Pep Talk: Be gentle with yourself, my darling. There’s no need for all this pressure. You’re doing great, life is getting better by the moment, and, in reality, you have no problems.

Thanks Daily Pep Talk From A Best Friend. Kindness and compassion for yourself is critical. I recommend you try it sometime.

On to the good bits:

• I got the Dream Job. My official title is Web Producer. The desk will be in the hygge building that houses a Seattle public radio station. I busted my tail to get that job, crawling over 160 other applications, interviewing with 7 intimidating smart people, and killing many trees for portfolio packets. I start next week.
• I found a new D&D campaign! I am playing a half-orc rogue. Go ahead and scoff, but I can’t think of many things I’d rather do on a normally boring Sunday night. (Also, playing 4th edition is an unexpectedly hard transition.)
• I am teaching myself Ruby. I want to be a better schemer, and the community around both Ruby and Ruby on Rails is amazing thus far. Next step: take over the world.
• I am taking more photos. However, I cannot post them. I know I am not adding anything of consequence, so it’s difficult to justify posting them. Let’s just say that I am falling in love with my surroundings again. I have the snow to thank for that.
• My important friendships are flourishing, despite my sudden departure from Facebook. The site became an ugly reminder of parties I wasn’t invited to and family members I don’t talk to and friendships long neglected. (Truth time : I was  also visiting the site in alarming numbers.) Trim the fat, as they say!

To my special friends who held my hand as I embarked on this scary step of figuring out my career, thank you. I have been but a shell of my normal cynical naysayer self, and I have to admit that this brighter world is pretty inspiring. Thanks for being here with me to celebrate.

Best of 2010 from Serene Careaga on Vimeo.

Song: Jonsi, “Go Do”

(This is about as climactic as it’s going to get, as I am a Fall graduate without any pomp or circumstance or tassels or stupid Mylar balloons, so bear with me.)

The weird thing is, I feel as lost as I did before I came back to school. This feeling is really disconcerting, thus the turn to the old bloggy-blog.

There is one really important emotion that keeps bubbling to the top, one that needs to be shared, and it is that I am grateful for everyone who supported me on any leg of this meandering journey. I have stopped and stalled so many times, for a variety of reasons that still seem valid. So, if you are that special person on the East Coast who proofed my admission essay to UW, or if you are the ex who played cheerleader while I decided to make the leap from underemployed cubicle monkey to starving non-traditional student, or if you are the high school best friend who always believed in me, take whatever pride you are feeling for my and firmly take it for yourself. Seriously. While my immediate family may habitually fail at supporting me, you all have believed in me. I owe whatever future accolades or successes to you.

Expressive outburst aside, I keep asking myself, “so, now what?” The cringe-inducing question about future plans makes me want to bury my head in the sand until everyone forgets I graduated. Grad school is out of the question as I stare at the $40,000+ student loan debt. I am trying to hustle as hard as I can to find my dream job while I have the luxury of full-time employment until April. I am furiously reading The Anti 9-5 Guide (generously gifted by another amazing friend) trying to find networking and career advice for the introverted and quirky.

Earlier today, I was frantically describing my job search to a poor innocent, and watched as my chaos and stress steam-rolled right over her. It was in that moment that I realized I iust need to breathe. It’s so cliched, and there is nothing that annoys me more than writing Hallmark-ed, overwrought cliches on my corner of the ‘tubes. But, there you go: I love you all, and just breathe.

Enjoy your holidays.

One week of internship left.

First day of December.

Half-way to 32.

You guys, life is moving too fast. I want to slow it down and reconnect with you and find out what you have been up to since we last spoke and I want to tell you about all my grand plans that begin on my last day of classes. I want to start my creative project again. I want to start preparing for the Vancouver half-marathon in May. I want to finish Fallout 3. I want to read Columbine by Dave Cullen. I want to finish the Daria boxset. I want to fall in love with my Holga again. And I want you to tell me I’m aiming too high, and to just relax and decompress after this crazy 2.5 year UW project.

