Turn It Off

My lunch appointment is laughing at me. I'm her guest at The Saint Paul Grill, which is where you would go to have a long Mad Men style lunch in St. Paul in 2014. It's the sort of restaurant that makes me nervous, where I don't want to eat anything and spend most of the lunch worrying about whether or not I've got something in my teeth.

Things are not off to an auspicious start.

I'm flustered by the fact that maître d‘ has tried to pull my chair out for me (I just sat down in it), has tried to adjust it for me once I'm in it (I pulled myself into the table, gabbing the whole time), and has now tried to put my napkin in my lap (I jumped). Despite my expensive dress and the Tiffany's I'm wearing, I still feel like someone's country cousin.

Once the maître d‘ has stopped hovering and my lunch appointment has stopped laughing I settle my ruffled feathers. Thankfully, she's an old friend and a mentor, and I wonder if her choice of restaurant was a much a lesson in how to act around major donors as it was a convenient place to catch up with one another.

It's a long, lovely lunch. We talk about the business we're both in, I tell her about my achievements and challenges from the past year, and she offers advice and commiseration. We start chatting about mission and vision of the organizations I work and volunteer for and it's like all the missteps from the preceding hour vanish. I'm articulate and passionate without being overbearing. I tell her a story that makes her tear up a little, another one that makes her laugh, and by the time the waiter brings our check around she reaches out and pats my hand.

"You're doing fine, kid."

It's one of the proudest moments of my adult life.

About twelve hours later, I'll have one of the most mortifying moments of my adult life. 

It's stupid, and shouldn't be something that keeps me awake (which it does). I hijack a conversation. That's it. Something that started out as funny and playful turns into a conversation about the internet and objectification. It's not the first time I've done this (at last count, this has happened upward of seven times. This year.), and even as I'm doing it I'm thinking thisisnotthewayyouwantedthiseveningtogo but I just can't stop myself.

I am so mortified by my own behavior that I don't sleep. At all. I spend the night puttering around the apartment, reading a book about Thurgood Marshall to distract myself and right around 3:00am start with a few hours of unproductive self-probing. And here's what I realize while unproductively pulling out bits of my personality and examining them. Ever since I was a tiny girl I have had a tape playing in my head that runs on and on and on about women and objectification. About equal pay and Title IX. About domestic and sexual violence. And on. And on. And on.

I don't know how to turn it off. 

It's not always a bad thing. My dedication to ending domestic and sexual assault helps me overcome shyness and stage fright and communicate passionately and effectively. Thinking about Alice Paul or Marie Curie makes me feel less like someone's country cousin and more like one in a long line of women who are trying to leave the world a better place than they found it. Reminding myself of how far women have left to go keeps me motivated and engaged enough to read through a stack of grant applications that will benefit women's health when the only thing I want to do when I get home is to curl up with some trashy television and stop thinking for awhile.

Feminism, my particular intense brand of it, has been responsible for some of the best, proudest moments of my life. Hearing my name announced cum laude, with distinction as I accepted my college degree, booking my first grant for an organization dedicated to ending domestic violence, and crossing finish lines would not have been possible if I didn't feel like everyone with a XX chromosome was peering over my shoulder telling me to work harder, do more, be better.

I don't know how to turn it off. 

It's not always a good thing. I am constantly reaching out to my friends for pro-bono help with my nonprofit work. I am apparently incapable of having a funny, playful conversation with someone I know to be a feminist and a good person without jumping on my soapbox. I have, on more than one occasion, worked myself to exhaustion because that goddamn tape is always playing in my head. One in four Minnesota women experiences domestic violence. Every two minutes a person in America is sexually assault. 90% of them are women. You're still only making .80 to the dollar. You can do more.

Feminism--again, my own particular intense brand of it--is also responsible for some of the more embarrassing, ridiculous moments in my adult life. Sexual miscues that leave me cringing for weeks afterward, conversations that degenerate into shouting matches, relationships that ended too soon because I wasn't willing to make a commitment that required a sacrifice, perhaps wouldn't have been possible if I didn't feel like everyone with a XX chromosome was peering over my shoulder telling me to work harder, do more, be better.

It's something I've got to learn to turn off. 

Regency

It will not stop raining here.

The weather, combined with the fact that my landlords have turned the heat off despite the temperature tanking, combined with the fact that I haven't actually had a hug in awhile, combined with the fact that I've been, uh, tense recently, combined with a zillion other things had me trawling the internet for good romance novel suggestions on Sunday afternoon.

