One Thing

Why, hello. No, you are not mistaken, I am posting in my blog. You know why? Because it's 2013. It's a new year, ripe with possibilities and untarnished aspirations and countless goals and dreams for the coming months. New Years is a time to take a moment and take a deep breath, to spend some small amount of minutes reevaluating your life: where you are, what you’d like to do, and where you see yourself by the end of the year. At least, that's what it's always been like for me.

To me, New Years is the adult version of the first day of school. You gear up for it for weeks, imagining yourself in your best form, a person without that deeply annoying habit of biting your fingernails, of slouching, or of ending sentences with, "you know?," you know? When you're younger, you get a new wardrobe that can reinvent who you are, and more importantly, who you want to become. You get binders and pencils and books to make you smarter, and maybe even some new friends in new classes with new subject matter to make you grow into a more intelligent, more well-versed adult, the kind that knows things like where the golgi apparatus is inside a mitochondria and that can recite “Oh Captain, My Captain” at will.

Sadly, all that newness kind of goes away when you grow up. Sure, when you're older you get gym memberships that you're fully going to commit to this year (not like last year), maybe some new clothes for New Year’s Eve if you have a social gathering, but ultimately after school ends you lose that crisp exciting feeling of newness and resolve. Except for on New Years.

Looking at most of the adults I know, it seems like if you're lucky, you get a few days off from work to spend with friends, family, or Ryan Seacrest on tv, maybe sipping something deliciously bubbly but internally remarking how utterly unremarkable the stroke of midnight always seems to be. Except for New Years, because of the all-too-critical tradition of making important New Year’s Resolutions. Resolutions make the whole pomp and circumstance of New Years seem that much more definite, more life-changing. You can finally make a commitment to yourself on a significant day (and not just any random Tuesday) to run that marathon, to speak up more at work, to finally learn how to speak Spanish to seduce that sexy vecino of yours. You would know what vecino meant if you had committed to learning Spanish, already.

My resolution is a little different, and is something I'm referring to as my "one thing." Many moons ago, back when we Massachusetts people donned skimpy swim wear and visited tiny, rocky beaches and pretended that we didn't have work on Monday, I got sick with a little something that the doctors are pretty sure was maybe West Nile. The verdict is still out. But regardless of what it was, it was just plain awful. I spent many weeks slumped over, stuck over indoors, being ache-y, watching entire seasons of tv pass by on Netflix, and generally feeling a whole mess of self pity. I no longer considered myself a contributing member of society, heck- I just called it a small victory if I could get through the morning without puking. Those were not my shiniest, most noteworthy hours.

So, once I started to escape the confines of my sick bed, I decided I would do one good thing a day that would make me feel like a real person. Just one good thing. That good thing could count as me paying off a bill I had been putting off for far too long, or writing a little note to someone I had been thinking about, or spending an entire evening without the internet (gasp). These actions were not revolutionary or innovative by any means, but they did make me feel a little less guilty as I crawled into bed at night. Because if I did my one thing, then that day was not a waste. It was just one thing, but it made me feel like a better, more complete person, a real adult.

Gradually, I got healthier, but I still kept to my one thing. And as I got stronger, my one thing started to get stronger, too, expanding to include things like gathering friends I'd been meaning to see, taking trips home I'd been meaning to take, reading books I'd had on a wish list that dated back to well before college, maybe even high school. They started to take a bit longer than one day, and that’s why, for this New Years, I am expanding my list again. For it is, after all, a new year full of promise, opportunity, hopefully health, and god willing, going viral on YouTube. Because that is one thing that is on my list of things to do, see, or experience this year. Fingers crossed.

Some of these one things may be small, like spending an hour doing nothing (victory is only counted if I manage to not fall asleep), some may be slightly larger (like to take part in a protest for a cause I believe in), some involve other people (like to sing what is arguably the greatest sing-a-long song known to man, Walking in Memphis, at a karaoke bar) and some are just plain practical (learn how to shoot a gun, or to host an R. Kelly "Trapped in the Closet" marathon).

