Square Peg in a Round Hole

2004 was a year of many changes for me. I had a baby. I started working part-time. I ended up resigning from my job, and, for a brief period of time before I started working again from home, I was a full-time mom with no outside-the-home job.

I tried to stay busy with these changes. I tutored adults for their GED exam once a week. I took a college class in preparation for going back to school to become a high school teacher (English was my dream, but Math seemed more employable). I joined a weekly Bible Study. And I took part in a regular moms' group at church.

I did not feel like I fit in to the moms' group. I was a mom of a 4-month old baby when I began attending, and most of the other women had multiple children. I was young, barely 25 years old, and many of the other women were probably a decade older. I wore jeans and t-shirts and no make-up. Most of the other attendees were much more put together. And, I learned, I was completely behind the curve on home decorating. At a table discussion one day, one woman confided that the turning of the seasons to autumn stressed her out because she felt like she had to completely decorate her house for fall, but could usually only manage to put out a few pumpkins on her porch. All of the other attendees nodded knowingly. I was confused. You were supposed to decorate for a new season?! And wasn't putting pumpkins on your porch an amazing feat - why would you feel guilty about that?!

2004 was an interesting year for me. We lived in Kansas City, but had not been in town long, and most of my time prior to having a baby had been spent at work. When I resigned from work, I realized that I was almost completely without a social group in town, particularly among other new moms or people who had time during the day. My in-laws lived close by, which was wonderful, and I knew lots of great people from my former work, but I lacked a day-to-day support group as a new parent. I had thought that joining a moms' group and staying busy with activities I enjoyed would give me a social network, but found myself feeling more like a square peg in a round hole.

I did eventually meet other new moms, at a library story-time hour, where we formed a weekly playgroup that was my saving grace. But Kansas City often continued to feel like a large, lonely town. When my husband and I decided to move to Florida to go back to graduate school, I was sad to leave our family and friends, but I remained optimistic that I might feel more like I fit in better elsewhere.

And I was right. Going back to school in Florida meant that I did not have a large network, but the people I did meet were foxhole buddies for life. Moving to Manhattan after graduation has given me the most amazing community I have ever been a part of. But I know that is not the case for everyone - some people may have had an amazing network in Kansas City and find Manhattan lonely. Still, I know what it is like to feel like a square peg in a round hole. And I wish that was never the case for anyone - but if you ever do, please know that I know that I am here for you.

Twentysomething

I began my 20s as an undergraduate college student in Kansas. I was planning to attend law school and, on my journey of five different official majors, was currently majoring in history and psychology. I was married, but, beyond that life decision, had little certainty about the future. Time seemed vast and limitless, endless options poised within my grasp.

I ended my 20s by graduating with a PhD in accounting, celebrating my 11th wedding anniversary, living in Florida, and as the mom of two beautiful children. My future trajectory seemed decided - I would interview across the country for tenure-track accounting professor jobs, find a place where my husband could work as well, and settle down with a single-minded focus on making tenure and taking care of my family.

In no other decade of my life did I change so much, grow so much, live so many new experiences, try on new options, and, ultimately, discover who I was. In my 20s, I learned that I loved being a mom. When I first got married, I was convinced that children were in the far distant future, but as college graduation approaches and life became less tumultuous, I became obsessed with the idea of having a baby. I had my daughter when I was 24 years old and working as a tax accountant at a CPA firm and I was instantly smitten. I had my son when I was 28 years old and a full-time accounting PhD student and my entire family felt complete. In my 20s, I learned how to grow from a couple into a family.

I learned that I loved accounting. It seems laughable now, but I really did not enjoy my early accounting classes. I felt they lacked rigor, that no critical thinking was required, and that they were little more than glorified bookkeeping. I was so wrong. I took a taxation course when I was 20 years old that changed my life. Instead of dabbling with the nebulous goal of going to law school someday, I became focused on pursuing a career in taxation and ultimately a transition to academia. I had barely heard of accounting when I entered my twenties, and I could hardly imagine a life without it when I exited.

I learned that I was stronger than I thought. I learned I could hold a job that required interacting with clients in a professional capacity and I was not terrible. I learned that I could chuck it all to go back to graduate school one day. I learned that I could resign from a job to be a full-time mom and then decide that was not my calling, either. I learned that I was capable, flexible, resilient.

My own daughter will be 20 years old in six short years. I see her poised on the brink of the future, uncertain about where it will take her. Perhaps her twentysomething years will not be nearly as formative. Perhaps she will have fewer tumultuous changes. Perhaps some of her big life events will happen earlier or later or not at all. But I hope her 20s will be just as memorable.

