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.

Advice for Day 72: Be Young, Passionate, Genius and Lucky

OK avid readers, settle in as I tell you a story about my jobless life on day 68. It is a story about a girl, 7 rounds of drinks, a basement bar and two editors of the Chicago Tribune. It is a story about all the best things in Chicago: passion, genius, youthful drunkenness but most of all insanely privileged luck.

It was Monday night and in an attempt to savor the real chicagist's chicago, beyond my beloved chicago-style hot dog shops, I turned to every real chicagist's favorite book: the Fodor's Chicago tourist guide. Under cheap and greasy in the index, I found Billy Goat's Tavern, the inspiration for the infamous Cheeseborger SNL skit.

After being convinced into a double cheesborger by the delightfully no bullshit waitress, I sat down at the red checkered slightly sticky table to indulge in a borger packed with onions, relish, pickles, ketchup and mustard sliding out the sides. As I attempted to keep white shirt presentable for the gathering crowd of middle aged men, I glanced up at the news to see that the Tribune Co. had filed for Chapter 11.

Billy Goat's has the good fortune to be situated directly across from the towering Tribune building, nestled onto lower Michigan, below the glits and glamour of the loop, but in proximity to feel the after shocks of the news. As a journalist- if not practicing than at least in spirit- I felt a pang of distress for the Trib journalists left without job security and the entire industry suddenly facing it's own mortality as it knew it.

Then I suddenly realized this same emotion was being emitted by the 5 or 6 greying men at the bar. Dressed in stretched out sweaters and coffee stained dress pants, I knew these kindred souls were Trib workers themselves. I had found the Trib lair.

I asked Payne, the best waiter who never actually waited on anybody, if any of these guys were journalists. And as luck would have it, Payne knew the guy walking into the bar was the sports editor of the Trib himself.

Relying on the fact that i had managed to keep my shirt free of pickles and that i still might look presentable, I waved Mr. Sports Trib himself over to our table of idealistic youth. And so began a night of stories of old newspapers ways, current business models and new media possibilities; it was the Christmas Carol's ghosts of newspapers' past, present and future.

Mr. Sports Trib told stories of his first newspaper gig as a delivery boy and how he used to get in trouble because he always read the newspaper "front to back" before delivering it. He told stories of small town newspapers and big breaks, of superbowls and world series, and frankly things i have never heard of and didn't understand. He said journalism was a thinking profession and that's why he loved it. And he kept muttering that we were just so young; not young and foolish like others have implied but young and potential, young and eager, young and lucky.

And that is what I felt that night- extremely young and extremely lucky. As the business editor rolled in at 11:30, I managed to buy Mr. Sports Trib a round before he could buy us our 7th round. He of course protested but it was the least i could do not only for the advice but also for this feeling- this renewed optimism of youth, that youth wasn't just inexperience and entry-level positions but that it was a time that allowed you to be foolish enough to follow passions, a time to drink too many rounds on a Monday night, a time where luck could still change the course of one's life.



Norman Mailer once wrote to a friend ""Now, of course, all of this is every artist's anguish- so many of us could have been geniuses if everything had worked out right- but i had so much more good fortune that the others, and I've fucked it away so wastefully."

Of course Mailer had a surplus of genius and for as much luck as he pissed away he still manages to be hero-like statue for many journalists and artists. But for the rest of us with our status-quo amounts of genius, luck, mixed with the passion to pursue that good fortune, might be enough to get us our dreams or at least to land us in a dive bar on a Monday night with enough good stories to entertain any pretty idealistic girls who might have wondered in.

Advice for Day I stopped counting a week ago: Have a Plan G

I always thought “if all else fails” I would work as a secretary in the big city for a while, freelancing what I could, until someone recognized the genius underneath their upturned noses.

But then today “all failed” including my brilliant Plan B, which was actually Plan F, after failed plans B, C, D and E. So here I am wondering how could I be so stupid not to have planned a Plan G.

After some soul searching, cross-legged meditation, a few yoga poses held too long, an expensive reiki session, and every other hippy practice I could partake in the fine anti-boho town of Green Bay, WI, I decide I needed to get out of this charming town now. I needed to get out NOW, not when I find my dream job but NOW before winter sets in and my ’96 Geo gets stuck underneath 3 feet of snow.

Now problem, I will just launch Plan F, find a temp agency and get some decent paying work, just enough to afford a sweet pad in the city and chill for a while.

And then the temp agency rejected me.

Yes the temp agency rejected me- a UW-Madison college graduate with a 4.0. How the hell does Plan F fail? How does a college degree not qualify me for the rigourous tasks of photocopying, answering phones and taking messages? I am an educated, dedicated and honestly pretty damn perky employee- how can a temp agency not want me?!

