On BIG Decisions

It's not that I'm scared, it's just that [it's] delicate.

It Only Took One

My professor said I had two choices: keep them or make art out of them. She told me her husband had gotten over 300 rejection letters before he was awarded his dream job. Being a crafty man, he burned them all and used the ashes to make a painting. Only having four, which at the time seemed like a million, it was still not nearly enough to make anything. I took the road less traveled and kept them. That was over three years ago. Seasons change, time passes and eventually the disappointment fades to gray...

Last night, I was cleaning off a bookshelf to make way for some pictures that I am having framed as part of my redecoration process. I took each thing off, and dusted off the three inches of dust that has accumulated since the year 2005, coincidently, the same time I put all that stuff on those shelves. I found mostly novels that I had forgotten to read and a slew of puppy pictures and lots of old notebooks from both college and graduate school. However, I also found my senior year college sketch book. At first I didn't think much of it and simply dusted it and put it on the pile of the other "crap" I had uncovered. A few minutes later, when the shelf was empty and the book was now lying on my bed, I felt like I was being called to read through it. I thought, if anything I might remember some of those great AH HA moments I had back in the day. I slowly thumbed through the pages and four sheets of folded paper fell out. I knew without looking what these were. I bent over and picked them up, taking the time to unfold each one carefully as to not tear or crumble their perfect preservation. Without reading much past the first line of each letter, I folded them back up and placed them into the spine of the book.

And then something odd happened...I smiled.

Keeping it Real

Last night while having Thanksgiving dinner with my girlfriends (which turned out to be more like a potluck dinner that so happened to fall the weekend before Thanksgiving) we were jokingly discussing things that we were thankful for, like your parents probably made you do when you were little, or more specifically, what my mom still makes us do but only after the 9th bottle of wine so that the only answer you can muster is...grapes. The most common answer among my friends was of course, family and friends, the equivalent of saying "thank you" when someone you don't love tells you they love you and you are left dumbfounded by their words and secretly wish you could make a phone call telepathically to your best friend in Boston and fill her in on all the drama that just transpired. It's the easy way out, if you will. But I think that's okay, sometimes. After all, thinking of things your thankful for is kind of hard thing to do because until you sit down to really, truly and earnestly think about it, usually those things that you are thankful for are the things you mostly take for granted. So without further ado, my 2007 list:

*The health of both myself and my loved ones. I have a grandfather who is 92 and two parents who, aside from a few aches and pains are in very good health. My health was what enabled me to cross the finish line.

*My job that even though at times I dislike, keeps a roof over my head and food in my belly. Having been to Africa earlier this year, I am also very thankful for all those other wonderful things we as Americans take for granted: food, electricity, access to education, running water, heat, clothing and unconditional love.

*Grad school may have been the worst two years of my life, but I am very very thankful for my advanced education and the opportunities I have seized because of it.

*Advanced medical technology and doctors that together, have allowed both of my friends who are battling cancer to live another day.

*Learning and recovering from my past mistakes, recognizing when something has taken its course, listening to my head and heart as separate entities.

*The last minute. The snooze button. Double-sided tape. Chapstick. Tylenol PM, blister band-aids, double knots, laughter.

I can't make this sh*t up; I'm good, but not that good

I work for the second largest cable company in the country. I spend most of my days designing stuff to promote our "high speed this or on demand that." And yet, I have internet in my office that is literally almost as slow as dial-up. No, seriously. It's about a millisecond faster. You can't even remember internet this slow. It's from the days when computers were not ubiquitous in every household in America; it's from before I was...born.

And. To top that off, it's not even OUR internet. We have our competitor's service. When our internet goes out for the twentieth time in one day, I am so glad I am not the person who has to make that call and explain to Time Warner Cable why we, in fact need them to come fix our internet.

Only the Half of It

I can
ID and recognize fonts anywhere especially on menus, determine the weight of paper by touching it, list all the state capitals, use every shortcut available especially in anything Adobe (on the contrary I cannot tell you where anything is located in a menu) daydream to the point of insanity, fantasy trip plan, spend an entire day at work having not done any actual work, eat the same thing for breakfast lunch and dinner, make one hell of a photo collage, envision lots of things I could never actually make, envy the hell out of the Print Design Annual and dream of one day making it, dream of working for Target, moving to Chicago and then Minneapolis or Berlin, count to ten in a lot of different languages, say "This is a gray bunny" in German, play the piano, the flute and once upon a time, the oboe, listen to the same song one-hundred or more times in a row, roll my tongue three times, worry about almost anything, read a book in one day, feel the titanium screw in my knee, find my way around a foreign city via pubic transportation, waste the entire morning in bed, never get sick of home renovation shows or reruns of Friends, spend three hours on the phone, laugh until my face hurts, cry until my jaw hurts, recover from a broken heart, finish what I started

