The Best Possible Limbo

I'm in a weird place right now. I'm still unemployed, working casually on small freelance pieces and slowly chipping away at the book but fixating an unhealthy amount of attention on a job that I applied for in April and haven't heard back about. At the same time, I'm seizing the day so hard and finding everything that I want outside of work, everything that prompted us to move here, the recreation and community and culture. 

When the job posting popped up I lost my mind with excitement; it felt like the description was written with me in mind. They had to hire me. Who else could possibly fit the bill? But as the weeks have stretched on, with only a few perfunctory back-and-forths in which I try to hide my enthusiasm and neediness, I've lost the confidence and certainty that this is my job. 

My family is blue collar stretching back generations, at this point very financially comfortable but still a little dismissive of work that isn't manual labor. Although they were completely excited about and supportive of my journalism career, I've always been sheepish because, as my parents liked to remind me, they never had paid holidays or company email addresses or jobs that could be stolen away by AI. Now that my generational wealth has enabled me to take a long and ever-lengthening sabbatical, I feel extra queasy about work and my lack thereof. I'm paranoid that my peers think I'm rich and lazy and privileged, and I worry that even Cy is getting sick of my unproductive days spent around the house. But it's more like I'm frozen in place, looking constantly at job postings but never applying for any besides the first one because that is the job that I want so badly that I can't even consider an alternative until I get a definitive answer.    

The reason I say this is the best possible limbo, however, is that in the meantime we are absolutely living life to its fullest. We've crammed several years of local experiences into less than two heady months. Sailing, a sunset ski tour, farmers' markets, pond skims, the Ski to Sea race, the Whatcom World Cup, the Washington Endurance Series, Bellingham Idol, a trip to British Columbia, a baseball game, poke bowls on the beach, drag shows, a Green Day cover band, cliff jumping, runs on urban pathways, errands by bike, adventurous gravel rides, scary bike trails, dig days (with women!), group rides (with women!), jump sessioning (with women!), a queer ride, a downtown naked ride, breweries, Russian dumplings at night, free yoga on the bay, and showing our friends the decadent life.  

Even though constantly checking my inbox for a follow-up email is a bit frustrating, I'm going to try and maintain this momentum for as long as it's sustainable. 

Friday update: After weeks on tenterhooks I finally heard back that the company is postponing the candidate search but will reevaluate in a month or so and I remain in the game if interested. It's closure, sort of! This week I also received a possible offer of copy-editing work from another publication so I am feeling way less dour than I was when I wrote this blog. 

Driving Away

On the kamikaze fourteen-hour drive from eastern Idaho to the northern coast of Washington, my only company the dog curled up in the piles of bedding jammed into the Subaru and Cy's voice on the radio as he piloted the van in front of us, I thought about the other times I've driven away from an old home toward a new one. 

When I left Brevard, two goodbyes stood out: the one to my withholding and not very good boyfriend, which was sad but lackluster, and the one to my father, which felt emblematic of becoming a grown up. When I left Tahoe, I drove away from a crowded hotel room at a casino in Reno, where we had celebrated the end of another season in fittingly hedonistic fashion. Everything and everyone was transient in Tahoe so it didn't feel noteworthy to leave, although I was going to miss some of the people I had met. But my partner was waiting in Idaho with a new life ready for me, so I headed east. 

This time, I was driving away from my home of ten years. In Teton Valley I became fully actualized, changed a lot, grew a lot. I had a deep sense of community, like I had in Brevard, but stronger and earned on my own rather than through my parents' business. I had a husband and a career and a house and adult friendships that made me feel so fortunate I could cry. 

My winter of goodbyes was drawn out and peaceful, because I had the privilege and luxury of leaving my intense job in November and only dabbling in work through April. It was an amazing winter with tons of good skiing and opportunities for adventures with people I care about. When I wasn't skiing or volunteering at the food pantry or listening to podcasts or typing away at JayP's book, I was slowly purging the house and tidying up loose ends. When it came time to pack, of course, we discovered I hadn't purged aggressively enough, but isn't that always the case. 

We filled our final weeks with as many hugs and drinks and walks and skis as possible, but I still didn't feel like I had done my friends justice. But they all quickly lined up with dates that they wanted to come visit, to spring ski and mountain bike, so none of my goodbyes were forever. 