Here's the thing. Ms. Proponent-of-Birth-Control, advocate for the Women's Economic Security Act, gets-into-weekly-fights-about-pay-equality has a secret shame.

I love Regency romance novels.

I'm completely unembarrassed by the fact that I occasionally indulge in a trashy book (this is why Kindles were invented, isn't it?). It's the Regency thing (and, ohmygod, the titles) that I find humiliating.

When it comes to romance novels I have intense author loyalty. Unfortunately, my favorite author seems to either be invoking radio silence while finishing a new book or has stopped writing (a thought that actually terrifies me), so I turned to the internet for suggestions. Given my intense mortification over the Regency thing, I read some reviews and decided on a contemporary romance.

Huge mistake.

Let's get past the fact that there were grammatical errors in the book (Yes, my blog is riddled with typos and incorrect grammar, but I'm not a published author. With an editor.) and the fact that the story was totally fucking preposterous (I'm not expecting an Octavia Butler level of plot development) and jump straight into the fact that the romance part of the gorram romance novel was completely unexciting, leaving me to wonder:

Is there anything more disappointing than a disappointing romance novel?

***

I've never received flowers from a boyfriend.  

In fact, the only man in my life to send me flowers has been my father. For years my mother would ask about the men she (with her crazy sixth sense) knew I was seeing. What we did, who paid, if they ever did anything nice for me, when was the last time one of them bought me flowers. 

She could hear me rolling my eyes over the phone. "Ma. I don't need that stuff." 

I could hear her rolling her eyes over the phone. "Yes, honey, but some day you're going to want it."

For most of my 20s I thought she meant that I was going to want those things because I was lady. As a lady, it was pre-determined that I would want my partner to send me flowers and give me Tiffany's. Retrospectively, of course, what she meant had less to do with the trappings and more to do with the idea that it's nice to see someone put forth a little effort, a lesson I only seem to have learned after never having had a date offer to pick up a check. A lesson that sunk in when I was laid up with strep and asked the guy I was dating if he could bring me some soup and he said "Sure, if I'm not too drunk. I'm going to go play poker first." A lesson that finally stayed with me after a paramour announced "Yeah, I know you didn't, but I did and I'm bored so I'm going to bed."

Is there anything more galling than having to admit, years down the line, that your mother was right?

***

As I said, Sunday's romance novel was disappointing for a lot of reasons. The part that gets me the most though is that the whole thing reads too much like an OkCupid date where you both know what the score is before you even leave the house.

I love Regency romance novels because, yeah, the smutty bits are there, but there's a bit of a build-up to it. It's one of the things I love about the constraints of setting the novels in the Regency period. Things are put on a slower timetable. There's lots of character development and because authors are taking cues from Idon'tknowJaneAusten there's lots of verbal sparring and sexy one-upsmanship. Yeah, they're not flowers or paying for a date at Cafe Barbette, but they're the sorts of things that make me swoon (among other things). The characters are putting in a bit of effort prior to taking a tumble. 

Yes, the fact that I read the novels, the fact that I find them so enjoyable is slightly mortifying, but dating can be unromantic and disappointing enough. I don't want to relive it in my romance novels.  So you'll forgive me, but I'm going to go try my luck with The Viscount Who Loved Me. 

Seriously. These titles. 

Lord Have Mercy

When the alarm rings at 2:00am, I stumble out of bed towards the clothes I've left draped across the wingback chair. I'm sleepy, less than half-awake, and still recovering from string of late nights I've had recently. I can't stop shivering, which is the number one indicator that I've been up too late and have had too little sleep. I stretch and yawn and look back at my bed. It would be easy enough to take off all these clothes, turn up the heating pad, and slide back underneath the quilt.

I check my pocket to ensure that I have my keys and mobile, and step out into the freezing air, hurrying toward the Mississippi.

Getting up to see an astronomical event is, well, lonely. I'll admit that while I didn't invite anyone to stay up with me to watch tonight's eclipse (mainly because after years of asking I've discovered most people aren't interested) I thought I might run into at least one other person awake, particularly because astronomical events that you can actually see in the city are unusual.

But 2:10am finds me standing alone on a bridge over the Mississippi, looking up at the Blood Moon, feeling like the only person awake in the world.

Despite the loneliness, the eclipse is something I revel in.

***

Somewhere along the way I confused "reflecting on your sins for the sake of atoning for them" and "relishing your sins."

I'm definitely relishing.

