The End of an Era

I lived on Capitol Hill for just 4 months almost 3 years ago, but my heart has remained long after I left. Some of my fondest memories of my first days living in my favorite city are there, and to this day one of my favorite places in DC is Eastern Market. So many defining moments in my life were spent in the coffee shops and flea markets there, talking over big ideas with great friends. I still hope to find a place to live in that neighborhood someday.

You can imagine my heartbreak, then, when I learned that the market's South Hall burned down early Monday morning. It hit me in the pit of my stomach. I feel like an old friend has died, and even though I know that it will be rebuilt, I know it can never hope to have the same charm as the 134-year-old building bustling with activity every Saturday morning. I wish I could be there right now.

Eastern Market South Hall exterior

Produce
Some of the neighborhood rowhouses
South Hall interior
The Market Lunch breakfast - best pancakes you'll ever have
Street musicians
Outdoor market - art, antiques, etc.

Do-nothing Democrats?

Americans seem to think so. So much for calling out Republicans for not getting anything done.

Beauty in the Breakdown

My office is empty.

My drawers are empty.

My files are empty.

My chair is gone.

My desk is clean.

I'm done.

That last one is true on so many levels.

Today was (kind of) my last day. Technically, my last day is Monday, but I'm done with work, and I'm having my wisdom teeth pulled that afternoon. That is, at least after I have my "I get to tell off my boss" meeting with the CEO. I'm really looking forward to that.

I'm so over that place. I have never felt so relieved and so happy to be ending something before. I am free. And I am walking away with a wealth of knowledge about how - and more importantly, how NOT - to run an organization.

I think that was worth putting up with crap for a year. At least I hope it was. I suppose only time will tell.

Off to the next chapter...

Thoughts on the War

In the words of Joe Lieberman, "Al-Qaeda, after all, isn't carrying out mass murder against civilians in the streets of Baghdad because it wants a more equitable distribution of oil revenue. Its aim in Iraq isn't to get a seat at the political table; it wants to blow up the table -- along with everyone seated at it."

With all the disgusting political maneuvering being played out this week at the expense of the ones who are actually fighting the war, this was a refreshingly rare read.

We are not the enemy. Terrorists are the enemy.

I think people are starting to get fed up. I know I am.

I'm not exactly a Bush cheerleader, and I'm definitely not a military strategist, but even I have a basic grasp of national security policy.

Even democrats - who historically have been experts at feigning unity at all costs in order to achieve political ends - have started to throw their own under the bus when it becomes apparent that they have slipped and spoken too much of the truth.

Apparently you can go too far with anti-war rhetoric. People are smart. The idea that you can claim to "support the troops" while at the same time spewing vitriolic contempt for their country and their mission is asinine. And while this is typical behavior for most liberal democrats who find it difficult to imagine that anyone but them could be capable of rational, independent thought, the reality is that most Americans (and most Iraqis) don't want us to lose this war. And they definitely don't want the soldiers to be defunded.

More brilliant, although now dated, commentary, this time courtesy of Michael Barone (whom I had the great honor of meeting at AEI in 2004):

The alternative is to get Republican votes. But only two of them voted for the March bill, and few are likely to support anything but a "clean bill," with no deadlines, goals, or benchmarks. But that would enrage many Democrats. The CodePink group and other antiwar organizations have already been staging demonstrations in Pelosi's office. They'd get really angry if a Democratic House passes a "clean bill."

The Democrats will face the same problem when George W. Bush vetoes their bill. They would like to end the war, but they dare not end funding to the troops. They can hope that the sympathetic mainstream media will put the blame on Bush. But they can't help remembering that the last time an opposition Congress refused to meet a president's demand to fund the government, it was the speaker-Newt Gingrich-not the president-Bill Clinton-who plummeted in the polls.

Unfortunately, thanks to some of the most spineless Republicans ever to hold office, we now know that Pelosi, Reid and the Democrats were able to do just that this afternoon: pass a bill that would defund the troops, ensure America's defeat, threaten our national security, and otherwise declare to the entire world (including our enemies) that we are more than happy to give up and go home when things start to get tough. That we have no honor or conviction.

