And she was…

While I wouldn’t say that my occupation in publishing necessitates thoughts of identity, a friend I have made here at Elsevier has prompted me to think even more critically about who I am, who I want to be, and what I want from life.

It’s exciting to realize that I am living the life I want to lead; every day I do things that I want to do without, for the most part, having to report to or acquiesce to the demands of others. It still delights me that I can get out of the house on a whim and wander down to the river without consulting anyone. Autonomy is a beautiful thing–and I do feel autonomous, although, in some ways, this couldn’t be further from the truth. At the very least I am autonomous in desire, in impulse, and that’s enough for me right now.

Time passes quicker now than it did when I was younger; for a lack of a better word, this freaks me out. I remember how six-hours-a-day of high school were interminable, how the span of a week at 16 felt like three, how Christmas was the apogee of my daily adolescent life; now, eight hours in my cube usually passes in the blink of an eye, and I barely have time to run, eat, and brush my teeth, before it’s time to sleep–I used to have time to write! Weekends come quickly and events that happened two months ago could have occurred in the past two weeks, the way I remember them.

This is not to say I want my work day to stretch longer than it is (or maybe that is what I’m saying…), but I wish I weren’t so aware of this speed of life: I’m in no hurry to grow up.

These are grand thoughts for a small person. I still think I’m part of some small-scale conspiracy: Somehow, Elsevier hired this Peter-Pan-of-a-girl and now I get to bounce around all day, pretending I’m pretending to be an adult, but everyone knows I’m just a little kid and my employment is a big cover-up for my inability to mature.

On Quarter-Life-Crises

A younger friend of mine (who sporadically reads this blog, I believe) just declared, “Quarter-life crisis stops NOW.”

“Oh, Honey,” I thought, “You have so much to learn.”

My co-worker, Stacey, articulated an apt thought yesterday morning: “Most 24 (and 25) year olds I know are still clubbing, living off of mommy and daddy, and drinking every night. Our generation has really extended the length of time one gets to stay ‘a kid.’”

In conjunction, I think our generation’s 20s-decade has become an extended “quarter-life-crisis,” if you prescribe to the phrase, that is. Whether it’s the economy, the wars, being raised by Baby Boomers, and/or myriad other factors, we are an interesting smorgasbord of folk who are growing up in–what seems to me–a curiously static environment; thus, our development (emotional or otherwise) is impeded by cultural factors.

Granted, there are 27-year-olds out there who have it all together with stable jobs, houses, and possibly spouses (not that espousal correlates to development)–but most of the 20-somethings I’ve met since Mount Holyoke have an inscrutable cloak of uncertainty, instability, and impermanance around them: Always looking for jobs or, if employed, worried about the next set of layoffs; enjoying life to the extent of drunken Sunday nights, but wondering if this is “all there is”; debating the pursuit of graduate school while weighing the amount of debt one would incur; and so on.

This limbo may not be uniquely ours; perhaps this is every generation’s “crisis decade.”

… I’ll finish this later.

Go East on Sunrise Highway

Well, well, well, look what we have here–

a BLOG post!

I’m sorry I’ve been absent. I miss writing, I miss the clickity-clack of my e-composition, I miss detailing minor activities for the hell of it…

The good news is that I haven’t had the time to write because I’ve been, well, living. A lot. Sometimes at a super-human pace that frightens me, but always in the best possible way (unless I’m tearing my hair out because I’m stuck in Harvard Square traffic at 5:00pm, but that’s irrelevant and uncommon). In fact, so much has happened that it’s even been difficult to record events in my journal–I’m back to my typical, frenetic “Hi, life’s good, gotta sleep, byeeeee!” entries.

Ultimately, the past month and a half has taught me about the friends I can’t live without, about the people who are so good for me that I’ve been known to stand outside Emily’s toyota corolla at the Ludlow Plaza on the Mass Pike and, teary-eyed, exclaim, “I don’t know how I deserve to have such good friends!” Granted, this experience may have been heightened by certain events, which involve Nikki and Emily literally rescuing me from certain doom on the streets of Harvard Square (and apparently in my room, too, in which I fell off my bed)–but that’s neither here nor there.

The people I “discovered” when I first got to Boston were important for my emotional growth; however, they weren’t meant to be enduring, unconditional friends, as I later determined (as one does when they throw you under a bus); thus, it has been refreshing to move into this beautiful house on Mount Auburn Street with Mount Holyoke women: They are my family and I will never find better people.

Ohhhh sentimentality. What would I do without it?

Maybe it’s Alanis Morrisette Time…?

The easy way to say it is:

Suddenly, everysinglething has happened at once–a deluge of life lessons and events–and it feels wonderful.

Even if it’s 11:29pm and I am up and hour and 29 minutes past my bedtime…

Coming soon: reflections on theoretic adulthood, mixed with the philosophy of Walter Benjamin.

Way to go, Bill Clinton!

Having followed the capture and containment of two American journalists by the North Korean government since March, I had a physical reaction to the announcement of their potential release. I’m sure some will argue that it was only a matter of time, but that doesn’t make the situation any better. The story struck a chord with me as a writer, as a journalist, and I was close to tears as I read the announcement.

