Hedgehog in the Blog

One Room, Two Beds

The small room she shared with her parents had two beds divided by a meridian of exposed linoleum and a two-tiered table at the foot of the larger bed. On the bottom of the table were several books and envelopes. On the top shelf was the imported TV. With its two antennas and VHS slot, it was a permanent resident. The white walls were bare. The comforters and curtains, shades of brown, orange, yellow, and red were it for decoration. The neatly layered secret stuff they didn’t want her to reach lived in the top section of a brown armoire. The deep window sill, where she’d spend hours looking outside daydreaming and running her small hands through the moist dirt of the potted plants was her favorite part of the room.

Red Seal = Really Important Documents

A standard A1 envelope with foreign letters and stamps appeared on the bottom shelf of the table at the foot of the larger bed. She had seen her father place it there after he came home. He thought she was napping and took extra care to be quiet. He balanced the envelope with an open palm so as not to bend it. He took a pocketknife from a toolbox under the bed, slipped the tip into the gap in the fold, and gently pulled up. With measured force he made a clean rupture. He sat down on the edge of the bed and took out four pieces of paper. They were blank but didn’t give to gravity. A red seal rose from the bottom right corner of each sheet. He examined each one, pausing his eyes on the seal.

The Opportunity

The envelope was already opened so examining the paper wouldn’t be risky.  She checked her hands for stickiness and ink before proceeding. She knew her grandfather, the only one home, was deep in a newspaper article. As long she kept some of her attention on checking for the crinkle of newspaper, she’d be safe. Her chest tightened. A strong urge to doodle had to be kept in check.

The Break-in

She placed the envelope on her palm as she’d seen her father do, but it was too hard to balance it on her small palm. She put the envelope back down and sat on the edge of the smaller bed placing it on her lap instead. She opened the top and gently pulled out the top sheet. The paper was heavy and textured. The seal was read with two flags on it. This was the most distinguished thing in the house. She knew she loved that paper and wanted to be part of a world paper like that was the norm. She loved it the same way she loved the pens behind the counter at the supply store. It was different from loving her parents. Maybe it was love of the world these things seemed to represent. A love unburdened by explanation.

No better reason to get the blog going again than for a traditional Baba Sofa poem.

Apology: 2012

Baba Sofa, I’m late I know,

but not the late you’re hoping for.

Your words – high heels, sway hips, the world is coming to an end!

Delight!

You’ve always been so good to add vice.

 You say, just pick one, old, bald or lame

I’ll love with time,

But damn it Baba it’s year twelve!

Zigzag like fly around a mound of poop

For sake of any steady rooster in the Melrose coop.

I know, I know there’s Baba progeny at stake.

Approaches vary, but our end is shared.

I have a foolproof plan.

Fs.

Ford, Pharoah, Firefighter, Francis, Fiddler, let’s stop there.

I know which plays the tune most pleasing to your ear.

Steady Baba, before you usher your reproof,

Do hear, he’s fixing shingles on a shaky roof.

And, rightfully the roof is top priority.

So now you see, the challenges that lie with me.

My grandmother sits in an armchair, the kind you imagine a professor settling into for a complex read. The chair is in front of an armoire showcasing standard Soviet-issue crystal shot glasses and a carp shaped teapot encircled by baby carp cups. A beige wool shawl cloaks Baba’s globular shape. Her son’s watch ticks between two crystal glasses.

Her gray eyes melt not into text but the latest episode of “Mothers and Daughters” – Russian TV’s exploration of the sacred relations between mothers and their superstar daughters. Baba’s legs oscillate as if ringing a gentile church bell to typically Russian aggressively intimate declarations.

“She was such a creative child,” says a somber Georgian widow.

“I listened even if I didn’t understand,” half laughs a rouged blonde.

“She taught me discipline,” admits a ballerina.

Baba still aligns herself with the daughters.

The five thousand plus miles of digitally transmitted company ignite an enduring desire in Baba Sofa to put on a red décolleté and seduce her way back to youth.

