I’m sitting on the porch at a coffee shop in Belize called Ice and Beans. This country has charmed me, mostly with it’s uninhibited embracing of the pun as a lingual flourish.

The iced coffee I got tasted like a bottled Frappuccino, which tastes like me being 12 years old. I used to drink them in the beach with my mom every summer. They were my gateway drug, the first unfortunate step towards becoming the caffeine fiend (caffiend?) I am today.

This place offers you a coffee shot when you walk in. I think it’s a cute touch and it saddens me that would never fly in New York. People would steal the shot glasses, or crack them against the counter and use the jagged glass as a weapon, or at the very least exit and re-enter multiple times wearing different mediocre disguises to try to drink the equivalent of what they would have hypothetically ordered were it not free. This place is adorable. I bet no one has even shat on the floor of their bathroom. #paradise

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking during the last few weeks about being alone. I like traveling alone. I like not having to match someone’s pace, to consider other people’s preferences. Alone is my most comfortable state, and it has been for as long as I can remember. This has had a mostly positive impact on my life. I can handle my shit without anyone else. I can mount a TV to a wall, negotiate the terms of my lease agreement, and wander around a new country on my own. But I do want to make sure I’m not avoiding any potential friend/partner or community out of fear, or insecurity, and upon very little reflection it became clear that I do that, a lot.

I was much better than this in college. I knew I needed to make friends so I powered through the discomfort. But at 31, I’ve got plenty of friends and my TV has been successfully mounted if you know what I mean 😏 I even hid the cords, if you know what I mean 😏 and set up my Roku by myself (eh ok that one doesn’t sound nearly sexual enough) sooooo I’ve been able to get by without too much external participation in my life.

As I flew between Miami and Belize City, I felt a tiny wave of anxiety wash over me. Some of it was due to the next to zero planning I had done for this trip. I had five dollars in my bag and it never occurred that maybe I should have at least a couple more, probably in a different currency. But most of it was definitely due to the guy sitting next to me who smelled like old cigarettes. This was not the eau d’an occasional smoker. This was someone who had been chain-smoking in the womb, someone who deliberately eschewed modern washing machines as they didn’t fit in with his lifestyle, that lifestyle being Margaritaville-meets-methhead. I breathed through my mouth the whole flight. As we landed in Belize, he leaned over me in the middle seat to look out the window and whispered to no one, “there she is.” Like Belize was a boat that he had lovingly built one summer with his dad, who left the family shortly thereafter and whose only communication has been a check for $20 in a card each year since on his birthday. I was so relieved when the wheels hit the tarmac. I really didn’t want to die next to this guy. I didn’t want my last smell to be old Birkenstocks and halitosis.

Landing in Belize, I promised myself that I would try to make at least one new friend, and was pleasantly surprised when I crushed that goal and met way more. Two of the people I met were two guys from Seattle who were staying in the same hotel for the first night. They’re friends who just travel together sometimes, which I found adorable. I’m not sure why. Girls go on trips together all the time, but it felt unusual for dudes. Either way, they were a great friend couple. They have personalities that are different enough to be interesting but similar enough to not be a disaster. They’re both the type of guy who would challenge a bunch of 20-year-old Belizean guys to a game of pickup basketball.

I’m gonna take you on a bit of a tangent now, apologies, BUT can I just say that the universe really loves fucking with me. One of them was cute, funny, has a legit job that’s interesting that he seems to be good at. He clearly found me cute (I don’t know how you know but sometimes you just do, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.) But he just bought a house in Seattle and almost definitely has a girlfriend. Everything goes to shit when property and existing relationships are involved.

It’s like this trick we’ve played on my mom a few times over the years, not telling her we’re coming home and surprising her with our presence. It was cute the first couple of times but now it’s just really tired. The universe needs to come up with a new joke for me. Every single solid guy I meet being unavailable is getting really old. If you need ideas of alternative ways to mess with me, I can help you come up with some ideas. You could get me audited or you could break one of my bones. Give me a surprise gluten intolerance. As much as I love bread I’d still prefer that to having impossible men constantly dangled in front of me, especially when I struggle so much with the whole idea of letting anyone in the first place.

In my more magnanimous moments I can convince myself that this is actually what my life is meant to be, that I should just embrace it. Little vignettes saved in my memory of short periods of time with interesting people. I can say I’ve learned cute little life lessons from each of them before releasing them back into the wild. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll even teach them a thing or two. It’s a fucking shame Garry Marshall’s dead. Netflix could pick up this series, and I could sleep with the resulting piles of cash in my bed as a proxy boyfriend. Cash is easier to understand, and it doesn’t have a house in Seattle, if you don’t count Bill Gates’s house in Medina, and I don’t.

