a life well loved

Today was not my first day of classes for the first time in, uh, an embarrassingly long time (I kind of like school. A lot).

My life went rather upside down over summer. I participated in an amazing Chinese intensive (which I didn’t blog about enough – at all), made great new friends, was nearly homeless a couple of times because of work/money and life problems, and had to make some hard decisions.

So now I speak Chinese better than I ever thought I’d be able to, and I’m no longer a Master’s student at the University of Virginia. I decided about a month into the summer that this fall wasn’t the time to begin applying for PhD programs, as I’d originally intended, but I still wanted to complete my MA. Then financial aid went to hell in a handbasket, and I decided I couldn’t cope with the kind of financial aid drama I had to go through last fall – or worse, as it looks now. Between that and living paycheck to paycheck or worse even when financial aid does pull through, I decided to withdraw.

I love my program and the learning culture at UVa (although the overall university culture – and Charlottesville itself – is incredibly overwhelming and sometimes alienating)…and I especially love my classes (leaving behind Tibetan class is one of the hardest things I’ve done). But…I was swimming upstream for so long I think this is God telling me it’s just not where I’m supposed to be right now. The decision to leave was mainly financial, but it’s also mitigated some other stressors that I have struggled with ever since I moved here…like adapting to the upper-class white affluence that’s just ridiculously overwhelming here, which has driven me up the wall and made me question whether – or where – I really fit in academia.

I’ll be living in Charlottesville next year and Alhamdulillah will be able to keep most of my volunteering positions at the University, except for one. So I’ll be on MSA Council and all that fun stuff. But…now I’ll be focusing mainly on freelancing and looking for regular work in Cville (still finding out if I can stay with the library I work at now), reading, resting, knitting, making art, blogging, submitting essays & poetry, etc. All that stuff I am usually too busy to do. As much as I love school – to an unnatural degree – it’s kind of relieving to not have to get up in the morning and go to class. To have time again.

I’m now terrified about losing my health insurance and some other things, but I am hopeful. I wish the changes with the new health care bill would just hurry up, but the big changes that will actually help me don’t go into effect until closer to 2014. I finally heard back from the free dental clinic after a year, so I’ll be going to the dentist for the first time in…well, over a decade…in a couple of weeks. That’s a huge relief because my wisdom teeth are still bothering me.

Right now I’m going to go enjoy a really, really late iftaar and sleep some. Then get up in the morning to tackle the big problems.

I have a confession to make.

I am addicted to lifehacks.

I have been addicted to lifehacks since before I knew what lifehacks actually were, but since I learned the term lifehacks…my addiction has grown. Part of the attraction is the list. One common suggestion often given to bloggers looking to grow their readership is to make list posts. I am not a big fan of writing list posts because I feel that lists are frequently just talking without saying anything. Much of my prejudice against list posts comes from seeing lists in magazines such as Shape and Cosmo (no, I really don’t need to know the “10 Ways to Make Him Worship You”), where they are almost always space fillers and the mental nutritional equivalent of a Snickers bar without the protein.

But boy, do I love to read them. It’s something akin to a train wreck – although I try to stick to ones written by people who are actually saying something and whose knowledge and opinions I respect. Part of the attraction is the illusion of having a guidebook – list posts create a sense that there is a definite goal and all you have to do is follow steps one, two, and three to get there. For a recovering obsessive planner (*raises hand*) who frequently starts out at point A with a definite idea of where point B is but with absolutely no sense of direction, list posts are like crack.

The irony of being obsessed with lifehacks is that the point of lifehacks are to make you a more productive human being, and clicking through post after post of lifehacking tips until the whole day (or three) has sailed by just leads you to, well, suck at getting things done. Walking the balance between finding tools that are useful to you (like Evernote, I use it almost every day) and using self-education on simplicity and productivity as an excuse to not be productive is not easy, and it requires way too much in the way of self-honesty.

In Buddhism, there is this concept of crossing over to the other shore (no, not the one with the Grim Reaper or Charon). The other shore is enlightenment and the boat you use to get there is the dharma – the religious teachings. One of the most difficult things for many Buddhists (including myself for years and years) to get over is the fact that once you get to the other shore, you don’t need the boat anymore – which is why you’re taught to work to rid yourself of all attachment, even the attachment to the teachings that show you how to get rid of attachment.

