Antelope Canyon

"Perhaps

we should love ourselves

so fiercely,

that when others see us

they know exactly

how it should be done."

- Rudy Francisco 

Joshua Tree

At the beginning of a yoga session, you find your intention for that practice. What are you hoping for or needing when you come to your mat. "Bring your attention to your intention", one instructor told us. 

The past week has been long, full of increasing demands and 12-hr work days. I love what I do, but feelings of burnout are overwhelming some moments and I still struggle with adjusting to this adult, office-desk life. There is energy working with college students, but as they prepare their spring break plans and summer adventures, I feel my days are, in contrast, very sedentary and repetitive. 

Wake up early. Drive an hour in traffic. Work for 8-10 hours. Drive an hour in traffic. Go home and cook something (hopefully healthy). Maybe watch a movie or read. Sleep. 

Repeat. 

I get restless. Perhaps it was my childhood spent traveling and exploring the outdoors. Perhaps it was my major that constantly allowed me to study abroad and work with communities across the globe. Perhaps it's my way of dealing with stress. I have to move. I have to see horizons. I need something to look forward to on a fairly constant basis otherwise I'm stir crazy. 

So after a 12-hr Friday and looking at a 12-hr Monday, I decided to head to the desert. My safe-place getaway. I went alone and stealth camped far from any road or ranger station. Literally alone with the Joshua Trees and cholla, I could breath and think. What are my priorities? What do I need to establish for myself so that my work-life balance is sustainable and refreshing? How do I create financial security in a job, while still allowing myself spontaneity and adventure? 

Driving home yesterday from this place of vast rugged beauty, I realized that, for me, it's about starting small. This week, my intention is freedom and self love. Freedom to do and ask for that which cultivates self-care and pride in myself.  

And with that, we head back to capitalism and workspace and routine. But we can do this. 

Happy New Year!

Tonight's been very....adolescent.

It's freezing in San Diego and it's almost Christmas, which means it's hypothermic and there's so much traffic you run through an entire tank of gas sitting on the exit bypass.

I worked through lunch today so I was starving by 5pm. They say "so hungry I could eat an elephant", but elephants are getting poached at alarming rates and I adore them, so I prefer "so hungry I ordered an entire box of soft tacos from Taco Bell and ate four of them in said traffic".

Our heater at home doesn't work. An entire wall unit that you have to get down on your hands and knees to turn on the pilot light in hopes the rest catches and it'll blow heat for 10 minutes or so. Once you remove your face from the baseboards and dusted off your knees, it'll turn off. So down you go again to play with the gears, adjust the flame, and tweak the gas a little. Then back up to enjoy the heat for long enough for your fingertips to regain feeling. And then it burns out and you're back down. It's like burpies or pushups. My janky home CrossFit.

So naturally, I took a 30 minute scalding shower to defrost.

And then piled every blanket I own on the bed. I am now the royal Princess and the Pea...except all the blankets are on top, burying me in heavy heat. It's divine. A little suffocating, but warm.

Now I'm finally warm with three tabs open on my desktop simultaneously. One is playing Breakfast at Tiffany's and Holly just snuck through Fred's window. Darling creep. Another tab has my resume open. It's been four months at my job so naturally I'm restless and working on "professional development" (i.e. snooping on everyone else's LinkedIn to see where they went to school, what they majored in, and what rungs of the ladder they've climbed to get where they are today). And the other tab is here. Hello.

It's warm, so I'm never getting out of this bed again. The end. 

Partner

When I talk about Patrick or introduce him to new friends, I call him my partner.

I love everything about the term. Weightier than "boyfriend", it connotes a subtle seriousness that implies dependability and security. There is intimacy in "partner" for me, a powerful recognition of the investment to each other we've committed to. A partner has to know your weak spots so they can support you. They genuinely care about your insecurities because they'll be the ones to tell you where you're strong. A partner pushes you, challenges you, comes up with wild schemes with you, and gets you out of the most impossible scrapes.

