The Right Choice

R and I have done long distance before, so I'm pretty well used to it. This past trip was different though, because I didn't cry at all when we had to separate again. Before now, I always have, and when I moved here, I cried a lot. Mostly because it was terrifying to move across an ocean to a new country, to start a job with people I'd talked on the phone with twice, to move in with roommates I only knew via email and facebook, and to leave R and the dogs behind to do it. I'm still pretty impressed that I chose to make this move in the first place, because there were definitely less scary options available.

This time, though, the only part of the return trip I dreaded was the actual trip, which was moderately un-fun, although way better than my last trans Atlantic adventure. I was looking forward to coming back to roommates that are friends, and a job that's awesome, and colleagues who are pretty awesome too. And I'll admit, escaping the heat and humidity was pretty thrilling. But I've been happy with my life and still cried when leaving every time before, when I was in grad school the first time.

This time, I think the difference is that I really truly love my life here in Holland, and while it would be better with R and the dogs, it's still pretty good without them. For the first time, I actually wanted to leave, because I'm excited about the next step in my research, and I missed my roommates, and I really missed the cool weather and my bike. Granted, I didn't actually go to work today, but I did sleep for 14 straight hours, so I think my body was busy recovering from my vacation. My very small bedroom feels more like home than the accursed house that hasn't sold yet. It also helps that we're planning to move R and the dogs after the winter holidays, so there's only a few more months of long-distance to go. His paperwork should be done by then, especially since he won't need the MVV and can skip that entire part of the process. Of course, we'll be adding all the fun of doggie passports and tranquilizers and crates to make up for it.

Not crying when leaving my best friend and my canine family behind tells me that moving here was absolutely the right thing to do. Leaving industry for academia was the right thing too, and that's very comforting, considering the salary differences. So weirdly, I'm grateful for being laid off, because I think my current life is a much better fit. I liked my old job, but I like my new one a lot better. I very much prefer my new city, particularly the bike-ability, and the charm, and the public transportation, and the little things, like flowers planted along the bike paths. And did I mention my hatred of hot weather?

Unending Stairs and Schoolbus Kitchens

Following a dreary rainy week and a rushed attempt to produce a status report at work (and seriously, who emails on Monday morning asking for a report by Monday AFTERNOON?!?!? The liaison to my project funding, that's who.), I have had an awesome weekend of touristy goodness with MM and her lovely almost husband (in fact, I'll be at their wedding in a week) W.

First off, I might have gotten us just a little lost, when my brain combined the way to the city centre with the way to IKEA, which paths aren't really even a little bit convergent. Luckily, Delft is the size of a postage stamp, and it was perfect weather for a bike ride anyway. We walked through the antiques market, parked our bikes, and started our tour of really beautiful old churches. We went to the Oude Kerk (translation; Old Church) which was built in 1605, and is just a little tilted these days. Then we went to the Nieuwe Kerk, which means "New Church" because it's less old than the Oude Kerk. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, new. These are the two main Protestant (I don't know which flavour) churches in town. They hold concerts and community events in them, since the congregations are no longer large enough to support a minister. In the Nieuwe Kerk, there's the option of climbing the tower, so up we went. And up, and up, and up, and up. The stairs were terrifying, because they're steep, spiralling, and very very narrow. This made going past the people coming back down a touch challenging. But not only that, they go on forever. The stairs trick you too; you finally get up into a room, and can go outside, only to discover that you're HALFWAY there and the next set of stairs starts on the other side of the room. We took a bunch of pictures at the halfway point. The second set of stairs is just as narrow, steep, and spirally as the first half, although they do change spiral directions a couple times, just to keep things interesting. After approximately eleventy bajillion stairs, and several pauses while people went around us, and my shoe strap falling off twice, we made it to the top. The view is fantastic, although it was pretty hazy. The railing on the walkway (it's too narrow to really be a balcony) is nice and thick and high, so there's no fear of falling. It's really all quite excellent, until you realize you have to go back down both unending staircases again. I was pretty quivery by the time we got to the bottom. MM timed us, and it took us about 10 minutes just to descend. The photos are courtesy of MM and W, since I was playing with the zoom lens and I haven't gotten the hang of it yet. Most of the pictures I took were pretty fuzzy. We also went to the market, passed a few of the jazz festival stages, and ate the best apple pie in Delft.
On Sunday we went to the beach in Den Haag, which was chilly and therefore nice and empty. We ate at one of the beach restaurants, selected because it had menus printed in Dutch and English on the tables. Most places do have a few English menus, but having them out meant we could more easily decide if the food looked good. Best of all, it turns out the kitchen was the school bus parked at the side of the outdoor dining area.

