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.