Earlier this month I spent a week talking to people about their goals. I think it was therapeutic for them to kind of discuss their goals and really think about the root cause. I mean, how many times do you really get the luxury of talking and being listened to for hours? To articulate your motivations and your vision for your future? And there’s also something great about getting to spill your guts to strangers who you can trust not to tell anyone and who will take you at your word because they don’t know you well enough not to.

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Continuing a tradition that seems odd for someone with basically no heart, my third annual Valentine’s Day cards!

Avoid the doghouse this February 14th and let your special someone know you’ll always be loyal. Come on, you shy love birds, you!—Don’t miss your chance with that one cool cat. 

<<printable download>>

I met you briefly last night after dancing in the new year at the Nema’s party under some beautiful (but uncomfortably close fireworks). We ended up hanging out longer than either of us expected because I forgot my phone on the bus back to the hotel and stayed up until the next bus came at 3am with Vinita. It was not the best first impressions, but I have the same problem so it’s ok.

I have stopped having resolutions because one year I realize I am constantly resolving to improve myself anyway. But, 2017, I hope you’ll find me more patient with others, a better friend to the people I’m privileged to know, less of a procrastinator more of an instigator. I hope you’ll know me as relaxed and content rather than anxious and sour.

Likewise, I hope you are kind to others, especially those who are different or less fortunate. I hope you incite more informed and responsible communities around the world. I hope you listen much more than you talk—and that when you do talk, that it is honest and good. I hope that foresight is exercised and we help support a better future for everyone.

Cheers to getting to know each other,

Jacklynn

Last week my friend Carissa visited me here in San Francisco and I’ve felt in a little better mood ever since. Not that I was I was grumpy beforehand (but I was).  Now I feel a little more hopeful about the people I meet and my place in this city.

When I travel to see my friends I’m always glad to see them, but there’s always this bittersweetness to the interaction. “Yes, New York is great because all my friends are here, now back to California.” Repeat for Chicago or Wyoming. But it was the first time a friend had come to visit me in California and it happened to be my best friend from undergrad.

Oh, this is what San Francisco would be like if I had a really good friend who lived here…

I have met some really great people in the city and I have good friends in the bay area, but there’s something so much richer about having that friend that really knows me that I can see on a whim. I know it’s going to be nearly impossible to meet friends like her again in this new place. Instead I’ll get some mismatch of people I see on a monthly basis. I do envy those folks who never leave their home- or college- town in that respect. Otherwise you only end up seeing people you date regularly—UGH ?.

To excess, I encouraged Carissa to move to San Francisco so that we could eat pastries and yakitori e’ry week. Alas, after the loveliest of times where both the mundane and the eventful were memories for me, I was back to a party of one in the restaurant waitlist of life. We both had to go back to real life.

But instead of returning back to California this time, I was already here. So maybe, I thought, just as good of times could be had here?(!). Carissa and I had a long talk about our role in friendships. We’re both reserved in different ways, I think. She’s absolutely charming and wonderful and everyone wants to be her friend immediately. But then she’ll disappear out of not wanting to bother people (which is false, Carissa. Never has happened, never will). I’m standoffish for an exceedingly long time and then when you finally get past that, I’m perpetually salty with occasional bursts of niceness so that you’ll remain my friend. Maybe, thought I, I should be less reserved? I don’t know. I’ll do some testing on this in the new year.

What has also made me feel more optimistic is that I moved into an apartment (read: small studio) by myself. I knew this would make me happier, but I didn’t expect just how settling…settling would be. It feels like I have a place in this city. One that I can invite people to!

But on that note of settling, I am about to leave in less than an hour for a two-week trip to India for my friend’s wedding. And for the rest of January I won’t be home a weekend at my little apartment as I go to Nebraska, Boston, and Durham, North Carolina. But it’s good to leave the old year hopeful for the next*. I will write more again, I almost promise.

*except about our garbage president-elect

What does it mean and what do we do next? I’m trying to figure it out this morning.

I’m not writing because I want to say something to you, I’m writing because whenever my mind is overwhelmed, I have to write to untangle the thoughts.

I had actually dreamed that the results were different this morning: Stephen Colbert had the winner of the election on the phone and she was crying and he started crying too, with happiness or relief.  But it didn’t happen. Today I woke up and got ready for work. I walked 15 minutes to the bus where I am now.

