I’ve been writing here as Atlimbo since 2009. I had been through a rough 2008 and in the new year I needed a hobby – thus atlimbo.com was born and I began chronicling my interests and evolutions. I started the site on a whim, as a wordpress blog with the advice of some musician friends and quickly found my niche. I covered the DC music scene as a music scene outsider. I covered dating in the music scene, as I dipped my heartbroken and burnt toes back into the pool. I explored what it meant to be 24 and single and scared and brave and I like to think atlimbo.com gave me a home for all of that. 2009 gave me courage and independence and I entered 2010 with the best attitude I think I’ve ever had about anything in my life. I felt I was ready to take on the world, and in a way, I did.

In 2010 I left the safety and security of the job that had been my life, to run a risky campaign on behalf of a friend. I wouldn’t change that experience, or my decision to do it, for anything in the world, for it was the campaign that pushed me to the ultimate truth: it was time to leave DC. I had been there, sheltered and shattered so many times, by it’s white columned buildings and green Mall for many years. But it was time, Limbo was knocking, and I needed to embrace it fully. What followed was ten months of cocktail waitressing, barista-ing, road trips, and relaxation. I tried to simply not think, and I rang in 2011 at a friend’s apartment in the middle of nowhere, in Southern Virginia.

And then we hit 2011. And it’s been one hell of a year. In some ways I’m so incredibly grateful for everything I’ve dealt with this year – I am in one of the world’s most amazing cities, I am with the love of my life, I have a job that may not last but is so much of what I want my career to be, I finally found a hair color I really adore – and in someways I’m very ready for the new start of 2012 – very difficult goodbyes, a 600+ mile move, 6 months of unstable temping gigs, living in a freezing, and moldy basement for two months with friends because the price tag fit to name a few of the reasons.

Mostly, I’m feeling tired of 2011. I will forever look at 2011 as a year I took a big leap of faith and it was entirely worth it. I didn’t know what moving to Boston would hold for me. I knew two people in the city (one from high school & one from college), I had no job prospects, no school waiting for me, I had a couple bags of clothes and an air mattress that a friend in Virginia bought me. I put on a brave face and thanked my parents profusely for taking the long drive with me. But I was terrified. I had never done this before. I’m someone who’s leaped off cliffs, charmed powerful & beautiful people, someone who’s taken on much bigger challenges without the bat of an eyelash.

But this… This was faith of a kind I’d never known. This was faith in my ability to persevere, faith in my ability to take the worst that might get thrown at me and make the best of it, faith in… In myself. Transitioning to life in Boston – living with a man I’ve loved for years but a man I haven’t even been in the same state as for five years, traversing new political waters and job hunting – was difficult, it’s been rough, actually, but I love it. I love it here. I’m grateful to have met the people that make up my every day now. I’m grateful to have rekindled old friendships and that despite years of distance and difference, Piece let me into his life without hesitation. We celebrated nine months just last week.

I feel like the last couple of years have been one big transition for me, actually. And 2012 opens up to the next step – the settling in, the working my ass off, the creating, the brilliance, the brightness, and the beauty of this life that I’ve built for myself. It’s almost like my letter to 2010: “I will not let my determination falter, my hope be extinguished, or my faith waiver.”

I’m ready for whatever next steps I may have in front of me. I’m confident that this is what 2011 gave me, the chance to take a big deep breath before heading through Limbo’s exit and into that Real Life that’s been so illusive for so long. I can’t wait.

I’ve struggled in recent jaunts, including Camp NaNo this summer, but I’m feeling excited and motivated, and most importantly, inspired!

The official site has just been relaunched, I’ve got my super-loose premise set (see the summary under the jump, I’d love you’re thoughts!), and we’re less than four weeks away!

So, do you NaNo?