I can't help it. I'm at the Easter Vigil with my folks and it's close to a three hour service. Three hours. Three hours of church for an atheist. On a Saturday night.

I go because it's my atonement for moving so far away and coming home so infrequently. I know that it means something to my parents to have me there with them, and I am almost never home over Easter, so I might as well do this for them. But as everyone who has ever attended a Catholic wedding knows, just because you're there doesn't mean you're paying attention. We're wrapping up Lent so there's a lot of talk about sinfulness and Christ's triumph over Original Sin and I can't help it (not that I really want to), I can't stop thinking about the past year. Oddly enough, despite twenty-six years of Catholic indoctrination, it's not the big sins that are getting to me (not to say that I'm not thinking of them. More on that in a minute). It's the little failings from the past year, times when I could have been kinder, less dismissive, worked harder, loved with fewer conditions that I'm atoning for at the moment.

The big ones though, the ones that would come off that list of seven.

Those are are things I would not repent if Jesus Christ were standing in front of me personally offering me a place in heaven.

I suspect everyone has sins like that. Mine tend to fall along the same lines, regardless of how old I get. Long boozy dinners with heaps of inappropriate jokes that leave my sides aching and head splitting the next day. Arguments where, just briefly, I let my temper get the better of me. After hours that leave me trembling and breathless and thinking I forgot it could be like that.

Like I said, things I wouldn't atone for if my (after)life depended on it.

***

When I get back into the house I am freezing. It's the kind of cold I know I won't be able to shake and that will keep me up for awhile, so I make a cup of herbal tea and wrap myself around my heating pad. Getting up this late, especially after so little sleep, was a silly idea. I'm going to be exhausted and not worth much for in the morning and I'm reasonably certain I'll be paying for this for the rest of the week. 

I don't care.

It's unusual for me to feel that way surrounding sleep (lifetime insomnia has made me hyper-aware of the beauty of a full eight hours), but when it comes to staying up late to see something incredible (especially related to space) I feel like I have to do it.  I go out in the early morning and stay up as late as a possibly can on the off chance of seeing the Aurora or the Perseids because it's my way of saying thank you to the universe. Our lives are such brief, unlikely things that I feel like I owe it to the universe to experience as much as I can.

It's a thought that will follow me to two-and-half hours into the Easter Vigil, when I'll guiltily snap back into the present. Our lives our so brief, and yeah, some things are worth atoning for, some things are worth skipping. 

And some things are meant simply to be relished. 

Relapse

I almost had an OKCupid relapse.

I hate online dating. I would rather spend every Sunday for the next five years gagged sitting through Scientology lectures than go on another online date. I'm sure there are nice guys on dating websites. I mean, the law of large numbers seems to indicate so, right?

I'm also sure that I can be on one of those sites for about two and a half minutes before someone sends me a picture of their package. And call me fussy, but I don't want to have to wade through all of those junk pictures prior to going on a date that maybe-at-best doesn't make me fantasize about jumping in front of the lightrail. 

That said, I still almost had an OKCupid relapse.

***

I'm trying hard not to roll my eyes.

It's the Saturday before Christmas. I had a little too much good cheer the night before and am slightly hungover, I need to get on the road to get back to Wisconsin in front of an impending snowstorm (hand to god, every year I have to head home early because of an impending snowstorm), and I am on a first date that I didn't actually want to go on and now Just. Won't. End.

The guy is, I suppose, nice enough. He's talking. He's talking a lot. I recognize that some people, when nervous, don't just clam up. But, Jesus. I don't know if it's the hangover or the fact that I knew coming on this date that I was probably going to be indifferent, but I am bored out of my skull and looking for a way to end this, swiftly and politely.

If I can get a goddamn word in edgewise.

Honestly, I have very little reason for being as bitchy as I feel. The guy is a little boring and way too talkative, but he's polite. He has a good job, he likes Doctor Who, he's actually taken me to do something rather than "Hey wanna meet for drinks?" (Ugh. Blorch.)

The compulsion to bitchily roll my eyes comes around the end of hour one, when he starts talking about True Love.

Yes. True Love. With capitals.

And, let's be clear, he's talking about True Love and The One and Destiny. It's when he brings up Destiny (also capitalized, I can just hear it) that I decide to hang politeness. He's about to ask me about my astrological sign. I can see the question, sitting there on his face. It's going to happen and I need to cut this thing off NOW.

***

Everything is coming up Kelly these days.

