Wandering the City of Detroit

Being on the road lesson #1: don't expect yourself to get as much done as you planned. I had this grand plan to write about each of the places I had visited right away, publishing a post a week, doing them all justice... alas. You'll just have to settle for my retrospective. We'll start where I just left:, Detroit. Eventually I'll get to San Diego, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Indiana. Now let's get moving!

I've been walking for days. Not having access to a car in the Motor City makes it pretty difficult to navigate the spread-out landscape. My pedometer cheerfully chirped out that I was a marathoner yesterday - a real neighborhood Olympian.

I've been taking a breather here to reflect and rest. I'd come from a writer's conference in Indiana that was jam-packed with inspiration but after a 5 days on a tight schedule and surviving on campus cafe salads, I needed something else. It's easier to sleep in when you don't feel like you'll miss out on some life-altering piece of information shared by your lecturer.

In my walking, I've seen a great swath of town. One one day, I went from Wayne State to John K. King warehouse of used books and back. Some pockets are going strong - the fancy coffee shops and pocket art galleries, the student areas with newly paved sidewalks - while others are a study in contrasts. Like the buildings downtown where, at one end of the block, you can order a $7 coffee drink and at the other stands a beautiful roped-off building with all its windows shattered. There's endless construction and demolition.

As a reader from afar, I romanticized Detroit for its arts and activism scene. Radical possibility rising from the collapsed heap of a capitalist ruin is an incredibly sexy metaphor. But, as I should come to expect, the lived reality is a lot more complicated. What I've loved here so far are the neighborhoods. Walking past houses where people say 'hello' from their porches. They have fancy brick turrets, most of them, even on the boarded up houses. I've loved going to free outdoor movies and participating in that DIY life with my host-friends. I'm privileged enough to see how the Motor City does Pride.

But I'm a little embarrassed to say that, of the five cities I've been to in the past two weeks, Detroit was the one I had the most expectations about. I didn't come with any plan other than to see what's here, but I did want this city to answer my question: what does it look like to build something new? And the answer I got was just another question, humbling and unexpected: what does it look like to live when no one's looking out for you?

5 Myths About Leadership to Bust

1. You have to be loud/extroverted/good at socializing.

2. You have to "know it all."

3. You can't ask for help.

4. You can't express weakness/stress.

5. You always are in your leadership role.

Got any leadership myths to add to this list? Leave 'em in the comments!

On Not Writing Anything At All

Judging mother goat says you "should" do more.

It's been some time since I've been able to sit down and write anything - well, at least anything that I'm proud of.

I've been writing emails, writing to-do lists, researching things to write, and generally hiding under my covers whenever someone mentions writing for pleasure or even for this blog.

Whenever someone asks me - the self-identified writer - "what have you been working on lately?" I begin to freeze up. There's nothing wrong with this question, but it does create an internal jab that I should be working on the next big masterpiece. Perhaps a novel, perhaps a book of poetry, perhaps an application that will send me to the greatest heights of academic superiority... but alas, as I mentioned on Monday, the word "should" does little more than shame me into thinking I'm not doing enough.

And there's nothing more unproductive than that.

I think that goes for any sort of situation in which you find yourself feeling uninspired or apathetic or any of those other adjectives that express that you're generally in a rut. When it's for other people - your professor, your friend, your parents - it can be hard enough. But when you can't even produce material for yourself, well then you might as well hang up your tools and call yourself finished... at least, that's what the monsters in your head are saying.

When I lack inspiration like this, I try to put down the barest minimum. Hit all the basics and feel no guilt. No should. If all you can get through is the final few pages of reading or the next appointment, then that's all that needs to happen. Sometimes it's important to work harder than anyone else, yes, but it is equally important to give yourself the self-nourishment to not get burnt out.

And you know what else? It's never going to be perfect. I am (slowly) learning that lesson myself.

Denying the Word 'Should'

This week, I entreat you to reject the word 'should.'

I remember in my high school, there was a giant orange poster that had a quote from Yoda on it that read: "There is no try, there is only do or do not." I want to take that message and apply it to 'should,' in any of it's forms.

Unfinished (or Taking Time to Heal)

It is harder to live.

You experience too much or not enough. You struggle uphill without a clear plateau in sight. Your priorities shift and what you've been working towards is suddenly invalidated. You stumble. You lose. You become covered in dirt and must wash yourself clean.

You listen to sad music when your spirits are up. You do everything incorrectly even when you know what needed to happen. You don't ask questions because it's scary to look vulnerable. You especially don't want to look vulnerable.

We are imperfect beings because otherwise we are unable to learn. We're not meant to know exactly what to do at all times. It's never made more clear than when you look back on the moments of your life and realize that they're an amalgamation of embarrassing, sad, fallible, and occassionally thrilling glimmers that can still produce a cringe or a rueful smile in your everday life. The state of happiness cannot exist without its opposite: we take the bitter with the sweet. Our strength is the product of our struggles.

I intend to make this post a hopeful one. Usually I write about my endeavors and artistic works on this day of the week, but I honestly admit to you that I have been "messing up" for the last few weeks on that front. I have been taking care of myself and making art has been put on hold. I have been re-evaluating and turning over in my mind every emotion in the book - even before this period of mourning, the semester had been studded with rough patches I had wanted to sit down and work through for some time. So I have been repeating the words that I started this piece with: it is harder to live. We are only given the burdens we can carry and, ultimately, we emerge as better people because of it. Believe me, I know what it is to be low down in the trenches.

For now, my thoughts are shrouded in a layer of "I'm not doing enough/doing it right/doing anything important." I am being a huge worrywort because I have taken this time for myself to rest and heal the raw patches of my heart. But I know that there must be a reason for this struggle, a reason to put these parts of my life on hold for the moment and just to breathe. To recognize the importance of slowing down and recapturing the energy of the universe in my own fragile body. I recommend it to others almost daily - now it's for me to practice what I preach.

6 Expectations I Have of the US Government

Today, I'm giving a brief list, in no particular order, of expectations I have of the U.S. government. So brief, in fact, that I will constrain myself to one pithy sentence each - which will be a strain on my typically long-winded writing style. Here it goes.

1. Keep AT&T from absorbing T-Mobile because its a Mc-monopoly about to happen.

2. Focus on domestic issues before dipping your toes into international waters.

3. Encouraging youth to vote and to become representatives, bring us out of unicorn status, and create a more representative democracy.

4. Trust Muslims - full stop.

5. Emphasize the power of local politics, so we don't elect the same person for 30+ years because they're familiar.

6. Give me some transparency and diversity, so that I know a) what's going on, and b) that privilege and power are kept in check.

Check out some of my other lists and my pieces on political participation and how to get youth involved in politics.