Commuter: Year 1

It’s been a minute since last I put on my writing hat while packed into a three-seater on NJ transit or huddled in a corner of Hoboken terminal. My work being heavily digital has gifted me some degree of carpal tunnel and sometimes the thought of clenching my phone a minute longer to write something is enough to deter me from the practice. But so much happens in these minutes, hours spent contained in a metal tube, devoid of service, surrounded by people and on occasion still feeling alone.

Today marks one year for me as a commuter. I refer to other people as tourists whereas I myself was a tourist in this gigantic city system a year ago. I get lost far less often, I can transfer trains, I can help a straggler on the corner and I walk quickly enough to appear to an onlooker like I know where I am heading. While commuting isn’t as romantic as it had been the first spring months I began work, it still entrusts me with forced quality time with myself and for that I am always grateful. 

And yet every day, a new experience en route to and from my job, another anomaly of the train uncovered. I lost my mother-in-law at 6 pm on a work night a few weeks back. I had been planning to get drinks with friends and was plucked from this carefree space and transported to one of fear and sorrow. I deliriously trekked to the PATH and sobbed on the train, anchored against the window. I tilted towards the corner to hide my face from view but noone noticed me. Not one soul. I’m not sure if this is good or bad? Perhaps both.

I recall in my writing from about three months ago that I felt as if I was losing my tenderness canvassing the city space. I’m more impatient than I once was. I have trouble unplugging as I feel a sense of urgency to be available. I rarely allot myself the time to be unproductive and feel endless yearning for a moment of calm all the while feeling excited and invigorated to have found work that is stimulating and exciting. When I hit the tunnel and service goes out I am outraged. I refresh the phone as if something will change and magically cell service will cut through water and concrete. Alas, I have to be comfortable sitting with myself and my thoughts for however long that spread of track is. Maybe connectivity is so desired because it prevents me from being in my brain all alone. My college roommate used to tell me that. Try not to reside alone in your head too too long. It can be a scary and vulnerable place.

I still wonder what it would be like to be an adult without immediate access. What would I do on the train in lieu of checking emails or scrolling? Even my reading is interrupted by a buzz or a ring. When I have kids I want to teach them the power of boredom. The joy of being uninfluenced by the forces of popular culture that tell you what needs fixing or who you should aspire to. The allure of disconnecting and daydreaming, without an intended destination. I pray amidst the constant onslaught of information and pressure they will know snippets of a childhood like I had with rollerblades, scraped knees, and conversations happening face to face. I pray I myself get back to this place too. For now, setting my devices aside and gazing out the window at the same landscape will be my solace. 

What I learned in 2017

Another year has gone by. I am actually listening to Celine Dion's song by the same title from circa 1998 to get me in the mood for recalling all that was 2017. I've been concluding the year with these reflections for a few years now and it brings me a feeling of peace despite the fact that I really don't like New Year's all that much. While I am hopeful for the promise and opportunity of another year, I always war with a subtle melancholy for the conclusion of the Christmas season. 

This past year I began a new job in Manhattan, one that has exposed me to a multitude of experiences for which I am so very grateful. I learned a valuable lesson in persistence. I applied to work at Bullfrog+Baum as a senior at Georgetown and received no reply back. I applied again a year later, and again received no reply. I committed to writing more, learning to compose a compelling image, and sharing creative projects here in this digital corner of mine. Upon applying to Bullfrog some 5 years after my initial infatuation with the firm, I got a call, 3 interviews, a job, a slew of new connections, a belly full of meals, and some new sisters. Brothers too! I see you Aik Wye and Alex. Oh and a promotion! 

I felt the pride of seeing my name in the Wall Street Journal.

I learned that relationships don't always endure change, but they serve their purposes for a moment in time. You can still be thankful for the impressions and wisdom left behind. Speaking of relationships - they can begin on rocky footing. There can be conflict, dissonance, and even harsh judgment. But all is not lost. People evolve and under the right circumstances the unlikeliest of people can become allies and advocates.

I learned you can make peace with popovers, win over a hardened heart with the freshly-baked, and heal someone who is suffering with 12 minutes on the phone. 

I have seen that the afflicted are prone to flock to helping professions. I believe this is a constructive way to cope with feelings of pain, fear, shame and inadequacy. I also learned we do not have to perpetually be on trial. We can be forgiven. 