Work has been amazing. It's been actual "Holy shit, I can't believe someone pays me to do this" incredible. I'm writing regularly and writing things that I like. The minor health concerns I've had over the past years have resolved. My social life is busy with enough things to keep me intellectually stimulated and physically challenged without feeling like I'm over-committed. I found a couple volunteer opportunities that I find fulfilling and a chance to get out and do something meaningful. 

Sunday morning I cried myself to sleep. 

I had been up for 28 hours straight with a work project. It was a funny, goofy "rebuild an entire website in 24 hours" thing, and I loved the website I ended up with and enjoyed the process tremendously. When I had friends volunteer to get up early on Saturday and Sunday to ensure that I wouldn't have to drive after having been up, I realized (again) the depth of the friendships I have here. I knew that when I showed the results to my boss and coworkers they would be thrilled beyond the ability to express it. 

Anyway, I got home, showered, made myself a cuppa, turned on my heating pad, got into bed and oy vey, without any kind of flashing warning sign I started crying. And how. The last time I cried this hard I was reading Eleanor & Park and listening to The Smiths. 

There were, admittedly, a lot of reasons for the tears. Sheer exhaustion and an ohmygodI'vespentthepasttwentyeighthoursstraightwithotherpeople introvert meltdown. Those were the real reason for sobbing, but what caused it, what sparked off the crying was the simple fact that I didn't want to sleep alone. I wanted needed someone else there with me, to help me laugh off the obvious, silly meltdown I was having, to put his PJs back on and curl up next to me and watch Fringe and just be there until I fell asleep. 

This was, hands down, one of the grossest meltdowns I've ever had. It was a stupid, childish fit to throw (especially considering how damn well everything else in my life is going right now), but once I started I couldn't stop. And then, of course, I started to think about how my life feels like the first twenty minutes of a romantic comedy and if I could be a bigger cliche than the single-woman-about-to-turn-thirty-who-has-her-whole-life-together-except-she-can't-find-her-one-true-love and how pathetic it was to be be crying over all of this. Which, of course, only made me cry harder.

Thankfully, when you've been awake for 28 hours, it doesn't take a long time to cry yourself to sleep.

When I woke up I spent a long time looking at the OKCupid website. 

In the end, I exited out of the site without reopening my profile.

I wish I could say it was because when I woke up I realized that I really am okay on my own, and that it's important to just keeping up with the things that I'm doing. You know, continue being unequivocally awesome and I'll eventually meet someone who is similarly awesome. That's the story I wish I could tell. But in the end I spent a lot of time thinking about the dates that I've been on and how terrible the were. How I'd rather spend the time that I have doing ohmyjesus anything else. 

And I really can't handle the thought of one more gross picture in my inbox.

30x30 #30: Healthy Fasting Blood Glucose

Sometimes being an adult is amazing.

I mean it. Sometimes it's a business dinner and drinks on one of your favorite patios to celebrate a successful collaboration. Once in awhile it's waking up to someone bringing you coffee and making pancakes while wearing your bathrobe. One of the amazing things I still haven't gotten over is not having to do homework when I get home (post-graduate disorder anyone?).

Sometimes being an adult is terrible.

Of course it is. Sometimes it's standing in the kitchen at 2:00am taking a break from a work project to eat peanut butter out of the jar because you've been too busy to shop. Once in awhile it's waking up to find a note that says "I'm sorry, I just can't." One of the terrible things I still haven't gotten over is how many people have claims on your time.

About a year ago, being an adult suddenly got really, really terrible.

I was still reeling from the emotional shitstorm that was the 2012 when a friend announced that they had recently been diagnosed with Type II diabetes. I was having an extremely difficult time managing my obsessive-compulsive disorder and immediately upon hearing that she had diabetes I decided that I had diabetes (and high cholesterol and heart disease and and and). I immediately made an appointment with my doctor to go in and have a full physical and get all of these things checked.

Before I continue, let me be clear about one thing. These concerns, while certainly amplified and made worse by the OCD, were not entirely unfounded. I have a family history that includes high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, various forms of cancer, and mental illness. Our genes are a mess. Armed with the knowledge that I was taking proactive steps to manage my health, I went into my doctor feeling empowered.

I'll never forget the phone call from my doctor. I could hear her flipping through my chart.

"Yeah, your LDL and HDL levels look good, so do your triglycerides. Your pap was normal, your breast exam was normal, your other tests were all negative."

