On editing and keeping moving

Last week was the I-think-I'm-starting-to-know-what-I'm-doing-with-the-paper week.  It was fabulous and I literally skipped around campus and I baked cheerful cookies and listened to music that could best be described as sunshine music.

It made me feel hopeful and happy and like I'm starting to learn how to fold in the corners of my life abroad and fit back in to the greater sphere of life at home.

This week has been the who-are-you-kidding-you-are-so-not-equipped-for-this week.  Mountains of typos have cracked the windshield of my rosy glow and melodramatic reporters are grating on my nerves.

Now that I'm five issues in, I actually had a chance to sit down and have a comprehensive budget report that means something.  And I've always known the Sun Star has no money.  But we really have no money.  It's kind of depressing.

I'm starting to realize being editor is basically a life of deciding which battles you want to fight.  And proofreading.

---

I'm sitting at my desk listening to the Shins seriously researching journalism internships in Shanghai right now.

It's an itch-- this travel thing.  All I want to do is go places and write and keep going and keep writing.

I bruised my knee yesterday, trying to move on.

(I actually bruised it in broomball.  But that was a poetic ending, right?)

Baking obsessed

Us Cutler 204 girls are a bit baking obsessed as of late.  Apparently when you grow up after your freshman year in the dorms where every Saturday night is a party and move into your own apartment, you entertain yourself with flour and sugar.  It's so... domestic.

So far this weekend we've made:

Cranberry-chocolate chip bread
Pumpkin bread
Pumpkin bread muffins
Zucchini brownies with chocolate-peanut-butter frosting
Baked pumpkin seeds

Also, on the list to bake today and tomorrow tentatively:

Pumpkin pie
Apple pie
Pumpkin cranberry bread
Pumpkin chocolate chip bread

Not to mention, we make our own bread.  So there's a bunch homemade wheat bread filling up cabinet space waiting to be turned into toast.

And Ashley's mom sent us a lovely care package full of chocolate chip cookies and peanut-butter cheerio bars this week.  The peanut-butter-marshmallow-cheerio bars are already gone.

So yeah, apparently I won't be losing that falafel weight.  But at the moment, I'm ok with that.

Also, come visit us!  We'll feed you baked goods.

blink&you miss it

Fall in Fairbanks is the kind of season that runs by at warp speed.  Blink and you miss it, take a nap and when you wake up you're well into winter.

Just days ago it was pleasant fall and now it is biting, ominous chilly fall.  Weeks ago it was summer and sunshine and oh-my-God-it's-so-hot-I'm-dying temperatures (i.e. 75 degrees Fahrenheit--so I have a low heat tolerance, sue me).  I semi-seriously joked all summer that I wished it was winter.  Now it's almost winter, and I'm kicking myself for sweating the summer away.

To be honest though, I've missed the snow.  Anyone who spent a modicum of time with me last year can attest to my weirdly large love of Alaska.  I'm not particularly into winter sports or cold weather activities, so it doesn't make sense to me either.  But I've heard from rom-coms that the truest loves make the least amount of sense.

Really, I've moved around enough to know that my soul belongs in the snow.  Or in Jordan.  Or, to be honest, a large number of places.  But I'm making a concerted effort to stop writing about my aching wanderlust, so this thought ends here.  (Per Valerie's feedback, "no, I mean, your blog is still good.  You should just stop writing about how much you miss Jordan.")

I keep meaning to stop when I'm walking through the woods to get back home.  The leaves are turning more yellow every hour and the ground coverings are a brilliant red.  But there are articles to edit and math homework to finish and lunch to eat and reading for classes to blow off and the internet to surf and lap swim to make it to and a radio show to put together and texts to guiltily not answer (sorry, guys), so I keep walking.  I tell myself that one day my life will calm down.  It might.

I'm writing for writing's sake.  It's been a challenging few months since I've been home, but the one thing I can do is put one word after the other.  Sometimes I forget that, but I'm trying not to these days.

It's nearly 2 a.m., and tomorrow morning will be the beginning of another day that passes in September bringing with it a few more fallen leaves.

This week's issue:

Our layout editor wasn't around on Sunday, so Ian (the marvelous magnificent web editor!) stepped up an laid out the paper.

This paper was different than the last two for a few reasons.  First, this is the first issue I've truly had to deal with new reporters and photographers so there was a bit more coaching and rewriting involved this time around.  Second, the layout editor wasn't there, so for about 14 hours on Sunday a group of us just stared perplexedly at InDesign.

We did manage to produce the paper somehow (Ian! Ian! Ian!), and I even left the office at the early hour of 12:30 a.m, all things considered.

I feel a lot more connected to this particular issue, mostly because I had a lot of input in layout this time around.  Also, I designed the cover.  Look at it.  Isn't it beautiful and super bright and colorful?  I think so.

The issue comes out tomorrow.  If you're in Fairbanks, you can pick a copy up at one of the usual locations.  And if you're not, you can read it online at www.uafsunstar.com.

This whole producing the paper thing gets easier, right?

stolen photos and misremembered moments

Finally starting to wade through the 7,000+ photos from this year including the several hundred pictures from my brother when my family came to visit at the end of the semester.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Labor day shenanigans

I went hiking and picked blueberries.  I don't think there is anything I love more than Alaskan blueberries, other than strawberries of any sort, E. Lockhart books and KSUA playlist album reviews.

Then Valerie and I managed to break into the post office building and we produced our radio show.

Then I talked to my parents about how extremely overwhelming e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. is.  And they made me feel a lot better.

And then I ended up sitting on the floor of my room covered in scarves and roommates, and it was just like when I would spend my nights doing nothing but pretending I lived with Ashley and Denali and bothering them and it was a good end to a good day and an interesting weekend.

Tonight I told Denali that being the editor of the Sun Star is like having a baby (not that I have a baby, but I assume they need a lot of copy editing).  And she said, "only 26 more babies to go!"  When I think about it as something that will be my life for a year it makes my stomach clench into knots and I shut my eyes tight to try to keep the panic inside and not let it spill out and infect the happy people around me.

But when I think about putting one word after the other then I think I can manage.  Fathme texts me periodically and tells me not to worry so much.  Everyone needs a sassy Mexican roommate to look out for them, I think.

Today was fun, at least.

On stretching your arms out too far

“Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors.” 

Hunter S. Thompson

I haven't been able to write lately.

There are two bright spots on my life that make everything bearable currently:

1. Nighttime wandering with Denali.
2.  Producing Emotional Celery with Valerie on Mondays.

Maybe I am grasping for poetry beyond my reach or maybe my words never came home from Amman.  It's where my mind is.  In the sand-colored skyline and the among the hijabi fashionistas.  Nothing matters to me right now quite as much or in quite the same way as things mattered three months ago.

Two and a half months should be long enough to know how to live in Alaska again.  But I am still falling asleep to dreams of blue domed mosques and waking up to texts that let me know there are others going through the same process I am.  We are miles and miles apart, but we sync together with our ungrounded restlessness.

I stretch my arms out too far.  There is something missing here.

Someone is watching an action movie in my apartment, and I am falling asleep to the sounds of cars speeding away as fast as they possibly can.