On Working with Porcelain: Facing the Year Ahead

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On the morning of January 1st I wrote down in my journal: “The panic is beginning to set in.”

I love New Year’s Eve; I welcome the new year surrounded by some of my favourite people, the constants in my life. We drink wine and play silly games and laugh our way through midnight. But by January 1st, the familiar feeling arrives. It's like standing at the top of a steep cliff drop; calendar pages splay out tauntingly before me with big red circles, lines and crosses mapping out the things unknown, the things I'm frightened of.

“Newness has magic to it,” I saw on my Twitter timeline on New Year's Day, and I believe this. I look back on my 2016 and see growth, change, and healing that was hard and good and so, so needed. New seasons make room for potential to come to life; it's exciting to think of what will blossom over the coming months. But newness means leaving the old behind too; life moves on in constant grief and we step forward with fear as well as excitement.

Fear has always come easily to me, and along with the joy of a new year comes a weariness when I think of all the things already on my to-do list. I'm daunted by deadlines and final exams that seem to dominate my next few calendar pages. Some really special things are there too—graduation, weddings, birthdays, trips and holidays with friends—but tasks that nonetheless add baggage to my mind.

And there's other countdowns in the back of my brain. My final days as a student—something I've spent the last four months claiming I can't wait to be done with, but now the end is in sight and I'm worried of what I'll be losing once these days are over. Counting down the weeks before friends disappear, scatter themselves across the country and the world. And sometimes, it's just hard to feel hopeful when the end-of-term tiredness from before Christmas never went away, and I can't remember the last time I wasn't stressed, wasn't worn-out. When my faith feels weary and I know I've been ignoring God, but not doing anything about it. When my sources of joy and refreshment feel dry, but panic freezes me instead of driving me to look a little harder for it.

It's daunting to look ahead and see everything that has to be done, all at once. To see everything hard or sad that could happen, and feel the weight of it all in one go. To realise how much of this coming year is unknown, and be frozen in fear like a deer in headlights.

Last summer I visited New Zealand, and spent an afternoon in Wellington's Te Papa museum. In a quiet upstairs corner surrounded by pottery, I found this quotation underneath one of the displays:

"There are always opposing impulses in working with porcelain: the desire to control, or to let things happen." - Raewyn Atkinson

I don't claim to know much about pottery, but this sentiment strikes me as more significant than just for porcelain.

I don't feel like I take a lot of control over my life. So far, things seem to have just... happened to me. The university I came to, my year abroad placement, even my church and my friends, all just seemed to find me, not the other way around. But then there are the unpredictable things that I do wish I had more control over. And other times, I wish I could let go of my (relatively few) responsibilities: when life's obligations and decisions stack up and it's time to take some action, I cannot just sit back and wait for things to fall into place.

There are things I can control, and things that I cannot.

I can't control whether I wake up wanting to leap out of bed, or hide in it all day. I can't control the amount of work I'm given in my classes, or whether my housemate will be gracious about the fact that, once again, I forgot to put the bins out. But I can choose to get out of bed and get studying, regardless of whether I feel like it. I can make the effort to be a good housemate, to make her a cup of tea and cook dinner when she's stressed.

I can't control whether a boy likes me back, but I can decide to take a risk; foresee all the ways I could get hurt but “let things happen” anyway, leave the fallout for another day. Or I can listen to my boundaries, decide to guard myself this time, instead of pushing my emotions to their limits. I can give my all in loving the people around me, but I cannot control how these relationships play out day to day; when I'm hurt, when insecurity tugs at me, when tiredness digs its heels in and snaps that last straw. In these final, vital weeks of my degree, I can decide the values I want to live by: rest-work-play. Decide to push myself to the library, put the hours in. What I cannot control is whether my best matches up with the examiner's expectations, or my memory serving me well enough when I'm sat in a French grammar exam, desperately trying to recall the passé simple.

The same is true for my future, for post-graduate life. I've chosen, loosely, what I want my post-July life to look like, sent the application and invested my heart. I can choose my city, the house I make home, and roughly how I'll spend my time. But I cannot control how the year will shape me, the people who'll become important to me, the events that will break my heart or spur me on.

2017 holds unknowns that I cannot entirely protect myself from. I have to let my degree come out as whatever it does. I have to allow my friends and family to move to the places they need to be, and trust that our relationships will be safe. There are lessons to learn, sometimes the hard way; and there are times to listen to my gut and trust myself to take control. I can take risks, trust the process. And in the elements I can control, I will do my best to act wisely, bravely, and with love.

I have to let this year happen.

When the year ahead feels more daunting than exciting, and more weary than wonderful, I will remember porcelain. There are always opposing impulses: but together, they make room for mystery. And mystery is exciting.

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The End of 23

Twenty-three has been the hardest year of my life, straight up. And I say that with zero melodrama and with the common sense that there will be years ahead that are worse and years ahead that are better. I know many of you can relate. Maybe this is just our early 20s, or maybe this is just life—this pendulum swinging between the dark and light, wandering and arriving, wondering and knowing, grief and joy.

Today I Am On A Plane: The Move to New York City

Today I am on a plane.

I have just moved to New York City. I have listened to "Empire State of Mind" 7 times. I have had 2 mimosas. I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know how I got here.

Five days ago I was in Nashville, TN. My home for the past 4 years, my city, my happy place.

One day ago I was in Long Lake, MN. My home for the past 22 years, the only home I've ever lived in, my safe haven.

