team harry

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 hits screens in two hours. Today I interviewed a 16-year-old girl who arrived at the movie theater at 5:30 p.m. yesterday - that's about 31 hours early. She and her friends have been staging Horcrux scavenger hunts, wizarding duels, a Triwizard Tournament....5 years younger than me; they were in 1st grade when the books started, and Harry Potter is still a big enough part of their lives that they'll wait all day on concrete.

This is so silly - I'm admitting that; I admit that this melodramatic, wistful blog post about fictional characters is dumb and sappy and unoriginal - but I so wanted to ditch out on work and just join them there. Watch the first Harry Potter movie, when they were all such babies, and talk about our favorite parts of the books and exclaim over spectacular plot points.

Because it's not just some dumb kid series - these books really did shape our childhood. I came on board a year or two late; I remember reading the first 3 in 5th grade, lent me by a classmate to whom I am forever indebted for getting me into the series in the first place. I loved the 2nd book, mostly because I'd wanted a pet snake for ages and imagined how cool it would be if I were a Parseltongue. I wrote out the warning posted at the entrance to Gringotts and put it on my bedroom door, hoping to ward off any intruding little brother.

Then that first agonizing wait for the 4th book to come out, and then actually reading the Goblet of Fire - it really was a turning point in my growing up. I remember the point when Cedric dies - so casually, so lacking in fanfare or acknowledgement; just "Kill the spare," and he's lying spread-eagle on his back a few yards away. I slammed my book shut and threw it across the floor - I remember curling up on the couch in my family room, sobbing as if my heart would break, because people were not supposed to die like that. It just didn't happen in the kids books I was used to reading. That grew me up, at least in my story sense.

Then I remember putting off reading the Order of the Phoenix because my next-door neighbor & best friend said it was depressing (Sirius is his favorite character) and I couldn't handle any more depressing. And I remember finally reading it and kicking things as I growled inwardly at Umbridge. To this day, I don't think I've ever hated anyone more than her.

I remember reading the Half-Blood Prince while we were in Scotland for the drama festival - it had come out a month earlier but I had put it off for some reason. I borrowed it from Dylan and raced through it as we stood in line for plays all over Edinburgh. I remember the cobblestoned street beside the sidewalk I sat down on when Dumbledore died and I wanted to cry but didn't want to do it in public. Dumbledore died! That wasn't supposed to happen, either.

And I remember the last book - my favorite book - came out on the last night we were at Seaside in Oregon after I graduated from high school. My education is stacked with Harry Potter milestones. (Haven't forgotten, either, the magazine page that got passed around my AP Lit class of Daniel Radcliffe in Equus. He's too pale, and the whole thing kind of creeped me out, but still intriguing.) We drove through Portland on our way home, and stopped at Powells - it had been 2 years then since I'd read the 6th, and I was hazy on Horcrux details, so in an aisle filled to bursting with Harry Potter books, I asked two strangers to remind me what happened. I love fellow book nerds.

I was not to be pulled away from that book for anything that day. I read it the whole car ride home, then wrenched myself away from it to go to a winery that evening with Mrs. Maldonado, where she'd brought me to listen to some poet (I'm afraid I was even less gracious to that poet than I would have been under normal circumstances; still, even under normal circumstances, I'm pretty sure she sucked). I couldn't stand it for long, so she actually let me drive her car back home, where I raced through another 100 pages before going back to pick her up. And I finished by midnight that night, because I never would have been able to go to sleep anyway.

I remember running into Mary Crow the next morning in the parking lot of my church, exclaiming over the Narnia-like scene when McGonnagall calls the statues to life and they go tromping off to protect the school. Mary stayed up finishing it, too; I remember she said she was about to give in and sleep when she turned to "The Prince's Tale" and couldn't stop. "I KNEW Snape loved Lily! I KNEW it!" she cried.

And there's just something magical about the series, nothing to do with the spells and enchantments. There's something magical in growing up with the characters, in maturing as they mature, in facing greater challenges in real life even as the fictional villains turn darker and harder to vanquish.

And now...now we have to say goodbye to the series again. I was never attached to the movies; I'm a purist, and I hated the way things got left out, even small details, so I stopped watching after the 2nd. But I went to part 1 of the 7th movie this fall - at 3 in the morning the night it came out, sitting next to boys who thought Hermione was hot and kept making comments to that effect. It was so well done - they used all that lag time in the Horcrux search to just take the characters to beautiful parts of the world with sweeping vistas and lonely horizons. That movie pulled me in, attached me again.

