I have some exciting news:

In six weeks, I will be joining Vasant full-time at Samudre Media. I’m happy to report that business has been very good, but as a result of that, my life has been very hectic balancing Samudre Media, my commitment to Richard Hugo House and some family issues that have required our energy and attention. As the family situation began to resolve and our client list grew, Vasant and I felt it was time for me to fully focus on Samudre Media. So, last week I talked to my boss and a fellow colleague of mine who gave me invaluable advice and support. I gave notice and we worked out a transition plan for the next six weeks. 

I have been at Richard Hugo House since June 2011, as a volunteer social media manager and graphic designer, and then later on staff as the marketing and social media coordinator. Our staff has been such an encouragement and an inspiration to me personally and as a writer, not to mention, my Brian McGuigan impersonation was just starting to get really good.

I have loved working there, and Vasant and I’ll continue to donate our time, filming and photographing events, as well as managing social media for the House. 

When Vasant and I first got together, we were just two drifting dreamers who traveled a lot, worked odd jobs in order to travel and who spurned the idea of higher education. I loved writing, he loved filming, but we didn’t have a plan or serious aspirations towards doing that professionally.

When we fell in love, our love of storytelling clarified. I don’t know how, but it was like our hearts contained two sets of lenses that, when overlapped, brought everything in our lives into focus. One of the first things we knew was that we wanted to tell stories together. Within months of getting married, a plan formed between the two of us: we needed to go to university (despite our age) and learn more about our craft, get jobs in our respective field (despite the economy), launch our own media production company after a certain amount of time, and then finally, film our first feature. In that order.

We made this plan in 2005. 

Now it’s 2013. We’ve done this all except for the film. That’s next year. This thought thrills me. No matter who we’ve been separately or how we’ve failed alone, when Vasant and I are together, we’re unstoppable. Samudre Media’s already been successful with him there full-time. I can’t wait to see what happens this June.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t add the biggest thank you to the friends and family who’ve stuck by us, believed in us, and encouraged us over the years as we’ve gotten to this point of being able to afford for both of us to be full-time in our business.

This will always sound cheesy, but sometimes the most sincere truths are: we wouldn’t be here without the love and support you’ve given. We have by no means “arrived” and as far as we’ve come, we have so far to go. But we travel with a fellowship of amazing people, and to those of you who’ve poured into us, supported us, inspired us and challenged us: thank you. We need you and hope that we’re only half as good for you as you are for us.

Reposted from sarahsamudre.tumblr.com.

sarahsamudre:

Written for my sister, Claire.

Click to enlarge.

sarahsamudre:

Creating New Year’s Resolutions is an Act of Bravery

We’re a day into 2013 and things have been pleasant and restful. I have another week left of vacation and now that the holidays are officially over, I’ll be spending it writing and cleaning the house.

2012 was a great year, but it was rough. My family lost my grandmother to cancer. This occurred early in the year, while Vasant and I were still recovering from miscarrying in 2011. We could barely breathe as the two losses collided within twelve months of each other. We also launched our small business in the midst of a tough economy which, while exciting, has been terrifying.

It is, however, not the hardest thing we’ve ever done. The physical, mental and emotional juggling that went on from 2006-2010 was, when we went back to school, getting two degrees each, building our home and finishing my novel. Launching and establishing Samudre Media is tough, but it’s not the toughest. 

As brutal as 2012 has been, it’s actually felt like the year when we’ve finally gotten traction on things. We earned our degrees in 2010, but 2011 was submersed in our grief from the miscarriage and our search for jobs that would open doors in our careers.  We had no time to appreciate what we achieved in 2010 in 2011, and much of the achievements of 2011 were lost in the wave of sadness that overcame us.

This year, however, we’ve been able to hold onto the victories, both big and small that have come our way. I turned my volunteer position at Richard Hugo House into a staff position. My time there has introduced me to amazing writers, actors, producers and directors. I’m constantly inspired in my craft while there and I enjoy what I do. Vasant has taken our media production company, which we’ve run on the side for years, and taken it full-time this year. He’s loved the people that he’s met and the projects he’s gotten to work on this year. 

