burning bridges: baker? check!

Remember this series? No? That's okay. I've only written one post about past jobs so far and it was awhile ago. But I've been thinking about this idea a lot lately, since I worry some days that I might be kinda "burning bridges" with the, uh, forum that makes my current "job" possible. (A little constructive criticism never killed anyone! And anyway, like they care. Or notice.)

Anywho, where were we? Ah, yes, high school graduation! So my first "real" job outside babysitting and those sort of practice jobs you get while you're a student was in the bakery of the Northwest grocery chain Fred Meyer (no relation to Russ, as far as I can tell). I can't remember now why I applied there, or where else I applied, other than as a delivery driver for a new pizza joint. Minimum wage was pretty, well, minimal at the time and the pizza joint was offering a little more per hour but the bakery offered a few schedule options that worked really well with my community college course load at the time, the gals who worked there were really nice (I regularly hiked Black Butte with the lady who decorated the cakes), and, duh, baked goods.

The funny thing is the only product we actually baked there was fresh bread; everything else was delivered at the crack of dawn by trucks coming from the store's central bakery in, I don't know, Portland? In other words, I didn't really learn anything about baking. I was criticized for using too much icing on the cinnamon rolls, and that all-white uniform was doing me no favors, but otherwise I really enjoyed that job, my first "real" job.

And I was able to put that year of professional experience to use after relocating to Berkeley the following summer, but we'll save that one for another post.

burning bridges: F is for facetious

I've got one more maker in the middle post for you that I'll get to either tomorrow or next Wednesday. Etsy shut down my forum post pretty quickly, citing self-promotion, so only two sellers had a chance to reply before that happened. I guess I can see where they're coming from. And I guess it is a little like complaining about the boss at the office. Actually, it's more like complaining about the office building, or maybe the office manager? I don't know, I'm a little sloppy with my analogies. At any rate, that may be a short-lived series. In the meantime, and in the spirit of potentially burning bridges, I thought it would be fun to take a little stroll down the job section of memory lane since I'm clearly still deciding what I want to be when I grow up.When I was in high school I made the declaration that I wanted to have 20 jobs by the time I was 27 which, in hindsight, is a little nuts! I didn't quite reach that goal, but I've had at least 10 distinct jobs, maybe more depending on how you count different positions at the same place. Skipping over babysitting entirely, let's get started, shall we?

First up is a summer position between junior and senior years of high school. This was one of those high school summer work programs, that paired students with low-paying positions in various locations around Patch Barracks, where we lived at the time. I was assigned to some sort of architectural office and what I remember of the 5 or 6 hours I worked there each day for about six weeks of my summer vacation involves reorganizing their supply closets. Surely I did more than that, right? It was easily one of the most boring jobs I've ever had. After "work" I'd go to the base gym for a couple of hours (really, like, 2 hours!) until my Dad got off work and we'd drive home. There was a real tool of a guy who worked there who kind of gave me a hard time. At one point he laughed and said he was just being facetious. Facetious? I had to look up the meaning of the word and, to this day, I always think of that guy when I hear that word. And I'm not being facetious. Anyway, my career in boring office work had officially begun!

PS: Yes, that's a picture of me from around that time. This image was taken during a soccer tournament, as we waited for our turn to play, but I'd imagine this is how my face looked most of the time I was at this particular summer job.

burning bridges: wayfinding

I wrote about how I got my start in the glamorous world of offices, as part of this "burning bridges" blog series, back in 2014. My first administrative gig was in a suite of law offices in uptown Oakland between 1997 and 2003. After several jobs in food service during my late teens, the switch to office work was welcome. Writing about it in 2014, after several subsequent office jobs but before my most recent, which ended this past August, I still reflected on that experience positively (this was also before I experienced the increased need to move constantly and monitor every calorie taken in as one ages that Heather Havrilesky details in this hilarious post about her treadmill desk). With this post, I'd like to focus in on the world of arts administration specifically, across the social, museum, and educational aspects of that broad field. "Artists in offices" that support the arts.

I've been mulling over this post for awhile, knowing I wanted to combine talking about the couple of jobs I had between college and grad school (after my summer in France and last year of college working for an artist and professor at UC Berkeley) but feeling like it made sense to lump those positions together with the one I was currently experiencing. Until this past summer. It's been about a month and a half since I became unemployed-by-choice. Lots has happened in that time: my sciatica flared up, I got bangs (again), I've lost anywhere from 2 to 7 pounds, depending on the time of day I weigh myself, I've spent time getting up to speed as a volunteer at both Cat Town and Oakland Animal Services, while fostering a cat from the latter for the former, and I turned 40.

'Heavenly', very early stages sneak peek

Aside from making very little money (from the occasional Etsy order) I have no regrets. I spend about half of the traditional work week with the kids (dragging them to as many art shows as possible), and the other half, now that I'm feeling mostly caught up on miscellaneous projects around the house, in the studio. I have fairly specific goals for the academic year: complete as many of the dozen additions to my portfolio as possible (we can call them paintings for now; collectively I'm referring to this new work as 'Heavenly') by about April 2018, and finish the screenplay I started a couple of years ago. Truth be told I have a much longer list of projects I'd like to complete, but I'm trying really hard to focus on those two for now.

Backing up to 2002, however, with college graduation looming, despite already having a job, I remember desperately looking for a different job that even remotely utilized my degrees in Art Practice and French; I was ready to move on from the world of law office management. I think the search only lasted about three or four weeks, but it felt like much longer at the time. Eventually I got a part-time job as an administrative assistant for the support group (museum members who pay a little more each year to further support a specific department) of the works on paper department at the Legion of Honor, part of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. For the first year I worked there, I hated it. I didn't have a car so I took two buses followed by a 15 minute walk to get there from my apartment in Oakland. I remember it being consistently foggy for the first several months I worked there (a typical summer in San Francisco is foggy but from what I recall this was a particularly gloomy summer). 'Eternal Egypt' was the traveling exhibition on view when I started and I remember people joking daily about the 'Eternal Fog'. On top of that, during my walk through the golf course that surrounds the museum, I was routinely attacked by birds I can only guess were nesting in the hedges that lined the trail. Eventually I started taking a third bus for that last leg of the roughly 90-minute, one-way commute, then resumed walking after a couple of months when, I'm guessing, the baby birds got kicked out of their nests.

