Tonight I make the journey from D.C. to Boston via Megabus, my 6th bus trip of this journey and the only one I’ve made so far with a hat, which changes everything.
Since travel adventures are almost always more exiting in the moment than they are afterwards, I’ve decided to live blog this experience and am attempting to do so despite a terrible internet connection and the lure of sleep
We’ll see what happens.
You can check it out at livebloggingthemegabus.tumblr.com.
Berkeley shirt
I pack light. For this seven week trip, I brought four shirts, two pairs of pants, some underwear and miscellany. One shirt is for sleeping, one is for exercising, and two are for everyday wear. One of the everyday wear shirts is solid black, which was a great choice. The other is a grey Berkeley shirt, which was not as great of a choice, mainly because the pitstains in it are huge, permanent, and growing.
In spite of the pits, however, it has been an incredible conversation starter. The conversations usually go like this:
Random stranger who sees my shirt: “Did you go to Berkeley?”
Me: “No, I actually didn’t. I found this shirt. In my apartment. When someone left it there who was staying with me. She was Australian.”
Random stranger: “Oh. Where did you go to school?”
Me: “Boston University, but now I live in San Francisco. I don’t know what the red dots splattered on this shirt are. It could be blood.”
Random stranger: “Oh. ”
Me: “Yeah.”
Variations include people who went to school at Berkeley, know someone who did, or wanted to go there. The shirt has started convos with a professor who used to play golf with Christopher Hitchens who stopped me on the street, the bouncer at a bar, a man on the bus and nearly countless others.
I think the moral of the story is that people in D.C. are kind of friendly. Also, shirts are great conversation starters. You shouldn’t be afraid to do it yourself either. In my case, that’d look like this:
Me: “I know I’m wearing this Berkeley shirt, but I actually didn’t go there. I went to Boston University and found this shirt when an Australian who was staying with me accidentally left it. She was studying abroad at Berkeley for the semester or something. The crazy thing is that I actually live in San Francisco now, so I don’t look out of place at all when I wear it there.”
Random stranger: “Excuse me – this is my stop.”
Me: “Wait, come back! There’s more to my story! I’m going to be an improv comedian!”
(Bus door closes)
Works like a charm.
Washington D.C.
Washington D.C. has wide streets and there are many trees. The crepe myrtle is blooming with pink and white flowers. This morning it’s not too hot. In fact, it is perfect. The window is open and when the wind blows I can see the leaves on the tree outside rustle. Then I feel the air on my cheeks and it’s refreshing like water.
The streets of D.C. are straight and laid out in an orderly fashion, a mixture of numbers and letters and state names and other names of governmental significance. They all feel very purposeful. They were built in relation to the capitol and all streets lead there if you go the right way.
If you go the right way and go to the Capitol building, you’ll see lawns. You’ll see green. You’ll see landscaping and trees with little plaques on them to tell you what kind of tree it is. At this time of year, there is usually a group of people taking a picture on the Capitol building steps. In front of them and across the street and down the hill there are men and women wearing slacks and dresses and going to work in large white marble buildings.
There are fountains with muscley old men and long hair riding mythic beasts, and beautiful women riding muscley horses. Turtles spout water forever.
People with maps and phones try to figure out which way to go. Air conditioning units work overtime to pump gigantic museums full of cooled air to accept the huddled masses, refugees from the sun and the oppressive openness of the National Mall. Interns are everywhere, but you can’t see them.
I did pushups on the landing at the National Gallery in the morning, and banged on the doors of the Supreme Court at night. I walked the same blocks as people who have their name printed in the newspaper and have many followers on Twitter. I swam in that fountain, the one with the turtles and the horses and a muscley old man.
I didn’t have any pockets so I shoved coins down my pants to have something to remember the moment by. I took a penny and a quarter. But then I accidentally flushed the penny down the toilet, and without thinking I put the quarter into my purse with all the other coins, so I don’t know which one it was even though I probably still have it.
And somewhere in the National Air and Space Museum, a raw almond rests underneath a display case, accidentally dropped from my hand and then kicked out of sight to rest forever until vacuumed up.
Keith
One of my passions is learning about other peoples’ journeys. A friend of mine and fellow BU alum, Keith (who blogs at Espose) has had an interesting career journey that he’s shared in the piece below. This is especially relevant for 20 somethings in search of a career or for anyone who likes a good read. Enjoy!
My plan after graduating from college in 2011 was simple. I’d do two years of Peace Corps in Ukraine, get a Master’s in Nonprofit Management afterwards, dive into the nonprofit world, and then one day run my own organization.
Three years later that plan is shredded. I work in an office that frustrates me always and at times drives me completely insane, and my professional life is directionless. It’s not a unique story amongst 20-somethings and my trajectory is by no means representative of everyone. But a common thread for many of us is getting what we wanted, realizing it’s not what we expected, and then not knowing where to turn.