I have learned to love more completely, and that sometimes love is uncomfortable and that you can love and not quite like someone momentarily. Life does not have to be blissful and without adversity to be pure magic. I have learned that when I am angry, or he is angry we make more progress confronting matters head on than when we dance around a fragile topic. 

Wine and Cheese Class at Italienne 

I have learned to navigate the NYC subway! Learned about some wines, many cheeses, and a spirit or two at Italienne. I baked oh so many batches of Rossella Rago's Italian Knot Cookies as I have for years at Christmas. We became friends too and to hold her book in my hands and call her a companion is wildly gratifying. I made Gail Simmons' Banoffee Pie and I am never looking back. I ate at restaurants I could likely never afford, at least not for a very long time.  

Rossella Rago's Knot Cookies 

Chocolate Banoffee Pie

I learned to shoot in manual mode. Thank you lynda.com and Melissa Cohn. I learned some ways to make an Instagram story perdy, and how to navigate the freaking billing section on Facebook Ads Manager. 

I learned of the joy in train travel. I learned oh so much about Hoboken from frequently missing said trains, and made new friends at the diner I get milkshakes at when I miss said trains.

I learned about press language, media outlets, and how to multi-task like a beast.

I had hot pot, my first ever martini, and ate pizza multiple times in Brooklyn.  

I learned how to maintain composure when dealing with obnoxiously drunk patrons while working the door at a bar. I also learned how gratifying it is to work with different demographics in capacities that use different parts of your brains.  

No two couples are alike. Comparison, as has always been said, is literally the thief of joy.  

Books fed my soul this past year, and period television was mildly addictive.  The Tudors and The Borgias kept me company on the treadmill... That is when I made it to the treadmill. I walked far and wide in the city to avoid the subway although as I said, the scared Jersey girl learned to navigate it. 

I learned that I can thrive outside of my comfort zone and that I’ve merely scratched the surface of all I would like to see and try.  

I’m still learning to be gentle with myself but I’m closer than I was and I’m hopeful for what lies ahead.   

How Social Media Mimics Intrusive Thinking

Social media has become engrained in the fabric of our culture and the way people interact, express themselves, and consume information. As a Community Manager, being immersed in social media is critically important to my job but sometimes detrimental to my sense of worth and peace. I am disheartened by the comparisons that inadvertently emerge as I tap and scroll, tap and scroll. 

As a child of the digital age and a person with Pure Obsessional OCD, I have observed abundant overlap between these two identities. Social media feeds are dictated by algorithms. Take Instagram for example: a Search tab so generously populates your feed with images and videos that might be of interest to you based on your behavior online. This is exactly how intrusive thoughts work. I have a thought that is ego dystonic, scares me and sets me off down the rabbit hole of mental compulsions in a futile attempt to disprove that thought. By seeking to avoid said intrusive thoughts, you guessed it, we affirm them. “What we resist, persists,” a counselor once told me. And what would have been diluted by simple acceptance, is amplified by the friction our brains set into motion. The same thing happens on Facebook and Instagram. I compare my relationship to the ever repetitive rhetoric of #CoupleGoals, tapping and reading, tapping and linking to yet another related piece of content. My Search tab is then inundated with images of perfectly tan, tone couples. Same goes for body image, professional success, activism, pie making abilities- you name it. Their (insert insecurity) must be more valid than mine, as they receive more engagement. It seems as if they are more worthy. I too portray aspirational parts of my life and work, but am troubled by the unrealistic expectation perpetuated.  When I fixate on perfection, then my need for it continues. The sense of urgency remains because I keep sounding the alarm and affirming that it is important. Conundrums scream, “pay attention to me,” and although it negatively impacts my life, I pay attention.

I consistently battle with these themes thereby guaranteeing they remain top of mind. If only I had the perspective to put down my weapons and coexist with the discomfort. If only I had enough confidence in myself, and my intrinsic worth as a person not to compare myself to the carefully curated version of another person. Not to feed into the trap of obsessional thinking. To combat the frenzy, I’ve set up some parameters for social media use.  I designate specific times of day to log on for work, not when I first wake up, and not when I lay down for the evening. I want my bed and that time to be a place of gratitude, not comparison. Same goes for uncontrollable worry. I set certain periods to utter my fears and intrusions out loud, when no one is around, and I force myself to sit with them. I cannot try to disprove them and they eventually lose their weight.

