On Important Anniversaries and *the* Importance of Making Yourself Happy

Last Thursday, September 5 marked two important anniversaries: it was the two-year anniversary of Rookie Magazine, which I've had the honor of writing for since the beginning (in case you want to revisit it, here's my excited post about Rookie's launch) and the two-month anniversary of my arrival in Seattle.

Actually scratch that. It marked three important anniversaries. It was also the two-day anniversary of me feeling that happiest I've been since 2009.

I haven't been wholly and completely miserable since 2009. Some really wonderful things have happened. Like this:

 And this:

And even this:

But that last thing was kind of where the trouble began. About three weeks before Ballads was to be released, during a horrible week when I'm guessing but can't be bothered to check that Mercury was in retrograde because we were having the kind of killer heat wave that made me hate Chicago, my air conditioner was broken, and I was having so many problems with my home internet that I'm surprised I didn't bomb Comcast, my then-agent called to tell me to STOP EVERYTHING and promote Ballads because the publisher wasn't really doing anything for it and the print run and sell-through numbers were half of what they'd been for I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone.

Since they are sorta like children, I don't think you are supposed to love one book more than another, but I did love Ballads more. It was the book I felt like I was born to write--or that I'd survived my teenage years to write. I'd poured so much of myself into it that the ulcer problems that I'd had at sixteen resurfaced and were worse than they'd ever been.

And with the way my agent was talking it sounded like that book had failed before it even hit stores because my publisher had already written it off. I don't know how much of that is true and how much of that was my emotional response. What I do know is that I did everything I could. I was actually already doing everything I could. I mean, if high school had majors, mine would have been "Punk Rock D.I.Y." I'd taken everything I knew to support both of my books. With Ballads, I'd even hired a publicist.

But, to this day, it's sold only a third of what I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone sold. I don't know why. It's the better book. Up until I finished The Grief Book in May, I was pretty sure it was always going to be the best thing I'd ever written. I think that it is always harder for second books, even when the publisher is giving them a big a push, and when the publisher isn't, well... But I don't want to play any sort of blame game. I still have nothing but love for my editor and the people I worked with at MTV Books. I honestly don't really know what happened. All I do know is this:

It was out of my control.

But it has taken me four long years to come to grips with that.

I'm a perfectionist. An overachiever. Even when I was a stoner fuck-up, I was a straight-A student (aside from gym which doesn't count toward your G.P.A., so um, it doesn't count). I couldn't shake the idea that I had failed somehow. I had this big dream of "making it" as a writer, but instead I was (barely) supporting myself on bartending income, which was not at all where I envisioned myself with my fancy MFA degree at the age of 30. I beat myself up for months, for years thinking I wasn't good enough, my writing wasn't good enough.

My writing suffered as a result. There was the whole saga of The Bartender Book. I spent two years on that book, going through paralyzing periods of writer's block, ignoring so many people's gentle advice to just let it go--advice that maybe I should have taken because it hasn't sold--because I felt like I needed to prove that I could finish a book. I thought things would get easier after that, but then there was The Modern Myth YA that I couldn't finished and my biggest crisis of faith about my writing, which came in the middle of writing The Grief Book.

Other Hard Things were happening too. I had friends who were going through Terrible Awful Things. I was still reeling from the death of my friend Marcel in 2008. My house kept flooding because the weather in Chicago was pretty much constantly wretched. My beloved cat, Sid, who'd been my best friend and companion since my awful junior year of high school got really sick and then last November, he passed away.

Out of his death came the decision to move, though. I felt like he was setting me free. Like he knew I wouldn't go anywhere with him sick  because it was too risky to be away from our trusted caregivers. But when we were saying goodbye, I felt like he was telling me to make myself happy.

My therapist definitely was. I went back to therapy in July of last year because I knew my depression was the worst it had been in fifteen years. I was thinking about cutting. I was even sometimes thinking about suicide. I felt very much like I had at sixteen, but I knew more. I knew I didn't want to hurt the people I loved and that I didn't want to keep hurting. I knew that I could help myself. So I did.

In therapy I quickly had a bunch of revelations, especially about control--what I could control, what I couldn't and why I was so obsessed with it (the still-lingering effects of the controlling/abusive relationship I was in as a teenager).

There are many things about my writing career that I can't control, namely who buys my books, meaning both publishers and then how many people buy them after they come out. I can only write the very best book I can, promote it in the ways I know how, and hope for the best. I can't base my happiness on this. So I needed to be proactive and do the things I knew would make me happy. That thing was moving to Seattle and starting fresh in a city that I love.

It was absolutely petrifying because it meant relinquishing a lot of control, which I wrote about in part two of my series on making the move for Ms. Fit Magazine here. I came out here without a job aside from the work I do for Rookie and Ms. Fit and an online teaching gig, which all together would pay maybe a month's worth of bills. I had savings and a credit card with a high limit. I have a very supportive mother. I had to trust that this would be enough and that finding my own happiness would be worth the gamble.