I was still working occasional hours at the law offices to make ends meet, managing the law library and putting in a few hours here and there for the immigration firm. Right before my one-year anniversary at the museum, I turned down a full-time job offer from that firm. It's a decision I've once or twice regretted, but at the time, I wanted to stick out this whole arts administration thing, setting my sights, eventually, on getting my MFA. Shortly after, I had the opportunity to interview for a very similar position at a non-profit arts organization focused on networking opportunities for women in the arts (not artists, I might add; curators, writers, art historians, etc.). I got the job and officially quit, once and for all, my on-again, off-again gig at the law offices. Most weeks I worked just four days a week - two in SF, two at home - reserving Fridays and weekends for studio time. It was around then (summer 2003) that I began working on the portfolio I would submit to graduate schools. I was waitlisted that first round so I spent a third year at both part-time gigs, and tried again (with success!).

Getting ready to take meeting minutes as a "fly on the wall" in a Pacific Heights home in 2003 or so.

I eventually grew to really enjoy the museum gig. After the one-year learning curve, it was pretty easy. I hated the commute (even after getting a car), even just twice a week, but I loved the location, once I got there, and enjoyed most of the folks I worked with. Since I worked with the support group's board of directors, all volunteers, of course, I had a lot of autonomy and decent flexibility, both of which I now know I really enjoy and require in order to thrive in a position. My other gig, though great in part because I worked mostly from home, was a bit more manic - I had some really fantastic experiences and some pretty awful days, too. I blame it somewhat on the nature of the organization I worked for (versus museum work or work in higher education). But do I really want to burn this bridge to the ground? Ultimately, my main complaint was that I felt I was living a double life. Case in point, when I announced in the spring of 2005 that I was leaving at the end of summer for grad school, even after correcting people, they were convinced I was going to pursue my PhD in art history (wrong!).

Fast-forward ten years, one master's degree, two cross-country moves, and two kids later. I've written at length about my full-circle experience enabling my side-hustle habit via Etsy, so I won't get into that again here. I'll just add that throughout the process of building my itty-bitty business and hanging out with my toddler, I applied several times to "real" jobs. Initially out of grad school, of course, I wanted to teach. Art. At the college level. In the stank economy that was 2008-2009. LOL. After two years of that I focused my attention on jobs very much like the two I had before going to grad school (this is where the possible regret around turning down that full-time law office gig comes into play). When I found myself considering applying to the very same job I'd had several years earlier, before a cross-country move and expensive degree, I refocused my Etsy efforts. But after baby #2, I struggled to drum up enough business to justify even part-time childcare or preschool. I looked again to arts administration and eventually applied to a job that was far from my first choice but one I was perfectly qualified to do based on previous experience. And I did it. For 2 1/2 years.

There's no real juicy drama to share here (that I'll save for the memoir I'll write after a successful career as a painter and screenwriter). I just wasn't happy. Late 2016 into 2017 was tough, on so many levels. And, as I mentioned before, I was approaching midlife crisis status. My cat died, a mini vacation was canceled, my husband lost his job, and Trump was elected President. And then I saw Moana. Now, I've talked with many women who identify with Moana at various stages of her narrative arc. Some have already overcome some major challenge and identify with Moana at the end of the movie, after she learns to sail and (spoiler alert) returns the heart to Te Fiti. I'm not there yet, and certainly one year ago I very much identified with Moana at the beginning of the movie, when she doesn't know exactly what she's after but she knows she's not happy with her current situation. I think a lot of creative folks can identify; it's a place we return to many times over the course of a creative life and career. Moana's wayfinding is basically "design thinking" (as it's by now been borrowed and made trendy by Silicon Valley). Coming to this realization was liberating. Instead of feeling like a professional failure, rather than feeling "stuck" in a navigational sense, I began to view my most recent work experience as one of a handful of possibilities or "prototypes". Like Moana, I didn't know exactly what I wanted, but I knew I was longing for something else, drawn to it over and over again despite how many times I resigned myself to being satisfied with where I was and what I was doing. This desire to rapidly prototype one's way through life by tackling many different projects while holding down multiple day jobs, isn't a deviation or distraction from any one right path. For me, there is no one, right path. I've failed often. I'm not a navigator; I'm a wayfinder. Indeed, that's what this whole "burning bridges" series is all about, like Maui tells Moana, "knowing where you are by knowing where you've been."

burning bridges: leave me alone

Do you ever get a song stuck in your head? Not an earworm, exactly, but a song that's easily triggered or a tune you hum doing a particular activity? For example, I have no idea why, but I often find myself launching into "Singing in the Rain" each evening while cleaning up the kitchen. Is it the water from washing the dishes? I have no idea. Lately, though, I've been repeating this little mantra over and over again:

Leave me alone, leave me alone

All alone all alone

All by myself

Those are three lines from They Might Be Giants' song "Fingertips", off of their 1992 album Apollo 18. Yes, I’m craving solitude while I’m almost never alone. Maybe because I’m never alone. Like craving chocolate when you're on a diet. The closest I get to alone time is running at 5:30 in the morning, which is why I do it at that time. When randomly presented with the opportunity to run on a weekend afternoon, for example, I’m all, “the people! the sun! my backside in these running tights!” No, before dawn is much better.

It's okay, studio spider. You can stay.

But there’s more to it than that. I don't consider myself to be a shy or quiet person but I don’t mind being alone, either. In fact, I like it. I think I need it from time to time. And I think it has something to do with being an artist, having a creative mindset that demands some space and time and distance from everything and everyone else in my life. This all dovetails nicely into thinking about picking up on my "burning bridges" series and the work I did toward the end of college for painter and professor Katherine Sherwood.

I first met Katherine in a mixed media class at UC Berkeley. I don't have a lot of memories from that class other than creating crocheted "bills" with the symbols for various stitches embroidered on them in response to her assignment to create a currency thinking about value. I did and still do very much value my time in the studio and the time it takes to craft something. Anyway, I went on to take a painting class with her and an independent study in my final year. It was during that semester that she asked me to work as her research assistant on a new class she was developing titled Art, Medicine, and Disability. And when she first taught the class during the first semester after my graduation, I stayed on as a sort of post-undergraduate teaching assistant.

I loved it. Easily one of my favorite gigs. In addition to helping compile and continually tweak the class reader, I checked out slides for her lectures, helped coordinate visitors, and gave a couple of presentations over the course of the semester. It was also during this time that my caffeine addiction began since she'd give me enough money each of the two weekdays I worked for her to run across the street from Kroeber Hall to Cafe Strada to buy her coffee (a half-caf latte with whole milk, if I remember correctly) and treat myself to a white chocolate mocha. Might as well start with the best, right? 