Long before we were partners, we took ourselves out to fancy restaurants and hidden bars, ran weekly Costco runs and grocery shopping trips. We backpacked in the desert and and stargazed among the redwoods. We'd study together until dawn and take long drives at midnight to nowhere, sharing secrets and worries and shaky dreams (I was going to move to Sri Lanka to work with elephants, he wanted to switch up and study computer science). We'd do movie nights on his bedroom floor, emergency room visits, and secret handshakes. And then, in a teary-eyed phone conversation a year and a half ago - he in California, I on a hotel room floor in Denver - we finally blurted out what had been a reality for months and months; "You're my partner in crime....I love you". And it stuck. Partners.

I also feel privileged to be able to choose to use "partner". "Boyfriend" or "girlfriend" can be riddled with stigma or judgement for many same-sex couples and so "partner" is a safe, vague alternative. As a straight woman, no one questions my sexual orientation or morality if I say "boyfriend". However, my lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender friends can't always say the same thing and that's a reality I'm very aware of. And so, I like being able to challenge a system of defined gender roles and social norms by using "partner" to describe my heterosexual relationship. I feel using "partner" allows me to challenge the stereotypes and easy assumptions that ascribe narratives to individuals without allowing them the space to define themselves.

As queer writer Lindsay King-Miller wrote: "If your relationship doesn't depend on a fundamental disparity between the roles of "male spouse" and "female spouse", but on the two (or more) of you approaching each other as individuals and equals, I think you should have access to terminology that reflects that equality. As same-sex couples continue to love, commit, and build families and lives together, regardless of gender, we create space for straight people to do the same....When I hear someone I don't know refer to their 'partner', I no longer assume that means they're a same-sex couple. I don't assume it means they're unmarried. I don't assume anything except that they are sharing their lives and creating relationship models that work for them."

I love it. I love knowing Patrick is my partner through thick and thin, that I can lean on him and we'll be an anchor for each other. I also love the conversations about equality, gendered norms and societal labels that tend to arise whenever I use the term. Partnering in partners.

Validation

When people speak of love languages - gifts, physical touch, kind words, time, service - my mind goes to the word "peace". I've discovered how truly precious this rare quietness is, how hard it can be to cultivate, nurture, and maintain it.

The tours office is a whirlwind. I'm interviewing nearly 80 students this week, scheduling my current staff for numerous special events that are wearing all of us thin, I made a simple mistake that now has over 600 visitors coming for tours next Monday alone, and tour guides keep showing up late to their shifts. I'm one part disciplinary officer, mother, special events coordinator, HR manager, supervisor and one part very, very human. It's a hard balance. Yes, rewarding and exciting, but also draining and I have moments where I don't want to see another human being for hours. I just want to curl up in a hug and a blanket, get a kiss on the forehead, and be told I'm doing a good job. I crave peace. Silence to just think and pause. Peace. It's sacred. 

Be realistic, Demand the impossible.

The past ten months have been a confirmation in determination in strength. I moved back to San Diego in January completely unemployed and signed a lease on an apartment in a beautiful neighborhood in blind faith that "something would happen". It was the riskiest financial decision I've ever taken. 

I submitted almost a hundred job apps, interviewed like mad and bounced between four completely different jobs in eight months. I ended up moving again, lost a car, bought a car, went camping once or twice, and somehow the fridge stayed stocked, bills were paid, and friendships remained intact. It was a rollercoaster and an exercise in trusting my gut, unabashedly pursuing simple goals, and leaning on amazing friends. 

It's been ten months and I've gone from being unemployed to a temp employee to a director of 100 staff members. I am so, so lucky. So lucky to have the opportunities I've had. That the right doors opened at exactly the right moment. That my friends and partner put up with my crazy schedules and dogged stubbornness. That I have a support system that allows me to bounce around without cracking. That the sun continues to rise each and every morning. 

"Be realistic, demand the impossible." It works, guys. 

Smells of Fall

The kitchen is quiet in the morning. Soft, warm morning sunshine joins me at the table as I blink sleep away. My man leans over my shoulder with a steaming ceramic bowl. He layered my oatmeal with cinnamon and honey, knowing that, even bleary-eyed and not awake, I have a sweet tooth.