The dirty little secret is, even though most people think things are going badly in Iraq (mostly because that's all they are told day after day), the vast majority want President Bush to succeed.

That's why I think we should just let them keep talking. Eventually, extreme liberals always show their true colors, and they have done exactly that this last week. Most Americans are patient, but when it comes down to it, they're also patriotic.

I can't imagine they'll stand for this much longer.

Fix You

Most of the time, I'm a problem-solver. You know the friend that you love but can never just sit there and let you complain about how much your life sucks without them telling you why it sucks and what they think you need to do to fix all your problems?

That's me. I'm a fixer.

The problem is, I can't fix myself. I used to be able to. I used to be able to sit back, objectively look at myself in the mirror and give myself a to-do list: "step 1 + step 2 + step 3 = problem solved." I used to spend hours and hours taking personality tests, reading self-help books, and "researching" my way out of all of my self-diagnosed "issues." Now, no matter how hard I try, I can't. Or won't.

I'm not entirely sure when or how this happened. Maybe I've been like this for a while and have just been so numb for the past year that I haven't noticed and had no need to try to fix myself. Maybe it's been so easy to pour all my energy into fixing other people that I forgot myself in the process. All I know is, I'm starting to feel again, and my heart is going into it kicking and screaming.

Feeling frightens me, and it didn't used to. I used to take such comfort in my emotions. They were my best friends, allowing me to escape from confusing reality into a world that made sense to me.

But when I finally allowed someone into my heart and my emotional world, for all the wonder and joy and passion and ecstatic happiness it brought, it also hurt. Sometimes, a lot. All of a sudden, I was vulnerable. Naked. Unprotected. And the more times I was hurt, the more I consciously or unconsciously put part of my soul to sleep. Now, it feels like there is a wall around most of my heart, except I don't remember building it.

Now, so much has happened to force certain parts of me out of hibernation that I have begun to realize just how much of me has been sidelined. And it scares the crap out of me.

What scares me more, though, is that instead of feeling my way through this mess, I'll tuck those last little parts of my heart away and shoot them so full of anesthesia that they may never recover.

Is it possible to experience all the depth and breadth of human emotion without simultaneously destroying that very essence of what makes us human? Or do we only have the capacity to feel so much at a time before reaching a critical mass of emotion, forcing some of our cylinders to stop spinning so the other parts can keep functioning?

A to-do list would be nice right about now.


Fix You
Coldplay (X&Y)

When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

When the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

High up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
If you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Tears stream down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face
And I...

Tears stream down on your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face
And I...

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Would You Have Stopped?

If a world-class musician were dressed like a street performer and playing in a subway station on your way to work, would the beauty and brilliance of the music transcend the surroundings?

Would you even notice?

Or would you - like almost all of the 1,000+ people that passed Joshua Bell playing his Stradivarius violin in the L'Enfant Square metro station that morning - walk by without so much as a glance of appreciation?

This article absolutely mesmerized me. Very rarely does one find such a poetic and disturbing philosophic exposé on music, beauty, art and modern life in the Sunday paper.

Have we become so jaded and numb that we no longer appreciate beauty, art, music... life?

For our sake, I hope not.

(You can listen to the full audio of Joshua Bell's performance on Washingtonpost.com. It is breathtakingly beautiful.)

Good, But Not Great

I got to meet Josh Groban last night. It was cool.

The concert was good (not great). The music was beautiful. He is extremely talented, but the show was poorly produced. It seemed very awkward and amateurish compared to his previous shows. The worst part was the strange video images on the background. There's a fairly universal rule in stage production: the sets and lights and effects should complement and support the performance, not distract from it. I found myself distracted and confused trying to figure out what in the world I was looking at and why it was on the screen. I thought it was unfortunate, since he is so talented and the music was so beautiful, that I missed a good third of the show by having my attention pulled away from the performers.