Anyway, after that semester the work passed on to other current undergrads. Katherine wrote recommendation letters for my grad school applications but other than that we've lost touch, even though I've been back in the Bay Area for almost six years and have visited Kroeber Hall several times (which in itself is such a strange experience, how things can change so drastically and yet stay almost exactly the same). But I've been thinking of her lately because of something she said in an interview she gave during the time I was working for her. I came across my hard copy of works + conversations a few months ago, flipped right to this page, and her thoughts on solitude have stuck with me since. You can read the entire interview here. Editor Richard Wittaker is discussing the idea of seeing art in the studio.

RW: You mentioned earlier that you wouldn't want people to see your art here in your studio, that it's such a private space, and there's something about the privacy of art making, that's...

KS: ...that's very essential for me. I long for that solitude that I can get in the studio.

RW: Is there anything more you can say about that?

KS: For me, that's where art is made. I love the fact that I get to go to my studio and work by myself.

"Long(ing)" for "solitude". "Work by myself." Yes. Me, too. One day.

burning bridges: pink toilet paper

Me, atop the Dune du Pilat, about 60 km west of Bordeaux, France.
Summer 2000.

Last time I updated this series, I wrote about my work with painter/professor Katherine Sherwood while an undergrad at UC Berkeley. Turns out I skipped over a summer internship with a bit of a twist. In 2000, less than a year after transferring to Cal, I decided to apply to a summer exchange program to supplement my French major, since, as a transfer student, I didn't want to be abroad for an entire year or even a semester. The main reason I decided to double-major, after all, was to extend my credit "ceiling" which allowed me to spend three years at Berkeley instead of just two. So during the summer of 2000 I traveled first to Paris, then to Bordeaux, as part of a work exchange program with the goal of being perhaps not fluent exactly but certainly "conversational" in French by summer's end.  My exact goal was to be able to watch French films without subtitles and more or less understand the plot.

For most of my 11 weeks abroad I completed a "stage", or internship, at the Office of Tourism. Normally in these "burning bridges" posts, I write about the job. But the job itself was mind-numbingly boring, with most of my journal entries from that summer about other things like the pink toilet paper in Paris, the dog poop problem, and the incredible food (skip to the post-script below if that's all you're really interested in). I was led to believe I'd be working in the information area of the Office of Tourism but they stuck me instead in one of the offices upstairs, where I interacted with just a handful of regular employees each day and spent most of my time translating various documents into English and responding to email and phone inquiries in, you guessed it, English. “I’m not at information nor will I ever be, hence no need for all the navy blue skirts and white blouses I bought,” the dress code for the folks who worked the floor, so to speak. Seriously, that was really challenging, like trying to find school uniforms to fit a grown woman. Anyway, while this occupation did little to enhance my French speaking ability, I was a whiz on French keyboards by the end of my internship. And I spent much of the first three weeks and a bit of the last week or two on free walking tours, "dégustations" (wine tastings), day-trips to nearby châteaux, etc. The days I did no sightseeing could be summed up in four sad words: "all work, no wine."

While in Bordeaux, I stayed with a host family, the son of which was participating in the same program, working at Great America in Santa Clara. I'd grown pretty fond of my host family by the time I returned home in August but initially found the entire experience to be incredibly awkward and frustrating. My hostess spoke little English, criticized me for not dressing "elegantly" enough for shopping in Le Bouscat, a suburb of Bordeaux, and took me on epic sightseeing adventures that had us visiting old churches and castles until 9 or 10 p.m. most balmy Sunday evenings. One of my most vivid memories is when she picked me up from the train station and I complained, in French, that my trees (mes arbres), not my arms (mes bras), were tired from schlepping my luggage through Paris during the first three or four days of my summer in France. Talk about first impressions.

My French hostess, elegantly dressed in a skirt and heels for a rainy tour of a medieval town.

Other than all the free tours and wine-drinking in and around Bordeaux, I spent, as I mentioned already, my first few and last couple of days in Paris, where I'd been a few times before (lucky gal that I was to spend grades 4 through 12 in Germany and England). I love Paris. I could totally live there. Additionally, I spent one mid-summer weekend in Toulouse, and a few weekends away with my host family, first on the Ile d'Oléron, where they were spending their August vacation, and my final full weekend in Blois, for a traditional French wedding. I could write entirely separate posts about each of these weekend adventures!

Ile d'Oléron at sunset. Just heavenly.

I saw just two movie-theater movies: Le Gout des Autres and Les Destinées Sentimentales. I developed a bit of a film-crush on Emmanuelle Beart, writing in my journal that she had "a great face." The films were, obviously, not subtitled and sure, I got the gist of what was going on. Mission accomplished!

The final entry in my journal, written during my final night in Paris before my flight home to SFO, details the few regrets I had about my summer in France, primarily this: "Didn’t ever get around to writing in here in French! But, see, if I read this in, say, twenty years after I’ve forgotten all my French I’ll be glad I stuck with English." Writing "twenty years" probably seemed like an exaggeration at the time but here I am, going through my box of Bordeaux memories 15 years later. And yes, I'm glad I wrote my journal in English!

PS - A few more words about the incredible food...

Most breakfasts consisted of croissant or baguette with jam, coffee or cocoa, juice, and occasionally yogurt. Dinners in Bordeaux with my host family were usually buffet style and served outside since it's so hot there in the summer. Some examples include: “first some tomatoes, tabouli, and spicy chicken wings, then salad, then some cheese and bread, and finally apricots for dessert.” Another night: “first some radishes and bread, then salad with tomatoes and cucumbers and a piece of ham, cheese and more bread, and strawberries for dessert.” And another example: “half of an avocado, followed by a green salad with these little crab meat stick things, bread and cheese (of course), and pudding for dessert.” One more example: chestnut mousse one night for dessert, following a dinner of salad, 3-cheese “tart”, and bread & cheese. Weekend lunches were the heartiest and most formal: “melon, some sort of beef thing and fries, bread and cheese, and cherries for dessert.” This next example, I wrote,  "lasted four hours!" - aperitif & hors d’oeuvres of cheese trays and toast with salmon pate. This dinner called for fancy table settings including “little salt servers that resembled very small ashtrays with tiny little spoons.” First course was a salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage, and green peppers with vinaigrette and feta cheese, served with bread. There were two different kinds of meat - bayonne ham and “some sort of pork thing” served over green beans. “Also, some chicken McNugget things but with broccoli instead of chicken.” Full cheese course, with bread and for dessert - individual fruit tarts (I had lemon). Another Sunday lunch included “three aperitifs, mussels, cheese trays, and what essentially seemed like duck ‘bacon’ to me, followed by salmon pate hors d’oeuvres, some sort of duck main dish (too much! enough duck already!), served with berries and nectarines, cheese and bread, and chocolate gateau for dessert. The cake was so good - consistency of a great big brownie, served with creme anglaise.”

