Trivia Night!

Several years ago when I moved back to Seattle I lived in a neighborhood called Beacon Hill, just south of Capitol Hill. I had never lived south of downtown, and it was quite refreshing - until of course it wasn't anymore because it could sometimes be kind of sketch. Anyway, I used to go to a Monday night trivia night on Capitol Hill with some friends of mine. Then, that trivia night started getting too busy, so we moved ourselves to another trivia night on Wednesdays at a different bar where our winnings also increased (and by winnings I mean prizes like boxes of chalk). A few weeks ago, I was out with some friends here and one mentioned that she goes to trivia night every Tuesday. My eyes grew wide and I was so excited. Trivia Night! I love trivia night and it is such a lovely way to spend a couple of hours. And also a way for me to put to use all of the useless facts I have about pop culture. But don't ask me anything about sports.

A Long Post About Prayer and Qualitative Research

One of my favorite authors is Karen Armstrong. I was introduced to her when I was about 23 years old, after a personal investigation into learning more about the institution of religion prompted me to pick up her book A History of God. A few years later I read her autobiography (and I should clarify, I read her amended autobiography which she wrote as a response to her previous work about her time spent in a convent) and felt that in many ways she I shared a kindredness for exploring the mysteries of spirituality and for comparative religion. I bring her up because as of late I have been thinking a lot about what it means to have a prayerful life. This is in part due to the fact that I am so steeped in the academic life that I wonder if these two lives could, in a way, find a place to co-exist. It is also due to the fact that I have been spending much more time outside, and when I am outside, walking, jogging, or riding my bike, I am obviously not directly engaged in my academic thoughts but I am complementing them by moving my body.

Brilliant! Karen Armstrong

Anyway - in her memoir, Karen Armstrong described her life as a writer and researcher as one that connected deeply to her spiritual life, even though it was not a traditional form of religious prayer. She found communion with her interior-life as a researcher, and described academic and non-fiction writing as a form of meditation. This deeply resonated with me (and still does), and her description of this in her memoir has stuck with me since first reading it almost 10 years ago. I include this here because this summer I am taking a qualitative methods research course and am running up against the division between my system of beliefs as an individual who connects with her "interior-life" and also the effort I put into supporting my arguments with evidence. I had to write a letter of introduction about myself for this class, and I took this assignment very seriously as a way to explore what my worldview is and how this informs the way I ask questions and seek understanding. Below are excerpts from that letter:

"...What this article stirred most deeply in me was my own insecurities about my intelligence, thus making me take more notice of the division I maintained between my soul and my mind. I have two distinct ways of living and knowing: what I refer to as my interior-life and the other my mind-life.

The first way of living and knowing is my interior-life, a way where ambiguity resides and knowing and learning are what Dirkx (2008) referred to as a “hard, emotional, messy, uncertain, ambiguous, and ill-structured process” (p. 66). My interior life is often in solitude. It invites a deeper sense of self while working in spaces that are not always comfortable. From this part of my life I have also learned to be very aware of the role that positioning plays in my communal and individual interactions. My interior-life is a listening life...

The second way of living and knowing is my mind-life, where my desire to find an evidence-based reality emerges. Here, my mind works to organize the world into tidy facts and best practices. This way of thinking and knowing for me is in response to my interior-life and the ambiguities it brings. It is also a very conscious attempt to want to discard the role that power plays in knowledge formation because to recognize this correlation, for me, unearths vulnerabilities. Also in this space is a very real attraction I have for a worldview that can show causation and generalizability, all the while knowing it can be potentially harmful, inequitable, and one-dimensional. I am aware of the dangers in this kind of worldview due to my experiences working in the non-profit sector and at the policy and legislative level. Despite this awareness, the clear outline and procedures of this type of post-positivist work both academically and personally help me feel grounded when my questions about the world seem too big. It also symbolizes a position of strength when I fear my interior-life may not be valid."

