had one day off from work per week, with the exception of my birthday week (3 days off).

When I got back from my birthday trip and realized I still had nearly 40 miles to hike, and only one more day off in the month of August, I thought I'd have to give up on my overzealous goal. Unfortunately, I'm too much of a...I don't even know what the right word is...nut?...to just give up. With a little creativity, I somehow managed to squeeze in all 40 of them. Well...39.5, by my most accurate count, officially clocking 99.5 miles for August...but without GPS to verify mile-by-mile each of my hikes anyway, who's really counting?

HIKE #10: MT. TENERIFFE


I've been fortunate to have great company on all my hikes this months, but this hike was particularly special. Though Seyeon is the person in Seattle I've known the longest, until this day, we'd never hiked together, just the two of us; with no nearby mountains, northeast Ohio wasn't really a place to hike much, and when I first moved out to Seattle, REI hadn't helped the hiking bug find me to bite just yet.

Given that we live within two miles of each other, Seyeon and I have a remarkably hard time actually getting together to hang out or catch up. This is largely the fault of My Ridiculous Work Schedule, the Yitka-time-hogging qualities of which many of my friends and loved ones are all too aware. (It's going to get better someday, I swear.) But we've both been reading some fantastic books lately, and having some equally fantastic thoughts and revelations surrounding them, so this hike was far more about spending time together to catch up with each other's minds than anything else.


We headed out to North Bend to take on Mount Si's neighbor, Mount Teneriffe - a mountain with several different routes to the top. We opted for the longest, most roundabout one - a steep, winding abandoned logging road that proffered some nice views of the fog on the way up, but mostly provided us with eight hours of uninterrupted conversation. We had the mountain entirely to ourselves, and our hike mirrored our conversation: meandering, full of tangents, no absolute summit at any point, but a wonderful journey along the way nonetheless. We stopped multiple times for snacks and to read to each other, then discuss what we'd read. Kind of like an intellectual seminar, except on a mountain.


Books discussed included: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, and You're Broke Because You Want to Be by Larry Winget.

"It's not enough to just know what you want. If you only focus on wanting things, you will end up with more want. You have to have an action plan: things you can do every day to move yourself closer to your goal. Always ask yourself what you could be doing right now to make sure you have the future you want to have."
- Larry Winget
Mileage: 14 miles

HIKE #11: KENDALL KATWALK


My friend Gale is wearing pink in this photo, a tiny speck on the trail that's cut into the granite on the side of the mountain. See if you can find her.
This hike was another spectacular one, on the other side of the basin from Rampart Lakes, where I was last week. In fact, we could see Rampart Ridge from where we stood today, and likewise, last week, could see the Katwalk from our vantage point there. Very cool.

Gale and I also had never hiked together before (not even in a group), despite not having known each other for over a year. A fortuitous day off in common allowed us to head out early this morning for this trek up to Kendall Katwalk, a popular destination along the Pacific Crest Trail (the west coast's equivalent of the Appalachian, i.e. a 2,650 mile trail from Mexico to Canada.) Lucky for us, Mondays mean very few cars at the traihead, and most of the hikers we encountered were thru-hikers with big packs.

The views along the entire hike were stunning. Getting to talk to Gale more than our usual cursory chats at work was awesome. We also got to watch scurrying pikas and listen to screeching marmots. Video footage of this phenomenon forthcoming in a future entry...

Our weather ranged from blazing sunshine to a trail-flooding downpour, with a lot of partly cloudy in between. After months of being nervous about screwing up my feet for either running or hiking, I finally have absolutely no other physical adventure penciled in on the horizon, so I felt like it would be a good day to start breaking in my new boots. In truth, they're old boots...a pair of Vasque Sundowners from the 90s, back when Vasque still manufactured full-grain leather boots in Italy rather than China - an era of bootmaking in Vasque's history for which hikers across the world are still nostalgic.


Landing myself an unworn pair in my size was a serendipitous gift from the universe. Nevertheless, the leather is ridiculously stiff and in need of a lot of breaking in. 11 miles today with only one tiny blister isn't a bad start, though! And given the downpour at the end, I was grateful to be wearing Gore-Tex footwear for the first time in my life...my feet were the only dry part of me by the time we got back to the car.


Glad it was nice at the top, though!

Mileage: 11 miles

Total August Mileage: 100 MILES

Ultimately, here's what I feel I got from all hundred of them: the kindling of new and old friendships alike, a better knowledge base for my job(s), some much-needed mental clarity, strong gluteus muscles, rest for my battered shins from too many running miles, a lot of fresh air, rich food for thought, many awesome photos, and an even deeper appreciation for this beautiful world we live in.


And onward!

Mood Management: Asparagus, Books, and the Caprice of Clouds

Cooking adventures continue!
As a first-time spring Seattleite, I have to say...the weather here this month has been one capricious beast. (See how tutoring SAT vocab is rubbing off on me?) It will go from sunshine to stormy winds to full-on hail to sunshine again, interspersed with 45-second blasts of pouring rain throughout. Mostly, it's just been cool and overcast a lot, but filled with the confusing presence of blooming flowers and spring birds chirping. I don't know what to make of it. The general lack of sunshine, though, the past few weeks might be getting to me a little bit...or it might still just be my crazy hours. I've felt calmer lately in general, though. A little worn down, but mostly content. My foot's starting to show signs of healing, so that's a plus.

I'm working to keep up momentum in initiating positive change in my life, as much as possible...we'll see what direction the next few months take me, but I am simultaneously happy with where I am now and exhilarated by the possibilities for the future.