The Bastille Day Dinner that blew my mind: “I had some sort of gratin dish for starters, with avocado, cheese, some sort of seafood and a few mussels. The main dish was kind of like a salmon shish-kabob with some sort of very rich sauce and rice and for dessert … fondant au chocolat with creme anglaise. I don’t know exactly what ‘fondant’ means in English, nor have I ever had anything quite like this, but it was so tasty. Kind of like a cake but really dense, essentially fudge, but with a creamier ice cream-like taste. There were two slices of this swimming in creme anglaise and garnished with sliced almonds.”

Labor-intensive seafood on the Ile d'Oléron: "Lunch was an adventure - assiete des langoustines - like little lobsters, unbelievably difficult to eat, but delicious. 'Dos de maigre' was some sort of fish, for the entree, and nougat glacee for dessert." "Had my first real 'gaufre' with chestnut spread at the port." Another lunch at the port included family style "platters of seafood, again all very labor-intensive to eat - langoustines, shrimp, ocean snails, crevettes, mussels, oysters, and crab."

In short, lots of meat, much of it unidentifiable (or was it that I was in denial that I was eating a cute little bunny rabbit?). And cheese. Lots of cheese.

pandemic diaries: 3 years later

A few months ago I started rereading over 17 years of blogging, organizing posts into thematic google docs: grad school in Boston, life and work since, burning bridges, and of course, the pandemic diaries. The latter collection became a 50-page google document and over the past few weeks I’ve been rereading those posts and making notes for a 3-year anniversary update. Initially I was weirdly looking forward to doing this, but as we get closer to the 3-year mark (which I’ve always thought of as the last day my kids attended school in person before lockdown, as I wrote during week 42: “the last day the kids attended in-person school…is how I'm keeping track of time during this pandemic”), I felt less and less motivated to continue, which I think is indicative of how my memory works. I was remembering the things I’m oddly nostalgic for, and had pushed aside memories of far less pleasant things like a full year of distance learning. I’m grateful I blogged as much as I did, especially in the first year, but reliving that time through these posts, sporadic though they’ve become, has predictably reignited a lot of mixed feelings. 

Faking It

1970s rock band America’s song ‘Sister Golden Hair’ randomly came on in my Spotify playlist the other day and I was struck by the lyrics, these posts all swimming around in my head these past few weeks:

I've been one poor correspondent
And I've been too, too hard to find
But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind
Will you meet me in the middle?
Will you meet me in the air?
Will you love me just a little?
Just enough to show you care?
Well, I tried to fake it
I don't mind sayin', I just can't make it

It’s a little dark, I know, but I think a lot of us, especially working parents, are faking it in more ways than perhaps we were pre-pandemic. As I reread the pandemic diary posts I traveled back through the weirdest three years of my life thus far, oddly nostalgic for the slowed pace of life in the early days (and things like weekday family morning walks, something that’s simply not feasible now), traumatized by distance learning…

It's a weird time, wrapping up week 10 of the school year, as we simultaneously settle into a somewhat sustainable routine (we could do this forever!) that is also somehow mildly torturous. And the very people who keep reminding parents that this is an unprecedented crisis situation turn around and dismiss, whether intentionally or not, how incredibly challenging this has been and continues to be for kids, parents, families, relationships, etc. I can feel deep gratitude for jobs we can do from home, space and technology for school work to happen, and our continued health while also refusing to sugar-coat how far from ideal distance learning has been and continues to be.

…and the social anxiety caused by things like "pandemic pods," feeling a sense of loss for where my life was finally going before the pandemic…

Still trying to recover from the pandemic in this way, my life pre-pandemic finally starting to settle into a nice mix of work, studio, family, and all the other stuff - all of which was skewed during the pandemic.

…and literally grieving the loss of someone very dear to me, not directly due to COVID (a very COVID-era quote about this loss: “I take some comfort in knowing she died in her home, surrounded by her adult children, not alone in a hospital”), but a relationship that COVID complicated, like so many. I wrote in week 23 that “I'm envious of people who find themselves surrounded by extended family and close friends” and this is still very true.

In a nutshell, what I wrote after the one summer camp of 2020 that did not get canceled ended predicted pretty accurately how I continue to feel now: 

The return to #momcamp last week was interesting. On the one hand, I didn't miss driving the kids to and from Fairyland twice each day. It was nice to return to having nothing really time-specific any given day, other than our various work meetings. But even then, if I have a meeting at 8 or 8:30 I only need to get myself ready, not myself plus two kids in order to leave the house and make it to point B by a specific time. I didn't miss making lunches, although obviously they needed lunch made at some point and it only took three weeks for me to forget how often they seem to need a snack of some sort. I enjoyed getting out with them each day for some sort of walk or hike, not something I'm as likely to do when I have an uninterrupted work block.

Beanbag Frog in 'The World Champion of Staying Awake'

Pandemic Time

The pandemic diaries began on March 16, 2020, the Monday after the kids’ final day of in-person school before lockdown. What characterizes my memories of those first few weeks is trying to establish some semblance of routine amidst general pushback to the idea of homeschooling or really providing any kind of structure, because we all thought this was going to be temporary (schools initially closed for two weeks plus spring break, then the rest of the 2019-20 school year, and then, here in Oakland, much or all, depending on grade, of the 2020-21 school year), a vibe that returned a year or so later when we were all so thoroughly burned out. Many parents of school-aged kids approached those initial weeks like a cross-country flight with a toddler, providing unlimited snacks and screen time. I wrote several times about how in Oakland this wasn’t exactly our first rodeo, having experienced school closures due to wildfire smoke, power outages, heavy rain (yes, we once had a “rain day”), and the teachers’ strike the previous year. But obviously nothing could have prepared us for the duration of this closure (about a month into the pandemic I wrote, “any anxiety around school being closed through the rest of the school year has morphed into anxiety around summer camp and beyond”).