On the southern end of the same mossy suburb, I sit at my computer scanning bolded subject lines, with a hope I hide in a dark corner of my ego, for a recruitment request to join a team of renaissance rebels on a consulting project to save an equally dark corner of the world – preferably headquartered in a posh northern hemisphere metropolis. Malaria and tsetse flies would get in the way of conjecturing and complex modeling. Wearing fashionable oxfords, trench coats, and skinny ties, the team lives off baguette sandwiches and sips dark coffee from dollhouse cups.

Minutes into daydream deciding what sexy elbow-patched tweed outfit I should be wearing at the outdoor cafe, I’m interrupted by the daily mid-morning phone call from my mother.

“Are you going to Sofa’s today?” curtly and to the point as usual.

“I was planning on it,” I reply.

“Well if you do, I need you to do something. Then again, we might go there later in the week. Anyway, actually forget it,” typically retracted.

“I can do it. It’s fine,” short and stern right back.

“Alright listen, first go to the kitchen, open the fridge, look on the second to bottom drawer, not the one with the vegetables. You’ll see a daikon radish. Behind it is a bag of black rye bread. That is not what you want. But to the right there will be a loaf of white bread. Now behind that are six slices of Bavarian Rye. Take them out. Make sure you don’t knock down the pickle jar. Now put the slices of bread in the paper bag I placed to the right of the refrigerator. Next, you need to get an empty jar for the borsht. Get the small stepping stool underneath the microwave. Set it in front of the stove. Stand on it. Make sure to keep your balance. Open the left kitchen cabinet. On the second shelf, find the third jar from your left with the green cap, the dark green cap. Take the jars in front of it one by one and set them on the counter. Don’t try to pull out the jar without doing this. Please restrain your desire to bear paw it out. After you take the specified jar out, slowly step off the stool and place the jar in the paper bag. Put back the jars you placed on the counter and close the drawer. Put the stool back. And lets not forget the paper bag when you leave. I know you’re like your Papachka and always forget things on the way out.”

“I’ll get you afterwords,” I respond listlessly.

I grab the rye bread from the fridge, climb onto the counter, and reach to the jar drawer grabbing the fist jar my fingertips manage to roll into my palm. I make sure it’s about the same size as the instructed one. I place the paper bag outside the front door, throw on some worn black converse and a gray coat and head out. One bare foot is still in a Gucci oxford at the cafe.

I pull the Forrester out of the garage. I stop. I forgot the bag. I hear my mother’s “Just as I knew it would be,” in my head.

The jolt of being out of the house is nailed down with the realization I’m not anywhere close to where my imagination wants me to be. Wire sidewalk chairs, knocking knees with slender, bearded men mix with stoplights and gray sky. The windshield wipers slap me back to reality with each sway across the glass.

At a four-way stop, just as it is my turn to go, my vision blurs, my eyes dart, my heart tries to escape. Ribs grip the prisoner into submission. I remind myself this is just panic. It is not new. My ear canal expands crowding my brain. I open the window for air and remind myself over and over again this is the crash landing to the streets, the home streets I walked with my grandfathers to and from school. The men who rescued me from my mute existence, from kids whose parents packed their neat peanut butter sandwiches in crisp brown paper bags.

I have been given clear instruction to let it burn out. Halfway to Grandmother’s house, this red riding hood has to trade tweed for steel armor. My body knows the battle that awaits. Redirect the adrenaline, abort panic, abort panic, and initiate Spinoza, stoicism and detachment. On guard.

I’m different damn it. I’m not, not enough at least. I’ll write in a cover letter or a graduate school personal statement how my rich multicultural background has given me profound perspective and creative problems solving skills. I’ll leave out the other gifts: panic disorder and acid reflux—saving those for the exit strategy.

I pull in. I peel off the safety belt from a wounded chest. My heart still pounds grinding my brain into tapioca. My ribs are on high alert as the inmate in the isolation chamber remains in throws.