Regardless, I cried often in the final week, almost as sad to be leaving my beloved little house in town as I was to be leaving my community. 

I thought I remembered writing on my blog in 2012 that, as I drove west away from the Blue Ridge, all my feelings were packed away in a box buried under other boxes in the car. It appears that I didn't write that after all, but I definitely thought it, and on my next big drive west, to Washington, it was exactly the same way. After the ceaseless churn of sadness, once I was in motion the feelings went into their little box, to be stored and forgotten somewhere in our new rental. 

Here, I'm not sad, just a little restless, waiting for life to start, waiting to accumulate friends and experiences and knowledge all over again. 

It's been amazing to ride from the house to the tangled web of trails and remember what good dirt is, when Teton Valley mountain biking is still months away from prime season. But the ride that really cinched the decision wasn't on trails, it was on pathways. A friend of a friend took us out to tour some of the city on gravel bikes and the sheer density of back alleys and greenways and bike lanes and singletrack cut-throughs filled me with joy. This place has arteries and veins crisscrossing the whole body to serve the beating center. And being able to ride safely and quickly and on scenic byways to the grocery store is a major factor in quality of life. 

The path to the grocery store looks like this.

Promotion

I didn't want this new job. 

I love my job, have loved it for four years, not without reservations but it felt like the best application of my talents, a constant challenge, an unceasing exploration of things that interested me and, sure, things that didn't. I took on more than the bare job description entailed and learned so much and grew. 

Then my boss quit and I didn't want her job. The editors I have worked for often struggled as the public's whipping boy. It's a thankless job made more so by the constant erosion of the industry, the steady elimination of support structures and staff and resources.  

But I did the job for a month and then two months and then ten weeks. It began to make sense for me to keep doing it, and people I trust encouraged me to explore the possibility. There are parts of the job I'm bad at and scared of, but there are parts I've learned from my more capable predecessors, and parts that I am better at than they were.  

It took the corporate office so long to offer me the job after I said I was interested. I considered quitting because I knew that even when I was promoted I still had to keep doing it alone until we got approved to hire a second writer. 

Finally last Friday I received the job offer. I sat on it for awhile, weighing it, and then let all the negative thoughts go and focused on the good stuff, which is really good: I have been promoted to editor. I have received a raise with back-pay. Our team is poised for excellence. I am scared, but I have the relevant experience, an eye for detail, and a nearly inextinguishable enthusiasm for thorny local government issues and articles about nonprofits and quirky people and stories that make parents proud. 

This is my process and Cy always teases me about it.

Five years ago who could have guessed this would be my life. Certainly not me. 

A Belated Announcement

I met a guy.

We skied Taylor together with mutual friends on a late March morning with the unresolved promise of rain. The snow was subpar. The boy was interesting and fun to talk to. I distinctly recall saying to my friend in the car afterward, "He's cute." My friend would go on to date my ex, so all's fair.

The guy and I developed a pretty great friendship. I inserted him into my big noisy group of roommates and extended friend-family, and when we weren't partying or riding with them he and I did something that I wanted so badly and didn't have a partner for: long runs. We talked constantly. I couldn't stop. I imagined bigger adventures, overnighters, traveling together out of the valley to find new mountains, feeding my craving for novelty.

I was an outlier in my friend group. Our ratio of getting high and drunk and socializing and hanging out versus going hard, going uphill, maintaining constant motion, was a little out of whack for my taste and I would get antsy and agitate for action. They put up with me but I was kind of annoying to them, and they were kind of annoying to me.

Also I had a boyfriend, had had one for over four years. He was strange and so smart and incredibly funny, loyal to a fault, passionate, stubborn, and polarizing. But he didn't run and hadn't read a book in quite some time, and while I thought we were probably going to get married, because I settled into that mindset pretty easily in relationships, I started to dream of climbing mountains, fastpacking, bikepacking, talking for hours about books and ideas. 

And then I did something about it. I poured my sadness and dissatisfaction and longing into a vessel that didn't fit and gave it to my boyfriend with little explanation. I moved out and forfeited the dog we owned together. I hid from our friends and tried to find normalcy and cried a lot.