Best of all, the grief of this year and last has finally subsided into a quiet peace and acceptance. The five stages have been traversed through and conquered. We did the work. We sought out healing. We wrote our stories, shared our nightmares, drew, did yoga, slept, worked… until we passed through. So many times throughout 2011 and in the beginning of 2012, we felt like we wouldn’t. But we knew what we had to do in order to get through, and we did the work to find healing in faith that we’d get it if we reached out. 

And we did. 

Then the fall became a time where we pushed out of our fragile recovery and got back into pursuing our dreams of writing and filmmaking. Our next steps? Take Samudre Media full-time and begin sharing my writing in public. Both happened, and it’s remarkable. I look back at 2012, and such grief separates the winter, spring and summer from the fall that it seems like we all came through three years just to finish this one. 

I feel like 2013 is going to be a year where we return to joy. 2011 felt like 12 months of drowning. Much of 2012 felt like we were just beginning to get our heads above water. This fall has felt like we’ve climbed up out of the waters and onto the shore. 2013 feels firm. It feels exciting. 

Because of this, I have a long list of resolutions. When you grieve, you can crawl into a hole and wait everything else out. Nothing is as important as recovering. You have one job. Get better. Everything else can be put on hold. 

This last fall, we began to take things off hold. The last several weeks have been filled with discussions about, now that we’ve regained our strength, moving forward and moving fast. What do we need to get rid of to move quickly on the massive things we want to accomplish? What do we need to add to our lives to get us where we want to go?

The list of resolutions has grown long and every item added thrills me. At first, the idea of a New Year’s list tired me out. While we’re gaining traction and strength, we’re still so tired. There’s a difference between gaining strength and having energy. That lays beyond us for now. 

But resolutions are so important. Every year, around the New Year, we sit down and decide to keep growing. Every year, this becomes more important than the last. Growing up is hard. We begin to say that in our twenties, but we still don’t fully know what it means. The jobs we gain and lose, the paths we take and abandon, the hope we have and forsake, the people we love and lose… they wear on us. We gain friends, find new passions, heal ourselves if we do the work. 

Joy is happiness that’s gained through and in spite of pain. It’s tough to achieve and transforming to attain. And you can’t get there unless you do the work, unless you’re willing at the end of every year to take all the shit that came against you previously and choose to let go. Choose to do better. Choose to take responsibility for your lot, change what you can, be brave enough to dream that something better is coming. 

Being brave enough to dream for something better is the hardest part after you’ve grieved. And that’s why New Year’s resolutions are an achievement in and of themselves. As soon as you’ve done your meditation on the last year, dreamed for the next, evaluated yourself and made the list, you are instantly better off. There are some people who can’t make the list. It becomes harder to do every year. Making resolutions is a defiant act of hope against the march of time, the grind of human existence in a world of gun massacres, brutal storms, disease and short lives. To be aware of all the cruelty of this world, and to make a resolution that you, yes, you, small you, tiny human that you are, will make a difference in your own life, in the lives of those around you, is one of the bravest things you will do all year.

I’m excited that I’ve pushed off my weariness and made my list for 2013. As soon as I’d finished, I felt an energy and excitement that has been out of my reach for far too long. 

I hope those of you making lists feel that too. If you have, you’re brave and better for it. If you haven’t, make one. Dare to dream of a better year than the last. Even small resolutions to secure a brighter future make a huge difference in your life. 

I can’t wait to see where Vasant and I will be on January 1, 2014. This feels like a good year. 

sarahsamudre:

It’s almost midnight and I’m still working. 

But I’m drawing pictures of toilet paper, so at least I can say I LOVE WHAT I DO.

…

No, seriously. If you have to be working late, drawing pictures of toilet paper is better than the database nightmare I was wrestling with last week. Of course, this is just a draft (pending the artist’s/my boss’ approval.) I’m moving onto some website stuff, with IT CROWD playing in the background, so I can take a wonderful, carefree day off tomorrow and get some writing done.