I went on a snorkeling trip, the one thing I had booked online beforehand. As my mother would attest to, I’m not big on booking things before I take trips. I say that it cramps my style but the truth is that it’s boring when it’s hypothetical and the fact that I would usually be trying to do it in between answering emails at work makes it just feel like too much of a chore. I realize that is the most obnoxious sentiment in the world, but we’re in this together. No backing out now.

The upside of this, of course, is that I don’t have to expend any additional energy. The downside is that sometimes I don’t get to do some shit. I’ve never ridden a horse in Ireland, for example, and that is my fault.

This time I decided (the day before I arrived) that I would sign up for a snorkeling trip. I figured that being out on a boat would never not be a good call, and so I googled “snorkeling Caye Caulker Belize” and booked the first one that came up.

I’m really glad I did. One of the charming parts of this island is that as you walk down the Main Street (there’s really only one of them) you are loudly encouraged by multiple friendly men to take THEIR snorkeling trip. There are easily 15 tour operators in a half-mile stretch. They also comment on your butt if you’re me.

I had no problem with this conceptually (the guys in New York yell much less enterprising things) but in all likelihood I would have been overwhelmed and would have choked under the pressure, ultimately deciding that snorkeling was not for me, even though I’ve done it multiple times in my life and always loved it.

I ended up on a boat with two other American girls, both of whom are nurses in Southern California. They were nice and friendly and had done expert things like resuscitate premies and bring waterproof cameras on vacation, both of which were very impressive to me.

The boat was amazing, I don’t need to tell you guys that. It had everything: sunburn despite all of my best efforts, new friends, coral reefs... this is not a travel blog. You get it. The highlight was probably the fact that we saw what I’m sure were all of the sharks in existence gather around the boat to be photographed (and also fed but I knew their real motivations, they wanted to be #stars.)

I did bring waterproof mascara for this trip, thinking I was a genius because #theocean but it backfired terribly. I think the last time I bought waterproof mascara was at least 10 years ago and I’m pretty sure it’s gotten stronger. Like drugs. For those who aren’t familiar, it’s generally a really bad idea to fuck with, ever (...like drugs) and it’s definitely not something you should wear on the daily. It clumps immediately and then dries, making it impossible to adjust. I knew this. But for whatever reason I expected to still be able to remove it, somehow, maybe with just a little extra eye makeup remover and a positive attitude. No luck. It is permanently affixed to my eyelashes and I’m just going to have to move forward like this. I accidentally pulled out like three eyelashes trying to get off before I threw in the towel. So my eyes are surrounded by permanent spiderwebs now I guess. It’s a look.

On our way back in to the dock, our tour guide Oliver cut the engine and pointed to a school of huge grey fish swimming alongside the boat. He told us that they were called tarpon, and they were protected etc. I don’t know. I don’t do fish.

He pulled out some much smaller fish from a cooler and passed one to one of the older men on the tour who I believe had not spoken the entire time. He instructed him to hold it out by the tail about a foot above the water. After a second or two, A huge tarpon jumped out of the water, pulling the food from the guys hand. Everyone clapped politely for Mr Doesn’t Talk, like our plane had just landed in the midwest. The captain asked if anyone else on the boat wanted to try.

This isn’t the type of thing I volunteer for, the things that I feel are just as interesting if I watch someone else do it. One of the nurses however boldly jumped at the chance.

She held the little guy she was handed over the side of the boat just like the other guy. All of the sudden, the fish jumped out of the water AND CLAMPED ON TO HER FULL FIST. It let go almost immediately and disappeared back into the water but as she pulled her hand back in to her body you could see that there was blood everywhere.

Then I got to see a study in proportionate, measured responses that you rarely find within the contiguous United States. Oliver didn’t even blink, he just sort of poked one of the other crew members and asked him to see if the first aid kit was where it was supposed to be. The girl whose hand was bleeding just said “ah” and then asked her friend if she could pass her a Clorox wipe. She wiped her hand down, and then wrapped it in her towel and that was the last we heard of it, even as the towel starting sprouting bloodstains. I kept waiting for someone to start screaming, even if it was me, but everyone else regarding it as not a big deal made me feel silly for even suspecting that it might be.

I did ask if Clorox wipes were how you were supposed to treat flesh wounds. Turns out it’s “not the best option but it’ll work in an emergency.” I was glad to at least hear them refer to it as an emergency, though their energy level didn’t reflect it. I suspect that it’s all relative.