And baby I know you got your radio on, so this is my my bad, come back song.
	Meet Leann. Call her Lee, please.Leann Tucker, 22, born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina. She moved to Boston when she was 18, for Berklee (styled herself a songwriter) but never applied. Ended up a receptionist and lives in a house in Allston with 5 friends. Spends her free time playing with a guitar & singing karaoke; drinks more than she should. Girl meets boy. Girl wrongs boy. Girl needs to get back to her country roots to win boy back & in doing so becomes a major popular artist. You know the old story, a song, a sincere look, and then the curtain.
Drew Sampson	The CastDrew: The Boy. 28. Musician, Colette’s older brother, works at a coffeeshop to pay the bills, Boston-born. Justin: 30, Lee’s best friend, lawyer, helps her with music & the rest of life, too, loves her like a little sister. Toni & Colette: 26/21, newest housemates, girlfriends, share the fifth bedroom. Gavin: 27, from San Diego, been in Boston 3 years, a trust fund baby writing for a bunch of blogs and smoking a lot of pot. Sean: Joins Gavin in the smoking, 28, office worker downtown, from Dorchester, surprisingly considers himself super religious.
Gavin Morse Housemate	Justin Allen Housemate	Toni Canning Housemate	Colette Sampson Housemate	Sean Manson Housemate

 
*Click on the icon for the maker!

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Like every Thursday night, last night I set my alarm for quarter to 8. You see I only have a 25 minute commute (door to train to desk, at that) and Fridays I tend to let myself sleep in a bit and simply rush a little bit in the morning. Most days I’m up around 6:30/quarter to 7 whether my alarm is going off or not, so Friday mornings are a delightful little break for me. Everyone has to have them, you know?

So this morning, I wake to the sound of the city trucks taking away our recycling, my alarm blaring at me from a couple of feet away. I roll over, hit snooze, get up ten minutes later on time and hop in the shower. As usual, getting from bed to my office takes about an hour. Assuming I have plenty of time to go, I get off the train Downtown and check the time (I always try to have an extra couple of minutes to stop at Dunkins) and my phone tells me it’s three minutes to eight. I stop. I get bumped into by anxious MBTA customers. I notice that the street is more empty than usual, even before a holiday. I check it again. Two minutes to eight in the morning. It is 7:58am.

Excuse me?

Today, I lost an hour. I asked multiple strangers on the street for the time, despite clearly holding a cell phone, and by the time I got to my office I had resigned myself to spending an extra hour inside on the day before the long weekend and maybe the fact that the Cosmos was playing some kind of trick on me. And really, if I was the Cosmos, this would totally be the week to do it.

“There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you’re high it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars….But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against–you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable….It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.” – Kay Redfield Jamison

Last week, when news broke that Catherine Zeta-Jones had sought treatment for Bipolar II Disorder, a dear friend sent me a BBC article before the news had even hit my Twitter feed. It’s not often someone of international prominence comes out and announces that they suffer from a mental illness (perhaps with the exception of addiction). It’s even more rare that someone announces they suffer from a mental illness that I also live with.

While CZJ has been diagnosed Bipolar II, as has 18 year old Disney star Demi Lovato (talk about brave – an 18 year old girl coming out as receiving help for eating disorders, self harm, and Bipolar II, that is some serious courage on her part), I have lived with Bipolar I Disorder* most of my life. Diagnosed with Panic Disorder & Bipolar I as a teenager, I was incredibly proud of both ladies last week for opening up about the disease and, whether they meant to or not, starting a dialog about mental illness. According to WCVB Boston, the condition is underdiagnosed in America, but some celebrities have ‘come out’ over the years to increase awareness:

“…celebrities like Jane Pauley, Carrie Fisher and Linda Hamilton have helped to raise awareness and decrease the stigma. There has been much speculation that actor Charlie Sheen could have the condition.”

So, why is it, that I’ve never spoken about it here at atlimbo? My friends and family have all known for years, I’ve struggled with medications, addictions, relationships, focus – it’s not a very easy secret to keep, and so I just never tried. But to write about it so specifically, so personally, here where everything will live forever in Google cache… It’s daunting. Scary, in a way. I admire these women, I believe that Charlie Sheen desperately needs to see a psychiatrist, I keep up with the news coming out of NAMI and I participate in online communities for people with these illnesses. I’ve been educating myself about BD, schizophrenia, sociopathy, depression, addiction, obsessive compulsive disorder, self-harm, and all manner of other chemical imbalances since I was a kid. And yet, I don’t know how to write about it in any real way. I don’t know how to tell the story of my diagnosis, my trials and errors with medication and other treatments.

