December 13: Action

photo by Beatriz AG.

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Prompt: Action. When it comes to aspirations, its not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen. What's your next step? (Author: Scott Belsky)

I took a basic photography class my last year of college. My school let me borrow really fancy cameras and lenses for the weekend, and I would go around and shoot a bunch of stuff for my assignments. I finished the class with a pretty nice portfolio.

Then I got my very own fancy camera for graduation. Although I go through spurts of shooting a lot of pictures, I don’t as often as I should. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that the camera is bulky and awkward and doesn’t allow me to take up-close-and-personal photos of people and things.

I aspire to take more pictures, but I need a new lens. It would solve a lot of my problems. I have put off buying one for forever. So I am making it happen soon. I’ve been doing some research. I’ve narrowed it down. Now all I need to do is make the purchase.

And then I need to take some pictures.

December 12: Body Integration (?)

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Prompt: Body integration. This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn't mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?

If I were presently under the throes of marathon training, this would be easy. During those four months, my legs are moving so much that I can feel every single muscle even when I'm just sitting down. But I haven't been running much lately, so that's out.

But I did go to a few hot yoga classes. I don't know if my face dripping so much sweat that my glasses fell off my face is a "a cohesive YOU, alive and present" moment. But it was a moment when my mind was pretty aware of what I was making my body do. If I go into further detail about my yoga matt became a slip and slide, you'd get grossed out. I'm grossed out. So let's just end this now.

December 11: 11 Things

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

December 11 – 11 Things What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life? (Author: Sam Davidson)

Photo by imago.

1. Eating meat on Mondays and hopefully other days
2. Half assedness in French class and French studying
3. Negativity
4. Multitasking. Really it decreases productivity.
5. Eating a gazillion cookies and pieces of candy and slices of cake and other free sweets at work
6. Slouching
7. Holding grudges
8. My fear of dying my hair (I've always wanted to try a redish color)
9. Losing touch with faraway friends
10. Procrastinating redesigning my blog and/or having a personal website
11. My inability to touch my toes or do a handstand

December 10: Wisdom

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Wisdom Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out? (Author: Susannah Conway)

One of the wisest decisions I made this year was to not run the Chicago marathon. When registration for the raced opened in January for the race, I knew I needed to register immediately to guarantee myself a spot (even though the marathon isn't until October, it sells out pretty fast).

I've run three marathons in the past six years. I've told myself I'll stop once I make it to Boston, a marathon so popular and prestigious that all runners must qualify at a previous marathon. In other words, you have to run two marathons to run Boston.

Like I said, I've run three, and I'm ready to get this Boston race under my belt. So if I were to have run the Chicago marathon, I would have tried to qualify. Which means I would have had to cut off 20 minutes from my best time — entirely doable with a lot of hard work, running a gazillion miles, healthy eating and absolutely no alcohol for 4 months.

I'm going to do it someday. Maybe next year. But this year wasn't the year for me. The bulk of my training would have been over the summer, and I ultimately decided it wasn't worth forfeiting my first real summer in the city for a race I have my whole life to run.

So I didn't enter. And this was wise. Because I had a great summer. The kind of summer that 145 percent reinforced my decision to live my 20s in Chicago. A summer of late nights and drinking and not exercising much and music festivals and general all around fun; a million things I would not have experienced had I been staying in every Friday to wake up early to run 20 miles the next day.

December 9: Party

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

December 9 – Party Prompt: Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans. (Author: Shauna Reid)


I'll start off by saying that my track record for parties hasn't been exactly stellar. Take my 21st birthday, for example, the ultimate party of all parties. Only two friends came. It was soul crushing.

I have since overcome my fear of throwing parties. It hasn’t been an easy path – attendance was low at a game night party last fall and I was left with an entire pot of chili – but I have learned along the way that having a successful party is all about quality over quantity. That being said, quality AND quantity in one room makes for a great party. And my roommates and I had one of those Halloween weekend.

There are a lot of reasons this was a good party. My mummy hot dogs were a hit. I had one of the best costumes I have ever had in my entire life. All my favorite people came. Good music, good times, good stories to tell later on. Great decorations thanks to my aunt.

