The Hope Jolt

Do you remember when you were a child, and your birthday was coming up, and you'd think ahead to your birthday party or a present you hoped to get, and you'd feel a shot of excitement and anticipation? Maybe you, like me, got that feeling as Christmas approached, or on the occasions when I knew I was going see my cousins. Let's call that feeling the Hope Jolt. As we get older the Hope Jolt gets dulled. We still get excited about things, but if we're excited about, say, a trip to the lake, our excitement is tempered by the packing we need to do, our time away from work, the stress of travel.

Lately, however, I've felt the Hope Jolt, but here's the thing: it doesn't appear to be connected to any specific event. I'll have these moments when I feel a rush of promise, when the world suddenly seems to make sense--even just for a second, and when I can see around the edges of the mundane to something great. Spectacular, even. But it's nothing that I can name specifically. It's just a feeling a get sometimes.

My life consists of a fair amount of work, some fun, and a lot of everyday stuff: laundry, cooking meals, cleaning up. It's weird to be folding clothes and then all of a sudden feel the universe click into place around you, and then have the feeling disappear again just as quickly. I have a theory, though, a reason for why this seems to be happening more recently. The truth is, I can't know what life has in store for me. Triumphant or tragic, I just have no idea what's coming up. I can make plans, and I can work and do everything in my power to make things happen, but the fact remains that unforeseen situations will arise to change my plans. Perhaps the Hope Jolt is a signal from somewhere--maybe it's just from inside of me--reminding me that the future will change my plans, but that it may change them for the better.

A friend once told me, if we got the things we wanted in just the way we imagined, how boring that would be for us! The Hope Jolt is the promise that sometimes--not all the time, but every once in a while--something incredibly good and unforeseen will make things turn out even better than we could have imagined. Or maybe we'll just end up following a path we didn't really expect to follow, but in the end, the path leads to greater success, more love, more friendship, or financial security, who knows?

We've all heard stories of the unexpected ruining plans: the jury duty summons that canceled the vacation, the car repairs that drained the Christmas money, the broken arm that spoiled the summer, the lay-off that put just about everything in jeopardy. We hardly ever recognize the times that the unexpected actually helped us along, partially because those unexpected benefits often start out as those very same disappointments. We don't know until much, much later that the lay-off prompted the move to a better job, or that the guy sitting next to you in the emergency room the day you broke you arm will actually introduce you to the person who will help you get that dream project off the ground.

The truth is, seeing the links between disappointments and future successes is difficult. And seeing the true nature of an unexpected situation is nearly impossible. The Hope Jolt is just a reminder that good things do happen. Sometimes it's the obvious lottery win, and sometimes it's much more subtle. So feel excited every now and then. Feel like your birthday is coming up because there is greatness afoot. You just might not know it yet. 

DecaAwesome Returns

Just in time for Halloween, the DecaAwesome list rises from the dead!! It's not exactly the Zombie DecaAwesome list, but that's a good idea for a themed list later in the month. This is a list of things I just plain like. It's been a stressful month so I think it's a good idea to remember some of the simple joys in life. Also, I watched Amelie last night and I always feel so inspired and whimsical when I watch that movie. Damn you and your irrepressible charm, Audrey Tatou!!

1. Reading a magazine backwards. Sure, I start out by reading it front to back, but soon I turn to the back cover and page through it backwards. I still read articles in order of course, but the paging is done back-to-front. I don't know why I do it, but it makes me happy, so there.

2. Being finished with grading. I love seeing that stack of newly graded papers, each one marked up and ready to be returned to its owner. I spent hours earlier today grading a midterm and I can't explain that wash of joy when the last paper was graded and out of my hands. Accomplishment!

3. The Daily Show. I get a lot of news from the Daily Show, I'm not ashamed to admit. TDS makes me laugh and throws down some facts. Also, Jon Stewart's comic rage is pure genius. This week, TDS is on a break. *sigh*

4. Reading a book that goes down easy. Sure, Proust is worth the effort, and Dostoevsky will break your head while it's breaking your heart, but it's nice every once in a while to read something that doesn't, you know, challenge so much. A book that you eat up like a plate of cookies. I'm reading a book like that right now, and I'm enjoying it very much. Proust is in the on-deck circle.

5. Chocolate. True chocolate lovers will call me a poseur since I don't like dark chocolate, but those people can jump in the lake. I bought myself a Cadbury Caramello on Saturday and I've spent the last few nights eating pure chocolate-caramel joy, three squares at a time. YUM.