My friend Marcel wrote his Instructions for Life on a paper towel and after his death, another friend had them printed on paper towels for a bunch of us. I keep mine in a shadow box above my desk. This is his first instruction:

"Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk." My friend, the one who had the paper towels printed for us, reminded me of this before I set off. I insisted that the shadow box with the paper towel accompany us in the car, that it be the first thing in my new home because I believed that knowing me as well as he did, Marcel would know that for me, a person who has struggled with depression for most of her life, a greater achievement than publishing a book would be learning how to make myself happy. In fact, I'm sure if I'd been able to call or write him during my struggles in the past four years, he would have said something like that. I know that he would have been proud that I finally figured it out on my own.

 My third piece for Ms. Fit, which I hope will be published soon, was written a month after we arrived in Seattle. When I was mostly happy because,um, well, I live in a place where I regularly see views like these:

  

But I was also freaked because I still hadn't found a job and/or sold a book, which I thought would click right into place if this whole moving thing was meant to be.

Deep breaths.
Great Risk.
It'll be worth it.
You can do it.

Job hunting is a slow process, especially in this economy. But much like when my husband and I found the right apartment, when I found the right job, everything sped up and it happened fast. I started last Tuesday as the administrative assistant in the English Department of a local university, one that is only a 15 minute bus ride or a a half an hour walk from my house. It's a gorgeous campus in one of my favorite parts of the city. Yes, it's office work. Yes it's full-time. Yes, this is a huge change from the past four years or so of my life. But it is an English Department and the people I've met so far are inspiring and amazing. For the first time in a long time, I feel stable, secure, hopeful, happy. 

I know there will still be challenges, the biggest being how to fit writing into my life. I know for sure that I will keep writing for Rookie because that is writing that has brought me nothing but joy for the past two years. I've always written fiction, but I've been writing essays and rants and zines since high school and I take just as much pleasure from that. Also, the Rookie staff has become my best support network. Even though it is an online publication and we work from all over the world, we take good care of each other. It really is one of the best parts of my life.

Of the two projects I mentioned in my last blog, I'll probably focus on the essay collection/zine thing because Rookie has given me the most joy as of late and because it will be the easiest to piece together while I'm learning to juggle writing and a full-time job. However, The Grief Book is the best thing I've written. It's better than Ballads. It's what I survived my teens and twenties and early thirties to write. I believe in it with all of my heart and soul. I'm finally ready to set free all of the old guilt and pain and stress I've felt about my writing career for the past four years and I hope that will unlock the universe somehow and the right editor will read it and want it and you all will get to read it soon. That would definitely take my happiness to the next level, but right now I'm just happy being here, in my heart city with the love of my life, the support of incredible friends all over the place, and knowing that I've done some damn fine work for the coolest magazine on the planet and I've written books both published and unpublished that I'm very proud of.

GCC Presents: Diana Wallach

So Diana Wallach has a SUPER cool new project--a trilogy of short stories called Mirror, Mirror. The first one, "Reflecting Emmy" is out now. Here are the details:

Background About REFLECTING EMMY and the MIRROR, MIRROR Trilogy

Diana Rodriguez Wallach, author of the award-winning YA series Amor and Summer Secrets, has created a modern take on the myths of Narcissus and Nemesis in a contemporary teen setting.

Her Mirror, Mirror trilogy debuts September 3^rd with “Reflecting Emmy,” followed by “Nara Gazing” in October, and “Shattering GiGi” in November. Each title will be a $0.99 short story sold in digital ebook format for Kindle, nook, and kobo. The titles will be combined to create the complete Mirror, Mirror trilogy, along with bonus materials and a prequel short story, in December 2013.

In early 2014, Diana’s Mirror, Mirror trilogy will be combined with the works of YA authors Jammie Kern and Magda Knight to create the Mythology High anthology, available in ebook and paperback through Buzz Books.

REFLECTING EMMY

Eighteen-year-old Emmy is in the family business-trapping vapid narcissistic souls into her silver compact mirror for all eternity. It’s what the Rhamnusia family has been doing for thousands of years, all under the direction of Great Grandmother. Only Emmy’s latest assignment, Nara, is about to prove more challenging than she ever expected.Gorgeous and self-absorbed, Nara is unflinchingly cruel to her classmates. Even her boyfriend, Luke, can no longer tolerate her actions–much to Emmy’s relief since she finds Luke a little more than intriguing. But when Emmy tricks Nara into gazing into her mystical mirror, what she finds there is not what she’s expecting.

About the Author

Diana Rodriguez Wallach is the author of Mirror, Mirror, a short-story collection based on the Narcissus myth, that includes Reflecting Emmy, Nara Gazing, and Shattering GiGi (Buzz Books 2013). She is also the author of three award-winning YA novels: Amor and Summer Secrets, Amigas and School Scandals, and Adios to All The Drama (Kensington Books).

In 2011, she published a highly regarded essay in Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories (HarperCollins), and in 2013, she will be featured in the anthology Latina Authors and Their Muses (Twilight Times Books). In 2010 Diana was named one of the Top Ten New Latino Authors to Watch by LatinoStories.com, and she placed second in the International Latino Book Awards. She hold a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University, and currently lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter.

The Interview:

Q: What inspired you to write this book?

