Who wears short shorts? Apparently, I do.

I have walked 10 miles today. It was supposed to be 14, but Megan wasn’t feeling up to the additional 4. :) When my heart feels down, or when I have lots of thoughts to spin around in my brain, I go all Forrest Gump and just keep moving. Despite it being March in Seattle, complete with heavy clouds and a low-40’s temperature, I decided that I should wear shorts for this urban excursion. I can handle the cold – that’s not the issue.

The issue is the legs.

The issue has always been the legs. When I was 13 years old, I stopped wearing shorts for complete insecurity over the shape of my limbs. I wadded up my short overalls and shoved them in a drawer, which, let’s be honest, was a good decision. Since I definitely wore a belt through the belt loops.

I muddled my way through junior high, high school, and college without ever donning anything less than long pants. Hot Colorado summers? Pants. Hiking in Utah? Pants. The beach in Mexico? Pants. Always pants. Pants were my camouflage – the thing that would prevent attention from being drawn toward my ultraviolet shanks.

I don’t know what I expected. Throughout this time, I didn’t really exercise – why would I assume that my legs should be svelte and toned? But half-way through college, I really got my act together, educated myself on nutrition, started working out, and as a result, lost 45 pounds. I felt great – so proud. But the insecurity over my legs hung on for dear life – try as I might, I could not shake it.

I bought some shorts for hiking and backpacking last summer out of sheer laziness, because really? I didn’t want to carry the extra weight of long pants on 24-mile trails. Even in the wilderness, even 100 miles from civilization, even with just two of my best girlfriends, even when I had much bigger worries (like the fact that we were teetering on foot-wide ledges and we had to carry BEAR SPRAY), internally, I was obsessing over my legs.

I am embarrassed by my self-centered, petty frame of mind.

Last night, I went to a Women & Wine night at a friend’s house. I knew no one except the host, and she had invited women from all different areas of her life: college friends, church friends, work friends, wives of her husband’s friends, all for the purpose of drinking wine and eating treats and connecting with each other. I went alone – sometimes it’s better that way, no one cramping my style – and found myself to be the youngest person there.

And my conclusion: I cannot wait to turn 30.

These women were absolutely delightful – intelligent, curious, real, funny, successful, deep. And here’s the thing: they were comfortable. They accepted and embraced their physical imperfections, and were glowing with undeniable beauty as a result. I was inspired, and their comfort with themselves allowed me to be comfortable with myself.

So today I put on shorts. I walked my 10-miles with my white legs, and I thought my thoughts that needed thinking – and not one of them involved how mortifying my legs are. It gave me such hope that as I grow in age it is truly possible that I might grow in grace.

But I will never, never wear a belt through my overall shorts again.

Today is a day for doing things that need to be done. Sleeping in. Enjoying my morning coffee. A load of laundry. A sink of dishes. Errands. Taxes. Getting my life in order. (Notice how sleep and coffee are considered just as much necessities as doing my taxes; I have my priorities, people.) This day off from work has largely been spent within the walls of my apartment, and there is no place that I would rather be.

As many of you might know, after 7 wonderful years, I am planning on leaving Seattle early this fall. Call it an adventure, call it a quest, but I after lunch today with my dear friend Mark Isakson, I personally am going to refer to it solely as, henceforth, The Big Trip.

I have no idea what will come of this time. I do not know where I am going, what I will do when I get there, how long I will be gone. I do know that I will be returning to Seattle, whether in 3 months or 3 years. Seattle was the first thing that I ever fell in love with, and it remains high on my list of infatuations; I won’t be able to stay away for too long!

I love all of you who live in Seattle – really, I do. I will miss you all immensely. But please do not be offended when I say that the thing that I am mourning the most about this move is the loss of my apartment. :) I have lived alone in my little studio for almost 2 years now, and it has been a haven and a place of rest and joy for me. I have gained a significant familiarity with myself through living here. I will be so sad to leave when my lease is up at the end of June.

Keeping that in mind – that is, the fact that I am only in my apartment for 3 more months – you might think that I would be strategizing about the logistics of The Big Trip. What to keep, and what to get rid of? Where will I put my furniture? How does one go about moving when she doesn’t know where she’s moving to? Where will I live for July and August as I finish up at work? And for crying out loud, what am I going to do about medical insurance? But today, I am not thinking about those things. I have had a more pressing issue at hand.

It’s that pesky corner – the one behind my couch. It’s so… empty. And plain. It needs… something. Something vibrant and colorful and entirely “Annie.” It needs a plant.

