In Memory

We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.

--Joseph Roux

The ways I’ve heard people describe Matt Arch - social butterfly, life of the party, unabashed activist – comprised a spirit so lively that I met the news of his death with incredulous devastation. There were times, being around Matt, when the world appeared to be lovely solely because Matt so thoroughly enjoyed loveliness, so how could one understand a world without Matt there to appreciate it? My disbelief left me unsure of what to do with myself, and when I saw my sister after the awful information had been confirmed, I told her about my emotional paralysis.

“I want to do something Matt would have done - like donate to a charity or sign up for a race. I know that would be the best tribute to his memory, but right now…” I broke off, unsure of how to finish.

Jess sighed sadly. “Yeah, I feel the same way, too. I thought for a minute about signing up for the marathon and running in Matt’s memory…”

I raised my eyebrows.

Jess looked solemnly thoughtful, “But I think Matt would understand.”

He would have, and that’s what I have come to accept about my trajectory of grief thus far: Matt understood we all bring what we can to a situation, he celebrated diversity and worked to safeguard our rights to be different. The people Matt valued come from all different walks of life and no matter who you were, he was always able to make you feel like the most special person in the room. He most memorably did that for me when he asked me to write and edit for his website, which worked to promote his own business prowess and bring individuals together.

I pitched my idea of a series connecting popular culture to the workplace to Matt with a certain amount of trepidation. Not only was I concerned the project would seem too pedestrian, I was also feeling doubtful, which was my natural response to another person investing in my intellect.

However Matt’s eyes lit up. Throughout our collaboration, he was endlessly generous and enthusiastic. The point of his website was to help people network their way to success, and he was insistent I set the blog up in a way to best promote myself (He was characteristically upfront about his view of networking, “Girl, if you succeed, I at least know someone at the top. We gotta get more gays up there.” “I’m bisexual,” I corrected. “Baby, even better.”).

I would meet with or email him to talk about pop culture trends I noticed, and we’d have conversations about our responses to the fads. I wonder, then, how Matt would feel about hundreds of his friends finding out about his death on Facebook. The ghosts of conversations I never had with him haunt my thoughts, and I imagine, had all of this been happening another way, I’d have approached him about the concept of grieving on social media.

“Angelcakes,” He would have doubtlessly utilized his favorite nickname at some point in this exchange, “This is brilliant, we have to blog about it.”

“But Matt,” I would have replied; I keep thinking as I write this, “there’s no way to make this funny.”

I haven’t yet been able to force my grief to manifest as fundraising, because the script I seem to be following is too absurdly predictable. I had passed through denial when quickly scrolling through Facebook after a cautionary phone call from my sister and searching through hundreds of posts until I was satisfied the news must contain some truth. And even after accepting the reality of his death, I still kept stumbling into the word suicide, an abyss instead of an erect obstacle. (Matt would have been thrilled to see the word “erect” in his elegiac blog entry.) I marched through anger, snapping at my partner and indulging in stony silence. In drunken nights, in emotional hypothesizing, I bargained, I ruminated and re-planned: If only…if only…if only.  But I have not reached a level of acceptance that has yet allowed me to participate in an activity to honor Matt, because his death is still a ridiculous impossibility.

My script is not only normative but also reductive. I’m incredulous because Matt was so happy and his cheerful spirit infective. Hundreds upon hundreds of people have expressed their despair at his passing: how could someone so loved ever feel alone? He was one of the most accomplished people I knew, and we had many editorial conversations about the best way to prune his resume in order to organize his many accolades. He was too young, too happy, too important. He loved life too much to die.

He loved Beyoncé too much to die, I imagine Matt would have wanted me to add.

But I know better. Not only have I watched an UpWorthy video or two in my day, but I’ve also coped with similar demons and can recognize the hue of this act thanks to the tar marring my own experiences. Nonetheless, I can’t let go of my incredulity because this shouldn’t have happened, and don’t we always want to rest in the safety of a logical universal order?