DIANA: Reflecting Emmy is the first short story in my Mirror, Mirror trilogy, which is based on the myth of Narcissus. I wanted to reimagine a myth that most people, and teens, would know very well. And honestly, within seconds of my brain contemplating Narcissus, I came up with the idea of a paranormal organization that traps Narcissistic souls by judging their reflections in mirrors. I wish I could pinpoint what part of my brain came up with this idea and how it happened so quickly, because there are times when I’m slugging through a revision and would love to manually click that switch.

Q: The main character of my first book, I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, is the kind of girl I wanted to be (a rock star!), the MC of my second book has a lot more in common with teenage me. Is your main character someone you wish you could be, someone a lot like you, or your total opposite? How so?

DIANA: Emmy is the total opposite of me. For starters, she’s the decent of a Greek Goddess who’s tasked with trapping Narcissistic teen souls in her silver compact mirror. So it’s hard for teen me to relate to her job. Also, she’s immortal and she’s never been given the chance to be a “normal” girl. She had to become an agent, she had to follow in her family’s footsteps, and she moves around constantly never getting the chance to make friends or fall in love. Reflecting Emmy, the first short story in my Mirror, Mirror trilogy, shows how much Emmy struggles with her identity. And by the final short story in the collection, Shattering GiGi, Emmy gets to really think about who she wants to be.

Q: If there was a soundtrack for your book what are five songs that would be on it and how do they relate the story?

DIANA: You’re So Vain, Cary Simon—Reflecting Emmy, and all three of the Mirror, Mirror stories, are based on the myth of Narcissus. And falling so in love with your own image that you die staring at your beautiful face qualifies as vain. Nara, the reimagining of Narcissus, would definitely think this song was about her.

Mirrors, Justin Timberlake—Emmy’s job is wiping narcissistic teenage souls from the planet by using her shiny silver compact mirror. I’d say JT nails some of that imagery in this song.

Stupid Girls, Pink—This song is about girls becoming obsessed with the paparazzi culture and losing site of things that really matter, essentially choosing to focus on outer beauty rather than inner. It really fits my theme.

“Mirror Mirror” by Lord KraVen—I just discovered this song on an episode of So You Think You Can Dance (yes, I watch this show religiously). It fits perfectly. It’s a little Euro Techno sounding for my taste, but the beat and “mirror, mirror on the wall” refrain, would really fit well with the conclusion. I could almost imagine it playing as the credits roll in the movie adaptation. Dream big, right?

Q: In addition to writing books, I also write for a website for teens called Rookie, which has a regular feature called "Literally The Best Thing Ever," wherein we write about a thing that we think is super mega awesome (even if it is the type of thing that others might call a guilty pleasure, we believe there is nothing guilty about pleasure!) and explain why we think it is literally the best thing ever. It's generally a kind of unexpected thing, for example I wrote one about the soap opera, One Life To Live. I don't expect you to write a whole essay obviously, but can you briefly tell us what either you or your character (or both!) would say is "Literally The Best Thing Ever" and why?

DIANA: I don’t know if I can call this a “guilty” pleasure anymore because I’ve come out publicly and admitted that Literally The Best Thing Ever is General Hospital. I was raised on soap operas. Growing up, my Puerto Rican grandmother babysat me daily, and she learned to speak English from watching soap operas. So while other kids were watching Mr. Rogers, I was watching the Young and the Restless and Guiding Light. Indoctrination like that sticks. And when I went off to college, my roommates introduced me to General Hospital—this was the late ‘90s, the height of the Sonny & Brenda and Robin & Stone drama. To cheer my roommate up, I used to tell she looked like Brenda (Vanessa Marcil). I still watch the show daily. I even voted once for Kelly Monaco when she was on DWTS—that’s how much I love soaps, they actually got me to vote for a reality TV competition. But more than anything they remind me of my grandma, which is why they are literally the best thing ever.

Q: What are you working on for us next?

DIANA: I am revising, revising, revising a manuscript I started writing five years ago. It’s my first crack at a YA mystery, and I’m still learning how to properly craft a good mystery/thriller. Thankfully, right now, I have a generous editor/beta reader who is offering support as I muddle through this learning process. Hopefully, one day I will finish this book and see it in print.

GCC Presents: Amanda Ashby!

I know it has been forever since I've had an author interview, but I've got a great one for you today. Amanda Ashby has a new book out called DEMONOSITY and she's here to tell us all about it!

About DEMONOSITY:

The Black Rose–a powerful ancient force–has been let loose and has taken up residence in Celeste Gibson, popular girl at Cassidy Carter-Lewis’ high school. Thomas Delacroix is the spirit of a fourteenth-century knight who is devoted to protecting the Black Rose, but he needs a contemporary living being to take on the challenge. That’s where Cassidy comes in.


She’s a quirky high school junior who just wants to dress in her vintage clothes, hang out with her best friend, and take care of her father, who is recovering from surgery. She’s the last person who would ever volunteer for such a task, but no one actually asked her.  Now, like it or not, she finds herself training before dawn and battling demons at parties, the mall, and even at school. But hey, no one ever said high school was going to be easy.

About the author:

Amanda Ashby was born in Australia and after spending the last sixteen years dividing her time between England and New Zealand, she’s finally returned home for some sunshine. When she’s not moving country, she likes to write books (okay, she also likes to eat chocolate, watch television and sit around doing not much, but let’s just keep that amongst ourselves, shall we?)