The point is to finally do all those things I'd been thinking, "hey, that'd be pretty cool, maybe one day.” Because today is that one day. This year is that year. And, of course, for posterity’s sake, I'll be writing about it and providing photographic evidence when possible. Because personal growth should be shared, and this is my blog, and if you think my life goals are dumb or this blog is dumb, you can take some advice from my crotchety old Armenian grandmother and go scratch. There, I said it.

My first resolution was to ring in the New Year sober. Did I fail the first of my resolutions? Or did I complete my first task because I remembered last New Years where I drank from a bottle of Kraken rum on the Longfellow Bridge, kissed random passersby, got sick in a car, and tried to give away my iPad to the kind women at the Blandford stop on the Mass Pike because I was convinced that a depraved being such as myself no longer deserved such nice things as access to the internet and touch screen capability? Will I tell you the whole story in the following post? Guess you'll just have to tune in next time to see.

Wouldn't It Be Nice

In the second week of March, two-thousand and twelve, I turned twenty-five years old. As Wikipedia informs me, 25 is the number that comes after 24 and before 26, a song by Veruca Salt from their 1994 album American Thighs, and, in baseball, the number that teams reserve for their best, heavy-hitting slugger. Twenty-five years is a full quarter of a century and about a third of the life expectancy of the average adult human, give or take a few. In dog years, 25 is roughly the equivalent of 3.5 human years, which means if I were a dog, I'd be at that boundingly energetic yet not-quite-a-puppy-anymore stage, where I’d be fully house trained but also not completely trustworthy near small children.

If I were 25 in the middle ages, I would earn 6 haypence reaping hay or whatever, and then I’d still have to go home and tend to my children, of which I’d have at least 8 because you know there’s always at least two weak ones that will die of scurvy. In the 1800s, I’d probably be married to a man with acres of fertile ol' western land and creating little farm children and teaching them the bible by now.

But in 2012, I, along with many of my peers, am in this weird childhood-adulthood limbo that is basically a long, drawn-out extension of what we all should have gotten out of our systems when we were teens. Some of us (me) stay up late, thinking long and hard about how we (I) should “follow the bliss” and figure out our (my) "life plan,” but ultimately, many are only really interested in figuring out how to stave off adulthood for at least the next 4-6 years when, for all intents and purposes, you (I) are (am) a fully formed human. An adult. A grown up.

To make myself feel better at this ripe old age, I looked to some historical figures from which to draw inspiration. At 25, Orson Welles co-wrote, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane, which is allegedly the greatest film of all time. (I disagree- I saw it both before and after wisdom teeth surgery, and even with the benefit of pain killers, I was whelmed.) Twenty-five year old Charles Lindenburgh flew the Spirit of St. Louis solo across the Atlantic, the first man to ever do so, and won a prize equivalent to over $300,000 today. At 25, Joseph Smith founded the Church of the Latter Day Saints. No big deal. So far in my 25^th year, I’ve written a few really solid emails (that I still am particularly proud of) and I finished not one but two full television series on Netflix. Slow down, Em! (You seem to say.) There is so much to live for, but you live so wildly and with such reckless abandon!

Though I am not confident 25 will be the year where my hordes of adoring fans will first create and then subsequently flood my Wikipedia page to share with the world the greatness that I have bestowed upon them, I do solace myself with other internet mediums. Namely, a quick trip to Yahoo Answers demonstrates to me that, even if I don’t have a wiki, at the very least I’m middle of the pack in terms of having an existential crisis about my life. For one, I'm not seeking counsel from an anonymous internet forum filled with uninformed citizens imparting their best, uninformed guess for that weird color your rash is turning. And secondly, I can consistently spell existential, which has to give me some bonus points.

Perhaps I have not “come into my own” at 25 years because, up until this point, I have been unable to fathom what 25 or beyond would actually look like for me. Growing up, I had a clear picture of the important events in my life: high school, college, the first long-term relationship, new jobs, new cities, new living spaces. I had a basic grasp on what “life”  consisted of until around 23. But then after that- pfft. Nothing. It’s like my brain couldn’t comprehend anything after that point because it was overwhelmed with the plethora of possibilities. Or, maybe, it just simply fizzled out because all the good stuff was behind me and there was no point envisioning a bright future as I was already passed my prime, like one of those toddlers who ages up in the beauty pageant contests to the 7-9 age category but desperately wants to stay in the 5-6. I was really good at being in my early mid-twenties. But then I aged up.