The whole time I committed these calm daily routines, my mind was racing. I was wondering if it was ok to do the mundane in a morning that felt so weird. Like when you have traveled to another place and none of your things have a spot where they belong.  I was wondering if the world was going to fall apart. I studied the streets and people I passed to see if they would some how be different. I felt suspicious of this foreign world. I thought more people shared my values and I am shaken to realize they don’t. I wonder if I’ll be the target of prejudice now, or my parents in Nebraska. What does it mean when a country is presented with the morally reprehensible side of history with all the knowledge at their fingertips and still says ‘yes’?

I believe it means people felt unheard and other people aren’t listening. Some of us are in our echo chambers where all our friends feel the same way we do. “I’m uninterested in hearing their justifications and excuses in my newsfeed”— as someone told me on Facebook this morning. It’s really frustrating and annoying when someone can’t engage in conversation with you in the way that you want, but it’s also part of human dialog and community to do so. This is what I believe. My white male friend has to go through diversity training at work and doesn’t understand it. He gave some of the common excuses to why he thinks it unnecessary and we talked about it for a long time on several occasions. He told me it was the first time he’s ever talked about it with someone because know the way he feels is ‘wrong’ or unpopular. Maybe I wasn’t able to change his mind, but what I could offer was my honest dialogue and let him tell me how he feels to so that I can understand it. That’s how I can try.

I believe there is a misunderstanding on how to affect policy. I’m not as political as I’d like to be or as it is my civic duty to be. I spent hours Sunday researching the bills and the candidates instead of following along like I should have. But I believe this has gone past issues and people were voting what they felt. This is wrong because how you feel is not always what the issue represented at the hand is. How you feel about gun control doesn’t mean all issues on the ballot are good or bad. It means you should look at the particular policy in front of you and with the power that comes with research, decide what’s best for your community now & in the future. I’ve been a guilty child of complacency as well. It’s effortless to feel something and difficult & unglamorous to do the work of educating myself and making hard choices to vote on something.  I thought about ways we could fix this misunderstanding and I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to teach children in school how to research the issues on the election and form opinions on them. This is not the teacher telling them what side to vote for on the issues, but teaching students themselves they can impact their government and giving them a valuable process for being active in the system. Maybe a group of students have to present the pros and cons for each of the issues on their local ballot. I’ve heard everyone say ‘I can’t wait for this election to be over.’ I know what they meant, but I guess now we’re reminded that democracy is continual work.

I believe there was willful ignorance. Voting with your feelings has meant being blind to so many hateful actions. If you feel like you want change and voting on one election isn’t going to make it (which is true, you should be voting more of your local elections)….then you might have been pushed to vote for something different. Anything different. If it means ignoring racism, bigotry, selfishness, lies, and more—than you would. And to me, that’s deeply sad. It’s what makes me feel the people who are ‘conscious voters’ consciously decided to be support such hate in order to vote the way they did. I have no words for this scenario because I don’t understand the logic it took to get there.

I believe there was cowardice. It takes a lot to stand up, go out, and become a target. It takes little update your status to some mocking jibe. I’ve mentioned this before, but satire is complex. I worry we—I—was too quick to make fun of something and too slow to offer solutions and educate myself instead. I would like to be more direct in the future.

It doesn’t mean we can’t overcome these wrongs. It doesn’t mean we’re less of the good people we were yesterday (or better people because of how we voted, mind you). We don’t have to accept prejudice or lies. But I needed to acknowledge what has happened and think about why it did so it doesn’t happen again. I was jarred by the results. I was not fearful enough of how different my sentiment is from that of the country and I shouldn’t be so out of touch again. I guess now it’s back to work.

In 2012 you might have remembered an introversion revolution with Susan Cain releasing a book and giving a pretty good TED talk on it. If you were like me, you might have also read a lot of the “introverts are great!” articles that arose afterwards and have still been trickling in. Had it been another group of people, I might have even labeled it was a ‘revolution’—but the people being what they are, I would say it was more of a ‘suggestion.’