OK you know life is really out of control when you ignore four years of journalism training and add two unnecessary punctuations to the end of a sentence. But it is at that point now. Suddenly it isn’t just that college grads have to settle for a less than desirable job but that they can’t get any job.

A effin 4.0. What a the hell?!

So on to Plan G: begging; just plain pathetic pleading, as old as Jonah imploring the great white whale to please throw him up, as classic as Oliver Twist asking for another cup of gruel, as annoying as that screaming 6 year old in Toys R Us nagging her mom for a bratz doll and just slightly less pathetic than Wall Street soliciting Congress for a bail out.

So a pathetic plea to all out there: know anyone in Chicago? Then please please hit me up with their info so I can gravel at their feet for a job. Please folks ‘cause there ain’t a Plan H.

Advice for Day 50: Sometimes you need a slow song and some effin sentimentality

In the air the questions hang
Will we get to do something?
Who we gonna end up being?
How we gonna end up feeling?
What you gonna spend your free life on?
Free life.

Let's fall in love again with music as our guide
We'll raise our ready hands and let go for the ride
Down into unknown lands where lovers need and hide

We got these lives for free, don't know where they've been
Don't know where they'll go when we are through with them
Starlight of the sun, dark side of the moon

-Dan Wilson "Free Life"

Advice for Day 48: Makin' Mistakes, Makin' Decisions

So why did I suddenly decide to go all hippie and get in touch with the inner boho? The truth is I feel, i've felt, trapped with the decisions of tomorrow. Yes, i've been over analyzing per usual. I've been wanting to take the right steps instead of just moving. I've always been so obsessed with not making any mistakes that i usually end up not even making a decision.

When I was 16, I got stuck in an intersection. I was taking my driving test and I was so nervous my hands were shaking at their proper position at 10 and 2. I was turning left at a light and i couldn't decide if i should scoot up into the intersection to cross at a break in cars or wait til the light turned red and i got an arrow. I froze and waited and then got the safety of a green arrow.

The instructor marked off 8 points for what amounts to unsafe hesitance. unsafe hesitance. it turns out over thinking it isn't always helpful in driving or life. I failed my first driving test. The next one i passed with only 3 points off. I just drove, I didn't think.

The problem is you don't get a redo at life. If i keep waiting, I won't be living. If i make a decision i might make a mistake. But that is really what i want. To make a big huge effin mistake.



So the reiki, my attempt at hippiehood, was really suppose to give me some clarity as to what i wanted to do with this potential of a life. But it just made me realize I need to just do what i feel and stop trying to stop myself from making mistakes.

So I'm moving to Chicago January 3rd and I'll plan the rest of my mistakes from there.

Advice for Day 47: Note to self: There are no nervous hippies

Have you never noticed that there are never any nervous hippies? No groups of dread-locked, tattooed, flowey skirt flower children gulping lattes and bemoaning the economic crisis in increasingly higher frequencies. No hippies got zen or pot or something that makes them immune to the useless feeling of anxiety and nervousness.

Needless to say my panic attack ridden self has never been a hippie, merely a proud faux hippie aka wearing bell bottoms in 7th grade and signing a legalize marijuana petition sophomore year of college.

But on Wednesday, i took one more step towards hippie heaven when i partook in the highly bohemian activity of reiki. You know, reiki- energies and chakras and healing without touching- everything hippie in one convenient activity.

And what was the soul revealing conclusion of my brush with hippie heaven?

That i am indeed a nervous person- ridiculously and painfully nervous.

It took the reiki master a good 40 minutes to rid me of my nerves. As i laid down on the table i was completely relaxed but as soon as she put her hands to my head, lord, my heart sped up and my mouth went dry. I could feel the nervous energy running along my skin but i couldn't let it go. It just ran along my skin like it was being chased.

And then i let it go and it felt really damn good. Like floating without the realization the gravity exists. Like being calm without remembering the sensation of panic. Like happiness without thinking about what might lead to sadness. Like the future without fear.

It was a rare gift that makes me want to be a full fledged for real boho.

It was also makes me wonder what my nerves have stopped me from in the past. How different could my life be if i didn't live with this tightness in my stomach? If i could let go of the anxiety what could would my world be? And can I ever really let go of nerves that have been part of me for so long?

Wow for those counting that was four rhetorical questions for a self proclaimed rhetorical question hater. And I'm not even freaking out about it...well maybe i am, just a little. Damn there goes hippiehood.