She has a degree in English and Journalism from the University of Queensland and is married with two children. Her debut book, You Had Me at Halo was nominated for a Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice award. Zombie Queen of Newbury High was listed by the New York Public Library’s Stuff for the Teen Age 2010. Fairy Bad Day was selected by Voya as one of their Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers 2012 and was a SCBWI Crystal Kite Award finalist for the Australia/NZ region.

The Interview:

Q: What inspired you to write this book?

AMANDA: I think I’m a 12 year old boy at heart so I knew I wanted to do something that had a lot of action and sword fighting in. Then when I started reading about secret societies and the Templar Knights, the story started to take shape.

Q: The main character of my first book, I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE, is the kind of girl I wanted to be (a rock star!), the MC of my second book has a lot more in common with teenage me. Is your main character someone you wish you could be, someone a lot like you, or your total opposite? How so?

AMANDA: Unfortunately my character is a lot like me. She’s hopeless at making decisions, which is a problem I suffer from. In fact, if you ask me what my favorite chocolate bar is, the answer will change depending on what day it is. She also wears a lot of vintage clothing and doesn’t quite fit into the mainstream—though she’s not smart enough to be a geek—which pretty much sums me up!

Q: If there was a soundtrack for your book what are five songs that would be on it and how do they relate the story?

AMANDA:1) Douce Dame Jolie written by Guillaume de Mauchet. Because part of the story is about medieval demon knights I asked my music buff husband to help with the playlist and this is the first song he gave me. It is so gorgeous and it really helped set the scene for me!
2) Brother by Smashproof featuring Gin Wigmore. This is a book about two brothers who both feel like the other one has deserted them. This song perfectly sums that up, plus Smashproof and Gin Wigmore are Kiwis!
3) Ant Music by Adam Ant. Cassidy’s best friend Nash, is a gorgeous gothic who is based on all the new romantic guys I grew up with in the eighties!
4) Paris is Burning by Ladyhawke. Another great Kiwi artist! I actually have a reoccurring scene in the book about a fire in Paris that killed hundreds of innocent people so this song was kind of essential!
5) Modern Love by David Bowie. Just because I always have a David Bowie on every playlist!

Q: In addition to writing books, I also write for a website for teens called Rookie, which has a regular feature called "Literally The Best Thing Ever," wherein we write about a thing that we think is super mega awesome (even if it is the type of thing that others might call a guilty pleasure, we believe there is nothing guilty about pleasure!) and explain why we think it is literally the best thing ever. It's generally a kind of unexpected thing, for example I wrote one about the soap opera, One Life To Live. I don't expect you to write a whole essay obviously, but can you briefly tell us what either you or your character (or both!) would say is "Literally The Best Thing Ever" and why?

AMANDA: My current best thing ever is The Gilmore Girls. I’ve dipped in and out of before but I’ve never seen the whole series. Anyway, I’m now totally obsessed with it and keep annoying my kids by having excessively long, random conversations with them—usually when they’re in the middle of playing Minecraft. I just can’t explain how happy I feel when I watch that show and I’m forever going onto IMBD just to see what all the actors are doing now!

Q: What are you working on for us next?

AMANDA: I’ve been working on a few different projects and will hopefully be sending them to my agent very soon.

New(ish) Shiny Idea(s)

At the beginning of this month, I tweeted this:

It really did kind of freak me out. I feel like I've always hopped from one book right to the next. Often I've had a couple of ideas that had to battle it out. One of those ideas that kept getting started and then hitting a wall (The Modern Myth YA) was still bopping around in my head. I really do want to do something with it, but I can't decide if that something is continue where I left off (it had become a Typical Unwieldy Stephanie Mess of Way Too Many Words And Ideas) or rip it apart and start all over again. It may just be another 8 year novel like Ballads of Suburbia was where I write a version, know it's wrong and have to wait for the right structure to fall into my lap. Except seeing as I've already tried 2 versions with it, this may take even longer than that.

Anyway, I still had that idea in my back pocket, but I didn't feel ready to tackle it. That's a pretty huge thing after a cross-country move. When I handed The Grief Book off to my agent in May, I told her and my critique partners and anyone else who asked that aside from my work for Rookie, I was going to take a break from writing at least for June and July. I said if anything I might work on planning my essay collection/memoir type thing that I'd been pondering for years. Oh and I was going to document my move here and on tumblr. Since I finished The Grief Book right before we headed to Seattle to house hunt, and then I came home with three weeks to pack, writing aside from Rookie pretty much went out the window. Then came the cross-country drive, the settling in to the new place, and the all-consuming, very stressful job hunt.

I told myself that it was okay that I wasn't writing anything other than my Rookie assignments and cover letters or having big ideas. I assured myself that it's not like I'd forgotten to pack my muse. After all, Seattle has been a big part of my muse for years. It would come to me in due time. And probably at an inconvenient time.