The only substantial, tangible change that has occurred now that my life has clicked over into middle-twenties-hood is this: I can now rent a car more cheaply than I could a few weeks ago. Yay. If that’s not something to celebrate, then I just don’t know what is. Being an adult = awesometown, population me!

At the very least, this inability to perceive the future has been with me throughout my life (kudos for consistency, brain). I have a perfect memory of trying to envision what my future life would hold, and failing at it.

I was standing in the living room in my old house, in front of the big picture window that served as my dance studio mirror at night. I had just switched over from the Backstreet Boys’ “If You Want It to Be Good Girl (Get Yourself a Bad Boy)” and was a bit winded from my emphatic dance style (what I would later in life start calling "edgy" to make it sound more intentional). I picked up the next album in our family’s alphabetized collection- the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. I knew it would be a good choice because at the time I thoroughly enjoyed all pets, namely my own spastic puppy named Eddie and spotted hamster named Reilly. So the idea of the sounds of pets was very appealing to me.

I remember staring into the window-mirror as the first song, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” came on. I was looking at myself in the mirror, wondering when the dance-y part would kick in, when the lyrics started. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn’t have to wait so long…” Wait so long for what? I wanted to know. What would happen when I was older? With the impact of a thousand bricks, I realized that things were eventually going to change, I couldn't stop them, and I just couldn't comprehend anything after that.

The best way that I can think to describe what I felt in that moment is in the Korean word, “Han,” loosely translated as sorrow without tears. I was a very deep child. I felt thoroughly, irrevocably old, with no clear direction for what would happen when I was "older" but I knew it wasn't going to be as good as it was then in that moment, dancing in my living room. I was 9.

That’s sort of how being 25 feels to me right now. People are telling me that it gets nicer when you're older. There's travel and friends and marriage and babies and birthdays and fun to look forward too! And I'm trying so hard to picture what the future could be, the future where the Mayan prophecy isn't right and we all wake up blinking ashamedly on December 22nd, still having to go into work. And I'm trying really hard, desperately hard to picture what that world will be like, but there's just... empty space. I'm Harold, without his purple crayon. And that's a lot to take in as a 25 year old. 

But I could also go use that cheap car rental to drive me and some friends somewhere to try to figure it all out. Maybe even pop in that Beach Boys album and see if it gives me any new insights, this time around. 

I am not hungover anymore.

I am a half Irish, 20 something young woman with many years of imbibing under her belt, who also possesses much more faith in her liver than her liver probably merits. I used to be able to drink. Maybe I couldn't drink as much as a frat boy at Ole Miss, but for a 5'5" 130 pound woman, I could hold my own.

My first real drinking experience came when I was sitting on a wooden log around a bonfire in the woods off the old train tracks in my hometown. We called it Beaver Pond. Every Friday afternoon, a mass text message would come through on the cell phone that I shared with my twin sister, usually when I was in statistics. It was pretty much the only thing that got me through those Friday afternoon statistic classes.

At Beaver Pond, I had my first taste of Goldschlagger, a peculiar cinnamon-flavored schnapps that I haven't seen since I was 17. Maybe it's only sold to underage kids, I don't know. But on nights around the bonfire, where my friend Paul would play Oasis songs on his guitar, we slowly sipped at the cheapest alcohol our part-time jobs could afford. Milwaukee's Best ("the beast"), Pabst Blue Ribbon, Popov in its clear plastic bottle. It was a simpler time, then. But those formative drinking experiences ingrained in me that if I was not a good drinker, at least I kind of decent at it.