Describing how much fun a party was to those who weren't there doesn't accomplish much, since all great parties are pretty much the same. So I'll end this here. But it was great, and this song will always remind me of it.

December 8: Beautifully Different

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Prompt: Beautifully different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different - you'll find they're what make you beautiful.

This prompt kinda rubs me the wrong way. Doesn't everyone want to believe that he or she is different than all the rest? Of course. We all do. That's why some of us wear wacky glasses or throw mustache parties or travel to Croatia solo. Or run marathons or sometimes dance in front of the mirror when we're alone or casually slip in that we've lived in Paris whenever it's pertinent (or not).

Those are things that I've done that are a bit different, but I definitely don't think these actions make me differently beautiful or beautifully different or whatever than the next person.

To say that I am different means I must compare myself to someone who is not. Someone who is undifferent, who is boring, who is normal. While I definitely think these people exist — I interact with them daily and shhh… I probably judge them — it is really not my place to say "I am different because I do these things that this person does not do." I really think claiming myself as different is a lousy way to make myself feel like more of a person than I really am.

When it comes down to it, we're people. We have different motivations for doing certain things or feeling certain ways or dressing in certain clothes. Maybe I wear these glasses because I think they define my personality, because I think they will make me stand out in a crowd or because I really want to look like a Mad Men character. Maybe it doesn't really matter.

Maybe we should stop trying to be so unique and different from each other and just do things that make us happy, no matter how those actions measure up to the actions of our neighbors. If we keep trying to be so very hard to be different all the time, we are all going to end up being the same.

December 7: Community

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Prompt: Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011? (Author: Cali Harris)

Early this year, I joined the staff at this little blog called Chicagoist. People tend to think this is a bigger deal than it really is. We joke about the Chicagoist office, which doesn’t exist. The editor-in-chief works from home and the rest of the staff posts around the schedules of our other jobs. I get paid $0 to write each and every post. Journalism school taught me that writing for free is one of the worst sins one could ever commit. But I’m obviously not there for the cash. I’m there for lots of things, and one of them is the community.

The Chicagoist staff is just a group of people who love Chicago to death and want to share that with the rest of the world. We each write about our own passions, maybe music, sports, politics, food, or in my case, literary this-and-that. We share content ideas over a listserv. It sounds pretty mundane. And in many ways it is. But these people do bring great joy to my life.

I appreciate how much everyone cares about our city. If there’s something particularly disturbing happening in the news today, I can expect upwards of 50 emails in my inbox from fellow staff members getting riled up. I’ll have the same amount of emails over less dramatic topics, such as where to find the best Mexican food in Chicago or where it might be fun to gamble in the city should casinos be allowed in.

I’m closer with some staff members over others, but I’ll generally say it’s a good group of people. On the rare occasion that I can make it out to one of the monthly happy hours to see everyone, I am always really glad I did. These people are always reminding me of why I love this city. That’s a great community if I ever saw one.

December 6: Make

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Prompt: Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

This is a hard question for me, because I don't really make anything. I make sentences I guess. I make my bed sometimes. I make muffins out of old and brownish bananas. And lately I've been making Crock Pot creations such as chicken and wild rice soup, pulled pork and chicken tacos.

So yeah, I don't really know how to respond to this prompt because I'm not a maker. There are things I have thought about learning to make, such as my own clothes or my own website. But these things would require a lot of time and would take away from other talent or hobbies I enjoy more.

There is one thing I am good at making however, and that is money. Well really, I am good at saving money. I got on this couponing kick when I was half-employed and now I can't pay full price for anything. I paid $2.49 for 24 photo Christmas cards including shipping. I paid $15 for a $70 pair of eyeglasses. Once I get some rebate checks in the mail, I will have made $5 on a bottle of organic shampoo and $10 on some body wash.

I am boring myself now. I look forward to tomorrow's prompt.

December 5: Let Go

Photo by by ginatrapani.