But I also started pursuing this other opportunity. He was a big reason I did what I did, although I've barely admitted that to anyone. It's probably obvious to everyone now but I so, so, so didn't want to hurt my ex even more by putting that out into the world, that simple, common trope: she left you for someone else.

This guy though, he was sexy and funny and smart and interesting and engaged and kind and full of joy. He wanted to go everywhere and said yes without hesitating to every questionable adventure I cooked up. He was there for me always. Before we were together and I got the job at the newspaper, he was more excited and proud and supportive than anyone besides my parents. He still reads every article I write, and when I bought my house he threw his time, money, and expertise into the task of doubling the property's value. And he puts up with my fixation on the "right" way to wash dishes.

My mom and her sisters met him in 2018. That was five months after he first talked to my parents, when he stood outside the operating room and called to say I was under the knife after a potentially deadly ectopic pregnancy. Fortunately my parents are good, understanding people and appreciated him and that hard call, instead of placing blame.

Anyway, my mom obviously liked him, because he's easy to like. And then he came to New Hampshire,  to the Tellman stronghold itself, even though for a couple years I felt too burned by the decimation of my past relationships to try and draw him further into my family. But it was fine, great, he was an ally and he charmed my sister and was open and kind to everyone and during dinner prep one night my father, who has been able to find something to like in all my young men although he clearly wants the world for me, leaned over and said, "I love him," with that emphasis.

While it rained we talked in the New Hampshire breakfast nook about engagement and titanium rings and none of it was surprising. But then we were back at home and he did manage to surprise me, on one knee with a ring box as I turned back around after applying sunscreen on a mountain plateau during a run in the northern Teton range, with a titanium ring that he had bought even before my whole family asserted that I should have a titanium ring, and I shouted in shock and cried and wasn't sure, because what is marriage? And are all relationships really doomed to failure like I've already convinced myself?

I told almost no one about our engagement for three months because it's a small valley and I still didn't want to hurt the other guy. I couldn't figure out how it wouldn't hurt. It turned out to be okay, ish, and we actually went for a big bike ride, the three of us, on my birthday last year and it wasn't that tense. I also kept the engagement a secret because I didn't see myself as a fiancee, and because I don't talk about relationships a lot or post about them on social media. That was a habit I picked up when I was younger, when I was doing some shady shit. And I have this stupid idea that love makes you weak or vulnerable.

After three years I'm still one hundred percent into this guy. He's just so great and I have friends who still regularly comment on that fact, which I love. So that's why we're getting married in September.

It's hilarious that nearly half of the photos of us that exist are candid, awkward laughing photos at special events. We don't take photos together. Ever.

This Decade

I'm kind of in the mood to do a decade retrospective, like everyone else, and I prefer the blog medium to more photo-heavy outlets, although I have sprinkled choice photos from the last ten years through this post. 

I start browsing The Plural of Danish, since it's appropriately just over a decade old, and I have a thesis in mind. I graduated college ten years ago; I must be a different person, I think. I've made two big moves, had several impactful relationships, bought a house, stumbled upon a career, stopped defining my life with bikes, started defining my life with a 50/50 split of bikes and skiing (quelle différence). Maybe I like myself more now. I do really like myself, and I've learned even as a woman that it's actually okay to like yourself. I like the people around me, I like my job, I just plain old like my life.

My last and best collegiate MTB nationals was ten years ago.

But I am actually a bit surprised, perusing old blogs with this thesis in mind. Turns out this is an ongoing theme in my life, the liking. Where is the earthshaking difference? While moving cross country felt so huge, like such a drastic shift in my life, so many people I know here did the same, often in worse situations, before it was cool. Moving to another community that feeds my need for connections in the same way that Brevard did was more of a natural progression than an abrupt change of direction.

Went to Arkansas.

My voice is so lively in early blogs. Cloying, sure, but much less self-aware than now. Now I always feel like I'm writing for too many people, an audience with whom I'm unwilling to share my whole self.

Went to Italy.

We are theoretically in the twilight of personal blogs and yet, according to my traffic numbers, my top ten most viewed posts all occurred in the Tetons, which indicates there is still an appetite at least among my friends for blogs about playing outside. Or it's just my mother reading trip reports over and over so she can gasp anew about all the dumb shit I do.

