When I used to think about the year 2020, it seemed impossibly far in the future. Actually, when I was a kid I didn’t think I’d live this long. This was the year of Back to the Future II, when Marty McFly sees himself as a forty-something married man, and the image isn’t exactly flattering. Sure, there were flying cars, hover boards and pizza that came out of the wall, (OK, why can’t we have all that?) but the older Marty looked like a tired wreck, and so I didn’t want to live long enough to become my own version of a tired wreck.
Well, 2020 is days away and I’ll leave it up to you if I’m a tired wreck or not (I tend to think I am—welcome to adulthood, heh)— yet as I continue on the journey on my way to the starting line of the CCC next October, I thought I’d pause and celebrate some of the highlights from this past decade because (honestly?) I haven’t written a list essay in way too long, and I’m feeling festive—hopeful that life isn’t over yet despite my childhood fortune telling.
So, lessons learned, accomplishments, funny moments, these are all the things I’m grateful for, all told in the present tense because, as they say, these moments still exist, somewhere.
(More or less in chronological order)
Thank you 2010-2019 for:
I get an MFA degree in nonfiction awarded by Saint Mary’s College of California. Although I know very well that it stands for “Master of Fine Arts”, and that I wrote/lived/breathed nonfiction prose, in my mind I still think of it as my degree in “Mother Fucking Awesome.”
I run a 2:47 marathon which nearly qualified me for the 2012 Olympic Trials in the marathon. I ran this at the California International Marathon, and that time put me in the top twenty of nearly 20,000 other female runners. It’s the most spectacular failure of my life.
At the SMC MFA, I meet Kelsay Elizabeth Myers, who becomes my bestie-creative-colleague for life. I can’t believe I have been so lucky.
I meet actor Patrick Stewart (Star Trek TNG!!!! OMG OMG OMG) in a coffeehouse in Tahoe City during a huge snowstorm. (FYI: I have been in love with Patrick Stewart for basically my whole life. The Shakespeare. The Star Trek. Brilliance.) I shook his hand and forgot every Shakespeare play every written or performed because I was so starstruck. Oh well.
I catch an oven on fire. (To be fair: I was only following the recipe!)
I go to the Tin House Writer’s Workshop and Cheryl Strayed tells me that I write beautiful sentences. I also learn that she uses her kid’s underwear as scrunchies.
I join an official USATF Cross Country team (Strawberry Canyon Track Club based out of Berkeley) and run a 17:31 5K. My coach’s write-up of that remains the nicest and most explosive thing a person has ever written about me.
I’m hired as a ghost-writer for a memoir that’s a movie now.
I publish a handful of my essays in literary journals— including some of my favorites: Hotel Amerika, Weber: The Contemporary West and TAYO: Literary Magazine. The first one made me cry. The second, I started jumping up and down. I still do both of those things when my writing finds a home in the world.
I have the worst breakup in the history of breakups. Or, that’s what I tell myself even though I know this can’t possibly be true.
I come back to Nevada after three graduate degrees, which was serendipity at its grandest.
I start a community-based reading series called Literary Arts & Wine. It runs for three years in various locations in Truckee, California. This community of poets and writers saved me from being so lonely after coming home. I would love to start another series like this one day.
I teach Core Humanities, French and English to college students.
I live in a place where the ceiling collapses on New Year’s Eve. The plaster crushes my office chair where I’d been working on an essay minutes before, but miraculously misses my laptop. This becomes a lesson in putting things into perspective.
I make a difference in one of my student’s lives. One my English composition students writes to me about getting over her addiction to meth. She asks me timidly if she can write essays about history. At the end of the semester, she tells me she changed her major: instead of getting an accounting certificate, she became a history major with the goal of becoming a teacher one day.
My agent shops around my memoir, about my life as an athlete, to several publishers. I learn that I am not “marketable” and only a handful of people have read my story. I resolve to never give up. I still haven’t.
I win the Lake Tahoe Triathlon, and was the third person across the finish line, including the men. (I win a beer glass for that, with no beer in it.)
My friend Tanna tells me that I need to go to Great Basin Bicycles to do the CompuTrainer classes there. We train together in the UNR Triathlon Club. I tell her there’s no way in hell I’m going into another bike shop where I get talked down to by a bunch of old men. After months she finally convinces me, and I meet Rich Staley.
I’m hired by a software company for the finance industry. They have never created any documentation for their product, and they need a writer to create a database of help documentation. Their programmers are in Russia and do not speak much English. After a year and a half, I create a database of written help documentation based on my own testing. I list this as an accomplishment because I do not consider myself overly logical and hardly mathematical, but to do this I proved to myself that I can be both, if needed.
I accidentally pack the sexy- stilettos and mustard-colored tights in my bag before a full day of teaching at UNR. Because I train with the UNR Tri club, I arrive on campus at 5:50 a.m. each day and do not leave until 6:15 p.m. I realize my error after I exit the pool. There is no time to run home. So, I teach English 101 and CH 201 in mustard-colored tights and the sexy- stilettos. This becomes a lesson in not taking myself too seriously.