Reaching for the paper bag, I tell myself the sharp pain in my shoulder is from the crash landing to reality, not a sign of an impending heart attack. But it’s not fast enough. My reptilian brain has me on an operating table with my father pulling my mother’s contorted face into his chest.

I climb up stairs to the door without a recollection of the movements that got me from the car to the doorknob. I knock and say, “It’s me.”

“You are here,” Baba responds with somber warmth.

A uniformly five-foot orb embraces me. Leaning in, I resist jerking my cheek away as it grazes three coarse chin hairs.

“Privet, how are things,” I ask knowing the answer.

“At my age it doesn’t matter. My joy comes only from you,” she looks me up and down congratulating herself for holding back.

“So what have you been up to? Did you take a walk outside? It’s pretty nice,” I keep it spry and light.

“Are you hungry?”

“No, I ate.”

Baba grabs my hips and runs her hands up my sides to my armpits.

“There’s nothing there. You might as well be two-by-four. Thank God I got up early to make you lunch. Potatoes, fried fish and homemade coleslaw. Sit down.”

“I already ate.”

I sit down at the kitchen table set with rinsed out sour cream and yogurt containers. I pick up a copy of Jew World from a stack of newspapers on the table. In Baba’s house, reading the news is done five times daily facing Jerusalem. I make my way through the headlines: New York Rabbi Blames Hip Hop for Rise in Interfaith Marriage; New Jersey Girl, First Generation American Wins Title Belt in Bronx Boxing Championship,” and then I see it. Three red lines, the third a clean incision in the paper, Scientist Finds Women’s Eggs Get Hard at 25. I close the paper and gently set it on the empty chair next to me. God help me.

“So how is Gladiolus?” I attempt a diversion.

“Ah, she keeps bringing me all this cream cheese, and I keep telling her I don’t

eat it.”

“Stocking up on cream cheese, even if it’s twenty cents off at Fred Meyer for Presidents Day Weekend only, is not the best use of one’s limited time on this planet,” I play the learned skeptic.

“Nu,” Baba looks down not sure what to do with the WASP sitting across from her, likely doubting our blood relations. Then again, besides clicking small buttons and morning clitoral prophylactics, I do even less in the tangible world.

“Lena how is the fish? Why is there only one piece on your plate?” She plops two more down.

“I said I already ate. Misha catches this fish from a pier at the boat launch. If he bothered to read the sign he leans his spare fishing pole against, he’d know it says not to eat the fish. The fertilizer from manicured lawns wreaks havoc on the fish DNA,” I pause to think up a little more drama.

“He caught a boneless carp once. Makes the two-meter Chernobyl mushrooms look organic,” I exaggerate and duly prove we’re connected. I’m one of you, a worrier, too.

“Oi, come on we’ve been eating it since ’91,” Baba takes a bite of the tail.

“I don’t think that point helps your argument. The sign is translated into Russian, Chinese, and Spanish. He’s doing a disservice to our people painting us an illiterate Mongol-Tatar horde among our new American brothers.” I break into familiar overstatement. Baba finally laughs. I might be spared. I look down at my plate and find a second helping of potatoes, coleslaw, and a freshly buttered piece of rye bread gently rocking at the edge of the plate. How does she do it? What slight of hand.

“I don’t want it,” I violently scoop the intruders back to their BPA origins.

“You’ve become cartilage and skin. You will not end well looking the way you do. Why do you do this to your mother?”

And so fly the daggers of Baba’s intermezzo. I will not be spared, not today.

She continues. “If only you watched more Channel One. Last evening they showed Jūrmala, and there were so many beautiful girls wearing heels, shaking their hips, wearing figure-pinching dresses. When will I see you in something like this instead of this shkutz uniform.”

“I dress up when necessary. Look outside, we’re not on the Baltic coast,” I go back to stern objectivity.

“Lena, Grisha’s granddaughter, comes to visit, and I peep out the window and I always, every time, without exception, in any weather, any time of day see her in heels,” Baba presents empirical evidence. She proceeds to stand up to demonstrate on her tiptoes the gentle sway of her watermelon hips. Like Venus’s moons, her arms orbit the celestial orb. Baba Sofa with her chin to the Gods rolls across the room.

