Young and full of running.

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I spent last Thursday night folding laundry and listening to John Mayer. Neither of which are very “cool” things for a twenty-something to do with her Thursday night. In fact, among half the circles I run in, listening to John Mayer would be decidedly uncool, a musical choice that would require a private listening session on Spotify to keep my indie cred firmly in place.

But I refuse to feel guilty about listening to John Mayer. And lately, I’m experiencing some sort of weird John Mayer revival. I can’t get enough of him. The other weekend, Jivan and I drove to my college town in the grey light of a heavy, muggy afternoon.  We were both battling terrible headaches; I was wearing a frat tank, my face plain and pale without a drop of makeup. For the first time, I wasn’t thinking about it. I spun his iPod to John Mayer, with a nervous smile. Can we listen to it again? I said after the first play of “Your Body Is A Wonderland.”  Yes, he laughed. So I put my feet on the dash and played it again and laughed out loud. Relief like the first bracing sip of coffee. Hey, wake up, this is good.

For my generation, taste is as much about what you don’t like as what you do. Maybe more, in fact. We grew up believing we were special, that we could do anything. Then we grew right into our Facebook accounts and Twitter streams, loudspeakers for the lives we believe to be so unique. The Internet feels like a race sometimes. Whose joke will get the most retweets. Whose day is the worst. Or the best. Whose sarcasm is the sharpest. Whose dinner parties are blog-worthy. Who will be first to the band/film/trend. If the Internet is a competition, then we never stop sizing each other up. To be young now to lead the examined life, the quotidian shared and consumed and dismissed.

The process of growing up includes a period of an intense awareness of other people’s perceptions or opinions. Sometimes the intensity of this awareness is a bucket of cold water, a roadblock, a re-router.  I’ve always cared too much about what people think of me. Fear follows me like a doctor’s scale; I am always measuring and adjusting, being measured and deciding to adjust. I’ve kept quiet, flip-flopped, said yes when I wanted to say no, bit my lip, swallowed my tears, walked out onto the stage anyway, given up, squared my shoulders, waited too long, felt stupid, looked stupid, avoided the scary but missed the sweet.

But the beauty of growing is motion, progress. And rain, if it doesn’t destroy what’s blooming, only speeds that growth. Caring less about what other people think about me would have happened naturally, in time. Thanks to the last two years of my life, it came quickly and miserably—but quickly. Of course, I’m not done learning this, because I’m not done growing up. On the short end of my twenties, I still worry about what people are really thinking, if I’m funny enough, why my house doesn’t look put together.

I’m listening to John Mayer shamelessly again, though. Ditching makeup when I feel like it. And, in a breathless rush, I recently confessed my shocking addiction to top 40 favorite, Call Me Maybe (Warning: it is the auditory equivalent of licking the cake batter off the beaters—not very good for you, but impossible to resist.) The most important thing about all of these other things is just this: I don’t feel the need to explain it or tweet a sarcastic joke about it or apologize for it.

The last time John Mayer was in heavy rotation for me was 2007, the hot hot Mississippi summer after my freshman year of college, when the world and all its maybes were basically mine. Nobody really knew me there, and I already stood out from the rich prep kids, so I was free to be as happy and weird as I wanted. I spent a lot of time reading that summer, late into the night, because although I was wholly 17, that is what I wanted to do. I remember lamplight spilling into high thread count sheets, Saul Bellow in hand and dry toast on the table next to me. I remember peace.

What I am trying to tell you is that my wild, tired, two-years-double-time heartbeat has finally slowed. I’m telling you that my life lately sounds like the first beautiful twelve seconds of Bach’s famous Prelude. But it also sounds like John Mayer singing “Your Body Is a Wonderland,” and if I get to listen to it unashamedly on a happy Saturday afternoon, you better believe I’m gonna turn it up.

The blue centerlight pop.

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When you don’t know where to start, you just start. Right?