But this is the end. All those posters - "It all ends July 15" - really, it does. No other series has spanned so much of my lifetime, or captured so much of my imagination, save Narnia, and that's in a different category for me.

No, Harry Potter is in a category all its own. And this end of it all - I tear up reading reviews, for goodness' sake; I'm going to bawl at the actual movie this weekend - but it's fitting that after all those Harry Potter milestones throughout my childhood, the series is over and the characters must move on just as I'm leaving behind my safety-netted existence and pushing off into the world of independent adulthood.

I find myself resenting the idea that in a few years, the new generation is going to have a different series that they're devoted to - that they'll claim is better than any other. We all know they'll be wrong.

Oh, how I wish I could just go back and be a kid again, reading these books for the first time. I miss that wide-eyed wonder.

Love always,
molly

surrounded

God is good.

I started keeping this blog when I left for Spain, and it seems that it's mostly been a journal of transition since then. Of moving to new places and finding new niches and making -- and leaving -- new friends.

Throughout it all, God has shown his faithfulness in the people he puts in my life.

I was going to write earlier about this being the easiest first week I've had anywhere, mostly from the job perspective. When my editor first told me he was going to acquiesce my request for a higher salary (look, I negotiated like a grown-up and got my demands met!), he said it was because he'd talked to my references and felt confident that I would be able to learn fast and "hit the ground running." As soon as he told me that, anxiety kicked in -- what if I DON'T hit the ground running? What if I take weeks to get used to the pace and the community and the newsroom? High expectations mean for certain disappointment!! and so on, as I am wont to do in these situations.

But this week, I started to think that maybe I finally have a handle on this journalism thing. I stayed until 7:30 on my first day, chasing down the numbers to accompany my story, which appeared on the front of their B section on Tuesday. On Tuesday, I wrote two stories -- both of which were A1 above the fold on Wednesday. My story on Wednesday, with the photo, took up most of A1 on Thursday. And my fourth story for the week came out on the B front today. Minimal edits, and I felt satisfied with the work I'd done.

So yes -- best first week of a job ever. While I had some downtime, I wasn't bored and didn't feel useless; at the same time, I wasn't overwhelmed by the information I was expected to take in. Could it be that I'm becoming a real-live reporter?! wowza.

While work was great, though, there was still a twinge of loneliness. Nothing too severe (read: no crying); I talked on the phone with lots of friends, cooked my own meals, watched my favorite movies, read Nancy Drew and lay by my pool. But there was no human interaction outside work, and the people there didn't really go out of their way to talk to or befriend me. So I was really banking on First Pres to be a friend-locator.

As far as friend-locators go, this one's pretty magical.

Went to church at 9:30 this morning; it was VBS Sunday, so quite different from normal service, but I was still able to track down Tyler, the college/career director for the church and a former Ghormley staffer whom I remembered from my middle-school camp days. He invited me to the college/career age dinner & Bible study shindig at his house this evening, and I went -- not without first driving past his house twice, wondering if I really had the guts to go barge in on a group of strangers, but barge I did.

It was amazing. Sure, there was initial shyness, but I soon got over it and into good conversations. People think the reporter thing is cool (though they automatically assume they have a PR "in", sigh) and I told my story about seven times, but that was OK. Met people I recognized as campers from my Ghormley days; met people who speak Spanish and rock climb and hike and listen to Eddie Izzard and make inappropriate jokes at the wrong times; met people who felt familiar after knowing them for five minutes.

God shows his faithfulness by putting me in the midst of people I need to meet. Seattle, Spain, Port Townsend, Santiago, Olympia and now Yakima. Can't get away from 'em.

This is going to be a hard home to leave.

Love always,
molly

just ahead

Well, that last post was a bit melodramatic and depressing.

I mean, yes, graduation is still anticlimactic and brews a good deal of uncertainty, but I'm not as disparaging as that post feels. The future is exciting -- it always is. I hate change, but as a good friend has often told me, it makes the world go round.