Then, last Wednesday, I had what I thought was a very inconvenient idea:
 

As often does in my process, I'd had the stroke of genius that two characters who had been hanging out in my head (very loosely shaped characters, ghost-like really at this point. I don't have a full sight of them and one of them has a middle name but not a first name, though I know what their problems are) belonged in the same story. This had happened previously with Emily and Louisa in I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone and with Zoe and Ivy in my (still unsold) Bartender Book. Those books were mother and daughter while this would be aunt and niece, but as I had before, I wanted to tell the stories I saw unfolding from both points of view. I was immediately frustrated with myself because yanno, the whole spending two years writing a book that hasn't sold yet thing. I KNOW that the issue with the Bartender Book is that it's not YA, it's not NA and it's not Adult (though Adult would probably be the best place for it). So, I told the New Shiny Idea to bugger off. It just wasn't going to work. Besides, I'm busy with this whole applying for jobs thing and I'd already told my agent that the next thing was going to be the essay collection/memoir/zine-like thing.

Then yesterday morning I went running and I decided to listen to The Hold Steady. I have a weird love/hate thing about The Hold Steady, or really about the characters in their songs. These middle-class Midwestern arty kids who are just doing a lot of drugs. I kind of was that kid, but not really, mostly I was just trying to be that kid and failing and I'm a little bit bitter about it and mostly just disgusted that I aspired to be this:

But I can't help being fascinated or relating to The Hold Steady's songs and they are such great storytellers that my own storytelling urge just kicked into high gear.

Or maybe it was the perfect gray Seattle day.

Or more likely it was because my muse is a cruel little vixen and she KNOWS that this is the worst possible time for me to want to start writing something because I was waiting for the details of a temporary contracted writing project to get squared away and I'd applied for a bunch of jobs, one of which is The Total Dream Job and that plus the temporary work would barely leave time to sleep let alone write my own stuff.

But the ideas, they came, hard and fast. My seventeen year-old girl character just started talking away in my head. She's not as sweet as I initially pictured her. She's hard-edged and troubled. She takes too many pills. She might like The Hold Steady (or aspire to be one of their song characters at least), but she likes boys who wear a lot of black even better. And there's a river and drowning or presumed drowning. And there's running away. From the Midwest to Seattle. Of course. And my thirty-five (or maybe thirty-four year-old character) who'd originally really wanted to tell her story, may not be so vocal after all. She could be if I want her too, but otherwise she and I thought up another way to tell her story within her niece's story. It all depends on whether I want it to be YA or Adult.

After early morning notebook scrawling, I managed to push my new characters away. Work on teaching. On job applications. All of the important stuff.

Then this happened:

Not really a fan of this new pattern of waking up because of my tiny bladder or my cats or whatever and then staying awake because I'm consumed with anxiety, but today it was different. It was a dream that woke me (well, and my bladder). My character and her boyfriend. Or the guy she wants to be her boyfriend. And I couldn't stop thinking about them.

Well, not until I started thinking about the essay collection/memoir/zine book, too. Suddenly knew how I was going to structure that. I was okay with it not being a cohesive narrative like most memoirs, but pieces and reflections that made up the whole of my coming of age (which pretty much encompasses age 10 to 24, even though I know that's not neatly YA either). It WOULD be like a big zine of my youth. It would have essays from Rookie and new essays and vignette style stuff like the Cemetery piece I just did for Rookie. It would have pages from my old zines like this:

And the liner notes from my old mix tapes:

At seven, I sucked it up, got out of bed and set about facing a new challenge:

I'd written things about the New Shiny Idea in both notebooks, but I settled on the skulls for it partially because those pages would be harder to rip out, but mainly because it felt right. The stencil notebook has good DIY vibes for the Essay/Zine/Scrapbook project.

I scrawled down everything that was in my head about New Shiny Idea and then I went for a run where I got more ideas, so I wrote those down too. I created a new Scrivener project for Essay/Zine/Scrapbook project because I have a lot of bits and pieces already written that I can use or adapt for that.

Then what I knew would happen did: the contract arrived for the temporary writing job. That project will start on Monday and likely last til the end of September.

Then what I hope hope hoped would happen did: I got an invitation to interview for The Total Dream Job next week.

If all goes well, I will be so completely busy with a full-time job and a temporary job that I won't have time to write, but I'm totally okay with this. In fact I'm hoping for it. If good things come in threes (which they should because bad things always do), maybe I'll be able to sell The Grief Book or The Bartender Book. That will probably shape the direction of New Shiny Idea. So I am okay with just jotting down notes after my run on it for now. Same with potential flashes of essay inspiration for Essay/Zine/Scrapbook project. They can even wake me up at 5 am if they want (but preferably not always).

Fingers crossed that even though my muse is a cruel little vixen at times, she is also an incredible good luck charm.

One Month in Seattle--the good & the bad

We've officially been in Seattle for a month as of today. For the most part it has been amazing, but I will admit that I just called my mom crying. The job hunt thing has been extremely stressful. Even though I know it was silly, there was definitely a small part of me that hoped/wanted to believe that when I got here things would work out almost magically. Like after four years and two other projects, maybe I'd get The Call that my most recent book had sold. Or I'd find The Ultimate Dream Job and land it right away. (I've found a couple of Ultimate Dream Jobs, but so far have not been able to land one.) My hopes were buoyed by the many people who were impressed by the leap I was taking and said things like, "So few people are willing to just go for it like that. Things are bound to work out because you have the guts to try."