It’s been six weeks, darlings. The last time we talked, I told you about what I was giving up. How the practice had changed me. And for the next few weeks after that, we gave up other things. Friends rotated in and out as they pleased. We went a week without texting. (!!!)  We stopped phoning while driving (or tried to, at least.) We gave up meat. We gave up music that wasn’t classical or worship. In the middle of one those weeks, however, around a table full of friends and wine glasses, we decided to explore what we could add to our lives. What we could we start.

Although I am a grown woman who pays her own bills and makes her own decisions, I often forget that I am the one controlling the pattern of my life. Annie Dillard says (and I frequently quote): How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. And so having arrived at a place where my heart has finally healed and my dinner table is finally full, it’s up to me to decide just how to use the exceeding, abundant, more than than I could ever ask or imagine gifts God has bathed me in lately.

In my mind, I crunch down the gravel paths of wilderness camp in Alaska and I keep walking until, at last, I turn around and see the mountains around me for the first time. Everything feels possible again.

I want to tell you about baby goats and a Victorian rug and boys and impulsive bed buying. I want to tell you about firework-like love for the Lord and sneaking into a Young the Giant concert and shrimp tacos on the back deck. I want to tell you about roommates who surprise me and allnighters and friends who came back.

Can I show you some pictures instead? Let’s look at them together and pretend that we’re real life friends, not separated by actual miles. I do have stories for you. A cocktail recipe. New music mixes. In time, my friends. I’m learning that the only way to handle the vast, exhilarating, slippery “next” is to grasp firmly onto “now.”

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Bourbon and lipstick and old lady shoes make an appearance in my life sometimes. So do Mad Men style birthday parties and the opportunity to wear my hair on the very top of my head.

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This verse means more to me after the last two years than I ever would have thought possible. He is so good. I can’t stop talking about Him this year, about the steadiness and magnitude of His love. About how He rescued me and set me in this spacious place.

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Major opportunities and tiny surprises — I seem to be saying this a lot lately.

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And five years later, I finally climbed another watertower. The kind I’ve been dreaming of climbing, with a terrifying, rusty ladder and a sunset that turned everything magic.

I don’t know anything about about tomorrow, but from my hotel bed in deep south Georgia, today looks beautiful.

____

P.S. My old URL “kathrynwrites.com” was stolen. Which explains all the recent spam. Please update your readers to this one. I promise to be around more often.

Negative Space

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It started with a bet, the way so many things in my life seem to begin lately.

I lost. With aplomb this time, despite being terribly unused to losing bets. Were I to pinpoint it, I’d say my losing streak originated soon after I moved here, soon after my life expanded. And that life has grown and grown, greening and blooming, pushing me—until at moments, I find myself shoved out onto the front lawn of my own house, staring strangely at it. Is this happy house mine?

We bet that an Instagram-obsessed friend couldn’t go a week without posting. In shaking hands on it, I knew I wasn’t betting on solid ground—anyone can resist if he’s been dared enough—but I counted on habit to come in like the tide, take over. Instead, I lost.  The week closed its doors without a single snap appearing in his Instagram feed. I want to give up something else, he said with an odd glee, after it was all over.

We tackled Tumblr next. And this time, I gave it up, too. The ripples were small, carrying us to Sunday afternoon where after some discussion and pleading eye rolls, another friend joined us in giving up Twitter for the week.  We’re three deep in life without Twitter, and somehow, this has become something much bigger than what began as a teasing bet. 2012, we have decided, is going to be the Year We Quit Things.

This has nothing to do with Lent.

But I’m wondering if the notion of giving up—of abstaining—woos us so because we are generation of excess. We can’t escape ourselves. We are our own entertainment. Everything is so much, all the time. We are the overstimulated. I write this because I fear it. My brain on the Internet too often feels thick and dull, needing the constant twitch of change. Another picture. Another tweet. Another song playing in the background of another blog post.

My generation has turned life into a race. To keep up is to be exhausted, because we are expected to lead a highly-fulfilling offline life, while simultaneously living a full life online. Check check check check check. The internet is turning over every second, and we have been conditioned to interpret any change as important. The question that hums constantly now is what did I miss?  Why do we award so much prestige to being first? First to discover, first to blog, first to publish.