Advice for Day 40: Extended Metaphors Help

Got some more good secondhand advice via facebook today. My wonderful friend Kastastrophe tells me: "The most difficult thing about being amazing and multi-talented and just plain kick ass at a lot of things is that you have tough decisions to make because you have so many options."

There is no way to hide it- i am no decider. I am a horrible decision maker, always has been. When I was little my mother used to threaten to leave me at restaurants because i could never make up my mind what to order. I would often call the waitress back to the table because 2 seconds after i ordered i changed my mind. It all drove my decisive mother nuts.

Today I still stand at the counter at the Chinese food restaurant in town for five minutes trying to choose. Part of it is a lack of gut instinct on what the proper choice is but more is just taking in all the possibilities of that extensive menu and all the outcomes those possibilities could have. After all a night of sesame chicken has totally different implications than a night of steamed dumplings.

Yes this is the metaphor i am going to use for life- ordering chinese food. Until now, life was like jenny craig pre-packaged meals- college, journalism, study abroad- and now i have the whole effin buffet in front of me complete with appetizers, soups, main dishes and desserts. And my glutenous gut wants a little of everything.

The one thing I am trying to remind myself is i usually figure it out in the end, i have never starved, usually giving into ordering within reasonable time frame. My routine is this: I will ask 3 people advice on what to order and i'll get three different responses- the general tso, the garlic chicken, the ragoons. Then i say nope to all of those and order a pizza.

That is what i need to do with life right now, i need to order a fatteningly amazing pepperoni pizza- with stuffed crust.

I may be taking this metaphor too far.

But here is my point- my "reasonable" ordering time may be a little longer than others, i may annoy the crap out of my waitress, i may annoy the crap out of my mother, but in the end I make a decision and i am almost always happy with it because in the end it is always my decision.

That is these unemployed months- they are Jon and Kate Plus 8 marathons, chocolate chip oat muffins, New Yorker articles, dinners at restaurants i won't be able to afford in a few months with my generous mother, they are a million self indulgent activities that may look like stalling but are really me figuring it out. It is me looking at that menu on the board, listening to the suggestions around me, ignoring them and then ordering something no one expected.

Advice for Day 35: You gotta stop letting the Universe kick your ass all around this world

So I am going to try to make a long story short, which is rarely successful in the garrulously wonderful world I have created for myself...look I'm failing already.

Anyway, the short story is my boss (aka my very temporary part-time I will never put this on a resume boss) is crazy. She has been sucked into some bogus religious/pyramid scheme called Avatar (yes like the second-life video game) created by a man that got KICKED OUT OF SCIENTOLOGY- how crazy do you have to be to be kicked out of a church that eats placenta.

In her crazyness, she has decided that all her staff should also be educated in the Avatar way, which is a waste of time, money and my precious little sanity. But amid all the crazy, I have actually found a pretty genius nugget of less crazy.

The story Avatar tells is of a kid coming in from playing in the snow one day. He is standing in the doorway, letting the snow blow in. His mother yells at him, "Either choose in or out or i will choose for you." Avatar explains that the same is true for life; if you don't choose, the universe will choose for you. We call this fate but really it is just indecision.

For years I have thought fate was pushing me to be a journalist. I became editor of my high school paper with virtually no effort. I got these random articles published in local papers. I worked with a news organization in Argentina. None of this was really intentional career moves; it seemed fate wanted me to be a journalist.

Or really it was just mother universe slamming the door on an indecisive child, making me stay in the warm comfort of the house I know so well. I have always known how to write and I have always know how to tell a damn good story but it has not always been my conscience decision to be a journalist; it is my default.

When i try to get in touch with that illusive gut it doesn't want to move to Roswell, NM to live on 18,000 a year and 5 vacation days. It doesn't want to chase cop cars or listen to the police scanner. It doesn't want to have a "beat." It doesn't really want to be a reporter at all.

Still I love seeing my name in print and the newsroom does have this frenzied caffeinated smell to it that i love. I love listening to someone's story and then retelling it better. And finding the perfect quote to end a story makes transcribing 3 hours of tape worth it.

And so i am still a contradiction of guts. Which is why i am still standing in the doorway, sending resumes to papers i will never work at and not yet understanding what i really want to do.

But i know this time needs to be different. This time I have to stop letting mother universe kick my ass where ever is easiest. This time I know i don't really want to stay in the kitchen; i am done with safe. This time i have to step out of that door and into that blizzard of uncertainty.

Advice for Day 33: Change, Baby, Change

As I sat in Green Bay drinking my imported liberal Madison beer and watching the crowd gather in Grant Park to celebrate Obama's victory, the only thing I could think to myself is: I should be there.

