LETTERS FROM MOSCOW

25 before 25

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:38:00 -0500

As college becomes an increasingly blurry memory, and my 22nd birthday approaches, and “adulthood” continues to fly at me with uncontrollable speed—I find myself in the mood to make a list. I love lists, and think there is nothing more gratifying than crossing something off of a list. Laundry done? Cross it out. Event attended? Cross it out. Deadline met? Cross that shit OUT.

I’ve seen 25 before 25-esque lists floating around the blogsphere. Reading other people’s goals, both big and small, has got me to thinking about what my goals are lately. I’ve always been a goal-oriented person, a planner, constantly grappling with my inherent need to plan out every moment of my day, week, year…to ensure its maximum satisfaction and to minimize boredom.

But I’d be lying if I told you post-grad hasn’t felt a little directionless! Not in a way that’s necessarily bad. It has felt nice to just sort of sit back and let life handle it for a while. But I don’t want to steer too far off course. I don’t want to lose my sense of urgency in regards to what it is that I’m trying to do with this little life I have been given. So what are 25 things I want to get done before I turn 25? I have a solid 3 years to do this, so I’ll mix up lofty goals with simpler ones. (I suggest you write your list, too!)

My 25 before 25:

1. Start a graduate program. (As of right now, I’d love that program to be a writing MFA.)

2. Find an artistic community to call home in NYC. (Or, perhaps, in whatever city I end up in if it’s not NYC in the next few years.)

3. Plant a garden. (I want to grow my own veggies, and flowers, and have it be robust and beautiful!)

4. Celebrate my first-ever two and three year anniversaries with my love.

5. Get something I wrote up and on its feet in NYC. (I really want to bring all that Michigan-centric production luck over to the east coast…)

6. Travel up & down the west coast—Seattle, Portland, San Fran. (I’ve been to LA and loved it…I’m afraid once I get to the Pacific Northwest I’ll never want to leave, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.)

7. Document life through photos, more. (I mean, something beyond my iPhone. I want solid, real life photographs that I can hold or use as a bookmark or tack on my wall. My beautiful friend Gracie takes a disposable camera with her everywhere she goes, and therefore has a myriad of sentimental, hardcopy photos.)

8. Make a personal website. (I’m talking like, an actual website. Something beyond this blog with the crappy layout. Something to convince people I am a very serious “professional.”)

9. Get headshots. (I’ve never gotten them before. I figure I am going to need them at some point if I’m trying to be a writer. Also, a professional photoshoot would be fun.)

10. Learn a new skill. (I’m not sure what that skill is yet. Perhaps I’ll perfect knitting, or learn to play a musical instrument, or how to build things. The skill will find me, I hope.)

11. Make a new close friend. (I’ve got so many wonderful friends, with bests in every category—Canadian, gay, high school, college—but there is always room for more. Especially one in the city I live in.)

12. Confront and solve an interpersonal problem head-on. (I don’t mean in an aggressive way, but in a way that is direct and through person-to-person communication. I can be an awful communicator sometimes—I let things fester, bubble up, and blow over without really ever finding resolution outside of dissipation. I don’t like this! Let’s tackle something outside of text or Facebook messaging.)

13. Get into exercising. (I so often go on a three-day exercise kick and call it a justification for a muffin every morning for the next month. Pretty soon I’ll be hitting that wall where the things you eat actually do show up on your thighs, and I want to be prepared for it by being able to jog longer than 30 seconds.)

14. Develop a new interest. (I’ve already got some weird interests up my sleeve, but I’d love to expand my horizons by adding to them. Comic books? The state of the economy? 80s teen movies? I’ll find something to love.)

15. Go dark again. (I’ve been such a committed blonde for over a year now! —For those of you who know me and my rapidly-changing hair personalities, you know that this is a personal achievement in itself. But now that I love the blonde, and feel like I identify with the blonde, I feel I lack the old edge I used to have—the girl who would chop off 12 inches of hair on a whim at the mall. Let’s get her back. We’ll take this hair crazy places before 25.)

16. Have another excursion abroad. (It’s been well over a year since my brief stint in Russia, and it still remains one of the most formative experiences of my life. I’m not saying that you have to travel overseas to find yourself, but it doesn’t hurt. Especially for someone like me. I’d like to disappear in the coffee shops of Prague or the hillsides of Ireland for a while.)