And besides, moving to Yakima isn't that big a deal. It's close to home, and not too far from Seattle. Loved ones reside in both cities, and history is bound to repeat itself in finding me solid relationships in Yakima. I've been very blessed in that so far. God followed me to Chile, and I'm sure he can find Yakima, too (even if it is kind of the middle of nowhere). And he's shown his faithfulness in the good people he's put in my life, to come alongside me and feed my extroverted spirit. There's always loneliness, but it's never been forever.

I've been thinking recently about all the parents I have in the world. So many people have stayed with me and supported me and encouraged me and offered wisdom and guidance throughout the years -- I wish all young people could be as fortunate as I am. My host mom in Chile Facebook-congratulated me on graduating, and when I visited my landlord-turned-hostdad in Olympia last week, he gave me a big hug and reminded me that he adores me and that I'm always welcome in their home. How do I find these people? How do they find me? Very, very blessed.

Then there's the teachers whom I still visit when I go home, who shaped me and put me on the path to becoming the writer and thinker I am today. I had such great teachers. Maybe someday they'll make a movie about them, like Dead Poets Society-style. They deserve it (just not the ending....yeah.)

Anyway. Just wanted to make sure no one thought I was a whiner all the time. Only sometimes, and I try to remain delightful while doing it.

One step closer to grown-up land...

Love always,
molly

looking ahead, looking behind

It's been four years since I graduated from high school.

Time has flown. College was amazing, full of unique experiences and opportunities, and I feel like I missed out on rejoicing in all those. It went so fast - it's been almost three years since I went to Spain, a year since I was in Chile, six months since I was even a student.

What stands out to me most right now is how much I haven't grown. I've backtracked. Self-esteem and self-respect took a huge dive in Spain and have been beaten back down on a fairly regular basis whenever they start to grow again. I think I was stronger, more secure, when I walked out of the Tri-Cities Convention Center four years ago than I am today.

I wrote a poem back then - silly things, those, and I feel silly saying it, but I still have them all tucked away on my computer - about my Peter Pan birthday party. "breathless, as we were, on the cusp of adulthood," I wrote. Graduation was so exciting in high school; I was breathless then. There was so much leading up to it - senior barbecue, final projects, college acceptance (and rejection) letters, senior sensation, the Willy awards; all working to build anticipation and giddiness. And then the senior party right after it, where we exulted our accomplishment and ran on an adrenaline high until 3 a.m. Everyone was in one place, everyone was celebrating, and most of us knew where we were headed next.

College graduation is anticlimactic to the max. I got done with classes in December, so even being on campus feels uncomfortable and somehow illegal, like someone is going to see me and point and say "Hey, you're done here, what are you trying to pull?" The ceremony itself today - no rehearsal for it, nothing personal; we wrote our names on cards, handed them to the speaker as we walked up on stage, and he read them off as we proceeded past. Not even in alphabetical order. It was as if no one cared whether it went smoothly or happened at all, or whether we even showed up. Saturday's giant ceremony is going to be even worse - they don't even read your name off. That's the only one my parents can make it to, and what's it going to be? I'll be just another silly-looking black hat in a sea of thousands of students. They won't even be able to distinguish my face from up in the bleachers.

I want it to be a bigger deal. I graduated with honors (I think) from the University of Washington - that's still a big deal, right? I mean...I guess it's what most people I know have done or are doing right now, so it's not really a stand-out accomplishment, but I still want people to be excited about it. Mostly, people are dreading standing around waiting for the ceremony to start, or worried about parking and traffic.

I know that I'm lucky to have a direction and a job after this. Yes, it's in Yakima, and everyone makes fun of it, but at least it's a job. And in my chosen field, too. That's more than most journalism grads can say, I think. But I want to be excited about it. I was excited when I was working for the AP; I was excited in Chile; I was excited at the Seattle Times, and in Spain. I want that feeling again. My friend took a picture of my today after graduation, standing in front of the "Department of Communication" sign in the COM building in my cap and gown. I've got this great, slightly cocky smile on my face, like "Yeah, I pwned that, now let's see where else I can kick butt." I want to feel that feeling. I want to be on the cusp of something, something exciting and worthy of my attention and enthusiasm. Instead, I feel let down, somehow.

Seattle's feeling less and less like home. Olympia's not home anymore, and Richland doesn't feel quite right, either. Where am I going and what am I supposed to be doing now?

Love always,
molly

out of the dust

In the month since I last blogged, I finished up my job with the AP in Olympia, went home for about a week to visit, kind of went on a couple dates, and moved back to Seattle, at least temporarily.

