The Undercover Introvert

The Art of Sheltering in Place

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So, you’ve decided to shelter in place.

Looking over your massive checklist, you feel pretty damned good about your progress thus far: you’ve boarded up your windows, fully stocked your pantry with a variety of unhealthy snacks and wine, filled up your car, polished off the remaining tubs of ice cream in your freezer (you know, in case of power outages), and put together a workable plan B for evacuation if the situation takes a sudden turn for the worse.

Now you wait.

And wait.

And wait.

The distance between when the hurricane first shows up as an indistinct circular blob far out in the Atlantic and when it finally rakes across the boarded up expanse of your coastal community can be upwards of ten days. In that prolonged period of frenzied activity followed by anxiety laced nothingness, you’ve had time to watch your friends go batshit on social media as they publicly decide whether to stay or go, posting a nonstop flood of pictures depicting destruction and terror from past storms that manages to seriously harsh your mellow. You’ve fielded panicked texts, calls, and emails from out of state friends and relatives who are freaking out on your behalf as you take time away from conducting precious hurricane prep in order to soothe them. You’ve bought eighty dollars worth of the unhealthiest garbage you could find, along with several bottles or cans of your alcohol of choice. You’ve returned to the store to replenish that first round of snacks and booze because, after a few days of the storm barely moving at all, you shoveled everything you could find in the cupboards and fridge into your mouth, despite your solemn pledge not to gain ten pounds during this hurricane. You’ve watched too many hours of the Weather Channel, gasping when you see correspondents broadcasting from your nearby sleepy little expanse of beach (looking at you, Jim Cantore).

But, mostly, you’ve just been waiting, because work, school, and all your social activities have been canceled, leaving you plenty of time to imagine the worst (days without power and air conditioning in the sweltering heat), scarf down round two of your snacks (the store’s still open, anyway), and pull up Expedia.com long enough to check out a few hotels further inland before scoffing cavalierly and refusing to be dislodged from your own home (also, what clothes would you bring? You’ve already gained five pounds).

The wait is mind-numbingly boring and yet also weighty with fear of the unknown storm, which is currently spinning hundreds of miles southeast of your location. What you need is something to take your mind off of this.

Don’t you have some work you could be doing in the meantime? Oh, you’ve already done it.

Hurricane prep? Done and done days ago.

Perhaps you could visit a non-evacuated friend and commiserate over shared snacks? Well, your car is already barricaded in the garage, which is locked from the inside and lined with sandbags on the outside. Moving all that seems like way too much work.

Well, maybe you can dig into some of those round three snacks then. Technically, you’re under Hurricane Warning, which means all snacks are fair game.

The calm isn’t terrible, come to think of it. Neither is the way all your professional and social responsibilities have momentarily fallen away, leaving you oddly free, besides being trapped in the shuttered fortress of your home. And isn’t it kind of nice hearing from all the people you knew from school and all of your former coworkers who live out of state? You know, the people you never talk to in real life, just via Facebook whenever one of you posts a cute picture of your pets.

But now you’ve ventured into day seven of persistent hurricane watch, and your patience is tattering at the edges, as though it’s already weathered the howling winds and pouring rain of the incoming Category 4 (or 3? Or 2?) storm.

Can it come already? Even if it means losing power? Because you can’t do anything until it does. This phase of the game is better known as hurricane paralysis. You can watch and stuff your face, but you can’t carry on with life until the storm either puts you through the ringer or passes you by.

So you continue sheltering in place. You check in with friends. Have they evacuated? Are they staying put? Have they heard some precious tidbit about the coming storm that you somehow missed despite your white-knuckled cable news vigilance?

No one knows anything.

No one is doing anything.

Everyone is on edge, bored to tears, and eating themselves out of house and home.

Fortunately, thanks to an endless stream of updates and satellite images, you’re basically an amateur meteorologist at this point and fully capable of projecting where the hurricane (still seemingly weeks away from where you sit in front of your television, double-fisting Doritos and jarred cheese dip) will make landfall. You estimate the probability of your county falling outside of the Cone of Uncertainty with near scientific indubitability, despite your past shaky performances in high school and college level math and science courses.

This is your life now. You might as well embrace it.

Sartre once said that hell is other people. But maybe it’s actually hurricane paralysis.

In the meantime, thank god for snacks and air conditioning. Long may they last.