17. Create a (near) perfect home. (I’ve lived in a lot of different places the past 5 years, and not one of them has reached even close to perfection potential. I always move in to new places with plans and ideas for what I want it to look like and what I want to have there—but those dreams fizzle out shortly after unpacking. I’d love to find a place where I can hunker down for a while, probably in NYC, that I can make a real home without having to worry about moving.)

18. Write a screenplay.

19. Write an original TV pilot.

20. Find a writer’s group. (Similar to number two…oh well :) )

21. Find near-one-hundred-percent comfort in who I am and what I want. (This one is hard because I know that this is something that most people never come to…because, well, we’re human. We’re always learning and evolving and changing our mind. But by 25, I’d like to feel just a little less schizophrenic. It’s something to always be actively working toward.)

22. Get something published by a widely-read publication.

23. Read and finish twenty books. (I always buy books and never find the time to finish them. We will find the time!)

24. Write in my journal more regularly. (I always feel much better after regurgitating the day’s thoughts into my journal. So I don’t know why it only happens once or twice a month when everything has reached the boiling point. Let’s have a goal of three entires a week.)

25. Go berry picking and make jam. (This is something I have always wanted to do. I should have gotten into it when I lived in the Midwest and there were berry fields abound, but alas. It’s on the list.)

So there it is, folks. My 25 before 25. I will keep you posted on my progress. Join me in making a list of your personal goals!

xx
Em

Missin' the Mitten

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 12:33:57 -0400

The longer I live in New York, the more I realize how proud I am of my Midwestern roots. Which is somewhat ironic, coming from the girl who spent the majority of her formative years scribbling down anthems of teen angst in a composition notebook (“WHEN I TURN 18 I’M MOVING TO CALIFORNIA!!!”) and cursing the damn-ed boring-ness of my stupid hometown in my stupid flyover state.

(Sidenote: composition notebooks were the “it” notebook before the Moleskine took over.)

But now, as I experience the most pathetic autumn of my life in a city of concrete (The difference between summer and fall in NYC? 35 degrees. End of comparison.), even a fleeting thought of autumn in the Midwest sends me on a downward spiral of nostalgic tweak-outs. The thought of sitting by a fireplace, drinking chai tea and reading a book yanks on my heart strings so hard I get palpitations. And the thing is, I’m not so sure that these are things I even did that often.

Here’s the thing: nostalgia is a goddamn bitch. She comes around and has you missing all these things that, when you actually had them, were just the same ol’ grind to be resented. But now, I stare out my window on a rainy day in Brooklyn thinking: Anything to be 17, driving in my crappy car to the only crappy record store in town, latte in hand, best friend in the driver’s seat, mutual dreaming about all the possibilities of the world…

Well, let me tell you, being “in” that world is so much less romantic. Because even though I didn’t turn 18 and move to California, I did turn 21 and move to New York City, which seems equally appropriate. And in the blissful world I dreamed up as a starry-eyed teen, I neglected to consider things like—bills, and life, and adulthood, and responsibility, and pressure, and expensive bar tabs, and oh you want to be a writer? Are you retarded?

But here is the other thing. Maybe being a writer in New York City is the most romantic thing of all, because you get to experience nostalgia. Perhaps, nostalgia for the Midwest is much more romantic and special than going back and…what? Enjoying the smell of the leaves for one day and then becoming bored out of my mind the next day? Subscribing to a townie fate? I guess in that scenario, I would have dreams instead of nostalgia…but I have to think that dreaming in that way gets exhausting after a while. Nostalgia is powerful, and that power can be terrible…but perhaps it’s better than the alternative. Because I’ll fulfill these nostalgic impulses for 10 days over the holiday, when I gather at home-base with the siblings, and I’ll feel so fulfilled and so happy and when it’s all said and done…so ready to get back to New York City.

Either way, I want a goddamn Bell’s Amber and my mom. Right. Now.

Happy Friday!

It's been a while

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 11:49:00 -0400

Who would have thought that adulthood (“adulthood”) would be even more bipolar and confusing than those later-days of middle school? I thought my days of feeling like a gangly, awkward, misplaced dreamer were done when I stopped wearing those stretchy bubble shirts. What the frack, bro?

But seriously though. My adult, aka post-graduate-first-real-job, existence has been going on for only approximately 4-5 months and I already know that I know absolutely nothing at all. All of those “challenges,” both personally and professionally, that I overcame throughout my adolescence and collegiate years, which felt so character-affirming, are now more like little baby bumps on the radar when compared to where I stand now. Nothing but a big, black abyss of uncertainty ahead of me.