I know, I know – I am only here for 3 more months. I have no business getting a plant – what am I going to do with it in 3 short months? But you know what? All that we really have is today, this moment. I can plan and plan, and think that I know what’s going to happen in my life, and the entire world can change in a split second. Control is an illusion. We do not have the past, we do not have the future, we have the NOW. And I have been doing a lot of thinking, and I’m pretty sure that the NOW would be made exponentially more wonderful if I had a plant in that corner. :)

I have had two plants in that corner in the past. The first one was a sad, scraggly, Charlie Brown Christmas tree of a plant that I appropriately named Dr. Seuss. Eventually, it was unbearable to wake up each morning to the sight of it struggling toward vitality, and so I tossed it. The second was a palm from Ikea that I continually tried to nurse to health. But one day I looked into the pot and saw a multi-legged creature squirming through the soil, and after recoiling with a gasp of absolute horror, I promptly threw the entire plant, pot and all, into the dumpster. Because that? Was disgusting.

Wandering through the house-plants at the store today, I found several that might work. I carefully pulled each plant from its assigned place on the shelves and risers, and placed them in a circle around me in the middle of the aisle. My index finger pressed to my chin, I slowly turned and surveyed the options. With the careful inspection that one might use when picking a puppy from the pound – or a husband, for that matter – I considered the possibilities, and arrived at a decision.

And I must say, I am happy with my $20 purchase:

Before:

After:

Worthy every penny, and the next 3 months will be more beautiful because of it. Continue growing, continue putting down roots, even in the face of change and uncertainty. All that we are given is today, so live. Seize the day, save the planet, and buy that plant!

So, this is where the rubber meets the road. I’ve set up this site, and had lots of thoughts like, “Yeah, this is going to be GREAT!” I’ve chosen my font and my background color (disclaimer: both subject to change at any time), and alerted the public that we’re in business.

And now. What to write about?

How about bitterness. I guess that’s just as good a place to start as any. A real “upper,” and really, who doesn’t want to immerse themselves in the topic of rancor and venom?

Here we go.

Native American folklore includes the story of a man who struggles between good and evil, positive living and negative destruction, building up and tearing down. He tells his son that he has two wolves fighting within his heart: a good wolf and a bad wolf. His son’s eyes grow large as he asks, “Which one will win?” The father replies, “Whichever one I feed.”

Throughout my life, I have had a tendency to bow toward bitterness. Whenever life dealt me disappointment, I went one rung further down on the ladder toward cynicism and despair. I started to wholeheartedly believe that God had it out for me, and that I should just go ahead and expect failure and misery. It’s easier that way – low expectations leave no room for the shock of the anticlimax. It’s not that I saw the glass half empty; on the contrary, I saw it half full… of poison.

The tricky thing about bitterness is that in the end, it only hurt me. I was down all the time, and pulling others down in the process. Oh sure, cynicism allowed for some witty comments, and people were often drawn to my “realism.” I stated things exactly as I saw them, compulsively wrung all buoyancy out of situations, and thus maintained control over my life and circumstances. Don’t get your hopes up, and you’ll never be let down, I thought. Do not want. Do not hope. Do not look forward to things. Do not desire. To admit that I wanted something, to admit that something was important to me, was to reveal a vulnerability that I was not comfortable with. And so I chose the safety within the hard shell of petulance.

It’s funny – I think that some people actually want you to be bitter, and so they encourage it. Aren’t you angry? Can you believe he did that? What an ass. It’s not fair! You are SO right to feel that way. Bitterness begets bitterness. Acidity and malice are the natural products of hostility. Let’s all be bitter together. After all, it’s more fun that way – misery loves company.

But enough is enough. Relatively recently, I decided that I didn’t want to be bitter anymore. This came at an unexpected time, a time when I had a lot of reasons to be angry. I had been wronged, and I had been hurt. I had let my guard down for a time, and it came back at me in the form of a bitch-slap to the heart. What better time to positively loathe life?

But no. No more. I do not want to spend my life raging against the world. And so I am learning how to choose joy each and every day. It’s a discipline, and it’s often incredibly difficult. My bitter wolf rears its head on a daily basis, howling for attention and some good lovin’. But instead, I am choosing to foster and strengthen the “good wolf.” And slowly but surely, by the grace of God, this positive force is gaining backbone and resilience. I have so, so many reasons to be joyful.

I am learning how to state what is important to me. I am allowing myself to feel, and to unapologetically desire. And I am hopeful that these dreams will take form someday.

All of this with a smile… and the occasional sneer. :)

This is the birth, the commencement, the inception of my blog. I cannot promise that it will always be deep and meaningful, but I can promise that it will always be authentic. Wait, this is a public site… so… yeah, actually? It might be contrived sometimes.

Annie Dillard writes, “We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall. Useless, I say. Valueless, I might add – until someone hauls their wealth up to the surface and into the wide-awake city, in a form that people can use” (from her brilliant “Total Eclipse” in Teaching a Stone to Talk). I have so many complex inner-thoughts, and they don’t make it to the surface often enough. So here they are. Take them for what they’re worth, and who knows?

Maybe something beautiful will come of this.