She lets her arms fall with a loud thud, and drops her shoulders in indignation at the end of her catwalk.

“When will you finally understand that the success you seek in life has more to do with the height of your stiletto not the content of your character, or however they say it in fairy tales they teach in your American schools.”

“Tfu!” She makes a spitting motion through her lips. “If one day you listened to me, to the truth, you would see that you would be well taken care of. And your mother would get more restful sleep.”

“You need new material,” I coldly reply.

“Nu, what’s the use? Your grandfather never got to see any great grandchildren, why should it be different for me. Your aunt who is twenty years younger than me has four.

“That’s what happens when you get married six months after you start menstruating,” I engage my armor.

“I just ask for one. You know her Anusia, when she goes somewhere she’s got red lipstick on, her boobs are on display and her zadnitsa is swaying thanks to a white pair of six-centimeter patent leather heels,” Baba’s passionate pantomime accentuates each point.

“As long as you’re having fun,” I say with superiority.

It’s getting dangerously hot. I let her be and step away into the bedroom. I walk to a wall of pictures. There’s a news clipping from a Polish newspaper. A man stands at a rectangular table. Three men and two women in white lab coats look up at him. One of them is my great grandfather. This is all that remains of him and his family.

I jump from one fire pit into another. The ribs are alerted to grip my pounding heart, and I unfold a scene.

“Hello is this Mr. Yusim?”

“Yes,” my grandfather responds.

“This is Alexander Abrahams calling from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.”

“I see”

“I wanted to acknowledge the receipt of the Pages of Testimony for the commemoration of your relatives who lost their lives in the Shoah.”

“You received my package.”

“I wanted to confirm that the following names will be engraved into the memorial, Avraam Yusim, Isaak Yusim, Iosif Yusim, and Rakhil Yusim, your brothers and parents. The pages of testimony will be kept in the Hall of Names.”

“That is them.”

“They lived on 18 Gorelov Streeet in apartment 118 in Lvov Ukraine, correct?”

“Yes”

“Lvov is an important city for the Jewish people.”

“I’m aware.”

“Lena!” I’m yanked back and the thumping prisoner makes a temporary escape to my throat. I hear plastic bags crackle in the kitchen. I swallow hard to push it back into my tight chest.

“Do you guys need any eggs?” She chews out the last syllable. Her eyebrow jumps an octave as the connection is made. Like a gazelle meeting the tiger’s eye in the plain, I give a quick peck and flee.

“Wait!”

“I have to go! I will be late getting Mama,” I plead.

“I forgot to tell you the most important piece of news I read. I’ve been saving it all week to tell you.” She catches the door as I race down the stairs toward the car.

“Oi, I’m such an idiot to not have remembered sooner,” she shouts and stomps her foot.

“You know that women’s eggs start getting hard at 25. You are 27! You want retard babies?”

I jump the last three steps almost knocking down an Indian couple returning from a peaceful walk. They check on their bejeweled children cooing in a double stroller I nearly topple. I feel their Ceylon eyes follow me.

I land in the wet streets I walked with my grandfather to and from school. I repeat his escape. I repeat our escape. It will not let me go. But, when it does, I will be free to be the remix of our histories, to see the courage and the triumph rise above the tragedies.

“Remembering the Holocaust is not an issue for us; we are, in our parent’s minds, the answer to the Holocaust. We are in our minds, the guardians of a problematic, unique and volatile legacy. We do not need to be reminded of it; rather we need to learn how to translate our consciousness of evil, our skepticism, our sense of outrage into constructive action.” – Helen Epstein

I’m not one to shy away from difficult subjects in art. Nonetheless, I’m zero for three with Schindler. Not once could I get passed even ten minutes. The distance of abstraction isn’t there to cushion the tragedy because my family has those faces, lived in those places, and rode those trains.