I should probably worry less and give myself more credit for the whole having guts things. But I'm really terrible about both of those things ;)

I will say that even though I didn't want to cry, especially not today of all days, this was the first time I have cried like this since I got here. In Chicago, I woke up feeling miserable just about every day and I had an incredibly hard time shaking it. In Seattle, when I get freaked or sad, I can usually shake it off just by going for a run because this is my view:

I can see the water, the sky, the mountains when it's clear (it was one of the only gray days we've had when I took this), and those cranes, which for whatever reason, I find even more appealing than any city skyline (though I do love the Space Needle and the fact I can stare at the city skyline from the bus stop by my house). And the air, the clean, clean air that smells of rain and lavender and other flowers whose names I haven't learned yet, it purifies me and takes the bad away.

Also, when I'm stressed, a fifteen-minute bus ride gets me to the place where I've always felt the calmest and the most at peace--the place I used to take a 4+hour plane ride to at least once a year. I'd go there are the beginning and the end of trip every time. I'd take a million photos and videos so I could try to recreate the feelings it stirred whenever I needed them. Now it's mine whenever I want it:

And so is this:

And this:

Stressful as it has been not having work, it has been nice to have the time to get my apartment unpacked and in order. It feels like home. A magical home where I wake up and go to bed every night staring at a beautiful horizon--colorful, sometimes cloudy, filled with green and trees and occasionally a mountain.

I've also had the chance to explore new parts of Seattle and spend time with friends. My husband and I have a great new tradition established on Sundays (which I used to sleep through most of due to bartending until 3 am) where we go for vegan brunch and pick a new walk to go on. Yesterday we went to Lincoln Park in West Seattle for some gorgeous beach and bluff views. Last week we hiked through the wooded Interlaken Park (which is his favorite so far and is definitely one of mine, but I love places close to water even more). And the Highline with it's delicious vegan food and infused liquors is definitely one of my favorite bars ever.

It definitely feels strange that I haven't written fiction or had the strong pull of an idea--I've had nibbles and a little bit of the desire to go back to my damn Modern Myth book that I never finished. I'm not looking at this lack of creativity as an omen though. It's part of the process. The move has been all consuming, and if anything I'm just scared to pursue another novel until I see something happen with the two I've already written. Maybe I'll focus on an essay collection since I do love the work I do for Rookie. Maybe I'm about to stumble on that Ultimate Dream Job and I'll need to focus on that for awhile.

I know that my creative spirit will thrive in Seattle once given a little more time, though. I feel right here even when I feel wrong and full of doubt about everything else. So, a month in, I know I definitely made the right choice and took the right risk. It's just the trusting myself/the universe that the rest will work out that is the hard part.

P.S. I apologize again for not having documented more of the moving process--I really do mean to, but the job-hunting has eaten up so much time. (If you can get a job before moving cross-country, I certainly advise it.) I haven't gotten much response to these posts anyway, so maybe there isn't much interest (and if so, I'm sorry for being boring!) or I'm just posting too sporadically (again, sorry! The job thing!). At the end of the day, though, I really intended to document this all for myself anyway, so I'm sure I will at some point. And I will make another promise to try to post more frequently at least on tumblr, but we'll see how that goes! I think I do better on Instagram!

Seattle So Far

As of 3:30 today, I will have officially been a Seattle resident for 2 weeks. I haven't documented the journey nearly the way I wanted to even though I specifically created a tumblr account so I could write about it in bite-sized chunks. Maybe I just suck at bite-sized chunks (and all of my editors, book and magazine, will be nodding along here). Maybe moving is just insanely exhausting and even someone who WANTS to reflect and document as much as I want to reflect and document can't find the time/energy to do it while it is all happening. Especially if that someone has trouble sleeping and is kind of ADD. (That someone is me... Um did I make this too confusing yet? See what the exhaustion has done!) Anyway, it is probably a little of column A and a whole hell of a lot of column B. I'm hoping that now that most of the unpacking is done and the only Herculean task left is Finding A Job (which is still pretty frickin' Herculean), that maybe I'll have time to reflect and recap and write all the helpful posts that I was seeking while planning this move like: picking a moving company, managing 2 cats on a cross-country job, finding a job when you are writer who has been freelancing and bartending for the past 5 years... though I still don't really have much to say about that other than:

and

For now, gifs, photos and lists are the main things I'm capable of (hey, maybe that's good for learning to write in bite-sized chunks!). If you haven't seen them, I documented my first 2 weeks in Seattle in photos on tumblr, as well as Day 1, 2, and 3 of the drive. I also wrote a piece for Rookie about my hoarding packrat problem and how I had to overcome it (as best as possible) for the move and I have a series upcoming for Ms.Fit about the emotional aspects of the moving process.

Here are my somewhat random thoughts about the move so far:

• At 3:30 in the afternoon of July 5th as we came into the city on I-90 over the bridge across Lake Washington, we had my 250 song "Hello Seattle" playlist on shuffle and "You Know You're Right" by Nirvana came on. Yes, the lyrics of that song are pained and resigned, but the title, the title seemed to speak to all of my doubts. Deep down, scary as this all was, I was meant to do this, to move here. There are no actual pictures of us entering the city because I was too busy taking a mental picture of EVERYTHING I was seeing, hearing, thinking and feeling. At one point I managed to tweet this, which pretty much sums it all up:
  
  
  
  It was one of the most emotionally charged moments of my life. Up there with my wedding vows and like when I said those, I did know 100% that this was right.
  
