At work, someone tells me I gave off the first impression of being scattered. Which is funny, because while I often announce my arrival as flustered, overwhelmed, rushed, sorry I’m late, the truth is I never thought anyone else actually viewed me this way. I don’t want to attribute blame, but in the language of learned patterns and behaviors, I will say that when we were younger, we learned the concept of time with clocks that were always set five to seven to eleven minutes fast. Mom discounted transitions entirely, which is to say we usually left the house at the time we were supposed to arrive at a given destination. The clocks didn’t make us earlier, but we could never be sure how late we really were.

Before I had my license, when Mom still drove us every morning in the Suburban down the hill to school, we had many mechanisms in place to reduce our lateness. Lay out clothes the night before, pack your track clothes in your backpack, Mom would pack lunch, while making dinner, pieces of Scotch tape labeling each sandwich or roll up when we were in that phase (maybe a concept created by Trader Joe’s, the tortilla layered with turkey and cream cheese, or maybe it was just Mom’s creation). In one of her best attempts to decrease our morning scatter, Mom gifted the girls (as we referred collectively to ourselves), Mom gifted the girls a hair kit. The hair kit contained everything we could need to do our hair in the car. If you were ready early enough, Mom would do your hair for you– ponytail, no bumps (messy was not in). Side braid, side braid was very in. But on the occasion in which you were not ready early enough for a stationary at home hairstyle, you could use the hair kit, in transit. (One Crazy Hair Day at school, when most girls got glittery bobbles and wash out hair dye from Target, I actually left Mom too much time to do my hair, and apparently my hair had grown too long because I got a massive bun coiled on the top of my head, tucked with a few twigs and a blown out egg, nested in the middle.) The hair kit contained no eggs, it was just a 3L rectangular Rubbermaid with snap handles with the basics. By design, it was placed under the middle seat, Caroline’s seat. It was she who always had the hardest time waking up in the morning, and as the youngest she always had to leave especially early for the sake of getting the rest of the girls to school on time. 

So one morning we’re driving down San Antonio, notoriously jammed with traffic, almost to the corner of Almond which will also be jammed and where I will surely be requested to get out and walk. Caroline is simultaneously trying to finish her sourdough toast with jam and brush her hair, I am simultaneously trying to finish my photography project and I catch her on film, wiping her cheek where a spot of jam has found itself. We are a block away from our right turn and nothing is moving so Mom asks me to get out and walk from here. I still have three shots left on my roll of film but maybe I can take them on the walk down Almond, so I get out in the middle of the stopped traffic and run around to the trunk for my backpack, but the traffic is starting to move and the trunk takes a couple of lock-unlock cycles to open and by the time it’s open the intersection is moving and I hop into the trunk and shut it behind me. Mom pulls up another 200 yards to the bus stop, I crawl out of the trunk over the back seat with my Dakine and get out the door again, I walk the last quarter mile down Almond and wonder if anyone at school will have been a witness.

The next time this happens, we’re not even walking distance from school. We’re at the intersection of El Monte and Foothill, coming up on the left hand turn. We’re always the first car in line because we’re always the last car that doesn’t make it through. We’re approaching this signal as we usually do, we are stopped, as we usually are, and we are running late. Also, as usual. From the lofty height of the Suburban, we spot the back of the Tsang’s Subaru, stopped a few cars up ahead. The Tsang’s have a singular drop off destination, they can avoid the left hand turn and go straight to the high school. They are not running late, their hair has been done at home. I see Mom think it and I glance back to the light desperately wishing it would just turn green, but it’s not turning so I start opening the door before I’m asked, my backpack next to me in the front seat this time, I’ve learned to be at the ready to get out and run. I come up next to the Subaru on foot, El Monte is not marked for pedestrians but I’ve been left no choice, I knock on the window and ask Maxine to let me in. She does, graciously, but she also has no choice. Mom swerves into the left turn lane behind us, the Subaru continues straight with me in it, we all return to the bounds of on time.

So I’ve learned to discount transitions and my appearance in them, I’m used to the chaos of these states. The chaos feels normal, the chaos feels excusable, and I must have expected a longer grace period in acclimating to the professionalism of the corporate world. But I take a moment for self-reflection. Self-assessment, as my colleague might suggest.

The first of my first impressions. I’m in the passenger seat of my friend’s Subaru in August, I didn’t have to knock on a window to get in this time, we’re driving down highway 9, I’ve forgotten my running shoes but we don’t know that yet and we watch the slow amble of tourists through the main street of Breckenridge and a call comes through from New Jersey which I ignore, once, and consider the second time with only the slightest sinking feeling in my stomach as I remember I’m supposed to have a team intro call today. It’s 7:38 am mountain time which means it’s 9:38 am Eastern time which means I’m eight minutes late to a meeting I’m not going to anyway, summer increments of time come in days and weeks and miles but not minutes, not hours. My laptop is far away, we won’t go back to get it but we will go back for my shoes, by the time we reach the parking lot and realize they are forgotten, the sinking feeling in my stomach is real because the permit for this lot does exist on the scale of hours, and we are running out of time. I don’t return the call until late that afternoon, my only and my real excuse is that I have forgotten, I haven’t been on my calendar all summer. 