The Plandemic

“Guess how I manage my anxiety?” I wrote that first Monday after lockdown. “I plan stuff, I put things on my calendar, I use my calendar to visualize how I'm going to get through the next three (plus?) weeks. I realize I can’t control everything (anything?) but this gives me back some sense of agency.” First time I talked to my Grandma on the phone after lockdown even she proclaimed, “you’re a planner!” While I did find things like the manifesto of the idle parent comforting in those early days (a copy of it still hangs on my fridge as a daily reminder), I looked to planning and sought structure as a way to manage anxiety and have some sense of control over the experience. Initially, and something I’d return to from time to time those first few months, I created a schedule of activities based loosely on the National Day Calendar of random (mostly food-related) holidays. Here’s a sample of things we did those first couple of months (and somewhat into the first summer break):

• We watched a panda documentary and made fork print panda art.
• We learned about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
• We made hot spinach artichoke dip.
• We watched a documentary about 3D printing.
• We learned about Rudolf Diesel and development of the diesel engine, biodiesel, etc.
• We watched Biggest Little Farm. Finally.
• Celebrated World of Flour Day by watching a documentary, checking out a relevant museum's website, having ravioli for lunch, and making salt dough.
• Learned about asteroids and stuff.
• Made chia pudding.
• Conducted a dancing raisins science experiment and made homemade chocolate covered raisins for National Chocolate Covered Raisin Day.
• Traumatized the 7yo by watching the first episode of the Netflix series 'Medal of Honor.'
• Dissected candy bars and designed wrappers for our own candy bar inventions for National Nougat Day.
• Ate a lot of guacamole.
• Made a couple of art ASMR videos (and pondered whether or not art ASMR a thing)

As I wrote toward the end of that first school year, I’m still good at “keeping myself too busy to give in to existential dread.”

A Day In The Life

Other than manage distance learning and other activities and playdates via Zoom, the kids started doing chores with us on the weekends, and weekly family movie night on Saturdays was born, a tradition that continues today. We stayed active and ventured outside every day, going on lots of neighborhood walks, plus I continued to run around Lake Merritt a couple of early mornings a week. “The downside right now, of course, is that there's nowhere to go, but that's also kind of the upside. In other words, I don't have to dream up some exciting plan or outing for each day.”

Eventually the 2019-20 school year ended. Here’s a compilation of Instagram stories I recorded throughout a day in the life of working from home with kids distance learning on the penultimate day of that first school year. Approaching that first summer break, I reflected on how “I could really use a respite from the day job after nearly three months of working from home while juggling distance learning, but where would we go?” Fairyland was the only summer camp that wasn't canceled. This is what I wrote about those three weeks of summer break: “Even after just a day, I can't accurately articulate how amazing it was, after 14 weeks of distance learning and mom camp, to have 5-6 uninterrupted hours to work. And for them, to be able to get a break from us, from our house, and interact, even from a distance, with other children...amazing.”

It wasn't all bad

I’m so Zoomed out now but some virtual stuff I genuinely enjoyed, like Oakland Zoo’s behind the scenes series every weekday at 2:30. It was a nice way to cap off the “school day”. As shown in the day in the life compilation, I enjoyed practicing piano via Yousician although I eventually plateaued, took a break, and have yet to get back to it. I did a paper folding workshop with designer Kelli Anderson (bought a kit that came by mail in advance of the Zoom workshop) and at one point during the 2020-21 school year, the then 2nd grader went on a virtual field trip to Luvin Farms in Colorado, not something they could have done as easily in real life, of course.

The day the skies turned orange

The most challenging stretch of lockdown was when the California wildfires were so bad that the air quality in the Bay Area was dangerously unhealthy and we were forced to stay indoors as much as possible.

September 9, 2020

“This picture does not do justice to the ORANGE skies we experienced last week," I wrote that day, "my iPhone trying awfully hard to auto-balance the apocalypse...It's a sobering realization that even if we weren't in the middle of a global pandemic, the kids would most likely still be out of school due to the smoke and lingering air quality issues.”

Silver Linings

Because we spent so much less time going places and schlepping kids to activities for over a year (I was also still working part-time at this point...I've since transitioned to full-time), I spent little chunks of time in the studio more consistently then than I do now, eventually wrapping up a project that started before the pandemic but took on new meaning with everyone at home all the time. I’ve yet to show this work, having submitted exhibition proposals to two venues so far, one of which rejected it, one of which I’ve yet to hear back from. 

Toward the end of the 2020-21 school year, after the then 2nd grader had moved to a hybrid schedule, spending a couple of afternoons each week at school, in person, the garden teacher handed out seeds for students to plant at home. We planted sunflower seeds in a little patch of dirt in our front yard and they grew to be about 7 feet tall. “It's not sourdough bread," I wrote, "but the results have a very early pandemic project vibe.” A few months later, we saw the Joan Mitchell show at SFMOMA for my birthday. About sunflowers, Mitchell wrote: “They look so wonderful when young and they are so very moving when they are dying.”

Keeping the lights on

No, I'm not referring to the Motel 6 slogan. Remember when Alanis Morisette performed her song Ablaze holding her young daughter on her hip? What parent wasn't desperately trying to do this every day, juggling work and their own health and sanity? "My mission is to keep the light in your eyes ablaze."

And while keeping the light in my kids' eyes ablaze will never not be my daily mission in life regardless of anything else going on around us, the pandemic diaries ended when this sort of thing no longer felt like an accurate description of our daily lives, from the New Yorker essay about Angela Garbes' book Essential Labor: "At one point, Garbes compares the pandemic to early parenthood, a period of time 'when whole lifetimes are held in a single day when 'the smallest details matter, they become the universe'—when we 'restructure and rearrange the way we live, how we define our lives, and what we value.'" And I guess there's a part of me that is, 3 years later, with so much having gone back to an imperfect "normal," feeling a little conflicted about this.