Moved cross-country.

I told my parents that, because I write professionally, the blog now feels like a chore, and writing in first person makes me feel like a tool. That's why my post numbers have dwindled. Seventy-three in 2009, twenty-one in 2014, eight in 2019. But it's also a good outlet for the stuff I definitely don't want to make available for mass consumption.

Thrived in Tahoe.

The biggest benefit in my job is that I've finally tapped into this boundless curiosity that I think I always had but wasn't using at all for a long time. I love doing the research and trying to wrap my head around new topics so I can reformulate them into accessible ideas for others to read about. I love gossiping with people who have power in the community after doing the work to prove I deserve their confidences. I love giving businesses an extra nudge with exposure. I love writing articles that parents want to cut out of the physical paper, even though sharing a link is so much easier.

Thriving in the Tetons.

I didn't mean for this post to be only about my job. I moved and grew and bought a house, one of my crowning accomplishments of the last five years in an economy that doesn't want young people to survive. I also got engaged. To be married. I keep forgetting to acknowledge that because of how unimportant the institution is to me. But I found this guy after over a decade of trying to figure out what I actually want in a relationship, and he is all of it.

Running is the best.

Owning a home is the best.

In 2009 I was finding joy, pushing myself on the trail, loving my friends, and casually wondering what was next. This decade I became a camper, a dog owner, a drinker, a lover, a journalist, a landlord. I established myself in new places without the baggage of old, decided I am actually sociable, can be kind, love asking people questions, enjoy making new friends. I realized as I've lost people dear to me how important family is, and began to understand just how near to the tree this particular apple has fallen. But my own trajectory does not fit within my thesis. I haven't changed significantly.

This one is the best.

The Pronouncement

I was in the kitchen in New Hampshire, probably a fifth grader in a baggy tee and long shorts and lopsided glasses, when I made the pronouncement to my grandmother that I would not be having children. She considered the statement and then told me that she had found that people who didn't have children tended to be selfish.

That nugget lodged itself in my brain, because I think highly of her opinion and I certainly didn't want to be a selfish adult. I still couldn't imagine forfeiting my body to a parasitic entity and also had pretty strong views on overpopulation and the plight of unwanted children, so I resolved to adopt.

Ten years passed, and in another conversation with another woman, in which I attempted to assert my aversion to pregnancy, I was told in a patronizing tone that that would change in time.

As I aged I began to encounter friends who had tried to wade through the bureaucracy and expense of adoption, without a single success story among them. My doubt grew. This country is adept at obstructing women from abridging their pregnancies but does not appear interested in easing the postnatal experience. 

But for a long time I was in a relationship, what I thought was The Relationship, with a person who did love kids and was happy to imagine his future as a father. I laid waste to that relationship eventually but still carried with me this strange assumption that I would eventually be expected to procreate or at least shop for spawn.

Somehow it was only last year when the idea crystallized, perhaps because I work in an office of mothers, all a little harried and a little resentful, that I do not have to have children.

The echo of selfishness still rattled around in my brain so I decided to address it head on and realized that some of the most involved, philanthropic, selfless people I know have chosen to do without progeny. They are the mentors, the electeds, the heroes of nonprofits, the ones with their fingers in many pots, while the parents, granted, are probably finding their own kind of fulfillment, albeit a little more home-focused.

The couples I know without kids lead lives I want to emulate. They have enough money to be comfortable, they can go on adventures, and they can devote themselves to volunteerism.

The parents I know seem to always describe their lives with a dependent "but" clause. "I love my kids more than anything in the world, but..."

Fortunately my partner is in complete agreement with me. I just recently made my pronouncement to a friend and she asked, "Well, how does he feel?" even though she would never have asked that if I had said I wanted a boy and a girl, three years apart. And then she asked who would care for me when I'm old and lonely, but there's no guarantee that you'll get any return on your life's worth of investment with children. That's not how our culture works.