Mondays feel heavy. They come regularly and uncalled for, barging into a perfectly happy weekend like that one cousin who always feels unattended to. Screaming and dancing for attention. Mondays always seem like a whirlwind; full of meetings and phone calls, new projects and urgent problems born over the weekend that all those bright, cheerful morning people love to bring to your attention before you've gotten halfway through that emergency latte.

This job is demanding and exhilarating. I constantly have to make decisions, speak in front of audiences, and manage my 100-person staff. It's big and exciting, difficult and challenging. I love it. But I wake up slow.

He knows this. And stirs a pot of warm cider on the stove for our commute to work. He adds honey and spices to it, filling the little kitchen with cozy smells of Fall.

This Monday feels heavy, but it tastes like love. 

Fierce

Fierce: displaying a heartfelt, powerful and sometimes aggressive intensity. Living on the road months at a time teaches me that life is short. Live fiercely, love fiercely. Do things that scare and grow you.

Graduating

Desert

I need the desert.
Right now. I need to be out in the dry, dusty, barren desert with the heavy silence and brilliant stars. I need the rocks. The cacti. The texture. The silence. The rugged silence. I need to stare at the vast emptiness and let my mind whirl. Life is too busy, too complicated, too demanding, too exhausting. I feel like the desert is an escape from realities and responsibilities. A magical moment to pause time. A place where I can think and be and revel in my utter confusion while the distant world of obligations and phone-calls spins chaotically on. Without me.

Graduation looms a mere three months away and I feel as though my world, security, and sanity is crumbling before me. I have no idea what I'll be doing in three months. I have no idea how I'll pay loans off when volunteering seems to be the only prospect before me. I have no idea how to make dreams happen. I've pursued something I've loved for so long, and now that I'm on the brink of it, I'm balking. I'm terrified. Excited and anxious and scared and restless and frustrated and bewildered and tired.

What do I want? I WANT to grab my camera and notebook and listen to the stories of women around the world. I WANT to sit in the dirt with these women and give their voices a platform. I WANT to show the commonality of women and mothers around the world; their struggles, their pain, their joys. I want to gauge my ears, get tattoos, get sunburned and sit under patched roofs and learn from people I've only read about. I don't want to read one more theoretical model or social critique. I'm so burned out from academia. I want humanity, I crave connection, I need reality and honesty and humility and simplicity. I'm starved for real people in real places with lived experiences and their own personal narratives. I'm so exhausted by chronic abstraction; the sitting behind desks in quiet rooms in filthy rich La Jolla TALKING about poverty and aid and women's rights and empowerment and how white people have fucked it up. I need to do something with my hands. Let me help deliver a baby. Let me dig a well. Let me scrub the floors of some orphanage. Let me plant crops. Let me DO something tangible.

I need to walk and walk and walk and walk. In silence. In hot, sweaty, unbearable silence. I need to trudge, and think, and be. I want to stretch my arms across the mountain ranges and breathe in the vastness of the stars. I want to revel in my humanity and my identity and my own uncomfortable skin.

In three months, something will happen. But right now,
I need the desert.
Right now.

I feel paralyzed by inadequacy. Frozen by overwhelming doubt and inability. These job apps loom terrifyingly and I want to just turn around and wait tables. I can do that. Really well.

And my soul will die.

More wine. And chocolate. 

I want a soft couch bathed in sunlight with a table covered in books at arms length. I want to be surrounded by quotes that speak to life and hardship and challenges and the beauty in mundane, simple things. I want to be in love again. I want maps to cover my walls, not so that I can boast about the places I've been, but so that I can plan trips to see the ones I love who live there. I want music to move me to tears. I want my camera to capture what words never can. I want love to fill every corner of every room. The deep, profound, unquestionable type of love. 

To Regret or Not to Regret?

In my spare (ha!) time I like to peruse strangers' blogs. I find them an intriguing insight into another's thoughts; it's like a window into someone else's mind. Fascinating.