Digging Out

I have had a somewhat rocky start to the semester due to a variety of personal reasons. At one point, I felt like I was spiraling downward and it was all I could do to keep my head above water. I feel like circumstances are starting to stabilize and I can start to dig myself out.

It is easy to spiral downward, fast. It is hard to dig myself out. At one point, I had seven overdue reviews to complete for work. I finished the last one this weekend and felt an immediate sense of relief, but already have another review due this Wednesday that I have yet to begin.

I am only about a week ahead of my students for the classes I am teaching. I am behind on every single research project ever, and my co-authors have been carrying more weight than they should. I have been asking people on committees and other service responsibilities to pick up some of my duties. I have even bowed out of some community responsibilities because I am not in a good place right now.

Digging out is exhausting. It seems easier to just stay in a permanent level of complacency, disaster, immediacy. Digging out requires energy, effort, planning, intentionality. Spiraling downward means that all obligations and commitments are narrowed down to only the bare essentials. Digging out means the minutiae of everyday life has to come back into the fold. Digging out is hard work.

So today, I am going to continue to dig out. I am going to try to track down all of our overdue paperwork and fill it out. I am going to write some hard e-mails. I am going to put together a plan. And somehow, I am going to dig myself out.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

This spring, our church put on a short-term Sunday School class focused on loving your neighbor. Not your metaphorical neighbor - your actual, literal neighbor. One of the challenges of the class was to focus on ways you could connect with and spend time with your actual neighbors.

Today, our neighborhood held an ice cream social for our friends and neighbors who live nearby. I did very little and most of the heavy-lifting was done by other wonderful neighbors. It was absolutely beautiful weather. The kids jumped on a trampoline, played in a bounce house, rode scooters, blew bubbles, drew elaborate pictures with chalk, kicked soccer balls, and had a blast. The adults stood in small groups or circled their lawn chairs around together, eating ice cream, cobbler, watermelon.

The whole event was wonderful. We had a chance to connect with both old friends and new neighbors. We were able to catch up on the daily minutiae of our lives. The kids were able to blow off steam on a glorious autumn afternoon.

What was the hardest for us to fathom is that our last neighborhood ice cream social was in 2015. It feels like yesterday, but yet, three years have managed to slip by. And I think that is such a perfect analogy for life - we really want to get together frequently and have meaningful connections and spend time together with the people who we do life with - but yet small moments of time add up and three years ultimately pass in the blink of an eye.

There is so much more I would love to do if I had more time. I would spend more time with my kids and go on long walks every night with my husband and have coffee every day with friends and FaceTime those who live far away every evening - and connect to our neighbors in some meaningful way every day. Alas, time is finite, sticky, limited, and most of our time is devoted to packing lunches and corralling children and stacking piles of paper on the counter and putting out our own little fires everywhere. But I truly would like to better prioritize connecting with our neighbors. Because what a beautiful gift that is.

Having an Experience

I was talking to a friend recently about how thankful I am for the five years our family lived in Florida. I absolutely hated Florida the first year we live there, but I grew to love it as much as my own home town, and I think it very much shaped who I am today. She remarked that she wished that she had lived out of the state at some point because it seems like a good life experience to have.

And this got me thinking - there are so many good life experiences to have. It is impossible to experience them all. We may not have the perfect or the optimal life in all areas - but we have can have "an" experience.

I did not experience living in communal housing all throughout college. I got married before my sophomore year of college and had a very different college experience. But, I had an experience - being married while in college.

I did not experience traveling abroad when I was young. We had little money and lived very frugally instead. But, I had an experience - living debt-free.

I did not experience a long period of time where my husband and I worked professional jobs and had no children. Instead, I had my first child fairly early after we both started working full-time, and then went back to earn our PhDs fairly soon after that. But, I had an experience - having children and going back to school.

I did not experience having children close together in age as I had planned. Our children are four years apart. But, I had an experience - having two children who are best friends despite my worries that they would be too far apart in age to be close.

I did not experience working at the "most prestigious" job that I could have when I applied for jobs out of my doctorate program. But, I had an experience - working at my alma mater with an absolutely wonderful university and community.

I am trying to remember this with my own children as well. My daughter opted to quit band when she began high school. She will never experience marching band or pit orchestra or state music competitions. But she will have an experience - focusing on art classes.

My son is not particularly interested in sports. He will never have the experience of being part of a traveling sports team. But he will have an experience - playing the saxophone and taking art classes and going to church and 4-H.