P.S. In March 2022, I finally ran the race I had trained to run right before the pandemic began. “There's something really powerful about—finally—checking a goal off one's pre-pandemic to do list.” And I am indeed the girl of 100 lists, so I'll end with a list of things added to my ongoing to do list during the pandemic that I still haven't done:

• Use Kelli Anderson’s This Book is a Camera
• Buy a record player and start a record collection
• Do something with this website/idea: Forces of Easel
• Use my 30+ year old sewing machine more, after I discovered during lockdown that it still works!
• Get to work on the podcast season 2 (although, as I wrote at some point during the pandemic, “I worry if I do, it'll take up all the little bits of time I need in the studio. Which is fitting since that's kind of what season two is all about”)

P.P.S. I still can’t believe my gingerbread dumpster, complete with candy “fire”, didn’t go viral. “Alas, it was fun to make and pleasant to consume, unlike most things in 2020.”

reverse sweatshop

About a week ago, cozied up with my smart phone after both kids were in bed, I was struck by a sponsored ad in my feed from Minted, urging me to check out their "unique" wedding invitations by pointing me to this design, a truly classic example if ever there was one, featuring a mix of script and block font in black ink on white paper, taking me back to my grad school day job days at Crane & Co. (more on that one-year gig in a future "burning bridges" post). Lovely though that design may be, "unique" it most certainly is not. I fired off a couple of cranky tweets about it, even engaging with the person who runs Minted's tweets a bit, and upon more digging, discovered that the designer, Cheree Berry of Cheree Berry Paper, formerly at kate spade, was the lead designer on that company's line of stationery, which was a collaboration with Crane & Co., a couple of years before my time. So it's not surprising that my first thought when I saw Minted's example of a "unique" wedding invitation was the same company that has printed the "the stationery, invitations and announcements for the White House."

Am I jaded and bitter? Sure. After all, Cheree Berry is living the independent designer's life I've wanted ever since giving up pretty much any dream of my own art practice and/or teaching. To go from working at kate spade (I love kate spade) to successfully running her own design business and custom stationery line is pretty impressive. And I should be happy for others, right? Good for her. But there's part of me that's genuinely disgruntled with companies like Minted, who have managed to create an online shopping experience one notch above Costco Christmas cards, but with the added guise that you're directly supporting an independent designer. You are, kind of. Designers are invited to submit designs in response to specific design "challenges." If those designs get enough votes from the Minted "community", they'll be included in the site's offerings. In addition to cash prizes for 1st place, 2nd place, and so on, designers get a 6% commission of sales. Wow, 6%. Makes the standard gallery commission of 50% look pretty damn generous.

It's hard enough for independent wedding vendors, you know? It's an incredibly saturated market of indie designers alone, on top of competing with sites like Wedding Paper Divas. And don't even get me started on Etsy. Have you seen that Portlandia sketch called "Reverse Sweatshop"? Season 4, episode 7 (I've been on a bit of a Portlandia kick lately.)



That's how it feels to be a seller on Etsy (or, I'd imagine, an "independent" designer with designs on Minted). There's this weird evolution happening, where it began as a forum for independent designers but ultimately followed the path of any big company, where I find myself trying to figure out ways to mass-produce my previously handmade products, now considered prototypes, so that I can attract wholesale accounts that will charge twice what I earn directly from my customers. Wait, what?

Anyway, just as things were starting to pick up toward the end of summer, after fully reopening my shop just about a year ago now, views, favorites, and sales plummeted. Crickets. Seriously. There was much chatter in the Etsy forums about what might be causing so many previously successful shops to die overnight. I'm still not sure. Things picked up a little as summer turned into fall, and I quickly wrapped up a handful of save-the-date and holiday orders, but by Thanksgiving I was polishing off my resume and applying to "real" jobs. Fast-forward a couple of months and I'm now three plus weeks into my latest office gig. I'm not sure what I'll do with my Etsy shops. Business is so slow that it doesn't really matter. I'm working on another post that digs into this six-year adventure a little more deeply. Stay tuned.

burning bridges: advanced baking

Actually, I didn't really do any baking at this job, either. But having worked at a bakery before helped me easily land this food service gig shortly after relocating to Berkeley following my one post-high school year in Bend, OR. I worked the opening shift, meaning I got there at the ungodly hour of 5 am or so, but the upside was that it was just a couple of blocks from my apartment. I put out all the baked goods the bakers had been baking for a couple of hours by the time I got in, did some prep such as cleaning and cutting strawberries for the cake gal (every bakery has a cake gal), and finished some products like the black & white and yellow smiley face cookies. By the time the bakery opened, I was already an hour or two into my shift! In addition to getting up super early, relatively low pay, and not the most flexible schedule (eventually I picked up on my community college studies at DVC before transferring to Cal), another downside was being allowed to pick any item to enjoy during my break. It's just not a great idea to eat chocolate eclairs every day, you know?

Anyway, I took my son there one afternoon last week and other than the girl working there at the time (who was probably my daughter's age when I worked there!) and the absence of the fro yo machines I vividly remember in the back left corner, nothing has changed. The cookies they sell by the pound are exactly the same, as are the decorated cookies, pastries, breads, and several of the cakes (mmm, chocolate fudge cake ... I also remember the pink-colored white chocolate flaked "champagne" cake). Having moved around so much in my life, it's a pretty novel (and kinda cool) thing to be able to return to a place that hasn't changed much at all.

19 years of logging the web

My blog turns 19 today! I've written 521 posts in that time. I wrote about the one-year anniversary here (averaged a post a week back then!). I wrote about the ten-year anniversary here. Last year I listed my top 18 posts based on number of views. This year I thought I'd list the top 19* posts from my POV. Here they are in loose chronological order:

1. Boston! Specifically moving from Oakland to and living in Boston for 4 years to attend grad school. I also taught for a bit there (it's a bit heartbreaking now to read my description of a postgrad teaching fellowship as "the start of my teaching career") and had my first kid. Most notable series of posts during this time, of course, is my MFA thesis.
2. Dancing. I never write about TV anymore (occasionally I'll mention what I'm watching on my newsletter) but I wrote a lot back then about So You Think You Can Dance. I was a superfan and continue to be a self-described dance enthusiast.
3. Family! As I mentioned at the top, I had my first kid while living in Boston. I eventually started a separate, private baby blog of sorts (one that I haven't updated since my 2nd kid was a toddler), but I do write here about family shenanigans a fair amount, especially as I have attempted to navigate art, work, and motherhood over the past 16+ years.
4. The Makery (original post is here)! This was a project I started when my son was just a few months old, while teaching my one class as a postgrad teaching fellow, just to sort of work back in to my daily life the regular act of making stuff. 
5. Etsy. Oof, where to even begin with this one. I had two Etsy shops at one point, one of which served as the online store for a legitimate micro-biz a little later on, which was my (low paying but more or less) full-time gig between kids. Long story short, Etsy changed, I changed, and eventually I shuttered my shops and business in favor of two "real" jobs since plus a couple of non-paying side projects in between (my 2 years of "unemployment by choice" between my last day job and my current day job started here).
6. Cats! In the spirit of honesty, I have to start by saying there is a really sad post that I won't link to about how we lost, literally, one of the cats of our previous bonded pair. You can search for it if you want to sob, I guess. But for lighter cat-adjacent topics, these are probably two of my favorite posts, the first about flying with felines, in which I make a cat carrier cozy, and a more recent post about feline non-recognition aggression. Not fun to experience in the moment, I guess, but fun challenges to write about after the fact.
7. A place of my own. I wrote over the course of multiple posts over multiple years about carving out studio space post-kids (one of two things every creative person needs, the other being time), starting out as a portion of the garage, eventually taking over my husband's office when he switched from a remote to an onsite job, to a portion of my closet after my 2nd kid kicked me out of that space, before finally splurging on a backyard studio shed where I'm writing this now.
8. Running (Big Sur in 2001, Oakland full in 2012, and the Oakland half in 2021), which has a therapeutic effect on me that I like to describe as "screaming in a socially acceptable way." This has been mostly replaced by mountain biking over the last year or so.
9. Travel. Fun travel posts include trying all the donuts in Bend, Oregon, hanging out with a bunch of 8th graders in DC, and a much more recent family trip to Iceland.
10. Work, specifically the burning bridges series about the many day jobs I've had over the past 30 years. This was the first one, about my first non-babysitting job the summer between junior and senior years of high school. I wrote about my current day gig here.
11. The podcast. It's been 5 years since I published my last, bonus episode of season 1. I have working docs full of ideas and plans for not one but two more seasons. The irony of being a working parent artist, of course, is that there's little time to interview other working parent artists about how they juggle it all (spoiler alert: most of us don't, at least not well). All the podcast-related posts can be found under this label.
12. The pandemic diaries. I blogged every week or two (beginning here) about how we were passing the time, staying healthy, and juggling distance learning while working from home. I wrote a recap on the 3rd anniversary of lockdown here.
13. Going vegan. While other folks were baking bread and learning to play an instrument, my pandemic project was all about eliminating animal products from my life and diet, my mantra over time becoming "the world is not your oyster." 4 1/2 years later I describe myself as "mostly vegan," being 100% vegan a daily goal I don't always meet, although most days I'm pretty darn close.

What will I blog about during my 20th year of blogging?

*While I could only come up with 13 topics, there are more than 19 blog posts linked above.

book deal dreams

As I near my final week of kid-free time (and by week I mean roughly 16-17 hours) to make stuff and write, before spending the summer with both kids in tow nearly 24/7, I wanted to take a little time to recap this academic year of unemployment-by-choice. First, a round-up of the posts I've written here about that decision and throughout the year (I didn't blog as much as I thought I might, only averaging about one post per month):

• The announcement.
• A lice-themed parody of Hamilton's 'Wait For It'. I include this because I'm a parent, and the reality is this kind of stuff happens more often than you might think, sabotaging hours, sometimes days, of your well-laid creative plans.
• I had planned to elaborate on the articles included in the initial announcement to quit my day job, above, but only wrote about a couple, here and here.
• My first day of unemployment-by-choice included a field trip to The Color Factory. I was not overly impressed, despite the price tag and hype, and, in hindsight, shouldn't have been spending that kind of money on that kind of "experience".
• Now that my most recent office gig was behind me, I could finally write the complete "artists in offices" chapter of the Burning Bridges series, a series of blog posts about my many day jobs over the past 22+ years.
• I made a few things in the fall before I really got to work in my studio, including this Day of the Dead altar for my past cats. I've also spent much of this year volunteering with and advocating on behalf of Oakland's cat population, through my work with Cat Town and Oakland Animal Services. I volunteer with cats and kittens more consistently at the latter, but have done some administrative work and fundraising for the former. I was even interviewed by KQED and NBC Bay Area about the shelter's staffing crisis. So this post is key to taking total stock of how I spent my year. After all, I wanted to be a veterinarian throughout most of my childhood and for the first couple of years of college, before I switched my major to art. I won't say I haven't researched the cost of vet tech certificate programs.
• I also saw a lot of art, mostly with my kids accompanying me. I wrote about the first half of the year here. We got out and about a little less in the second half of the school year but I'll write a recap of those field trips eventually.

Waiting for Daphne.

• A little side project this year has been this Instagram account dedicated to mostly bathroom selfies I take while waiting for my daughter. I spend more time with her than my older son, as she gets ready for kindergarten (because preschool is expensive). I also wrote about these images here.
• Finally, in January this year, I started making progress on my recent collection of mixed media...stuff, collectively titled 'Heavenly'. I wrote about the beginnings of that project and other stuff I did in the fall to "warm up" here.

• In late January/early February I began applying to - and getting rejected from - various, local art residencies and exhibition opportunities. I wrote first about my generalist tendencies - problematic when you have so little time and really need to focus - here. Later I wrote about my frustration in the face of said rejection and my decision to pivot to screenwriting here.
• I've been really into reading memoirs lately, perhaps because so much of my own art and writing are autobiographical in nature. In April, my last post before this one, I singled out 5 reasons why creative folks should read Felicia Day's memoir.

Day writes about her experience with Geek & Sundry, "the more mistakes, the better the story afterwards, especially if there's a happy ending." I feel like my starts and stops make one helluva story, but I'm still working on the happy ending. After all, nobody wants to read a story about a string of mistakes, do they?

Anyway, that sums up much of how I spent the past nine months. But in the spirit of checklists, let's see how much I accomplished from that initial to do list in my announcement last June:

• I’m writing a screenplay. I need to finish it by next March so I can submit it to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. 

Okay, so this is not finished and was not submitted to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. And the story has changed a lot. But! I did manage to write over 40 pages and I feel pretty good about that. The trick will be finishing it, especially if I find myself in another day job situation at the end of summer. Which is likely.

• I need more time to make art in my cozy little backyard studio. Preferably before I turn 65.

Yeah, I did this. Just not as much as I'd like and I haven't been successful in getting any of this new work out into the world anywhere, other than via social media. And maybe it's just crap, I don't know. I have also, if I'm being honest, been challenged by my lack of funds to go toward art supplies and any opportunities that require a fee. I've done a few and I've bought some supplies, but I have no money to put into my art practice. None. Nada. Zilch. Such is the paradox of making art.

• I’m starting a podcast (and/or support network) about(/for) other artists in offices.