Though I traveled and lived in cities with notable World War II exhibits and historical sights a short bus ride away, I never went. Not the Holocaust museum in DC, not Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, not Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam, nor Jewish Museums in Vienna and Prague. I’ve kept a safe distance from Poland. My self-soothing rationale was always that I didn’t need to be reminded. It’s stapled to me.

I didn’t want to be reminded of why I can’t make mistakes, why I must be agreeable and rise to every challenge. My life represented redemption and survival and had to be protected by the thickest of fences. Every jog lead my imagination to a marathon, every paper to a thesis, a loose dream to a novel, an analysis to a top floor boardroom. I sought acceptance and assimilation and in the process shredded my heart. I’ve often crumbled under this weight.

My great grandfather Iosif was shot in the head at work in the first four days of occupation. My great uncle Avraam was shot sneaking out of the ghetto to sell family jewelry for food. My great uncle Isaac was hung on a balcony as an example of what happens to a Jew that fights back. My great grandmother Rivka remained waiting her turn to die among the 200,000 tied to the same fate. Eastern Galicia was judenrein, cleansed of Jews, by November 1943. My grandfather learned these details from the remaining connection to his family – a Ukrainian housekeeper he ran into on the street shortly after returning from the front.

My mother’s father, Veniamin Yusim was the sole survivor in his family and one of the half of one percent of the Jewish population that survived the Nazi occupation of Lvov, Ukraine. Even after his passing in 2007, the shadow of his tragedy remains a silent member of my family.

In the fall of 2010, I sat with my grandmother and recorded her memories of the war and what my grandfather shared with her. I am grateful that he could speak about his war experiences and his painful return to a city that built his character and betrayed his soul.

In participating in my grandmother’s telling, I saw that what breaks us are not the unimaginable horrors but the small details that link us to the perished. When my grandmother spoke about Rivka losing her children, she felt a mother’s loss and wept. For me it was a scene.

In the wake of victory over the Germans, many Soviet soldiers looted German apartments and businesses. In a chaotic scene filled with victorious frenzy and tired defeat, German POWs are marched down streets as Red Army trofeynyi batalioni gather loot won from the Germans. Russian soldiers restart thinking about their future and the materials necessary to build it. Will it be German guns, tools, machinery, a musical instrument, fabric, or boots? Snippets of character are revealed in these decisions. My grandfather grabbed notebooks and paper. When I heard that, when I saw this scene, whatever lived inside of me that struggled to be named and felt broke out of its cage.

My grandfather would never have wanted his story written. But the story is no longer just his, it is mine.

You could saw through the air of suspicion, in what I estimate was my 40^th job interview. After the required pleasantries, the woman across the table said that in her experience there are two types of employees – butterflies and nesters. Slyly looking down on my paper self she saw a notorious butterfly. I have no real defense. The longest stint I’ve had was barely two years. But to say I am a butterfly is incomplete. Delusional, confused, scared, selfish, and idealistic may be getting closer to the root.

My response was a rehearsed brew:  getting on the wrong track, the nature of the lean and mean contracting world, and the tight economy. I was sensibly elusive.

What I should have said, what I wanted to say was:

“Listen, I am a butterfly that’s in need of some ankle weights, better yet, crampons to force me into the ground.  I’m tired of floating, being at the mercy of passing breezes. I can’t guarantee a lifetime commitment to you, but I can say that based on meeting the team and the intangibles of the environment, I could stick around and be useful. You seem like thoughtful people.

Perhaps you should consider adding nesting butterflies to your ‘types of employees’ paradigm. Some of us need nests to be comfortable enough to float about and explore. You shouldn’t be deterred by this because innovation and good ideas rely on some level of chaos. Also, I want to write, but it doesn’t pay the bills and your non-soul invasive job does. I won’t be much of a writer if I am always thinking about where my lunch money will come from.”

At least it’s satisfying on paper.

Clearing things up to a woman across the table, one I could potentially never speak to again, is much easier than weeding out what I should be saying to myself.