For me, the first seeds of doubt were planted before I even got to Ukraine. Before I left, I worked for a bicycle tour company and loved the energy of the rapidly expanding small business. This contrasted sharply with the inefficient, glacial-paced, red-tape atmosphere that overshadowed my work with Peace Corps Ukraine, Ukrainian NGOs, and at the school where I taught English. In particular, working at my school was the most perplexing challenge of my service. On paper it was the ideal job, but secondary factors made it miserable. These included interpersonal conflicts with the cliquey staff and my mostly apathetic colleagues, structural challenges like the draconian administration and ever-changing schedule, and the more ambiguous but ever present hopeless vibe that pervaded the school and the economically-depressed, post-Soviet town. I was constantly stressed, even when working completely independently or outside of work altogether.
I returned to the States with a reversed sense of priorities — I didn’t know what I wanted, but I sure knew that I didn’t want to work for the government, in NGOs, or as a teacher. I moved back to Boston and found a job temping through August at an office at Boston University. Unfortunately, I’ve fallen into a familiar trap — I love my work with the students, but this office, its employees, and my daily tasks rival a Dilbert comic in absurdity. Living in Boston, I do have the advantages of the city and a network of friends, so for a while I simply tried to separate life and work. But eventually I reached a point where a “good” day was when I mentally blacked-out for half of my waking hours five days a week.
The Monday before 4th of July, I had a terrible day at work. None of the events were exceptionally heinous individually, but collectively they gave me one big wake-up call and the much needed epiphany that I don’t have to deal with any of this. Even though I’m still unhappy at work I feel empowered to take ownership of my professional life instead of letting the clock tick down to the end of August.
Going forward, I’m going to try to have a more balanced approach. I’ve traded in my clear-cut lists of “wants” and “don’t-wants,” for flexible tiers of preference weighted much more towards intangibles like people, mentorship, and office culture. I’m now very aware that choosing a job is also choosing a lifestyle; that jobs largely determine personal schedules, how and when people spend their time, and living purely for the evenings and weekends leaves people disengaged from whole swaths of their lives. I’m also trying to appreciate the benefits of uncertainty. Being directionless is often anxiety-producing, particularly after pouring over endless job postings with still no idea of what I’m really looking for, while most people around me carry down their well-defined career paths. But every once in a while I stumble across a bundle of possibilities I had never considered or even known of, and I’m completely free to pursue it. There’s nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
I still can’t say I have a plan, but I do have a perspective. And though less concrete, it’s more than what I had three years ago.
What are your thoughts on a career journey? Do people ever really like their jobs? Leave feedback in the comments and to hear more from Keith, check out his blog at espose.wordpress.com.
woman in the hat selfie
I was walking today, just doing my tourism thing in Capitol Hill and walking in the general direction of my destination but not too set on it. Like, I’m open to other adventures and stuff because if traveling isn’t about having adventures then I’ll just go ahead and eat my socks.
So I was walking today and noticing how the buildings in my neighborhood are so put together and made of brick, and how they all kind of remind me of senators from the 17th-18th centuries or whenever they still wore wigs. And I was just walking along doing my thing when I notice some free stuff on the road, like there’s a cardboard box full of cookie cutters and a desk and then there’s also this hat.
It’s just a sunhat that’s Columbia brand and either dark khaki or light green but it looks like it’s in pretty good shape, and I have pretty fair skin and was planning to be in the sun all day so I thought this was a fairly wonderful find. I put it on and was so stoked about it and kept on thinking to myself, “I found a new hat!”
And I wore the hat around all day and it was kind of a funny thing, you know. Like, I don’t usually wear hats. In fact, I’m a little weird about them. I think the people who wear them have some sort of ego complex. I always think, “Who do they think they are wearing that hat? Where do they get off accessorizing to such a high degree?”
But today, I was the woman in the hat. I wore that hat around all day and loved it. But the thing is, if someone saw me today they would just think that I was a hat-wearer by nature and that this was just something that I do, even though nothing could be farther from the truth. They wouldn’t know the difference. They would just think, “There goes a woman in a hat.” Or they wouldn’t think anything at all and would just continue on with their lives like I do when I pass people on the street.
I assume I see people the way they are, but the reality is I know nothing. I don’t know what they usually eat, what their friends are like, if they come around these parts often, or if they wear hats. I can only see them in one moment and in one place. Maybe she just got that tattoo against her boyfriend’s wishes. Maybe he’s had those shoes for six years and can’t bring himself to throw them away. Maybe she just got back from a 11 month trip around the world and is experiencing massive culture shock.
I don’t know. So that’s the truth that hit me today: that I am the woman in the hat and I don’t know. Also, my hat is pretty awesome.
P.S. The selfies are out of control
Snotting black 