The second of my first impressions is on a Tuesday afternoon, the intro call graciously rescheduled since I missed it on highway 9. Mind you, I am not on payroll yet, mind you, my body is not acclimated to this southern heat yet, mind you, there is a tower of moving boxes and wads of brown paper strewn about my living room. I have a box from Spectrum so that I might have internet by 2pm but turning on the internet will not go smoothly the first time no matter how step-by-step the instructions may seem. Today I have to be on video, so I find a work appropriate shirt, I don’t own a single collared shirt at the moment but linen will do. I attempt the internet set-up for twenty minutes and then walk to the closest coffee shop, I set up inside at first but it feels too awkward to be on a video call and it’s probably against company privacy policy, I don’t know that for sure yet but I can assume. I station myself outside instead, but the wifi is not working today even with the password generously posted to the side of the espresso machine. I connect to my hotspot, panicked that I will now be late, and by the time I join I’m sweating and I’m waving my arms around to show that wifi is all around me but that I can’t get connected, my apologies I hope my connection isn’t bad, but if it is maybe you will mistake this linen shirt as collared.

My third first impression is on a Wednesday, my browser a collection of Facebook Marketplace tabs and even a Pottery Barn tab because maybe I will buy a real bed instead of another overnight Amazon frame. I find a brass pharmacy floor lamp, I find a walnut side table which will go next to my couch, I drive out to Durham so that I can close these two tabs and I’m sweating (this is feeling normal now) because my AC is intermittent and I’ve been accepting throughout the morning that I have some sort of food poisoning, but I’m also determined to pick up my new furnishings, there is no next day delivery option. I pick up the side table first, the woman tries to entice me with a king suite of bedroom furniture but I resist and drive on to pick up the lamp. I’m admittedly ill at this point and can hardly lift the lamp into the backseat of my car, I can hardly handle the twenty-five minute drive home and I’m sure I’m going to be sick as I stumble through the courtyard and up the stairs to my apartment. Luckily I picked up a rug yesterday so I have somewhere to collapse, my mattress won’t arrive for another two days. I’m supposed to join another video call in an hour and I gather myself back up just in time, I don’t remember what I’m wearing and my hair might be in a knot on the side of my head but this call is also, ‘introductory.’ It includes a reminder that onboarding next week is virtual but on video and that we are expected to look professional, but just from the waist up. 

A couple of weeks later in the office, I am still wondering what business professional really means, I looked it up online but the pictures don’t look like me, I look up our dress code in the company handbook but the last summary of style is from 2011 and it says no denim, not even dark denim and I’m sitting right here wearing my black Levi’s so it must be outdated. Meanwhile, at the pool, where I’ve been swimming on early mornings because it is far too hot to do anything else, my Jolyn bikini is scandalous. I didn’t know it was until 5:32 am (practice starts at 5:30 am, but we know how this goes), when I am looked up and down by the 50-something year old swim coach (a woman, I should say), I’m trying to introduce myself because I’m new here but she informs me before I can finish saying my name that they have a ‘dress code’. I immediately assure her that a one-piece is coming in the mail, that I’m just getting back into swimming and that this is all I have. Unfortunately, the two piece is not the problem, the lack of coverage, in back, is. I don’t know how she knows this because I’ve been facing her the whole time, though I’ll admit this two piece is stretched and faded and projects inadequacy in the coverage category. 

So by my self-assessment, my first impression was, accurately, scattered, I was scattered because I was so unfamiliar with myself in an identity I had yet to inhabit, an identity which intimidated me even if it was supposed to be my own. My colleague clarified, that it seems I have self-corrected, and I’m not sure if I should be proud or sad that I’ve acclimated to some level of professionalism deemed appropriate, put-together. I’m not sure if I should be proud or sad that the routine of a work week has become satisfying in its mental exhaustion, that come Saturday, I relinquish the concept of time and sometimes my only objectives are to read on my couch, to do laundry, and not drive my car anywhere. I’m not sure if I should be proud or sad that maybe I’ve grown out of my scattered energy, that maybe I’ve forsaken something that’s out there in the chaos. 

But I also find new shades of contentment. I second guess if they’re real, or if somehow this unexpected contentment might be misperceived. But I think it is real. I feel it most as I walk through the neighborhoods at dusk, which here, is soft, billowing, it makes me think of marshmallows, not marshmallow clouds but marshmallow colors, the little ones that bleed in a bowl of Lucky Charms. I thought nothing could compare to California sunsets, the ones I watched from the peak of Claremont, settling over the Headlands and the Golden Gate, settling over fog banks and through winter storm clouds. Or the electric ones from the foothills in Carpinteria, the ones that could shock the system like my cold water plunges off Santa Claus Lane down the road. But I like this Southern sky.