The highlight of the show was, once again, Lucia Micarelli. She is amazingly talented. I fell in love with her at the first Josh Groban concert I attended in San Diego where she completely stole she show with her rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. Josh has since added another beautiful young woman playing a stringed instrument in Collette the cellist [30 minutes of Googling and I can't find her last name... arrgh!]. She was poised and passionate, and the perfect complement to Lucia's wild enthusiasm.

All in all, it was a lovely evening. Rob and I did the meet and greet, and Dave got to come at the last minute (to be Rob's hot date). Brian liked when Josh got on the drums at the end of the show and soloed.

Final analysis: I did not find myself being moved as I was at his Closer concert, but I was entertained.

Looking Forward

I don't think I've ever been more excited to go to Disneyland.

This last few weeks has really taken its toll on me. I won't go into all the gorey details, but if you can imagine combining the stress of finding a new job, possibly moving, family issues, and financial struggles, then throw in some abnormally bad health problems just for fun... well, you start to get the idea.

Times like this (and yes, I have been here before) make me desperately wish I could just take a month off from life and lay on a beach in Hawaii. Or go to Paris and sit in a Cafe and write in my journal every day for two weeks without a care in the world.

I think the attraction of Disneyland is its artificiality. People go to Disneyland - and see movies, watch television, read novels - because we want to escape. Disneyland is always pretty, clean, fun and happy. Not to mention nostalgic, helping us remember the happier moments of our childhoods (another great escape tactic).

There was a time during the late 90s when television and movies began to tend toward reality. Producers reasoned that audiences no longer wanted to escape, they wanted to see real life in all its grim, gorey, messy disfunction. It worked for a while, until even so-called "reality" shows started moving back toward a fairy-tale and often soap-opera-ish view of life (e.g. Survivor, Desperate Housewives, The Bachelor, American Idol, The Apprentice... even my beloved Grey's Anatomy has become so over-the-top drama-filled that I find it hard to watch sometimes). Even game shows and sitcoms have swung so far to the reality side of the spectrum with nuerotic consestants and dysfuntional families that they allow us to feel superior and disconnected, therefore escaping what we perceive is wrong with our own lives and making us feel better about our own mild (or not so mild) neuroses.

All this leads me to believe that all people, even seemingly happy people, want to escape the stress of real life as much as I do. This gives me some comfort, since lately I feel like I am betraying a part of my normally confrontational personality by wanting to run away so much. It's the classic fight-or-flight syndrome that is the hallmark of my personality type ("Sentinel," classic Aquarius, and either ISFJ or INFJ, depending on the day I take the test), at least according to research I did to try to "find myself" in high school (consisting mostly of online personality tests and self-help books).

So I guess the conclusion of my rambling is that I will be in good company this weekend, side by side with thousands of other escapees, desperately hoping our real lives don't come to find us.

Who I am?

This is me... apparently.

Thinking: Healer

Working: Healer

Emoting: Sentinel

SENTINEL™ Emoting Style of Strength

• No pain is greater for them than betrayal.
• They keep diaries or personal journals.

"A most common emoting style. Behind trademark reserve and alluring attractiveness is an individual who is hard to know and harder to love. Trust is the wall that divides. Whether Sentinel trust is an open or shut case depends on how each person has evolved and adjusted to three personality-typical determinants: language, loyalty, and new experiences. Characteristic of a Sentinel is a crane calm look of time-suspended stillness or fixed concentration. None other portrays mind-at-work like them. Others are often surprised at the thoroughness and depth delivered, when they do respond and reply. No thought, no word, no action is more painful to these sensitive beings than "good-bye." So ingrained is their conviction that all good must come to an end that Sentinel may not risk "hello." If by nature they are skeptical and by choice, reticent, then one question begs answer. Is there a causal relationship between reticence and the fact that Sentinel suffers internal degenerative illnesses more often than others? What is eating Sentinel from the inside out?" ...

HEALER™ Thinking Style of Strength

• Avid readers, they prefer non fiction and biographies to fiction.
• They are keenly sensitive to noise and uncomfortable in messy environments.