I am learning more and more how to manage, not so much balance, my life here in Lansing as a student. And since the spring semester ended, I have learned how important it is for me to 1) get outside and MOVE and 2) acknowledge that prayer may take on many different forms in my life. This second point is something I have always known, but how I define prayer (even if at times it is defined as rest) becomes more full and expansive as I explore my own ways of understanding. I expect it will continue to evolve and I am excited to use my qualitative class this summer to approach understanding in a new way.

Filling Up My Community Cup

Having finished my spring semester, I decided to take a quick trip to Chicago to visit some friends. It's pretty easy to get to Chi-town, if the train runs on time. Thankfully for me, it did on this trip. My purpose for this trip wasn't so much to sight-see because I've been to Chicago a lot. So much so that I've started to lose count. One year when I lived in Seattle I had to go to Chicago three times in a matter of six months. So for this trip, the purpose was simply to see friends and to fill myself with familiar people. What is coincidental about the two friends that I visited is that I met them both in Seattle. One, I met as an undergrad, the other, I met just a few years ago. However, they both filled me up to the brim with a sense of community. My friend from college isn't someone I see very often, and we drank and noshed and he and his wife made me an amazingly delicious dinner. And then I played some with their two year old. The rest of my time in Chicago was spent with a good girlfriend of mine and her husband - although it was mostly just she and I taking walks, talking, lounging, eating and drinking, and talking and lounging

Saw her on our walk, she was
glad I was with friends
too.

more. It was simply fabulous. I have realized that, even though I now comfortably call Lansing my home, I still have a home wherever my friends are. And these are friends who know me, and I feel known and recognized by. There is laughter and community. I am starting to have that here in Lansing, yet there is something so nourishing about being around people who know me - really know me - regardless of where we are. It was the trip I needed to fill up my community cup enough as I start in on my summer semester, and also to allow me to settle even more into the Midwest.

The Craft of Changing the Work

I have been intermittently chatting with a friend of mine back in Seattle who is a writer. I have a handful of friends who are writers, and over the last year I've observed how they engage with their writing in different ways. I probably observe this more because I am writing a lot these days as well, although in a different context. They all write fiction, and I for one, and am always amazed by this ability. As we were text-chatting, she shared that she's been receiving some very positive feedback from her writing teacher and is being encouraged to start pitching and presenting her work. She has also had some nibbles from publishers and agents. I thought about this, and realized that she and I are probably writing in a similar manner, even though we are writing about very different things. She is being mentored and coached about her writing, and I imagine that she is making changes and even to some extent, making sacrifices to her craft in order to improve upon it. And this got me thinking even more about the craft of changing the work. Simply, the craft of editing. In painting, or song-writing, and now more recently academic writing, there is always something personal there for me. What I create is from me, and so receiving feedback can be felt personally. That I have had years of experience in receiving feedback on my work that is very personal (As an aside, there really is something weird about having a critic provide feedback on a painting - or an art dealer. I once had a woman approach my work from a strictly sellable point of view and say, "this would work in an office hallway" - ouch. Needless to say I have faced a ton of rejection, but also some acceptance) has probably made me less sensitive to the feedback. Because the aim for me is improvement. My feelings aside, even though it is hard to take, I want to be better at my craft. And I know my friend in Seattle is going through this too. She is putting herself out there, writing and getting feedback, changing things she probably never imagined she would change, and doing this because she is dedicated to being a better writer. The real skill here then, is a talent for being edited and changing the work.

I'm Becoming My Mother

I was about ten years old when I first learned of the similarities between my mom and I. This similarity wasn't observed by me, but announced with astonishment by a family friend. When I was young, we would sometimes drive to Medford, Oregon to visit with our family friends, and during one of these visits the matriarch of the family exclaimed to me, after having observed me doing a simple task with my hands (it could have been opening a Pepsi can for all I know), "Oh MY!! Your hands are just like your mom's!" Then she grabbed my hands and said again, "Look at your hands, they look just like your mom's!! You have you mom's hands!" Needless to say, I didn't know what to do with this information, because I thought I had my own hands.

