Logic, linguistics, and long distance running: A professional vision

Warning: Really meandering blog entry. Proceed with caution.

One month ago, I wrote about the concept of urgency, on feeling a deep sense of it in my own life and everything I want to accomplish.

Sometimes my enthusiasm and big thoughts tip that scale from a healthy, productive sense of urgency into full blown panic. That's kind of where I've been today...or maybe this week altogether. I've run-commuted (vs. walk-commuted) nearly everywhere because I've just felt excited about going places, about this idea of movement, of a life lived in motion.

Motion is powerful.

As some of you know (but probably most of you don't), I am part of a networking group in Seattle of professional women working in the outdoors industry. It is precisely my kind of networking group - i.e. the kind that I can show up to in jeans and running shoes, and where conversations center on the relationship between business and our natural environment, rather than the soulless crushing of one by the other. Tonight, we had an event that focused on creating Vision Boards, a fancy term for homemade inspiration collages. Yup, scissors and gluesticks and magazine cutouts were all included this evening (with blueberries and candied pecans and fancy cheeses to boot!)...definitely my kind of networking group.

I have probably made at least a dozen of these so-called Vision Boards in my life thus far. I made them in high school. I made mini-ones for my high school graduation announcements to get myself psyched up for college. Seyeon and I made one together for our door when we first roomed together at Oberlin.

It was really interesting making one again (photo forthcoming in a future entry, when I can get my camera and the giant poster board collage in the same place at once...), this time with a "professional" vision for myself, rather than just a personal one. Are they really so different, after all? Do they have to be?


Me atop Mt. Si yesterday, again, just a couple hours before class. It was snowy and wonderful!
The Vision Board I made tonight, predictably, had a lot of mountain and running imagery. The dominant word that others used to describe when looking at my finished collage was "calm". In contrast, the woman sitting next to me had phrases on hers about multitasking and squeezing into skinny jeans; I judge not, for I very nearly glued the phrase "tea-sipping hippie" on my own poster, so certainly, to each her own! We are all individuals, and appreciating the strength in our differences is what keeps this world turning.

So, while my current jobs do not pay me to run in the mountains (yet :P ), they do so indirectly; I get to talk to customers at REI about that passion when they're shopping for footwear to help them get out in the mountains more, and I get to turn around and write about it all, as well as my enduring love for the Pacific Northwest, for Outdoors NW. That's why, I suppose, when enrolling in school forced me to drop one of my three jobs, SAT tutoring (despite being the best-paying of all!) had to be the one to go. I've just met too many burnt-out, regret-ridden middle-aged folks to consider selling myself short in this life when it comes to choosing my career path.


Orcas Island: Foggy and beautiful as ever!
The trail work party and 25K run on Orcas Island earlier this month revved up my soul again in much-needed ways. Perhaps I'm adjusting to the Northwesterner-hibernation cycle, and thus am feeling especially motivated to get moving again after a long dreary winter (and yes, the cherry blossom trees are already blooming here!)...but truly, there are no more inspiring people to be around than trail runners. They're down-to-Earth, fun-loving people who appreciate the value of hard work, of giving their all for the sake of a greater goal...people with a hint of masochism in their determination to pull off what once seemed impossible, people who like to spend hours on end in the mountains, people who have come from all over the globe to be in the Pacific Northwest because a great trail run is never more than a few miles' dash from your doorstep. Friends I made at last year's race have run 100-milers in the meantime - while holding down full time jobs! There are no excuses in this life to not start getting to work on your dreams tomorrow - and not the Ephemeral Tomorrow, but the real life, starting-in-a-few-more-hours Tomorrow.

Anyway. Ultimately, no, my "professional" vision is not that different from my personal one. I keep going back to the Howard Thurman quote I included on my blog a few months ago: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

You know what's crazy? Of all the classes I've been taking for my web design program, my absolute favorite, hands down, has been my Javascript programming class. I love it. Like really, really, really LOVE it. Way, way more than my artsy design-based courses, and - well, that was unexpected. Seriously, you couldn't pay me enough right now to work on my upcoming "visual design studies" assignment - essentially, a layout design in Photoshop or Illustrator with color, images, typography, etc. Stuff I thought I'd really enjoy, but instead, have felt myself surprisingly bored and restless with. But you know what I just might do when I'm done writing this blog entry? Put on a pot of tea, turn up some Alexi Murdoch, and get cracking on my programming homework from class just a few hours ago. Why? Because I'm still riding out the feverish high I get twice a week from the learning and discovery that happens in that classroom. I love it.

Last month, I officially completed (and was paid for, woohoo!) my first web development project - a small contract project for someone I met in school, to code a website for a small business analytics company, for whom visual design prototypes had already been created. Essentially, I was given a PDF file with 10 pages or so to turn into a working website. I had a blast with the nitty-gritty of troubleshooting code, and not having to worry about visual design at all.