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Don’t Forget to Tip the Writer

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I make things up. That’s the definition of what a writer does. Some things spring from my head out of nowhere, fully formed. Some things come more slowly, coaxed with hours of careful research and focused thought. I move words around the inside of my skull all the time — when I’m reading, showering, running, driving, staring oddly into space while other people are talking. I look at a blank sheet of paper and put down all the lovely, helter skelter chunks of sentences and bits of half-formed imagery, adjusting, editing, deleting until I have something that rings true to my own sharply critical ears. And then I edit again. At that point, it’s ready for public consumption.

There’s a funny thing about writing, though. Because it’s literally described as ‘making things up’, folks seem to think that my words, as well as the time I spend crafting them, aren’t worth very much at all, if anything. On more occasions than I can count, I’ve had people request hundreds of words worth of content at no cost because, as they casually comment, it will only take me a few minutes.

While it’s true that I can often knock out a thousand words or more in under an hour, that ability didn’t arise from the same nothingness in which I find most of the sentences I cobble together. I’m a damned good writer and I enjoy doing it, but I’ve been writing daily since I was in middle school, penning short shorties, articles, essays, and novel length projects, grinding out words that were subpar as well as spectacular. I’ve devoured the work of other authors for decades as I honed my own particular voice — anyone who wants to write but doesn’t read like they need books to live should not be taken seriously, IMHO. I’ve worked for well over twenty five years to get where I am right now, and I’m still working.

I write, I rewrite, I make things up, ad infinitum.

I started with all that so I could say this: creative work product has inherent value. Full stop. Digest it. And here it is again for those in the back who might have missed it:

CREATIVE WORK PRODUCT HAS INHERENT VALUE.

Now that we’ve established that, let’s establish this: if you want someone to write content for you, or take pictures, or paint a picture because you recognize their talent, then you should fucking pay them. And if you reference something they wrote, or use a picture they took, then you should fucking give credit where credit is due. Plagiarism isn’t just a no-no for high school and college students. Another word for it is theft. Just. Don’t. Do. It.

Think of what you do for work. Would it be appropriate for me to ask you to perform that task for me pro bono because you are good at your occupation? Or because it would take you much less time to perform said task than it would take me? For some reason, writers and other creative individuals are routinely expected to perform on demand and without pay. And when we rightly request payment, we face short and snarky responses like:

But isn’t writing easy for you?

I thought you liked writing.

Can’t you just throw together a quick paragraph for me? How hard is that?

This is all shit I’ve heard over the years (including this year), y’all. And, it’s true: most of the time, writing is easy for me. I also happen to fucking love it. There’s nothing more magical than having a tiny spark of an idea, sitting down, putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), and whipping that flame into an inferno of ideas, with my words as the kindling. I live for it and always have. But that doesn’t mean my words are worthless things that I should give away to you for free. If you want them specially crafted and on demand, then pay for them.

There’s another fun thing that happens to creative individuals when folks find out what they do best: people request other related services, also for free.

Can you teach me how to write? (NEVER doing this again because no good deed ever goes unpunished).

Would you mind looking over this doc and giving it a quick edit? (‘Quick edit’ always translates to complete rewrite, as well as research to fix gaping holes in the document; I’ve had a ‘quick edit’ end a friendship before, y’all, no joke).

Do you want to coauthor something with me?! (From the grammatical and spelling errors in this person’s various social media accounts, it’s best to back away from this in a goddamned hurry. Don’t just walk, run).

I don’t want to teach you how to write. I don’t want to edit your term paper, short story, or novel length project. I don’t want to collaborate with you on a project if we don’t have an existing relationship that involves a mutual respect for each other’s writing. Even then, I have to be intimately acquainted with your process and commitment to the craft.

I know not everyone can write, but just because I can ‘throw a paragraph together’ rather quickly doesn’t mean I should do it without being paid. I’ve watched mechanics change my oil before and it only takes about 20 minutes. I still pay for the service, because that’s how that person makes a living, and I’m paying for the mechanic’s skill as much as I’m paying for his or her time. It’s really that simple.