This all sounds so dramatic and depressing! I assure you it’s not. It’s actually really exciting (nauseating, but mostly exciting). It’s just like, no matter how smart or sure of myself or whatever I thought I was…it’s all been completely challenged and flipped on its head since I’ve moved to New York. It’s a new plane of existence, of understanding who I am as a person—or attempting to. And it’s totally awesome and exciting and…okay, maybe a little paralyzing.

I feel like I’ve passed all the milestones in my life that I could have feasibly prepared for, or rather planned for. Now that I’m passed these said milestones, aka going to college and landing some sort of job, I’ve realized that the rest is on me. The rest of my life is mine to invent. There’s no right way to do it, there’s no one to tell me what I want, there’s no school-like structure forcing me to categorize myself socially, there’s no playwriting professor asking me for pages, there’s no mom telling me to wear my seat belt or brush my teeth or to make good choices. The rest of this life is all on me, and that’s somewhat terrifying. Because once you realize it’s all on you, and there’s no one there to force you to do anything…you have to pick what you want. What makes you happy. You gotta do what feels good, feels right, something to get you outta bed in the morning. What have I realized? My lazy butt feels that laying around watching 30 Rock with a beer is the right thing to do 87% of the time. Needless to say, I’m embracing the transition period. A good friend told me I have a solid 7 years before “adulthood” becomes adulthood, and I’m solid with that.

The good news is, I’m super happy, I’m in love, it’s fall in New York City, I got a good haircut for once, my job rocks, I’m not in poverty (yet), and that big black abyss is actually a swirling pool of lovely possibility—I’m just trying to work out where I fit in this new phase.

Love,

E(xistential crisis)mma

I want dat.

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 14:48:43 -0400

I want dat.

oberstingwithconor: Conor Oberst - Common Knowledge...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 08:39:32 -0400

oberstingwithconor:

Conor Oberst - Common Knowledge (Live 2012/07/24) [New Song]

Either way it’s how it happens
not the way that you imagined
or go out with a bang like Hemmingway
some will say you’re brave
some will say you ain’t

Props to the og that recorded this.

haha tru

I’m dead. These lyrics…

That’s real.

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 22:08:22 -0400

That’s real.

"MOON: In the house to your left an old man watches his old wife sleeping. She breathes slowly and..."

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:26:00 -0400

“MOON:
In the house to your left
an old man watches his old wife sleeping.
She breathes slowly
and he holds the mirror to her mouth.
A little cloud assures the old man
that she is alive.
He thinks of the day they first made love,
a sweet October day thousands of miles
and seasons from here.
He has never held a body
so rich with dreams
and she had never held a body
so hot and hungry,
and that first liquid night,
a night without food or sleep—
with my wicked light
coming in through their bedroom window—
as she lay in his exhausted arms…
he reached for a mirror
and put the mirror to her mouth
and she breathed on it—
proving to this young disbeliever
that she was indeed alive
and not a dream,
a woman and not a fabulous invention.
And now the old man is afraid
of life without her
and keeps a .9-millimeter in his house
and he checks his wife’s dutiful breathing
and knows what to do in case it ever stops.”

- “References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot” is THE perfect play.

An Update with Maria Taylor

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:31:43 -0400

Love this betch. Can do no wrong.

wqhsradio:

After the release of Overlook, it seemed like Maria Taylor couldn’t have topped 2011 with her extensive tours across the U.S. and continued success with side project Azure Ray. Yet 2012 has now hit its halfway point, and Taylor is still going strong.

Read More

Cookies for Breakfast: So a Girl Walks into a Comedy Club....

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 00:00:15 -0400

Cookies for Breakfast: So a Girl Walks into a Comedy Club....:

Reason #785 why I hate stand up comedy.

breakfastcookie:

This is something that happened to a friend of mine in her own words.

“So, on Friday night my friend and I were at her house and wanted to get out and do something for the evening. We brainstormed ideas and she brought up the idea of seeing a show at the Laugh Factory. I’d never been, I thought…

fuckyeahbookarts: (By Mary Oliver) I’ve posted this poem...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 08:07:21 -0400

fuckyeahbookarts:

(By Mary Oliver)

I’ve posted this poem before, but I will again, because I absolutely love it.

