Those of you who know me really well may know that while I may be happy much of the time, I struggle a lot with confidence and sometimes I can get into some pretty large swings of negativity and self-doubt. This entry is a short addendum to the main blog post I put up over on my main blog "Washington to Washington". Click on the title there, or you can check out the most recent blog post here: "Capital Bikeshare and Exercise in the District"
I tend to rely heavily on friends when I enter into these spirals, and I have one specific friend to thank to bring me out of the negativity after I received the diagnosis of pre-diabetic. I will not name her here because I'm not sure if she wants to be mentioned in this blog, but needless to say I have her to thank for getting me up and out to do some sort of activity.
I try to appreciate and keep up with my friends, but I've been doing a really bad job of it lately. I know I'm not on Facebook as much as I should be, and I'm not as responsive as I should be when friends contact me. I can't make excuses for myself, but I can try to acknowledge some of the great times and people I've been missing since I graduated and we all went our separate ways.
College is still a time I look back upon nostalgically. Yeah, the last days of college were over three years go, but I still remember many a nights playing Rock Band and Mario Kart on the Wii, and dragging Magic The Gathering games out for hours. But the smaller instances are starting to fade. Like many of the great times in Gladfelter, and the in jokes and experiences I had when I was a freshman and sophomore. That was almost over 7 years ago now. Four years in college seemed at the time to last forever. But then the day came when I had to say goodbye to the campus, and leave my room for one last time. That was a weird night. I relied on my roommate and one of my best friends for that.
I also remember the many times at Waffle House at 3 in the morning with a couple of guys. We'd go out after hours of game play, and we'd sit at the bar and eat our breakfast plates and drink our coffee.
One of my fondest memories was driving around with friends. Be it to get a game, see a new place, or simply go into town. I loved to be with so many people.
I would call myself an introvert, but introvert in it's true form of the word. I'm not one who is shy or ambivalent about going somewhere (although I would say I sort of am now being alone a majority of the time), but one who needs to recharge after being in a demanding social situation. It doesn't mean I dislike the social situations. I just need a break from them every now and then.
This blog is more of a rambling stream of consciousness style rather than anything too thoughtful and constructed. I did have a negative section here, but I decided to take it out because I really wasn't in the mood to share my low feelings. It's been a couple of days, and I've read over this a little more, and realize that life is good, and that while bad things have been happening, we have victories as well. And I really need to take more time to look and reflect more on those instead of living in the past.
Needless to say, thank you to all of my friends who I have relied on in the past and keep touch with me to this day. I know I may be more hidden and holed away now more than ever, but you all still play such a huge role in my life, and I couldn't imagine a world without you all.
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Friday, February 19, 2016
Columbus, COTA & Race
I went on an adventure today.
Columbus has always been a looming city over my small town mentality. In all of my exploring of cities around the country, and around the world, I never really took time to get to know the city that has been closest to me for the longest. My mentality of discovery never seemed to apply to Columbus.
It is probably because I grew up here. I was raised in the time when the media only portrayed the city as the "bad place" where the "bad things" happen. Where people who were different from me would do bad things to me if I went anywhere near where they lived. There was always a "bad" part of town, and rarely was there a "good" part of town. The line was solid and bold. There was an "us versus them" attitude. Yet I left to go explore other cities that held the same connotation.
Once I made it out, I had the culture and the media dampened from my senses. No longer was the city a "bad" place, and the countryside a "good" place. The dichotomous perceptions fell apart and fractured. I wasn't hemmed in by my surrounding culture anymore, and I was free to explore and discover. Yet I started small.
I stayed within the small comfortable zone of our college campus for a while when I first started at Warren Wilson. The whole experience of going to college was such a huge impact for me that I couldn't start exploring quite yet. When I eventually made it to Asheville, my drive for uncovering "place" really began.