Hence the panic. Here I have invested five months already in school, on track in a program I'm no longer confident is the perfect one for me. Earlier today, I was drooling over curriculum descriptions in both the Web Development (more back-end programming for the web) and the Computer Programming certificate programs. Five months, of course, is only a drop in the hat of a lifetime - and 23 is still plenty young enough to be "figuring out what I want to do with my life." I know, I know; people are still doing this at 30, 40, 65...and I probably still will be then, too!

The loyal Lion that I am (and remain to be, thank you very much!), I still plan to finish the web design program - but it doesn't mean I'm not sneaking chapters at night in the PHP book I bought on the side for my own personal interest, or considering extending my current educational plan to encompass more programming. I feel as though I've been blind to the fact that in addition to my obvious love for words, I also have a powerful affinity for math and logic. The fact that when I was still tutoring for Kaplan, I enjoyed teaching the math sections more than the verbal should have been a tip-off, I suppose.


Mmm, warm fuzzies...
Our society draws this huge line between math and creative writing, like they're polar opposites, but...they're not. They're both left-brained pursuits. They're both problem-solving, in their own ways; either I'm staring at my mess of code on Aptana, trying to find the solution to make my webpage act the way I want it to, or I'm staring at my mess of words on WriteRoom, trying to find the solution to make an article or blog entry convey the meaning and emotions the way I want them to. Either way, I'm working on a jigsaw puzzle of words and characters, trying to arrange them in some meaningful way. Both are languages, to which you can devote a lifetime trying to harness and master the power of; both involve the translation of an idea or image in my head into something tangible to present to the world.

I can even still retain my Grammar Nazi ways in the world of code...in fact, the importance of differentiating between semicolons and commas, between capital letters and lowercase ones, is 10X more important in code than it is in creative writing! At least in English, people still understand the gist of what you were trying to communicate; computers do not. Browsers crash completely on you, sometimes, if you forget a semicolon. It's beautiful.

Of course, I have other passions, too, that must be fed, must someday be combined in an ultimately fulfilling mix of work and hobby:
(...and on that note, why that phrase "work/life balance"? Must those two be at odds with one another? I should hope not...)
- Creative nonfiction
- New media journalism
- Photography
- Meeting new people
- Trail running
- Snowboarding
- Endurance sports
- Clean eating
- Holistic health
- Yoga
- Universalizing financial education
- Leadership
- Coaching and empowerment
- Entrepreneurship
- Web app development
- Business psychology
- World travel
- Macroeconomics
- Small scale agriculture
- Helping others
- Changing the world

Haven't quite stumbled on all those lumped together in one job description yet, but I'll keep my eye out... ;) *

*Obligatory footnote to my bosses: Jamie, Carolyn, Greg...the wink is for y'all. Don't worry; if it wasn't already clear from the rest of this entry, I am content with my current work situation!

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.

Full circle: How I came to be where I am now

a.k.a. The entry in which I try (and fail) to address the afore-mentioned 7,000 items in need of addressing.

First of all, thanks to everyone who took the time to respond to my blog entry about life as a 15-year-old Yitka. I've had a lot of rich conversations with different people that came out of that entry - and it's that sort of meaningful content on the web that makes me, paradoxically enough given my reflections on The Shallows, excited about it as a medium. That entry alone has fetched well over 500 unique visitors, according to my GoogleAnalytics, which is rather unheard of for my humble little personal blog. (And Tom Atchity, I still owe you some book recommendations in response...)

I want to write about some other things first, but you'll find some afterthoughts on the DMTM entry at the end of this one.

So. I started school this past week. I am officially a full time student again - though the fact that all my classes are evening classes makes it feel very different than full time studenthood has in the past. The vast majority of people in my classes are in their late twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties. Many have full time jobs already, but are looking for a change of scenery. It's amazing how many people are completely miserable in the jobs they do. And a shame, too. More power to all of them for having the courage to try something new. I think especially in this economy, it takes guts to not clutch on to job security, even at the cost of your soul.

I am pursuing a certificate in web design. After a couple years of feeling, admittedly, a bit huffy that my college degree didn't lead me straight into full time work, I'm realizing what a blessing in disguise it's all been - and how, given the chance, I wouldn't have it any other way. The truth is that at 17 or 18, most of us have no idea what we want to do for a career. A liberal arts education helps you figure out what you like to study, and it teaches you to be a professional, lifelong learner - which however priceless it may be, is not an especially marketable skill to throw down on a resume. Creative writing was the perfect major for me, as there's nothing that fires me up like thinking and learning about the written word - but does that mean I'll be happy in a writing job for 40 hours every week?

Not necessarily. I loved writing in school, and I still would love to go back and get my MFA someday...and in the meantime, sustain my soul with my own writing projects, and the omnipresent pursuit of publishing my own book. But writing for a job is very different from writing for yourself.