[UPDATE]

It got approved and lots of compliments. I think drawing toilet paper may be my new calling in life…

sarahsamudre:

I have struggled with dyslexia all of my life. Although I’m amazingly clever at anagrams, this issue, as you can imagine, has been problematic. I was lucky to grow up with parents who read a lot and helped me learn to love to read and write despite how difficult it was for me. I know a lot of kids aren’t that fortunate. They have difficulty with reading and writing early on in school and are instantly evaluated as “less intelligent”. I was lucky and, because my parents provided me with a reading obsessed environment, I taught myself workarounds. 

Some days still, however, when I’m tired and stressed, it’s hard to get through a sentence. It’s like a bomb exploding within the word. “Second” become “econsd”. “Typically” becomes “pytcially”. I’ll spend ten minutes on two paragraphs, typing and retyping, then deleting, then growling at the keyboard, at my stupid fingers, at myself, and then I calm down, and type again. Slwoly. Slowyl. Slowly. 

Until it’s right.

And I’m a writer. I’m a marketing & social media coordinator at a center for writers. What, other than obsessive masochism, would drive me to choose this path? What would drive me to blog about it when I’m having to retype every other word two to three times?

I don’t know. 

For years, this has been THE question. And I still don’t have an answer. Even if I had one, it would probably come out twisted and inside out. All I know is that I love to write, despite the inherent difficulties. I hate feeling dumb and usually don’t, but every now and then, I miss something. Some days still, I don’t just type inside out, I read that way too. And when I write “ahte”, I read “hate” and feel the text is ready to share. 

I’m sending off a piece I’ve written to Peter Mountford, Hugo House’s Writer In Residence, today. It’s the first literary non-fiction I’ve ever written and I feel very good about it, but a multitude of fears trail behind the piece… fears about writing memoir, fears about my own writing, fears about whether I’m capable enough to review my own work before sending it out. I suppose I’m writing about this, on a day when my dyslexia is particularly bad, because my fears about my writing are just like my fears about my abilities. They’re something I can work around.

I just have to keep typing.

sarahsamudre:

This is the story about one of my heroes.

It’s a story about the failings of our collegiate system and the horrible economy and hope in the face of all that.

Yesterday, my youngest sister, Claire, got into Chapman University. I wept when she told me over the phone.

If you knew what Claire had been through in the last several years, you’d cry too.

Claire was a 4.0 student in high school. She took all the AP classes, took Running Start, volunteered, and ran herself ragged doing everything that a student can do to get into college. She got accepted to several colleges and took the one with the best financial package: New York University.

Claire’s freshman year at NYU was wonderful. She fell in love with the city, made great friends and blossomed being out of our house which, as great a family as we are, is nonetheless crowded at seven people, especially if you’re the youngest.

At the end of her first year, however, she received a shock. NYU wasn’t going to continue to take care of her financially, despite her excellent grades. They went back on the offer that had led her to turn down other colleges and raised general tuition on top of her rescinded financial aid. When she explained that her parents were putting three other children through college and they had lost their land development business after the Stock Market Crash of 2008, they said the only factor they could consider is how much our father made. He made too much for them to consider helping Claire, even though she had earned their help through her hard work in highschool. They refused to offer her any financial help, as they did to many other students that year. Claire had no choice. She couldn’t pay her way. Mom and Dad couldn’t sign for loans. She had to drop out of school.

I don’t think I know anyone in my life who embodies perseverance like Claire does. She was devastated, returning home to life in the country after life in New York. We may live 30 minutes away from Seattle by car, but it takes 45 minutes to walk to a bus stop from our house. On top of the loss of city-life and her new friends, her future was uncertain. She had worked so hard all of her life. She’d been told that if she worked hard, she’d achieve success, only to be thrust into a situation where her only options seemed like retail.

But Claire, though discouraged, wasn’t destroyed. She began working on her first album later that year. A talented songwriter, singer and musician, Claire’s first official album was more than I ever thought possible, and I’ve heard her playing for years. Her songs were beautiful, catchy and incredibly intelligent… specifically my personal favorite, “David”. It affirmed to me that no matter what Claire’s collegiate future would be, her talent would lead her to great success.

Unfortunately, not a lot of people bought the first album, although people streamed it (and still do) like crazy. And yes, if you’re in that group, I am trying to make you feel guilty. You’re not ripping off Britney Spears here. You’re robbing someone who desperately needs the money so you can have something to listen to while you browse the internet. Do the right thing and pay the four dollars today.