In college, I pretty much drank anything that anyone handed to me out of one of those ubiquitous red solo cups. It is the exact opposite of what the lectures proselytized to us during "First Days," my college's equivalent to freshman introductory week. There weren't any classes, there were lots of lectures about life on campus and how to avoid date rape (tip: don't be drunk! ever!), and then at night we'd party. It was camp college, and to us, it made perfect sense. Though alcohol is often framed as a sinful, motivating factor behind everything indecent, the worst things I ever really did during this time was to race around campus with my friends, hopping from gathering to gathering and laughing a bit too loud. I danced on a couple of tables and allegedly stole two boxes of Trix from a dining hall after it had closed. In my defense, if they didn't want people to steal the Trix, they shouldn't make them so delicious.

The night before I graduated from college, my friends held a meet and greet for their family and friends on the porch of my senior housing. It was a barbeque, with tons of good ol' fashioned family fun. There were hot dogs and hamburgers, corn husking, and games of beirut. It was there that I played my first (and last) game of beer pong with my mild-mannered, alcohol-abstaining mother. My mom was the MVP of the game. I would like to throw in the caveat that the night of the barbeque, I had an undiagnosed case of Swine Flu and a raging fever, but the fact of the matter remains that my mother sunk more cups than I. And it was awesome. Clearly I got my liver from one side of the family, and I have my suspicions as to which side it was.

That night is important for a few reasons. One, I was one of only a handful of kids at my school to actually contract Swine Flu, or as we called it, "the swine," because that is a story in and of itself. But that night is also significant because of a conversation I had with my friend's father.

We were talking about everything you'd expect on the night before graduation: graduation itself, life, my plans for next year, and then he got kind of quiet for a moment. And with a kind of passive longing, he looked at me and said, "You know, you won't be able to drink like this forever." Then he gently placed his arm around my shoulder in a fatherly way, as if to impart such great knowledge in a more delicate manner. "You get hangovers like that." He said, he snapping his fingers. And the moment was gone.

Upon reflection, I remember thinking, "Huh. That'd suck." But the rest of the night was a feverish, beirut-y kind of blur. I was told I graduated the next day, but I only recollect some flashes of the hot sun and my fever finally breaking around 10am. Then I went home and slept for 4 days.

When I awoke, I could no longer drink.

It's not that I didn't drink, it's just that I couldn't. Suddenly after only two drinks, I would just get rather sleepy and the next thing I know my body would be steering itself around the party, trying to find the most comfiest place to nap. "That's a nice tuft of grass," my mind would tell my feet, urging me to plop down. "Just for a moment!" I tried to fight against those urges, and sometimes it was successful. It's kind of been like that since graduation. Oh sure, I go out at night. But when you live in a sleepy New England city where the public transportation shuts down a full hour before the bars have last call, it's kind of like everyone just wants you to go home, anyway. So why fight it? When I did drink, I would get hangovers at the drop of a hat. It was like a big switch was flipped (most likely by my mother) after graduation. You like partying? Well, too bad! WHA-BAM. Now go to bed.

This past weekend was one of my best friends in the whole entire universe's 25th birthday. Twenty-five years, a full quarter of a century. Such momentous birthdays can and should be celebrated with all of the joy and wonderment that one can muster. To celebrate, we decided to go out dancing. We settled on one club that had so many wonderfully distinctive characteristics it was the clear winner. It had: soft red lighting, reminiscent of what I envision it must have been like to be in the Moulin Rouge (only Baz Lurhman's cleaner, Ewan McGregor-ier version); a mechanical bull pit; and 4 (4!) stripper poles lining the dance floor.

That night, we drank. And we danced. And it was good. Soon, we had had enough of the drinks and the large-ish women who seemed to be the only ones hopping up to display their talents on the stripper poles and the sweaty men gyrating anonymously behind us for an hour and a half. It was like college, only much more expensive. So we went to a different bar. There, we drank different drinks. Then we went back to her apartment and continued with the drinking in ways in which neither I, nor my liver, were fully prepared for.

Then, suddenly, it was Sunday morning. Between the bouts of nausea and cursing at the sun's rays for so existing so brightly, I remembered the words of my friend's father, all those years back. With every fiber of my saturated psyche, I wanted to rue his name. But I couldn't. The fault lay mine, and mine alone. That was a bitter pill to swallow, much harder than the rum and cokes (which, by the by, were free and delicious).

