Smashing things apart just to put them back together again

I've always been a fan of puzzles. It started with my grandpa who, as he got older and his fingers were no longer nimble enough to pick up the smallest pieces of the 1500 and 3000 puzzles, passed down his collection to my father and me. The first one I remember completing with Dad on the dining room table was The Doobie Brothers' Greatest Hits album cover. It was glorious. (The Doobie Brothers were legitimately my favorite band in 3rd grade - I still catch myself humming "Jesus is Just Alright" and "China Grove" on occasion).

Those jigsaw puzzles that we'd start and finish every family holiday led me into the whole wide world of puzzles (number, logic, word, etc.) and I quickly became enamored with figuring things out. Even now, I find so much enjoyment by simply putting my iTunes on shuffle and curling up with a big book of either crosswords or Sudoku. That's why I absolutely love the scheduling aspect of my job so much - it's all about finding out what fits and what doesn't so that my boss can have a smooth, seamless, and complete day. Essentially, I get paid to take a 200 piece puzzle that's mixed up in a box and put it together so it shows the picture of what we're doing, where we're going, and what my company hopes to accomplish.

When things start to go too smoothly, though, I get anxious. I panic. I never learned how to internalize what most people long for -- the calm and peace that comes from a job well done. I'm kind of a weirdo, and I need those everyday challenges to keep me on track, to keep me focused on the big picture and see how the little puzzle of my day fits into the bigger puzzle of my life which fits into the biggest puzzle of all - our cosmic existence and purpose.

So what do I do when I feel like I've finished every metaphorical puzzle I own? When my life is going smoothly and I have no worldly concerns? I rip everything apart, put the pieces back in the box, shake it up and start all over again, of course.



Last night, I did just that. Half a bottle of Jim Beam, straight, and I was making plans with my ex and over-sharing with my sister and making absolutely absurd and unfair accusations against someone I barely knew. I had pressed the self-destruct button for fun, and nothing I said or did could take it back.

I woke up this morning severely dehydrated and thinking about Meredith Grey (Yes, I used to watch Grey's Anatomy. I'm a girl, what do you want from me?) I can't remember the full context of the episode, but I do remember one of her best quotes: "Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop."

Why do I periodically and purposefully smash things up in my life? Because it feels so damn fulfilling when I put the pieces back together.

To those of you who know all too well what I'm talking about (i.e. the collateral damage - y'all are getting personal apologies soon, I promise), I'm not making excuses for myself. I have my share of unattractive qualities, and my penchant for personal creative destruction is definitely one of them. But here's the thing about creative destruction -- not every piece has to fit back where it was before. Try as you might, a square peg can't fit into a round hole and sometimes two jigsaw pieces just can't fit, no matter how hard you smash them together.

Whole-assing one thing

There's a quote from a Parks and Recreation episode a month or so ago that struck a cord within me. In the midst of working full-time as Deputy Parks Director and running for Mayor of Pawnee, Ind., Leslie Knope starts to realize just how many things were falling through the cracks, including her co-worker's "Sweet Sixteen" Leap Day birthday.

Ron Swanson, Leslie's boss and a bastion of common sense in the over-dramatic, esoteric world of city government, pulls Leslie aside and tells her a lesson he learned as a boy:

"Never half-ass two things; whole-ass one thing."



Despite considering myself a political person, I realized that I seriously lacked hands-on campaign experience. A hyper-local, party-specific race seemed like the perfect opportunity to get that experience while getting more involved in the DC Republican Party -- something I wanted to do since I changed my residency and registration.

What started as just going door-to-door and handing out lit grew into making phone calls and putting together mailers and coordinating volunteers for events and Election Day. A week before the election, I started to wonder what the heck I had gotten myself into -- had I gotten in over my head?

It was then that I realized I'd been half-assing too many things and not whole-assing enough. I'd been juggling the campaign, my day job, moving into a new house, keeping up with friends, running my own campaign for DCYRs, and dealing with burgeoning romantic prospects, among other things. The beauty of juggling, however, is that you have no choice but to be disciplined when you have so many balls in the air.