I breathed a silent sigh of relief. It appeared the issue was, as it always seemed to be, my over-active amygdala freaking everything else out. I was all right. I was better than all right. I was healthy. I started to say my adieus when she paused.

"Oh."

Oh followed by a long stretch of silence is never something you want to hear from your doctor.

"What?"

"Well. Kel. Your fasting blood glucose is . . . elevated."

"What do you mean "elevated?""

"I mean it's not diabetic, but given your family history it gives some cause for concern."

We then have a long conversation about what cause for concern means. Essentially it boiled down to the following: either make some significant lifestyle changes or be diabetic in ten years. Possibly.

Normally when I have a bugaboo about diseases, it's a bugaboo about a disease. Measles. Ebola. TB. Something that is deathy and feels like it comes from a science-fiction novel or is antibiotic resistant.

With the exception of diabetes.

I watched my grandfather deteriorate slowly from Type II diabetes and it was horrible. I refused to conceive of a future that required insulin shots and compression socks for anything other than a distance race. I insisted that my doctor give me information on how I could address the issue of an elevated blood glucose.

What it boiled down to was "move more, eat less, eat selectively."

At this point in my life I was already running three days a week, averaging between nine and fifteen miles weekly. Getting told I needed to move more was like a punch in the gut. And while my food consumption had never been, you know, the best, I had never thought I ate a particularly trashy diet.

But, with the specter of shots and socks constantly in front of me, I upped my workouts from 30 minutes to 60, and then again to 90. I walked to and from the gym. I religiously accounted for every single calorie I put into my body. I taught myself to eat fruit when I'm hungry and that dinner can, on some days, just be vegetables.

It was amazing.

I'm serious. It was like one of those before-and-after weight loss reality shows, the ones where the contestant realizes how much their life sucks because they can't do what they want. I was scared. It worked. I dropped thirty pounds in a year. I biked 150 miles across the state of Minnesota. I ran through two Polar Vortexes and dropped a minute off of my mile times. I'm to the point now where a seven mile run is no longer a thing, it's just a run.

Yesterday I was sitting with a new doctor doing the whole "getting to know you thing." I made a comment that I'm turning 30 in September and she asked how I was planning to celebrate and before I knew it we were talking about 30x30 and I was telling her that one of the goals I had was to bring my blood glucose levels down to a normal range.

"Well."

Well followed by a long pause is never something you want to hear from your doctor.

"What?"

"I mean, you're doing everything right. It sounds like you've made some progress, but the thing is, sometimes genetics just gets you in the end. So I don't want you to get too down on yourself if today's labs don't come out the way you want them to."

I was a little devastated (have I mentioned that I believe with the right data and the right work ethic I can actually achieve just about anything?) and I didn't want hear that all of my hard work may have been for naught. She gave me the normal "It won't have been for nothing, these kinds of changes are amazing" speech, but I wasn't  really listening. As we wrap up she shakes me hand and says "You should have your results on the website tomorrow."

Imagine the nail-bite-y 24 hours I've had.

When the email popped up today that my results were available I broke off the conversation I was having with my coworker and raced outside to check them on my phone. I was preparing for the worst, incredibly upset that I was going to have to report failure not just on the 30x30 front but on the "I'm a healthy-able-to-take-care-of-myself" grown-up front as well. By the time I had clicked through to the website I was shaking.

Normal.

Just . . . normal. Not bad. Not good. Just right where they were supposed to be.

The note that accompanied them was "These are good, but you need to keep up the work you've been doing to get them like this." It hit me that over the past year I've been treating these changes in my life as a means to an end. That some day I'd be able to go back to not tracking everything I eat and scaling back my running and biking miles, getting something less than 300 minutes of exercise every week. I suppose I still could, but the problem is that doing so makes it all the easier for genetics to get me in the end.

It was terrible, the sudden realization that I'll have to be vigilant about the bits of my genes that are trying to kill me faster than I had planned.

While I was standing outside shaking my mobile buzzed with a text. "Hey, there's this adventure race I want to do, will you do it with me?" I recalled the seven and a quarter miles Andy and I ran last night and how it wasn't a thing, just a run. I started laughing when I remembered our bike ride from hell last summer and considered the prospect of coaching someone through a half in D.C. next spring.

It was amazing, the sudden realization that I am a different person than I was a year ago. That I am stronger, faster, and better because I have to be vigilant about the bits of my genes that are trying to kill me faster than I had planned.

Sometimes adulthood is amazing and terrible all at the same time.

Fly-Over

"What the hell is a lost Swede town anyway?"

