Generation Meh

Last week, I ended up in the hospital. Well, ended up is maybe the wrong choice of words. It makes it sound like I set out for Dunkin’ Donuts and somehow took a detour to the ER on my way to get a large black with one sugar. No, I drove myself there at 7:00 AM, after spending four days unable to keep down food or liquid. I assumed that they’d do a quick check of my throat, figure out what was blocking it and maybe tell me to drink some Pedialyte to fix my dehydration and then I’d be at my desk by 8:30 AM. Eight hours and two IV bags later and I realized I wasn’t going anywhere.

The doctor who came to break the bad news looked like a smaller version of Cee Lo Green, clad in a bronze velour tracksuit, dark shades and a solid gold necklace in the shape of a set of ram’s horns. My liver enzymes were out of whack, my gallbladder and spleen were enlarged and I was turning yellow (no, really). He wanted to keep me overnight and run more tests, because if any organs had to be yanked, they’d have to come out the old-fashioned incision way. I tried not to think about that part.

Overnight turned into five days. And more tests turned into a CAT scan, a HIDA scan, a GI scope and two rounds of bloodwork every day. The hospital didn’t have any free rooms, so I ended up on a stretcher in a former ER operating room that had been repurposed to house patients. The only privacy to be had from my revolving cast of roommates was a curtain that could be pulled halfway around my stretcher. No tv, no internet, no phone, no energy to read. Just me, my thoughts and the insistent drip-drip-drip of my IV, an IV that I had to drag to the bathroom (which felt like a mile away down the hall) with me and required me sleep with my hand just so not to make it ache.

Oh, the aching. I’m young. I’m in good shape. And spending 23 hours a day on a stretcher killed my body. Hips don’t lie and mine were not impressed with what I put them through. And neither was my mind. I simply stopped caring. For a person whose brain is always churning, it was shocking how quickly I succumbed to the torpor of hospitalization. The isolation didn’t drive me crazy. I didn’t find myself pining for Twitter or fretting about work emails piling up. I simply curled up on my cot and dozed under a tangle of thin hospital sheets. When I had to get out of bed, I found myself clinging to the IV stand like a subway pole and swaying my way down the hall like an octogenarian zombie. Trying to wash my hair in the bathroom sink left me out of breath and exhausted. I forgot about the outside world – the weather, the news, anything beyond my own pounding headache and burning desire for ice water (two full days were spent without fluids because of testing). Once a nurse brought me a three-flavored popsicle and I almost wept in gratitude. How the mighty had fallen.

The middle of the night in the hospital is the loneliest time. When you look at your watch to see that it’s 1:47 AM and you wish for nothing more than someone to squeeze your hand and rub the achingest part of your back and tell you that you will feel better and soon. But that doesn’t happen, so you simply readjust your blankets and go back to staring at the flicker of red and blue lights from the ambulance bay play across your wall and then, eventually, it’s 6:00 AM and someone is coming to draw your blood and check your pulse.

I was released on Friday. Not because I was cured, but because I was no longer throwing up and the nursing staff felt sorry for my obvious discomfort at being confined to a makeshift bed in a makeshift room with no end in sight. An internal medicine specialist reviewed my test results, ran through a brief questionnaire (no, I’m not an alcoholic and no I haven’t been foraging for wild mushrooms) and told me he wanted to see me in a week to re-evaluate things. There are several possible diagnoses being floated, with some more serious than others. Now, we play a waiting game. No discharge paperwork to sign (“That’s just on tv, honey,” the nurse tells me), only the numerous pairs of pajamas dropped off by my mother and the vase of flowers hand-delivered by my boss to pack up.