My first bus ride in was exhilarating, yet terrifying. I had never been on a public bus before! Show your ID to the driver, and that's it? Okay, well I take it I'll know when I get into the city. I don't know exactly where I'm going. Wait. The bus doesn't stop at every stop? How will he know when I want to get off? Well crap. I reached the end of the line, at the terminal, with no idea/clue of the city I was in.
Secretly I enjoyed every minute of it.
Asheville remained the largest city I routinely visited for four years. I thought it was everything a city should be. It had everything! A transit system, a vibrant downtown, lots of shops, festivals, and really great food. Then I moved to Vancouver, Washington.
The population difference still astounds me to this day. Asheville, the hub of it all for the Blue Ridge Mountains only clocks in around 87,000 people. Whereas Vancouver adds up to over 160,000. It is so much more, that you have to add a new place to the number. Yet it did not feel as vibrant as Asheville. Nowhere as unique, vibrant, or exciting. There are two areas of Vancouver worth talking about for any middle class white person: Uptown and Downtown. Asheville had Prichard Park, Lexington Avenue, West Asheville, the River Arts District, the Grove Arcade, along with several within-easy-driving-distance outlying communities like Black Mountain, Fletcher, Woodfin, and Weaverville.
Needless to say, Vancouver was not the city I was expecting it to be. The city was too residential, and not unique enough. While it was larger than Asheville, I felt trapped by it's size. In the interim I've explored all kinds of cities on short notice. I spent six weeks in Barcelona, and found refuge in Portland (across the river from Vancouver.)
Seattle, Pittsburgh, Washington DC, New York City, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Chicago, Omaha, Cleveland, Wheeling, Knoxville, Lexington, Cincinnati, Tampa, Spartanburg, Birmingham, Saint Louis, Dublin (Ireland), Charlotte, Virginia Beach, Charleston (West Virginia), Tarragona, Huntington. These are just some of the cities I've visited, passed through, and explored.
Yet here I was in Columbus. On a bus riding down Livingston Avenue, going for an adventure once again.
The landscape of east Columbus is quite striking. First you pick up the bus at a Park & Ride in Reynoldsburg, a nice suburban town with little pedestrian infrastructure but overall nice layouts. Crossing into Whitehall you then get the glimpse of what white flight can do to a neighborhood. Houses are boarded up, crumbling, and the bus violently shakes with the potholes in the ill-kept road. Businesses have bars over the windows to prevent break-ins, and are painted with that 70's shade of white that is not quite there. As if on queue though, this is where the bus picks up the most amount of it's riders.
Up to this point, I am the only white rider on the bus. It was apparent that I was the odd man out. But not many people seemed to mind, and while I was uncomfortable (for reasons I knew very well of, and talk about in other posts), I enjoyed feeling unsettled. It offered me a chance to reexamine myself, and to ask: Why do I feel this way?
While I can't speak for other routes or services, it is clear to me that on the East side of Columbus, COTA is mainly utilized by people of color. I did not see anyone remotely close to my skin color on the entire route. We passed right through the affluent (and white) Bexley, and didn't pick up a single person. Why don't white people ride the bus here? In Vancouver there were lots of white people who rode. Granted, they were lower on the income scale, but maybe it is because of demographics?
Actually, just researching this, I got a new clarity on demographics. Columbus' population is 28% black, where Vancouver's population is only ~3% black. Even enlarging the region to include Portland would explain the demographic gap: Portland's population is 6.8% black. That would explain why I was the only white guy on the bus.
Or would it?
While the proportions may be a large influence, there was still an inconspicuous lack of white people on other routes I took around town. Why aren't white people riding the bus?
Let's get real folks. It's race. Remember that feeling I talked about at the beginning of this entry? Where the city was "bad" and the country was "good"? That was good ol' rural American racism talking. When we saw terrible things on the news, it always included people of color. The good stories always focused on white people. Where I was raised was the reason that, even though I have exposed myself to all kinds of people, I felt uncomfortable on the bus. It runs deep. And I'm working against that which my culture hammered into me when I was young.