Don't get me wrong; I love the writing and editing I get to do for OutdoorsNW. (Did I mention that I got paid to bike around Oregon, drink wine, and write about it?) But in working for them and starting to rethink their web presence - an imperative at this point in time for all print media publications - I've gotten back in touch, again, with shades of my former self. I have always been really, really into this sort of thing. I love design and layout. Thinking about it again, and for the first time ever in terms of a possible career path, takes me back to building and distributing table-based layouts on Expage for other aspiring 13-year-old web designers, to laying out pages for yearbook in high school, to designing grunge brushes in Photoshop to use for our literary magazine The Muse when Kelly and I were co-editors. I feel like the color of my parachute has been right under my nose, but somehow I've been so hung up on the writing thing that I've forgotten about this whole other huge part of what's sustained me so much throughout my life.

So, isn't it better that I spent those formative years from 18-21 immersed in education that helped me learn to think and explore - and now that I've had a few years to be in the so-called real world and figure out what aspects of different jobs I like and what aspects I really don't like, to be able to go back to school to pursue the thing I'm confident now I could be happy doing full time?

Honestly, my appreciation for school at this point is higher than it's ever been. At the end of Oberlin, I felt burnt out. Now, a few hours of classes at the end of a long work day feels like dessert. I'm giddy that I can justify spending my money on books that are going to help take me from where I am to where I want to be, career-wise. The fact that it's my own money I've saved up over the past year paying for these classes makes me value every second I get to be in the classroom, soaking up knowledge and tools and advice from my teachers.

Also, even though I'm now pulling 12-14 hour days four days a week, I have (or will soon have) something that I have never had in all my life in Seattle thus far: a weekend. It'll be a Friday-Saturday weekend, but nevertheless, generally speaking, two full days off every week that I can count on. The peace of mind of it is beyond thrilling.

Afterthoughts!
So I found the handwritten notebook where I was keeping a journal of ideas when I first came up with the DMTM project. Amongst my plans for that are also several other interesting gleanings...mostly lists (generally not given in their entirety below...just excerpts.)

A list of things I wanted in my life at that point:
Better relationship with my parents
Get A's
A boyfriend

A list of tangible ways to go after those things:
Don't get mad over little things, try to see things from my parents' perspective, no yelling
Study groups, make outlines/flashcards, DON'T PROCRASTINATE!
Be more outgoing, hang out in groups, work on my sense of humor

A list of Likes: Doing makeup (ha), sleeping in, making websites, playing soccer, making collages, photography, being patriotic, chocolate ice cream with marshmallows, Harry Potter, connecting with nature, thinking, gel pens, happy people

A list of "Things That Suck": School, waking up early, smoking, math, regret, spinach, the smell of trash, death, liars, the color brown, Eminem, bad moods

I have to admit, that list cracks me up. My opinions, at least, on school, waking up early, math, spinach, the color brown, and even Eminem (such excellent running music) have all done a pretty serious 180 over the last decade...

A list of things I wanted to be able to buy: skateboard, belt, winter jacket, camera/film

And a list of ways to save more money: limit vending machine spending at school to $3/week, fewer snacks at the movies, bring lunch, remember that EVERY PENNY COUNTS!

Lists of good words: myriad, brazen, cascade, sagacious, illicit, atrocity, nuance, abyss, rhetorical, calamity

A list of things I missed when I was at Stanford (age 16): Sasha, my hermit crabs, my parents and friends, Luna Moonshine (my car), Eternal Sunshine (wasn't out on DVD yet...)

A list of things I wasn't missing when I was at Stanford: Humidity. (That's literally the only thing on that list.)

Lastly...I was able to actually track down the first "professional" website I ever made - where I designed layouts for other people and distributed them for free to my 5,000+ visitors - on archive.org, a website that has catalogued 150 billion current and expired webpages over the years. Mine is so embarrassingly bad and amateur on so many levels I won't link it here, but I will leave you with this fun tidbit: On my "About Me" page on that site, I had filled out a little meme that included the "Currently, I am listening to..." question. My response?

Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians' "What I Am", which was playing on the local radio station at the moment I was making that webpage. Whew, bringing back the memories...

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.

Road Trip Redux

FYI:

In case anybody is bored with my Seattle raves already and nostalgic for the life-on-the-road entries that dominated this blog in its fledgling days...fear not! I'm making the whole drive again this week! (Crazy, right?)

Granted, there will be some key differences. Let's count 'em:
  

Last Time Alone In my Passat Via I-80, mostly Over the course of 6 days Staying w/ friends

This Time With Alan In a 16' moving truck Via I-90, mostly Over 3 days Camping along the way

In other words, a general improvement. (Though all those hikes last time were nice!) There's something epic and momentous about a solo cross country road trip in my trusty little car with everything I could jam inside of it...but it's something else entirely to really, truly be moving my entire life and worldly possessions out here with me.