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking has been on my to-read list since it came out and I was in Denver. I finally saw it in a used book store and picked up and, thanks to a round trip to the east coast, I finished it this weekend. It was like reading all the different pieces of myself put together and backed by science. I feel like I know how to better spend my time, make myself happier, and work more effectively. I’ve never been so excited to read about how un-unique I am.

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//Two of my closest friends coincidentally have birthdays a week apart, this isn’t going to be a recurring thing//

You have to meet all the good friends you can when you’re in college, I think, because afterwards, it’s pretty tough. (Like, how even do introverts find each other outside of school!?)

I feel lucky, then, I was able to meet Katie before my senior year of undergrad.

How did you meet?

I guess how we didn’t meet was at the introductory meeting of our summer study abroad trip. Katie was the only person missing. I remember thinking “I can’t believe someone is missing the pre-travel meeting about an international trip a couple of days away!”

Katie & I both did a three week study abroad through the English department to study Shakespeare. I was filling my Shakespeare requirement as an English major (in the best way possible) and Katie was studying acting & directing and loves Shakespeare. We would spend two weeks in England watching plays and one week in Italy ‘taking in the country’ that Shakespeare wrote about. (At the time I this made total sense to me; retrospectively, I think our professors wanted to go to Italy for a week every year).

Before our flight, one of the two professors leading the trip also hosted a little get-together at his house. So this was actually the first time I met Katie. (And notably, the first time  I had smoked salmon with a boiled egg on toast—thanks, Dr. Parolin!).  She looked like one of the cool kids. I remember she was wearing purple flats that I thought looked nice. I vaguely remember introducing ourselves to each other. Maybe. And I if that is a true memory, I think it went something like this:

“Oh! You’re the Katie that missed the introductory meeting!” (real tactful, Jacklynn).

Slightly embarrassed Katie: “Yeah…That was bad, wasn’t it? Did he say anything? Was he mad?”

“No, I think he was more confused.”

What was your first impression of them?

Besides the small talk that may or may not have happened, my real first impression of her was at the airport gate. And it still wasn’t even really talking to her. I was sitting next to my professor, my department head, and she was sitting on the other side of him. We joke about this now, but I have the utmost respect for my professors never attempted to treat them like equals. I clam up and am even more shy and awkward than normal. When my professor sat down next to me, I immediately stiffened and filled with anxiety like: “HOW CAN I BE THE BEST AT WAITING FOR AN AIRPLANE?” 

Katie joined us on the other side of my professor, there was bubbly”good to see you again!” excitement from both parties. They immediately launched into best bud conversation. Not even just chatting, but personal chatting. I was completely baffled. Katie was talking about a previous relationship and my professor was giving her comforting advice based on his past experience. What? Waht. This was a completely foreign interaction to me. Who was this woman who knew my professor so well? Was she even our age? I questioned whether she was even a student or not. I wanted to meet someone who could be friends with a person of authority.

What stood out to you about them?

We didn’t hang out constantly on the trip, but when we did we got along well. When we hung out there was always a lot of laughing. Katie is very sweet, eager to make friends and get to know people. Like really get to know them. She is infamous in my mind for immediately asking personal questions (and of course being ready to offer her own story in detail too). She is so much more out-going than me and was prepared to actually follow up with “let’s hang out sometime’s” when we got back to the United States.

Katie is unlike most of the friends I’d ever had up into this point. I usually hung out with other shy artistic introverts, but Katie is energetic, open, and bold. She is more socially sensitive and more feeling than the people I’d met up into this point. She is a very good and thoughtful friend who has made me a better person for knowing her. She taught me to be kinder and more generous. She’s always thinking about her friends and family and how she can make them happier or support them.

How did you become good friends?

I am most comfortable with one-on-one interactions. It’s a must if you ever expect to really get to know me. I remember just going to her apartment in Laramie to after we got back to talk about my then-relationship. Katie was the first friend I met outside my undergrad friend circle. I knew she would be an understanding person to talk to and an unbiased third party to advise on the situation. And she was. Anyway, that was my attempt to test the friendship waters. Although, was I mistaken that she had a Gilmore Girls DVD boxset? Small red flag there. :)

We had a good post-graduation summer. We almost moved to Portland. I think we lived in New York together for about 4 months. We have a group chat where we talk to each other nearly every day. There was no choice but to be good friends.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Happy birthday, Katie. You know when it was.