Wherein the author cuts out the crap

Ok. I don't know what you'd call this, but I'm calling it a change of direction. I am 46 years old and I think I have earned the right to start taking control of my own life. I'm tired of doing things to please everyone else.

I know there is an entire contingency out there that can't believe I do ANYTHING to please anyone else, but you're wrong. I have spent a lot of time and energy trying to please other people and smooth things out for others, and make sure everyone else is happy and never giving a thought to what it is that makes me happy. But a recent series of events in my life have demonstrated, unequivocally, that my self-denial is without value. Let's just say that the lack of positive reinforcement for such behavior has led me to believe I am knocking myself out for absolutely nothing.

So the buck stops here. Presumably, half of my life is over. I think that gives me some latitude.

I have decided to stop coloring my hair. The reasons for this are two-fold. One. Coloring your hair isn't good for it. Two. Despite buying hair color that is designed to be "cool" and not highlight any red, every box of hair color I have tried over the past 4 years has turned my hair red. And it's not a flattering red. It's this weird red that I don't think favors my skin tone. And I guess there is also Three. My dad had grey hair and it looked really nice. I'm hoping my hair will go that way.

Now not coloring hair is a pretty radical thing in my family. It's sort of like saying you aren't going to shave your legs anymore. My 92-year-old Gram still colors her hair. She told me it wasn't polite for me to go grey before she did. I have a feeling that should anyone ask, they'd stare at me like I just dropped out of graduate school to join a commune if I told them of my decision. But color it I will no more. If it makes me look old, I guess that means I'm old.

#2 on my list. I have decided to start drinking Coca Cola Classic again. I love Coke Classic and I haven't allowed myself to enjoy it in years and years and years. I figure if I am going to be overweight and sexless, I might as well enjoy the things I eat. I don't drink enough soda for a can a day to make that much of a difference.

#3. I am going to make some new friends who have absolutely nothing to do with school. I am outgoing. I have always enjoyed a high level of social activity. I never had to wonder what was going to happen on Friday night, because something would come up. Social activity just spontaneously generated around me. And when I first came to Carbondale, we had a large group of grad students who enjoyed each other's company. I thought it would stay that way. But things have changed. People have moved on and new faces have arrived. There are cliques now and I'm part of none. I have tried to integrate but it just feels forced. I don't quite know how to put my finger on it. I'm generally forgotten. If I am not at the forefront of people's minds when it's time to do things, so be it. I'll do my own thing.

#4. Someone once said of me: "You don't seek to be a leader, but in the absence of true leadership, you will lead." I think that's on the mark. Professionally, I have floundered for 4 years. I thought I had the skills and the talent to raise money for my project. I do not. The entire time that I have struggled and panicked and come to terms with an unfunded project, I have done so alone. None of my professional mentors--even those that I thought SHOULD give a shit--offered a hand, any friendly advice, or any alternatives I might have considered. While I was out in the field over the past few weeks, I came to an epiphany. My path through graduate school has been impossibly harder than almost every other person I have studied beside. (I am willing to concede that the Chinese student who was involved in an arranged marriage, became pregnant, and her husband began to abuse her and her child--all while attempting to study for her prelims in a foreign language--wins that contest hands down.) But on a general ease-of-making-progress-in-graduate-school scale with my peers, I have come up as a significant outlier. I have waited on those who should have led to lead, and I waited in a vacuum. I have watched with some amazement as those people who ignored my efforts and needs bend over backwards to extend themselves to others. It is painfully clear I am now solely responsible for finishing. I am left to my own devices. So I am no longer looking for leadership, mentoring or advice from those folks anymore. I believe I have the skills I need to do the work. I believe I have sufficient funds to do the work. And since I traversed the hard times alone, I've decided to continue on my own. I think people who know me in my professional life are going to notice a big change in the coming year. Or worse, perhaps they won't even notice at all.

I don't know if this is all for the better or the worse. I don't really think it matters. I'll be a grey-haired, grumpy ol' fart, who stays home with her dog on Friday nights, or maybe I'll be a smart, genuine, person who finds a social circle that does enjoy my company and what I have to offer. Maybe Jake will be my only friend. Maybe I'll take up roller skating. Or sky diving. Or hip hop dancing. Maybe I'll spend every weekend in the herbarium. Maybe people will be pissed at me or maybe they won't even notice the change. So be it. There is more than one way to do graduate school and there is more than one way to live your life. From now on, I'm doing both in a manner that pleases me.

Traveling Ashes

I've been preoccupied by a thought lately. It's about place and belonging. I went walking in the woods on Sunday and was reminded of the woods of my childhood. There was a time when I knew every woodlot in a 5-mile radius of my parent's house. I knew where to find the best blackberry bushes, where had the neatest streams for damming, where to find arrowheads, where to find pop bottles for cashing in, and where to build the best club houses. Now, I can't remember the name of the streets two streets over. I couldn't find the house my best friend lived in although I bet I spent the night there 50 times. I get turned around while driving when I'm in for the holidays. I feel no sense of belonging there. I am an outsider. My hometown is not my home any longer.

