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.