  
  
  
• Unpacking is WAY more fun than packing. Except for dealing with all the bubble wrap and newspaper you used to protect your most precious things. Cats like that part though:
  
• The thing I hate the most about moving is figuring out your routine all over again. Where the various grocery stores are. The nearest bank. All that crap. And I still haven't figured out where the hell one buys decently priced toilet paper in this town. We've been to QFC and Red Apple and both seemed overpriced. Safeway, maybe? Or Grocery Outlet (Gross Out as my dear friend affectionately calls it)? While the produce is way way way better here, as is the selection of vegan and natural foods (we already have a co-op membership and mad love for our local fruit stand), groceries as a whole seem more expensive here than Chicago, though that could have been because we lived in a suburb.
• Despite the hassle of figuring out how to meet those everyday needs, exploring your neighborhood and being a tourist in your new city is kind of fun. Now I get to do all of the things I didn't have time for when I was just visiting. Go on all 50 of the walks from my 50 Seattle Walks card deck I bought years ago. One of the biggest incentives to move here for us was more outdoor time. We dove straight into that by going on a hike with one of my best friends from high school, her partner and their kids the day after we arrived. Then a few days after that we visited Kubota Gardens and when my friend was in town for my birthday we did the marsh island walk near the Washington Arboretum, which I'd tried to go on while visiting once in April, but it was too wet. It was still *almost* too wet:
  
• I've been eating great (sooooo many vegan options) and in full-on music geek mode since we got here. We got a membership for the EMP and saw their Women Who Rock and Fantasy exhibits. And we went to the Sub Pop Silver Jubilee which happened ON MY BIRTHDAY and was admittedly one of the main reasons I wanted to make sure to be here by my birthday. 
• It is a little bit weird being at a festival like that, where I would have either gone with or run into a bunch of people in Chicago, and knowing absolutely no one. I do have a couple of friends here including the aforementioned close friend that I've known forever and I do sometimes like feeling like my husband and I are on our own private adventure (that was by far the best part of the drive out here), this is a teeny bit both scary and depressing. Making new friends and becoming a new member of established groups of friends is an intimidating thing as a grown-up, at least to me. And while I still have no nostalgia for Chicago yet (it's like a bazillion degrees there right now, I hear and I'm already a Seattleite who bitches about how hot it is when it's 80 and sunny. I mean it was really freakin' hot and sunny at the Jubilee. Scott had to buy a hat!), I definitely miss my friends and family like crazy. My mom and niece especially. Shit. 
• I'm tired and sad and freaked about finding a job a lot. I expected that though. I knew that living in my heart city wouldn't make my life 100% perfect. Mostly I still feel kind of like I'm in a daze. Kind of like a year from now I'll look back on this and barely remember but also laugh at all the hard feelings. At least I hope so.
• This is the view out of my window, so basically whenever I'm tired/sad/freaked, I can instantly feel better by looking outside and basking in the shock and awe that I'm actually here and this is mine.
  
   
• And to end on a totally strange note, I love that composting is a city-wide thing here! I am so freaking excited that basically NOTHING goes into the trash. Except packaging. This is making me think a lot (and be quite annoyed about) packaging. Oh and also that shit-ton of bubble wrap we used. Sigh and with that, I go back to unpacking.

Packing Panic

We move in 15 days. Our first container arrives in 9 days. I'm pretty sure I should be putting things in boxes at this point. I should probably definitely at least have boxes at this point, right?

I don't know.

Ugh. That's the problem. I just don't know. 

I'm a novel-writer, which means I love tackling big projects. But this is a totally new sort of big project. I should probably have lists and a plan. I've made a lot of lists, but I don't really know how to make a plan. I've been doing this pretty much by the seat of my pants.

I figured there were three major elements to moving across the country:

1. Finding a place to live, which I also totally didn't know how to approach at first. So I did a general survey of my Facebook friends and asked like how far in advance we should go to look for a place. They said a month, so we planned to spend a week in Seattle, a month before our move date. Since a couple of people mentioned getting a realtor, we looked into that, but they all wanted to charge us like a grand for what basically amounted to searching Craigslist with us. Yeah, eff that. So we went to Seattle for a week, did a lot of Craigslist searching, stressed quite a bit, but went back to Chicago with a signed lease and keys in hand. Find a place to live--check.

2. Finding a job. This is it's own animal. At least for me. For my mechanic husband, it also just meant search Craigslist, send resume, walk into business, walk out with job offer. Hey, at least one of us has a job. I'm still "networking" and sending resumes and waiting for responses. But there is a routine to this that at least makes sense to me, that can be plotted out in to-do lists, worked on in chunks like I do my writing. And we  have enough savings to survive for four months with neither of us having a job, so I'm trying to reassure myself with that.