Truly living simplicity? It requires putting down not only all the things that keep us mired in overwhelmed and unproductive lives, but also putting down the tools that got us out of that situation. Because otherwise they’ll smother us.

I won’t stop reading lifehacks. But I am committing myself to actually putting the tools into practice. One Zen Habits post I found recently that I love is Kill Your To-Do List.

I’m a big fan of to-do lists because I have to write down everything, otherwise I’ll forget it. (Out of all the things that drive me batty about living with chronic pain and fibromyalgia, this is definitely at the top of the list.) But I love the idea of getting rid of the to do list and learning to focus on one thing – the most essential thing – at a time, because multitasking and pain fog feed off of each other. And because I have been blessed to know a few people who just have that personality – who focus on one thing at a time so much that when you are talking to them, it’s as if you are the only person in the world, subhan’Allah. It’s a quality I would one day like to have – not just wish for, plan for, think about. So I’m going to put down the boat.

I have this thing about buying fruit. I always think I’m going to eat it and then I never manage to eat all that I buy (when I have money to buy lots of fruit). I like buying bananas because they’re inexpensive and yummy, but they go bad more quickly than most things (except maybe strawberries), so I don’t buy them often. A week or so ago, I bought some bananas, and they were looking well overripe but not quite overripe enough to make proper banana bread – and I never make banana bread anyway. But…in the spirit of waste not want not, and because who really needs a reason for baking, I decided to give it a shot.

The raspberries and chocolate snuck in of their own accord. Totally not my fault.

I, um, forgot one important fact when I set off on this journey (besides that I’ve never made banana bread in my life): I don’t own a bread loaf pan. (Or a bread maker, for that matter, although you don’t need that for yummy fruity breads, but I really, really, really want one of each insha’Allah. Someday.) But…there are worse things to be left without – I was hoping that if I made enough to share I’d be able to cut the final product up into pieces and give some to my roommates and Chinese classmates, so I considered doing muffins. Except muffins must be done in batches and I was exhausted. (I also had the good intention of making Rotel for proper dinner, but you know what they say about good intentions – I could barely stand I was so wiped out after making this and washing clothes. Besides, I can always make Rotel tomorrow night.) So, anyway, I eventually decided upon just throwing it in a square pan.

Big, big, huge, massive mistake. (Yummy, gorgeous mistake, but mistake nonetheless.) I ended up with an overfull pan and cookie baking on the bottom of the oven, which is always fun. So upon my roommate’s advice I stuck a cookie sheet underneath, but then, of course, the cookie sheet began overflowing. I eventually gave up and poured the whole half-baked mess into a new rectangular pan, then forced my roommate to help me eat the half-baked overflow on the cookie sheet.

Now, since I’d just sort of made up this recipe I was a little nervous, but her reaction (one of those wordless moments where you eat something so good that you are rendered speechless – she and I love chocolate and fruit with equal gusto so we were on the same wavelength) reassured me somewhat. I thanked her profusely for helping me. She was all, “You’re such an awful roommate, the things I do for you, I swear.”

Verdict: As my mother would say, it’s slap your mama good. The thing I like most about it – which my roommate remarked upon – is that with the brown sugar and spices and semisweet chocolate, it has a lot of flavor, but it’s not overwhelmingly sweet. I do recommend biting the bullet and doing it in muffin batches. Or proper loaf pans. Or just throw the whole thing in a 9×12 pan. But seriously…all this awesome tasting stuff in one place? Obviously gonna be awesome. Even the very messy half-baked drippings.

Banana Raspberry Chocolate Bread

3 cups flour
~1 tsp each of vanilla extract, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, salt and cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup shortening or butter, softened
1 cup applesauce
2 eggs
~3 mashed overripe bananas
~6oz. raspberries
~12oz. chocolate chips

Cream together butter or shortening and sugar. Slowly mix in eggs, spices, applesauce, and vanilla extract until smooth. Blend in bananas, then slowly begin blending in flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Finally, fold in raspberries and chocolate. You can totally substitute or add just about anything else, like nuts, other fruit, etc.

Bake at 350F until a toothpick comes out clean (about 60-75 minutes).