So instead of worrying that I or my family may not be pursuing the optimal life experience or life choices, I am trying to remember that we can all have "an" experience - that can absolutely shape our future in a myriad of rich ways.

Four-Year Plan

My daughter is putting together a four-year plan for her Advisory hour in high school. This involves a strengths finder, interest test, articulating your post-high school career plan, college major (if applicable), ultimate career choice, and, of course, identifying every single high school class for the next four years.

I love this kind of planning. I toyed at one point with the idea of becoming a university academic advisor simply so I could help people make schedules. So this assignment seemed like perfect mother-daughter bonding time.

Well. My daughter found this whole exercise very panic-inducing. She is a very literal thinker - and the idea of needing to commit to a plan, on paper, was quite stressful.

"But I don't know what I want to do for a career."

"Just write down something. It doesn't matter. Don't you want to do something medical? Just say, 'something medical.'"

"Mom, 'something medical' is not a career."

The same pattern followed with course selection. I tried to convince her that this was fun, a puzzle, a plan that could always be changed. She found it monumental, heavy, burdensome. Every course she was writing down was locking her into a one-way journey.

I remember doing similar four-year plans as part of the IB program in high school. My own high school path was very lockstep and there were fewer options. Somehow for my daughter, at one of the largest high schools in the state, with a plethora of options, the wide-open spaces seem paralyzing rather than freeing.

I wonder how many people find the exercise exhilarating, as I did, and how many find it paralyzing, like my daughter. My daughter has a good deal of anxiety about growing up and the future. She may not be alone. And sometimes I wonder if we spend so much time raising our kids for the "next step" that we forget to meet them where they are right now.

I Overshare

I overshare. I tell almost every detail of my life to almost every person I have ever met. It is how I process traumatic events. It is how I handle minor annoyances. It is a method of coping, a method of celebration. Being authentically who I am and sharing it with the world allows me to be my best self.

I did not always overshare, either online or in person. I had a blog from 2005 through 2008 on the platform Xanga, in which I blogged under the anonymous name "Molchick," and was careful to never ever expose any details about my actual name or city or circumstances. (The tragedy of this level of anonymity is that I am, to this day, unable to locate or even access any of my myriad of postings.)

I joined Facebook in 2006 and was very careful to be private. This was before the days of the Newsfeed, before all details about your life were shared with your connections, before there was really any point in have "friends" on the platform. I was careful that, when I did update my status, it was vague, obtuse, lacking any details.

In 2008, a floodgate of non-university-affiliated individuals began flooding Facebook and the site changed. I had a baby and stopped blogging on Xanga. I was suddenly worried about what to write and share. There were so many connections, all from different parts of my life, and there was not a way to vary the content or tone across audiences. I tried to share non-threatening pictures and parts of my life. I started a blog on Blogger, but was careful to never mention it on Facebook and used a domain name that could not be traced to my actual identity ("fourismore").

Facebook continued its march toward expansion and more and more individuals joined the site, causing most older members to pull back, tighten the reins, become more careful about sharing. Somehow this expansion had the opposite effect on me. With every passing year, I became more open, more prone to post, more comfortable with letting private details of my life be part of the Internet. In 2012, I restarted my blog - and, this time, began posting it on Facebook as well.

The biggest change in my proclivity toward oversharing came in 2014, when I wrote a blog post that I posted on Facebook called "Living a Medicated Life," concerning my battle with depression and anxiety. I remember my hands shaking as I pressed "publish," my palms turning clammy as I shared the blog on social media, wondering if I had ended my career and destroyed friendships and made acquaintances uncomfortable with who I was. But none of these disasters came to be. Instead, I found support, connections, enhanced relationships. I suddenly realized - that if I craved authentic connections, the only way to do so was to act authenticly myself.

I have continued this march toward oversharing on social media to this day. I am not honestly sure what is left for me to touch that I have not already explored online, but I am sure I will continue to surprise myself. Oversharing online is not for everyone. It is scary to be vulnerable. I worry that I often annoy people, both with the volume of my posts as well as the personal nature of much of my content. I try to be fairly quiet about some areas, such as political ideology, and I wonder where my line in the sand is on being authentic compared to trying to play it safe. I am concerned that my desire to share and foster connections can butt up against my own children's desire for privacy. I never want to make anyone uncomfortable, ever.

But on this day in 2018, oversharing, particularly online, is a strong part of my identity. And I am so grateful for this opportunity for it to shape who I am.