Astoria Park

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 17:47:57 -0400

The setting sun glistens off the East River and other corny imagery.

A baby runs by with a red ball, accidentally trips, a good face-plant into the dirt. He gets up without missing a beat, proudly declaring: “I’m okay, guys! I’m okay.”

Feels like a metaphor.
xx

Photo

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 12:21:10 -0400

Mediocre Poetry

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 17:49:00 -0400

He
Leaves all his side streets unsweeped
Sills in the ether you breathe
Creates a flood and leaves you treading

I knew him once but not anymore.

Me
A sharp tongued, shy minx
Plagued by dreams of fairy figurines
Adorned with a zodiac spinner ring

He knew me once but not anymore.

We
Exchanged infections on a carousel ride
A distended devotion to a Barbie doll bride
Circused about to an imitation jive

We played that once but not anymore.

Our telephone line’s frayed fabric wire
A message bumps and swells through the tin-can speaker
It crackles out a mantra although it was not clear

Time and tide wait for no one, it said
(So I couldn’t either)

Girl Talk.

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:24:00 -0400

Now that I’m some semblance of an adult (a term I’ve loosely defined by giving up yoga pants in public and paying full price for movie tickets) … I’ve been having all these thoughts. (And here you say, Emma, you always have an excessive amount of thoughts.)

But I’ve sort of been having these woman-y thoughts. Womanhood epiphs. Musing on what we’re dealing with, us ladies. I’m not sure these thoughts have much to do with being an “adult,” but I can feel the lens through which I view the world shifting, and my perspective with it. Thus, thoughts.

It all started the other night on the N train. I was sitting across from this beautiful red-headed woman. She was looking at herself in a pocket mirror and putting on makeup. This is very normal behavior, and something that I’m sure most women have done on the train at some point. Now, don’t get me wrong, clearly I’m a major proponent of (cruelty-free!) makeup—we all know that I can’t function without a healthy dose eyeliner/mascara. But seeing her there, applying concealer to little imperfections she was clearly self-conscious of, lining her lips with a stick the same color as her skin, adjusting her hair to fall a certain way—it made me feel really sad. Incredibly sad. Because, to me, she looked the exact same after all of her hard work. In my head I was like, sister, you were beautiful before and you are beautiful now, but there wasn’t a visible physical change from where I was sitting. Something did change, though. It was her demeanor, her attitude, her clearly improved perception of self.

I guess we do it for a little comfort. It’s a way to have a little bit of a say on the appearance we were given. I know I don’t primp myself up for anyone else, it’s always for me—a way to get through the day, to feel like I’m in charge of the way I’m perceived. But I never really thought about it that way until I saw someone else doing it. It was like looking in a mirror that shows you yourself, in a way just removed enough so that a true understanding can be achieved.

I suppose I could make a bigger comment on how women are “forced to be this way” because of “men” and “the media” and “skinny people” but I’m just not going to do that. We police ourselves. We are in charge of they way we regard our faces, bodies, spirits. And we’re in charge of the way rubbing some stuff on our face makes us feel. Personally, I prefer excessive glitter.

Anyway. The image of this woman, and the thoughts thereafter, have been sitting with me all week and I figured I’d take time to share.

Cheers to one month, NYC

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 23:23:50 -0400

Dear friends and strangers,

I let the entire day go by without even realizing its significance: today is my one month anniversary of living in NYC! We’re still kickin’, still feeling good, and thinking that this just might be the first of many, many more wonderful months here.

I sort of accidentally celebrated this anniversary without even realizing it by going on a date with myself to see 4000 Miles at Lincoln Center. (Which is a MUST SEE for those of you in NYC. A very moving, simple new play)

There have been a lot of wonderful things happening in my life since I moved here. I was able to spend 3 weeks here before I started my job. And I used it to, literally, recharge. I slept and ate and drank and napped and watched TV and read and stared at the wall and explored…

But I think the most important part of the past month, though, has been my ability to really sit down and process the past 4 years of my life. Being able to come to terms with the fact that I am no longer a student, and I am, in this moment, embarking on the rest of my life. I was able to reflect on my experiences throughout my time at Michigan, the relationships that I made there, the things that I learned both inside and outside of the classroom, yadda yadda. It sounds dumb, but I spent the majority of my life pre-college dreaming and working and wishing for that Michigan experience. And now here I am, on the other side of it, with hopes/dreams/ambitions much less clear than the ones I had as a wide-eyed teen. It’s just bizarre. It went by in the blink of an eye. I’m glad I got 3 weeks to think about it. Consensus? Gratitude. Love. Strength. Nostalgia. Friendship. Fondness, all around.