6. Trader Joe's. It's not my normal grocery store since I have to drive a ways to get to a decent one, but last night I decided it was time to go and get those products exclusive to Trader Joe's. I won't bore you with a list-within-a-list of what was purchased, but I will tell you that after my roomie and I returned from TJ's, he made a kick-ass salmon dinner that was paired beautifully with a $7 Riesling. Ah, TJ's.

7. Binder clips. It's wrong how into office supplies I am, but there we are. Staples now has this paper clip station wherein you can fill a tub (small, medium, or large) with binder clips, paper clips, fasteners, and the like. I filled a medium tub with whimsical and practical clips (some are shaped like G clefs!) for school. The clip I most often use is the red one with the "X" on it. I put my to-be-graded papers in it. When they're graded, the papers get transferred to the green binder clip with the check mark on in. That's how you know they're done!

8. Glade Scented Oil Candles. They come in a pretty tin, which, is pretty much all I need; I love tins. Anyhoo, you burn these little candles and they smell wonderful without being too strong or cloying. The tin is reusable, and you can get refills for the candles. My recommended scent: Clean Linen. Pretty much says it all. You get the smell of laundry without actually having to do any. WIN!

9. Half.com. I just bought some DVDs I've been putting off buying because they were never going on sale. You can get things both new and used, and it's part of eBay so you know you can trust it. I now own all of Samurai Jack, and season 4 of Supernatural. Take that, Target, for not putting it on sale. Now some independent seller in Minnesota gets my money and you get the shaft! (I'm just kidding, Target. We cool.)

10. Fall weather. The weather over here is a little bipolar at the moment, but that's okay. We have experienced beautiful fall weather intermittently. I'm no fan of winter, and I know that's what fall leads into, but it is such a wonderful thing to walk around in the crisp autumn air, wearing a sweater or a jacket. Fall means crunching leaves when you walk, watching TV at night with a blanket tucked around your feet, buying fresh apple cider at the supermarket, deciding on a Halloween costume, roasting pumpkin seeds, and making holiday plans. It's lovely.

Confessions of a Quidditch Player

I never played organized sports as a kid. Not really. I suppose you could count gym class and some catch and stickball with my Dad and sister, but that's about as far as it went. I have one trophy from my first eighteen years and it's for choir. Yeah, I'm that girl. I played intramural soccer and volleyball in high school, but that was more of a joke than anything. Sometime during college, I got it into my head that I was going to play on the softball team, but one introductory meeting later I realized I couldn't make the time commitment. After college I studied martial arts, but team sports were still definitely missing from my resume.

Last weekend I saw Whip It, the roller derby movie starring Ellen Page. It's a fun movie, perhaps a bit long and formulaic at points, but still a rollicking good time. It made me want to join a roller derby team, and I was heartened by the portrayal of players who were still rolling at my age. I probably won't join a team since I work so damn much (and if I find something else to take me away from writing, my head might explode). But still, that sense of camaraderie and girl power and ass-kicking fun is so tempting. Driving home from the movie, it occurred to me that I had participated in some similar ass-kicking fun.

I've played Quidditch.

Readers of the Harry Potter series and viewers of the movie will at present protest that Quidditch is a magical sport, impossible for Muggles, impossible without brooms, enchanted bludgers, and the golden snitch. Magical Quidditch is indeed impossible, but Muggles have come up with ways to play it (yes, there are multiple versions) and I have had the honor to play four times. Each time I played it was while attending a Harry Potter convention. The first was in Orlando about six or seven years ago when we were still working out how to play Quidditch. We played inside the hotel in a ballroom. On this occasion, I didn't play on a team, per se; I was a snitch-carrier. Since our snitches didn't fly, we had to run with them while the seekers chased us. There were a few snitch carriers and we carried either decoy snitches or the real deal.

A few years later, I played Water Quidditch at the Harry Potter convention in Las Vegas. My team was The Giant Squids (we called ourselves the "Squiddies") and we played and practiced in the gorgeous pool at the hotel. I was a beater on this team, but I substituted as a keeper for one of our games. I liked Water Quidditch a lot, but my favorite kind of Quidditch is Mud Quidditch.

It was October of 2005, in Salem, Massachusetts. The Saturday of the Quidditch tournament dawned gray and chilly. All of the teams in the tournament met at the House of the Seven Gables for a special breakfast. My team: the Punctuation Pixies. Our logo features a tough-as-nails pixie giving y'all the finger (the British version). We had met the previous day in person for practice and strategizing, but we'd all met months ahead of time on the interwebs. All of us are writers and/or artists so the physical part of the game was not our strong suit. Where we owned was in the attitude.