You really want to know what it is about 20-somethings? It’s this: we live longer now. But we also live less. It sounds hyperbolic, it sounds morbid, it sounds dramatic, but in choosing the internet I am choosing not to be a certain sort of alive. Days seem over before they even begin, and I have nothing to show for myself other than the anxious feeling that I now know just enough to engage in conversations I don’t care about. –Alice Gregory

So to voluntarily give this up—to step out of the pool and stand still, water streaming down our legs—is a temperature change. We are adjusting. The breeze passes over us. We deleted the Twitter app from our phones, so our fingers don’t wander there out of habit. And it’s habit denied that has made me realize the space Twitter occupies in my life. In absence, we see.

I love Twitter. I love it for how it expands my world, both intellectually and relationally. I love it for giving me a chance to snap word Polaroids of my life. When this week is over, I will tweet again, and I’ll probably keep tweeting for a long time. But Twitter as a time-filler, a distraction, a line killer, a validator, a reason to disconnect when I feel awkward in a real life situation—this I want to let go.

Part of the growing up process is sorting. Assigning value to the bits that make up our daily lives, deciding what we treasure and where it belongs.  Another word is balance. Every week, in carving something away, I think my life will grow a little lighter, clearer.

There’s a reason negative space feels so beautiful.

A Dramatic List of My Recent Failings

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Sometimes I lie in my bed late at night, listening to weird music, and I write blog posts in my head. But I rarely post them, because they are scraps of things, or significant thoughts that haven’t been cut and processed and packaged for public consumption. Somewhere between 2007 and 2012, this blog lost a good deal of its vulnerability. And mostly, that’s a good thing. I had some maturing to do, and 2010-2011 screwed the hinges shut in the swinging door this blog used to be.

And yet.

If this blog is (sort of) about learning to be a grown up, then where better to tell you how very decidedly I don’t feel like one lately? I did in 2010. I did in 2011. But here, in 2012, when I’m choosing zombie show marathons over sleep and weekend trips over new furniture, I’m not so sure. I have not arrived. (And maybe we never do?) This I understand. What I don’t know, however, is what I’m supposed to be doing in the meantime. Should I be paddling like mad? Should I drop my shoulders, for once in my life, and ride the current? Should I be taking pictures of the landscape flashing past me, or should I just blink more often, taking photos with my eyes, fingers, mouth?

I am not drinking enough water.
I am not returning emails in a timely fashion. Or Facebook messages. Or even texts.
I am not planning my meals. I am not eating enough green things.
I am not going to bed at a decent hour.
I am not going to the gym I’m paying for.
I am not writing enough.
I am not hanging my clothes up.
I am not sticking to anything.
I am not making my bed.
I am not focused. I am not burning with ambition anymore.
I’m not on time.

But.

I am cooking for my friends.
I am laughing more and harder than I have in a long time.
I am starry-eyed.
I am sleeping deeper and better.
I am making memories.
I’m collecting nicknames and wine stains.
I am taking breaths and taking leaps.
I am praying more. I am believing more.
I’m eating so much brunch.
I’m opening doors, even when they scare me.
I’m having business meetings.
I’m stargazing on mountaintops.

And it’s this constant wondering of what should I be doing? that pulls taut through all my days. Nobody tells you, of course, and so I swing wildly between feeling invincible and feeling tiny in the face of all I don’t know.

These are my dizzy twenties. Maybe you know what I mean.

What are you doing/not doing lately?

I sing the body electric.

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I don’t exactly have the quintessential redheaded temper. But I am quite stubborn. And if you challenge me to something, I can’t walk away. (Unless it’s karaoke.) So when a far-away friend dared me to make a makeout playlist, I accepted the challenge.