Also got a job offer for a job that just doesn't feel right.

I'm feeling very directionless right now. It's an almost foreign feeling -- I've known I wanted to be a journalist since at least senior year of high school, when most of my friends waffled around and changed majors or mindsets or goals several times. Within journalism, I've had a very clearcut path: Accepted into the major freshman year, the Port Townsend internship fell into my lap, then the Seattle Times picked me, then Reuters in Chile, then graduation, then the AP. All incredible experiences, and all in a very neat and tidy succession. I never had to choose between one chance and another; the opportunities just presented themselves one at a time in an orderly fashion and were easily identifiable as the place I was meant to go.

But now, I have no idea. And it's terrifying. But not overtly so; it's that same vague dread and uneasiness at the future that I felt right after graduating, but stronger because I feel like I'm supposed to be more grown-up and responsible now. I've already had a real job -- I'm out on my own -- I have to keep ascending and maturing and making grown-up decisions, even when I don't want to.

So what's the grown-up decision now? I have a job offer for a yearlong spot at a paper in eastern Washington. I don't want it. Don't get me wrong; I'm glad I grew up in eastern Washington; I think it's beautiful, and I still love going home to visit. But I don't want to live there. I've spent the last three years trying to get away from that side of the state. Except for Spokane, there really doesn't seem to be anything promising for people my age. I don't want to take a job because it's safe and then never dare to break free from it. I'm only 22! This is the time of my life that I want to be off doing exciting things, while I'm young enough to be flexible and unattached and adaptive and enthusiastic and willing. This is not the time to settle down in the Palm Springs of Washington.

But I'm so anchor-less right now that I don't even have the discipline to sit down and really try to find jobs elsewhere. I don't know what to do with myself -- I haven't been so lacking in structure for probably six years. I've been unemployed for two-and-a-half weeks, with nothing to do but hang out with people and watch TV and climb. I think the last time I had that long a vacation from work and school was probably the summer after freshman year of high school. I've worked every summer since then, with usually two weeks or less in between school and internships. I don't do well when I'm just sitting around. I need structure, someone or something telling me what to do, or I just get lazy.

Oh balls. I just don't know what to do. Is it that I childishly/shallowly don't want to take this EWa job, or that it really doesn't feel right for me? Is the only grown-up option to take the job, even though I foresee nothing but loneliness, depression and lack of excitement in that place?

Moving is always going to be hard. I still want to do the foreign correspondent thing; that dream hasn't changed. But there's a degree of "is it worth it?" that has to be heard. Moving to Olympia was probably the hardest one yet, for a number of reasons, but I could always assure myself that it was worth it. I was working for the AP at 21 years old -- my first job out of college! Moving to a small town in eastern Washington is not something I could get excited or proud about. And no one will visit. People get that incredulous "oh man, that sucks" look on their faces when I tell them about the offer -- and I have that same face on when I talk or think about it.

Where's God in all of this? I wish he'd just tell me what to do in a really obvious way. Gideon got a wet fleece; how about a wet newspaper or something? I want this decision to come ready-made, so I don't have to risk making the wrong choice. I don't want to get stuck somewhere I'll be miserable for a year, but nor do I want to get stuck without a job, or with a non-journalism job. And this paper would be a good training ground; a good first job.

The talk at my church tonight was good. This series is about "where do I go from here?" so it was a good message for me to hear, but didn't have quite the explicit instructions that I was hoping for.

The music was good too. We sang this song, which I already loved, but it gave me new ideas tonight.

You make beautiful things,
you make beautiful things out of the dust

Made me wonder what God could make out of eastern Washington.

I guess we'll find out soon.

Love always,
molly

a question of weight

I want to change the way I think.

I can have a week of kickassery -- filing two or three stories a day, getting news tips from representatives who know me and respect me enough to seek me out directly, and most notably, an in-depth weekender that got play on front pages across the state -- and still be knocked down by a few moments of self-doubt.

Why does the negative weigh so much more than the positive? I felt like an awesome possum today -- many thanks to the people who encourage me in my success; I store those comments up and reread them to remind myself that I'm doing a good job.

But then as soon as I got enough downtime to slow down, and didn't have House floor session crap filling every corner of my brain, I floated back down to this funk of not feeling like I'm quite good enough. Again, I think it has to do with a few specific people not caring or not recognizing something that I feel should get more attention.