My next thought was: Why am I not there?

I said by November 1st I would be in Chicago. But fear of not finding a job and/or not finding myself in the city has kept me in the relative comfort of Green Bay, where i have the ease of a part time job and a reliable old self imagine to fall back on.

But hearing Obama's speech and seeing the people of Chicago made me realize you don't accomplish greatness by staying static. Change, the pesky slogan toted around from 2 years, seems to be the only way to really discover who you are and who you are meant to be.

As Obama says:"For that is the true genius of America -- that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."

The genius of life is the ability to adapt, to take what we have accomplished and add to its beauty,to stretch for that illusive perfection. And that does not happen by sitting in green bay waiting for winter to freeze you in.

Sometimes it takes the first black man becoming president of the United States of America to realize that you too can make change, you too can change - even if Wolf Blitzer doesn't cover it for 24 hours straight on CNN.

Day 29: Unemployment has ruined the Holidays

I just can't enjoy Halloween this year; partially because I've out grown the whole "sexy-profession" costume but mostly because Halloween is just another reminder of time ticking by in my job hunt.

By November 1st I wanted to be in Chicago. Actually i promised myself i would be in Chicago. But I'm not and i have to admit that i feel like a bit of a failure. I have yet to move beyond college.

Maybe this anxiety is why i keep waking up at 6 AM, worried that if i don't start my job search now, i will miss the perfect job.

The thing i have come to accept is that i'm not going to be 100% satisfied or even happy while i am unemployed. I can't enjoy this as leisure time because my mind and body were not meant to "leisure." I need a purpose to feel whole and good.

So this may be one year where i don't enjoy the tricks or treats as much as i wish i could, but at least i have learned i don't have the spirit to be unemployed. My father will be so relieved.

Advice for Day 25: Screw All the Advice

I went to my career advisor today for the third and last time today. Halfway through her contradictory advice, I felt those ridiculous tears of frustration building behind my eyes. As she discreetly tried to pass me a tissue, I wanted to just bolt from that office of reiterated “It’s a rough economy” cheer-up lines.

But just as I was about to high-tail it out of the office of torture, my advisor said one of the most valuable pieces of advice I’ve heard. She looked over my cover letter and said, “This just doesn’t sound like you.” I told her she was right. It wasn’t me. It was parts of the dozen or so people I have been receiving advice from over the past few months. I lost me sometime around the end of September.

She told me to scrap the cover letter and start over putting me into it. Because, as she so wisely pointed out, I was qualified candidate and I did kind of kick ass.

It’s hard to pinpoint when I lost that sense of self. It is not that one day I woke up and decided to give up my identity in favor of everybody else’s vision of me. It was more that my identity was whiddled away at by all those well meaning advisors and mentors, until I was a hodge podge of dozen other people’s lives.

I have been so confused when I look into the future, that I was willing to put anyone’s future into my cover letters instead of myself. It was just easier.

But in the end, I underestimated my will. It is a lot stronger than I thought and a lot harder to get to shut up. I’m not saying I can magically wash away all that advice garnered over the past few months but I can decide to listen to my gut more. And in the end I am going to give myself the deciding vote of what my future will be.

Advice for Day 24: Have Good People

I have to make a quick tribute to my humbly genius journalism friend Elli Thompson, who is the only individual who can make me jump off the pity train and onto the optimistic wagon with nothing more than a cherry coke and an hour of sincerity.

We all want to be these people, these genuinely good and honest people like Elli, but we rarely can inspire such goodness in ourselves much less pass it on to others. But some of us are blessed to have such graces of human nature in our circle of friends; we must take some time to stop wishing we could be them and start being grateful that they put up with our shit.

As a rule of thumb, I think we should surround ourselves with people who make us feel good and people who make us want to be better. We spend way too much time wanting to change others to be the people we want them to be instead of appreciating those good friends we already have.



And while i am on my tribute kick let me make another shout out to the amazing and beautiful women I have bee privileged enough to call friends the past four years of college. I am blessed with having not just the goodness fairy as a friend, but also a whole slew of lovely ladies I like to call my entourage of kick ass. They may not have the cheeriest dispositions but they could drink Mary Poppins under the table and then give her a eloquent speech about politics or conservation or phycology or the Brewers. Combined these ladies hold all the characteristics I so respect: the gumption and guts, the humor and humility, the charisma and charm, the selflessness and sexiness.

At times when it is apparent that we are not the greatness we anticipated we were going to be, it is easy to forget are in the presence of future greatness. All of these ladies are going to be the future faces of what a power women looks like- and let me tell you, they look way better than Sarah Palin.

