LaurieWrites

DNC: The Kids Were Alright in Denver

I was in Denver covering the Democratic National Convention for my university's news service, courtesy of the graduate program that runs my life, so I had no time for anything else while I was there, and usually lacked an Internet connection. Welcome to blogger hell, friends.

The whole experience was physically and mentally exhausting and frustrating. The logistics of dealing with press restrictions once on site made it tough to get good shots. Being in a hotel 45 minutes away from the center of the action and another half hour from the group I was covering was daunting. The worst? The lack of time online to write, upload and edit that proved to me that I am not a print person, once and for all. (Also? The altitude is no joke if you're not used to it. I was the walking winded and more parched than all of you at Burning Man, seriously.)

But by the time Stevie Wonder took the stage on Thursday night and the buzz in Invesco Field reached heights I've never personally experienced, the curtains of my professional bias closed and I realized just how amazing it was to be there - within that physical structure and in a city that for a few days played host to what I honestly believe in the most overblown of terms imaginable was a turning point in our history.

I'm here to talk about young Dems - about the generation
that the campaigns say the future hinges upon, although some people
under 30 (or even 40 - youth is a relative definition these days) say
they're not sure they're entirely heard, at least not in the official
channels that - when it comes down to it - truly determine who takes
the top spot.

Some of these young people are on the trail blogging, taking and uploading thousands of photos and videos , writing endless posts and articles with their take on the action. Others are going on the official party line, serving as state delegates and pages, attending ridiculously early delegation breakfasts, sitting in caucus meetings, and finally taking to the floor to watch the candidates speak.

Sarah Burris from Kansas is a Rock the Trail blogger who also blogged the DNC for FutureWatch. She blogged about the Human Rights Campaign's Rock to Win concert featuring Cyndi Lauper, Rufus Wainwright and Melissa Etheridge (wow!)

The concert began with a short press conference where all agreed that
young voters were essential to the election in November. Cindy Lauper
said it was important for all people to vote, and that was a key
component for her concert with the HRC as well as her national True
Colors tour.

(Burris crossposted at Everyday Citizen, where she is a founding blogger, and all of her Future Majority posts are collected here. Her bio there says she's "always happy to talk to fellow young people about elections,
organizing, and new media. You may contact her at sarahkatheryn at
gmail dot com.")

The Human Rights Campaign itself runs Generation Equality (GenEQ), that "helps queer youth go from being out to being active by providing the
skills, tools and knowledge to make full GLBT equality a reality."

Sarah Grainger was all over the DNC, and wrote at MomoCrats about the up-and-coming party leaders, specifically A'shanti Fayshel Gholar, DNC Youth Council Director, Secretary of the Nevada State Democratic Party and Vice-President of Young Democrats of America.

One of the things I didn't expect with the Democratic National
Convention was the large youth contingent. I don't know why, really,
because it's not like I haven't been somewhat tapped into what they've
been doing; I just didn't realize how major a force they were becoming.
When I was in college, the people I knew who were involved in politics
seemed to be doing it for the wrong reasons, so I was turned off to the
idea...(A'shanti) has her finger on the pulse of the young Democrats and is eloquent
as well. It's inspiring to see all of the new young leaders in the
Democratic party that were at the DNCC this week participating in a
wide range of events

The Young Democrats of America have a blog too. The latest post was about Got Tuition?, an organization focused on college affordability that currently features a contest sponsored by the National Education Association and the Huffington Post. The creator of the best video gets $1,000 towards school and the chance to blog on Huffington Post about college affordability.

College financing is a serious issue for many young voters. Got Tuition's mission, which they were pleased to hear echoed in Joe Biden's nomination speech on Wednesday:

bringing the issue of college affordability and the long term impacts of
student loan debt to the forefront of our national debate. If our nation is to maintain its status in the world, we must
ensure access to our colleges, vocational schools and universities to
everyone who wants to pursue the dream of higher education.