At least that's a change from my recent mindset; it's no longer, Why am I not doing a good job, but rather, Why can't you recognize that I'm doing a good job? I'm 21 and my first job is working as the No. 2 reporter at a statehouse bureau, and I've filed about 90 items in the past three months -- that's worthy of note.* And for me, admitting that I'm good is a step stronger than where I was a few weeks ago.

But still. I want the good moments to outweigh the bad. I want the giddy feeling I got when people wrote me today to tell me that my story was on the front page of my hometown newspaper to carry me over for the next week. That's how it should work; that's how it would work if I could simply reverse the way things currently are. The way my mind works now, a negative moment can cast a shadow over several days, but positives are fleeting and easily brushed off.

I want a job with the AP. I want one so, so badly that I'm not even thinking about the fact that I'll be unemployed in two weeks. I love the pace of the wire service; I love that I can write as much as I want and not worry about page space, because it'll all get picked up online somewhere; I love that I'm known (at least to the Democrats) exclusively as "APMolly." I love writing fast, pounding out stories, and I love being counted on by the other publications here. "Are you doing something on such-and-such? Great, ok, that means we don't have to."

I don't want to work at a daily newspaper now. I want to work for the AP -- one story a day is too slow for me. Yes, I probably wouldn't be able to sustain this pace for long, and yes, it's been exhausting and effing difficult, but at least for the next few years, while I'm young and enthusiastic and ambitious, I want to keep up this pace. I don't want to lose momentum now; I just found my stride!

Damn it, US jobs market, please just let a miracle happen and open up a job at the Seattle bureau.

Love always,
molly

*I'm not trying to be cocky...honestly just trying to convince myself that I'm good at what I do, and that it's ok to acknowledge that in myself. It's a work in progress; forcing myself to say it and write it is helping me to believe it.

musings

My life right now is filled with two things: journalism and climbing.

I'm just interested in examining how I settled on these two pursuits. A friend recently pointed out to me the oddity of choosing journalism for my career -- for someone who is so dependent on receiving praise or at least affirmation and encouragement in what I do, I sure picked a hell of a job.

Journalism -- writing in general, for that matter -- is something where you can never reach perfection. It's so varied, and so subjective; your style and goals change whenever you change editors or audiences. Don't break up your sentence structure in APNewsNows. Write with confidence for weekenders. Don't use "says" in the writethru, but do in the newsnow. And on and on.

And with companies like the AP or Reuters, you may have half a dozen editors reading and rewriting your work. By the end, it might not even be recognizable as your story. And you have to be OK with that.

How'd I wind up here? How did I, seeking to be right as often as I can, end up in a job where there is no one right answer, no one right way of doing things? I have set myself up for a life of constant anxiety and endless, undefinable pursuit of something "better."

Perhaps I'm a masochist.

The other main pastime, then, is almost an about-face. Climbing is full of clear-cut victories, and the climbing community is, I would venture to say, one of the most encouraging groups of people you could imagine. Here I have found an activity where I am congratulated -- and can congratulate myself -- for simply reaching one rock higher on the wall. I enjoy it for what I accomplish; it is a solo effort, but not a solitary sport. For once in my life, I am (almost) able to stop comparing myself to the people around me and recognize that I can be happy with where I am.

It's also an activity that shows progress -- something else that's hard to track in journalism. With my job, I can see over a wide span of time that things have changed; at the end of my Reuters internship, I knew why the stock market fluctuated and what the consumer price index was and that the currency devaluation in China affected Chile because China was the world's No. 1 importer of Chile's No. 1 export copper. Whew.

And now, during the Legislature, two and a half months in I can identify legislators by face, if not by voice; I know a bit about what can be targeted in budget cuts and what's off the table; I know the day-to-day procedure of the session.

But there's not a lot of measurable progress in the actual writing. I still make the same mistakes I was making in my first week. I still obsess over understanding a topic before calling a legislator because I don't want to ask stupid questions. My stories are changed less substantially than they used to be, but editors still call with questions and alterations.

Climbing shows progress rapidly, almost immediately. You see the fruits of your labor: you climb more often, push yourself harder, focus on technique, and you improve. I like being reassured that I'm getting better; effort without reward is often deemed pointless.

Anyway. I have no conclusion yet. Just self-analyzing in the most public medium there is. Like y'do.

Love always,
molly