Advice for Day 22: Delayed Birthday Gifts can bring supervicial smiles to us all

Being unemployed is really starting to get in the way of my irresponsible consumerism. With $60 to my name and that number quickly dwindling thanks to yoga classes, Chinese takeout and gas station cappuccino, I am beginning to become the most hated player in the US economy: the frugal spender.

But luckily thanks to my mom's "3 months late is better than never" attitude, I have once again joined the ranks of useless spending and become the proud owner of a ridiculously overpriced MAC purple case for my baby.

And let me tell you, it is beautiful, and it did make me happy, if only in the very superficial and fleeting moment of glee. I will take what joy i can get these days.

Advice for Day 21: Find Zen without Losing your Hygiene

First let me make a disclaimer: I love hippies, really i do. I love their avantgarde approach to halter tops, bangles and tie dye. I love their hand-inked butterfly/flower/fairy tattoos placed strategically on the ugliest and most noticeable part of their bodies. I even love their silly annual parades to that weird shaped green plant called mary.

That said I do not like their "au naturual" scent; that distinct order they seem to have copyrighted as organic (as if they could put a sticker on their armpit and sell it for twice its market value). From the unwashed dread to the unwashed unmentionables, hippies need to find a shower before they find their inner peace.

But luckily the WASP's have gentrified hippyhood the same way they do to any dignifably ugly neighborhood and turned it into YOGA Inc., my zenarific 45 minute noon power stretch.

Every Tuesday and Thursday I am welcomed into the studio with a sign asking guests to consider their hygiene for the comfort of other guests. That is how WASP's say no effin' Hippies allowed. We may be embracing the religions of the East but we will never forget the 1st commandment of the West: politeness is next to godliness.

And so i enjoy 45 blissful minutes of the gentrified skeleton of ancient yoga that the Green Bay area has so finely honed over the course of the last 3 years. And I walk out feeling good and smelling even better thanks to my all-powerful Secret deodorant.

But beyond knowing i just participated in an ancient religious practice watered down for and then steroided back up to appeal to the "i want a hot ass and inner peace" American, I feel like i did something i little good for myself.

I took 45 minutes and realigned my spine and my priorities. I folded my body in half, rested my nose to my knees and didn't think once about the my impeding insurance-less doom. Yoga may be too hippy for WASPs and American Yoga may be too WASPy for hippies, but I say light the effin' incense and find zen my friends because neither side is having much luck these days.

I am starting to see I may be a WASP but I may be a Yogi as well. Really the only difference is a little more deodorant and a little less stick up ass.

Advice for Day 19: Advice from Reruns

Sabrina Spellmen and Rory Gilmore are now my sole sources of advice.

Today, as i was watching the cable i swore i would unplug yesterday, the two wholesome TV role models leaped from their respective wholesome college careers into their respective wholesome real worlds; Rory with an internship at a small local newspaper and Sabrina with a job at a hip music magazine. Neither was their dream job- working, of course, at the prestigious New York Times- but both sucked it up and made the best of their new jobs.


Of course i don't have the help of a talking cat or a caffeine-hyped ADD mother, but really if the Spellmen's and Gilmores of the world can learn that lesson in an hour, then i really should have caught on by now.

So I'm swallowing some of my burdensome pride and asking the cyber space gods to send me an opportunity, any opportunity, before I run out of reruns to get life advice from.

Day 18: Reality TV is my Sunday Reality

My mom told me that when she was younger she used to hate Sundays. She loved the weekends, especially going to see whatever long-distance boyfriend she was currently canoodling with, but she dreaded Sunday: the day before reality.

The anticipation of going back to school or her job or whatever her real life was at the time ruined the entire Sunday and therefore half of her precious weekend. That always seemed a little ridiculous to me. Why ruin a perfectly good weekend with the fear of the inevitable return of reality?

Here is where my mom and i differ. I never feared the reality of Mondays; reality, in fact, was a welcomed break from the usual insanity of weekends. Mondays brought back the structure and safety of routine.

But Sundays now are different because they aren't followed by a healthy regiment of the predictable work and class schedule but instead by the frightfully free time of unemployed Mondays; Mondays where nothing "has" to be done but everything "should" be done. My Mondays are now just as dreaded as my mother's were 30 years ago.

Usually on weekends you can rest guilt-free knowing you will be back to work in a few days. You can allow yourself freedom to be unproductive because that American 40-hour-productive work week lays right around that lazy Sunday. But when weekends are not followed by the productivity of the "work week" then weekends become a hideous reminder that no part of your life is productive; that you have no reality to return to on Monday.