And here I am now. I started my job at the beginning of last week and I couldn’t be happier. Being back at Theatre Communications Group is a blessing, truly—I love my boss, my coworkers, the actual work that I do, the organization that I am a part of, the creative and theatrically-focused energy of the office…it’s wonderful. I edit books about theater for goodness sake, I don’t even understand how this is my life. I’m currently working on a HUGE project (600+ page volume of essays on the American Theater) and I really just couldn’t think of a better place to be at this juncture of my life.

I’m feeling CREATIVE again. I’m feeling inspired. I see people or things or situations and they affect me. It’s so beautiful! I saw a little boy nuzzle under his mother’s arm on the train and started weeping. I’ve seen some theater that makes me so excited I can’t even breathe, and it makes me want to write. SO MANY THINGS! Married couples carrying groceries. Life chats with falafel cart workers. Accidental dates with my banker. Free drink, 5 A.M. excursions with Olivia in Alphabet City. Free jazz and red wine and Brooklyn. All of it. I MISSED being a person of affection and feeling. It’s crazy how 4 years of stress and no sleep and drama and alcohol and other college things can really beat the human out of you. It’s crazy how one month in a certain city can shake you out of your carefully constructed world view and force you to see something else…whatever that may be.

It’s good to be back, it’s good to be here, it’s good to be.

There it is, folks

Sun, 27 May 2012 19:14:53 -0400

17 days of nothing but drinking, exploring, relaxing, sleeping, yoga-ing, and daytime television watching in New York City…and finally, FINALLY. It has hit me.

I won’t be back in Ann Arbor in the fall. I won’t be back in Ann Arbor any time soon. I’m done with school. All of the moments spent there have led me here, and now here is what “it” will be from now on, and “there” will always be that special somewhere behind me, a place to be cherished and treasured.

The trigger was strange and sort of funny. My bestest friend Aislinn is currently having her last night in Ann Arbor and we are Facebook chatting about what food she should order in. And all of a sudden I had this big wave of realization that I won’t ever have a night like that in Ann Arbor again. Jimmy John’s because it’s cheaper, or Pizza House because it’s more delicious? Go out to the house party, stay in and drink wine with Nicole? Spend the sunny afternoon reading in the Diag or the Law Quad? Yes, it’s hitting in waves and it’s hitting hard.

I’m glad, though. I was starting to worry that I had prematurely divorced myself from undergrad and Ann Arbor all together (somewhere around October of 2010), and that I’d never have that big wave of sadness/nostalgia that was realizing that it’s over and honey we’re never goin’ back. But it’s there, that honest feeling in my gut that Ann Arbor is now, officially, a place in my past that will always be a little more precious than the rest.

And let’s be real, I miss Jimmy John’s. The closest JJ is in New Jersey. WHADDAFUXUPWITTHAT?

Love,
Emma

My blood is pumping folks

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:57:00 -0400

In general, I can SORT OF understand that there are two sides to every issue, every argument. That there are pros and cons to a lot of the major discussions of the day, and that with adequate research, one can come to a conclusive opinion on an issue—without IGNORANCE. However, I refuse to accept that there are two (legitimate) sides to the following “issues”:

1. Gay rights.
2. Women’s health.
3. Veganism/Vegetarianism.

It’s my way or the highway on these ones, bitches. As much as I’d love to preach about all three, today we’re going to focus on VEGANISM.

I absolutely CANNOT wrap my brain around why people think being vegan is “weird,” “gross,” or “wrong.” Have you ever looked at a fruit or vegetable and thought, “EW HOW GROSS!” I absolutely despise how people people think it’s okay to make ignorant claims against veganism. People are SO quick to judge the lifestyle, but when questioned about exactly what the lifestyle entails, and what it means to the people who do it—they are at a loss. This pisses me the fuck off.