Some (temporary for now, for however long I need) commitments to myself I've made, as of yesterday:

- Read more. (Currently on my coffee table: Lorrie Moore's "Birds of America", which someone once recommended to me as the absolute best collection of short stories ever written. I can't even remember who gave me the recommendation, but I bought the book years ago and have let it sit on my shelf since. To its credit, I didn't give it away with the 70% of my books that didn't make it out to Seattle with me, but...it just takes a lot to get me to read short stories. I generally find them horribly unsatisfying...I don't like the constant goodbyes with characters I'm just barely starting to get to know. But this collection really is ridiculously good. My writing might even get pushed back into a fiction kick for awhile because of it...
- Keep a more manageable work schedule; No more months without days off.
- Tea instead of coffee, indefinitely.
- No allowing running injuries to keep me from being active. Usually, if I can't run, I just give up on physical activity altogether; the all-or-nothing personality in me is too busy being upset about not being able to run. So I really haven't done much lately - but I went for a long, brutally windy bike ride yesterday, and did an intense Power Hour at the gym this morning, and OI VEY have I missed endorphins!
- No junk food, also indefinitely. This includes chips, cookies, candy, ice cream, French fries, sweet pastries, etc...

I've tried going halfway on that last one, but I'm still making far too many compromises. I've spent six years wishing I were a health nut, and I'm just tired of wishing, instead of being. I quit junk food for a 70-day period my senior year of high school, and it was a good thing for not just my body, but my moods and soul as well. So I'm giving it a try again. So far, so good. My meals yesterday:

Breakfast: Oatmeal with raisins, cranberries, cinnamon and walnuts

Lunch: Rottini pasta with cherry tomatoes, peas and asparagus (CSA-share-food Alert!)

Snacky-poos: Apple, Carrots (CSA-share-food Alert!) with hummus

Dinner: Buckwheat pasta with mizuna (CSA-share-food Alert!), onions and walnuts

The sauce in progress.
Dessert: Vanilla yogurt with slivered almonds, fresh strawberries and agave nectar

Today so far, I had oatmeal again for breakfast, and for lunch, a banana/blueberry/strawberry smoothie and a ridiculously tasty salmon burger on a pita with fresh cucumber (CSA-share-food Alert!), tomato slices and tartar sauce. Yummy. Healthy food is awesome.

Feelin' good...

Music shoutout of the week: James Vincent McMorrow.

From Farm to Yitka's Kitchen

Homemade zucchini bread.
This week, something big is happening: I will have my first day off from work (all jobs considered) in TWENTY-SEVEN DAYS. I didn't actually realize how ridiculous my schedule had gotten until I sat down today to look at my iCal, and realized, holy cow...I've been swamped. I'm working full time at REI, tutoring four students, proctoring the occasional SAT at local high schools, cleaning Vera once a week (in exchange for free training sessions), and doing some writing here and there. Though not much blogging, apparently...

I'm pooped. It's exacerbated by the fact that I'm battling some severe bruising (Metatarsals? Bone bruise? Not quite sure...) on my right foot...I didn't even hurt it while running, but it's kept me sidelined from my passion for three weeks and counting now. Bummer. After writing an article on the Eugene Marathon, I registered for it this spring...but it's less than a month away now, and I'm pretty sure my injury's left me in no place to run it. Needless to say, the lack of running during this rather hectic stretch in my life has left me a little stir-crazy.

Nevertheless, I'm determined as ever to always carve out the requisite relaxation time. There definitely hasn't been enough of it lately, but I *have* done some nice bonus activities here and there. I finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Vegetable Miracle", about her family's decision to live on a farm and eat only locally grown food for a whole year. It's a wonderful book - funny, enthralling, poetic, inspiring, poignant all - and one that's been on my reading list since Seyeon and I went down to Austin, Texas about a year and a half ago and I saw it on the bookshelf of the delightful folks from Couchsurfing.com with whom we stayed. That week in Austin was one of blissful vacation in the midst of the only time in my life that I've been even busier and more stressed out than I am now, in the middle of my final semester at Oberlin and 5K-race organization effort. The book went on my "Things I Want to Do/Read When I Have a Life Again" List.

So, having finally read it, I felt (as I'm sure most of its readers have/do/will) inspired to get more in touch with the world of local agriculture. It's kind of scary how out of touch the modern, industrial grocery store has made us with the very thing that sustains us in this world, let alone how much less flavorful and nutrient-rich our typical grocery store fare is today than it was years ago. And all the waste that's involved with shipping food halfway around the world just so we can eat strawberries in January...anyway. A great read that definitely reinforced my desire not only to build my food knowledge but also to work on honing my cooking skills. My first step was to sign up for a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) share: a box every other week of fresh, organic produce from a local farm.


My first box!
I did this for awhile with my housemates the summer I lived in Oberlin, but that was back when I was still intimidated by unfamiliar vegetables - so I feel like the CSA was of little use to me back then. But now I'm all about experimenting and learning in the kitchen, so the prospect of a box of new ingredients to explore - or just familiar ones that I don't go out of my way to buy at the grocery store. Like, in the case of this week...zucchini! Hence the tasty loaf at the top of this entry.


Bonus: Chloe gets a boat to play in after I've unloaded all the produce into my fridge.
Other triumphs in the past week:
- Alan bought his own truck, and thus will be able to be home much more often soon!
- I hosted a girls' night/dinner party a couple evenings ago...delightful.
- I bought plane tickets to Cleveland this spring. So excited to see old friends!
- Also finished reading Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood." Excellent read.
- I played Wii for the first time at Easter at Gale's house (where I also spent Thanksgiving...hooray for Gale's family's sponsorship of orphan holidays) and failed at pretty much everything except WiiFit Hula Hooping...in which I was a "Calorie Incinerator." Awesome.
- I got my first pieces of non-footwear REI gear: my very own packable, 2-person tent and a cozy sleeping bag.


And Chloe approves.