In real life, if a conversation isn’t going anywhere you stop talking and part ways.  On the internet there is no concrete out as the information is always available, and the behavior is tracked via algorithms outside of our awareness. When your OCD brain latches onto an irreconcilable fear, you can’t excuse yourself, you just endure it and the suffering continues. My goal will always be to reside peacefully in my skin and circumstances, to realize the fallacies at play in my mind, and reconcile with them; the cycle is not readily overcome though. Since I cannot separate from my disorderly brain, I can always log out of the Instagram app for a brief hiatus. Maybe they are one in the same. 

Social Hour

I attempted to unplug for the day and broke that resolution the minute I Instagram storied from my semi-monthly brunch with a dear friend Molly, at our most favorite spot, Raymond’s in Montclair, NJ. Although we don’t work together in that sweet little house on Park Street for years now, we have been diligent in maintaining our sisterhood. Same place, every other month or so, a corner booth, hot cappuccino for her, iced for me, over easy for her, scrambled for me, butter for her, butter and jam for me.  There are animated giggles, angst balanced by joy, and cold home fries because we just have so much to say that we can’t quite finish the food in its “hot” window. I surely can’t unplug now as I feverishly type from another cafe, brimming with thoughts from our two plus hours of being immersed in one another. 

Molly always graciously shares her wisdom and assurance with me, I share with her my latest frenzy or accomplishment. We are quite possibly mirror images of one another born in different times. Catholic-raised, anxiety-ridden, maternal, a little rebellious, introspective, deeply feeling, and bearers of smiles on the outside even when we are hurting on the inside. Per usual we dove to great depths covering topics like social comparison, shame, guilt, and fear. She had recently taken herself off a few social platforms as they were not serving her in a productive and healthy way. And while my job is precisely to reside in this strange digital world, I can’t quite disagree with her choice. I think it was a prudent practice in self care. She asked how I can subject myself to reading and digesting all of this highly polarizing and evocative content on a daily basis. Image after image, narrative after narrative. “Isn’t your brain fatigued from all of these perspectives?” she said. “Whose truth is actual truth because yours is surely different than mine. And why should anyone else's perception be superior?” Preach, Molly. 

I am endlessly seeking information from the outside in. Social cues, suggestions from media, family and peers, and mandates from thought leaders set the pace for my day. Quite frankly, it is tiring to react every moment of every day. To attach uncessecarily to the plot that unravels around me, I become a character in a play I never auditioned for. I compare my uncut footage to someone's highlight reel, or worse I portray a highlight reel for fear of sharing what is imperfect. Sometimes, most times, it is a monologue of my own vicious making. “Words are powerful,” she said, “and we are most harsh when speaking to ourselves.” Right again she was. 

During our social hour, Molly shared with me wonderful, personal news. Yes, you heard right. We exchanged news in person, face to face, not via a screen. We touched hands and celebrated. We chatted about gender bias, podcasts, how to establish routines, how challenging it can be to exercise first thing in the morning, and her position on television. Words are powerful. Best we share ours thoughtfully with people deserving of them, and disengage when it all gets to be too much.

Commuter: The State of Affairs

The news is unsettling, rather heartbreaking. People are suffering as their homes are ravaged by Hurricane Harvey. Parents pray that their children can grow up in some semblance of peace. I asked my parents if it was like this when they were young. "Should I have kids? Is it going to be ok?" They say there were bullies as long as they can remember and their parents before them; they just dressed differently. People were aggressors since nearly the beginning of time. But still we hold on to the idea that we will someday live in a violence and bias free world. There are enough polarizing opinions out there. There is sufficient blame and shame being cast in different directions so I am going to find the common ground. I am confined to a metal tube each morning and each evening, Monday through Friday, and I am comforted by the state of affairs as I have experienced it on the train. 

When you have a television sized smart phone, you forfeit some level of privacy. Lock screens are available for passersby to see and sometimes admire. Lock, Unlock, Spotify, Instagram, Lock, Unlock, Fruit Ninja, Twitter, Lock Unlock, Skimm, Text, Lock. Every lock screen I have gazed at unintentionally features something beloved. A child, a partner, your favorite food. Predominately children, I have seen. People find comfort in children. When we clutch our devices day in and out, the first sight we need to see is something beloved. 