And it doesn't reside solely in rural America. I would guess the exact same reason is why we did not stop in Bexley, and why I was so often the only white face on the buses throughout that day.
And I love the fact that I can go and observe and learn. Because it makes me a better person. I would recommend others do the same. Go take a bus ride around your town and simply look. Listen to the people on the bus, their stories, and their struggles. Go eat some food you've never tried before. Experience others.
Columbus has always been a looming city over my small town mentality. In all of my exploring of cities around the country, and around the world, I never really took time to get to know the city that has been closest to me for the longest. My mentality of discovery never seemed to apply to Columbus.
It is probably because I grew up here. I was raised in the time when the media only portrayed the city as the "bad place" where the "bad things" happen. Where people who were different from me would do bad things to me if I went anywhere near where they lived. There was always a "bad" part of town, and rarely was there a "good" part of town. The line was solid and bold. There was an "us versus them" attitude. Yet I left to go explore other cities that held the same connotation.
Once I made it out, I had the culture and the media dampened from my senses. No longer was the city a "bad" place, and the countryside a "good" place. The dichotomous perceptions fell apart and fractured. I wasn't hemmed in by my surrounding culture anymore, and I was free to explore and discover. Yet I started small.
I stayed within the small comfortable zone of our college campus for a while when I first started at Warren Wilson. The whole experience of going to college was such a huge impact for me that I couldn't start exploring quite yet. When I eventually made it to Asheville, my drive for uncovering "place" really began.
My first bus ride in was exhilarating, yet terrifying. I had never been on a public bus before! Show your ID to the driver, and that's it? Okay, well I take it I'll know when I get into the city. I don't know exactly where I'm going. Wait. The bus doesn't stop at every stop? How will he know when I want to get off? Well crap. I reached the end of the line, at the terminal, with no idea/clue of the city I was in.
Secretly I enjoyed every minute of it.
Asheville remained the largest city I routinely visited for four years. I thought it was everything a city should be. It had everything! A transit system, a vibrant downtown, lots of shops, festivals, and really great food. Then I moved to Vancouver, Washington.
The population difference still astounds me to this day. Asheville, the hub of it all for the Blue Ridge Mountains only clocks in around 87,000 people. Whereas Vancouver adds up to over 160,000. It is so much more, that you have to add a new place to the number. Yet it did not feel as vibrant as Asheville. Nowhere as unique, vibrant, or exciting. There are two areas of Vancouver worth talking about for any middle class white person: Uptown and Downtown. Asheville had Prichard Park, Lexington Avenue, West Asheville, the River Arts District, the Grove Arcade, along with several within-easy-driving-distance outlying communities like Black Mountain, Fletcher, Woodfin, and Weaverville.
Needless to say, Vancouver was not the city I was expecting it to be. The city was too residential, and not unique enough. While it was larger than Asheville, I felt trapped by it's size. In the interim I've explored all kinds of cities on short notice. I spent six weeks in Barcelona, and found refuge in Portland (across the river from Vancouver.)
Seattle, Pittsburgh, Washington DC, New York City, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Chicago, Omaha, Cleveland, Wheeling, Knoxville, Lexington, Cincinnati, Tampa, Spartanburg, Birmingham, Saint Louis, Dublin (Ireland), Charlotte, Virginia Beach, Charleston (West Virginia), Tarragona, Huntington. These are just some of the cities I've visited, passed through, and explored.
Yet here I was in Columbus. On a bus riding down Livingston Avenue, going for an adventure once again.
The landscape of east Columbus is quite striking. First you pick up the bus at a Park & Ride in Reynoldsburg, a nice suburban town with little pedestrian infrastructure but overall nice layouts. Crossing into Whitehall you then get the glimpse of what white flight can do to a neighborhood. Houses are boarded up, crumbling, and the bus violently shakes with the potholes in the ill-kept road. Businesses have bars over the windows to prevent break-ins, and are painted with that 70's shade of white that is not quite there. As if on queue though, this is where the bus picks up the most amount of it's riders.