I know that in many ways I’m lucky. My family has never been anything but supportive and while Bipolar I has a higher instance of hospitalization and suicide and yet here I am, nearly 27 and I can keep a job, have a conversation with a stranger, keep my own home in order, and I’m slowly but surely learning how to sustain relationships. This last one is my biggest struggle. There are a lot of stories online about failed attempts and outrageous statistics. I’m contemplating therapy in my new hometown and my boyfriend is as supportive and understanding as they come – he’s seen me through many of my phases in the nearly ten years we’ve known each other, and that comes in handy when I don’t know how describe what’s happening in my brain. He knows what I mean without my even having to say it.

But none of this is really getting to the point. Which is this. Why can’t I write about it? Why is the point so damned convoluted for me? I know that the disorder is a chemical imbalance. I know that there are a multitude of causes and the real 100% cause isn’t even known – for now it’s considered a mixture of genetics, chemical flow in the brain, physiology, psychology, stressers… I know all of this. I’m glad to say I don’t buy into the social stigmas attached to the disorder or the idea to simply medicate it away… And yet, I can’t write about it. I can’t tell my story, despite my being proud to trumpet others who have done exactly the same with their own.

* Bipolar I Disorder is considered the more severe of the two including higher, more sustained jaunts of hypomania and a less consistent depressive side – for more information and a general overview of the disorder, click here.

However, I realize that as I get crazy!busy with the whole ‘new life’ thing, I may not be the best at keeping up with the rest of the world. I’ve been missing my friends and family (shout out to the PPM in DC!) a ton lately, an ache in the pit of my stomach sort of missing, and so I thought I’d take a moment to reconnect.

I’ve spent the morning catching up with friends online, going through journals and blogs and Twitter feeds and tumblrs. I’m tackling email and text messages next. Maybe tonight. I’m catching up on my latest partnered writing projects, trying to get inspired by checking out new followers on Twitter, new books to keep me busy on the train ride in the gray morning.

And so, here I am, reconnecting with you as well. I’d love to get to know you better. So find me! Twitter. Tumblr. Graphics. YouTube. Last.fm. Flickr.

Former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) didn’t mince words in weighing in on the crop of Republicans mulling presidential campaigns for the next election cycle during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Monday.

When asked for his assessment of the emerging GOP field by anchor Chris Matthews, the co-chair of President Obama’s deficit commission didn’t hold back in criticizing members of his party on social issues.

“Who the hell is for abortion?,” asked Simpson, who has developed a reputation for making blunt and colorful remarks. “I don’t know anybody running around with a sign that says, have an abortion, they’re wonderful. They’re hideous. But they’re a deeply intimate and personal decision, and I don’t think men legislators should even vote on the issue.”

Simpson went on to address the issue of gay rights. “Then you’ve got homosexuality,” he said. “You’ve got ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ We have homophobes in our party. That’s disgusting to me. We’re all human beings. We’re all God’s children. … [Former Pennsylvania senator Rick] Santorum has said some cruel things, cruel, cruel things about homosexuals. Ask him about it. See if he attributes the cruelness of his remarks years ago. Foul.”

Simpson was presumably referring to remarks made by Santorum in 2003 that have already resurfaced in the early stages of the GOP presidential primary campaign. CNN reported at the time on the comments in question: In [an] AP interview, Santorum criticized homosexuality as he discussed a pending Supreme Court case over a sodomy law in Texas.

“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything,” Santorum said in the AP interview.

“That’s the kind of guys that are going to be on my ticket, you know, makes you sort out hard what Reagan said, you know, ‘stick with your folks,’” explained Simpson to Matthews. “But I’m not sticking with people who are homophobic, anti-women, you know, moral values while you’re diddling your secretary while you’re giving a speech on moral values. Come on. Get off of it.”

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is one Republican who Simpson praised in the context of the conversation that began on the topic of the 2012 presidential election. He called the governor “quite awesome.”

Don’t get me wrong, this move is possibly the best thing that has happened to me in nearly 27 years on the skin of this planet. I am lucky to have a strong network of friends, coworkers, and family in this area (and I still get a kick out of already having coworkers!) and I’m unbelievably blessed to live in a house where, when I moved and said “so… can I pay you for the first month at the… end of the first month?” they shrugged their shoulders and said, “eh, sure, why not?” I love this city, I love the new job, I love getting to reconnect with friends from DC and elsewhere, I love spending so much time with my new boyfriend (who’s very patiently helped me re-organize my basement like three times already).

