being an adult 2.0

I'm really rooting for 2009. This is mostly because I'm officially trying to be an adult. This means real forays into the intricate world of taxes, insurance, acquiring furniture (secondhand/dumpster dives count!), and oil changes,--you know, grown up things. I'm learning how to talk patiently about printer models and gas prices and the economy (things that usually bore me to tears). But being an adult is not all about learning how to cope with and explain boring things. It's about learning how to mourn and heal, how to rejoice, how to love earnestly and deeply. It's about taking responsibility for my mistakes and wanting to make good, thoughtful choices. It's about wanting to build safe, warm, creative communities. For me, a lot of "being an adult" revolves around learning how to be a good woman. But I think it's mostly about being brave: knowing how and when to take risks even in the face of imminent failure or paralytic self-doubt. This being brave thing is no small thing. I spent the better part of last summer trying to do small acts of courage in an attempt to cultivate my bravery because I was tired of being afraid. It was not easy, but the more I tried the braver I became. So by the time I had to do the bravest of things--uproot from a city I loved, my best friend, my favorite sister and her lovely family--to move back West to a graduate program where I would be required to do what scares me the most, which is to write and attempt to be a "writer," I was ready.

I left. Or, more to the point, I was able to leave. I moved West away from the lush green of Virginia and fell head over heels for these cornfields that now surround me, the flatness of the horizon, the riotous pollen-strung sunsets, even the snow. So I am very much for being brave. It works. I want us all to be brave: to allow ourselves to fail splendidly, and of course to succeed. There is bliss in that to and fro.

(A few months ago I was on a brave jag and submitted some writing to a journal called Brevity, which I love and admire a whole, whole lot. I found out last week that they accepted a small essay that I wrote! It is an essay that is quite dear to me and I am so glad they liked it. It will appear in their Fall 2009 issue. Thank you very much to David Grover for all your help! If you are not familiar with Brevity, please check it out. One of my heroes, Pat Madden, published a lovely essay in the last issue. Wonderful poet Lance Larsen has something in this issue. So be brave, friends, be brave a lot.)