"Their fame and repute is more constitution of horse and steel-willed determination than frail and retiring. In fact, they are much more substantial, in every regard, than they appear. Three common characteristics of Healer are: sensitivity to noise, aversion to mess and great need for privacy. Interestingly, Healer is either an avid fan of television and motion pictures, or an avid avoider of such. A propensity for getting too emotionally involved in the human dramas is their commonly cited reason for avoidance. For most people, the term heal connotes with practicing medicine. In terms of this style, heal means an active involvement in some people-benefitting service and practice. Regardless of the scale of their endeavour — science, medicine, arts, entertainment, literature or music; the Healer strength awakens and uplifts the human condition. Removing doubt is their specialty. One peculiarity of this Style of strength is fear of incarceration." ...

HEALER™ Working Style of Strength

• When they solve problems, they look at its effect and impact on the system as a whole.
• They have a natural talent for any field or endeavour where healing is involved.

"These are the ones who change or broaden perspectives. The following excerpts are less specific than indicative of how this Style of strength approaches jobs and tasks. Healers find it odd that when people stub their toe they get angry, curse and through hobbled grimace and gritted teeth ignore the pain. How much quicker the heal if that throbbing toe were held and its pain acknowledged. How much more pleasant the day if the pain were comforted by sympathetic hands. After all, no matter your shoe or the rocky path it is pointed your toe never lets your body down. If small this change in thought does seem, apply it in principle to larger scale living, as Healer would, and note what differences result with change of belief. When the body is sick or diseased the prescribed policy is to view the disease with winner-loser hostility. Rather than stiffening resolve and muscle, and steadying nerve to control the pain, rather than declaring all-out war against the invader, instead try flipping perspectives. Focus light on the body's plight. It is every bit in need of caress as a stubbed toe. Accept the pain. Validate its existence. The body system may be confused as to which is friend and which is foe — the body for allowing disease to enter or disease for daring. Wars are always confusing. As peace follows surrender in war, heal and cure follows surrender in body disease." ...

Losing My Blogger Virginity

I must be obsessive compulsive. Or ADD. Or something.

I just spent the last 2 hours (ish) trying to fix this thing so that I can actually post to it. Now I feel obligated to post something, but I don't know what. I think I'll post what I posted on my Xanga, and my Myspace, since that will be in keeping with the whole OCD theme I've got going on right now.

*Ahem*

So I officially spent the entire day yesterday watching Sex and the City on DVD (special thanks to Costco for putting the box set on sale so it only cost me $50!). I got through all of season 1 and two-thirds of season 2, and I'm completely addicted! (I'm coming to terms with the fact that Charlotte is a slightly wealthier version of me.) Combine that with going to a wedding on Saturday and seeing great friends from high school for the first time in forever... all in all it was a really great weekend!

Unfortunately, I now have to leave my fantasy world of big city life and return to the stress of real life. Boo. Why can't life consist of drinking Cosmos with your girlfriends, discussing sex and romance, wearing fabulous shoes and designer dresses and exploring the big city on the arm of a wonderful man?

*sigh*

Right now, real life for me consists of finding a new job and tying up loose ends at my old one. And moving. We've preliminarily (is that a word?) made plans to move back to DC when Brian finishes grad school (in May). There are many reasons for it, but one of the big ones is that my job recently became the most recent victim of the instability of the nonprofit sector, meaning that at the end of April, they won't be able to afford to pay me anymore. I'm sure I could keep working there for free, but that wouldn't make my landlord very happy when the rent comes due.

So that's the plan right now. Honestly, I could not be happier or more excited! I've been there for a year, and I had been frustrated for a while and was already looking for new opportunities when I found out. Brian and I had been talking for several months about moving back when he finished school. I have also been researching grad schools and all the programs I'm seriously considering except one are in DC. Hopefully I'll end up with a Master's in Public Policy (and maybe even a law degree, too!) sometime soon.

I have been so homesick for so long, I can't wait to return to my favorite city in the world. And with nothing tying us down to any one place (no house or kids or job), the world is our oyster!

Hehehe, I've always wanted to use that phrase.

So that's the latest. I guess that means I may get to explore the big city on the arm of a wonderful man after all!