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.