Now that I have truly made my decision, few days pass without a rushing sense of relief. Whether it's worrying about screen time, climate change, pink eye, strep throat, or autism, or wondering if the LDS kids would try to convert her or ostracize her, or if he would use slurs to impress his friends, or if she would be raped by a boy she trusted, or if she would dart in front of a car, or if work would dry up and the twenty plus years of endless expense would engulf and ruin me, or if parenthood would kill a partnership or suck me dry of motivation or excitement, the thought passes through my brain and is then swept out by a deep sigh of contentment: I'm not having children.

Polishing a Turd: Adventures in Basement Renovation

My upstairs roommate moved out in April and the pleasure of not sharing our living space made us hyper aware of the empty rooms beneath our feet, 1200 square feet of potential income separate from my pleasant upstairs existence. That’s why we started working on the basement only a couple months after finishing the upstairs. The five-year plan turned into five months.

We laid out lines of gold spray paint on the floor to evoke walls, but I couldn’t see the shape of the final product through the detritus and weird layout. I could see, however, the potential for an airy open space, with big windows that let in a surprising amount of sunlight.

The upstairs renovation made us cocky and overconfident. A couple grand, a couple weekends of twelve-hour days should be sufficient.

Cy is really good at demolition and making piles and being ruthless, so that happened quickly—sketchy walls knocked down, fetid carpet torn up, rotting drywall hauled out.

The ancient oil furnace promptly broke, of course, in the first few days of basement tinkering. It had to be replaced before we started any meaningful construction, so there went another couple grand. Electric will be way cheaper than oil, and it’s hydroelectric here, so I guess sacrificing the health of waterways is better than burning dead dinosaurs.

The job grew in complexity. Cy laid out a day-by-day plan but each task on the list took double or triple the estimated time. Carve up a cast iron tub and an absurd old wood-fired range, carry the heavy pieces out, fix all the questionable wiring the previous owner had recklessly slapped together, and then framing, and then drywalling (oh god, drywalling) and taping and mudding and texturing, activities that no sane person with a disposable income would ever take on herself rather than hiring a drywaller, but the only thing we had was time and four hands. 

So there I was, trying to help lift grotesquely heavy, brittle sheetrock over my head, or freehand cut it into appropriately sized squares to patch holes, and Cy was carrying 80 sheets one by one down the narrow stairs.

Then we were zealously mudding the ugly holes left between untidy sheets. It wasn’t pretty, none of it, but the thing about sad drywall is that once a space is painted and filled with furniture and the walls have art on them and the deep windowsills are lush with potted succulents, it doesn’t really matter. It’s insulated and fire resistant and clean.

Then Cy went to work tiling the bathroom and installing ingenious metal siding in the shower. Metal was way cheaper than plastic shower lining; frugality was the top priority in this endeavor. We recycled drywall (terrible idea), bits of lumber, leftover particleboard, faux wood paneling, paint—it was amazing.

My boss, a notorious procrastinator, was renovating her kitchen and promised me for two months that I could have her old kitchen cabinets, but with a June 1 deadline bearing down on us and no sign that she was anywhere near coming through for me, we decided to build our own out of a thrift store desk and upper cabinets and more bits of old wood. We poured another batch of concrete countertops (much smoother this time around) and Cy wrestled with the plumbing (always the plumbing).

I hope it’s obvious from the staggering laundry list of renovations that Cy did everything and had all the skills. I was there merely as a willing accomplice and a cleaner. So much cleaning, sawdust and metal dust and drywall dust and concrete dust. I lived in dust.

After the final clean we painted the floors, leftover beige in the bedrooms and a rich gray-teal in the common areas. Suddenly it looked habitable, and then Cy trimmed it out with cedar fencing (cheap) and it smelled like California after a rainstorm.

We finished on a Wednesday morning and my friend (and tenant, whoa) Carolyn was moving belongings in by the evening. The basement is a quirky space without enough storage and the light switches are in weird places and there wasn’t enough dedicated electricity to install a full range and it’s really cold, but it’s also an enormous apartment with a ton of sunlight. And it’s mine.

Renovation Weather

I hadn’t looked for a house in a year and a half. Hunting came to a halt when Tyler and I found a great rental, a house I loved in a location I didn’t. And then we broke up and I lived in a series of cold cabins with dirty carpets. I hate cabins with carpets.