So, I’m not complaining. Not really, anyway. It just seems to me that there’s gotta be an easier way to do this! Instead there are licenses to change at DMVs that you absolutely cannot get into and out of during a lunch break, and of course there are fees and paperwork involved. There’s insurance paperwork to be filed on a deadline, but you need money in the bank first, just in case. There are all the bills you had before you moved that still expect you to pay. And then, when you finally feel like you’re getting a handle on everything, and go to cash your very first New Home Paycheck, you find out your bank doesn’t exist in the entire state. Either branch of it. Not even an ATM. So what do you do? You enlist some of your awesome coworkers, track down the bank the check came from, pray they’ll cash it for you, and start looking to send your business elsewhere. Which begins a whole new slew of forms, bills, address changes, account numbers to memorize, and ATM cards to wait for.

Ah, moving. I think it was more adventurous and glamorous when I was 19.

One thing I’ve definitely gotten out of all of this? Last year, I didn’t think I was strong enough. I didn’t think I could do it. I didn’t think I rely on my loved ones, change my life for the better. Luckily, my family, my friends, and the people I have met since then have been patient enough to tell me over and over again.

I am strong enough. And I can do it. I’m pretty sure, actually, that I can do anything.

• In the last month, I’ve traveled over 2,000 miles.
• I’ve left a job.
• I’ve moved my entire life up the east coast.
• I’ve ended a relationship.
• I’ve been offered a new job (which I start tomorrow morning).
• I’ve got a basement in a beautiful house to do what I will with.
• I’ve left my Party (as I plan to register as an Independent as soon as I have proof of residency in Massachusetts).
• I’ve started seeing someone.
• I’ve reconnected with old friends.
• I’ve watched all three seasons of True Blood and read 7 of the Sookie Stackhouse books.

I have asked this question many times, but today it hits me harder than any recent curiosity could. What does one do post-Limbo? Is it a choice between Heaven and Hell as the religious would have us believe? I wrote a loose definition of Limbo when I founded this website, meant to be an open space for me and my fellow mid-twenties lost children to think out loud. Since then, I’ve allowed the page to evolve through music obsessions; chronicles of my restlessness and wanderlust. I’ve even had to admit on these pages that I am no longer in my mid-twenties. Time marches on, I suppose, even in the ether of Limbo.

I think that’s something I didn’t understand when I began this blog. When I saw myself as eternally jaded and confused and 24. I dated musicians and drank too much and threw what few rules I had lived by out the window. I wore leggings and headbands and chain-smoked menthols in my knock-off Ray Bans. True, I still wear cheap plastic sunglasses, and I still smoke menthols, but looking back on the years I’ve spent in Limbo, I think I might have missed the point.

I’ve got some ideas, and some tough questions for myself, but it’d really help to know what you think. Check out my pontifications on life, Limbo, and moving forward, and let me know what you think after the jump…

It’s about growth. Limbo is an infinite space. It’s shitty deals and hard work and learning lessons you wish you never had to. It’s long roads and longer nights and you feel like nothing can even lift you up out of it or bring you down off your natural high. But as you grow, as Limbo does its job, you might not need it anymore.

You might not need to move every couple of months just because you’re feeling claustrophobic and twitchy. You might find you really do believe things you’ve always rebelled against. You might figure out that you’re okay with all of that and that Chick Corea was right and “that truth is basically simple and feels good, clear and right.”

But what do you do when you’ve staked your personality, your lifestyle, your relationships on this idea of freedom? Floating? When you’re ready to take steps toward becoming a real, whole, complete adult? I feel at a loss. I feel like I should admit I’m nearly 27, admit that I’ve just made what will surely be my permanent move (which, by the way, went fantastically), and that recently I’ve made decisions that will shape my life and my relationships forever. I need to admit these things. I need to wrap my dizzy brain around them, embrace them as who I am as I near the end of Limbo. I see the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s getting bigger as I draw closer, but I ask myself, am I ready?