3. Getting our stuff across the country. I've lived in the same house for nine years. A house that is too big for me. I've accumulated a lot of stuff. My previous moves involved a U-Haul and my car for all the precious things like records and my stereo. At 33, I really wanted to move like a grown-up. Like with dudes who bring your stuff in and out of your house. Dudes that you don't know and pay with money not pizza and beer. Also, driving a U-Haul and towing our car through a couple of mountain ranges with two whiny cats sounded awful. Like if-this-is-my-only-option-maybe-I'll-just-stay-in-Chicago awful. So more research/investigative work was done. That phase was fine. I'm good at research and investigation. It's part of my job as a writer.

Of course there were complications. 

Complication #1 As I mentioned, my husband is a mechanic. Before marrying a mechanic, I did not realize that they buy their own tools. Thousands of dollars of tools. And then they also buy their own giant toolboxes. Toolboxes that also cost thousands of dollars and weigh thousands of pounds. Scott's tools and toolbox are, like, as essential as our bed. If anything is moving with us, it's that stuff.

Complication #2 We live on a busy street. I did not realize this would be such a complication until the middle of the research and investigation phase. When after exploring ABF U-Pack and PODS, two non U-Haul options friends had used to get their stuff across the country, I decided I wanted to go full-on Grown-Up Move and at least price Actual Professional Movers who put the stuff on and took the stuff off a giant non-U-Haul truck. Also, Mayflower just happened to pop-up in our Google search to compare container prices, but instead of entering our information for a quote, they wanted our phone number, so I gave it to them and then they called me the next day and wanted to send a person to our house to assess our stuff and present us with our options. This estimate was free and would help us figure out how much space we would actually need no matter which company we went with, so I went for it. And, even though it was at the highest end of our budget, I really wanted those Actual Mover Guys and was so ready to go for it when the Mayflower Assessor Lady said, "Hmmm, that's a pretty busy street. Will they actually let you have a semi parked there for loading?"

Uhhhh. 

So I called and asked and of course they said no. Of course, they next day, I saw a semi parked down the block on part of our street where no parking is allowed for ANYONE EVER and I took a picture of it and texted it to Scott, who told me, "They only said no because you asked. If we'd just done it, it probably would have been fine."

I'd been too afraid to just do it, though. Mainly because we're moving during Mercury Retrograde already (and I'd seriously considered picking another time because of that, but my very logical, non-superstitious, non-astrology reading husband did not understand my objections, so I've just been planning very carefully). But also because of Complication #1. It added all sorts of expense to an already expensive van move to have my husband's tools moved to a storage facility where they would have to live until he got a job. (We did not know then that he would find a job before we moved.)

Mayflower also offered container moves--big 16-foot containers that ABF did not have. The containers came with a month of free storage, so they could just hold the one with Scott's tools until we were ready for it. PODS also offered these big containers, but with Mayflower you could actually get movers. My husband chose to go the pay friends with pizza and beer on the loading end in Chicago because he has friends he can rope into that here, but in Seattle, our few friends have kids, so we went the Grown-Up route there. It was an excellent compromise.

Plus Mayflower worked with us to figure out Complication #2.5: We live on a busy street and only have one parking spot. They would stagger our container delivery so the one for Scott's tools comes on June 25th and is swapped out for our other container on June 27th.

Of course, they were mildly concerned that they would not be able to FIT the container into the parking spot and encouraged me to ask a neighbor to use the driveway between our building and their house. This took a lot of bravery on my part since I'd only really waved hello to those neighbors before, but of course they were super nice and said they'd lend us their driveway for a week, and also, they have boxes from when they were thinking about selling their house.

I called and left a message this weekend to see if I could look at those boxes and haven't heard back yet (trying not to be nervous about that and whether or not now they do not want us to use the driveway for some reason). Since, as it turns out boxes are also INSANELY EXPENSIVE and when you are moving like a grown-up you have to get stuff like "wardrobe boxes" because apparently putting your clothes in garbage bags is Not Okay, I really want to see what I can get from them first.

Or maybe I'm making excuses.

But really I just don't know WHEN I should start packing. I mean, until we get those containers, I'm not precisely sure how much will fit, but I've already done a lot of purging. (That is it's own post, since this is already too long.) All of this went to a community garage sale and Goodwill:

And we listed a bunch of stuff (like my elliptical, sob!) on Craigslist this weekend.

My husband doesn't finish working until the end of this week, and technically neither do I, but that's a night-time bartending job. Since I'm not working on a novel and my freelance assignments are handed in, my days are free. I plan to spend today doing Practical Things like going to the dentist, the bank, and the DMV. But um, what about after that? Do I keep job hunting? Visit with the people I love that I'm leaving behind? Suck it up, buy some boxes and start packing? Write long blog posts about the process of moving?

I feel like maybe I can do the visiting thing because I seem to remember packing in a weekend for all my previous moves, but since those weren't grown-up moves, I'm not sure if that is how it works when you have to special boxes for your lamps and your artwork (Holy hell, I am so freaked about all of the framed artwork. And my records. This is the "precious" stuff that always went in the car with me, but now with 2 cats, 3 plants, and supplies for the ten days we'll be without the rest of our clothes, dishes, etc, there is no room.) If you have advice, feel free to share it. Consulting the hive mind has served me well so far. And I guess (strangely, since I'm usually such a planner), so has just rolling with it and trusting things will work out, so I'll do that, too.