Politics West blogger Jackie Borchardt at the Denver Post wrote about an encounter with a politician on the first night of the DNC. (Sarah Burris blogged about Jackie as well, speaking of her disappointment with lip service to youth involvement from other politicians and Hollywood.)

"We need more young people like you," a California delegate said to me while I slurped a lemonade outside the convention hall.

I set the record straight: I'm not here for Democratic Party business.
I'm a journalist here to learn about the relationship between the news
media and politics.

Still, he said, the world needs more aware young people.

Message to other 23 year olds who might be walking around the Pepsi
Center this week: you are carrying a lot of weight. Whether or not the
"youth vote" exists, people are paying attention to the presence of
youth in this convention.

Lily Gold is a student at Germantown High School in Philadelphia and a guest blogger at the Y-Decide 2008/WHYY blog for the DNC. She quickly learned, along with the rest of us there, that credentials are hard to come by - and boy do you need them.

What I mean to say is, there were no credentials left.
Pennsylvania is unique in the way that, instead of distributing extra
credentials among the delegates themselves, each delegate enters their
name in a raffle and the winning names get credentials. Hefty sigh for
us hoepful high schoolers. But don’t count on this correspondent to be
down and out so fast- I networked at this breakfast more than I do on Facebook, and trust me, I am on Facebook a lot.

There were 631 delegates under the age of 36 in Denver – 28 super
delegates, 118 alternates, 55 standing committee members, and 74 pages. The number of delegates 35 and younger has almost doubled in eight years, to about 16 percent from 2000's nine percent. There were only four delegates under 30 in my state of Maryland, but some states are obviously doing better.

Rebecca McDonald at the Rock the Vote blog wrote about the youngest delegate, 17-year-old David Gilbert-Pederson from Minnesota, and his state colleague, 23-year-old Douglas Wiliams, and their road trip from Minnesota to Denver. The two not only crossed the age divide, but also a racial perception in Minnesota.

They began this historic process well before stepping into the car.
David recalls, “I feel like we both went in and busted up the old boys
club in our respective races.”

Their ascension on the City of
Denver, CO is history in the making. As 2 of 50 people of color in the
Minnesota delegation, this road trip duo is destined to change the face
of the Democratic Party. “Out of 109 delegates from Minnesota, 50 of
them are people of color.” Douglas continues, “When you think of our
state, you think of movies like Fargo where there aren’t any Black
people. But guess what, we do have diversity!”

Kate Snyder filed video blogs for WKYC in Cleveland and wrote as Eravial at SpaceFem Forum about her role as the youngest delegate from Ohio.

I am currently writing from Denver, Colorado,
where I am at the Democratic National Convention! At age 18, I am the
youngest member of the Ohio delegation, and one of the youngest in the
country. The convention is at the same time exhausting and incredibly
exhilarating! Being a delegate is an amazing opportunity, since there
are few better ways to gain exposure to party politics. I was elected
as a Hillary Clinton delegate back in January for Ohio's 14th
Congressional District, and after the March 4th primary, Clinton's
success in my district ensured that I would be attending the DNC. Since
then, it had been a whirlwind of planning and preparing with the Ohio
Democratic Party. Sunday, I left my Rice University freshman
orientation to fly to Denver.

Kay Steiger at Pushback posted this video from a female college student, 21, who drove to Denver from Missouri thinking she could "make a difference" by volunteering at the DNC. The economy is her top concern.

Finally, I spent some time with Tashea Brodgins, president of the Baltimore City Young Democrats and a Marylander concerned about her ability to participate with many older delegates entrenched and the small number of delegates allowed. Credentials were hard to come by for Tashea and other young people, she said, but Maryland Democratic Party leaders had been there to help her out.

She said that no matter how hard it was, it was worth it to be a part of this event. With political aspirations of her own, she refuted claims of some longer-serving delegates who said the newbies were in it for the moment. She said that she's in it for the long haul.

Laurie White writes at LaurieWrites.

First day of school, and the rest of my life

Denise just posted over at BlogHer about the first day of school, wanting to know who takes pictures of that annual milestone. Now, you know I don't have kids, but last September, I have to admit that I did take a picture on the first day of school: of myself.