Something good that happened

I realized that I forgot to post this on Friday. My car is sold! Everything is done, and having that money (plus eliminating that debt!) is pretty reassuring, and very very awesome. However, I miss my little car. It was a good car, with excellent gas milage and enough space for the dogs in the back. Not that Nova ever stayed in the back. I was sad to see it go, but the new owner is super excited about it, and I'm thrilled to be this much closer to a car-free lifestyle. Not that I have anything against cars themselves, as a concept. New technology means we can shift away from burning oil to run them, and exclusively human powered transportation is not practical in a lot of places. I do, however, hate driving in traffic, paying for insurance, trying to park, being a designated driver, and paying for a machine that needs a fair amount of maintenance and depreciates in value very quickly anyway. Attending a university with amazing bus service made me appreciate being a passenger. Given a choice, I much prefer being able to review notes, play games on my DS, read, talk on the phone, or otherwise productively spend my commute time instead of paying attention to the road. The great thing about having a car is the freedom of movement, being able to go places easily and quickly, and at university I had that (for the most part) with the buses.

I also paid off my credit card, and am going to pay of R's as soon as we figure out a safe way to transfer money to that account. In another week, our only debt will be our fairly modest mortgage, and that's pretty awesome for a pair of 25 year olds!

2010

I like making lists. A lot. So I usually make a New Year's Resolutions list, and in the past, it's been mostly about self-dislike, and unhealthy. Things like "Lose 20 lbs" when I have no medical indications that my weight is inappropriate for my body. Or things like "Keep my living space clean enough for a spontaneous photo shoot" which mostly makes me feel guilty and miserable, and encourages me to define my self-worth on stupid external parameters, like what people think of my house, rather than what I think of my house, or better yet, what I accomplish in areas important to me. Not to mention that keeping the house that clean is time-consuming, tedious, frustrating, and boring. (Why yes, my house is on the market, how could you tell?) This year I'm going to try something a little different, by creating goals that reflect who I actually am, and what I actually care about, and not random societal holdovers from the imaginary 1950's.

1. Refuse to respond to my reflection or image with "I need to lose weight" or "why can't I be as slender as {insert whoever here}." There's a fair amount of evidence that a weight range is DNA determined, and you need to put in a ton of work to shift past those boundaries. I am only overweight based on an arbitrary BMI scale that fails to take into account pretty much anything, since it's meant for use over large populations, not individuals. As long as my body performs the tasks I need it to, I'm fine. I am going to pause every time my mind says "lose weight" and replace it with "I'm awesome."

2. Relearn bike riding (or, fietsen). This is more a necessity thing than a resolution, though, since bikes are a primary form of transportation in the Netherlands.

3. Have an entire conversation in Dutch. I realize that pretty much everyone in the Netherlands speaks English, but I think it's important to learn the language of the country one is living in. At least enough that I could chat about the weather. This is going to be tough, because my brain keeps trying to put Dutch in the same space as all the German I know, and I get mixed up. Learning a third language should be a very interesting challenge for me, and help strengthen my mind.

4. Avoid complacency. Now that I'm leaving, I'm shocked by how little I explored this city, and how few friends I made. Delightful as simply hanging out with R and the dogs is, I think I need more variety to keep myself entertained. I am going to seek out and embrace new experiences, because I only get one life and I don't want to waste it. Megan's tragic death this past summer really brought this one into focus for me. She only got 25 years, but I think she really made the most of them. Only with Megan could taking a friend to an airport or dyeing hair be epic adventures, and I think that's a lot of why everyone was so shocked when she was gone. In fact, thinking about Megan and trying to describe her (she was just so alive! how do you explain her to someone?) is what gave me the courage to apply for jobs all over the world, and to take this one even with an interview set up with a company that would have been a much safer, easier, and familiar pick. I realize that avoiding complacency will often lead to feeling awkward or uncomfortable, but it was worth it as a college freshman to combat shyness, and it will be worth it again to combat falling into a mold instead of making my own.

5. Procrastinate less. I don't like the procrastination-anxiety-exhaustion cycle, and I'm going to strive to break out of it more often.

6. Knit for 10 minutes every day. This is simply to ensure that I spend 10 minutes a day doing something exclusively for myself. Knitting is my creative outlet (at least, the only one I'm taking with me initially, because it takes up the least amount of space!) as well as soothing work, and creating something beautiful and useful out of yarn is very satisfying. In addition, I'm going to keep the cast-on projects down to 5 or fewer.

