Good Saturday

Today was going to be a pretty uneventful, even boring, Saturday. Sure, I'd meet up with some friends at the Sunnyvale Farmers' Market, in the morning, but other than that and a few errands (dry cleaning, rest of the grocery shopping) I had little else to do. Usually, on such a free day, Mark and I would come up with a crazy scheme to go to the city (SF) or even Napa, on a whim. At least we would play catch and watch a movie. But not today, since Mark has work to do. In fact, when Mark first announced he had to work quite a bit this weekend, I was disappointed, because he knew I was going to be out of town during the week leaving him free to stay late at the office and/or work late at home without feeling as if he was neglecting me. But his deadlines are not always within his control, and Chicago wanted to launch on Monday, so he's working over the weekend.

Still wondering what to do with my afternoon, I recalled my weekends when I was at Fenwick, and the awful feeling of spending all of a beautiful Saturday cooped up in my office with only the free Starbucks coffee to help me block out the sound of carefree sun-filled fun outside. I recalled the feeling of returning to the office at 9am on a Saturday after having left the office only eight hours earlier, and spending the entire Saturday pulling together exhibits, making sure boxes and boxes of 3-inch binders contained the appropriate documents in the appropriate order for someone else's deposition or depo prep. And suddenly I was relieved and happy that I had spent a morning outside sampling fresh, local produce, enjoying my friends, and was now home with Mark, even if he's going to be at his computer most of the afternoon.

Old Song New

Ever hear an old song as if you're hearing it for the first time? It just happened to me with John Mayer's "Why Georgia." I had my iPod going on random, and it came up. The music was just for background, as I was doing other things, but all of a sudden, the lyrics came to the forefront of my consciousness and it hit me clearer than ever what the song was about. I always understood the lyrics before, but now I understand the people for and about whom those lyrics were written.

For the past six months, I've been playing at figuring out what to do with the rest of my life. I had fooled myself into thinking I had figured out my options, and just had to choose. I rationalized the time off as some much-needed, possibly even deserved, time to reconnect with friends, spend precious time with family and help out those close to me in need of help. I also pretended to know what I wanted to do next - I would either go in-house or "start over" in patent prosecution, with my pipe dreams of teaching or getting my Ph.D. in English Lit in tact as pipe dreams. God forbid I have no idea of what to do next!

I realized this week that it has taken me six months just to get ready to really think about the question. In that time, I applied to four job openings, only because they were the best of what was available in the legal field, but not really because I wanted any of them. Only one of those companies called me, and in talking to them, I realized I only knew what I didn't want, and not what I did want. Also in that time, I picked up Po Bronson's "What Should I Do With My Life" three times without getting past the introduction.

I've been waiting for an epiphany, or for fate to intervene and push me in one direction or another. Nothing so far. As I've learned from Bronson's book, this is common. I suppose it is appropriate that traumatic events leave you only with shell shock, recoil, an instinctive knowledge of what you don't want. They don't inform on what you do want. I always thought if you could figure out what you didn't want, by process of elimination you could figure out what you did want. I'll admit the latter question is much more difficult and real than I've previously given it credit for.

For someone who has always known what the next ten steps were, I've been surprisingly adrift. I wouldn't say I'm lost. I know where I am in life, what my priorities are, and I've figured out the important part of my life - the personal/social, family/friends part. I'm happy. In fact, having a stable and full personal life delays my need to find my next (true?) professional purpose, because it's almost enough. In fact, I thought for a brief while that I could do nothing (professionally) for the rest of my life. But all my friends and family know, and now I do, too, that I can't go on doing nothing, even if it is financially possible, for the same reason(s) that I stuck out two years of bioengineering even though I had no desire to be an engineer; that even after figuring out I wasn't cut out for engineering, I wouldn't graduate college without a science degree; and that I wouldn't go into any ordinary field of law - it had to be one where you had the added technical layer. I don't consciously know what all those reasons are, but I know one is that I am haunted by my potential. It nags me to make the most of it.

Figuring out how best to make the most of my potential was easier in high school. It's harder now that I've gone through what seems an entire cycle of "What Should I Do With My Life," and am trying to figure out the next volume, "What Should I Do Next With My Life." Last weekend, I found I was finally ready to read Bronson's book, a collection of stories about people, including himself, that have asked themselves the same question. If his book has shown me anything, it's that everyone finds their way differently. Although he tries valiantly to categorize the stories somehow (he says he's always been good at math, so I imagine his left brain just wouldn't let him put these stories down in random order), his organization seems a little forced to me. As he admits, most of the stories fit in many, if not all, of the chapters.

And then I hear, "Am I living it right? ... It might be a quarter life crisis or just the stirring in my soul ... Either way, I wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still verdictless life ... Don't believe me when I say I've got it down," and I get it, I get the song. I used to dismiss such musings as belonging to lazy, unmotivated, spoiled people wanting an excuse to delay work or thinking they deserved better than what is out there for them. Now I'm one of them. It's uncomfortable, hence the rationalizations and false plans described above. But now that I know, I can get down to trying things out and seeing if they stick.

Vacation Alice

I always seem to possess superhuman strength starting the day before a vacation until a day or two before the end of the vacation. On Monday night, I stayed up until 5am packing, tightening up my itinerary for our trip to England, printing maps to match my itinerary, printing our boarding passes, etc. It didn't help that our desktop computer is really slow.

The maid arrived at 8:30am, and while I could have slept in a little more since our bedroom is always the last room she cleans, I needed to finish our packing before she got to our room so that she wouldn't have to navigate suitcases splayed open on the floor and piles of things that still need to go in the suitcase. So I got up.