Today I am on a plane.

I have realized there is a difference between dreaming your dreams and living them.

I have also realized how hard it is.

Through the Eyes of a Child

One disappointing thing about getting older is noticing the mystique of things that used to excite you fade. Coming into the real world is met with its fair share of challenges, and the temptation to let this harden you is accessible; perhaps it’s autopilot to become jaded. To have a hopeful outlook towards the state of the world, towards your passions, even towards life at times, takes a conscious effort. The reality is you witness (and sometimes find yourself in the middle of) a lot of crash and burn scenarios as you grow up, and it is really easy to let ugly truths cloud your perspective.

Dealing With Heartbreak at 35,000 Feet

Three days after my birthday I got dumped. Plain and simple. I was about to leave for a month in Germany, followed by a more permanent residence in Alabama for graduate school, when my boyfriend said he wasn’t prepared for the distance. It hurt, I cried, and then I drank more wine than I should have.

I spent the time leading up to my trip to Berlin thinking about the what if’s: What if I wasn’t leaving for half the summer? What if I could stay in Nashville? Would things change? Three weeks of driving myself crazy with questions made me realize that I needed to go to Europe, if only to provide myself with a distraction from neurotically checking my ex’s Instagram page. I packed my bags and in mid-May settled into seat 27C on a flight from Dallas to Frankfurt, thinking that maybe this was a good way for me to take a break from the breakup.

On Making Decisions When You Are Afraid Literally Always

Like a dramatic and silent slow action shot in a cheesy multi-million dollar film, I watched in horror as the barista raised the whipped cream dispenser, taking aim at my beloved mocha. But I didn’t want whip. In fact, when ordering, I had specifically requested no whip, please. An internal battle raged within me on whether or not I should say something. Over whipped cream. I was literally contested over whether I should say something about whipped cream.

Because why rock the boat? Even if it’s as inoffensive as asking for no whip.

“Don’t say anything,” Fear instructed. Over whipped cream.

Let It All Go: On Shedding Expectations and Fear

There are a few things that happen when you graduate college. You celebrate school being finished. You send out job applications with big dreams and starry-eyes. You get rejected and ignored. You send out job applications, and LinkedIn invitations, and cover letter after cover letter—you dream about cover letters—you start losing steam. You want a job. You want a job so badly.

You get a job. You celebrate. You go to your first day in a new pencil skirt with starry-eyes. You love it, for a while. Some days you hate it. Sometimes you wish you could go back to that time when you weren’t tied down to your desk, even though that’s all you wanted. You start losing steam. You want a new job, or to travel, or to do what that girl on Instagram is doing. You want that other life so badly.

And it’s not that what you have is bad, or that it isn’t what you expected. It’s that there are so many reasons to tell yourself that you’re doing something wrong. That you didn’t choose the right path.

One Year In: 3 Lessons from That First Year of Post-Grad Life

I turn 23 at the end of July, meaning I was the baby of my grade all through my academic career. Being the youngest (among other things) somehow made me feel uncool and likely had an effect on my ridiculous effort to prove just the opposite. Self-expression was key here. I found identity in a flowy skirt, Converse sneakers and a Rolling Stones t-shirt in the 8th grade. “Woah, Lane, that look sounds way chill already—how’d you manage to make it even chiller?” you ask? Braces and a DIY hemp necklace, obviously! The universe had surely never seen anything this edgy. I remember feeling like a fraud but also a badass when asked, “Can you even name a Rolling Stones song?” and responding only with a panicked “yes—of course!” before fleeing the room immediately.

I can name close to 10 (lmao, boom) Rolling Stones songs now, but in many ways I still carry around that same confidence-meets-self-consciousness. It’s this stupid thing where I don’t care what people think about me so much so that I want them to know just how much I don’t care. I believe “caring” is what that’s actually called. So just to reiterate: sometimes it’s hard to feel like an adult.

Reflecting on the year, it bums me out to realize how hard I’ve been on myself. Whether that meant kicking myself for not living up to an expectation or kicking myself for being “too much” or kicking myself for not being enough, there was always a reason to kick. But the thing is, all we can do most of the time is try to exist as we are.

That said, I’ll keep this short and sweet with three pieces of advice for those entering their first year after college.

A Letter to the Recent Grad

I took graduating really hard. Like, really hard. I left school having absolutely nothing figured out with absolutely no answers, and spent most of the summer crying to my parents and denying the fact that I could no longer get dollar drinks at the bar (one of the rudest awakenings about post-grad life…). I felt lost without my friends, without the walls of UNH that protected us all so neatly, and without my identity as a student.

…because if I wasn't a student, then who the $%&@# was I?!?!?

An Ode to Carrie Bradshaw

It’s discouraging when you work something up in your head for so long and nothing comes of it; the moment I put something in there, I can’t let it go for the life of me. And it’s even more discouraging when you realize that what you want may not exactly be what you need. But John Steinbeck once wrote to his sons: “I have discovered that there are other rivers. A great many never come to know that there are other rivers.” I over-analyze literature like I over-analyze everything else, but what I took from this is that sometimes, we try to cling so hard onto what we know, simply because it’s what we know. But you have to allow your dreams to change so constantly because you are changing so constantly. There are other rivers, and other cities, and other places to grow in. And often, they are the ones you would never expect.

Dreams, Graduation, LifeIssy DaviesJanuary 22, 2017FeaturedComment

On Working with Porcelain: Facing the Year Ahead

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