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Prompt: Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

I let go of about a gazillion virtual friends this year. I don't know how I came to have so many on Facebook, but it had come time to whittle it down. The rules were simple. If I do not even know who you were, I deleted you. If I only met you once or twice and we never spoke again, I deleted you. If you were a giant a-hole to me and I was only Facebook friends for who even knows why, I deleted you. That included people that I used to be friends with or people I used to live with. The a-holiness was automatic delete delete delete.

I got rid of 200-300 in a couple hours of purging.The initial reasoning was to keep my online self a little bit more private. As I kept erasing people from my life, I was kind of freaked out by how many I had let in.

In fact, it wasn't easy to delete everyone. Some, like the a-hole people, were obvious and painless. But to cut off your one and only tie with someone is a scary thing to do. I told myself it was okay if If I hadn't talked to these people in years. Once I deleted them, I felt better. It's like donating clothes to a thrift store. Once you get them out of your house, you completely forgot you ever had them.

December 4: Wonder

Photo by bbaltimore.

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Prompt: Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

I begin my response to this question with a snippet of a gchat conversation with a friend:

Kevin: dude
I love snow
every year
moi: me too
Kevin: I love living in the midwest even more
I don't know why
it's a dump here
but whatever
moi: the changing of the seasons is nice
Kevin: word
moi: something new every few months
Kevin: even the super crazy cold part of winter
I don't really mind
moi: something to look forward to

The seasons cultivate a sense of wonder in me. They never fail to do so. Yesterday I woke up and literally screamed "IT'S SNOWING!!" as if I had never seen snow before in my life. It snows every single year. But it's no matter. I love the sense of wonderment that comes with a new season, even if I've been expecting it.

Our day-to-day to lives will be the same, but the cycle of snow, rain, blossoms, green, warm colors of leaves, dead leaves and then all over again makes every single day a little bit different.

December 3: Moment

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Prompt: Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

When I saw this prompt, I immediately thought of one moment in which I cannot describe the texture, smell, voices, noises or colors. I thought of every time I am driving on I-55 as it becomes Lake Shore Drive and see the skyline of Chicago.

Every time I see this panoramic shot I am the happiest I have ever been in my entire life. I feel like the skyscrapers – these Chicago ones in particular – offer so much hope. As if these sturdy buildings will give me something to lean on anytime I might be apprehensive about the future. That something good is going to happen soon because I am in a comfortable place that I am proud to be from and proud to live in. That I have left anything unknown behind me on I-55 because I am coming home.

I feel like I have talked ad naseum about my decision to leave France and come back to Chicago, but I am going to come back to it again. I remember driving into the city shortly after I returned, and this jolly feeling of coming home being a gazillion times more powerful because a familiar song was playing on the radio. I don’t know what the song was. But it was one that I knew, and that felt great. Understanding the language in a different country is such a small small very small (although kind of big) piece of feeling like you belong there. There's so much more to it than that.

Knowing a song by heart that was a huge hit in the ‘90s, the one you put on mix tapes and the one that every time it comes on the radio, every single person present knows all the words by heart, too, and will randomly burst out into singing the lyrics… that is feeling like you belong in a place. I never had that in France. I wasn’t a ‘90s child in France. I was a ‘90s child here. This song was one of those, and although I was alone in the car on Lake Shore driving against the backdrop of the skyline of Chicago as I bust out singing the words, it felt really good to belong with every single person here.

Lessons Learned in French Class

I’m ashamed of myself for not putting as much effort as I should be into French class. I am paying a lot of money to take these classes and am not learning as much as I can because I don’t réviser enough. So for this session, I decided I would take my homework a lot more seriously.

For my first assignment, to write a little biography of myself, I sought out the native French eye from multiple friends to help me find mistakes in grammar and spelling. After correcting errors in almost every single sentence, I was proud to finally print off the four paragraphs and know they were the best they could be. I was ready to bring my homework to class and show it off.

Except our teacher wasn’t there. Even worse, the substitute was a teacher I H-A-T-E, she didn’t even mention the homework, and really I dislike her teaching style for many, many other reasons. I tried to sit through class, but knew after five minutes I had to get out of there. I stomped out as gracefully and cheerfully as possible, but I was fuming. A. I worked hard on this homework for nothing. B. That sub is the absolute worst and everyone knows it, so why in the world would the Alliance Française even let her take the class and just waste everyone’s time?