First, I have to start with what I know. I love words, language, how a cleverly expressed argument or insight punches you in the chest and the exuberance of getting halfway there myself. My father took me to a stationary store back in Lvov when I was six. It was an immediate attraction: pens and paper. I still hoard them biblically waiting for a deluge of genius to pour out of me. But, to wait is an unsatisfying verb to live by.

So, if I sit myself down for an interview what do I ask, what responses do I weed out?

The spurious stints are a reflection of how deeply off track I veered. The worst side effect of my ego addiction cleverly disguised behind fear induced excuses. Like with all addictions, realizing you have a problem is the first step.

“Hello my name is Elena Reitman and I am addicted to excuses.”

My excuses are so conveniently heavy. The only surviving child of poor, Russian Jew immigrants, disposed to dwelling and panic attacks. It’s hard to beat; a heavy lot is so convenient for absolving yourself of responsibility.

“Look, I survived. Get off my back.”

Yes, I watched my parents struggle to learn a new culture and work through heavy mental and physical struggles. Life was met with zeal toward the comportments and anonymity of American life, even its often unbearable lightness. There was a deliberate distancing from the past, no idealization, no romanticizing the predicament. Like generations of Soviet Jews before them, the objective was to stay off lists, work to provide for the family, and always anticipate the next calamity. The margin of error was narrow. Sob story author bios do fit nicely in book jackets.

It’s not until now that I better understand the behavior, some of it ugly, and my resulting anger and responsibility to mend it with accolades, trophies and correct conduct. Step two: awareness of addiction. Nice try ego. I did in part because it felt good to succeed. It’s also possible that some of the success came from sympathy I crafted with the right stories. But before you tag me as a self-hating Jew, I will admit I’m crafty, something I do appreciate about myself despite it getting me into trouble. I can live with crafty Jew.

Part of the root cause of the addiction is my issue with what I perceive as expected proper conduct.  I can go with the flow, numbly. It’s a sickly kind of flow. Not the expected kind that comes from doing something for the first time, but a slow gnawing that develops when you go against your nature for the sake of not bruising the ego. Out of what appeared as fear, I adopted outside voices. Only a handful of times did I risk reaching in for my own. If not practiced, the ability to find an authentic voice fades.  And if it fades, you are in danger of becoming a complete mystery to yourself. Few things are worse.

That devilish ego kicked in as fear! Figures a crafty Jew would have a crafty ego.

I still feel guilty and raw about writing something honest and personal. I hear a voice knocking me down telling me it’s self-indulgent, poor form. I foresee comments and judgments from people I have been so agreeable to. Here we go again. This habit is hard to kick.

Every time I reach outside my mind, somewhere between the heart and the spine where the ego has no claim, I see a writer. Nothing scares me more than writing, except that not doing it will make me scared of everything else.

Time to shit or get off the pot.

Apology: 2010

I’m sorry Baba Sofia, for my womb is not with child,

My bank account not merged,

No comma MD postscript to my name,

But Fame!

A sordid sort of game.

I dream like salted herring for its sea,

That one day I’ll be free.

“Yes, brie. I have.”

No Baba, now is not the time, for filling stomach does not dignify the rhyme

Sit dearest Baba,

I have news.

Despite my blues, you’ve been the greatest Baba muse

Apology: 2008

I’m sorry Baba Sofia, I’m not pregnant yet
but I did loads of great stuff – don’t fret

I scheduled lots of meetings and color-coded decks
and even pretended to know stuff, only to vex

I read Milton Friedman and schemed of grand plots
O8 was a year of the luckiest flops

I smoked illegal cigars and drank manly liquors
all for inspiring funnier kickers

I tried to play nice and laugh with the boys
they do all the fun stuff, play with the best toys!