Leaving the island, I stopped to take a picture of a sign I had walked by countless times over the previous six days, that said “go slow, but keep moving.” It was referring to a spot on some stairs where they were imploring the public to not sit. But I know myself, and I know that that pic, even out of context, is something I should keep close by.

I spent the last four months working. And not the normal amount of working, where I give it a solid 8.5 hours then go home and eat half an organic frozen pizza with kale on top that I cooked separately. The normal amount of working is intermediate level problem-solving at a brisk pace, occasionally taking a bit more initiative than necessary and trying not to be a dick to my coworkers. It’s the amount of working that generally leads to regular-enough praise from my boss, which is as sustaining as frozen pizza for me, if not more.

Recently though, I was put in a position where I was really Working. My work email, normally toggled off on my phone at night and on weekends remained on for a full quarter of a year. I had Sunday calls and 7PM meetings, and a general feeling of thrilled dread took up residence in my stomach. It was a period of extremes. I was overwhelmed and nervous, working towards a goal that was objectively impossible. But I was also exhilarated. This is what I’m good at. My insides could be a wreck but I will step up and act like I couldn’t be calmer in the name of successfully docking the ship of a project. And this project was an aircraft carrier, or another example of a large boat. A cruise ship. An abnormally large catamaran.

In August, in the middle of the madness, I promised myself that as soon as the project was over I was going to take some serious time off. The last vacation I took that was more than two days off was in 2017, when I went to Ireland with my mom and sister. So at the end of last week, I scrubbed down my apartment, put fresh sheets on my bed, Swiffered (with the wet cloths!) because my anxiety prevents me from leaving any sort of mess for more than four hours and picked up a Hyundai Accent at the Advantage Rent a Car in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Driving, I found, did come back, but merging sure as fuck didn’t, and neither did changing lanes. I reserved the car in a cocky moment when I viewed the blank canvas that was the entire month of November on the calendar and I realized in order to do a writers retreat in Bumblefuck Massachusetts I would need to get there somehow. I had a brand new New York driver’s license and plenty of time between now and then (to what, practice?)

Suddenly, it was Sunday, and I was on I95 North, windows up, with the music turned off for safety reasons. Luckily, the first car I drove regularly (not mine, never mine, which was always fine with me) was a Hyundai of approximately the same size. Ours was an Elantra, which was like the snooty version of the Accent. We pronounced it “E-lahhhn-trahhhh” and rolled the “r” and always wore a beret when we said it which was weird because French people don’t roll their “r”s. But it was basically the same car.

I have four full weeks off. Four weeks. When I got home from work on Friday I actually cried I was so relieved.

This week is being spent in a tiny town in Massachusetts called Ashfield at a place called Wellspring House. The entire town consists of seven buildings, four on one side of main street and three on the other. When I drove into town, my cell phone immediately ceased to work. They had warned me about this. I don’t particularly care about cell service, especially now that the internet has made it almost entirely redundant. It was a symbolic moment. I had reached the end of the world.

I told myself that as I write for the next ten days I would only hold myself to the standard of trying to impress my former seventh-grade teacher. I don’t actually have access to her at this time but I feel fairly confident about her expectations. I have what I’m sure is a classic problem. I unintentionally edit while I’m writing, which can make my progress slow and painful. So I asked myself, what level can I confidently reach without putting any undue pressure on myself? And the answer was: a seventh-grade creative writing exercise.

My essays in middle school were always exactly good. I varied my sentence structure, peppered them with PSAT words (but not too many) and developed my own style of prose. At the time felt like 100% original Rose, but was definitely an amalgamation of the types of writers I had read the most- Lois Lowry, Ann M. Martin and the occasional author whose work was probably beyond my comprehension but made me look smart reading. It was during this time that I read the first quarter of The Brothers Karamasov three times. Incidentally it was also during this period when I learned to hate Hemingway, based on the first ten pages of The Old Man and the Sea. I have never given him another shot and I have no intention of ever doing so.

My homework would be praised by my teacher, often read aloud to my classmates who luckily were only bored and did not grow to openly hate me. In a group of 26 12 year olds, I was the best writer. Now at 31, I still feel as though I am the best writer in the average group of 26 12 year olds. This a manageable yardstick for me. Aiming for this gives me permission to be pretty terrible, at least with my first drafts, which is the only way I can still get words out onto the page.

The house where I’m staying is old and run down. There are four rooms where other writers can stay, three of which are occupied right now. It has a white exterior with royal blue trim. Each of the rooms is named after a writer. I’m staying in the Phyllis Wheatley room. The mattress of the twin bed I’m sleeping on is hard, but the room is warm and cozy, so warm in fact that I have to leave the window wide open. It’s monk-like. I’m into it.