Indeed, I do share a lot of physical similarities with my mom, for which I am grateful. For example, I rarely sunburn. And if I do, it always turns into a nice tan. I have seen many of my friends over the years burn and blister, and I admit I've never burned that badly, even when as a kid I never used sunblock because I don't remember it being used as religiously as it is now. (I do use it religiously now, though). I'm petite. Yes, this is sometimes an annoyance, but like my mom, I have purchased many pieces of clothing in the kids' section. That really nice down coat? It costs 1/2 the price in the kids' section.

Our similarities, however, go much deeper than our looks. Over the years I've learned how much like my mom I am. It's so easy to find our differences, yet the ways in which we are alike are ways that I rely on quite often. My mom's ability to focus for long periods of time, for example, is something that has been handed down to me. As a kid, I remember my mom preparing lesson plans for her class, or grading papers for long periods of time. Now, she quilts. And this is the kind of activity that requires focus, and she does this for hours. Her interest in quilting hints to another trait we share, I our knack for creative thinking. My mom has a gift for thinking creatively, and bursting out with ideas that are filled with color, playfulness, and imagination. I'd like to think I have some of this.

There is one trait, however, that I do hope I will grow into. She has an ability to think of others while also preserving the person she is. Her thoughtfulness is both for people, and also about herself. I have often talked with her about our own interior lives, those prayerful lives where we look at ourselves and ask questions, sometimes scrutinize, and challenge our own ideas and views of the world in positive ways. This trait gives her a gift of loving others in ways that are much deeper and more true. I hope this trait matures in me because she has given me a picture of what it looks like and it's truly remarkable. Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

The Wanderlust Gene

Not only is my dad riding his bike
across the country, he's making
pancakes for the first time for his
fellow bicyclists!

Two weeks ago I mailed a letter to my dad. In this letter I wished him a safe and joyful journey across America because he is riding his bike across the country (I will add, for the second time). The bicycle riding was just part of my letter, the other part was acknowledging the wanderlust gene I inherited from him. This wanderlust gene is a Blalock gene, and pops up in some of my cousins, and at times in me. I believe it is mostly attributed to my grandfather, although it may go further back on the Blalock side. Here, you can imagine a voice over, something of the sort, "the force is strong in you" however I have spent a lot of my adult life squelching this gene sometimes with great success, sometimes not. I squelched it because I feared it would interfere in my becoming an adult, although I'm still not sure what constitutes an adult even now as I approach the age of 38. And when I squelched it too much, I would suddenly quit my job and buy a plane ticket so I could get the hell out of dodge for a while, then eventually return, because, well, "adult."

My grandfather on my dad's side moved his large family around the south of the U.S., mostly in North Carolina. Although I never knew him, I feel a kindredness because of this shared gene. The wanderlust gene. As a young adult, I suspect this gene was more about believing in a grass is greener scenario. Now as an older adult, I believe it is more about discovery, and inquiry, and exploration.

For the next three months, my dad will be bicycling across the country. Here is our wanderlust gene in exploration mode. I feel a little closer to my dad these days and our wanderlust gene, somewhat because of my move to Michigan, but particularly because we are both participating in our own kinds of inquiry and exploration.

Tinkering

This evening I will attend my last class for the semester. It is somewhat of a momentous event, because it also marks the end of my first year as a doctoral student. It is hard for me to believe that nine months ago I moved to Lansing, and that 8 and a half months ago I started this program. Obviously, I have learned a lot of things since coming to Michigan, both about the place and about myself. One thing, however, stands out a little more than other things, and although it isn't something I've learned so much about myself as something I have come to understand better. I have always been a "tinkerer." When I start work on something I enjoy, I can keep going back to it and working on it. Even if I don't enjoy it so much, if it gives me some sense of intellectual or artistic food, I'll still continue to tinker with it, to figure it out, to take it all apart and put it back together. Obviously, this works in my favor as a student.

