Bread and Bread

This week I’m at 826 ’s national Staff Development Conference, a welcome breath after many days of worky work. It’s been a pleasant roller coaster ride of inspiring speeches, helpful workshops, information overwhelm, and good chats with universally awesome coworkers. Topped with a sprinkling of my own white fragility because I like to swing between wild fear that the government is coming for my little queer family and unproductive worry that I Am The Problem. Blah blah blah. But I know this: 826 is the right place for me. That’s a good feeling. Anyway, one of my favorite parts was when poet Nate Marshall asked us to write a variation on Idris Goodwin’s “A Preface.” I riffed on my one true identity. Nerd on consent. My parents were nerds which is to say they studied hard and delayed gratification or their gratification was in sacrifice but also knowledge. They are not to be confused with academics, because they went to state schools. They are not to be con...

All week, I've had a tightness in my chest and stomach. I tried to breathe like that chiropractor taught me in 2011, a year that was essentially a slow-motion panic attack. I thought it was about work, which has been a little bit intense. I felt frustrated with myself for letting something so banal--something that on balance is a positive in my life--get to me on such a visceral level. Then, yesterday, I had a great day at work, chatting with our spirited new intern and leading a writing prompt for our Summer Writers' Workshop. During my nightly plummet into social media, I soaked per usual in the day's headlines and outrage, and my stomach clenched again. It finally dawned on me. On Tuesday night, Dash woke up around 3 am, and I dragged him into bed with AK and me. He promptly fell back asleep while I tossed and turned and chased the blue light of my phone for hours. I kept thinking about what everyone not wearing a jacket announcing their lack of empathy is thinki...

1. PGSD I spent the last couple of weeks preparing for 826LA’s big gala. My coworker Shawn—a woman whose superpower is asking people to do hard things in the most graceful, inspiring way, a skill I wish more powerful men would watch and learn—led the charge, but I was second in command. It was all sales and numbers and making multiple donor management databases talk to each other, none of which is my jam. Toward the end, I was working 12-hour days. Also not my jam. My eating habits tanked. My parenting was meh. I relied on AK for a lot and didn’t give much in return. The night of the event, I worked registration in the role of “trouble shooter.” At Homeboy’s gala, if a name wasn’t on the list, I just sent that person down the line to the Lady With The Laptop. Now I was the Lady With The Laptop, which was mildly terrifying. I went in feeling rather proud of my meticulously devised and revised seating chart, and I finished in tears. Being the Lady With The Laptop at a gala e...