I guess I just want to hug you and buy you a warm chai latte and tell you how much you mean to me.

I really do love this holiday, and not just because I’m half-Mexican. If you have endured the pain of losing someone, you may find comfort in marking a day to remember and celebrate their lives. I find great joy in remembering laughter and funny stories; maybe you can find warmth in the holiday too.

Where they all are, I do not know. But I hope today they know they are in my heart.

Hug your loved ones.

I was craving those warm, salty, crunchy seeds of awesome on a crispy fall afternoon; there is no greater thing than a freshly roasted pumpkin seed. Thus, the first pumpkin of the season became impaled on my knife. There will be more. Oh yes, there will be more.

In life news, I’m trying to breathe through the chaos. It is rewarding being so busy, in a totally masochistic way, but I can’t help but feel like I’m doing everything a little less perfectly than I would like because of I am overextended. This too shall pass.

Also, I think I know what I want to be when I grow up. It feels good to be coming to peace with my ambitions during my last quarter of school. Just in time, I ‘spose.

I have  my marching orders for the design internship. Mock-ups and photo archives and Adobe InDesign, oh my! (Preemptively speaking, unpaid design work is more fun than paid desk work.)

I have an entire week off, staring on Wednesday. My agenda is:

• play Uncharted 2,
• bake some brownies,
• finish a few more upcycling projects,
• photograph these last few days of sun,
• cherish my quiet time.

This, for me, is living in the most hedonistic and Utopian way.

And last, but certainly not least, I’ll be starting my last quarter as an undergraduate at the end of this month. Exciting! I’ll be taking 20th Century Architecture and Indigenous Film. Just thinking about this crossroads makes me a little weepy (and confused and scared and excited and grateful). I’ll conjure up something far more eloquent and touching once I am actually done, but it wasn’t that long ago that I had my friend Kevin editing my admissions essay and I spent a few months daydreaming about studying abroad. Life: it moves fast.

A much-needed reunion with my much-beloved friend who has known me longer than anyone else became my grounding strip, the thing that plants my feet back on the ground.

Our reunion started with a late night Denny’s trip to reconnect to our awkward 17 year old selves on those restless Albuquerque nights where the only thing we could legally do at midnight was drink too much coffee at Village Inn and talk about new loves.

Our 31 year old selves on a quiet Portland night blended talk of work and life and dreams and history, with yawns as a reminder that we are not as sprightly as we once were. It was perfect. There is nothing more refreshing than spending time who remembers what you were like as an angry 15 year old kid, stomping around awkward high school halls with everything to prove and nothing to lose.

And now, after a whirlwind trip, a renewed clarity brings a spring to my step. I won’t pretend to know where I am headed, but I know I have my people behind me. I love my people. You all are my breath and my grounding strips and my blood and the thing that I think about in those moments of panic.

Thank you.

A birthday is looming in my future. These last few days before a birthday usually bring up strange emotions. Last year, it was ambivalence. 29 was unadulterated excitement. 2007 was peaceful. This year could be described as purposeful.

I’m feeling mortal these days. I hear the sirens call out around me and I read about people younger than me dying and it invigorates me to do more while simultaneously striking fear in my bones. It’s a perpetual state of conflict, I suppose. I close my eyes and feel myself falling, wondering where I am going to land. I feel in flux.

Truth be told, 31 slips off my tongue easier than 30. I am embracing my age. I feel a tiny bit wiser with every crack of my hip bones in the morning. I find the youth of my co-workers amusing rather than revolting (this means that I have finally matured). I feel a calmness finding its place in the new baby wrinkles in my smilelines. This getting old thing is alright; if nothing else, it means I have more time to do all the stuff I need to do.

I need to love another dog. I should learn how to cook a decent tamale. I want to dip my toes into the clear blue of the Mediterranean. I want kiss under the stars and wrestle in the mud. I want to buy skates and try out for roller derby. And I want to see you, whoever you are.