Advice for Day 99: Unemployment is a state of mind

My 100 days are up. I'm officially living in that scary world of no health insurance with only the faint Obama-colored glimmer of hope for universal health care in my future.

But honestly my lack of health insurance isn't what is freaking me out. It is my lack of life insurance; lack of foresight about what I want my life to look like.

100 days ago i told myself i just needed a gulp of faith to wash away the shiver of fear. That gulp of faith fueled my way to Chicago but I'm afraid, I'm not sure if I have enough of the magic confidence elixir left to get me through actually living a life in Chicago.

But then again i remember my journalism yoda telling me to just fake confidence like it's my job, because right now it is. Unemployment is really just a state of mind that only influences the real world if you let it.

So my red hair may be fading, my confidence a little weak but my hair still glows in the red and a stiff drink of faith is lined up at the bar around the corner.

To see me tackle unemployment in the "big city," check out my new blog at www.bigchitownliving.blogspot.com.

Advice for Day 93: Careers End, Careers Begin

With this year's glowing ball inevitably smashing into '09, came not only headaches of hangover's future and blurred facebook pictures to be untagged but also the sloshed start of my new career in Chicago and the sober stop of my father's 36-year-long career with his appraisal company. Both are to be expected, but i never realized how important his end would be to my beginning.

My father is a man of his generation, a man of good hard work, a man whose life for better or worse was often defined his job. My father is also no fool and knew that he could not escape the gentrification of the old boy's club type private companies; he knew that even after 36 years, he could still be replaced by someone 36 years younger who would work for half of what he had rightfully earned; he knew loyalty, dedication and missed piano recitals does not equate to a steady job in a shaky economy. And he was right. On Jan. 1st he was "laid off" with 4 weeks of insurance and 10 weeks severance pay.

And a day later, he sat in his home office, smoking his pipe drinking Powers Whiskey and packing up his office supplies to ship to Chicago with his daughter.

He was calm and looked happy, not glazed over whiskey happy, but moving-on-without-regret happy. According to my mother for the past decade or so, most Mondays she would hear a muttered but conclusive "I quit" come from the shower where my father was contemplating his work week. But he didn't quit; he continued to provide for his family the only way a middle class white collar man knows how, by listening to Rush Limbaugh in the car on the way to work and having a glass of Powers after work. He managed until the clock ran out and that shiny fragile ball came crashing down into '09.

But like all things inevitable- the falling ball of new year's eve, the hangovers of new year's day and the start and stop of new careers- he, we, managed and will manage with a little talk radio, a little more whiskey and a lot of hokey family love.

Advice for Day 87: Appropriate Punctuation is not always possible

I love periods. Periods are the perfect bookmark to the end of a statement, thought or even life stage. I crave periods in my life; that simple punctuation to let me know life stage 5 is done and it is time to move onto stage 6.

After graduation, I searched for my period. I searched until I ended up back in Green Bay like a repeat sign on a chorus sheet. I was mixing music and English and had no period in sight.

But 4 months and countless false periods later, i think i have discovered my period in the imperfect form of an impromptu move to Chicago.

Today on day 87 on this journey through unemployment, I announce I am done with green bay and am moving to Chicago to be a temp.

Not the perfect job, not even a job I considered, but a job.

And no it is not the period I expected and it may turn out to be more of a semicolon but what is life if you can't mix up your punctuation ever once and a while.

So with that I say...

Advice for day 84: Until you are 25 believe in Happily Ever After

I have been obsessed with Halmart Christmas movies for the last few weeks. It is ridiculously considering i know how they end; the cynical journalist finds optimism in a small-town lover, the divorced skeptic finds joy with the Joe the Average Plumber on Christmas Eve, the jaded novelist finds simplistic inspirations from the humble waitress. Perfect Endings to Perfect Delusions.

Yet as I move to Chicago, I think these delusions might be what we need to move forward in life. These idealistic images of what life could hold for us is what we need to imagine in order to take the insane risks life requests of us.

As I talk to my grandma tonight of life and she tells me tales of actual true life stories she never "should of lived through" and i realize she never would of lived through them unless she had the insane confidence of youth and zero foresight.

And that is the beauty I have on this Christmas Eve. I have the idealistic memory of all that laid before me: Santa Clause bringing bikes and eating half of homemade cookies, singing off key carols in a 19th century church, eating cookies til my stomach hurts and then eating one more; as well as the idealistic vision of what lay before me: bringing charming a 2 1/2 children filled family to my sig. other's family farm in Utah, getting my own column based on my distinct realistically optimistic voice, having the forever and ever kiss under strategically placed mistletoe.