It was my first day of graduate school at the University of Maryland, in journalism. I'd failed out of the program as an undergraduate approximately 18 years prior, although I stuck it out and graduated from the university in another major. It never felt right, though, never felt like I'd done what I set out to do there, so I was back to mark this off my list of things that hadn't worked out that I could control (much shorter list, as it turns out, than the other "can't control it" one.)

That is me, standing in front of one of the many statues of Maryland's mascot, Testudo the terrapin (not a turtle. NOT a turtle. Get it right or some asshole in a red and white sweatshirt will bring the beatdown. It won't be me, but that's what I'm supposed to say or they'll revoke my last season of basketball tickets and that is among the joys I discovered this year.)

This is part of the post I wrote about it then.

First day of school below. Dork! (And that's melted mascara combined with exhaustion...and a couple of happy tears that I may or may not admit to. Milestones, man. Gotta love 'em...sometimes.)

I actually tagged this "First day of school" on Flickr, which of course I said was a dorky thing to do, but it was a long-forgotten feeling to be that proud of myself, to have followed through on something that I really wanted to do, that I had an idea would change my life for the better after eight years of knocking around back in Maryland, never satisified, sadly more worried about what the man who'd spent a lot of that time with me was finally, oh God please finally, going to do. And then when he finally did it (something I supported, no matter what it meant for me) I was standing there with hands not entirely empty but holding nothing I wanted, and a head that was so confused I HAD NO IDEA ABOUT ANYTHING AT ALL.

I found photography and I honestly believe that saved my life. Photography and blogs were my anchor, and I moved into a world of words and pictures that increasingly had little to do with my day to day, with a job I liked but where I felt I didn't fit anymore. I had an idea that school could save me, give me the connections and the kick in the ass I needed to make the changes, so somehow in this confusion I filled out applications and did writing samples and got letters of recommendation with no idea what I was going to do about it if I got accepted into either of the two programs I thought would work for me. And then I got into both of them. After a brief consideration of giving into my newfound crush on New York and completely impoverishing myself in Manhattan, I decided to go back to where they kicked me out a long time ago.

It's a year later now, blahblahblah, and I only have the online news bureau to go in the fall and then I'm unbelievably done. I concentrated in online journalism, which I'm still glad I did, even though it's quite clear now that very few people  - including me - really know what that exactly means. I have no idea what I'm doing most of the time, besides defending blogs against the journalistic literati, including a 25 year old who quotes Pound with a very serious face. This is also why you'll often find me wasting my time on Facebook and laughing myself stupid over LOLcats and Top Chef recaps, which are helpful activities in spite of the fact that they deter me from new media domination, because I do not have to put down my wine glass to participate in them.

What I didn't know a year ago was extensive and nearly crippling and could and has filled many blog posts, text messages, Twitter updates, tearful phone conversations, dinners with more wine and late night deadline iChat rants. I have typed literally a million words, I think, deleted almost that many, taken approximately 10,000 pictures, and I just pray that Virginia the MacBook will make it to December (after Woolf, so I'm a lit dork too, yeah.)

I have been straight crazy for most of this year, it must be said. I have gained so much weight, too much for what my body is comfortable with. I have been to Vietnam. I have stood on a stage and read a very personal essay out loud to hundreds of people, which, as it happened, was a pretty big deal in my endless quest to not be crazy and to get used to participating in community where I find it. I have left a devastating but nonetheless seminal relationship behind and in that process been a messy and ridiculous mess of a person. More importantly, perhaps, I have learned not to care what other people think about that...so much, because it's just what happened for me and it's how I felt about it and that's the 5 W's of that. I have gone through the primary season without even a vague picture of what kind of world we'll have in a year and that scares me to death. I have pissed some people off and gotten into some less-than-stellar conversations that may in some quarters mark me as someone who needs her prescription refilled right now this minute. I have blown some important deadlines and been a lazy reporter. I've also gotten a few things right - I like the stuff I write online, for the most part. I've taken some pictures I'm proud of. I got a print magazine assignment that was a personal and professional milestone for me, which was kind of the point of all of this anyway.