Once I stopped worrying about things that didn't matter and started pouring all my energy into the campaign, things miraculously started coming together. Election Day came and went -- much to the credit of Starbucks Doubleshot and Clif Bars -- and my candidate prevailed! Amazing what can happen with enough dedication, right?

So with that over, it's time to pick up a couple of the balls I dropped during the past few months (i.e. this blog). Hopefully my new subscription to Garden & Gun arrives soon ...

The Lost Cause

This past Friday, I was introduced to Lee-Jackson Day, a Virginia holiday commemorating the births of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. As the idea festered, I knew a blog post was imminent, and I began searching for any information about this heretofore unheard of holiday.

Throughout my upbringing, the Civil War was framed as the racist "bad-guy" South vs. the caring "good-guy" North who loved everyone, no matter the color of their skin. An unfair over-simplification, I now know, but an idea that had colored my view of the South and Southerners for so many years. It wasn't until my senior year of college, while reading John C. Calhoun during my American Political Thought class, that I started to realize just how complex the Civil War actually was.

When Southerners talk about the Confederacy, they rarely mention slavery. To them, secession was an absolutely logical outcome after the gross infringement of states' rights by the federal government. As a libertarian-leaning Republican, I'm sympathetic to this argument. Any power not constitutionally given to the national government should be reserved to the states -- true now, true then.

However, when was it ever a right to oppress another human being based solely on characteristics completely out of one's control, such as skin color or ethnic background?

Southern culture is something of which to be proud. I wouldn't have started this blog if there wasn't something so attractive and enamoring about it. But the blemish of slavery can't be ignored, and to say that the Civil War had nothing to do with the South's treatment of African-Americans is irresponsible and foolish.

Yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and I, like many of my peers, was given a paid holiday. I was thankful for the time to myself and was well aware of the irony of using my time off to write about the Confederacy, especially when I did nothing else to celebrate such a great man remembered most for his immense contributions to the Civil Rights Movement.

I felt guilty for a bit before I went about my business of relaxing with my laptop and a large glass of Malbec.

As I mentioned in my last post, tradition is the safety-net to fall into when nothing else works. The Lost Cause of the Confederacy understood this, only a few years and a half a million casualties too late. While reneging on the slavery issue, the Lost Cause reframed the Civil War as a fight for their way of life -- the traditions, customs, and institutions innate in the "Southern way of living". How unfortunate that, at that point in time, the "Southern way of living" included so much more than collard greens, sweet tea, sorority mansions, and debutante balls.

We do not live in the ideal world of Dr. King or Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson. We do not live in the ideal world of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or Christopher Columbus, either. Yet we celebrate the legacies of all these men, for they all contributed to the melting pot of American culture.

Tradition

It was an odd Christmas back in Wisconsin this year. No snow on the ground, temps were in the balmy 40s, and – for the first time in my life– I had no real part in preparations. My dad had already put up the lights outside, my mother had unpacked the snowmen and Santa Clauses and set the nativity herself, and the tree was lit and sparkling with ornaments when I walked through the door early Friday morning. It was good to be home, don’t get me wrong, but something just felt so different from years past.

Maybe it was my fault. After all, I was the one wearing cowboy boots and asking for grits instead of hashbrowns with my breakfast.

Or maybe it's just part of growing up -- the realization that the house I had grown up in is no longer my home. My life is in D.C., not Wisconsin, and this Christmas I was made painfully aware that the traditions I once held so dearly may not be compatible with the life I now lead.

Tradition has always been an important part of my life. As a Polish Roman Catholic, my entire heritage is based on rich history, and my interest in Greek Life was first piqued by the mysterious rituals of fraternity and sorority. The idea that something created hundreds or thousands of years ago still has value in todays world is so powerful to me. But where did these customs come from? What we now see as comforting and familiar had to have been new and unheard of at some point.

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions, but I felt particularly inspired this weekend and decided that this will be the year I stake my own claim on life. While still respecting the traditions of yore, I can start my own. Whether they be small like a New Year's Day PJ brunch or as extravagant as a week-long spa vacation, I'm determined to stop living behind the comforting veil of conventional wisdom and start doing something new. Customs and heritage are what we fall back on -- not what should be determining our next move.

Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Live your best life!