A Yellow Roman Candle

A Mini Intro

            

             I would have signed my life away (or, at least the next 8 years of it) to the Army National Guard sitting right there in that small, stuffy, colorless office in the heart of Baltimore City if the paperwork hadn’t taken so long. I was ready for a direction. Three months of aimless tent-dwelling will do that to you. The Army’s benefits package and the promised opportunity for someone like me looked better than anything else I had going for me. That’s not to say I had no other options. No, I own the pumps and the suit that cost more than my plane ticket to Seattle, and I landed several job offers after college while wearing them. But I felt like a thirsty soul being forced to lap water like a dog. I had this strange feeling that opportunity was coming, and I needed to be available for it.

              So I moved into a tent on my aunt’s and uncle’s property to salvage some semblance of independence while not dropping an atomic bomb on my bank account. I loved it. In the woods, with a natural spring to bathe in (when I wasn’t using the shower at my aunt’s and uncle’s house), and a fire pit to cook over (when I wasn’t eating dinner with my aunt and uncle), and a constant challenge to find the most primitive conditions at which I could live and be okay with living. It ended up being easier than I thought because my aunt and uncle helped out so much, so I still haven’t found that limit yet. Knock on wood.

              But after three months, I needed a direction. I’m not sure when or how I decided on military, but on one hot summer afternoon, I found myself in this stuffy little office airing out all my dirty laundry to a recruiter who was truly convinced I was lying about wanting to join the military. “Do you seriously want to enlist?” the young recruiter asked me incredulously for the third time as he scoured my paperwork. For the third time I told him yes, and he said he was just waiting for his bosses to come in and tell him I’m just someone they paid to test his abilities as a recruiter. “They told me you worked on a farm so I was picturing some short, hefty, barrel-chested girl who could wrestle a wild pig. You’re so… tall.” He did not let up. “So you’re telling me you graduated college a year early, you have no tattoos, no college debts, no criminal record, you’re 5’9”, you could be a model, and you want to enlist in the military.” He stared at me when I said yes, for the fifth time. I was beginning to feel like I was in the wrong place.

              Then I went to Ecuador. Before I left, I called my recruiter in Toronto and scheduled enlistment ceremony for the day I returned. I had started a non-profit back in January, and Microsoft had selected me as one of the five grand prize winners of the Youthspark Challenge for Change. Part of the prize package was this two week trip to Ecuador to serve in a local Amazonian community. Microsoft also wanted to self-promote by sending a team of videographers to film us while there and create a short commercial for the Youthspark program. I felt like a celebrity. No moment was safe. You could get caught on film biting your nails, napping in the bus, taking a selfie. But I liked the videographers, and they liked me. Enough to give me a job.

              That’s how I ended up in Seattle. I was sitting in the back of a canoe on the Napo River in the Amazon rainforest with Matt Skerritt, the owner of the videography company, and I asked him for a job. He had advised me against military, seeing that I had a creative streak in me, and I told him if he gave me a job, I’d move to Seattle. It was a little ballsy of me to say, but right then and there we shook on it. Fifteen days later, only nine days after returning from Ecuador (and cancelling the enlistment), I was on a plane to Seattle with all of my belongings crammed into two vintage suitcases and a guitar case.

              So now, to all of ye who are interested, this is the account of my adventure out here on the Best, I mean West, Coast.