Tonight, I found a hurting blog post who's interpretation of heartbreak made me stop and reflect:

"Thoughts: Regret is Just Love Spelled Backwards

People in the end are just regrets. They are the email you shouldn't have sent. They are the phone call you shouldn't have made. They are the late night you should have walked home alone. They are the streets you should have never walked down and doors that should have stayed closed...

...People in the end are just a series of events we wish we never experienced."

See, I differ in my opinion of past loves; I find this pervasive regret sad and unfair to both parties. It may not have worked out in the end, but that doesn't discredit the happiness, the intimacy, the countless beautiful moments and laughter shared together. I have never, not for a moment, regretted the year we had together, the months I waited, or the tears we shared. And so, I'm countering with my own "thoughts":

Thoughts: Evolve is (ev)Love Spelled Backwards

People, in the end, are teachers. Windows into the secrets of humanity and the universe. They are the ones that forced you to be vulnerable and taught you how to trust. They are the text messages that made you smile at midnight and the hand to hold down countless cracked sidewalks. They are the reason your eyes have more smile wrinkles and the reason there's the understanding of heartbreak hiding in their depths. They are the ones that taught you what you value most - in life, yourself, and in others. They taught you the science of cuddling and pillowtalk, the beautiful riskiness of trust, of and how far you're willing to compromise. They are proof you tried. People, in the end, are a series of teachers that help you discover, and evolve into, who you truly are. 

Good news: My major was approved! I will officially be graduating in June as a Global Health and Social Justice major. Cool.

Good news: A book I conducted research for and helped write was sent to the publishers today at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. Should be published by Spring 2014. Cool.

Good news: Get to go backpacking through Anza Borrego next weekend for free as the professional photographer. Cool.

Bad news: Exhausted and sick. Can't get out of bed. Ever again. #drama

Yo soy

"Forget about enlightenment. Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind that is singing in your veins. Feel the love, the longing, and the fear in your bones. Open your heart to who you are, right now, not who you would like to be. Not the saint you're striving to become. But the being right here before you, inside you, around you. All of you is holy. You're already more and less than whatever you can know. Breath out, look in, let go." -John Welwood

Breathe

I lay on my mat tonight, eyes closed, limbs trembling, listening to the sound of my breath.

Each inhale and exhale were deep, powerful, purposeful and soothing. I've learned to really listen to my breathing, pay attention to my breathing; it centers my mind and balances my racing heartbeat. It's therapeutic, whether in the midst of a warrior pose or in the last five minutes of that really intense exam. What I love though, is how your breath has different sentidos. Each part has a different feeling, sentiment, and imagery.

It sounds like the ocean. With each inhale your breath mirrors a breaking wave; crashing upon the shore with life-giving momentum, intensity, curling ripples of oxygen and peace. Desperate and overwhelming, it's easy to get lost in the inhale. But it's that speed and force and power that fills your body, lifts your chin, and gets you through the day. And each exhale is the retreat of the wave back into the vast sea. A release of tension, stress, worry and control. It drags at the grains of sand and fragments of shell as it smoothly pulls back into the dark depths. The shore of your lungs slowly empties until your breath finally tapers off into a quiet whisper between your lips.

It's magical really, if you think about it that way. That your breath is like the tide, ebbing and flowing. Rising and receding. Deep, profound, complex, full of life and mystery.

It's as if the sea were in you. 

White Girl

I met a man in a classy bar a while ago. With shiny leather shoes and a smart, gleaming watch, he seemed intelligent. Sophisticated. Interesting. And I had on my turtle-shell glasses, pearls, and a glass of cooled scotch. 

We began to talk.

A mutual friend had mentioned my time in Jordan to said man and Señor Shoes ventured to turn the conversation more....international. "What were you doing in the Middle East?" he asked, slightly amused. I gave him the quick shpeel, "public health work addressing health conditions inside Jordan's biggest refugee camp" and his eyes lit up. 

"Refugees? You worked with refugees? That's so cute!....Haha, did you get your refugee fix?" 

This face is how I feel about it a week later. In the moment, I could've slugged him.