Up to this point, I am the only white rider on the bus. It was apparent that I was the odd man out. But not many people seemed to mind, and while I was uncomfortable (for reasons I knew very well of, and talk about in other posts), I enjoyed feeling unsettled. It offered me a chance to reexamine myself, and to ask: Why do I feel this way?
While I can't speak for other routes or services, it is clear to me that on the East side of Columbus, COTA is mainly utilized by people of color. I did not see anyone remotely close to my skin color on the entire route. We passed right through the affluent (and white) Bexley, and didn't pick up a single person. Why don't white people ride the bus here? In Vancouver there were lots of white people who rode. Granted, they were lower on the income scale, but maybe it is because of demographics?
Actually, just researching this, I got a new clarity on demographics. Columbus' population is 28% black, where Vancouver's population is only ~3% black. Even enlarging the region to include Portland would explain the demographic gap: Portland's population is 6.8% black. That would explain why I was the only white guy on the bus.
Or would it?
While the proportions may be a large influence, there was still an inconspicuous lack of white people on other routes I took around town. Why aren't white people riding the bus?
Let's get real folks. It's race. Remember that feeling I talked about at the beginning of this entry? Where the city was "bad" and the country was "good"? That was good ol' rural American racism talking. When we saw terrible things on the news, it always included people of color. The good stories always focused on white people. Where I was raised was the reason that, even though I have exposed myself to all kinds of people, I felt uncomfortable on the bus. It runs deep. And I'm working against that which my culture hammered into me when I was young.
And it doesn't reside solely in rural America. I would guess the exact same reason is why we did not stop in Bexley, and why I was so often the only white face on the buses throughout that day.
And I love the fact that I can go and observe and learn. Because it makes me a better person. I would recommend others do the same. Go take a bus ride around your town and simply look. Listen to the people on the bus, their stories, and their struggles. Go eat some food you've never tried before. Experience others.
Saturday, January 9, 2016
Travels, Work & Updates
Over this past couple of days I drove my sister back down to Tulane University in New Orleans for her to resume her freshman year of college. I didn't quite know what to get from this kind of journey because I had a rental car, did a lot of night driving, and visited Mammoth Cave again for a second time.
Let's get the exciting trip stuff out of the way first:
At Mammoth Cave I took a more detailed cave tour than I did the first time i was there. The tour was the Dripstones & Domes tour, and led down 300 feet of vertical cave shafts and across a long cave passage to the Frozen Niagara formations, and back out the other side of the ridge. It was quiet a spectacle to behold.
Sadly I didn't take many pictures because I was too busy being in awe of everything around me. Also I've been developing this question of why I should take pictures when I should be experiencing what I am doing in full when I am doing it. (But that is for another post.)
As a compensation, have a picture of me driving the rental across one of the last rural ferries in the Eastern United States:
After visiting a creepy church built in 1842, we drove down to Birmingham, stayed the night in a hotel, and then the next day to New Orleans.
I moved my sister in, and then we went to a nice dinner and had some delicious ice cream among the mid 60 degree weather. I booked an Airbnb for the stay that night, and then in a small suburb south of Nashville called Spring Hill for the drive back North. While in New Orleans I did meet a really sweet cat outside my Airbnb whose name was Fergal, and was so docile and wanted attention. Sitting down on the porch, petting him, enjoying the damp, cool air, and hearing the bustle around me. I was truly happen then, and just wished I could keep that fleeting feeling.
All in all it was an uneventful drive back North; the same way I'd come with a little deviation to Jackson, Mississippi because I thought I'd be able to drive the Natchez Trace Parkway back to Nashville. I didn't end up driving it because it had gotten too dark by then.
So the search for work goes on. I am in a bind because i want to be in a place that values work and where the employees are dedicated, enthusiastic, and invested in what they are doing. The places with job openings are old, traditional, and/or status quo, and I usually don't have the experience to apply.