After a lot of CompuTrainer classes, Rich convinces me to ride the hardest double-century around with him, the Alta Alpina Double. It’s 200 miles, and has 20,000+ feet of climbing. Somehow I do this event though I know it’s insane. After fifteen hours on the bike, I collapse on the top of the 7 or 8 climbs and start sobbing because I have nothing left. He falls asleep on a cot at the rest station. It’s my first DNF. It’s also the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
After my first DNF, I tell Rich that I want to compete in the California Triple Crown— a 600-mile cycling race—the next year. He says “OK.” My shorts fail after 200 miles, my crotch and legs are scraped raw and bloody, I’m rained on and at a certain point, I just cry as we continue down the road. I’m the first woman from Nevada to win the race.
I get chickens for the first time. They are eaten (massacred) by raccoons. I try again, ordering them in the mail, and they arrive in a chirping cardboard box. This compels me to start doing “chicken math.” We have three chickens; then five, and now we have nine.
I become an Ironman. The race still has the highest DNF to date, yet I finish the Coeur d’Alene IM in 6th place (103-degrees). My parents are my cheering section, and it’s all I can do not to cry when I cross the finish line.
I’m hired by a company that manages residential and treatment programs for at-risk youth. I’m asked to provide a writing sample as a part of my in-person interview. I write this in their conference room on a borrowed laptop. The Director of R&D reads at what I’ve written and then looks at me and says, only: “this is beautiful” as she slides an offer letter with more than anyone has ever wanted to pay for me across her desk. It’s the moment of my life.
I buy a new car (OK, OK, I know selfish! But when I was eating out of cans for all my adult life, this is incredible that a bum like me could do this.)
My writing mentor passes away. He was incredibly giving with all his students, and I feel the loss deeply. I alienate myself from a lot of people by my grief, which I still feel terrible about.
I co-author a memoir published by Beacon Press. It takes three years, and it’s one of the best partnerships I’ve ever had.
I write a winning grant for a multi-million dollar award that enables at-risk high school boys to have additional access to their on-campus library, tutors and “educational advocates” who will be those people in the audience who clap just for them when they have no family there to do that.
Rich’s daughter tells me that “you could be a cool stepmom.”
I DNF in the Tour de Nez in downtown Reno. Me and two other riders lap the main field and I’m poised to win when I take a corner too sharp and rip the derailleur from the bike and a considerable amount of skin from my body. (At least the Firefighters in the med tent were cute, though.)
I win the Donner Double— which means I swam lengthwise across Donner Lake and then ran a 10-mile race. Rich rides in one of the support boats and then rides his bike next to me as I run. I feel incredibly loved.
Two years after my DNF, I ride the Alta Alpina Double and I do all 8 passes. I’m in the top ten finishers. When I finish, I’m definitely not crying. (But I’m definitely wiped out.) This is a lesson in what you think is insane is still insane years later, no matter how fit you are.
I give a speech to at-risk young women who have been the victims of sexual trafficking. The Governor of Nevada is there, and I end up telling him about hope and why we need it.
I win the Silver State 508 as a mixed 2-person team, as a mixed 4-person team and as a 4-woman team. I am inducted into the Hall of Fame.
At the residential treatment company where I work, I get so frustrated with their apathy and general rudeness that I envision throwing my shoes at the cars parked in the company parking lot. I don’t do it, but even imagining how my heels would dent their bumpers is hugely satisfying.
I decide to race in the Alta Alpina race series. I’m the only woman in the “A” racers, but I win 2nd place two years in a row. I place 2nd in the USAC spring race series despite not having teammates. I win a bottle of olive oil.
Somehow, TMCC hires me as the writer of their news stories. It’s a job I love. I take a considerable pay cut by doing this, but I have yet to envision hurling my pumps at my colleague’s cars.
I join Orange Theory and start running. I take a year away from competition. In all of this, I run a 5:50 mile, and I start dreaming in color again.
I bake cookies. COOKIES. And they didn’t catch on fire.
Rich says he loves me.
We get a puppy. I just say it one day, randomly, as Rich is cooking dinner: “let’s get a pup.” And Rich doesn’t say no. We do research. We find the perfect one. We call her Freya. She is our heart.
We go to Point Reyes. We go to Nevada City. We go to Prescott. We hike to see petroglyphs. We collect crystals and turquoise. We eat in diners. We laugh together. We sing. I learn that Rich and I can exist outside of cycling.
At TMCC, I win awards for my day-job work. That’s never happened before.
I attend a social media conference in San Diego where two women decidedly make me a part of their social group, and a safe messaging conference in Washington DC where I’m also folded into a community of women. I am grateful to know so many strong, intelligent and kind women. I aspire to be more like them.
Rich gives me a ring and says “forever.”
I take a modern dance class and fall in love with it, all of it. I wonder what I was so afraid of.
I lose a couple of friends because I not only burned bridges, I nuked them. I regret doing that now.
Kelsay E. Myers leads me through a soul-searching session and she asks me to locate where the fear comes from. I learn that it’s my diaphragm, the breath. It is my heart, the red ribbon connecting imagination, the body and these fingers on the keyboard. I promise not to suffocate myself anymore.
I’m going to ride and raise funds and awareness for the Arthritis Foundation for Team Carter. I’ve never done anything like this before— and perhaps it’s fitting that this event is at the top of my to-do list for 2020.
If you want to support me as I train and blog, and blog and train, and write on related (or sometimes only tangentially related subjects that make me laugh) check out my donation page. All the best to you in 2020… and let’s go #TeamCarter2020.