So instead of face the fact that by life is embarrassingly useless, i submerse myself in Sunday reality TV show marathons. I usually get hooked when I click on the TV for some background noise and find there is yet another ANTM marathon. I now know just about every winner of the show- including my girl Whitney, season 10 winner and first plus size model at a whopping size 10. I try to take solace that if Whitney's pant size is ever a question on Trivial Pursuit, i will kick ass...but since i haven't played Trivial Pursuit since I was 11, it isn't much consolation. I am still left living my Sunday reality through reality TV marathons.

It is just that somehow watching others live their reality, makes me forget that I don't have a reality waiting for me on Monday. The bliss of mind-numbing reality television is the escape from my reality-less existence.

Maybe my mom and I aren't so different. Maybe we both hate facing our Monday realities: her's of a low-paying social work job; mine of a non-reality unemployed existence.

Yet maybe if my mom had had reality TV back in the day she could have blissfully lived in someone else's reality for a Sunday instead of her Monday-fearing Sunday reality. And maybe if i could disconnect the cable I could get busy living my Sunday and forget the reality of TV.

Advice for Day 14: Call a Spade a Spade and an Ugly Baby an Ugly Baby

I don't know why the people get so offended when you call an ugly baby ugly. It is not even their kid and they start defending the obviously unattractive baby's better features i.e. it looks better when it is sleeping, it is cuter with clothes, and my favorite, it will grow out of it.

Well of course it will grow out of being an ugly baby and grow into being an ugly toddler and then a ugly child and so on until the adjective ugly will be so obvious that people won't even need to mention it. And when that ugly baby is an ugly adult it will probably have ugly babies that it and all the people around it will call cute.

But they are lying- the baby will be ugly. But by lying they are missing the point; it is ok for the baby to be ugly. Let's admit it: most babies are rather ugly.

But they are also beautiful in the symbolism they stand for: new beginnings, clean slates, brighter tomorrows. Plus they have that great new baby smell which even trumps new car smell.

Yes it is ok to allow some ugly into our lives. Some ugly even makes our lives a little better and a little more interesting. Besides, most babies, and most ugly, really do grow out of that weird bug-eye, sunburned look and into semi-normal and occasionally beautiful look.

That is what being unemployed is like: it is an ugly squinty-eyed, cone-head, sticky-out ears job hunt that you know is going to turn into a 40-hour-a-week, health insurance and 401K full-time job and maybe, just maybe, eventually that better-than-disney-land, it doesn't even feel like work, who needs to retire when you have this job, kind of a job.

But for now let's just call a spade a spade: being unemployed is an ugly baby.

[p.s. thank god i am not Oprah or Ellen or any other personality so important they only need one name because i would get truck loads of hate mail for this. Seriously people why can't we just love our ugly babies?)

Advice for Day 12: Shedding the Unemployed [Undisclosed Amount] Weight

Four years ago, there was the freshman 15 (or closer to 40 in my fried-food-loving case). Now there is the Unemployed-I’m-too-old-too-admit-my-weight weight gain.

The inevitable weight gain makes sense. There are similar conditions of unemployment and the first year of college: sinking self-esteem, mass consumption of comfort food and mindless hours of reality TV marathons, all a recipe for an extra little layer of fat.

Two months into my unemployment journey, I suddenly realized I have a child-size inner tube inflating around my waist. More than just being a result of my LOST and Mac&Cheese binges, my extra few pounds signal my digression to a defeatist lifestyle. I have given my life over to cheese and Chinese food.

But all hope is not lost [nor weight gained]. Here are my new Unemployment [Undisclosed] Weight Gain Resolutions:

1. Food is not an event to anticipate. Your morning should not be consumed by whether you are going to have Mexican or Thai for lunch. Your dinner selection should never be a topic of discussion at lunch. There are other events- like yoga, book readings, workshops, volunteer events, or trips to the coffee shop- that actually make up a life worth living.

2. Addiction to food is just as powerful as addiction to crack, or at least it seems like it. Once you put sugar and red meat into your body, your body will want more of it. Taking away the crackalicous unhealthy food will be painful for a week or two but after, your body will adjust and, like a crack baby reborn, you will be addiction free.

3. Jogging is way cheaper than anti-depressants, especially for the uninsured. A slight depression seems to come with the jobless territory but jogging gives you your fill of free endorphins plus a good hour not taken up with worry.