I am homeless.

There's Chicago. Sometimes, some memory will spark a colossal case of the warm fuzzies over Chicago. It adopted me. It didn't care where I came from, it just said, "Come in out of the cold. There's good people here." It took a while, but I could name the streets from the Field Museum to Wrigley Field and from Lake Shore Drive to Damen Avenue. I felt like I belonged. Now, it's all gone. The street names. My favorite haunts. The people I called friends. Not one person I knew in 12 years remains in touch. No phone calls. No Christmas cards. No, Chicago is not home.

Southern Illinois is not home either. Sure, I own a house here, but I am only passing through. I don't know my neighbors. I am a ship with no port. I am a pirate. A gypsy. A Bedouin. An Mbuti. I am not bothered by this. I am not like those Army brats who spend the whole of their adult lives trying to lay down roots in every vacant field. Perhaps it was because I was tethered to one place as a kid--but no, that's not it. I have always had wanderlust. Always had an eye on the horizon. Never had the dream of meeting Prince Charming and having the Cinderella wedding. No fantasy of the husband and 2.3 kids, the house, the picket fence, bbqs with neighbors, and going on vacation to the same place with the same people year after year. I don't want to grow old and sip tea on the porch with the ladies that I have known the whole of my adult life. In fact, just thinking about that life stifles me. The way marriage stifled me. The thought of that is enough to kill my spirit.

They say you get the life you choose, for better or for worse. I like my life. It suits me. But I certainly find facets of it curious. I find it curious that I can't settle down and settle in. The longer I sit, the more I eye the door. I can't imagine moving back to a town where I have already lived. Ok, maybe Chicago. There was a line I recall from a B movie I once saw. The character ripped off his rear view and said in a terribly thick, fake Italian accent: "What'sa behind me is-a not important." The future, ladies and gentlemen, is where adventure lies--and the future is Out There. Like Bonnie Raitt says, the road is my middle name. I'm never so alive as I am when I am on the road. That's why I thought this botany gig would be so nice. I'd get to get it out of my system once a year. But a year between adventures is a very long time. And adventure is never so much fun as when it is shared.

When I think about the times I was happiest over the past year, and where those times happened, I think of Demming, New Mexico, drinking beer with Liv on the Continental Divide and learning about stars. It was dinner with Terry Griswald and David Moeller at Lake Isabella. It was meeting Linds and Joe and camping in that remarkable red valley. It was watching the whitewater on the Kern River. It was seeing my first wild burrowing owls in Winnemucca, Nevada. It was even the excitment of being that close to a Mojave green rattlesnake in the shadow of the Whitney Pockets. And so I have to ask myself. Where do I belong? Where is my home? Is it possible that the road is home? Is it possible that my home is in the mountains I've yet to climb? In the friends whose faces I haven't yet imagined? Is it possible that home is wherever I rest my head at night?

You know, maybe it wasn't so different when I was a kid. I wasn't exactly an indoor kid. I wasn't one to play dolls or dress up. The woods were my playground. And every day, between my companions and my imagination, between dawn and dusk, I ran free. But I have been here 5 years. I am getting itchy feet. I long for the road. My compromise is to reinvent this house. To make it feel new through some massive project. I like my house. It is small and meets my needs. But I am not attached to it.

Bek left this past semester. I realized that of all the people who I started with, I'm the only one left. I am a cohort of 1. Every year a new group comes in, but they are not my group. My phone sometimes goes a week without ringing. My life has become stagnant, uneventful, and predictable. It is, in a word, tedium. Worst of all, it lacks adventure. Donne said, "No man is an island." And yet there are times when I am sure I am so utterly alone that I wonder if any ship will ever pass my way again. Although I'm not sure it is lonliness that has me feeling off-kilter so much as the feeling of being stranded here.

The Lone Ranger had Tonto. Tom Hanks had Wilson. D has Jake the Wonder Dog. I am torn between this need for novelty and this desire for something permanent. I would rather my companions be permanent and my surroundings transient. Unfortunately, I am at a place right now where the opposite is true. My colleagues are transient. Jake is transient. Soon he will leave me as Nevada did. Those old dogs of mine have taught me a valuable lesson. They never cared where we lived as long as we were together. And so, I haven't buried them. I can't leave them behind. I carry their ashes with me. And when I die, their ashes will be buried with mine. Unless, of course, I can find someone willing to cart around our traveling ashes. I'm betting on the latter.

We are a tribe of nomads. Our home is with each other.