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Category: virginia

August 13, 2012

A mosh pit full of fist pumps

So much has happened since I last wrote.

Let’s see. I quit my job. I moved back to Richmond. Which means I left New York and all its wonderful wonderfulness — something that still hasn’t quite sunk in. It is possible any moment now I will wake up in my too-small room with its too-big desk, the light barely peeking in from behind the too-long curtain just above the too-loud air conditioner.

Which might be entirely plausible were it not for photographic evidence that I somehow packed up my New York existence in this many boxes and that many trash bags.

But wait, you say. Didn’t you promise us getting started things a mere eight or so weeks ago, just before you unceremoniously implemented radio silence? How utterly, utterly rude of you.

Well, observant reader. Like I’ve said many times before, given my tendency to disappear without warning (I mean, who plans disappearances anyway? Would a kidnappee leave a note to say, “Hey guys. Don’t expect me home today. I gots evil things waiting for me”? Would my left sock tickle my sole ever so softly, knowing full well it would soon take up permanent residence in the crevices between the washer and dryer?), I am never truly gone. For there is Twitter. And Tumblr. And, to a lesser extent, Instagram. I am everpresent. And omniscient. And totally full of crap.

But there was good reason. The very next day after I posted my last entry, this happened.

This, after months of reading and preparing (That epic novel? Grad school application.) and contemplating my existence and purpose and non-purpose in life, was the day I got accepted to this place.

This place can only be best described as one part ad agency, one part rogue M.B.A. program, and one part laboratory for experiments in 21st-century branding.

If you’re patting me on the back for that lovely description, don’t. I didn’t write it. This guy did.

So, there I was, sitting back down at my desk about to write me some legal copy after a run-of-the-mill trip to the bathroom, when I got the email. I’d been waiting for this thing for months. My reaction, of course, was nothing short of extreme euphoria masked as a perfectly composed journalist with Really Important Things To Write. Inside, however, was an all out mosh pit full of fist pumps as I fully accepted my transition to the dark side.

But wait, you say. Advertising? Wasn’t journalism what you’d been working toward since you started writing when you were, like, 8?

This is true, curious reader. It had been my dream to be a journalist in New York City — a dream only solidified by the Muppet Babies’ foray into investigative deeds using an old school typewriter. All I can tell you, without diving into a diatribe about the failings of modern journalism, my preference for big picture analyses over knee-jerk regurgitations, and my conflicting impulses to express myself creatively without defying journalistic objectivity, is that, well, I was ready for something else.

So, in five weeks, I left everything. And in those five weeks, my brain was unable, and is actually just now finally able to string together coherent sentences, to process the sheer absurdity, suddenness, awesomeness, sadness, gravity, and excitement of it all. I could not even read on the fucking train. And aren’t you happy I can say fucking now? All those years I was holding back because I wanted to be absolutely professional, given the reserved confines of education and law, when sometimes all I really wanted to use in place of a multisyllabic word was a four-letter one.

All in all, I just felt that striving for objectivity ended up suppressing a great part of what makes a writer a writer — at least the kind of writer I’ve always wanted to be.

While I can write about this now semi-succinctly, I can tell you it was not easy. It was actually kind of painful. It took months and months of reconciling with the fact that I was leaving a big part of myself so I could move forward. There’s so much more to tell, of course. There were many players and layers, many, many agonizing internal monologues. I can’t quite divulge everything right here in this instant, because I’m still getting used to this paradoxical writerly existence. That is, that writers, often among the most introverted, cannot truly write without revealing their innermost selves. It is at once terrifying and liberating.

Maybe it will all end up in a book. Maybe it will become an essay. Or maybe it will become the narrative to a really melodramatic commercial. For now, though, this is me. It’s probably a different me from the one you thought you’d come to know. Maybe it’s someone you really, truly like or no longer like or like right now but ultimately will dislike.

Whatever it is, this is me. And admitting that is a great first step to whichever direction I’m headed.

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April 30, 2012

Art & Basketball

Before the Final Four, VCU was mostly known in the art, advertising and medical space. Sure, it didn’t make for much of a retort in a gathering of university students (“So what if our football team doesn’t exist?! We create art things!!!”), but it’s what I loved about it.

Group chants and rituals were foreign to me. I never understood the wonders of donning university clothes and, upon stumbling into a fellow Ram in a foreign land, taking part in acknowledgement: You, there, in that shirt that is similar to mine in color and origin that signifies our divergent yet shared experiences – you, my friend, rock.

The few times I got a taste of this elusive school spirit was with Hokie Nation, which I engaged in as a mere observer. I mimicked said chants and rituals, but they came from a detached place. Whenever I raised the ridiculousness of throwing away a perfectly good night after some sort of loss I couldn’t quite grieve, people simply said, “You just don’t understand.”

And I didn’t.