As I rode my bike home, I thought more about it. I was wrong about both A and B. For A: I did not work really hard on my homework for my class or for my teacher. I worked hard on it for myself, to improve my own French. As an added bonus, I got to reach out to some of my French friends whom I haven’t stayed in as good of touch with as I should have. I really appreciated the time they put in to help me out, and I hope I can return the favor. Physically handing in my homework didn’t matter for any of that. For B: I forget that I’m dealing with the French here. How many times were my classes in France – both when I was taking them at the university level and teaching them at a primary school – randomly canceled with no explanation? Americans expect a certain level of communication and I-have-to-know-every-single-thing-that-is-going-on-ever for every aspect of their lives and the French are just like “Meh. Guess the teacher didn’t show, I’m going to go drink an espresso.”

So, aside from working harder to learn more in French class, I need to work harder to remember the lessons I already learned in France. Mainly, don’t get stressed out about it, because it isn’t that big of a deal.

December 2: Writing

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Prompt: Writing. What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing -- and can you eliminate it?

This is a pretty easy one. It starts with an "I" and ends in "nternet."

It's so easy to get distracted when I hit a tough patch in my writing. Especially when every single word could be a tough patch – that's a lot of opportunities to get distracted! I've been trying to work on this lately, but it's a challenge. At my job (I'm a copywriter), I sometimes really need to force myself to finish a sentence before looking up something kind-of-not-really related that might help me gain more insight about the topic at hand.

Another thing that prevents me from writing more is fear. I always think I have nothing good to write about. It's one reason I don't write more here. For every post you see on this blog, there are probably three others I started writing and deleted because I thought they sucked.

Fear affects my writing outside of this blog, too. I've thought a lot about freelancing for various publications in Chicago, but haven't pursued it. I don't think I have enough good ideas or don't think I'll do a good enough job. I think I don't have time. I think it's too hard.

The "too hard" part really kills me. Since when did I not do something that was too hard? Especially after I read this article on freelancing today:

Freelancing is that remarkable stretch from February to December 2009, where I wrote entire features… using only my phone, a first-generation iPhone jailbroken for T-mobile, bought for $100 from a friend at Mac Week. That was because my computer had broken and I couldn't afford a replacement.

Really? If that guy can do it, then so can I! (Although he could have used the computers at the public library for free.)

Can I eliminate the Internet and fear? No, not really. But I can try harder not to let these things get muddled up in my writing, for sure. Absolutely. No doubt about it.

December 1: One Word

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Prompt: Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?
(Author: Gwen Bell)

Correct.

Sometime this year, I became an adult in the most correct way possible. I guess it has something to do with getting a full-time job. It was the biggest correct thing I did.

So is paying my rent on time, volunteering a couple hours a week, donating a little bit of money each month to a reputable organization, continuing studying French, being generally nice to people, eating fruits and vegetables and getting a healthy amount of exercise as well as sleep. Responsible, correct adults do those things.

All year I have been working to be a correct person in all of the ways above, and I have been doing a pretty good job. And I am proud of that. It is not easy to balance the correctness of adulthood. I am making myself grow up and that is good.

But as I strive to do a little bit of this and a little bit of that in the most correct way possible, I think I’m missing something. Like there’s a part of me that won’t let me drink too many glasses of wine after a stressful day. Or I’m not changing enough lives via my volunteering and charitable donations. Or that my steady routine of swim 2x yoga 2x a week is not challenging me enough. And that I go to French class every Thursday, but don’t work as hard as I should.

Maybe it’s passion that’s missing, or maybe it’s the sense of accomplishment. I have racked up a lot of accomplishments over the past few years, but this past year was meh in comparison. Do I need to stop comparing myself to myself? Or should I just put myself to shame and do something BIG?

I’ll probably do the second one.