It is now Monday night. As the last throbbing ebbs of my headache recede, I am sitting quietly on the floor of my bedroom, reflecting on how good it feels not to be hungover. I think you should, too. This is a feeling that I would like to hold on to for longer (but maybe while avoiding the process of the actual hangover). I'd like to wake up every morning, look in my mirror, and think, "Gosh, does it feel good to be not hungover today!" And I want to really mean it. I want to mean it so much that I'll remember it come dance time when I find myself at a red-lit club somewhere downtown with expensive drinks and loud top 40 blasting out from behind the mechanical bull.

But, in all honesty, I'll probably have a glass or two then, too. Because drinking is just one of those that,as long as you don't take random solo cups from strangers and you feel comfortable and you're friends, you should probably do. Shake loose that repressive side before the subway shuts down. Maybe dance on a table every once in a while and rediscover how tasty Trix are. There are always more birthdays to celebrate and mechanical bull riders to make fun of. And, on the bright side, at least this hangover gave me material to get me blogging again. But more importantly, at least I'm not hungover anymore.

Boredom

Boredom is a pervasive problem for much of America’s youth. Sure, there are wars and shit, but that’s all going on somewhere else. Did you know that we had an earthquake two days ago? Boy, was THAT news. Thankfully twitter was there to report on the situation a full 17 minutes before other “news” outlets broke the story. The first I read online about the earthquake came from twitterer @Reefa_LeGrand  with “Sorry for the earthquake yall... I dropped my wallet! #MyBad  lol.”  Hard-hitting news, indeed. Thanks, Twitter!  

The word “boredom” was first recorded in a Charles Dicken’s novel in 1852. Now there's a guy that knew about boredom. First of all, he lived in 1800s Britain. And then he worked as a child laborer pasting labels onto shoe polish. ‘Nuff said.

But back to boredom. Boredom is an affliction most notably carried by the American teenager who has been coddled all of their lives: they have had food on the table, a roof over their heads, decent medical and dental care, and all technology to keep them entertained up the wazoo. I was one of those teenagers. And now, with the passage of time, I am one of those adults.

We have grown up being told that boredom is bad, very very bad indeed. “Idle hands are the devils playground,” say our Puritanical friends. “Go outside and do something!” said my 6th grade English teacher, Mrs. Goodrich, when I just wanted to sit inside at recess. And then there are the lyrics that haunt me to this very day: the song is “Flagpole Sittah” by the band Harvey Danger. The lyrics go, “…but if you’re bored then you’re boring.” Dear God, no one wants to be boring! And I always try to take advice from bands who got their name from a phrase graffitied onto the side of a building. They know what's up.

In my short time playing around in this age called “adulthood,” I’ve gone through some ups and some downs. There was that time when I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life or myself. There was that long time when I was 60 dollars too rich for food stamps (damn you, third job!). But it’s funny. After the basic needs are met (food, clothing, etc.), and before one settles down to create miniature replicas of oneself to feed and clothe, one finds oneself with an unnatural amount of free time.

I think it's important to state here that: I am not complaining. I just wonder what other normal adults do with their time. And, because I’ve been been wondering this question for some time, I've observed some rituals  I'd like to share with you. The vast majority of adults that I interact with on a regular basis seem one of three things: attend trivia night, discuss politics, or drink. All of which are usually accompanied by more drinking.

Trivia matches around Boston are wildly popular. There are so many things to love about trivia! For one, with the exception of the drink you have to buy to avoid getting the stink-eye from the waitress who was hoping for a 6-person dinner party, trivia nights are free. Then there’s the fact that you can finally put all those bad song lyrics and pop culture facial recognition skills to work for you, since they are so woefully underutilized in your daily desk life. Lastly, there are the prizes. In regular life, you would never go out of your way to purchase a yellow muscle tee with the logo for the fifth Fast and the Furious movie emblazoned in glitter puffy paint across the chest. But on a Tuesday evening, surrounded by other fully-formed adult-like persons getting slowly drunk off a drink that splices two seemingly unrelated words together (i.e., "Bostonjitos") while thematically appopriate 80's music wafts in from the background, that muscle tee embodies everything you could ever want from life, and more. And don't forget about the already opened copy of the soundtrack to Ashton Kutcher’s movie “No Strings Attached?” It has Leona Lewis on it!! And, before you know it, you (I) are (am) hooked on trivia.