In Matt’s mind, the logical order of the universe was that we all come together and celebrate one another. I know few people with Matt’s capacity for love – he clearly served as the connectarian he aspired to be (buying rights to that connectarian domain name, of course, because, for Matt Arch, ideology need not be divorced from business opportunities). I don’t have answers exempt from anyone else struggling with this tragedy, but I do know a lesson I learned from Matt’s life and death is that connection matters. Matt would be thrilled if we took the risk of reaching out to one another at least once each day, practicing the kind of life he strove to live. If you knew Matt, then you knew what it was to be included, to be valued. What better tribute to pay to this man than to pass on that favor, and to try to live in such a way that the gift is ever passed forward?

I don’t always know, Matt, the best way to say my goodbyes. But, because I love you, here’s one last collaboration.

The Short Shelf-Life of the Realized Goal

In May I graduated from my MA program and ran a half-marathon.  Unused to such levels of accomplishment, I have apparently been resting ever since, hence the lack of updates.  I noticed, however, in my lull between Doing Things¹ that I never actually thought about what reaching either of these goals means.  There’s a scene on Parks and Recreation where Leslie Knope and her team reach a milestone in her long-running goal of park creation, and Leslie immediately starts rallying her troops with plans of what needs to happen next.  Ann (that beautiful, flawless mermaid)² interrupts her best friend and says, “Don’t you ever just stop and celebrate?”  

And she kind of doesn’t, which is one of the reasons we consistently say Yup to Knope³. But it’s also one of the reasons Leslie exists irretrievably in the realm of fiction: No one can consistently maintain that level of energetic optimism without taking a day or two to reflect and be a little self-congratulatory.

This revelation came to me and I thought, “Parks and Recreation rocks.”  Followed by, “Why don’t I reflect on reaching both of those goals with a blog post.  That way I’m multitasking!”⁴ 

Weirdly, a lot of the conversations I’ve had with people about finishing a half-marathon parallel conversations I’ve had about earning my MA.  And, while I like to think I smelled a lot better earning my Masters than I did running a half-marathon⁵, I still learned a few similar lessons.

People ask you why you want to accomplish this (and your answer really matters)

Sometimes “why” comes with incredulous support to buttress the speaker’s disbelief.  “Why would you want to run a half-marathon? That sounds hard and boring.”  The same, by the way, can be and has been said about attending graduate school.⁶ 

Often we have to search far back into our memory banks for an answer to “why.”  And there are times when the motivation is harder to remember than it should be, or maybe our reasoning sounds idealistic and naïve, or we know that our answer will do nothing to justify our desires to others. 

I decided to run a half-marathon because someone was talking about training for one, and I immediately thought, “I could never do that.”  After chasing the thought down I realized instantly declaring my own inability to complete a task was rather unproductive.  There was no real reason I couldn’t run 13.1 miles – I was certainly healthy enough and already enjoyed running.  I signed up for the Pittsburgh half-marathon the next day and started training, but I was really training myself to stop being a premature nay-sayer. 

Of course, sometimes when I was on my eighth mile while training, and it was snowy or rainy or, you know, Tuesday, and I was tired, then the “why” was buried a little deeper.  I realized in those moments that my knowing my motivation isn’t important because I need to justify myself to others⁷, but because I need to remember my goal to get me to the good days.  Knowing I was getting my MA because I believe education can change the world was helpful on late nights/early mornings in a library that always smells faintly of body odor and desperation.

To push through the pain or to take a nap?  The struggle is real.

Early on while training for the race, I got a stress fracture because trying to save money by running in three-year-old running shoes is actually as dumb as everyone says it is.  Push-through-the-pain culture and an impervious competitive streak left me unhappily lightly cross-training and resting, but I knew ultimately a break would probably spare me, well, a break⁸.  There were other times when the “To Rest or Endure” question was harder to answer.  Did I not want to run today because of a swollen knee or ennui? Knowing the difference between pain that should be tended to and pain that should be ignored was a vital part of training, especially in the first few months of preparing when I was still learning how my body responded to this level of physical activity.