This wasn’t like the movies. I didn’t come to any grand epiphanies, not about the state of the healthcare system or the state of my own life, except maybe a dry chuckle at the fact that it didn’t take long for me to have to put my money where my mouth is when it comes to my resolution to be more accepting of help and support. I didn’t use the time to do some internal stock-taking or to ponder whether landing in the hospital was the penalty I had to pay for pushing myself and my body too hard for too long. And even now, as I’m curled up on the couch in my pajamas eating chocolate pudding and waiting for the all-clear to return to work (the one thing the docs were sure of was that, in addition to my other issues, I have mono), I’m still figuring out how to shave precious time off my recovery period, not basking in a renewed appreciation for the fragility of good health.

Mostly, I just want taking a shower to stop being the most exhausting activity in the world and to be able to leave the house without getting hot and dizzy. That would be enough right now.

2011 was a big improvement over 2010. Given my thoughts on that year, almost anything would be, though. In 2011, I landed my current job. I started writing for Forbes. I was published by Salon, Jezebel and The Atlantic, among others. I drove across America with a stranger. I became an aunt again. I spent New Year’s Eve in New York City with someone who’s certainly not a stranger now. I came very, very close to going back to school. I saved a lot of money. I had my first panic attack.

I end 2011 and begin 2012 believing more strongly than ever in this post and the idea that we open ourselves up to the situations we are capable of handling and the people we need to meet only when we’re finally ready for these experiences and encounters. It’s not magic, it’s simply being able to see and perceive and pursue in a way we weren’t equipped to before. I’m not a patient girl, so this understanding hasn’t always come easy to me, but 2011 has proven its truth in spades.

Over at Forbes, I talk a little bit about career resolutions for the year to come. But really, it’s stuff you and I already know – understand yourself, understand your goals, be curious, be specific, be forgiving. I think the personal stuff is much more interesting anyway. Here’s what I’m committing to in 2012:

Accept more

I am not good at this. Not good at all. Help, compliments, support, whatever. A very dear friend refers to to this as my “fierce independence” and while such a quality would be admirable in frontier times and while I’ll always be one of the first people tagged into the ring during a crisis (it’s because I have bobby pins and post-its in my purse, isn’t it?), I’m no longer interested in being so dogmatic about always doing it all. I can take care of myself. I’ve proven that for decades. To keep feeling as if I have to assert that to the world at the expense of hurting really great people who want to be there for me and would like nothing more than for me to let them in? That’s selfish. Much more selfish than I’ve stupidly convinced myself that accepting an outstretched hand could ever be. I would like this to be the year I stop confusing imperiousness for autonomy and acknowledge my humanity a little more fully.

Write more

I’ve had a not small amount of freelance success this year and I’m grateful for every new connection or email that comes my way as a result of others reading my words. And it has made me greedy for more. More stories. More ideas. More venues. But mostly, a more central role for writing in my life and a way to move it from a side gig to the main one. I’ve somehow gotten it into my head that because I am capable of earning a living in other ways, I should probably do so. I’m good at other things and those other things are more profitable than word vomit, so I should be pragmatic and just do one of those other things (project management, business strategy, policy development), right? And so I do. But nothing makes me happier than what I deem to be the perfect turn of phrase, when I arrange all the words just so and then mouth them aloud to myself to get the rhythm right. No amount of pragmatism replaces that feeling.

Move

Somewhere. Anywhere. A little bit kd lang and a little bit Neko Case. Here is not where I need to be. I know that. Anyone who knows me knows that. I’m not exactly sure where is, but I want to test the options in 2012. And I want to do more traveling. After years of solo adventures, adjusting to someone else’s travel proclivities has been strange. We’ve worked out most of the hitches and I have no doubt that 2012 will also include more #RoadWorriers dispatches. Although, probably no more videos of me in my pajamas.

“What are you thinking?”