Politics is another pastime that many people seem to engage in as a past-time. In a magical world where everyone is an open-minded and rationale citizen, engaging in political discourse over drinks will lead to the those involved walking away with a renewed sense of their own beliefs that have been enlightened and improved because of that night's exchange. But in the real world, you end up arguing the ideological beliefs of a party that you don’t actually vote for, on a Friday evening after you’ve had one too many "Bostonjitos." and the conversation ends with everyone involved slurring the phrase, “I know, but listen,” at each other about forty times before someone jumps in with a, “It’s just what I believe!” Ninety percent of the time, you’re not going to change anyone’s mind in events like this, because you lack the specific facts, figures, full names, and sometimes even the very talking points of the issues you’re trying to argue. And yet, week after week, I see people enter into this dangerous game with Fox News and Daily Show clips at the ready on their smart phones.

The most popular adult activity is drinking, which is sometimes (but not always) done in the presence of other people. You ever think about the fact that we spend so much time at our jobs longing for the second the minute hand strikes 5pm, only to have a whole mess of us immediately seek out the very thing that makes time pass more quickly and memories float to the background of our consciousnesses? I do. You’d think people would want to remember those free moments and stay sober more, but no. Humans are weird. 

The best part about drinking- besides the fact that it is SUPER FUN!!!?!- is that you can combine it with almost every other adult activity. There's Trivia nights and drinking, discussing politics and drinking, Monday night football and drinking, taxes and demure glasses of wine, being awkward in bars while holding bud lights, dealing with a bad boss by sneaking a little something special into your coffee mug, watching your kid’s sporting activity behind a beer cozy, playing a sporting activity yourself in between sips of the Rockies, recouping after you injure yourself because you were drinking whilst engaging in a sporting activity with a cold one, watching other people lead their lives on reality television by playing a drinking game based off specific catch phrases... the list goes on and on and on. Drinking is so darn accommodating!

But that’s the problem with people my age, a 90-year old version of myself would say to today’s version of me, if time travel and/or dark magic did exist. The conversation would take place on an old wooden porch with a creaky rocking chair, and there would be a stern look in 90-year-old-me’s eyes as she’d say “You drink, you idle away your time with nonsense engagements. You can do anything, and yet you choose to do nothing!” And then she’d spit, for ninety-year-old-me is a straight shooter. I also imagine her having a Russian accent, which I have yet to acquire but have high hopes to do in the future. 

There is a lesson here somewhere. Puritans would say it’s time to put those idle hands to good work. Jimmy Buffet would say it’s five o’clock somewhere. I say maybe it’s time for me to get a real hobby. Something that doesn't involve drinking on a Saturday afternoon. Or rewards me for knowing the lyrics to "Never Gonna Give You Up." Something that 90-year-old-me would enjoy from her porch.

A Daisy in Starbucks

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Tape Is Reusable

This one goes out to my friends that work in the environmental movement. I say this with the utmost love and respect from the deepest trenches of my adoring heart: you’re crazy.

Hitchhiking in the middle of a lightning storm with an umbrella crazy? No. But definitely wacky Uncle Al type of crazy who is always a good time at Thanksgiving but doesn’t exactly warrant an invite to meet your girlfriend’s family. Nuts crazy. Loony crazy. A screw is loose somewhere and probably won’t be found crazy. But well-meaning and fun-loving enough to earn him a seat next to your Aunt Martha and right by the cranberry sauce year after year.

Full disclosure: I work in the environmental sciences, so this includes me as well. I am ok with that.