I'm waiting for a friend at a downtown St. Paul bar, taking small sips out of a glass of stout and reading on my Kindle.

The gentleman next to me, wearing a suit and too obviously drunk for 5:00PM on a Tuesday, is trying to strike up a conversation. It takes me a moment to pull myself of out my nonfiction about Elizabethan espionage, to say "Excuse me?"

He gestures to my bag, a clutch that looks like the cover of The Great Gatsby. "I never liked that book."

I bristle. Visibly. 

There are a lot of things I find annoying about this guy in this moment. His drunkenness so early in the evening. The fact that he's talking to me. His suit, which signifies someone who works at Wells Fargo and thinks he's actually the Wolf of Wall Street. 

But what annoys me most is that his opening conversational salvo was a nasty comment about Scott Fitzgerald. 

If there is one place in the world where you don't rag on Fitzgerald it's in St. Paul. It is in St. Paul while sitting at a bar where, if you lean back a few inches, you have a direct line of sight out the windows to Rice Park where Fitzgerald has been memorialized in bronze. It's in a bar where you're less than a five block walk to the Fitzgerald Theater, where Scott's bust reigns aloofly in the hall as you stream into your seats. 

And if there's one girl in the world to whom you don't belittle F. Scott Fitzgerald, it's the one sitting at said bar, on the way to said theater, with a bag that looks like cover of The Great Gatsby.

I'm barely halfway through my beer and feeling more magnanimous than I usually might. I take a deep breath and remind myself that Fitzgerald himself, for all his literary gifts, was a drunk on a barstool annoying someone at some point. 

"I imagine he meant towns with names like Mora, Scandia, or Linstrom." I'm crisp enough that I think I've signaled that our conversation, thank you very much, has come its inevitable conclusion. You will not be buying me a drink. We will not be discussing the finer points of Elizabethan espionage or Midwestern writers. 

"Bah." He sways a little on his seat. "What would he know about the Midwest? He was from . . . New York." 

"New York?" The sharpness of my tone is enough to make the bartender, someone I went to college with, look up and move away. 

"Yeah. Or Paris. Or some place." 

When I suspect someone of intellectually sloppiness, my reaction is always the same. I suck my teeth. I take off my glasses. I recross my legs and lean in, and boy, you better brace yourself. 

My fury is always of the quiet "You may want to reconsider what you've just said" kind rather than the explosive kind. "Have you ever been to Rice Park?" I ask.

He looks puzzled. "Sure."

"That Rice Park, just down the block?" I'm pointing out the window.

"Yeah. So?"

"Ever, I don't know, seen a bronze statue of a man in a double-breasted suit there?"

"Yeah."

"You know who that is?"

He shakes his head.

I lied when I said my fury is always quiet. I start shouting. 

"It's F. Scott Fitzgerald. You asshole. He was from St. Paul. We have a theater four blocks from here with his portrait painted on the side and his name on the marquee. Anyone with an iota of historical or literary curiosity can do a walking tour of the neighborhood where he used to live. There's a building in Cathedral Hill where he used to walk to buy his cigarettes while writing his first novel. He knew how to write about the goddamn Midwest. He was one of us."

***

I've lived my entire life in fly-over country. 

I rarely think twice about it. Why would I? I live in a state with excellent education, taxes that feel reasonable, and amenities out the roof. My home is in a city where no one lives farther than six blocks from a park. At any point in time I can step out my door and run thirteen miles along the Mississippi, find locally sourced eggs or honey, catch an author reading, see a show. To that same end, I can drive an hour, an hour and a half north and see the Aurora, swim in a pristine lake, or be in the middle of the woods without a soul to talk to me. 

I love fly-over country. 

***

Thursday is the anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby. 

I have sort of a busy day on Thursday, but Friday I'm taking off of work early to do the Fitzgerald walking tour of the city. I'll start in Rice Park, with Scott's statue and then slowly wind my way up the hill, eventually ending at his various childhood homes and a certain old bar in Cathedral Hill with lots of original brickwork and a lovely patio. I'll sip my gin and reread my favorite passage from The Great Gatsby: 

“That's my Middle West-not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters [. . .]”

***

This winter did not to dispel the idea that many of my coastal friends have of the Upper Midwest (cold, flat, and lame). I received quite a few emails during the three Polar Vortexes and again when we had ten inches of snow the first week of April talking about how horrible it must be to be stuck inside all winter, and that there was something wrong in the minds of the people who choose to live like this, and why don't I come to one of the coasts, where the cities are proper cities, the weather is more temperate, there's a real literary scene, people are more scientifically minded. 

