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.