"Refugee fix?" I frowned. "Not sure I understand."

"You know, white girl goes to the desert to work with refugees. Was it exciting? I mean, it seems crazy exciting! But, well, what do you want to actually do?"

White girl? What do I actually want to do?

"You make refugee camps sound like going to the circus...like something to be entertained with. Like I was just there to get a profile picture." 

"So you did get your refugee fix!"

I just excused myself.

Way to completely undermine, minimize and patronize me and what I'm passionate about. Way to stick me in a racist, sexist box of stereotypes and generalizations without actually stopping to realize that the color of my skin or hair shouldn't sabotage my credibility or goals.

Yes. Thank you Captain Obvious, I am white. And blond. And a woman. Therefore, genuinely caring about the world, it's realities and people, the pain and suffering, the triumphs and challenges is inherently inconceivable. Naturally.

And in those moments, as I walked away from Señor Shoes, I heard another voice in my head....

"Is it because you wish you had culture? Don't base your life off your white man's guilt..." 

Tonight marked the third night in a row I've stayed up past 2am working on my major proposal. Tomorrow I meet with the academic dean and will defend this major I've dreamt up and designed over the last seven months. Global Health and Social Justice: Development, Urbanization, and International Migration. It's powerful, it's holistic, it's raw, challenging and will actually prepare me for the real world; unlike the theoretical bookwork UCSD seems obsessed with. Yesterday I got both the Director of the Global Health Minor and one of Anthropology's leading indigenous rights professors to sign off on my proposal and I literally couldn't breathe from pure joy.

And now I'm terrified silly. I've rewritten my proposal into five drafts, each one different sizes...one is a single page draft, the next is two pages, then three pages, four pages and five. No matter what they ask for, I'll have. I've organized and reorganized the proposed classes, practiced defending it to the mirror, read the entire general catalogue over...twice.

I'm ecstatic and terrified, thrilled and apprehensive, incredibly proud and unbelievably nervous.

And it's not because I'm a white girl who wishes she had culture.

I have culture. So does every single person on this massive, complex planet. And I don't have white-man's guilt or burden. There is unnecessary pain and death in the world and I happen to have spent six years in college and too many SallyMae loans figuring out how to help alleviate it. Has nothing to do with the color of my stupid skin. Or my hair. Or the fact that I happened to be born with green eyes.

White girl's gonna show Señor Shoes and everyone else that passion shouldn't be dictated, or limited, by the color of your skin. I thought we were bigger than that.

Purple yoga mat

My yoga mat is purple. Purple with violet elephants running down one side.

This afternoon, the warm, golden sunlight came streaming through the windows onto the hardwood floor as we shook. Panted. Stretched. Our yoga class is for beginners, but it's incredibly challenging. Cords are used to pull your legs and arms in directions thought impossible moments before. Arturo, the instructor, has learned my name and tells me from across the room "stretch Risa, stretch further. No! Further."

In surfing, there's a desperate sensation when you've been under water a few moments too long where your lungs start to gasp for air. They convulse in upon themselves, stretch against themselves, and you become acutely aware of each cell of your lungs. You feel each one, so furiously bent on living, surge and pulse with life, propelling you to the surface where you can finally gulp the sweet, sweet oxygen.

Yoga is similar. You stretch and bend in ways that make your muscles scream in delicious agony. You hold perfectly still in bizarre poses as your sinewy muscles gasp and cramp and pull at your joints. You listen to your heartbeat as you force yourself not to shake, pull your sacrum back towards the floor, lift your chin towards the ceiling, and breathe. Let it burn, just don't forget to breathe. And when you think you'll collapse in upon yourself, the pose stops. And you can finally relax into yourself on that wonderful, safe mat.

I found myself pressing into my purple, elephant mat as if it were the only thing in the world that could offer me security, stability, and a refuge during the tortures of yoga. As soon as I could get my body flat against my mat, silently whisper cuss words at my understanding elephants, close my eyes and melt into the mat, I'd be okay.

My yoga mat is purple. Purple with violet elephants running down the side. It's tangible representation of peace and sanity.