I upset you a lot by not wearing stilettos
it’s an O9 resolution, that, and freeing babies from ghettos

I have good intentions, but times are so strange
so far from your norms of the Carpathian range

But you should know, my roundest of Babas, and here we’ll agree,
life is simpler when you fight, not become bourgeoisie

The next generation of workers will demand more flexibility, freedom to express themselves, and support for personal development- yes, this may include a six month sabbatical in the Andes for Spanish immersion courses or a summer in Antarctica. We’ve heard this. Echo bummers are a pain in the ass. They are so, particularly if they are confused with themselves. Blame technology, heightened expectations, rising per capital GDP, longer life expectancy, and birth control pills – all of which allow for extended dicking around. It’s a closet half filled with wrinkle free oxfords and half shlepwear. Brooks Brothers and American Apparel coexist in harmony.

HR folks have an understandably hard time with us. I wouldn’t want to deal with all this drama when I’m trying to run a business that requires diligence and execution of unglamorous but critical duties.

Welcome to the battle, one I’ve been waging since graduating high school. There’s nothing particularly special about me going through this, but it has been ugly and excruciating at times. I record the following ten points because I hope not to repeat them, at least not willingly, and to show solidarity to anyone struggling.

1. Distinguish brain candy from contentment

I find economics incredibly interesting, but not the clean cut stuff, the messy, unexpected behavioral stuff that explores why we don’t behave logically and are paralyzed by choice. Many of these thinkers show how the freedom to choose is the enemy of happiness. Read Barry Schwartz for more. When ambition is constrained, there is more joy in work. That constraint is quite difficult to impose on ourselves especially if we have a candy hungry brain. Using the brain to solve problems makes the brain happy, but are these problems worth focusing on? There is more to a human than just a brain. And as is with anything, if you leave parts ignored, they atrophy.

I spent a good part of my life trying to prove my competency to teachers, professors, and bosses. I adopted their language, followed their rules, keeping my head box busy. Unfortunately, proving you’re smart can often turn into really unsatisfying theater. My friend Mark looked over my graduate school essay and said I was trying to hard to prove to the school that I’m smart. My first clue I was completely lost.

A brain running on candy may have trouble pausing and asking whether it’s on track to make someone’s life richer. Focusing on how I feel only makes me feel worse. Unfortunately, it’s a necessary exercise if I want to change thinking habits. It’s hard in light of the realization that many of the best best moments in life involved frontal brain bits the least.

2. Building a life instead of a career

Ok, so I’ll do this because it will look good on my resume and open doors. Wait! What doors am I hoping to open? Thinking that I sell out for a bit to make some cash and then do something creative/fun/entrepreneurial/non-profitish didn’t happen as smoothly as I imagined. You get attached and adapt. Think of a break up with someone you didn’t see yourself sharing a tombstone with but had been with for at least a year. You’re entrenched and breaking it off will feel like a loss. Doing something for the short term, cashing in, and then following something you are passionate about DOES NOT WORK. Worst of all it will make you hopeless for the things you are probably better suited for. The familiarity and security of the reliable cash cow becomes a major stumbling block in the “thi$ then that” plan.

You are smart and know that big rewards require forfeiting your time and energy, and worst of all your autonomy. Self determination theory states there are three innate psychological needs 1) competence 2) autonomy 3) relatedness. A huge price has to be paid for taking that from you. Companies that take the most of these know this and smartly offer hard to resist rewards.

3. It’s a very quiet whisper

It’s really a tickle in a primordial part of your brain that tells you something is interesting, but don’t expect to know why. It tends to come to you when you are feeling good, maybe after a nice solitary beer, or as you stare out a window on a long car ride. “Something that breaks a polite routine and for a brief period and allows us to witness things with the heightened sensitivity afforded us by novelty, danger or beauty” (Alain de Botton). It may have even come to you when you were a kid exposed to the subject or medium for the first time. Not all of us are that lucky. In many cases it comes when life gets tough and your spirit or body needs sutures. It may never come unless it’s fought for. And honestly if it comes, it may not be as great as you thought.

Epiphanies don’t exist. There are faint whispers, and they require a still mind to catch. Trial and error more often than not ends with error. Errors are painful in ways you often can’t imagine. They are also paralyzing. They will also repeat, if they don’t change you.