How could I? Blind sports fanaticism went against my very nature. I was always more into independent ventures than following the herds. While I loved certain things and ideas and people, I had no aversion to disagreeing when I felt it was warranted. In fact, I relished it.

Then came the Final Four. “Aren’t you excited?!” people asked. “The Rams made the Sweet 16.”

“What’s that?” I said.

More out of curiosity than school spirit, I tuned into this mysterious, saccharine-themed event. And there he was, this young super coach who oozed charisma. I, of course, was fascinated. I Wikipedia’d. And Googled. And read and read and read. It was a storyteller’s dream – the underdog who rallied a band of underdogs to conquer the mighty ones.

I was reminded of sports’ mystifying ways of bringing out the best and worst in us. And, perhaps more significantly, that nothing else is quite as unifying.

Suddenly, even in corners farther than the corner of my coast, people responded. No longer did I have to say, “Well, it’s in Richmond, which is about two hours from DC…” Instead, it was they who nodded: You there, with your affiliation to the university that spawned that wonderful run – you, my friend, rock.

They understood. And suddenly, so did I.

When I heard VCU was getting a contemporary art institute, I was pretty excited. I was even more excited that the architect was unveiling the design in an exhibit in New York. Last week, my roommate and I headed to the opening reception in Chelsea to check out the models and renderings.

I can’t quite articulate a building’s relationship with its environment like a true architecture nerd can. Nonetheless, I’m an admirer of design, shape and pretty things.

This, to me, says: Look at me, world. I am kind of rad.

It was so neat to have two of my worlds collide. In true creeper form, I eavesdropped on a conversation about Richmond and VCU between (I think) one of the architects and a woman. They talked about the city’s bars and restaurants and southerness.


This is me. Standing awkwardly after about four or five other awkward shots of me not knowing what to do with my hands, feet and, oh I don’t know, face. I am officially terrible at this.

This is Leah, officially not terrible at this. When she asked me to explain this Forking Time thing, I proceeded to read aloud the text on the page. She wasn’t impressed. (Note: This picture was taken at another exhibit.)

This is us, together. Behold our magical feet.

And away we went, gallery hopping into the night.

 Photo credit for watercolor: Steven Holl Architects
More art institute goodness here

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August 9, 2010

Part Two: Falling & Rising

“Why do you want to work so hard?” my dad asked. He was against it from the start. So was my mother.

After getting laid off from a reporting job, I moved back home to think about what I wanted to do with myself. Teach English abroad, go back to school, consider nonprofits, move somewhere, anywhere. The list went on and on, and I was so sure I’d left journalism for good.

I saved my unemployment checks and the money I earned from a summerlong stint as a document reviewer at a law firm. The pay there was decent, the job easy but incredibly tedious. Day in and day out I sat in front of a computer scanning thousands of documents, barely getting up except for a 30-minute lunch break. I knew I didn’t want to spend 40 hours of my week on something I wasn’t passionate about. I still wanted to be a writer.

So there I was, standing in the kitchen probably with a glass of water or whatever I innocently went there for, and there was my dad or mom, taking turns it seemed, asking the same questions.

“Why do you want to work so hard?”

“Why don’t you just stay here and live here for free?”

And the just as irritating non-question: “I think you’re making a mistake.”

I’d always planned to move to New York; it was just a matter of when. When it became clear I wouldn’t be able to afford to go to college in the city, I decided to postpone the move until graduation. Then, when it became clear I’d probably position myself better with meaningful work experience at a small newspaper, I postponed it until after my first post-college job. Five years, I told myself. In five years, I’ll move on from here and see what happens.

But after about two years, my job was gone. I hadn’t counted on the economy collapsing or for the newspaper industry to be in shambles so quickly. Not interested in churning out stories in another small city in another small newspaper that probably would have its own round of layoffs, I knew I was done. This, despite sacrificing my grades and sleep to produce the college newspaper. This, despite spending my summers in remote towns in southwest Virginia to work 40 hours or more, often including weekends, at small newspapers. I cried about it once. Once, a few nights after I learned the news, I had a few glasses of wine with my roommate and cried, alone, before bed.

But I’m pretty ambitious, naively so, that after two weeks back home sleeping and doing nothing, I decided to make new goals. I began waking up earlier than I did when I had a job, running for fun, and planning my move, jobless, to New York. I didn’t tell many people about it, partly because I was afraid of failing. And in a world where friends broadcast the most inane things on Facebook, no one else really needed to know.

I knew regardless of what I ended up doing in New York, I was going to write about it. It all came down to what drew me to journalism in the first place. But at 24, I didn’t quite have the life experience that made for compelling writing. I needed to jolt my system, to venture outside my comfort zone, and to be around others who were looking for the same thing.

Eight months after I moved back home, I was gone.

This is the second of three entries in a series I’ve so dramatically titled “The NYC Chronicles.” You can find the first one here and the third and last installment here.

Image: A summer night in downtown Richmond, 2009

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