Hyde Park

Fun parts of being unemployed include:
Time is less crunched and your mind is free to roam. You realize a lot more things, half of which seem brilliant (!) but later, read, scrawled in the margins of a notepad, seem both silly and philosophical. You notice the odd quiet of the weekday while everyone else is at work. You get to wear yoga pants and sweat pants like they're goin' out of style.

I remember also feeling this freedom when I started working from home twice a week in 2015. Without the commute and deadline to arrive anywhere at 9 precisely, I woke up earlier but wandered around more. I could walk the dogs longer and enjoy the smell of the coffee brewing while simultaneously drafting emails or working on a spreadsheet a little at a time from my laptop or my desktop, either one. Google Docs makes that easier. There was more sunlight in my day from the office with a window.

The answer to the question of "are you feeling settled" in Hyde Park is out of reach since we moved in, and I have had now three trips away in that short seven weeks. There's a lot left to do, a lot to unpack, it can feel endless even without a full time job. But the break from working is certainly opening up my perceived possibility of getting unpacked, of getting things off the list. And Lucy seems to be getting a little healthier although not completely free of anxiety.

This morning, I simply got the task done of baking our pumpkins from halloween, to give dogs a healthy treat, researched a few jobs, sent snail mail letters to a couple friends and my sister, and made coffee dates with other friends in Brookline. A few pieces of halloween candy were grazed on between chores.

Self-portrait, braving the chilly October fresh air, above. Buster has been recently following his nose into trouble by escaping the yard a lot, so he's punished on the porch right now while I sit with my coffee and typewriter (chromebook) out in the yard.

This morning on our morning walk, because I wasn't rushed and it wasn't dark out, I noticed the neighbors about 6 houses away from us have a pretty and simple HP marker of the town border between Milton and Hyde Park.

For those of you who haven't heard of it (we hadn't!), HP is the southernmost village or neighborhood within the City of Boston, so our address is technically Boston, though it is surrounded by non-Boston towns, Canton, Dedham and Westwood. Milton is the eastern town to us, famous for large houses, large yards and many "academies" with uniformed student bodies, as opposed to Boston Public schools like its neighbors.

I'm really interested in studying the history of Milton and Hyde Park, and also the triple intersection of Hyde Park, Milton and Mattapan, since Mattapan is unfortunately the economically and socially least advantaged part of the city and I think it's no luck of the draw. Certain laws and biases have kept it that way, at least that's what my Facing History radar suggests.

This first month that we've been here, our neighbors have been so kind, so it was heartbreaking that on October 25th, a few days before halloween one of immediate our neighbors had their fence vandalized in what was in fact, an attack of hateful, spiteful, red-painted language. I decided to reach out to them with flowers and a note and say "That's not cool, and I'm doing my best to forgive whoever did this to you. I am glad you're our neighbor and consider us your friends. Please let us know if we can ever help you rebuild the fence later on."

Starting from Scratch

art by Lisa Congdon
instagram.com/p/BaeXe05BTEh

2017 has gifted me a handful of blessings, but these blessings were often clouded with dark and gloomy clouds that required patience and careful examination.

Our new house and back yard is an amazing fit for us, and well worth all the paperwork, negotiations and strife of weeks and expensive costs it took us to get in here. Often I feel like we don't want to go anywhere now. I could just camp out in our backyard under the stars.

Everyone keeps asking "are you feeling settled in?" about our house.

Well, we're feeling settled but the house is not quite looking settled. I need another two weeks at least to feel I can come out from under the rabble.

José and I have had zero vacations other than a short one to see my dad in Raleigh mid-September (which was rough on the dogs, leaving them in a new house), but we did take quite a few staycation days in Boston in August.

I've had two emergency family visits to California for my sister, and probably a third this December. Unfortunately each time, I barely saw the ocean, but zipped in and out without much time for calm or reflection. I am grateful that on my recent trip, two of my mom's closest friends were embracing us, literally and figuratively of course, and helping us manage the grief and struggle. The easiest way to put it is my sister is having a hard time - she's down, less than motivated, exhausted and needs a lift in spirit. I think she may need a change in her scenery, too.

Although it wasn't easy to decide or easy to execute, I decided to leave my job at Harvard in late October and pursue something that makes my heart sing more, and I don't mean, like art and writing, because those will stay in my heart as hobbies, but I am listening to my job-related instincts better than before. Finance was really wiping me out in every possible capacity. A new career direction in career counseling is something I now realize I've been gravitating toward for about six years with my volunteer work at Career Collaborative. I had a lot of experience mentoring and counseling peers at Harvard this summer, as well.

It was touching that when I left the role, a handful of staff who had started new since May each thanked me for the influences I had on them when they were hired, and in fact, they (along with my boss) gave me a set of beautiful paper journals and a set of colored pens that warmed up my heart. It was a very, very sweet departure and not bitter at all.

I am glad to have learned so much about the Kennedy School students, academics, and staff, and so glad I made a lasting impression on some of my colleagues. I will stay in touch with them just as I do with my Facing History friends, and will never forget the weekend in September that I was assigned to lead 50 grad students and alumni to a Mystic River cleanup project, and one of my volunteers, turns out, was the Secretary of the Interior for President Obama (well, alrighty then!)

cheers,
and more to come.