Until about three songs in, when I realized it was going to be much harder than I had anticipated. Here’s why: I’ve never made a generic makeout playlist before. Of all the kinds of mixtapes, the makeout is almost the most personal (second only to that first carefully crafted mixtape, you know, of the impress & woo variety).  I deliberated over my choices, wondering how to place them with no relationship to lend shape.

Context unknown.

It’s not, of course, that anyone pays much attention to lyrics, or even individual songs, in a makeout playlist. It’s background music at its best. But a playlist of this sort can meander or race or drift or gallop, and here, at the fork in the road, is where context would firmly turn the wheel in one of those directions. Since I’m making this no-hands, however, this mix wobbles through several of those turns—although there’s not much drifting. Pace, I discovered in the making, is highly personal.

The other thing we’re not talking about is the notion of creating a makeout playlist in the first place. Something about that seems odd. For me, the best “makeout music” has been  chance, a fortuitous discovery.  But maybe creating this mix (or, for you, downloading it) isn’t about scheduling or planning at all, but instead, opening the door to possibility.

And my, if this hasn’t taken an oddly inspirational turn.  I’ll stop here. Just download it. Test drive it. (I haven’t.) Or test float it. Put it in your pocket for a rainy day. Download it here.

*Thanks to Phil Belger who designed the cover (and I am obsessed with it).
**Note to anyone who catches the title reference without googling it: let’s be friends.
***This isn’t my make-out mix, just so we’re all clear.

TRACK LIST:

The Zone // The Weeknd
Video Games // Lana Del Rey
Let’s Get Lost // Bat for Lashes (ft. Beck)
Be My Baby // DM Stith
Montreal // The Weeknd
Time to Pretend // Jonsi
Tell Her No // Tennis
There Is A Light that Never Goes Out // The Smiths
Rock My Boat // Dntel
We Looked Like Giants // Death Cab for Cutie
We Don’t Eat // Adventure Club
Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) // Nancy Sinatra
Don’t You Think Someone Should Take You Home // Butch Walker
Knotty Pine // Dirty Projectors
Our Swords // Band of Horses
Michicant // Bon Iver
Northern Lights // Bowerbirds
Novacane // Frank Ocean
Infinity // The xx
Anthems for A Seventeen Year Old // Broken Social Scene
So Insane // Discovery
All You Are Going to Want to Do Is Get Back There // Caretaker
I Only Know What I Know Now // James Blake
Crystalfilm // Little Dragon

Man Things

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Late one summer night, with the windows open and the table set, we were talking. I took my seat giggling, and explained to him my list of things I felt every man should know how to do. Number one on my list? Make a dang good omelet. Then I asked him if he had a list like mine, only things every girl should know how to do.

“Yeah,” he said. “Look pretty.”

I rolled my eyes, and laughed, and we finished the omelets he had managed to create from the sparse contents of my nearly empty refrigerator. He was joking, but I wasn’t. A friend once said that I love lists more than anyone he knows. That’s probably true. So because it’s Thursday, I present a partial and incomplete list of my requirements to call yourself a man:

Make an omelet.
An omelet is a man’s dish. There’s no arguing about that. Even if you can do nothing else in the kitchen, you should master this art of creating something from nothing, of wielding a whisk and a skillet, of looking so entirely, charmingly capable.

Tie a tie.
And I don’t just mean fumble your way into some semblance of a knot. You should be able to deftly tie a crisp knot, finishing with a small, confident tug. Make sure you know the process well enough to teach a girl, when she asks you. Isn’t that the beauty of it? Bonus if you know more than one kind of knot. (Windsor, anyone?)

Own some tools.
You don’t need a shed full or anything, but you should definitely own more than I do (which currently means if you’ve got more than a hammer and a couple screwdrivers, you’re set). Learn how to use them. And please, acquire a drill. Girls always need to borrow a drill for some reason or the other. If you lend us a drill, you’ll usually get dinner out of it. At least at my house you will.

Turn the wheel with the palm of one hand.
Preferably as you’re reversing the car. That fluid, spinning motion seems to come naturally to you, and I think it says something subtle about confidence and command. Also, it’s sexy.