I want to be clear with myself: this is not a diet. Mainly this is not a diet because diets never work and I refuse to ever utter the phrases: low-carb, fat-free, or Jenny Craig. No this is not a diet; it is me regaining control of the bulging belly and hopefully my life.

Advice for Day 10: Self-Deprecation Doesn’t Equal Funny; it Equals Sad

I like to blame it on Midwest; a place where confidence is cockiness and self-deprecation is akin to godliness. It is the Midwest that infused my resume and cover letter with self-deprecation, humorous and occasionally LOL self-deprecation, but still pathetic and un-hireable self-deprecation.

This weekend, while watching a local band bash themselves on stage, I realized that self-deprecation isn’t really that funny; it is actually just kind of sad… and unprofessional and painful to watch.

“The only one to come see us play is our mothers,” cliché, untrue (your sister and girlfriend were there as well) and pathetic.



“I swear we sound better after a few drinks,” cliché, untrue (I had a few and my friends had a few more and none of us thought you sounded any better) and very pathetic.

“We are drunken-live-my-our-parents-high-school-dropouts who can’t give up the dream of smoking pot all day and writing songs about smoking pot all day. Thanks for coming to see our show.” OK so they didn’t say this last one but they might as well have because that is how they appeared to all three of us in the audience who weren’t somehow related to them.

And that is how I sound when I joke about my awful Spanish accent or getting bailed out of jail. It is not so much funny as it is cliché, untrue and very, very pathetic.

Because the truth is I rock. In fact I kick ass. I can report, write, edit, re-edit. I am talented, professional and worth hiring. And no I am not being cocky, you killjoy of the Midwest; I am being honest.

Advice for Day 8: Unintentional Advice is the Best Advice

Last Christmas, Grandma casually said to me over her third glass of white wine, “Nik, I hope you have as much fun in the next 60 years, as I have had.” To this day it is one of the most meaningful pieces of unintentional advice I have ever received.

Maybe it is the 90 years of experience she is packing or maybe it is just her constant optimism, but Grandma always seems to be just chocked full of these granulates of inspiration. On my way home from the Northwoods, I stopped in Antigo hoping to be gifted with some notoriously wise Grandma words.

For almost three hours we talked about life, about World War Two, about the election, about her junior prom, about getting married in a blue suit. We never talked about my job hunt or the uncertainty of the future. We talked about life.

And these were perhaps the best words I could hear; words about a life lived, and lived well. They are inspiring words because they showed me the power of living life instead of talking about living life.

Grandma gives the best advice by not talking at all; but simply by living her life.

Advice for Day 6: Sometimes You Need Drunken Rainy Days and Rainy Drunken Days

They are both the same really. Slow, sluggish, sloshy and of course necessary every once and a while.

Three isolated days at my cabin, turned into three drearily perfect rainy days in the Northwoods; three glorious days where nothing could be expected from me except maybe to make another brandy and coke.

And that is what I did. I made myself just one more drink and watched old movies, until the black and white of Audrey Hepburn seemed to be in color. I laid there, under my sweating glass tumbler of brandy, coveting how good a world in black and white.

The world slowed down for the night and it seemed simple, just like pearls or love. All I needed to do was make one small elegant kitten-heeled step towards Chicago and that would be enough.

I don’t need to jet off to Santiago or even abandon sunlight for the wintry mountains of Alaska. I don’t need to create an adventure worthy of the silver screen; I just need to create a beginning to this plain Midwestern girl’s post-college life. And if that life starts and ends in Chicago, all the simpler and happier the story will be.

And it only took me 4 tumblers for this revelation.

Advice for Day 6: Running Away to Run into Yourself

About two weeks ago I received one of the most sensible pieces of advice from one of the least sensible people I know. It came in the unassuming form of a facebook message. On September 25th, my insensibly genius friend wrote me:

“I have one piece of advice: take your favorite sweater and your most wonderful pair of underwear, buy a pack of marlboro lights (or a carton if ya feel inclined), 3 magazines, the movie chocolat or such flick, a bottle of gin and champagne (for the real fun) and whatever else feels good at the moment and load up your car and drive to your cabin. Do whatever the f&%$ you want for however many days, everything else be damned. Enjoy the f@#$% out of yourself. If you don't get clarity, who the hell cares, you had an amazing time; the clarity will come later.”

Two weeks later, here I am, isolated in the Northwoods, wearing my new VS underwear and my old wool sweater, drinking brandy and watching old Audrey Hepburn movies. I have not completely abandoned home. I know I have to return to the responsibilities of unemployment in a few days. But for now, I am just doing whatever the f@#$ feels good. For now, all that advice on just what path my life should be taking is left back in the bay of reality and I am wandering my own paths through the Northwoods.