Despite this, you can’t fight your nature by being an impostor: “If you drive nature out of the door with a pitchfork, she will creep around and climb in at the windows.” (Robertson Davies) I was never going to be a corporate jet setter, or a smooth talking bureaucrat.  I’m a nervous, scatterbrained slouch on bad days. And on good days I’m about the same, but make more jokes.

4. Stop asking for advice

Anyone close to me has been asked, “So, what do you think I should do?” When you do this, isn’t there an answer you’re really hoping to hear. Come on be honest.

You have to live it. For the person you ask it’s just a thought exercise. How sound is their judgment? Everyone is slightly prejudiced by his or her own experiences and decisions. What sounds like advice may be validation for their own chosen philosophies/path. It may be envy or a misguided impulse to protect you. Mostly, don’t expect them to do the work you have to do for yourself. They have done the internal aerobics to get them where they are, and if it’s a good place, they probably don’t want to jeopardize it by really sympathizing with you.

5. Physics always win. An object at rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

It’s almost impossible to think your way out of it. I’ve heard thousand of times that you have to think positively, believe in it, and want it bad. No. You have to act and fail a few times and have some crappy periods, and then when you get sick of making the same mistakes, you might stand a chance of changing. But, you might not change and have to accept and learn to appreciate your nature and go from there.  I’m notorious for researching and brooding over what to do next or how to mentally approach something, when really I should just do something and find some folks who might want to do it with me.

From Steppenwolf: “What I needed was not knowledge and understanding. What I longed for in my despair was life and resolution, action and reaction, impulse and impetus.” Read the rest of this entry »

Nature always win; it’s programed to do so. As someone fighting with my natural composition, this question is often on my mind. How much can we really change? A small bush outside my parents’ condo started blooming in early January. This has been an unusually warm winter in Seattle, and I thought plants took blooming cues from the angle of the sun. It’s way ahead of schedule.

Why do I care? I think it struck me because there’s this sense- confirmed by like-minded comrades- that there’s simply a lot of change in process in our planet, our politics, our relationships, and our values. It’s often hard to have a truly objective eye when making statements like this because undoubtedly all generations feel this.  It’s humbling and comforting to realize that this questioning is remarkably unoriginal.

The last few weeks back home with my family have reminded why it  gets hairy when I try to dig in and understand myself. Steve Jobs says that to understand our place in the world and find passion we have to look backwards and connect the dots. Speculatively connecting for the future doesn’t work. I looked back; I got sad. But after all I am Soviet born American and should acclimate to the optimism of my new home. So here I am trying to use lemons to make zest in a new recipe for life. Having already lived for 26 years, one would think I have gained sufficient understanding of the things I enjoy, and of the pursuits that fulfill me. I realize I do not, or more accurately, I have lost touch because I’ve spent the large part of my post-college graduation years trying to fit into the wrong shoes. When you wear ill fitting shoes for too long, your feet revolt and you fall.

I’m thankful for having a home and family that have cushioned the landing. The fall is for the rising.

Quote from current reading, Robertson Davies, The Deptford Trilogy: .”..spiritual athletics do not lead to wisdom. Forgive yourself for being a human creature.”

I moved to Washington DC in May of 2009 where I spent time working for the FCC, taking an IT course at the University of Maryland, and a semester in the Communications, Culture and Technology program at Georgetown. DC is a fantastic place for the intellectually curious, with think tank talks, museum exhibits, political forums and vibrant conversation all around. I was also extremely fortunately to be able to live with a dear friend. This makes all the difference when you come to a new city.

The posts that precede this are examples of some of the issues around internet policy, technology, and human capital I examined in my courses at Georgetown. I hope to continue following these issues through this blog, as well as expand it to other interests: literature, art, philosophy, photography, travel, and whatever ignites me in the future.

I am in the process of moving back to Seattle to be closer to family, friends, and nature. I learned that paradoxically graduate school got in the way of my curiosity and ability to explore freely. I also learned that the education I seek is not one that can be easily bundled into a discipline, but is more readily found in everyday experience and appreciation. This of course is all a euphemism for a quarter life crisis.

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be”- Lao Tzu