Posted by Meagan Fisher on May 11th, 2009
This is the first in a series of posts about my trip to London. Now that I’ve had time to process the experience, I’ll be writing about it for a bit. Be warned.
Photo by Jason. For more, follow his ever-growing London & Paris set on Flickr.
When I was fourteen my family scraped together enough cash to send me on the Stetson Children’s Choir’s Summer trip, part of which was spent in London. Visiting this city weeks before I started high school impacted me in a lot of ways; for one, seeing Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey convinced me to study English Lit. But more importantly, it was during this visit that I set a big goal for myself: when I grow up, I will travel. I resolved to get out of the small-minded town I was raised in, and the hot southern state I’d grown to hate.
After high school my only real ambition was to find a new place to live; I visited Detroit, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington DC, New York City, Scotland, and finally Boston. These trips made it hard to have a normal full-time job and be a good student, but that was secondary in my mind. The equally irresponsible Jason and I moved about the country, armed with our 12″ PowerBook G4s and Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML. At some point I learned I could be a freelance designer, which meant never asking permission to take a vacation. I dropped out of college, quit my job, and started building my portfolio.
So as you might imagine, my return to London was awesome for a lot of reasons. Being at FOWD to speak amongst personal heroes such as Jim Coudal and Molly Holzschlag was an honor. However, as we rushed through Kensington on the way to the speaker’s dinner, I realized I was living an even bigger personal victory. It was in London 10 years earlier that I swore I’d never keep a job I hated, or get married and pregnant at a young age, or stay in Florida for the rest of my life. Avoiding these potential road blocks to happiness well enough to return to that awe-inspiring city felt like a success in its own right.
Posted by Meagan Fisher on May 10th, 2009
Mom, pregnant with me at 21, eating ice cream for two.
One of the worst parts of growing up is that no one hangs my participation ribbons on the refrigerator anymore. There’s no one I can be rude to after a bad day who will take it in stride and fix me a snack. Nobody calls at 2AM to ask why I’m out so late when I have work tomorrow. No one feigns interest in my passion of the week, then surprise when that passion is gone. Adulthood is hard without a mother nearby to take care of me, which is something I tell my fifteen-year old brother all the time when he’s whining about his curfew. He may not understand it yet, but the older I get the more I realize how hard it is to be a mom.
Even with all this wisdom of old age, it’s still easy to take my mom for granted. I know she’s going to love me even though I dropped out of college. She’ll forgive me even after I move all the way to Boston, and again when I don’t get a real “respectable” job with benefits. She’s my number one fan, though I don’t always return her emails right away, and sometimes forget to call on Sundays. She won’t protest if I blame her for my issues with eating. She understands that I yell, even if all she wants is help fixing the printer (again).
The truth is, she’s seen the worst of me, yet she always stands by me. So thank you for everything, Mom. I love you, and Happy Mother’s Day. Sorry I forgot to send you flowers. Here’s a cartoon of an owl instead. I hope you like it.
Posted by Meagan Fisher on April 21st, 2009
I’ve always been a night owl.
In elementary school I would hide under my Whinnie-the-Pooh blanket with a forbidden Stephen King book and a flash light, reading about the sexy world of vampires, monsters and serial killers from Maine.
In middle school I spent my nights with headphones, a portable radio, and Love Line with Dr. Drew; I was obsessed with words that were forbidden in my household.
In high school I was a nocturnal drunk, sneaking out of the house to drink Natural Light beer in pickup trucks with my equally stupid friends.
In college I spent my nights on my boyfriend’s couch, listening to him write songs on his guitar until we passed out and missed class entirely.
Now, I stay up until the wee hours of the morning writing markup and styles. While the spirit of rabble-rousing rebellion may no longer be present, I still feel most alive late at night.