Beautiful cross-country roads, I'm coming back for more!
Alan and I, somewhat foolishly but in good humor and silliness, made a bet awhile back (incidentally, while I was driving through Wyoming last time, almost a month ago now) about what people from Wyoming are called. Wyomingans? (My guess.) Wyomingers? (His.) The stake was radio rights in the state of Wyoming on our August road trip together.

The correct answer, curiously enough, is Wyomingites. Who knew? Obviously, neither of us. Fortunately, though, MapQuest tells me we'll hardly be in Wyoming anyway this time around, since we'll be taking an entirely different route than the way I came up before. Depending on the wi-fi situations in whatever obscure campgrounds we wind up crashing in deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the depths of rural Montana, I may or may not be able to update the blog as we go. But for the record, I'm flying back to Kansas City tomorrow, and the epic road trip redux will commence on Saturday morning. (Probably at least another blogpost here before we hit the road...)

I'm going to be gone less than a week - and gosh, I already feel a little like a kid clutching desperately to a parent's leg on the first day of kindergarten...I'm not ready to be left alone without my beloved Northwest landscape and 65-degree weather!

(P.S. I hope you enjoyed the above table of side-by-side comparisons. Formatting courtesy of my HTML brush-up this past week. Be ready for a super awesome Yitka website to emerge sometime in the next month or so.)

Ode to coffee and overcast skies

Well, the rain has finally arrived. A couple overcast days in a row here - still comfortably in the sixties, but brisk, a little wind coming off the water, and the drizzly faucet of the Seattle sky let loose. It's funny how much different kinds of weather affect different people. Seyeon's mom, Andrea, and I both thrive in this kind of climate - cold enough to drink tea and wear fleece around the house. It's heat and humidity that suck energy out of me - if it's hot, I tend to think, Well damn, I'm uncomfortable; what can I possibly do today but sit still in front of my fan and be miserable? But the cold makes me feel alive. It gets me moving, if for nothing else but to keep myself warm, my blood moving. My mind is more alert.

And the overcast sky! It's obviously far too early in the game to lay claim to total enjoyment of it, but for now, I don't mind it at all. It's an enabling condition for two of my favorite activities: writing and running.

WRITING

Often times, if I stay inside to write, I feel guilty for not doing all the other things I could be doing with my day, outside in the sunshine like normal people. Staying in with a laptop feels antisocial. But not here. It's no surprise to me that so many of the great business leaders, computer programmers, writers and artists have thrived in Seattle. With a host of coffeeshops to hole up in during the long, gray days and work away at, it's easy to slog away and get things done here. I have taken on the challenge of building myself a rockin website from scratch, and despite the tedium of teaching myself code and implementing it, it's been a blast to get swept up in the nose-to-the-grindstone-but-in-a-creative-way vibe of Seattle's coffeeshops.

I told myself I wasn't going to repeat any cafes for at least my first few months here. There are so many to explore, there's really no excuse to repeat. Each place has its own ambience and vibe...its own aromas, couches, freshly baked pastries, artwork on the exposed brick walls, script on the chalkboard menus. Nevertheless, I've failed miserably, having discovered a small local place that I absolutely adore, and can't seem to break out of the habit of frequenting in the mornings to write, work on my website and conduct my job search.


Cappuccino: the price of productivity.

RUNNING

Cool, overcast weather is absolutely ideal running weather to me. Again, the sun drains me - so with it safely behind the clouds, I feel like I can run forever. There's an entire blog entry in my discovering the joys of urban running, but for now, suffice to say that I've had several amazing runs around the city - exploring residential and commercial districts alike (though the two are often deeply intertwined in Seattle), getting lost here and there (I actually ran several days ago with a printed Mapquest map clenched in my hand; the ink wound up getting wet from sweat, leaking all over my palm and dissolving into complete illegibility by the end of my run), but thus learning how all the neighborhoods connect. It seems near impossible to run more than ten minutes in any direction before running into a huge, sprawling park with trees and trails and solitude - before emerging again on city streets, and running across bridges over scenic stretches of the bay, with stunning views of the mountains, the Space Needle, the downtown skyline and all the lush, green hills that surround it. Beautiful! I did 13.1 miles yesterday, running from my doorstep through Interlaken Park, across the University Bridge, along the Burke-Gilman Trail, to Gas Works Park, then up a 2-mile stretch of gradual uphill to arrive at Seattle's runners' paradise: Green Lake! And then back home again to stretch out my unbelievably tight calf muscles!

And finally, bonus of the weekend: Zephyr calling me with an extra ticket to go see Othello at the Intiman Theater near the Seattle Center - an absolutely fabulous performance.