Log 73: Year in Review

I'm writing this just hours after getting home from the airport. It's 1:30 AM in Hawaii and I'm exhausted, but it feels like the time to write. 

It’s probably because in Minnesota time, it's 6:30 AM on July 28, 2022. Exactly one year ago, down to the hour, I was waking up groggily, hurriedly packing myself lunch, and heading to Featherlite for my first day of work. A week later, I had confirmed my leave of absence with Princeton for the 2021-22 school year. At the time, I was certain that I would be back next fall. 

In my mind, I just needed time to get my mental health in check and recuperate for a little while. That was all this time off of school would be. A break. A blip. And then it would be back to work. It had to be. I was desperate to feel better as quickly as possible so I could get back to the place that made me feel so awful in the first place.

I pushed down my doubts about Princeton, even as I started marking transfer application deadlines for various other colleges in my calendar. I spent the following six months working full time for my uncles at Featherlite, delving into the unfamiliar world of manufacturing. I still believe that I have Covid to thank for that job opportunity - I doubt my help would have been needed without the damage the pandemic did to the company’s workforce.

As you all know by now, I was far from qualified for the job. But, despite how out of place I knew I would feel in a work environment composed entirely of white, middle-aged men - let alone a work environment where I was completely incompetent - I did my best to go into the experience with an open mind. I can clearly recall how it felt walking into Featherlite’s warehouse on my first day of work, not knowing anyone’s name or how to complete any task. I felt so awkward and tense, constantly having to ask people for help with whatever I was working on, and usually being left just as confused as I was to begin with after their clarification. It was a true baptism by fire. 

On that first day, I was standing in the saw room, sanding some cabinet doors (at the time, I didn’t know what sanding was, and definitely didn’t recognize that the things I was sanding were cabinet doors), when I started to feel overwhelmed. What was I thinking when I agreed to this job? Suddenly, I was looking for a way out of Featherlite. I told myself that it was only my first day, so if I quit, no harm no foul, right? Just as I was about to solidify my decision in my mind, my internal narrative paused for a moment. I took a deep breath, and reminded myself that it was irrational to expect everything to click on my first day. I needed to give it time - maybe a week, maybe a month, but definitely more than a day. If I gave up right then, standing at the starting line of this journey, I would never get to see who I would be when I reached the finish. And so, I returned to my cabinet sanding, and held out hope that I would improve.

And I did. Everyone in the office was patient with me, and although I had many blunders along the way, by the three month mark I felt proficient in all my day-to-day tasks at work. In fact, one day, about four months after I started, Featherlite hired a new guy, and on his first day, I happened to be working across a table from him in the metals department. After a few minutes, he whispered over to me, “Hey, uh… do you know how to turn this thing on? I can’t remember.” “Oh. Yeah,” I said, taking the rivet gun he was holding and connecting it to a pressurized air valve, before handing it back to him. “Thanks,” he said, looking relieved. A proud smile crept across my face as I went back to what I was doing. 

When I left Featherlite in early January of 2022, I already knew where I was headed next. A few months prior, I had thought to myself, what could I do that would be the furthest thing possible from this job? Fast forward to February 19th, and I was on a plane to Maui, Hawaii, to spend the next 5 weeks working on an organic honey farm called Liberty Vista that I found through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), an organization that connects workers to independent farms around the world. 

When I left for Liberty Vista, I did my best to manage my expectations. I declared to myself that no matter what, I would come back from Maui with a smile on my face and a great story to tell. Whether that would be because working on the farm was the best experience of my life or the worst, was entirely out of my control.

It took about ten minutes on the farm to confirm that the latter would be the case. In hindsight, I guess I was kind of asking for it. 

However, I stayed true to my vow. When my time at the farm (6 nights) came to an end, I had one hell of a story, and I was still smiling. It was the nervous smile of a traveler who has no idea where they will be sleeping the next night, but a smile nonetheless. 

Then, I found Hakuna Matata, the only hostel on the island that had a bed for me. My 2 day booking turned into 4 weeks, and then six months.

Those first two days, I walked the streets of Lahaina, weaving through throngs of tourists, collecting job applications from every ice cream, shaved ice, and coffee shop I could find. And from Taco Bell, of course. I interviewed with Ululani's two days later, on March 2nd. By March 6th, I was the newest shavista working at the Hyatt.

Looking back, I think I really found my groove in April. I got promoted. Ran my half-marathon. Celebrated Dominique and Daniel’s wedding. Unenrolled from Princeton altogether. Started geling with my coworkers. My routines became solidified, and Maui began to feel like home.

Then, the months kept passing. I committed to Scripps’s class of ‘25. My family visited, and Anne and Lucas arrived. I'm forever grateful that they were both able and willing to come to join me. What a time. 

And now, here I am, back in Minnesota. 

I know that all of this is basically a reiteration of everything I’ve included in my other entries, but I guess I wanted to sort of… sum everything up. During the college transfer process, I was often asked to explain my “educational journey”. The only problem was, there was always a 1500 character limit on my response - I couldn’t even sum up the education I received on any given day at Featherlite, on the farm, or in Lahaina with so few words. In 1500 characters, I couldn’t tell my whole story, so I’m telling it here. 

Maybe it’s unconventional to include my time at Featherlite and in Hawaii as part of my educational journey, but they are. This year, I learned as much as I ever did in a year at Breck, or during my first year at Princeton. The only difference was that instead of going to classes and submitting papers, I was riveting frames together, hardcore camping, and pouring sugar syrup onto snow cones.

So, one might pose the question, now that I'm at the end of this year long journey, what was the destination? What's the conclusion? The takeaway? What did I discover or learn about myself and the world at large?

You might be disappointed to hear that I don’t want to be a metalworker, or a carpenter, or a beekeeper, or even a shavista for the rest of my life. A year ago, I think I'd look back on this year as a failure, because none of the things I did made any kind of concrete progress towards a concrete goal. My whole life, I've always been working towards something - the things I did were always necessary to yield me a certain result. And here I am, after a year, no closer to getting a degree, or a job, or even finding a career path. 

I think the real takeaway for me was that, for once, I enjoyed the journey I was on. Because I didn't have a destination! The “goal” of this year was just to go on the journey at all. 

My dad always says, “life’s not a race”. And for the first time, I think I agree. I don’t have to have it all figured out - I’m a work in progress, remember? 

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