I’m coming up on the end of my first year at an environmental nonprofit in Boston. I’ve acquired many skills and life lessons including but not limited to: nonprofit strategy, networking tips, the ability to be on two phone calls at the same time, and enough business cards to make an ugly and uncomfortable quilt for a 2-D man. I’ve met incredible people, made some amazing friends, and at times felt as though I was living in a tv documentary about wacky offices and their workers, or as though Ashton Kutcher had given up punking celebrities and decided to target an ordinary young woman. This ordinary young woman was especially concerned last Tuesday that there had been a full 20 minutes of a company meeting spent talking about Justin Bieber, a topic of which she was uniquely and ashamedly equipped to contribute.

It goes without saying that as an environmental organization we are a bit more plugged into the sustainability movement. I’ve always considered myself qualifiably crunchy. I went through a long vegetarian phase, a laughably short vegan phase, a tendency to unplug all the appliances not in use phase, and, like other plaid-loving hippies, developed an undying devotion to the Discovery Channel’s “Planet Earth” series. But this last year I’ve come to realize that I can’t hold a candle to some of the people in my line of work. In my mind’s eye I thought I was Captain Planet, but really I was just a cuter version of Hoggish Greedly.

This past year, I have been yelled at for throwing away adhesive sticky tape because, and I quote, I could “use it again.” I’ve had my nostrils overtaken with the rich aroma of fruits and veggies being broken down by the office vermiculture bin. (For those of you who don’t compost, vermiculture is composting with worms.  You’re welcome.) I’ve been questioned about the amount of water I use while washing dishes, and I’ve been openly chastised for using a space-heater in the middle of winter even though the building’s heat had given up somewhere around the middle of February.

One especially enlightening event happened the day I walked into work and realized that the office garbage can was missing. After asking around, I soon discovered that it had been recycled. Not our garbage, mind you- the garbage can itself. I was told that it had been a "health hazard"and that by not having a garbage can so readily available would help me reduce the amount of waste I produced.

For the next week, I grew a rebellious pile of my leftover food and assorted sundries on the corner of my desk. Part of me wanted to make a social statement , and the other part was too lazy to walk it to the trash can next door. There were stacks of stained plastic coffee cups from the times I had forgotten to take a mug with me to the coffee shop, individual greek yogurt containers- because buying a large container and dishing it out every morning seemed to be too much of a hassle-, gum wrappers and candy wrappers and banana peels and foil from lunches and scraps of paper that were filled with many underlined and circled words and small pictures of stars. 

There is nothing like feeling righteously indignant until you realize that, hey, the other person was kind of right. I do consume a lot. Maybe getting rid of the garbage can was a touch extreme, but I rarely ever forget my coffee mug now. For some situations, it really can’t hurt to drink the kool-aid.

Perhaps we’re all a bit nutty because we care too much. There’s a strong sense of pride in being over-worked and under-paid, of caring passionately about something and actively trying to change all those bad things that keep you up at night. Does getting rid of a garbage can or stacking banana peels on your desk so you can feed your plastic bin of worms at the end of the week really make a difference? I’m not sure. But even if I have to walk outside to throw my trash away, or use my beloved space-heater less often in the harsh Cambridge winter, I like to think it’s all worth it. I’m a little less bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than when I first began. But, at the end of the day, come hell or high-college-loan interest rates, I love what I do. If I have to be a little crazy to do it, then yee-haw.

The Reformed Vegetarian

I have become a traitor to the animal kingdom. Though once a vegetarian, I now eat things that used to be living creatures. And I am trying to come to terms with it.

My first foray into the world of bean sprouts and protein product came during that time of great social and personal experimentation: college. As with many colleges, my junior year was a time to travel the world, to jump off cliffs in Fiji, to down a chocolate brioche and espresso on a romantic morning in France, and to test out some special brownies in a shady cafe in Amsterdam (from what I have heard). Instead of doing those things, I signed up for a maritime studies semester based out of the wildest of all American cities: Mystic, Connecticut.

In that small town I lived with a motley crue of young adults interested in questioning the impact they made on the local environment. Because of this, the overwhelming majority of kids did not eat meat, and hadn’t for many years. But I had. I was an outsider.

Yes, please.

You see, I didn’t just eat meat- I relished eating it. It is embarrassing how much I had. My family would tell stories to new boyfriends about that time in Outback Steakhouse when I ordered a full rack of ribs and inhaled it before my dad had even finished his salad. My friends consistently notified me via text message any time corned beef was offered in our campus dining hall. There are some traits that one just cannot deny in themselves, and before Connecticut, eating meat was one of mine.