When people judge vegans, in general, they don’t know that:

-Being vegan does NUMBERS for your health, your body, the environment, animals, etc.
-The food industry is disgusting and horrifying. It’s the leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions/climate change.
-It takes 16 extra pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to produce a whopping ONE POUND of beef. (It takes 0 extra pounds of grain and 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of vegetables or grain. Anyone else catching on to the wasteful use of precious resources here?)
-30% of the earth’s land mass is used for the production of animals for food. 30 PERCENT. If you’ve been living in ignorant-land where the animals we eat exist naturally in the wild, and that we eat them to help control their population or some shit, you’re wrong. These animals are kept, produced, and grown (often in disgusting contaminated conditions where they are pumped up with various steroids and poisonous chemicals) STRICTLY for food production. Disgusting and wasteful.
-89,000 POUNDS of fecal excrements PER SECOND are produced on factory farms WITHOUT any filtration. Therefore, all this SHIT (literally) directly contaminates earth’s water supply. That same water supply that is being depleted every second of every day. Yum.
-Eating a plant-based diet cuts your risks of leading cancers MORE THAN in half. This includes, but is not limited to, heart disease, breast cancer, colon cancer, etc. (100 years ago, things like heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, etc. didn’t even EXIST because people weren’t abusing their bodies with poisonous foods!)
-Eating a plant-based diet also helps to better and even REVERSE existing health conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, etc.
-Contrary to popular (and incorrect) belief, the human body is not “evolutionary meant to” eat meat products. Hence why incompetent cooking makes us sick. Canine teeth are absolutely not an indicator that we are meant to eat meat, but only a poor argument made by some meat eater (that has apparently caught on) to make them feel better about their dietary choices.
-Of course there is also the argument which is for the animals—the one that most people don’t buy. But in the words of Sir Paul McCartney, if slaughter houses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. There is a reason that slaughter house locations are remote and highly secured—the conditions are abusive and disgusting. Don’t believe me? Google it. Or check out www.meat.org and watch some videos yourself.
-The animal products you buy at the store are often latent with the remainders of feces, blood, pus, etc. from the abuse of animals before death, and the dead carcasses sitting before being shipped off to your local grocery store. Delicious.

People who keep a plant-based diet are doing their small part in helping the environment, their body, and yes, animals. So before you become one of those people that I despise—those people who make ignorant, negative claims again vegans and their lifestyle—do your research. See the facts for yourself. Once you have a full understanding of the implications of being vegan (or a meat-eater, for that matter) and you’re still comfortable with taking digs against vegans—by all means, go for it.

But I’ll still know your wrong. And I think you will too.

I figured it out!

Sun, 13 May 2012 19:13:41 -0400

Figured out what?

Why I love Astoria so much.

You’d like to know the reason, eh?

Eh??

It reminds me of Moscow.

I’m not sure how, exactly, or why.

But it does.

This was a beautiful realization.

Another change of scenery

Fri, 11 May 2012 13:40:55 -0400

Folks,

My dear friend Alex Gabriel gives me false hope that people read my blog. I promised him I would continue to update as I continue into another new life adventure. So here goes.

I’m in Astoria! It’s a pretty little (big) neighborhood in Queens, just east of Manhattan. I got here yesterday morning and, thus far, it has been lovely. Our apartment is HUGE, not only by New York standards…just by apartment standards. We even have a foyer. A FOYER.

Our bathroom is pink and blue, which is wonderfully bizarre. I have cable for the first time in 4 years. There’s a window on about every wall. Hardwood floors. A dishwasher AND a washing machine (we don’t pay water!). I even have space in the medicine cabinet! It’s the little things, especially when coming off of living with 10 people.

I’m not feeling very poetic today, but I will say this. When I woke up, I looked out my bedroom window to take in the morning view. The sun peeked through the oh-so-New-York contrast of lush greenery and electric wires. Birds chirped and the NQ train screamed as it passed. A butterfly was sitting on my window sill. I’ve always taken butterflies to be a good omen. Put simply, it’s great to be back in New York City. And this time, for some indiscernible amount of time that feels semi-permanent. We’ll see.

I don’t start my job for another 3 weeks. I asked my dad what I’m supposed to do with all that free time.

“Sleep and write.”

Well, okay! Don’t mind if I do. The past 2 months of my life have been insane. I’ve a lot of reflecting to do.

This made me smile.

Thu, 03 May 2012 11:09:33 -0400

This morning, my old advisor from LSA sent out an email to graduating seniors with some funny and heartwarming advice as we embark on our new journeys…and so I thought I would share.

“Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth.
Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts.

Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss

Don’t waste your time on jealousy.
Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.

Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund.
Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.”