So, the next time you approach an acquaintance or stranger who writes, paints, takes pictures, plays music, etc. for a living, understand that what they do has value and takes skill. If it didn’t, you could do it yourself. The fact that you can’t proves my original point. Pay people. Credit work when you make use of it. Be a decent human being. We’re all trying to make a living over here…

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Good Riddance: On the Death of 2018

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As the end of another year looms, I feel the familiar urge to reflect. You know, for the sake of auld lang syne. If, as the worn cliche states, life is a journey, this year was the part of said journey in which I veered from the road less traveled and into the actual wilderness. Here I am, bedraggled, checking the sky for familiar stars by which to orient myself, stumbling through the underbrush, thorns tearing at my clothing, smeared with dried blood and dirt. But I’m still pushing forward, powering toward 2019 as I contemplate the death of the old year and the impending birth of the new.

As always, approaching the precipice of a new year triggers deep reflection of the year that’s passing. This, in turn, triggers the desire to share what I learned, my struggles, and hopes for the days and months to come…

You can’t win them all.

I spent the year working on political campaigns, toiling for 80+ hours a week to get folks elected that I truly believed could change my state and country for the better. These were people for whom I was willing to bleed, sweat, and cry. After the fire that was this election cycle went out and the ashes settled weeks past election day, it turned out that there was more losing than winning, and some of those losses were crushing. I understand that this isn’t the type of work you do for a short while, that it takes a lifetime to create the lasting change you want to see in the world, but the losses still land like a sucker punch to the gut. After you recover your breathing, however, there isn’t much to do besides learn from what went wrong, celebrate what went right, and get on with the next initiative.

When all else fails, read.

I’ve been an avid reader from early elementary school, and, as I grew into adulthood, it was normal for me to read 75+ books per year, devouring them as soon as I could get my hands on them. There isn’t much I value above a well formed collection of words, and I’ve fallen into many a book that has left me breathless with the author’s fantastic prose. Even less earth shattering books will do, provided they can hold my interest.

In 2017, however, I found myself so nerve-shatteringly busy that I only read 2 books all year. I haven’t read so little for pleasure since I learned how to read. I was ashamed, dismayed, and determined not to repeat the mistake in 2018. I knew I’d be busy, so I set a modest goal of 30 books. I’m happy to report that I surpassed that goal by 7 books (working on number 38 right now). Next year, I’m shooting higher, and I plan to make reading a little every day (and not just articles about how the country is on fire) a priority. Reading calms the chaos in my head. I need it to live well. That’s something I had to relearn this year.

Not everyone on your side is a friend.

Democrats, y’all know how we are. We may be a big tent party, but say the wrong thing around the wrong group of Dems and you’ll be knocked out of that tent and onto your ass.

My home state happens to be one that had a very contentious gubernatorial primary, and, more broadly, many Dem incumbents were challenged in their districts by so-called ‘more progressive’ candidates. So, that created a perfect shit storm of division, hate filled rhetoric, grandstanding, prolonged character assassinations, and higher than thou pronouncements. Once the primaries ended, we were all supposed to go along to get along, and I think many of us did, but it damned sure wasn’t comfortable — like jamming your feet into a pair of shoes a size and a half too small. The constant sniping, back biting, and tearing down of other Democratic candidates created an environment similar to 2016. It would be a massive understatement to say that this was an extremely frustrating and exhausting experience.

I don’t know how we successfully move forward as a party, but I’m willing to commit myself to doing whatever it takes. However, I have come to understand that just because we are all Democrats doesn’t mean you give a shit about what would make life more equitable for black folks, for women, and for other marginalized groups. It’s depressing, but real. But the work must continue, even if the conditions make it difficult to stay positive and productive. That’s what happy hour is for, amirite?

Buy into selfcare or perish.

Selfcare isn’t some new age bullshit that can be written off with the roll of your eyes. I say that because I used to think of the concept in those terms. Being busier than I ever dreamed possible has quickly disabused me of those tired, narrow minded notions. There were many days that I woke up brittle and weary after a decent night’s sleep, simply because the exhaustion was all consuming and had settled into my very bones. To combat this, I created pockets of spaces that I used like temporary sanctuaries — dinner with friends, a movie with my folks, the quiet commute to the office or an event while I listened to an audio book in peace — and, next year, I plan to further carve out these pockets, to expand them into spaces large enough for me to fully occupy, if only for a short while. We need these spaces in order to go on being productive. And being an introvert only amplifies this need. This is yet another lesson I’ve learned the hard way this year.

You can figure most things out along the way.