I did indeed start a Facebook group and very sporadically post items of interest to it, with minimal but satisfying interaction. I'm also very slowly making my way through the book Artists in Offices. And, most exciting, I took a class, at CCA of all places, with Julia Scott, about podcasting!

Hello old friend.

Unfortunately, it turns out podcasting is a little more expensive to pull off well than I imagined (is it considered bad audio to use Voice Memo on my iPhone?) so my goal is to buy minimal gear I'd need to practice with my kids this summer before scheduling interviews in the fall. I have a handful of willing interviewees so, again, I just need more time to pull this off.

• I'm going to revive my boutique wedding invitation design business. But maybe explore platforms other than Etsy!

I did handle a handful of holiday card orders in November/December and continue to get the occasional ready-to-send card sale in my Etsy shop. But this one's tricky. I'm reluctant to officially call it quits, because if I could make some dough this way it'd be ideal in terms of schedule flexibility and parenting obligations and such, but the truth is, I do very little to promote my business. And there were things I didn't love about it, mostly the fact that, like a full-time job, it took over my life. I'm constantly debating "closing" the business so that, in the very least, I no longer have to pay the fees associated with owning a small business, regardless of income (business license, resale permit, checking account fees, etc.). But I'm hesitant to do so.

• I’m working on a kids’ book based on the Cosmos series, starring a cuddly tardigrade as Neil deGrasse Tyson.

This has officially moved to my summer to do list, in the hopes that I can work on this during the summer months. In the meantime, you can check out past tardigrade tomfoolery here.

• I’m planning to volunteer at the cat cafe until they just give me a job.

See above. No job offer yet, but I have been spending a lot of time with cats. Probably too much, if I'm really being honest. But I dig it. 

(Sweet) Caroline. Current foster kitten for Oakland Animal Services.

• I’m compiling a “quit your day job” bibliography that will eventually be turned into a manuscript for a self-help book with the working title: “Little Boxes: How to get out of the office and into the studio...” (or something like that).

As I wrote above, I only elaborated on two of the articles included in said bibliography. Not exactly a book manuscript. But a girl can dream about a book deal, can't she?

• I'm going to figure out how to make hand-stitched felt phone cases for Android, minus the carpal tunnel syndrome.

No progress made on this point and I'm 100% okay with that. I would, however, love to sell the handful of ready-to-send cases in my product inventory currently stored in my garage so if you know anyone with a really old Android device (and/or a really small smart phone), send them my way!

• I’ll be making videos for my YouTube channel “dances with kids” of me, dancing with my kids.

I've made a few videos, some dance-related, some not. I have a video currently in the works for my cat-themed parody of Sophie B. Hawkins' 'Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover' (Damn, I Wish I Was Your Kitteh. Obvs.) so be sure to subscribe if you want to be one of the first to see that! You won't be disappointed.

• I’m developing recipes for a cookbook called “Sweet on Oakland: Cookies Inspired by Oakland Neighborhoods".

I started a new recipe for the Dimond 'hood of Oakland in the fall but it flopped and I never really got back to it. This, like the tardigrade kids' book above, has been moved to the summer to do list. You can follow that project here. If you know anyone in the cookbook publishing industry, hook me up!

• I’m starting a food truck business that serves only peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. Each PB&J order comes with a free carton of milk!

Again, nothing. But I have made countless PB&J sandwiches over the past 9 months. I'm sure I'll make a lot more for my two kids over the summer. Maybe I'll get creative. 

• I’ve signed a NDA and I can’t tell you where I'm going from here.

This was never true, of course. I've signed nothing and I'm going nowhere. But if you want to offer me a super cool, creatively fulfilling, preferably not full-time but still well-paying day job I can do mostly from home, I'll sign an employment contract on August 13th, when my kids go back to school. Book deals also accepted.

The 8 stages of Moana

I've been mulling over this post for a long while, dipping into a third year, as I am, of unemployment-by-choice, less "by choice" the longer I'm unemployed, but still "working" (maybe laboring?) like crazy: as a SAHM (a title I champion while also admitting reluctance in claiming), as a volunteer at my kids' schools and at the animal shelter, on my podcast, on my writing, and on my art. For zero money and not even a ton of feedback. Sigh. Prompted by this article on Etsy's weird evolution, and inspired by rereading my thoughts on wayfinding in the context of my "burning bridges" series about all the day jobs I've had over the past couple of decades (including my own Etsy business), I thought I'd finally try to articulate how I think of Moana in the context of (primarily) women and work. First, from my post on wayfinding:

I've talked with many women who identify with Moana at various stages of her narrative arc. Some have already overcome some major challenge and identify with Moana at the end of the movie, after she learns to sail and (spoiler alert) returns the heart to Te Fiti. I'm not there yet, and certainly one year ago I very much identified with Moana at the beginning of the movie, when she doesn't know exactly what she's after but she knows she's not happy with her current situation.

I guess you could say, two years after writing this, that I'm somewhere in the middle right now. Or, if we're thinking about this in terms of wayfinding versus navigating, I'm in the middle of this current cycle. I'll get to no. 8 eventually...and then something will happen that will put me right back at no. 1 or 2. Without further ado, the eight stages of Moana:

1. The unhappy girl next door.

At the beginning of the movie, Moana is unsatisfied with her current lot in life. What woman hasn't felt this way at least once in her adolescence or adult years?

2. The restless rebel.

She's determined to do things differently.

3. The defeatist.

As the song goes, despite her strong-willed determination, she loves her family and she's accepted her station. She shouldn't have to choose between what her family needs and what she wants and feels compelled to pursue.

4. The determined heroine.

Alas, she cannot deny her deep dissatisfaction with her potential future, and her strong attraction to the sea, coinciding perfectly with receiving the heart of Te Fiti.

5. Tested and discouraged.

Please note: this may happen more than once in any given "cycle."

6. The obstacle overcomer.

Atta girl. Did you start a new job? Did you exceed even your own expectations? Congrats! You're at stage 6.

7. Relishing in the reward.

Soak it up. Bask in it. You've earned it. You deserve it. Hell, like the slogan goes, you're worth it!

8. Smug sharer of life wisdom.

Yeah...so, note to those lucky enough to reach stage 8: please be sensitive to where your friends, colleagues, relatives, and acquaintances might find themselves in the Moana cycle. Having a drink with someone in the midst of stage 5? Maybe keep your success story on the DL and offer to pay for her cocktail.

What stage are you on?