The places I want to work don't have open positions, or haven't responded to the one's I've applied to.
I'm worried there will never be a place I want to work. I'm worried that all of the places out there are dedicated volunteers working for little to no pay, or are miserable desk jobs that sustain a living. That there is no equal medium. But I try to not let that worry me too much. I just have to keep saying I will find something. (I mean it's only been a couple of months, so I really shouldn't be worrying too much yet.)
As for my personal life: I don't know what to really think. The holiday depression comes and goes, and I take solace in the fact that there are people out there who love me, and care about how I am. Now that I am in a hopefully short transition between two points in my life, I am reevaluating what decisions I've made, and how I can go forward from those decisions to try and make things better.
I also keep telling myself that it is my brain that plays these tricks on me, and that I need to keep up with the checks I have in place to make sure I can reign it back in to a manageable level and get my headspace back on track. I need to muster up the effort needed to overcome my apathy and get some shit done.
I feel as though there should be some nice ending to go here that is all inspiring and stuff, but I can't quite seem to get anything. I'm sure things will turn up. Just gotta give it time.
Let's get the exciting trip stuff out of the way first:
At Mammoth Cave I took a more detailed cave tour than I did the first time i was there. The tour was the Dripstones & Domes tour, and led down 300 feet of vertical cave shafts and across a long cave passage to the Frozen Niagara formations, and back out the other side of the ridge. It was quiet a spectacle to behold.
Sadly I didn't take many pictures because I was too busy being in awe of everything around me. Also I've been developing this question of why I should take pictures when I should be experiencing what I am doing in full when I am doing it. (But that is for another post.)
As a compensation, have a picture of me driving the rental across one of the last rural ferries in the Eastern United States:
After visiting a creepy church built in 1842, we drove down to Birmingham, stayed the night in a hotel, and then the next day to New Orleans.
I moved my sister in, and then we went to a nice dinner and had some delicious ice cream among the mid 60 degree weather. I booked an Airbnb for the stay that night, and then in a small suburb south of Nashville called Spring Hill for the drive back North. While in New Orleans I did meet a really sweet cat outside my Airbnb whose name was Fergal, and was so docile and wanted attention. Sitting down on the porch, petting him, enjoying the damp, cool air, and hearing the bustle around me. I was truly happen then, and just wished I could keep that fleeting feeling.
 |
| The pretty Fergal baby. This was the only time I could get a good picture of him, other times he just kept rubbing up against my arm. |
All in all it was an uneventful drive back North; the same way I'd come with a little deviation to Jackson, Mississippi because I thought I'd be able to drive the Natchez Trace Parkway back to Nashville. I didn't end up driving it because it had gotten too dark by then.
So the search for work goes on. I am in a bind because i want to be in a place that values work and where the employees are dedicated, enthusiastic, and invested in what they are doing. The places with job openings are old, traditional, and/or status quo, and I usually don't have the experience to apply.
The places I want to work don't have open positions, or haven't responded to the one's I've applied to.
I'm worried there will never be a place I want to work. I'm worried that all of the places out there are dedicated volunteers working for little to no pay, or are miserable desk jobs that sustain a living. That there is no equal medium. But I try to not let that worry me too much. I just have to keep saying I will find something. (I mean it's only been a couple of months, so I really shouldn't be worrying too much yet.)
As for my personal life: I don't know what to really think. The holiday depression comes and goes, and I take solace in the fact that there are people out there who love me, and care about how I am. Now that I am in a hopefully short transition between two points in my life, I am reevaluating what decisions I've made, and how I can go forward from those decisions to try and make things better.
I also keep telling myself that it is my brain that plays these tricks on me, and that I need to keep up with the checks I have in place to make sure I can reign it back in to a manageable level and get my headspace back on track. I need to muster up the effort needed to overcome my apathy and get some shit done.
I feel as though there should be some nice ending to go here that is all inspiring and stuff, but I can't quite seem to get anything. I'm sure things will turn up. Just gotta give it time.
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