Academia was a little tougher.  As someone who struggles with anxiety and depression, I am accustomed to weighing internal turmoil against external obligations, and I had never, until graduate school, learned how to accept that there would be some moments it would be healthier for me to just stay home.  Maybe being totally isolated in the dim, aforementioned smelly library would not be the best thing for me today.  Or, perhaps being in a space where a room full of people share and critique complex ideas with one another would legitimately be too overwhelming for me at this moment.  Of course I also became aware that academia has an unfortunate habit of cultivating feelings of inferiority and isolation, and there were ways I could maintain an awareness of and combat this tendency. Learning it was responsible to sometimes say “Not today, but maybe tomorrow” was a big deal for me.  I also now wholeheartedly believe in the healing power of the hour-long nap.  Because, friend, 2pm is going to happen whether you’re awake for it or not.

Methods that worked for everyone else in the universe will not work for you.

You aren’t going to believe this, but a lot of people get up at 4am to go running.  It’s true.  Other people totally cease academic work by 7 or 8pm (I strongly suspect these people are also early risers).  Before embarking on my journey as a graduate student or runner, I did a lot of research on how people were successful in both endeavors.  I tried getting up early to work out or write, but realized that harboring a fatigued hatred of absolutely everyone and everything by 11am was not worth the Early Bird title.  I found that certain types of cross-training didn’t work for me – I have always found the elliptical mind-numbingly boring⁹ for whatever reason, and so despite the many advocates for that particular machine, I avoided it religiously.  Some of my peers would write their own responses to texts beside corresponding paragraphs, but whenever I did this I couldn’t remember what I was responding to, or how “hegemony” related to anything.  I ended up realizing I needed to write general summaries beside work to jog my memory, even though other methods seemed more advanced.  I cultivated a heightened skepticism for foolproof, universal routines, since I’ve yet to find a fool-proof plan that I cannot upend.

Someone will ask what you want to do now that you’ve reached your goal, and “drink and sleep” are actually totally acceptable short-term answers.

I think that speaks for itself. 

Please take some time today to reflect on cool stuff you’ve done and prematurely dismissed.  We are sometimes more impressive than we acknowledge.  Happy reading.

1. Well, I was working ten hours a day at a daycare this summer, but no one gives you a medal or a diploma for that…Just room temperature applesauce.

 2. Sorry to the two people left on the planet who don’t watch Parks and Rec and therefore have no idea what I’m talking about

 3. Sorry

4. Multitasking: The Only Relaxation a Type A Person Forgives

5.  It’s the little things

 6. Mostly by graduate students

7. Although, it was fun to occasionally answer the “Why would you want to run a half-marathon” with, “You don’t want to run a half-marathon?” and act totally baffled.

8. A little stress-fracture humor for you there.

9. Plus, “Pedal Faster” scrolls across the screen when you start slowing down to end your workout, and I find that very uncalled for and discouraging.

July Pop Culture Update

Hey folks,
A new installment of the Your Life through Pop Culture series is up! Check it out here.
Also, though I've been focusing on the guest blog the past few months, I'm hoping to start to more regularly update this blog again soon, so...I'll keep you posted.  Happy reading.

April Pop Culture Update

In the spirit of graduation, Matt and I are happy to share the latest Your Life through Pop Culture post.  We added some Buffy in there for the hell of it.

Pop Culture Update

We have a new post on toxic work environments up - take a gander here if you have the time!

New Update

Another Your Life through Pop Culture post is up!  If you have a few minutes and would enjoy deconstructing some failed celebrity apologies with me, take a gander!

Professionalism and Pop Culture Update (The titles just keep getting more exciting)

Hi, folks!  For anyone who has ever watched Beyoncé perform and thought, "Awesome, but how can I apply this to my professional life?"  I have a post for you!  If you're so inclined, check out my most recent post on my guest series for Matt Arch's website.  Feel free to leave a comment if you have any suggestions for what you'd like to see next.  Not that I don't have any ideas and would appropriate yours.