Until we are 25 it is important...no i would say vital...to hold onto the idealism that springs entrepreneurship , inspires novels and launches dreams. It is important to not think the Hallmark story really happen to XYz actress, but to believe it could happen to you. It is important to think your dreams aren't crazy or reckless or insane but exciting and youthful and exactly what you need.

Tonight, as in every Christmas night that involves one too many or one too less Bailey's on ice, my grandma gave me valuable advice i heed listen to:

"You can't just go with the flow; you have to make decisons. I don't' know if they are the right decisions but you have to make them," says Gma J.

Tonight, as in every Christmas night that I admit involves at least 2 too many Bailey's, I know my life lay within her advice but beyond this night, this town, and whatever destiny anyone could think up for me.

Tonight makes a decision knowing it doesn't matter if it was the right decision or not; knowing making a decision is all the right needed.

Tonight accepts life will be no Hallmark story and bets it will be better.

Advice for Day 83 To All The Single Ladies

I hope this goes without saying but never follow the advice of a Beyonce song. There is no deep wisdom somewhere between the repetition of the line "If you liked it then you should of put a ring on it."

If you want a ring, buy it yourself and put it on your own god damn finger instead of waiting for the seal of approval that is a wedding ring.

And for that matter all you single ladies and all you other ladies as well should apparently start acting like boys; because according to Beyonce "If I were I boy...I'd put myself first and make the rules as i go."

Beyonce has way too big of balls to not do that as a woman. You don't need to be a man to make your own rules and put yourself first.

FYI: Kevin this is not a feminist rant.

Advice for Day 80: Fall in Love

My amtrak train got stuck 15 minutes outside of Chicago. Besides the drunk lady sitting in front of me who didn't know or didn't care that she was swearing loud enough to make the amish in the quiet car blush, i didn't even care. I was headed to Chicago, my one true love.

After a Metra train shoved my amtrak all the way to Union Station, I exited the platform to be greeted by the welcoming arms of a blowing blizzard. Note: wind, rain and snow to not fall down on Chicago, it goes sideways, diagonal and sometimes straight up from the ground. In the whirling white, i was disoriented and asked a woman at the cross walk if i was on Wells. She along with 2 other blizzard bravers bravely took their mouths out of their scarfs to answer no this was Wacker and wells is one... no two... oh right, you're right...it's two blocks up. That is why I love Chicago.

Getting onto the el, two people held doors for me and an entire group of Chicagians made room for me and my burdening luggage under the heat lamps. That is why i love Chicago.

As I rode the elevator up to my interview clearly frozen from my half hour walk in winter, one lady told me where to buy silk long johns, another guy suggested i get layered gloves and a third advised PETA friend faux fur boots. That is why I love Chicago.

Now I'm not really the falling in love type of person. It is quite normally irrational,unproductive, potentially awkward and almost always painful. But it is also the thing 23 year olds should do and should do with a little chutpah.

So today i profess my love to Chicago and decide to go all. I'm moving down Jan. 3rd.

Advice for Day 75: Does Nostalgia have a place in a grown women's heart?

I hear my college roommates groaning even before I write these blaphemous and insanely nostalgic words but I must write them anyway: I miss finals.

I miss eating pokie sticks for dinner a week straight. I miss cramming at Helen C. until my ass cramped. I miss endless cups of coffee that made my taste buds die and my head spin. I miss taking a test and knowing I nailed it, knowing that 3 months of work paid off, that i had something as proof in the end, even if it was just a test.

And i miss that final's end celebratory beer. Nothing tastes as good as 1-12 cheap beers (or boots as my crowd rolled) after your final final.

Maybe it is just my lack of productivity these past 3 months that has me yearning for the fake productivity of college. For three months I have eaten crap with no excuse of final's food cravings. My ass has cramped not from hours studying in cheap wooden desks but from too many Jon and Kate Plus 8 Marathons. And I drink coffee not to learn about civilizations of old and revolutions of tomorrow but simply to try to stay awake in my boring middle America life of today.

And I have no final test to prove that it has been worth anything, that i have learned anything about myself or life in the past 3 months.

Sad but true, what i miss is validation that I am not wasting my life, validation in the form of a test, a paper, a project.

And I am slightly afraid that cheap beer will never taste good anymore...

All I can hope is that this nostalgia is just a part of what I am learning in this grand course of life, that nostalgia is just a little test on my endurance to make myself a future and not live in the past.

Maybe PBR will never taste good again but I am learning there are other beers, more expensive beers, more expensive and probably European beers, that might be waiting on the bar for me in the future.