For some reason, the Pixies had a reputation as a badass team right off the bat, even though all of our people were nerds and dorks. We probably had one real athlete on the team, but there we were, with a huge cheering section. Our fans screamed the loudest and threw glitter on us as we took the field. We chanted "Mud and Blood" to get psyched up before our matches, and when people took our picture we gave 'em the finger (the British version). The rain that came down even before we started the tournament couldn't dampen our amazing pixie-ness. Or maybe it was just the sugar; we chugged pixie sticks throughout the game. We played our little dork hearts out. We played in the mud as hard as we could. Did we score? Not a single point. Not once. In either of our games. But we were ebullient anyway. After our final defeat, we dove headfirst into the mud on the pitch and rolled around, laughing and screaming and having an awesome time.

The Fizzing Whizbees ended up winning the Quidditch Cup that day, but guess which team made the front page of the Oracle (the daily paper for the convention) under the headline "MUD AND BLOOD!!" That's right, the Punctuation Pixies scored the place of honor. In addition to that, on the way from the park back to the convention (the tournament was played in a public park nearby) people began stopping us--for our autographs. Yes, the losingest, muddiest team in the tournament signed so many autographs on the way back to the hotel that the mud on our bodies hardened into a cement-like substance. Not only that, but NPR interviewed us as did some local television show. At the leaving breakfast at the end of the convention, the Fizzing Whizbees got the Quidditch Cup, but the Pixies got the most applause.

Two years after that I had the opportunity to play for the Pixies again in New Orleans. We played in a park on the banks of the Mississippi. We lost again, but once again, we didn't care because it was ass-kicking fun.
This is a frame-grab of me playing Quidditch in New Orleans. This was the moment after I made my only save of the day. It's from a video that MTV News shot (I still can't believe they managed to film my only athletic move ever). It's still up on the web, and this is the thumbnail that advertises the story. I think that's pretty cool.

Thousands, probably millions, of kids have played soccer and little league. My team sport? Quidditch. How many people can say that?

...And Together We'll Be Fine

It is indeed a blessing that there are different personalities in the world and that there are people who like and excel at different kinds of things. I just spent the last six working days in jury duty, and during that time I watched lawyers and judges hustling through downtown with their file folders. Suits and shiny ties on the men, suits and painfully high heels for the women. I watched these folks going through their day-to-day jobs and I thought to myself, 'If I had to do this every day, I'd end it all.' It's not the suits so much, I wear them myself sometimes (although I prefer jeans and I refuse to wear heels unless it's a really special occasion). It's not the research that bothers me either. I love research. And libraries. No, it's the rest of the job. I don't have the stomach to argue every day. When I talk to groups of people the only thing I want hanging in the balance is knowledge, not someone's fate. I also lack the command of logic that I think might be necessary for lawyering. I assume it's necessary since that's what the LSAT tests. I'm decidedly illogical and often silly. I'm just glad those lawyers and judges do their jobs, and perhaps love doing their jobs, because lawyering and judging are not the jobs for me.

Likewise, I don't think I could work in an office 9-5 every day. I worked in an office all through college and afterwards. A few summers ago I temped for an agency that sent me out as an executive assistant for bigwigs in television production. I hated it. I hated making copies and setting up meetings. I hated rolling calls. I hated being told what to do all the time. I hated being "on-call" for someone else. It's not an existence I am comfortable with. But there are people who excel at such things, who pride themselves on their organization, their ability to predict what will need to be done, who thrive on the pressure to get things done right now. And I salute those people, because I am not one of them.

The job I feel most comfortable in is teaching. Unlike the office jobs that seemed a bit unreal to me at the time--why am I doing this? who is this helping? I never see or meet anyone affected by my work--teaching always seems so real to me. It's happening right now. It's alive and unpredictable. Teaching means interacting with people. In some ways, it's performing. I suppose that's one reason why people might not want to have my job. It requires public speaking, the ability to ad-lib and think on your feet. Patience is not a requirement, but it sure does help. I love doing it because the gratification is almost instant, and the payoffs are huge.

When jury duty was finally over yesterday, I sighed with relief. I didn't have to return to the courthouse again. I could get back to my life and back to the job that I am supposed to have. It was good to see how other people live, though. Good to see bailiffs, judges, attorneys, clerks, court reporters, and police officers all doing their jobs. Even though I'm not at the courthouse today, it's business as usual over there. Juries are being selected, the unwieldy vehicle that is the American justice system rolls on. But I'm here and I don't miss being there.

Besides, they'll call me back for a visit soon enough.