That’s not to say I wasn’t open-minded. I listened to my new friends as they talked about the evils of the meat-packing industry, and animal cruelty, and the dangers of antibiotics in the foods we eat. It sounded awful. But that didn’t stop my friend Dave and I from sneaking out to the local grocery store to buy contraband bacon and stuff it into the back of the freezer with a tape label that said "?" with the hope of warding off curious housemates in search of that frozen tofu dog.

But slowly, over the course of the semester, I started to change my mind. Maybe I did not need to order three sides of bacon or double-stuff my turkey melt. After considerable thought, I decided to give up turkey for Thanksgiving, and right then and there I knew I was a changed woman.

When the semester ended, I gave a considerable amount of thought to my role in the food chain. When I went back to campus, I reunited with my friends and found that many people had changed in significant and substantial ways. I was a vegetarian, my friend Katie had a rediscovered a fear of heights, and my friend Sarah adopted a rather convincing French accent. While many of these attributes faded faster than the tans of those who “studied” in Australia, my vegetarianism stuck. And I was rather proud of it.

But I suppose that, deep down inside, I knew the whole Not Eating Meat phase of my life would not last; there were signs. It began with a dream. 

For most people, dreams are a way for their subconscious to work out issues that one encounters during the day. (Or is a random series of unconnected events that mean nothing to your waking mind. Whatever you're inclined to believe.)

I started to dream of ham sandwiches. And not just any ham sandwich, it was the mother of all ham sandwiches imagined in exquisite detail: the “how did you get them so thin” slices of ham folded back perfectly onto itself, the way it does in Hormel commercials on television; slices of Land ‘O Lakes cheese delicately layered with pieces of the freshest of lettuce greens, drops of moisture clinging to each and every verdant leaf; whole wheat bread, and, to top it all off, Hidden Valley ranch dressing. The weird part is, when I started to make this sandwich, it was wholly at odds with the rest of the dream. Previously I had been flying from roof to roof, trying to find some missing gem that was really important to me. And then- BAM. Ham sandwich time. It was as though my brain was like, “ho hum, let’s give her the standard boring life metaphor, I guess… no wait. Wait. What if we have her make a ham sandwich!? Scrap that first part, we’re doing this!”

Blissful ignorance

The kicker is, before going meat-free, I had a take ‘em-or-leave’ em  attitude towards ham sandwiches. But remove my conscious desire to eat them? Suddenly I was fiending for them in dream form. I could no more control these dreams than one control the direction of sand blowing in the wind.

This is apparently a fairly common phenomenon amongst vegetarian types: you end up craving the foods you didn’t even think about before. I have a friend who talks about cheeseburgers the way one might talk about an old boyfriend. Sure, it may have been a few years, but when the timing was right… anything could happen.

Once the ham sandwich dreams started coming monthly, I knew it was time to start eating meat again. My family was delighted, and no one more so than my twin sister. She decided the best way to celebrate was to dive right in and hit up this classy little BBQ place in downtown NYC where they sold ribs by the pound and offered tiny plastic umbrellas in their pomaritas.

I knew I shouldn’t have done it.  But there I was, tiny umbrella in my hair, country music wafting in the background, 34 different options of ribs and sauces and all-you-can-eat cornbread, blissfully ignorant of the havoc I was about to wreak on my intestinal system. Twelve hours later, after the migraine had worn off and I was able to stomach more than just triscuits and gingerale, I became a vegetarian again, temporarily.

If there were to be a lesson here, it would be that maybe you should declare the first day of the week “meat-free Monday,” and think more about your behaviors and how they shape the state of food in America. Be a conscious consumer! The other, more obvious, lesson would be not to eat 3 pounds of ribs after a few years hiatus. I cannot be the first reformed vegetarian who has learned this lesson the hard way. But at least now I can wear this shirt, purchased for me by a high school friend during my veggie stint, non-ironically. And I no longer dream of ham sandwiches.