In November I went on a ride with my friend Lynne and afterwards she took me over to a house her neighbor was working on. Downtown, huge garage and accessory unit, beautiful woodwork, mature trees in the yard, sunlight. It was $300,000, but the owner could have asked more. Lynne said she wanted friends in her neighborhood. I talked to Debbie and as usual she shot it down, reminding me of how realistic numbers like that were. I acquiesced.

I did a casual browse of Zillow a couple days later and saw a disheveled little house in Driggs that was $100,000 less than the one I had looked at. The photos on the listing sucked: dingy carpet, trash and belongings left behind, and most of the images were of the basement construction zone. I sensed miles of potential. I showed Cy and my coworker Jill and they agreed.

It was such a gross house.

I called up one of the realtors posted on Zillow, although I later realized it wasn’t his listing. He told me I could look at it whenever. The three of us tramped around the house getting excited, imagining the passive income from a rental apartment in the basement.

For the first time, I showed Debbie a property and instead of saying hell no, she said…do it. So I did. I made an offer and was under contract within a week, terrified of what that entailed. Convincing the mortgage people that I deserved a fat loan took some doing and some parental assistance (a loan disguised as a gift), but my mortgage is now slightly less than rent was.

This winter has been pretty bullshit and it couldn’t have picked a better year to suck. Over the holidays I was happy devoting ten hours a day to my house instead of skiing and touring. I didn’t care that it rained, blustered, crusted up, and dumped snow then warmed to sludge, all while avalanche danger remained sky high. Throw in a medical emergency to keep things interesting and I had no desire to ski. I was busy pouring concrete countertops, prying up carpet tack strips (people who install carpets are monsters), putting in wood floors, painting every room, cleaning, always cleaning.

The big sunny living/dining space is my favorite part.

Cy was in charge and I just followed directions and we really figured out the meaning of sweat equity. It was amazing three weeks later to walk around the warm, sunny rooms and know I had just increased the house’s value by way more than I had put into renovations. All the credit goes to Cy for his incredible hard work, generosity, and complete investment in a property that isn’t his.

I haven't gotten enough exercise, I feel schlubby and lethargic, but I've realized that by buying a house I’m settling down for the long haul and maybe it’s okay that every season isn’t devoted to progression and the frantic hamster-wheeling of “getting after it.”

I’ve paid my first month of mortgage and my old rental got claimed so I’m finally off the hook for breaking my lease. And in the morning I walk to work and it takes eight minutes, too short even to listen to a podcast, just right for some quiet zoned-out thinking before I’m suddenly at the office. Huge quality of life boost.

Oh yeah, I have an enormous toy palace too.

A Year in Twelve Photos

This year has been markedly different as far as documentation goes. I used to have to trawl the web to find even a single pic from a bike race, or depend on friends to post on social media so I can steal the images. Now I have access to a Google Drive full of adventures and memories. Now I can do a year in review and I actually have to winnow down the choices because there are so many great options.

January

I don't have any pictures from this month, which was fairly shitty on the life scale. Here is Sophie looking regal.

February
This still hurts every day.

March
I was kind of dreading this yurt trip because my life was in self-induced turmoil. It turned out to be exactly what I needed.

April
The team's season goes from spring to fall. We had tons of kids, not enough coaches, and practiced three to seven hours every week for five months. And it was fantastic.

May

I went back to Tahoe to ski, bike, run, and visit my old haunts. What a wild 72 hours.

June
Almost every spring weekend was devoted to exploring the amazing mountains within a three-hour radius of the Tetons.

July
I felt like I didn't do many cool runs this year but there were a couple noteworthy ones, including finding a route from Darby to the Ghee.

August
We did a final sub-24 hour bikepacking trip in the Big Holes as a shakedown for ORATB. August was so dang hot. And dry. And smoky.

September
Ah, ORATB. Sometimes I remember that we did this. It was just the right blend of awesome and dumb.

October
And just like that, the season ended. Summer felt so short this year.

November
At least the skiing got pretty good pretty fast.

December

I'm buying a house. That doesn't feel real. This has been consuming my thoughts for two months now. More details when it actually happens.