I kind of want to throw my arms around Bill Clinton and give him a hug.

And so on…

Dear Cortizone,

My arms thank you. My legs thank you. My elbows thank you. Hell, my FACE thanks you, what with the four mosquito bites on my cheeks and eyelids. You may be relatively expensive, but you are worth every penny.

Love,

Sarah

————————–

Dear Tongue (is my tongue an inanimate object? No? Yes? I suppose the question is: is it alive independent of my mouth? No…),

Sorry you now have Cortizone on you and are inflamed with little bumps. I just couldn’t resist licking the Cheeto cheesiness off my fingers, forgetting I had just applied the less-than-appetizing ointment. Please forgive me, I’ll make sure I apply Cortizone AFTER eating Cheetos from now on.

Love,

Me

Letters to Inanimate Objects (part 2)

Dear English Literature Canon,

I have arrived at an age (or emotional state or physical place) in which I can admit certain things—not without regret, but also with the knowledge that I will endeavor to correct these errors. They are as follows:

• I never finished Pride and Prejudice. This is probably my most embarrassing secret. Ever. I was a senior in high school, trying to do theatre, volunteer-work, edit and publish a literary magazine, and get through my math class—I don’t think I got past the first five chapters. I know all about Elizabeth and Darcy, of course, but that’s due to the BBC and not to the original. I also faked my homework of “reading notes” by writing tunes to Broadway lyrics in bullet points.
• You’re shocked, I know.
• Come to think of it, I haven’t read any of Jane Austen’s novels cover-to-cover.
• Yes, I still feel guilty.
• Never read any Hemingway or Faulkner.
• Actually, I have a massive gap in my reading of early-modern and modern English literature, except for a junior-year-of-high-school once-through of The Great Gatsby.
• I don’t understand Keats. Or Shelley.
• Haven’t tried Dante or Milton.
• Only skimmed Shakespeare’s Histories (but props for Hamlet!).
• Just Jane Eyre under my belt among the Brontës.
• Almost no writers of color, save for Maya Angelou’s I know Why the Caged Bird Sings. And that’s the one that everyone reads.

Yes, my dear Canon, I suck. I especially suck at being an English major, but I have the rest of my life to make up for it, right? Starting now? You’ll always be one of my first true loves, and I’m not just trying to butter you up!

Thanks for the books I have read, though. You rock.

All of my nerdy love,

Sarah

Letters to Inanimate Objects (Part 1 in ongoing series)

Dear Cruel Intentions,

Thank you for introducing me to the song, “Bittersweet Symphony.” The parting shot of Reese Witherspoon driving down the sunny freeway with those sweet sunglasses on and that song playing in the background is, for lack of a better word, awesome. When I hear that song while driving I imagine that I am Reese Witherspoon’s character and that I look as cool and as beautiful as she does–hell, I sit up straighter and drive faster, too! Of course, the bad-boy-turned-good to whom I lost my previously-iron-clad virginity didn’t just die in my arms, but no one ever called me a method actor. Regardless, way to rock the song.

Love,

Sarah

————————————————————————————–

Dear “Bittersweet Symphony,”

I know someone’s going to argue that you’re an overplayed, cliched ditty, but I don’t care–my love is pure (almost as pure as Reese Witherspoon’s heart was before she gave it to dirty (but oh-so-dashing) Ryan Phillippe). If I remember correctly, you were my St. Mary’s class of 2004 senior song, which means you were playing on one of the few times the love of my life said “I love you!” to me (it had more relevance to context than to emotion, but who cares!). Imagine, 170 sobbing girls onstage, hugging it out (before it was popular) to your tune, thinking, “ohemgee this song is, like, so totally perfect for how I feeeeeeeeeeeel right now.” And it was. And it still is, even as I drive down I-93 on one of the hottest and muggiest days of the year. Thanks for making the commute more fun.

Love,

Sarah

Concise. Sort of.

Bullet list, for the hell of it:

• SUN! WARMTH! True, this also means sweat, but what the hell, it’s a welcome respite from the rain.
• I’m listening to the song “Maneater” by Nelly Furtado for the first time in more than a year. It doesn’t hold the punch it used to; no visceral reaction here, thank you very much!
• Last night on my walk a bunch of Black-Eyed Susans seemingly jumped out at me in the darkness; they were beautiful.
• I am moving to Cambridge with Emily, Nikki, and Sarah Keeping and I am more excited for this than for anything else in my life.
• I’m happy.
• Hope you are, too.

Best. Weekend. Ever.

And then, our clothes and hair still dripping wet from the salt water, Abi, Cherry, and I pulled over to the side of Revere Beach to watch the fireworks. “You are so beautiful… to me…” played on the radio, a soundtrack accompanying the CRACK CRACK BOOM of the pyrotechnics illuminating the ocean.

“I knew this was going to be good when you said ‘I never make this light in the morning,’ and then we made the light,” Abi said.

And that was just somewhere in the middle of the perfect adventure.