My replies were always the same. As I said, I've lived my entire life as a citizen of fly-over country. I can wield politeness and passive-aggression like a rapier. Thank you, but I managed to run twenty-miles outside last week despite the sub zero temperatures, and while it's not as good as the twenty-five I normally average, I'm still managing to get out. Part of the reason its been so chilly is because there's very little cloud cover, which means bone-aching cold, but it also means we've had an exceptional winter for star-gazing. And yes, there are moments when I've thought about moving to a larger city, but I'd really like to see the Aurora again at least once before I die, and St. Paul really does have a fine literary culture. Lots of small presses and interesting work being written by the people who live here.  So, thanks, but no thanks. I'm good where I am. 

The fact of the matter is that I've never seriously considered living anywhere else.

The Midwest has been good to me. Milwaukee is a city full of fellowship, good will, and living there is an exercise in loving things/people who will inevitably disappoint you (I'm looking at you, Milwaukee Brewers). Central Minnesota is place of deep, no-bullshit community and a love for the land that leaves you breathless. Duluth and those lost Swede towns on the Range are a testament to the ability to keep yourself occupied and engaged during long, hard winters. Northern Wisconsin is a guide to self-sufficiency and quiet pleasure in knowing that you built your own shed or caught and butchered your own dinner.

I am a part of that.

These are the secret things that keep me in fly-over country, the aspects of this part of the country that prevent me from considering living anywhere else. I am the games I played as a child (Duck, Duck, Goose instead of Duck, Duck, Grey Duck) and the linguistic ticks I've acquired (it's a bubbler, not a drinking fountain). I am the poems stamped into the St. Paul sidewalks. I am bluegrass on the North Shore and hiphop in Minneapolis.

And yes, as I'm walking through St. Paul on Friday afternoon, I'll think about F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, and about this beautiful, complicated place and my equally complicated emotions surrounding it and the experiences I've had here. Because I am as much a part of them as I am anything else.

Super

I recently had to retake the Myers-Briggs for a volunteer gig that I'm contemplating. It seemed like an odd thing to have to do, but I like the organization and was willing to take it for them.

I got an INFJ.

I always get an INFJ.

I've taken the Myers-Briggs tons of times and regardless of the mood I'm in, what's happened recently, or the time in my life, I always get an INFJ.

***

As a kid I read comics intermittently, as I could get my hands on them. I loved loved X-Men (Holy Hannah, Jean Grey. How could you be a budding feminist and not love X-Men?). I was a dreamy, not-terribly-down to Earth kind of a kid, apt to lose myself in reading or games that I played alone. 

I grew into an equally dreamy adult. 

I was also a terribly shy, incredibly introverted kid in a family that (like everyone) prized extroversion and the ability to be outgoing under almost any circumstances. My father, who can (and will) start a conversation with anyone could not (and maybe still doesn't entirely) seem to understand my desire to go through life simply being left alone. 

He and my mom had whispered conversations about whether or not I was a loner. 

They also, I suspect, worried about my inclination toward geeky things. Harry Potter and comics, The X-Files and Tolkien. I distinctly remember a look that passed between the two of them after they had taken me to see The Fellowship of the Ring and I enumerated the ways in which the book was different on the car-ride home. 

Retrospectively, I feel for them. They were raising a nerd without being nerds themselves. My adolescence would have been a little bit less rocky for all of us if I had either turned up as a jock or a delinquent rather than the the quiet, bookish, rule-following kid I was. 

Like a lot of social out-casty, nerdy types, I found  a lot of solace in SFF and comics. I liked to fantasize about one day discovering my mutation or finding out I had a superpower. It got me through the tough moments of adolescence. I secretly believed that there was something special about me. That I would be able to save the world because there was something specific about me that would enable me to do things other people couldn't. 

I think I always imagined that I would grow out of my interest in SFF and comics. That when I turned into an adult I'd start reading and watching adult things, like Anna Karenina and Citizen Kane. 

Ha.

***

"Hey!"

I'm on my way out of a fairly long evening. It's been a work networking thing and I've been smiling and chatting with different people all night. It's been incredibly fun evening, my cheeks actually hurt from smiling so much all night, but I am completely exhausted and not looking forward to a snowy, slippery drive home. 

One of the other attendees comes bolting out the door after me. I'm buttoning up my coat and weighing the pros and cons of getting a coffee before I leave when he accosts me.