This next year I will work harder to be better than correct. I need to start and finish something I can be proud of. The word that I would like to capture 2011 is complete. Watch out, because I might run 10 marathons or something.

Fighting my American Gene

As an American, I was blessed with the desire find ways to obtain nicer and newer things than those I already had. Both times I was living in France, I scoffed at the Americaness of it. And when I'm here, I always find myself slipping into the same old habit.

Like when I bought this coat last Friday. I don't need a new coat. I have three coats. But it was 50% off and I really liked it. So I snatched it up along with a million other things and swiped my credit card without a second thought.

And then I did think about it. I was so angry at myself for buying it. It wasn't about spending the money. It was about adding to my pile of possessions. What was I doing, buying something I didn't need? Especially after I've vowed to myself a million times not to do that?

It took fortitude, but I returned it. You'd think I would have immediately felt better as soon as I handed the coat back to the saleswoman. But I didn't really. I liked the coat a lot. I would have worn it. I wanted to own it. But I didn't need to own it. I'm sure the longer I held onto it, the easier it would have been to accept that the coat needed to be in my life. But I didn't want that to happen. So the coat had to go.

Bye bye coat. We were never going to work out.

Le Future

Yesterday, Amy helped me put up a world map on my wall. I will now wake up just under Antarctica every day. I was looking at it this morning and thinking about how much more of the world there is left for me to see, and I wonder if I could ever survive an around-the-world trip for six months or a year. I've met and read about lots of people who have done it, and it sounds incredibly lonely and amazing.

Whether I travel or simple move, I don't think it's my destiny to stay here in Chicago forever. I know I have at least a few more years in me, because I really do love this city every single day. But I wonder where I will go next. Will I go to school? Get a different job? Move someplace new with only the will to be there? I don't have to decide just yet, but this map has got me thinking…

Bette Davis Eyes in My Arms

I’m not one who knows her music. No no, not at all. But, I will say I’m always blown away when I find a new song I love and later realize I’ve for a long time loved the song that inspired it.

Like this:

Old


New


Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Why You Shouldn't Pay More Than $0 for Anything from the GAP

The GAP has certainly been making headlines recently. First there was the nationwide Groupon that broke the site. Then, there was this thing today with Facebook places to get one of 10,000 pairs of free jeans. And a couple months back, the Michigan Avenue store gave away 50 pairs of their new black pants. There's a lot of talk that GAP is paving the path for the future of retailers online. Maybe it's all true. But when GAP puts all these deals out there, they have to watch out for people like me. The ones who realize that if GAP is going to keep giving away free stuff, then I'm just going to stop paying for any of it.

From all the coupon blogs I follow, I know the absolute most you should ever pay for any GAP item is 40% off. Every couple months, they have these sales that sound super exclusive. But they're not because these sales happen all the time. So I've needed a new pair of jeans for awhile now, but I knew if I waited a bit, I could get them for super cheap from GAP. I was planning on paying just a fraction of the price, but today I got them for $0. I will admit that I stood out in the cold for a little while and read a book while waiting for the doors to open, which is more than most people would do for a pair of pants. But I'm trying to fly to Australia next year people. By my calculations, each mile of airfare costs 18 cents, so the $60 I saved can buy me 333 miles.

Anyways, my point is giving people a bunch of deals all the time is not necessarily going to make them buy more. In my case, it's making me buy less.

Now what shall I wear tomorrow? The free GAP jeans I got? Or the free GAP black pants?

Justified

Today I received this comment on a post I wrote:

This is probably silly, but your posts about books and the local literary happenings are much appreciated, even if your posts tend not to get many comments (too bad--books and writing are great things to argue about). Same thing for the classical music posts, from which I have learned a decent amount about a style of music I am trying to understand better.

This is also coming from a commenter who sometimes trolls the site and leaves really mean comments. Which made it even better.

I've said before that I don't need anyone to pat me on the back. I am both my own biggest motivator and my biggest critic. But, I'm just saying. It was a nice thing to see.

Life Goals

- Learn another language (Italian?)
- Do a legit triathlon (not the easy sprint stuff) and/or Boston marathon
- Do a handstand