*backing down off my soap box*

Claire pressed on, both with her musical career, recording and playing local gigs, and with college applications, despite the discouragement coming at her in both arenas. Last year, she was turned down from USC. After that, she decided her next plan of attack was to finish up her AA at Bellevue College and then apply to a whole host of colleges again this last Fall and Winter.

Each month that’s gone on, as we’ve heard of more and more colleges doing exactly what NYU did to Claire, as Republicans in Congress suggest cutting Federal loans to students, as publications write about the death of college, we all wondered what would happen to Claire. Even our local university, University of Washington, is barring in-state applicants in favor of out-of-state students that they can gouge more, and still, they’re raising tuition two to three times a year, every year since we went there.

It’s one thing to say that college is dead, and it’s another thing to be out in the world. Employers don’t know that college is dead yet. We knew that she was talented and insanely dedicated, not only continuing with her music, but going to community college for her Associate’s and interning at Richard Hugo House with me. But what would happen to her talent if doors kept being slammed in her face?

Then, last week, she began to hear back from colleges. She got accepted to Bennington, who agreed to pay half her tuition, leaving her with the burden of $38,000. They, like NYU, would only look at the most basic financial information on my father, showing his earnings, not his failed business, his family of seven, his sick parents, dead mother-in-law and sick wife. Claire plead with a financial aid officer who seemed, as so many of them do, not to understand English unless it’s specifically worded on a pre-approved form in front of them.

All of that, of course, ruled Bennington out. Within days, she was turned down from the next two. Claire could only go to school if she had over 95% of the full cost covered. This began to seem almost impossible. But Claire, as frightened as she was, continued to believe that something would work out.

And that’s the thing I love about Claire. She has been very depressed over the last several years. She has been enraged by the injustice of the systems that beckoned her and demanded her hard work and then rejected her over technicalities. She’s been sick. She’s been frightened.

But she never lost hope or courage to keep trying.

You see, that’s the thing about courage and hope. They don’t require your happiness. They don’t require a stalwart repose. There is no zen-master calm that you have to have. In fact, the more scared you are, the greater courage you must have to balance it out and a brighter hope you that you have to keep to outshine the darkness in your own heart.

Courageous people are scared. Hopeful people are dark. The only thing that keeps them from being cowards is that they persevere. They believe. The press on. Their hearts are strong.

Claire only sent out those applications this last Fall and Winter, after being rejected year after year, because she is one of the absolute bravest people I know.

She got into Chapman, who will be covering the requisite 95%, because she didn’t stop believing and working hard to fulfill that belief. It would’ve been so easy. She is so young and has been so stomped on. But she believed. She put her songs out there for us to hear, whether or not we pay for them. She worked hard at a community college, though her high school prep had aimed her at the Ivy League, believing that it would all be for something, even though she constantly doubted and feared that it might come to nothing.

But now… it won’t! Claire now gets to finish her four year degree. She gets to continue to work hard, learn amazing things that will help her in her writing, her music, her view of the world. She gets to meet people who will connect her to opportunities and get that STUPID PIECE OF PAPER that still means so much to employers!

Does this mean all will be perfect in her life from now on? Of course not. But this is a win. A big win, in a day and age when colleges are raising costs and screwing over students. This is an incredible win, and it never would’ve happened if Claire had taken the first several rejections as a sign to stop believing.

She dealt with her pain and her fear and her anger and she kept hoping, courageously, against the odds, that she’d make it if she kept trying. And this win inspires me. I hope it inspires you to read about it.

This win doesn’t protect her against future losses. But like any good story, it will give her and those who hear the story, courage to believe in the face of hardship, courage to keep hoping and trying and struggling when all seems lost.

I look up to her so much, nine years younger than me, and she is truly one of my heroes.

So if you don’t follow my sister’s tumblr, and if you haven’t bought her album, remedy that. This won’t be the last time I sing her praises on my blog and they’ll only get more impressive as she presses on.

Posting this on my other site with one addendum:

Claire has released a new album. All proceeds go towards helping her pay for college!