There are people in three of the four rooms right now, but people come and go. The most interesting so far are the couple in the room next door to mine. I met Robert on Monday morning when I went downstairs to make coffee. He’s an extremely friendly older man who’s a professor, around 70, very chatty, clearly smart and a little eccentric. He laughed at something I said very shortly after we started talking so I decided right away that I liked him. He was saying his wife was coming to join him the next day. Fast-forward to Wednesday afternoon, when I run into a woman while I’m making coffee (I’m very predictable when I’m procrastinating.) She was probably mid-thirties, MAYBE 40, and she was cute and nice in a Midwestern sort of way. She tells me that she’s here with her husband and then ROBERT APPEARS AND HE IS HER HUSBAND AND HE IS AT LEAST 30 YEARS OLDER THAN HER. Blew my mind right open. Look, I obviously don’t have to approve of their relationship, but I have to say they seem great together. He made her pasta with squid ink and then they both tried to describe to me how it tasted. It was adorable, but also let me tell you if you ever need to kill an hour or two just ask two academics to describe how something weird tastes.

The place is located in the foothills of the Berkshires. Everything is brown and red and orange around the town, it’s almost boringly pretty. I drove to another small town nearby called Shelbourne Falls earlier this week in search of coffee (note the pattern.) Everything was closed except for the bakery, where I sat in the quiet and ate a pumpkin muffin while reading. The town has a waterfall running through it, just a perfect New England postcard. It’s also where they filmed The Judge. I don’t know what movie that is but there was a plaque.

It’s just so quiet here. The others in the house are around, and everyone is friendly, but ostensibly we are all here to write, so everyone is also very respectful of each other’s space. Lots of asking each other if we’re bothering each other and assuring each other that we definitely aren’t. Lots of whispered apologies for walking by someone. There’s a large living room with well over a thousand books, placed haphazardly in stacks. Fiction to the right of the fireplace, non-fiction to the left. There are house rules, posted strategically throughout the house. When to do laundry, where to put your milk in the fridge, and a reminder to leave 40 cents for any call on the landline to cover the cost (guys the old-time phone still costs money)

In between writing, and coffee, I’ve been going through this list of prompts I make myself answer towards the end of every year. It almost never happens at New Years, it’s more or less yearly and usually aligns with the onset of my seasonal depression, but it’s the same idea. I started doing it three years ago and each year I’ve refined it a bit. I basically wrote down all of the things I knew I needed to face sooner rather than later in my life and then organized them into a proactive format that didn’t make me want to jump off a roof.

I thought I would share it with you, with a bit of explanation, just in case this sounds like a fun afternoon activity to you. So without further ado…

ROSE’S GENIUS MEGA-LIST OF SELF DISCOVERY PROMPTS AS FEATURED IN DOMINO MAGAZINE

Fill out the below.

How do you feel right now? Like, for real. No one else is going to read this. This part is hard, take your time. Here. Take a Xanax and an Emergen-C packet.

What is your biggest challenge and why? E.g. passing science, not being such a cunt to your mother-in-law, major surgery, being unable to accept love

If you could have one wish for the next year, what would it be? FYI your wish can be kind of crazy, but if you’re expecting actual magical wish-fulfillment you are going to be extremely disappointed and honestly I just don’t even want to hear about it.

General goals

• My body: Which part of you are going to exercise regularly this year? Fingers crossed it’s not just like a single bicep

• My love life: How long will you make yourself stay in relationships this year?

• My career: Maybe this is the year you’ll figure how to do a career plus anything else at the same time.

Affirmations There has to be a better word. More like just a list of reminders for and about yourself to keep yourself on track and make yourself feel better when changing is hard and you hate it so much.

Specific goals This is the part where you look up what SMART stands for every year because you’ve forgotten since we did this last even though it’s a really great

Bad habits to stop You definitely have them, probably a lot. If this isn’t your longest list when you start doing this then you are not telling me, and probably not telling yourself, the truth.

Good habits to start It’s really easy to volunteer in New York but also flossing is really just not optional people and it’s even easier. Of course, those are just a couple of ideas of good habits to start. There are lots more you can do. Make it your own.

Current good habits to keep: Like looking so fucking fly all the time

Spend less money on: cortados, your appearance aka the British jewelry maker who sold you every pair of earrings you own on Etsy

It’s ok to spend money on: socks, batteries, the fancy Irish butter, the medication that actually stops you from jumping off the roof, the occasional bath bomb

Action items: what now?

Love to all.

xo

R