As I rub my freshly shaven legs together (shaved because I wanted to not because I was expected to) and curl under the comforter to take a 2 pm nap, I am beginning to hear myself for the first time in a month. I hear the self that looks with anticipation not fear towards the future, the self that leaps into adventures she may not be strong enough for yet but will be soon, the self who internal scale tips more towards faith than skepticism.

Running away to the Northwoods may not be an option for every exasperated unemployed in the Fox Valley but taking a day to enjoy the f@#$ out of yourself is. So this week I am forgetting about resumes, cover letters and job sites and remembering watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s at 2 AM, reading the New Yorker in my underwear and walking over crunchy fall leaves on my way to my own path.

Advice for Day 3: dancing into tomorrow

To a Latino, a few drinks almost always equals coming home at 5 A.M. with sweat stains and more than enough stories to tell the grandkids. After eating dinner at 7 AM with Brasilians, watching the sun come up outside a boliche in BsAs and having to drag my Latina roommate from bars at close you would think I would have learned this cultural norm.

But since Lore, a notorious all-nighter Latina, is now a single mom of a two year old, I thought maybe this time when she asked me out to a quiet night of drinks, it would really mean a martini or two in some quiet little bar. But it seems, toddler or no, Latinas never forget how to dance into tomorrow.

After a few drinks downtown, we spent a few hours dancing off our buzz followed by a few cups of coffee at 3 am to prolong our Saturday night. As we ended our night at Denny’s over whatever caffeinated beverage we could swallow the fastest, I looked around the table absorbing for the first time that this one exhausted gringa was surrounded by 10 fast-talking Latinos, none of whom seemed to be concerned about the fact that today was now tomorrow.

I tried to catch snippets of conversations, picking out the key Spanish words I knew. One young Mexican had just taken exams and was looking to go into the Navy (because everyone knows the Army screws you over- that is of course roughly translated). Another, dressed up in a flashy suit and shiny leather shoes, was working for his engineering degree at Milwaukee and hoping to move home after.

I asked one of the Peruvias what he did and he answered, “Can I tell you what I want to do instead?” I said that yes, I thought it would be perfect he told me what he would be doing tomorrow instead of what he was doing today. Besides as far as the clock was concerned it was tomorrow.

There is something liberating about talking to people for whom time and timelines don’t exists. There is something beautiful about seeing the future coming up while you are still drinking yesterday’s coffee. There is something revolutionary about dancing into tomorrow and realizing how little yesterday matters.

Advice for Day One: Faith and Red Hair Dye

Today when I picked up my asthma medication from the pharmacy, I abstractly asked the pharmacist how much my Advair would cost without insurance. She casually read off a series numbers “2...4...9...9…5.”

As I tried to visualize that number, I convinced myself my coffee-deprived brain must have added an extra digit in there somewhere. In disbelief, I looked at her and asked naively, “Like two hundred and fifty dollars?”

Without looking up from her computer, she confirmed with a noncommittal nod of her head. “Holy shit,” escaped from my luckily insured lips. To that exclamation, she looked up at and said “Good thing you have insurance.”

Then it hit me. In 100 days, my good luck of being insured by my mother’s health insurance policy will run out. In 100 days, my post-college soul-searching journey will become risky bank-breaking dead end. In 100 days, in additional to being stultifyingly unemployed, I will also be painfully uninsured.

And so, with this realization, I did what every rational human being does when they come to these strikingly obvious yet terrifyingly tangible realizations: I panicked, wished for a strong drink and curled up to mental fetal position.

The mental fetal position, a position I have perfected after years of unsuccessfully trying to face my fears, has become quite useful in these past few weeks. In August, the unemployment rate hit 6.1%. September saw the loss of over 100,000 jobs. Wall Street is begging for a 700 billion dollar bailout. The Dow dropped 7 percent on Monday. And the four horsemen are saddling up as I write.

But just when I was salting my wrist for another shot of fear, I got some sobering inspiration from where else than the wise shores of Jersey. My journalism Yoda, a begrudging New Jersey’ian, told me in his brilliantly simple manner, “Niki, it takes just as much energy to have faith as it does to have fear.”

So I took his advice and dyed my hair red.

Yes, it is a silly symbolic act that probably won’t help my job search process (unless there is some weird niche market for redheaded journalists) but it was an action nonetheless. It forced me to defrost my frozen confidence and faithfully leap into a future of uncertainties.

So on this first day of my 100 days (or less) of unemployment, I have learned the most important lesson of the job hunt: you need a big gulp of faith and a little bottle of red hair dye.