This was a game my travel partner and I played a hundred times last week. Late at night, over dinner, during long stretches of flat road, on the last few miles to our next destination. A close cousin to “Why are you looking at me like that?” The object is to make the other one crack, to admit that they were thinking something terrible or scandalous or just plain silly. I’m very stubborn, which makes me very good at the game. And while there may have been rare moments when I just didn’t want to share what was on my mind, for the most part, it really was a blank. Eat, sleep (or try to unsuccessfully), drive. I didn’t think about work. I didn’t think about coming home. I didn’t fixate on the fact that I couldn’t doze for more than an hour or so a night. I stared out the window at the alien flatness of Nebraska. I braced myself to merge into interstate traffic. I petted dogs and peeled apples. I laughed. I ate (vegan) ice cream. And I hardly spared a minute to analyze any of it.

You can only fret for so long before you simply wear yourself out. Until you can’t muster one more ounce of angst. Like pulling an all-nighter to write a college term paper and then suddenly, at 2:00PM the next day, all of the adrenaline wears off at once and you’ve never felt grubbier and queasier and more tired in your life.

That was my week. A whole seven days spent at the point where the reserve tank of energy you use to police your own mind and assemble and reassemble your plans is completely dry. We all end up there at one time or another. And it’s really not such a bad place. In fact, it’s liberating –  that quiet when the record ends and no one gets up to flip it to the other side, that juncture at which you don’t worry about having the right words, because there’s really no need for words at all, those moments when you can hardly muster a first guess, let alone a second one. There’s a comfort in this, in the feeling that you haven’t snapped the band of your mind so far and so hard that it can’t bounce back if you just leave it alone for a few days, if you loosen a few buttons, open the gate and let it wander, stop trying to wrap your arms around all of its moving parts as if it were a squirming toddler. Just let it sit.

Sometimes, when someone asks you what you’re thinking,  not only is “Nothing” true, it’s the best answer of all.

I am good at hearing secrets. I am good at accepting them thoughtfully, like a present someone took a long time to choose. Holding them in my lap with both hands to make sure they don’t fall and break.

It’s not very hard. I can teach you. In fact, it might be even easier than being bad at it. Because it mostly requires you to do nothing.  Don’t interject. Don’t try to fix. Don’t judge. Just nod. Tilt your head a little. Say, “Well, that’s not very good at all” or “Hmm.” That’s it. And wait. Wait for more.  Don’t ask for it, just wait. Wait for the person to feel out how the story goes. Sometimes, it’s very efficient because they’ve told it (or thought about telling it) many times before. Beginning, middle, end in one big breath. And sometimes, they are stringing it together right then and there and editing as they go and they don’t really even know how they feel about it until they run out of words. Then they cut themselves off or just shrug, shrug, stop. Sometimes, they are peaceful at the end and sometimes angry, as if they too are hearing this for the very first time. And sometimes, they want to twist the lid back on the bottle as quickly as possible, pretend they don’t see all the bits spilled on the floor, just step over and around them and leave you to clean up. It’s not them,  it’s not you. It’s the secret. You should remember that. Because they will come back.

They will always come back.  If you’re good at this.



I knew Annie Passanisi and I were kindred spirits when she unveiled her plan for world domination and it involved trademarked t-shirts and kissing booths.

I was delighted when she asked me to be a contributor to Whimsy for Wendys, her brand new e-book baby. As much as I alternately reject and grudgingly tolerate the Manic Pixie Dream Girl thing (but mostly reject), I was tickled pink to join with 11 other awesome internet ladies to write about how to keep your sense of wonder,  joy and delusions of existential grandeur alive in a world that has little time for such seeming nonsense. My particular piece addresses how to hold onto whimsy in the workplace and includes road-tested tips from my white-collar life.

Working with Annie and co. was a fabulous experience (so fab that she and I have another killer collaboration in the works) and I couldn’t have chosen a better project with which to finally dip my toes in the e-book pool.

If you want to learn more about Whimsy for Wendys or grab your own copy (early birds also snag a host of freebies and discounts, including a deal on copywriting services from yours truly), hop on over to the main site.

And if you ask really nicely, I might just tell you about the business trip where I stayed in a hotel room next door to a dead body. That little anecdote narrowly missed making the cut in my contribution.