Teach me something.
Who cares what it is: the history of punk, how to make crepes, the complicated league divisions of international soccer, literary theory. Just have deep knowledge about something, so I can ask you questions, learn something, and be duly fascinated.

Walk on the outside of the sidewalk. 
Perhaps this is antiquated, but I guarantee you that we notice when you do. I don’t care if I’m your girlfriend, sister, mom, coworker, friend, or crush – walking street side is just plain nice. Do it.

Know how to throw a punch. 
Doesn’t mean you have to—in fact, I hope you won’t—but I like to know you can handle yourself if things got weird.

Read.
You don’t have to consume the entire New York Times bestseller list, but set aside time to read occasionally. It’s good for your brain and good for your conversation. If I ask you about your favorite book or your favorite author—have an answer. Don’t know? Start with Hemingway, if you like classics, or try DeLillo or Didion for contemporary with a punch.

How to walk by a girl.
Oh yes, this is terribly vague and perhaps a little odd, but if you fancy a girl, pay attention to how you walk by her in passing. Do it right, and turn yourself into a magnet. (I think maybe the secret is in your glances.)

Get a good haircut.
I have a theory about boys and haircuts. They seem incapable of grasping the concept of a trim. So they let their hair grow past optimal length, and then overcorrect by chopping it all off.  You can avoid this. Timing is everything.

How to waltz.
If you can walk, you can waltz. Or foxtrot, or rhumba. The best (and worst) thing about life is not knowing what comes next—so if the day arrives when you have to step on the dance floor, at least have a faint idea of what you’re doing.

The Glenn Highway

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When I lived in Alaska, we spent our two precious breaks in Homer, a romantic little fishing town on the Kenai Peninsula. The long, winding road from Wasilla to Homer remains the most beautiful ride I’ve ever taken.  Also, the most dangerous, according to Alaska Highway Patrol. How can I tell you about the sheer magnificence of the mountains, of the mud flats, if you haven’t seen them? It’s a lot like being love.

Love is agreeing to a type of isolation. It is the ready willingness to defend what you know to be fact. Love—to be in a room with a view that no one else can see, to swear to the beauty of the world and beg for understanding, understanding yourself, all along, that no one can. In love, you mimic Frost, saying to all you see: “You come, too.”

That road followed the curve of the mountains, left and right, sending us out over the vast mud flats and drawing us back tightly to the mountain. Every turn felt monumental, like the whole of my previous life dropped off behind me, and the new stretch of road was all I knew or wanted.  In a very serious relationship, those turns come – sometimes at lightning speed. Perspective shifts. What becomes important is the good of two, the good of him, the good of your together future. It’s normal and healthy. I felt that shift once; I watched friends slide sparkly rings on their fingers and make that turn, too.

A steady relationship with the Lord is marked by those turns. Sometimes, in the midst of careening through an ever-changing landscape, He turns me, and the beauty of that sudden turn is seeing my future for the first time all over again. The other things—the music I was blaring, the conversation I was having, the mountains I was seeing—fade in light of the road He calls me down.

Someone has said that the more you learn to love the Lord, the more and more often you repent. And having been in love before—the kind that nearly swallows you with its glittering immensity—this makes sense to me. In love, you are hyper aware of the one you love. When he comes in a room, you feel it. When he tilts his head a certain way during conversation with someone else, you know the thoughts that prompted it. You wear prettier things. You say different things. It is your delight to bring him joy.

Too often, I miss God’s nudging for a turn because I’m busy driving. Usually full speed ahead, with music blaring and six different conversations spread out across my various networks.  But if He’s dedicated to romancing me, even in the little things — a bouquet of constellations, a tiny prayer answered — I hope my love for Him shows up in the little things, too.

So I’m looking closer at the minute trajectory of my days. My tweets. My casual conversations. My serious conversations. My thoughts. My spending. My dreaming. My either/or choices. My plans. I want them to bring Him joy.

If I’m starry-eyed lately, it’s because of Him.