I have also lost a grandmother and a dog since that September day, to what Elton John calls the circle of life, but I just call a big fucking hammer that comes at your head when you're the last one standing, when it's you dying of course, and to a lesser degree when you're the one watching it come down. (Yes, death wields a similar, slightly smaller hammer for bystanders. You just get to stay conscious for longer.)

Now they're sending me to the convention in Denver next week and I've started quietly freaking out about that too. I have never been more worn out in my life, but somehow, I have to wring the rag out and keep going. I don't see an endpoint here, which is no doubt a good thing, but damn am I tired a lot. I am a master procrastinator, I can whine, I am really good at getting on my own nerves.

Almost a year later I am older, and a little bit wiser, and certainly, yes, fatter and more recalcitrant. I am less prone to tears than I was this spring, but I'm still sad about the way things have gone in my personal life. I have four months to go til I'm unleashed out of the academic structure again, and I have no idea what I'm going to do. I am completely freaked out and at the same time oddly calm, much like descriptions of people who rob banks. I am still really impatient and occasionally I will call fellow highway drivers very, very bad names.

What I do know now though, as vague and changeable as it is, is what keeps me from completely imploding into myself. I know that no matter how difficult this process is, no matter how hard it has been as a woman in her late 30s to partially chuck a stable career and take on a project that has required emotional, physical and mental work for which I often feel quite ill-prepared, no matter how much I've felt like this was the worst and most incredibly stupid idea to ever be put into motion, I have never, not once, thought it was the wrong thing to do.

Never. And you'd have to be me or someone very close to me to know just how monumental that is. I think most decisions are wrong at some point. I analyze everything on a level that few normal people can withstand. I doubt and worry and ponder until my neurons are audible in their efforts to bail out of my brain for higher ground. I feel responsible for everything. Rest assured, if I know you, if we've had even one innocuous or perhaps awkward conversation, I felt responsible for how it went, or for your feelings, or for your need to get a cup of coffee or your next life decision. I believe, incorrectly, that I am in charge of the outcome for the world at large so I'd better get my shit together.   

This time I actually accomplished that in some small way. It was all for me, and it wasn't and still is not totally popular, and I did it anyway. So thank you, first day of school, 2007, which just like every day, but particularly that one, was the first day of the rest of my life. I'm sure I'll take a picture of the last first one, in a couple of weeks, which may or may not include Testudo. Or Kermit. 

(Jim Henson is my favorite fellow Maryland graduate, and this statue of him and Kermit is outside of the student union.)

Sorrow is a Dan

Professor: For this assignment you'll produce three images that really reflect your college experience

Dan (to me): So for you that's Def Leppard!

Me: Shut up, Dan.

Inoculated

I've had my shots.

Apparently there are some health risks inherent in traveling to parts of the world you've never been to before. Yesterday I had to spend $150 on vaccinations for the (rapidly approaching, shoot me please I don't have time to travel 10,000 miles twice and still get all my shit done, help me oh God why am I doing this? Oh, right.) trip to Vietnam in March. I've already spent a zillion dollars on a new camera (Nikon D80, sorry there's been no birth announcement of THAT baby yet...I am such a blog slacker, but honestly I'm still making friends with it), and an expedited passport, and I still have to deal with the not-small issue of whether or not I'm going to buy a smaller laptop because taking my Macbook seems really, really stupid in addition to all the other very heavy stuff I'll be carrying.

Did I mention how frail I am? And also that said center of my universe Macbook is currently not working? That yesterday I plugged it in and it was all, "Haha, you expect me to work? Because you have no time for me not to? And that you might care that every ounce of information you need to conduct your life is inside this dark, hellish screen? HA! Way to take me for granted, stupid human."

If my cute little Apple Store genius man does not tell me in approximately one hour and 45 minutes that this is a result of a suddenly-faulty charger, please brace yourself world for the screams.