I cannot
remember the last time I made my bed when I woke up, started work right at 9, got to work right at 9 or read Wired cover-to-cover before the next one arrived, drink whole milk even in coffee, see the point of decaff coffee, eat broccoli, stand the thought of touching chicken or read meat, properly use a ruler to measure anything, start my day without listening to NPR, get to work without my iPod, stand riding the subway at rush hour, write with blue ink, use Windows without getting annoyed, easily admit when I am wrong, say the word singlet, refrain from making up my own words, help but sing in the shower, often remember my own phone number, eat pizza for breakfast, fall out of love quickly, imagine leaving Manhattan, live in the suburbs, drive a minivan, play chess, laugh enough

Don't Speak

I'm going through another one of my phases where I can't handle listening to music with words. This usually happens once a year, but the last time I can remember it happening was when I was in grad school, the Fall of 2005. Let it be said that I cannot work, write a paper or design a logo without some sort of background noise, however I much prefer music to the TV because let's be serious if I even hear Chandler or Monica so much as sneeze, I drop everything and run to sit and obey all things related to those beloved characters. I do the same thing for Forrest, Zoolander and Office Space. I also don't have a TV in my room and haven't since college so the temptation is barely there, although, ever since downloading season 6 of Scrubs to iTunes, the temptation is a bit more palpable. Luckily, I finished that dumb school thing a long time ago and don't work from home. So yes, yes I must have noise and I rejoice daily in the fact that I now have my own office and can listen to music all day without having to wear headphones. Sometimes when I really need to focus, I turn it up super loud and close my door. But sometimes I just do that when I'm throwing a dance party.

The last time I went through this phase, this weird phase where music with words digs so deep under my skin I can almost feel it in my bone marrow, I discovered one of my current favorite bands. I remember where I was sitting, the time of day AND what I was working on when I discovered The Album Leaf and realized that it was, quite possibly, the best music I had [not] ever heard. Two of the songs from their album In a Safe Place top the 'most played' list in my library. I also love that This American Life uses it as transition music on an almost weekly basis.

Sometimes, these random phases that I go through can be quite amazingly productive and unveil great things. The time I went through my 'all I want to do is smoke pot' phase...not so much. It unveiled great things sure, but mostly just in my mind.

Good music is just waiting to be discovered....standby.

While I wasn't blogging this week I:

Finished the NYC marathon, freaked out about my time being 3 minutes slower than I thought, received the good news that the marathon timing system was flawed and in fact, my time was 3 minutes faster than what was published in the NY Times (that's right, this week my name was also in the NY Times) proudly wore my metal to work on Tuesday morning where all my coworkers made me feel like a celebrity

Woke up in quite literally the most amount of pain I've ever been in, got drunk at 1 in the afternoon on a Monday with my bestests, had lunch at an old favorite in the E Village, napped like a rockstar, took a whole lot of Advil and Tylenol PM, waddled like a penguin around my office, wore nothing but sneakers and baggy pants to work, went down the steps both in my building and to the 5 train backwards, asked for assistance when getting up from the sitting or squatting position on more than one occassion

Got a new blackberry, freaked out at "the T" for charing me $86 for 2 weeks of service, relished at being "IN" again, was perpetually annoyed by duplicated messages coming from "myself" to my pearl, convinced my better half to join facebook because he lost a bet (don't ever make a bet with me unless you plan to lose) started listening to Holiday music, threw a dance party in my office

Finally returned Borat, which, for the record I've had from Netflix since March (!), received a new movie that I have yet to watch but put on the docket for this weekend, went out for beers with my coworkers, learned that my boss is a dem but loves the MTA, battled about the war in Iraq and the '08 election, spent another crazy half hour trying to dodge traffic in midtown for a cab, got drunk off two beers because my tolerance is shot to hell

Ate a lot less carbs than last week, lost three pounds, worried less, slept less, ran less or...none at all, laughed more, smiled more, relaxed more...
returned to normal!

TwentySixPointTwo

There are so few times in my life that I have been this nervous, anxious, excited and eager to do something, to accomplish something and get something out of the way that I forgot how awful it is to literally not be capable of even thinking straight. Sitting here at work all day, confined to the chair and my desk feels like pure torture. My hands and feet are sweating, and I'm not even moving; my heart has been beating this fast since the alarm went off at 7:26 this morning. I've gotten e-mails and cards wishing me good luck from friends & family all around the country (and the world, actually.) This morning there were a slew of facebook messages, IMs and the occassional visitor dropping by my office to wish me well. I've rarely had such an outpouring of support from the people I love about some event taking place in my life; the last I can remember is "the breakup" of 2006. It is so true, so blindingly true, that everyone rallies around you in times of need and in times of crisis. So I wanted to take this time, in advance, before all is said and done and the gun goes off and the clock starts ticking, to say a big heartfelt thank you to everyone. Your support and your cheers, your homemade T-shirts, posters and banners, your well wishes, your talking me off cliff after cliff after cliff, your shared excitement and joy will get me to and across that finish line on Sunday and for that, for that I could never be more thankful...