How does a person go from never working on a political campaign to working on three in quick succession, the titles getting better and more responsibility-laden as she moves along? Well, there is a whole hell of a lot you can learn to do if only you’re willing to introduce nose to grindstone, set fire to your personal life (for a few months at a time), and jump all the way in, caution be absolutely damned. This is literally what I did this year, and, inexplicably, I found myself holding my own as I worked closely with people who have been doing this kind of work for years. I spent 2018 soaking up everything of value, pinpointing things that weren’t working, and then improving upon them. I believe a fresh set of eyes combined with the willingness to work 7 days a week for months on end created the space for me to grow much more rapidly than I ever believed possible. It also helped me move beyond the obstacle of my own doubt, and it’s a beautiful thing to see that stumbling block in the rearview instead of perpetually up ahead. Now I’m in this shit, and I have so many ideas for how to make things even better. More on that in 2019…

A sense of humor is vital.

In my family, you can’t hang unless you can crank up the sarcasm and crack jokes just about every 30 seconds. My sense of humor is very particular, and it’s not for everyone (their loss). So, I know I’ve found the right people when they get my sense of humor and, even better, counter it with their own. This year, I was fortunate enough to work with all kinds of funny, interesting, intelligent, irreverent people. Working fifteen hour days isn’t so bad if you’re laughing and trading jokes all day. I want more of that next year, and every year.

Changing the world is possible.

This is the best lesson learned over the last couple years, but this year I actually got to flex my skills and put them to focused use. Change is possible, and I can be part of what ushers it into existence. It might mean working for the rest of my life, but I’m okay with that. It beats the complacent alternative. I’ve had too many years of inactivity already. For me, the hustle will continue until the day hustling becomes impossible.

I’m not sad to see 2018 go (it’s last call, after all), and I value the lessons learned this year, including the losses, because there is more to learn in losing than in winning. I truly believe that. I want to slough off all the frustration that has built up over the last 12 months and enter 2019 with renewed spirit and fresh perspective. There’s so much work to be done, and I can’t wait to get started. Onward.

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Thanking John Lewis

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Yesterday, I met Congressman John Lewis. I shook his hand, spoke with him, and posed for a few pictures. I listened as he told a group of students about his life growing up in rural Alabama, about his father who was a sharecropper, about the way he always questioned segregation, though his mother warned him to stay out of trouble and stop asking questions.

We’re all fortunate that he never stopped asking questions. That the innate sense of injustice he felt as a boy drove him to act as a young man. We still have a long way to go in this country, but people who look like me wouldn’t be as far along as we are without people like John Lewis. People willing to risk their lives for a movement from which they might never benefit.

My origin story — how I got involved in political organizing and campaigns — pales in comparison to his. Rep. Lewis held the entire room in thrall as he told us that meeting Rosa Parks at 17 and Martin Luther King, Jr. at 18 is what turned him into an activist.

He talked about marching in Selma and barely making it out alive.

He talked about the importance of voting, how it was life and death in those days.

It’s still life and death, but it’s not as visceral and immediate, so folks seem to have forgotten. Rep. Lewis urged everyone to vote, to do their small part to save our democracy. It’s precious, that vote. A flame we have to hold in cupped hands as the winds lash around us. Because that flame can go out.

As I listened to this powerhouse of the Civil Rights Movement, I thought about how annoyed I am whenever someone tells me they don’t plan to vote, or they ran out of time, or they aren’t even registered and don’t care. It infuriates me, but I can’t even imagine how frustrating it must be for someone like John Lewis. I never rode into the segregated south to make sure people had the rights I take for granted every day. I have never been beaten on my way to the polls. As flawed as race relations in America still are to this day, I have never feared for my life when exercising my right to vote. That is a gift. And people like John Lewis are the ones who bestowed it upon every person of color in this country. But gifts can be taken away.

One woman asked what made Rep. Lewis decide to run for office. His eloquent response was immediate, and it brought tears to my eyes. Recounting it here would not do it justice, but as my activism is a mere echo of the fire of John Lewis’s activism, so too can my words be a distant echo of the ones he spoke not even 24 hours ago.

He said that he watched as John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And then he lost his friend, Martin Luther King, Jr. He was with Robert Kennedy when he heard the news. They were friends too, and they mourned together. And then, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated as well. He said that of the 10 speakers at the March on Washington, where MLK gave his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, he was the youngest, and he is the only one still alive today. That loss of life, the threat to the movement, is what compelled him to run, to serve, to keep pushing for what was right. He urged us to heal the division in this country, and quoted his friend:

‘ We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools’.