Seriously, I cannot freak, all the while I am currently freaking. But this was not supposed to be about that. Shots. Yes.

I went to the campus health center yesterday which houses an International Travel Clinic, all capitalized and shit, because we are a major four-year research institution. It was actually a fairly good experience as those go that involve getting stuck with needles. I waded through the sea of apparently rapidly expiring college students littering the waiting room, flu germs swimming in the air, to go to the second floor and meet with a real-live doctor. She told me I needed a Hepatitis A shot, a combo cocktail of "Tetanus/Diphtheria/Pertussis", and a series of typhoid vaccine pills. Pertussis is Whooping Cough, which apparently is making a comeback in adults who "haven't had boosters", in case you were fresh out of things to worry about this fine winter's day.

Me (because I must torture the people with my pressing need to know): What is WHOOPING cough?
Doctor: Well, it's an upper respiratory condition that results in a cough with a WHOOPING sound.
Evil voice inside my head: Well, YEAH.
Me (see above): I'm just not sure what WHOOPING sounds like. I remember my grandmother talking about it but no one I know has ever had it.
Doctor: I'm not sure I've heard it, because I'm an internist. The pediatrician here has seen cases. 
Me: Probably best to avoid it, regardless.

She also said that I need to acquire insect repellent that has at least 25 percent DEET, which will probably set me spinning because again, frail. (I just made myself laugh. Rock.) Also, she mentioned Immodium, and wrote me a prescription for Cipro, the anti-Anthrax drug, which you're supposed to take if Immodium doesn't work and you've somehow stumbled into the jaws of intestinal death.

There's really not a better way to feel all warm and fuzzy inside before noon than to have someone say things like, "Eat no fruit or salad" and "insect-borne diseases can be really serious so you need to take precautions." I have no idea what Hanoi will be like. I'm not afraid of it, not at all, but I have never traveled to Asia and much of what I read tells me to literally and figuratively fasten my seatbelt. It's really exciting, but I don't want to do anything stupid or get sick and ruin my time and more importantly my ability to work while I'm there. A good chunk my work for the semester will be based on what I do in Vietnam - pictures, footage, interviews. I have to be at full strength.

It's not like we're sleeping in the open air, it's a hotel that has a home on TripAdvisor and everything. But without going into too much nauseating detail, dude, I have the worst stomach in the WORLD right now. This is not an unusual circumstance, not at all, but I am a mess. It's quite possible that Vietnamese food and water will improve my situation. But 20 hours on a plane will not, so I'm actually looking to go on some kind of pre-trip gastric IronWoman training program or something. Google has so far not been forthcoming with that.

The shots weren't bad. I am the best little soldier, really, which is a result of having scalpels and needles wielded in my direction since I was six weeks old, I'm pretty sure. Seriously, you think this sense of humor is organic? Listen to doctors and nurses and admissions types ramble on for most of your formative years and you'll quickly learn to go to your own happy place.

The nurse yesterday told me to wiggle my toes, first on my right foot and then on my left, which I thought was some kind of accupressure technique for blood flow, but it turns out that there I go, complicating things AGAIN. After it was over she said that thinking about your toes takes the focus off the needle going in your arm. It could be the ADD, but I am completely capable of wiggling my toes while still directing the majority of my energy to the sharp thing puncturing my skin just a few feet north. Just sayin'.

She told me my arm would hurt from the tetanus, and it does.  I took one typhoid pill last night, and have to take three more on alternate days through the end of the week. That is a live vaccine in a capsule, and has to be refrigerated. It's a very involved process but it's kind of interesting, actually, to read about all the terrible things that can possibly befall you when you venture off of your continent.

I had terrible nightmares last night that I was in some kind of grave medical distress and my mother called an ambulance that somehow never came. Most dreams can currently be interpreted to reflect an unmet or rapidly approaching deadline, which is the current (due tomorrow! At least a draft!) story of my life. We leave for this trip in three weeks, and believe me I am really excited, and additionally a little bit overwhelmed. I'll just be relieved when we touch down in Hanoi, and not just because it's a 15 hour plane trip to Korea and then five more to Vietnam. I'm really ready to get this show on the road.

