death and taxes

Filing taxes has never been a stressful thing for me. I find it oddly soothing, actually -- you just get all your tax forms and receipts and start putting in information until there's nothing left to be entered, and at the end, you feel like you've accomplished something.

It was especially fun back in student times, when I made little enough that I would always get a refund.

These days, however, it's kind of shocking to see my annual income lumped into one big number. I always end up having to pay extra taxes, but I don't really mind, because I still strangely enjoy the process, and it reminds me how fortunate I am to make enough money that I have to pay taxes, and can afford to pay them.

So yes, I enjoy filing my taxes, and paying taxes makes me feel lucky.

13

I went on a bit of a buying fast last year, and decided I wouldn't buy any new clothes or shoes. It started off as perhaps a six month experiment, and lasted for thirteen months. It actually felt pretty good not to shop or buy anything new, and to donate some of my old stuff.

It also felt good to place an order online for two new pairs of shoes yesterday (the Chucks that I wear to work almost every day are about to fall apart). They should come next week. I'm not sure if I'll keep them, but it will be fun to look at them and try them on. If I keep them, it means my fast is broken (after a respectable thirteen months), and if I don't, I guess I'll see how much longer I can go. Either way, I've saved a lot of money, and have made the act of buying things less common and more fun.

order

Outwardly, I am a very messy person, but I prefer for my thoughts and work to be very organized. It doesn't always happen if things are too hectic, but when I have time to impose order on my thoughts, work, and schedule, it gives me a feeling of immense satisfaction.

less is more

I defriended an acquaintance on Facebook today, after many months of finding all of her Facebook activity supremely irritating (spammy messages, constant updates asking people to buy her prints or "Like" her gallery, awkward semi-nude profile pictures, and weird non sequitur updates straight out of the trash bin of a failed romance writer). I don't know why I waited until now, because it was so annoying for all of that time, and so satisfying once I finally told Facebook that yes, I really wanted to remove that friend. It's like finally killing a mosquito that has been in your room for ages -- it didn't really cause you that much harm, but you're so much happier once it's gone.

absence -> fonder <3

I was in Vegas over the weekend for a bachelorette party, and just 37 hours apart (plus a terribly early airport drop-off, perfectly timed airport pickup, and homemade pizza upon my return) made me appreciate my boyfriend even more than usual. Also, going out in Vegas, which is teeming with desperate singles, reminded me of how lucky I am to have caught a fish that is so much better than all the other ones who are still in the pond.

advice

Talking to people who want to apply for a job in our department always reminds me of why I wanted this job so much in the first place. It's reassuring to step back and look at the big picture and remember how it felt like to be an outsider, then a newbie, and then to finally feel like I had started figuring things out. I've come a lot further than I thought I would.

free upgrade

Why is it that I like my house and office, but I like them even more if my friends like them? Nothing has changed, but hearing good things about them makes them better, somehow.

time capsule

One of the side effects of being a pack rat who moves a lot is that I have a lot of boxes full of random things that represent various phases: boxes from law school, boxes from when I lived in midtown, boxes from Switzerland. I generally give up on unpacking before I get to the last few boxes, but this time, I did a more thorough job, which meant that I got to rediscover some old memories with good friends as I unearthed, among other things, photo booth pictures, a magazine from Argentina, postcards from Russia, a volume of printed and spiral bound emails. I've had some pretty good times with really cool people.

comparing notes

I hang out with a lot of lawyers, but almost all of them are coworkers. I rarely spend time with groups of lawyers who are at other companies or law firms. I did that yesterday for the first time in a long time, and listening to the amount of discontent (or at least the desire to appear discontent) expressed by this group of law firm lawyers was both depressing and uplifting. Depressing because I know some of these people, they were my law school classmates, and it's sad to see them feeling trapped and dissatisfied with how things have turned out so far, and uplifting because it really is good to keep a sense of perspective and to see the life I've avoided living.

groove

It's weird, but sometimes, I like when I have a ton of work to do, and I get in a groove with it, and just cross item after item off of my To Do list. You'd think that I'd rather just not have anything to do at all, and while I admit that downtime and slow periods are great, there really is something satisfying about having of ton of things to do and then actually doing them.

seven years

I've been a lawyer for seven years now, which I find somewhat unbelievable. I feel lucky that I had a short and liveable time at the firm, and I've had two jobs that both qualify in my mind as once in a lifetime opportunities for a young lawyer. Lawyers tend easily towards bitterness, it's in our personalities, but so far, I have no regrets.