7. Take one picture every day. I'm still deciding if facebook or this blog will be a better way to keep me honest on that one. Maybe both. I didn't buy an awesome camera for nothing! I have practically no photos of the past two years, except for my wedding. Like this morning, I realized we took zero pictures at our party last night, even thought it's the best New Year's Eve party I've ever participated in, and my brand new camera was sitting right there!

Here's today's picture. I can't believe Quasar both held still and looked at the camera. Even his tail is in focus!

Defying Gravity

I've been sorting through a lot of stuff that I've moved from one place to another without really thinking about it. All kinds of things, like high school newspapers, terrible film-camera photos that don't actually capture anything (tons of these from jr high dances, since we were all camera-shy back then) and just a lot of paper. Random notes I didn't think I should part with. Random ugly knickknacks that induce memories, but the same memories as other things like photos. Just a lot of stuff about my past. All of it from high school or earlier, because in college, I had a digital camera and a scanner. Also, I moved every 8 months and that's the best way I know of to become an anti-pack-rat.
I've had a great time looking through everything, trying to figure out when/who/where, and smiling at the awkwardness of the photos, and giggling hysterically at some of the notes written and the problems faced. "OMG I like these two boys, and everyone says I should date X, but I think Y likes me better and this is the biggest problem ever faced in my 13 years of life what do I do?" Only we didn't use OMG in junior high. I've even cried over notes and photos of classmates whoe've died. I created a small pile of the photos of recognizable people, the photos that aren't too fuzzy, too dark, too "we're all hiding behind our hands because we're so HIDEOUS" to add to my scrapbooks. I've kept two notes to give back to the writer if I can find her this xmas, because I know she'll laugh at them as much as I did. I kept a couple newspaper mentions of myself and close friends.

And then I threw out everything else.

It felt amazing, like letting go of a whole persona that didn't fit me any more. I feel like I've removed unneeded baggage, stuff that no longer matters to who I am, and just let it go. I've kept things that relate to people who matter now, and events that mattered then, and the rest of it is gone. I feel lighter now, and more ready to take on the crazy path ahead, both because I've reviewed the path behind, and I've rejected the dead ends. They were there, I learned from them, but I don't need to keep revisiting them, to make sure they're still dead ends. I'm terrible at letting go, but I'm trying to do it more, because you can only drag so much around with you.


That feeling of letting go of the familiar, but unsatisfactory, paths and embracing uncertainty on a promising (but unknown) road is why I'm still thrilled about moving. It's also the feeling that motivated me to start this blog. It's definitely what made my final title choice. I played with all sorts of ideas, from nerdy to nonsensical. I picked the defying gravity theme for a couple reasons.

1. Singing the song "Defying Gravity" from Wicked has been immensely helpful in picking myself back up after getting laid off. Even though I knew the layoff was nothing personal, and based on economic crisis beyond my control, and it's pretty amazing I stayed as long as I did considering how recently I entered the job market, it's still pretty disheartening to be told in your first year of real-world work that you're done, thanks, buh-bye. "Defying Gravity" is upbeat, and all about pushing boundaries and striving and that even though you could fail, if you don't try you won't know if you could do it, which is pretty much the best antidote to a layoff ever. It reminded me that even if I only got to work in KS for a year, I proved to myself that I could handle it. That's pretty awesome.

2. Aerodynamics became a major field of study in part because people wanted to fly. Without aerodynamics, there cannot be airplanes. Creating something that can GLIDE without knowing what you're doing is easy, but sustained flight is something completely different.

3. I can't believe I'm doing this. In high school, I was the shyest of the shy. In college I reinvented myself somewhat, increasing my confidence and learning to love social events and meeting people. Now I'm moving to a new country, that I've never seen, to work with people I've never met. I've talked on the phone to the profs who will be my bosses, but I haven't even emailed the post-doc or the other PhD student. And since R will be staying in KS until our home sells, I'm moving there by myself. If you had said to high school me "So in a few years you should apply to and accept a PhD position in the Netherlands" she would have been too nervous to say anything, but would have thought something like "sure, when pigs fly." I think high school me would have found defying gravity easier than moving so far. Current me is ecstatic, and thinks that meeting a bunch of new people, learning a new language, and living in a new country is crazy awesome. But I'm still a little surprised I was gutsy enough to even try for it.

I have learned to love adventure, to enjoy pushing out past my comfort zone, and to try new things without fearing failure. I still try to avoid failure, because it's never fun, but I'm working very hard at not fearing it.

I used to resent certain people for doing what I wanted to do, and acting how I saw myself inside but was afraid to be outside. Now I'm becoming who I've always felt like, but been afraid of. And that makes me feel so much lighter.