School starts tomorrow and I'm a little nervous and also itchy. Itchy because it's been really cold for the past few weeks and the air's so dry that my skin's going down the tubes of aridity with it. ITCH. ITCH. ITCH. I can't remember ever having this much of a problem in the winter. Annoying, random itch, on my elbow or on my toe, like just underneath the hoodie or the sock or God forbid through my jeans where I can't reach it. Try to scratch yourself through denim, and fail. Sucks.

Now it's almost 2 a.m. and I should have been asleep a long time ago. I'm more nervous about this semester than I was the first one for some reason. Things are coming together now. I need to produce. I need to get into the groove quickly and crank out at least two full-length stories this semester that are acceptable for major publications. I got my syllabus for the Vietnam class - International Reporting - in my e-mail the other day and there is so much to do and think about and plan for that. We leave in a month and a half and before then we have to build our stories from the ground up. I have some ideas and I know how I hope it will go, but I also know that I have absolutely no idea how this is all going to turn out. None.

I think our break was almost too long. I think I forgot how to write. It'll be good to get back to goals again, even if I am terrified that I'll have a clip requirement in my reporting class, which has the added bonus of not counting towards the credits for my degree. I've honestly never worked harder at anything academically than I did the sum total of my classes last semester, and this four month span promises to be more of the same, so I hope I can regenerate my momentum and keep it going until May. And hopefully the itching will stop by then too.

(hopefully) Hanoi Rocks

I am going to Vietnam for ten days in March.

I am so excited. I just don't think this is a place I would have taken myself, at least not with any great confidence. I have never been to Asia, and have always been interested in traveling there, and it will be great to go with a purpose and a construct for the trip, and a charge to tell stories about the places and people. This will be happening in the context of a semester-long international reporting class. We'll study Vietnam for the first part of the semester, go there over spring break, and then come back and write (hopefully) publishable pieces. They wanted a mix of print, broadcast and online people. It shocks me like few things do that I am one of three people that I know in my program in the online concentration. THREE. This really shocks me. I truly love print newspapers. Reading the paper, as in holding it in my hand and reading it has been one of my most consistent daily activities over the course of my life. The Washington Post is "my" paper and has been since my grandfather used to bring it home every day, because he had to take a special trip to get it. I don't know if it was ever sent to the house. He just bought it every day when he worked, and then when he retired he had to go to get lottery tickets and "a Post paper" every day. There used to be two papers in the city, and in that case he'd buy the Washington Star, before it stopped publishing when I was a kid.

This is where it started. When I first hit a city I get a newspaper. My whole family reads the Myrtle Beach Sun-Times every day on summer vacation. When my Aunt Dot was at the beach full-force on our big family trip, she'd go down and get the USA Today and the Sun-Times, and drop them off on the doormat of everyone's condo unit. As family members trickled down who maybe had to work over the weekend and couldn't get there until Monday or Tuesday, they'd bring multiple copies of the Post and it would get passed around on the beach, people rushing to claim the crossword puzzle. So I come by it genetically I guess.

I even read the Dayton Daily News every day, and loved it for what it was, which was a truly Dayton paper. I worked at Barnes & Noble where we'd get the Sunday papers from major cities on Monday or Tuesday, and I paid triple the cost of the Sunday Post many weeks of the five years that I lived in Ohio, when the news was a couple days old, just so I could get Book World and the magazine. I LOVE being in cities where I don't live on Sundays, because a Sunday newspaper is like the heart of a town for me, and I like to pretend that I really live there and go to a coffee shop and read the paper. I've done this in Tampa, Chicago, Phoenix and Austin, among other places. And therein you have a window to my strange little soul, and also confirmation that I am really quite easily satisfied.