A mother putting suntan lotion on her babes is such a small act that solidifies the goodness in humanity. It conveys, I've birthed you and I will care for you, your scalp and the spots behind your ears. 

Predominately, seats are offered to the elderly, the disabled, and pregnant women. This is a tricky one, because some do not want to have a seat offered to them and some women may appear to be pregnant but are not. Nonetheless, the intention is universal to offer a seat to someone else whose labor might be lessened, even slightly, by a chance to rest their legs or feet. I've offered many seats, even just by scooting over in a three seater, to the undesirable middle spot, so that someone could have a seat. The people have mostly been appreciative. 

Whether or not we care to acknowledge it, we are all affected by implicit bias. There is no way around it. The noblest among us will claim not me. But we were programmed since the days of Sesame Street to identify that "one of these things is not like the other." We received shiny tickers on our worksheets for identifying what is different. We were shaped by culture, fear and imperfect teachings. To deny our own ignorance is more damaging than to embrace our fallacies as friends, and teach them well. To extend a hand to someone who doesn't look or believe as you do, to try and understand what made a person behave as they do, to attempt an open mind. I cannot change another person by shaming them, hurting them, or ignoring them. I can work on myself though. 

When the Path train comes to a sudden stop, we all sway in the direction that inertia carries us. Like a scene out of a musical I queue music by Pasek and Paul in my head comprised of the hum of the train, a syncopated rhythm, and crunch of metal. Heads bob. Music and travel combined make me feel like life is a film and this is the soundtrack. I am surely not alone in having the vivid experience of life slowing down when a song comes on that you love. A calm comes over you as you travel from point A to point B, the star in your own movie.  

To assemble a brownie pie, line a 9 inch tin with your favorite crust. I use this one from Williams Sonoma. Fill with brownie batter and bake in a 350 degree pre-heated oven for 50 minutes. I used my Cricut Explore Air 2 to make Labor Day themed stencils. Top with powdered sugar, and serve. 

I felt something like shame ordering pepperoni pizza and fried calamari on the train. It was not the quiet car but I am always self conscious speaking on the phone when people can hear. I was hungry and did not want to wait, but was oddly nervous people would think ill of me ordering a whole pizza for two people. But how would they know? AND why should I care. A woman a few rows up grabbed her phone and dialed for Chinese.  Solidarity, sister. 

Bros will be bros.  I smirked because I was confined to the corner of the train in my spot where I lean between the door and the end of the seat, so I don't have to touch anything but I have something to balance against. Two guys forfeited confidentiality when they spoke loudly directly in to my ear budless ears. "My plan for the winter is to get fat," one said.  "Well fatter I should say." Raucous laughter between them. "Social media is like the Tinder of advertising." I got a kick out of this one. Makes some sense. But he went on,  "I will never use Tinder again." "Dude, you have been dating your ex's close friend for five months. Tinder would be your safest bet." I chuckled discreetly and the lady next to me had taken out her ear buds to enjoy the exchange.

Worker bees funnel out of the train. Most of us have to work; it is not a choice but a certainty. We work morning, noon and night and still barely make the bills on time. If we are fortunate, we can choose to some degree how we labor. Are we making music, are we trading, are we erecting buildings, laying floors, counseling the addicted, healing the sick. On the porch in the Pocono mountains I was lamenting unnecessarily about student loans and feeling indebted, still, to a system. My Dad looked at me and said paying bills is a noble undertaking, if not a privilege. Yes, he made paying bills sound enviable. I will think twice before cursing my responsibilities. They represent opportunities, wonderful experiences of the past, and ideally security in the future.  

Sweater weather, pumpkin spice, and legs shaven less frequently is nearly upon us. I am surely not the only one looking forward to one or all of these fall themes. Another thing we might have in common. Men and women plunge in to violent waters to save stranded horses and dogs. Ladies rally to fix hair and build the spirits of others. Officers line the streets to protect people who distrust them. The men and women of the armed forces fight to ensure liberties, go fund me pages pop up to help a comrade in need. While we are infinitely fallible, there is good to be found and celebrated. The state of affairs is nowhere near perfect, but was it ever?