"Hey!" 

I'm feeling considerably less bubbly than I did when I arrived, but I smile anyway and say "Yes?" 

He looks a little uncomfortable, like he didn't think out this encounter entirely before hailing me. "You're on Twitter under your real name, right? I mean, I'm not following someone else?"

My smile becomes considerably more genuine. "Yup. That's me. But you should really be following my work account to get a better idea of the role we fill in St. Paul."

Before I can tell him our Twitter handle he shakes his head and says. "No, that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to ask you" he hesitates. He is obviously nervous and super uncomfortable. "Hey," I tell him "I can guarantee that I've said something weirder in the past 24 hours than whatever you want to say." 

He smiles and blurts out his thoughts "It's just . . . you Tweet so much about being an introvert. How did you do that?"

"Do what?" 

"You were amazing in there. I mean, it was crazy. I would've pegged you as an extrovert."

My smile genuinely grows again. This isn't the first time I've had this conversation, so I have an answer at hand. "I actually get that question a lot in professional settings, so it's not weird for you to ask at all." I can see him relax, and I forge ahead. "I really love the work I do. It's important for me to help other people understand why I'm so passionate about it. That makes it easy to talk about." 

I've given him something like the truth, and while it doesn't entirely satisfy him I can see an escape opening up. I extend my hand, give his a firm shake, and say "It was great to meet you. I'll see you again in a few weeks." 

I slip out the door and get into my car without scraping all the windows. Now that they're covered with snow, the car serves as a mini-sensory deprivation tank.

I just need a minute. 

***

I get a lot of (affectionate, I think) ribbing from my friends about the amount of feelings I have and the intensity of those feelings. At this point, I think we all accept that it's the way I'm hard-wired and there's nothing I can do about it. 

Well, that's not quite right. 

I do spend a lot of time trying to tone things down. I keep a fair amount of my geeky enthusiasm for things under wraps until I know someone well enough to let that side out. I am not an easy person to be friends with because I will rhapsodize on any number of odd things. When there's a project about which I am passionate, I will dig in with everything I've got, sometimes to the detriment of my own health. I am weirdly in touch with my own emotions and hyper-respectful of anyone else's. I am easily frustrated when others don't react as intensely to something or quickly notice when someone is upset or hurting. 

I've said it before, but it merits repeating. Going through the world hard-wired like this makes me feel a little bit like a freak-show. Because I simply feel things so much and am apt to get so passionate about things that I think matter (modern feminism, jazz, ending domestic violence and sexual assault) I suspect  know that it's difficult for other people to relate. 

It can be a surprisingly lonely way to go through the world.

***

I am ohmygodbeyondexcited for the new Captain America movie.  

I love Captain America. 

Oh my God, how could I not? I'm a history geek with a super-hero fetish of course I love Captain America. 

There's also, you know, a little bit of the fantasy in the Steve Rodgers to Captain American transition, that those of us who are less than our best can somehow be transformed into the best possible version of ourselves. 

Maybe I never entirely grew out of wanting to have a superpower. 

***

It turns out that, as far as Myers-Briggs is concerned, INFJ's tend to be sort of rare.

It's something I discover after this last round of personality testing. I actually read the information the well-meaning volunteers give me rather than simply ripping it to pieces and using it for notepaper. I'm a little shocked by what I read, and how accurate a description of my personality it is. Turns out I'm an odd combination of idealism and decisiveness, profoundly introverted with the ability to communicate passionately, intensely (especially via the written word!) about the things that matter to me.

When I finally get out of the car to scrape the windows down, I think about the guy I just talked to inside and his observation that I seem like a pretty extroverted-introvert and I think about my passion for esoterica and the weird intensity I apparently display when I'm talking about something that interests me. I reflect a little on the evening I just spent and how bone-tired I am at the moment and how much good I did by simply talking about something that moves me.

And when I get in the car and hear and advertisement for The Winter Soldier I start to think a lot about superpowers. About how as a little girl and as a teenager, and yes, even as an adult, I want(ed) to have world-saving superpowers.

I feel corny for even thinking it, but I wonder if this weird mash-up of personality traits just maybe might be my own version of a superpower. It's certainly not as cool as telekinesis or the ability to move between dimensions, and I'll never be able to save the whole world from certain destruction, but the ability to get people excited about ending domestic and sexual violence, the capacity to recognize when someone is upset or hurt or furious (especially when they might not recognize it), that's gotta be worth something.