But as much as I love the actual paper, which I've ended up writing about more than I intended, I am also completely fascinated by and obsessed with, I'll admit, the immediacy of the online environment and what that means for telling stories. So when I talked to the director about this trip, I said I wanted to take photos (on my mythical D80 which now really, really has to happen) and video, and also set up a website, and she was all excited about it. Like it was hard. ;) I honestly think that's a big reason why I'm going, because of my desire and ability to capture the experience on film and in posts. But my new theory is that as long as people view this audiovisual stuff as difficult, I'll have a gig. And whether it's hard or not, mechanically speaking, what matters is that you have a better than average eye, and aren't afraid to take the pictures in unfamiliar places. That, admittedly, is more challenging, and what is thoroughly charging me up about the prospect of this trip.

This is really, really why I went back to school. I didn't set out to go to Vietnam, specifically, or really to travel anywhere, although I admit I was hoping that was going to be part of it somehow, I just didn't know where or when. I've embraced ambiguity on so many complex levels at this point that I'm much more comfortable answering questions with "I don't know," and I mostly don't mind if people aren't satisfied with that answer. I'm still working on whether I'm okay with it, and that takes up enough space that I'm not interested in inviting other people beyond my most important family and friends into my daily psychodrama at this point. ;) But it's amazing that what has been often said to me is true, that when you just jump in, stuff happens. Pretty basic. The hard part is the waiting for it, whatever it is that signifies to you that this, this stuff is the good stuff - the stuff for which all other (often aggravating, boring, daily grind stuff) is preamble. And I just have to say, I am COMPLETELY RIDICULOUSLY FUCKING AMPED about this particular STUFF, and a little bit embarrassed because like Wilbur the pig I am grossly humble, to say that I'm proud of myself for taking the chances I've taken in the past couple years, which have more or less amounted to putting one foot in front of the other lots of times when I was scared out of my anxiety-ridden little mind, and thought I was too old, and thought I was too scared of flying, or whatever.

And I'm also completely grateful to my university, it must be said, who let me back in to get this show back on the road, and who will be paying the freight for us to go, plus for a hotel in Hanoi and translators, who will come in very handy, and also for breakfast every day, I think.

When I sent in the university application forms, I had no conscious knowledge that this was a workable or advisable plan. I just did it knowing it had to be done, because as interesting and thrill-ride-like as I seem hellbent on making a standard trip to the mall, I didn't want to be the same anymore. I knew that the next act, as it were, had to be different, that I had to work that other 80 percent of my brain that maybe was left a little softer than it should be, and mostly deal with a nameless, faceless fear that seemed to have become my primary driver. I needed to go beyond the confines of comfort, outside of familiar mental geography, if not physical, and complete the only thing in my life that I really regretted that was within my control - finishing school. It shocked me when people assumed they knew stuff about me that to me was never a done deal. I never intended to just stay here, although there's nothing really wrong with that either, so there. You can do amazing things up the street as well as you can do them all over the world. There is no point to prove.

We won't have press visas so it's not like I can do any huge expose of anything, and that's not really the kind of story I tell anyway. I'd be happy to write about Vietnamese musicians, or street artists, or what it's like to be over 30 and single in a society that's really just taken off economically - for some? (key words.) I want to take as many pictures or more as I write words. By the end of March I guess I'll know how it should all come together. I have a lot of work to do for this.

Here I am, feverishly researching whether or not there's a Starbucks in Hanoi. Priorities, must attend to priorities:

 

So now I need to ask for a Vietnamese language program for my birthday, because I have no idea how to even begin with that part. I'm poking around on Flickr (the greatest invention ever) through the hundreds of thousands of photos tagged with Vietnam and Hanoi and Saigon and on and on and on. My very best friend called to tell me that she was so happy that I was in such a different place than I was this time last year, namely a spot from which to handle the things that still suck in a way that is much more hopeful and always with an eye on what doesn't. My mother has (typically) already called the lady who does her nails who is lined up to give me tips on street bargaining. And I kind of love that my family and friends have started wondering where the hell I'll end up next. And that I don't know either.