chatterbox

One of the best things about being a girl is having female friends that you can call and talk to for an hour or two and just feel good about having them in your life, even if they're far away. I don't think guys get that as much.

recommendation

Today, I got to look at a recommendation a friend is writing for a college student who is applying for a scholarship for medical school. I remember reading the recommendations I got from teachers and professors when I was applying for college and law school, and hearing some of the things my mentors and bosses said when I was applying for jobs, and it's such a warm, fuzzy feeling to read or hear someone list out all of the reasons they believe you will succeed. This is the first time I've been on the other end of the recommendation (although only indirectly), and it really was a pleasure to read through all these wonderful things that my friend wrote about the student, and try to come up with ways to make them sound even better.

ration

Good books are uncommon, but books that are so well-crafted that you are torn between reading slowly to savor every word or tearing ahead to devour the book in huge gulps are exquisitely rare. When I was younger, I almost always took the second option, perhaps naively believing that there would be many more perfect books to come. Now, when I come across such a book, I try to take a more measured pace, sifting through it more slowly and re-reading a line here, a page there, in order to bask in the book for as long as possible. The pleasure is more muted, but it lasts longer, and I can always devour it if I decide to re-read the whole thing later.

custom

My creative and talented coworker made a necklace (it may look like two, but it's one) that captures a lot of the things in life that make me happy. I can basically wear the whole concept behind this blog around my neck as a reminder of how good life can be, if I just stop and notice it.

I won't go into full detail on the explanation, because it probably only makes sense to me, but for me, this necklace is a physical representation of all that is frabjous: sun, moon, stars, blue skies, clear water, diving, my dog, freedom, self-determination, wonderful things coming from not-so-great circumstances, luck, the color red, food, loved ones, good times, and the very meaning of happiness.

respite

Nonstop action, that crazy mix of work, travel, play, and friends that I've had for the last few weeks, can be fun and exhilarating, and it makes the first empty day afterwards feel relaxing, rather than boring. I love quiet Saturdays, with just a few little tasks thrown in to pretend I'm still being productive.

ting bong goo

I'm back in Cambridge for the first time in eight years. A bunch of my friends and I are converging on the old alma mater for a big retirement celebration weekend for our college conductor. The celebration is being called "Ting Bong Goo," which is the kind of thing my conductor routinely said when he was explaining finer musical points to us. This man brightened my entire college career with his skill for non sequiturs (and his ability to squeeze beautiful music out of us). I can't imagine having gone through college without someone yelling at my friends and me to try to imagine a palm frond falling on Cool Whip, or describing a padiddle coming through the night in the Gobi desert, with an armadillo scurrying across its path, or making borderline obscene gestures to prevent us from going flat. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how I've gone for ten years without that, except that the memories have sustained me in a world that, for my tastes, is often lacking in random weirdness.

oldies but goodies

I'm in New York, and I always love coming here. Out of all the places I've lived, New York is still the one where I felt the most at home, and even six years after leaving, visiting still feels like a homecoming of sorts. Many of my good friends are still here. My favorite restaurants, the squealing, rocking subway, the ebb and flow of people, the interactive movie of walking through the city streets with headphones on, it's all still here, and it still gives me that same feeling of belonging that no other place did before I lived in New York, and no place has since I left New York.

reality check

Sometimes you appreciate things more if someone else reminds you that you have them. It was a beautiful day on Friday, and a friend came to my office to have lunch. We browsed the menus and went to main campus, where we had oysters, truffled mac and cheese, salad, dessert, and smoothies while basking in the sun. She exclaimed with charming enthusiasm over every detail, especially the fact that there was roasted broccoli in the salad bar, which for some reason made the biggest impression on her. It reminded me that even if things get tough sometimes, there is still someone doing simple things, like roasting broccoli, that make the day better.

what's a frabjous?

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'

He chortled in his joy."

-- Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky"

I've always liked that line, "O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" In that one line, you can picture the wildly happy celebration that's going on about a good thing that came quite unexpectedly (in this extreme case, it came about out of a situation where it seemed like nothing good could happen).

I spend much of my time thinking, "I should blog more," but often don't get around to it, because I can't decide what to write about, or even if I know what I want to write about, I don't want to spend the time it would take to write a long post about it. Much of the time, the posts are about things that frustrate me or make my life more difficult in some way, and writing about them can actually be a second dose of frustration or difficulty.

That's why I'm going to have this, a different kind of blog from my normal blog. Let's see how this works, since I've never been a "glass half full" kind of person, mostly because I don't like water. I intend to post every day. The posts can be as short as they want to be, and they will all relate to (and remind me of) things that I find frabjous.