Springtime & My Time.

It appears as if I left Alaska in winter and I came back a few weeks later to spring.

It wasn’t the sunny weather though that signified the start of the new season. Nor was it the official date on the calendar, warming temperatures, melting ice, dry roads, sound of trickling water, and obvious change in the air.

No, I knew it was spring because my hibernating cat resumed her place at the window and is now longing to go outside.  

Big, mournful, pitiful meows that echo all of my desires to join her outside in the sun.  

It’s contagious, and I often find myself joining her there, promising her that the time is near.  

After my three week stint in California and my brief reconnection with the sun and how it felt on my Alaskan winter skin, my excitement for spring has only grown stronger.  

It’s not just the warmer weather that I’m looking forward to though, or the ditching of the layers and the unearthing of all my shorts and summer dresses. It’s the change of seasons and it’s appropeitness to the change I’m about to go through.

We talk of spring as a rebirth, a changing of the seasons, a time when the cold winter thaws and the hibernating landscape bursts forth with color and life. 

Not that I’ve been hibernating the last six months under a thick layer of ice and snow (but I sort of have), but I have been in a comfortable place and I’m about to shed those known layers, like the ice over this once frozen landscape, and step out into the light.  

So to speak.  

It’s time for a new change of seasons, and I couldn’t have picked a more opportune moment. 

It’s a change of seasons I’m ambivalent about, for sure, for I fight with the desire to stay in my comfort zone and the urge to go into the unknown.  

My response to people when they often ask why I would leave such a haven, a place where I’m successful and happy, is simply: a comfort zone is beautiful, but nothing ever grows there.  

I can feel it in my bones, like the trees thawing under the spring sun.  It’s been simmering for awhile now, this feeling of awakening. 

It’s springtime, but it’s also my time.  

And thank you for dubbing it officially spring, Fudge!  

Good Copy.

Like most stories, there's a beginning, a middle, and an end. 

What makes a story so captivating though is not necessarily what happens at the beginning, middle, and end. It's what's in between those pivotal moments.

And like a good story, there are many parts in which things aren't always peachy. But that's what makes good copy, or so my mom says. It's those bumps in the road that matter, those adventures in which at the time you're crying and cursing at your misfortune, but later, you're looking back with understanding, particularly because you overcame something. 

It's been awhile since we last caught up.

I believe the last time I chatted with you, I was optimistic and my road trip was going swell, just swell.

Well, my sister left, and things slowly spiraled downward. 

Don't get me wrong, nothing was "bad", per say, but things weren't going how I pictured them to be. 

Let's see, the morning my friend Jo arrived, my poor Fiat was victim to what San Franciscans call a "smash & grab." Essentially, they bust a window out your car and grab whatever's easiest to run away with. Apparently, there are over 33,000 cases of these crimes a year in a 7 miles by 7 miles wide city of San Francisco, and mine happened to be one of them. What's worse is that two cop cars slowly coasted by during this ordeal and didn't bother to ask if I was okay.

I guess a hysterical crying young woman with a busted window isn't important enough on their radar. 

Just as well!

On top of that, and my speeding ticket in Bridgeport (never been pulled over in my life!), I had to deal with the unpleasantness of California drivers, and California parking (or lack thereof). It brought out the sensitive Sally in me who cried behind her sunglasses. My Laker team also lost to the Warriors, my friend Jo got sick the last day, and I didn't find a job. 

Despite this all, I still had one of the most memorable (and at the time, frustrating) trips of my life. 

Although there were many moments in which I felt that my move to San Francisco wasn't meant to be. Instead of a movie style greeting where the small town girl gets to the big city with dreamy eyes and a bright future, I was greeted with a speeding ticket, a smashed window, middle fingers, and a lot of money spent on parking meters, I just now realized that it all made for a good story. 

This is what adulting is and it's not going to get any easier. But that's okay. That's what makes good copy, and I know that my attitude in the future has to be about confidence, not certainty. In the space in which something happens and my response, there lies an opportunity to choose my response, and in that response lies growth. Do I let the unfortunate things that happened consume me, let it dictate how my trip was? Or do I take them as lessons learned and write it down and decide to grow and learn from my experiences?

There were more pleasant memories during this trip which far outweighed the misfortunes, like getting hit on in a bar in Haight on St. Patty's Day by a true drunken Irishman, walking ten miles from Fisherman's Wharf across the Golden Gate Bridge with one of my dearest friends, seeing an epic (first half) game between my faves the Lakers and Warriors, being reunited with my besties from college, and having spent quality time with my sister. 

According to Nora Ephron, everything is copy. And not all good copy has to contain good stories. It's often the misfortunes and how you react to them that make them good copy...