News Brief

I am coping with the many papercuts of irritation at my job because I realized a couple months ago that if I went back to a job that didn't involve writing every day I would shrivel up and die. It feeds me and sustains me and sometimes I cover stories that buoy me like champagne bubbles through the bullshit of mismanagement.

Also, I'm about to buy a house so I'm definitely not job hunting right now.

She's not pretty but by god, she's (almost) mine.

Trecenti

Three hundred blog posts.

My first post, written over eight years ago, was really dumb.

This is how old I was when I started blogging.

It took me years to get a better handle on my tone.

When I started posting, everyone had a blog. Writing grammatically dubious race reports. Spewing inside jokes. Referring to friends by their dumb nicknames.

All those blogs are now mouldering in Blogspot limbo. You can still find them if you try. Most of them were last updated circa 2010.

This blog has been a casual project for so long. I never expected it to land me a job. The editor at the paper is a friend of mine, so he saw when I occasionally posted blog updates on Facebook. He knew I could write and even used my material once. When he asked for a couple quotes about the high school mountain bike team, I was casting around for a new pursuit. I asked, "Are you hiring?"

By some serendipity (or lots of turnover at the paper), he was looking for a reporter. I had no experience or education, so I scored the job merely by dint of knowing lots of people in Teton Valley, and by promising I could discard blogginess and replace it with AP Style.

I never wanted to be a journalist, but I've really enjoyed moments of it. I'm scared of interviews but I love it when people get on a roll, running off at the mouth about something they're really passionate about, and then apologizing that they've been inarticulate. Never apologize about that. Only apologize about being monosyllabic.

I love being edited, even though I sometimes take poorly to criticism. When the other reporter debates my grammar and syntax it raises my hackles, but talking through a piece with the editor is exciting and revelatory. He's great at taking something I've already given up on and shuffling my words around so that I no longer hate it. And I'm better at ruthlessly cutting out flab and passive voices and anguished phrases now. (But I can still do whatever I want in my blog, so there.)

I also think local journalism is more important than I, as someone who never used to pay attention to news, ever realized. It's about cutesy stories and repetitive event previews, but it's also about holding local politicians accountable. Informing people of decisions that were made at meetings they couldn't attend because their kid had hockey practice. Attempting to present all sides of an argument in an atmosphere that has turned so vindictive and polarizing.

My trajectory towards adulty mileposts like marriage was recently interrupted, but working at the paper is a huge step towards doing what I Want To Do When I Grow Up. And that happened because I started a blog. Because all the bike racers were doing it. Life is funny.

Resolve

I did a tour in GTNP a couple days ago, this tour but with a less complicated descent.

The conditions were identical: deep, light snow, single digit temps, no wind, cloudy skies.

Skinning across Taggart Lake...I love GTNP
Pic courtesy of Cy

The journey was completely different. Three years ago, I was still really new to skiing. I did fine on the uphill but the downhill was painful. I slowed down the group, I wasn’t a competent skier, and it was irresponsible for me to be out there. I think we all have to go through these deep end experiences and hopefully are able to learn from them rather than dying from them.

Now, in my fifth season of skiing and touring, I’m a different person. I’m probably more conservative than I was then, because I don’t let other people make decisions for me. I can make my own observations, do my own research, and navigate somewhat adequately. I often don’t get it right but every time is a learning experience, and I’m never a passive follower going in over my head without any knowledge. I can’t handle emergencies yet but I have the everyday systems dialed, and I’m a pretty good skier. Not pretty, and not good, but pretty good.

I like the word resolve more than the word resolution. Resolution is fluffy and aspirational; resolve is iron-spined.

 I set little goals every year. I don’t always remember them, but mostly I follow through. At the dawn of 2012, I vowed to shake up my life. In 2013, I wanted to say yes to everything. I remember talking to my dad on the phone early last January and saying that I wanted to write more. I was scared to say it out loud because then I was accountable.

My 2016 goal came true in a more definitive fashion than I could ever have predicted.

What do I resolve to do this year? Have more adventures, probably. Keep learning. Maybe get outside my comfort zone. Maintain my obsessive quest for novel experiences. I did a lot of that last year but I don’t want to lose momentum.

And now it’s in writing, so I guess I'd better do it.