And, oh, what fools we’ve been. Not bothering to vote. Watching as a group of motivated members of one political party make all the rules for the rest of us. Allowing hyper partisan politics to divide us into even smaller, less effective groups.

I’ve always voted, but I haven’t always been involved. That laziness, that distinctly American acquiescence, stopped on November 9th, 2016. John Lewis’s activism started in his youth, when he questioned segregation, and those burning questions led him to action. I had questions too as very young woman, but there was no spark, no inferno, until I feared the prospect of losing the rights Rep. Lewis’s generation fought so hard to secure.

History is a wheel. The same things happen again and again, and only the players are different. We stumble into the same mistakes because we don’t listen to those who came before us, those who saw the impending darkness of tyranny or lived the reality of brutal racism firsthand. I’ve tried to listen well in the last two years, but it’s so hard to know, in the moment, if you are helping the cause or hurting it. And it’s a cushy kind of activism when you never have to worry about losing your life. Does that make it less worthwhile? Or is that another thing for which to thank activists like John Lewis? Even in the semi-enlightened age of 2018, not everyone my color can protest without swift, sometimes violent repercussions. But many of us can. And that is a gift too.

Before he left for the airport, I thanked John Lewis for everything. He smiled and thanked me. I’m sure he hears so much of what I said from the thousands of people he meets every year. But I meant every unoriginal word. So much of what I have, so much of what I take for granted, was only available to me because of the sacrifices he and many others made. The ones who risked their lives and safety. The ones who did not make it to the promised land.

I wish I could have found a way to say all of this to him, and to promise that there are so many of us trying hard to continue the work that he started at 18. But words failed, and I could only say thank you.

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Depression: Let’s Call the Beast by its Name

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I’m not a happy person.

Don’t get me wrong, I can be happy, but the feeling tends to wane more than it waxes. As long as I’m not actively unhappy, I count the day as a win. But there are days that definitely aren’t winners. There are days when it’s hard to find a reason to get out of bed.

As an introvert, I have a rich inner life that doesn’t often mirror the outer one. Before the craziness that was the late fall of 2016, my outer life was whisper quiet. In contrast, my inner life is akin to ordered chaos. And while chaos lends itself to fantastic bursts of creativity, it is also exhausting emotionally and physically.

But here’s the kicker: you would never guess it.

From the outside, I appear to be mild mannered Clark Kent. But, on the inside, I am leaping tall buildings in a single bound and screaming at the top of my lungs.

For me, adulthood has been a mostly bleak landscape interspersed with the occasional soaring peak of exquisite joy. And while I cherish those joyful times immensely, I also wonder why they are so few and far between. I came to the conclusion many years ago that adults aren’t meant to be happy. That we expect otherwise is a childish misconception born of the fairy tales we were force fed as children, complete with smarmy soulmates and happily ever afters. Real life is different, longer, and packed full of humdrum, yawn inducing moments that can still, oddly, be fraught with anxiety.

So, I set a low bar, and settle on the goal of contentment, which I label the absence of active unhappiness. This mostly tolerable state isn’t created out of thin air. I set the conditions in which I can stand to sit comfortably inside of my own head, that loud, tumultuous place where dread so often seeps in through the cracks and crevasses. Contentment is less a state of being and more a destination, reached through hard work and constant diligence.

Exercise helps a great deal. The longer I run, the better I feel, because that anxiety washes away on a river of sweat. But I can easily overdo it if I’m not careful.

Spending time with a handful of the right people can also bolster my weather beaten spirits. But if you add too many people, my spirits tatter at the edges even more rapidly, and I unravel.

Food helps too, momentarily. And why wouldn’t it? Food is delicious.

There are times when I stop short and think:

I am happy, right now, in this moment.

And the feeling disappears like smoke in the wind.

But the residue remains, and I cleave to it on mornings when I can’t find another reason to peel myself from the mattress and face another day. Because there will be more such moments, if only I soldier on. Right?

Why am I even bothering to say all this? Because we should name the beast whenever we see it. Whenever we feel it. Whenever it starts to creep over us, spreading sticky black anxiety…

Depression.

The more we speak its name, the more we know it. This might not loosen its hold, but there’s relief in the telling, isn’t there? And, sometimes, that’s all there is.

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