I was completely finished packing by 10:30am, more than 8 hours before the flight, and I'm sure a record time for me. I'm usually a last minute girl. I could have taken a nap after the maid left, but I didn't. Instead, I proceeded to tidy up the clothes and knick-knacks that didn't make it into the suitcases, clear and charge the camera, clean up my TiVo line-up (this included watching some of my TiVo'd programming while I ate lunch so that I could delete it), toss food that wasn't going to make it through the week, pick up dry cleaning so that Mark would have pants to wear when we returned, turn off alarms, and otherwise get the house ready for our return.

Next thing I knew, I was off to the airport, we were on the plane, and I had gone 36 hours with only 3 hours of sleep. The flight wasn't the most comfortable (see Travel with Alice blog), and I only slept a few hours of the 11-hour flight. Luckily, the rest of the way to Bath was smooth. When we got to our B&B, it was 9am Wednesday morning in California, and I had slept less than 7 hours in 2 days. It seems hunger is more powerful than sleep, though, so after unpacking a bit, we ate, and I finally crashed a few hours later. It was 10pm Bath time (2pm back home).

You would think I would then sleep for at least 8 hours before waking up bright-eyed, but I found myself fully awake at 4am. I tried unsuccessfully for half an hour to go back to sleep, so I got online and wrote this blog. It's now 6:50am, and I've updated FB and both my blogs.

I can't wait for breakfast at 8am!

A good breakfast

I was naturally awake before 8am today, for the first time in weeks. I've been staying up late with Mark - him working, me reading and watching TV shows he'd rather not watch (i.e., Castle, Jamie At Home, Poker After Dark, etc.), and waking up late as a consequence (the luxury of not having kids or jobs to force me awake unnaturally, and generally living life a la Hodgkinson's "How to Be Idle"). I'm hoping it's due to a few days of exercise and good eating. So I was feeling good this morning just about that alone.

While I watched the morning news, though, I heard my stomach rumble and started to fret about what I had left in the house that was gluten-free for breakfast. Yes, I've survived two gluten-free days, including a couple of meals at Sandy's house (thanks, Sand, for supporting my hippy whims). In my hunger-induced irrational panic, I Googled "gluten free breakfast" for ideas, and was happy to find a list of gluten free breakfast suggestions. I'm not interested in buying artificially gluten-free foods to sustain this diet, so I dismissed all the suggestions that involved gluten-free bread, flour or cereal. The list did remind me, however, that I have eggs, fruit, and veggies already in my fridge.

I started with the idea of scrambled eggs and grapefruit, which then turned into something much more luxurious upon opening the fridge. Next thing I knew, I had put together a beautiful breakfast comprising a fluffy egg and asparagus scramble, grapefruit segments and raspberries tossed with brown sugar, and coffee to wash it all down. Needless to say I am very happy with my impromptu gluten-free, organic and local breakfast (except the brown sugar, not sure where it came from or if it's organic), and looking forward to a good day.

Gluten free?

I watched The View this morning, where Elisabeth Hasselbeck was promoting her new book "The G-Free Diet," and talking about Celiac Disease, and it reminded me of my brief and unpleasant encounter with gluten-free pasta. I remember vaguely a flash of media fervor about the health benefits of a gluten-free diet, or more accurately, how awful gluten was for your health. I didn't have lots of time then to explore the facts, and so I impulsively bought some gluten-free pasta to try and see if I could even stand eating it. It was inedible, so I tossed the rest of the package, and the idea of going gluten-free along with it.

Well, this morning's discussion on The View peaked my interest again, and this time, I spent some time looking at what a gluten-free diet actually might include (rather than exclude). Surprisingly, maybe because my eating habits have improved in the past couple of years, at least 70% of what I eat is gluten-free already. Since I'm already incorporating more fresh, organic/pesticide-free, local produce and free-range, cage-free, organic-feed meat into my diet, I figure going gluten-free can't be that much of a stretch. So I'll try it out for a week, and see what happens. It will help a great deal that rice, fruit, meat, vegetables, vegetable/olive oil, and nuts (even honey-roasted!) are all gluten-free.

Balance despite my disorganized living

I don't know if my friends and family can tell, but I lead a very disorganized life. I value organization, and when it's important to be, I can be organized (people have seen my travel itineraries, and as an attorney in a law firm, needless to say it was necessary and always my greatest compliment from my colleagues). But I'm just not cut out to operate on a daily schedule (waking up, sleeping, working out, blogging, etc. at the same time or order everyday), everything in my house in place, bed made, laundry folded and dishes washed and dried. I figure every day out as I go along, sometimes not washing and putting away dishes and clothes, even when I have the time and energy (poor Mark). It both suits me and bothers me at the same time.

Today is a perfect case in point. I spent all morning in bed with the laptop in front of me and the TV on, trying to remember my dream from last night, learning about how Tyra Banks became the big star she is today, updating my Netflix queue, and thinking about all the things I need to do today. I've been up since mid-morning, it's nearly mid-afternoon, and I still haven't eaten or done anything else productive.

But to make up for this egregiously lazy first half of the day, I have a jam-packed afternoon. After I eat some food, I'll put together my clothes drying rack so that I can finally try out my Laundress cashmere and wool shampoo, which will be one more environment-friendly habit I'm attempting to adopt (no more dry cleaning my sweaters, and more drying clothes in the sun in general). Exercise and tidying up (dishes and more laundry) are also goals for today, and with Mark attending a work happy hour today, I might just get it all done.

I always thought I was doomed to never find balance, because I associated balance with organization (having an hour a day to exercise, an hour a day to read, eating 3 square meals a day at times that make sense, taking a vacation or two every year, getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night), but I guess this is my own version of balance. It's not for everyone, but I suppose it suits me.