For this reason, I have dabbled a lot in a lot of different things and you can tell this by my varied career. A few weeks ago I was chatting with a woman who runs a fellowship program that I will join next year, and I had sent her my shortened version of my resume. She asked what was going on during the 8 year gap of when I graduated with a BA and when I started my resume history. I gave her another shortened version of "art instructor, started a summer program in a small town for art and science, worked at a small book press as a bookbinder, did some substitute teaching on the sly because I'm not certified, joined Americorps, traveled around the country by train for 6 months, worked as a visual merchandiser and fluffed pillows and moved sofas for a living, blah blah blah." I didn't really think much of it but she laughed and her eyes got big and she said, "You've done a lot!!" I hadn't ever thought of it that way, because until I started a more linear career in the nonprofit sector my life did seem a little untethered, but also natural.

It would have been naive of me to expect that I could continue on in my career in nonprofit. I tried to stick to it, and climb that ladder as it were. However I jumped jobs every 2 years because I was restless. I liked the chaos of things and putting order to them and once that was done, I would grow bored or frustrated and then find another place that hired me to clean house. Thus, I finally bent to my desire to tinker in a field I knew I belonged, and that brought me to Lansing. Now that I'm here, I understand more fully how well I can tinker. I tinker all the time, reading, writing, talking through ideas, listening. Sometimes I get tired, sure, but I'm usually pretty content - even joyful sometimes - at all the tinkering I get to do. Even when there is no useful effect of my tinkering, and I don't always know what it is for or what it will become, that I can try to make little improvements to my ideas and flesh them out is truly enjoyable.

Fresh Water Beaches

When I first moved to Michigan, I was here alone for the first three weeks as Kevin had to go back to Seattle to finish up work there. It took a few days for me to get my bearings, and then I started to explore around Lansing on my bike, then started driving around the state. One place I went was to the coast of Lake Michigan. Over the last weekend, Kevin and I went there to spend the day together. I have only been to the lake a couple of times now, and I think it may take a few more times for me to get used to the fact that it doesn't have a sea smell. It is such a huge body of water that it feels like the ocean, apart from the fact that there is no seaweed, no salty briny smell, no tidepooling, no big crashing waves (until a speed boat goes by). What it does have is soft soft sand, and fresh water, and lapping little waves. It was too frigid to dip my toes in the water, but I know in the summer when it's hot and humid I'll likely return and have a long water walk along the shores.

As A Tourist (Washington DC Post 2)

I had some time at the end of my trip to Washington to take in some of the sites. One thing I didn't do, however, was check the hours for the many free museums along the National Mall. I've been to these museums many times, and so on this trip I decided to hit the Newseum, having heard a lot of good things about it. So at about 3:30pm I left the AAU, went to my hotel to change into play clothes, and walked down to the Mall. It was a beautiful day! So, as I do when I'm traveling alone, I walk. And walk. And walk and walk and walk. And forget about what I may have planned to do. And so I ended up at the Washington Monument. I kept walking and almost made it to the WWII Monument, when I decided that my feet kind of hurt (I did not bring my walking shoes, for reasons I'm not sure of) and sat down for a bit. Then I decided to make my way back towards the Capital Building. And as I walked past some of the Smithsonian Museums, I thought "Maybe I'll just pop inside and take a quick picture of a diorama for Kevin." I noticed the sign on the outside that said the Museum closed at 5:30, so I checked the time, and it was....5:24. I'm not completely sure where the time went, but that is when I learned that the Newseum I had planned to visit closed at 5pm. Along with many of the others. I took in more sites. My feet hurt, I sat down. I made my way to the American Art Museum (it closed at 7pm) and found a lovely folk art display. It was about this time that I started to realize my feet were really tired, and I was hungry. So, per a recommendation from a friend, I went to a great little Asian Cafe and had myself some delicious Bento. A full stomach and a short half a mile back to the hotel and I tucked myself into bed, ready to head home the next day.