I had the best day today.

I woke up, got a text from my friend about the html book I've been bugging him about. He had it and was willing to do a trade at the corner of Chicago and Milwaukee. My job: to ride the bus.

I've never actually ridden the bus by myself. There are things that I feel that I am too good for: A job in service. Sometimes, my apartment. Sitting down at fast food restaurants. Shopping for clothes at Wal-Mart. AND... taking mass transit.  Call me a princess or whatever, but I don't care.

I didn't take the bus to Chicago and Milwaukee. Instead, I walked. I walked the entire way from Humboldt Park to Chicago & Milwaukee. It took me 45 minutes.

It was a freaking gorgeous day. I put on my sun dress, flip flops, and headphones and just walked. It was awesome.

My buddy and I had some afternoon drinks. Both unemployed. Both taking online classes at Iowa State next semester. We talked a little about life. His girlfriend is moving in with him after dating a year. I talked about my desperate search for employment, to which he replied.... enjoy it, it's summer, quit fucking whining about it. Touche.

We nerded out at the apple store downtown. I played with the new ipad. (Not impressed.)

AND....

I took the bus home! All by myself. It wasn't that bad, but it made me realize.... I want a new car. But I feel like a full fledged Chicagoan now. I am a girl living in the city sans car! I have to walk to get groceries now!!!!! Yeah!

I told Ryan he should write a "how to enjoy unemployment" book (being unemployed for almost a year). Here are some of our thoughts....

1. Take naps and take them often.
2. Day drink.
3. Make friends with others who are also unemployed.
4. Enjoy your unemployment checks.
5. Go to the beach.
6. Don't watch tv.
7. Go shopping.
8. Don't whine about being unemployed.
9. IT'S SUMMER!!! ENJOY IT!
10. Stay out late and sleep in.

It's always amazing how life works.

Things change so quickly. I think about my girlfriend, Kelly, who casually signs on to a dating website for kicks. Sh meets someone online that same day, they have one date, get engaged a few months later, and are married within a year. It's strange how fast life happens.

Life is just like that. You just never know what is in store. Just one change in your day can completely alter your life.

I'm waiting for that moment. I counted up the resumes that I sent and stopped after I got to a hundred. It's frustrating and feels like someone sucker punched me in the chest.

And for the first time in so long I had a mini breakdown the other night. An accumulation of confusion.

I had been withholding this secret and it has been torture. So I'll let the blog world of unfamiliars in on it. I just need to get it out...

I had gotten a job offer in Des Moines last week. It doesn't matter what it was for. It doesn't matter that my buddy offered me his large three bedroom house with a back yard to rent. It doesn't even matter how much money I was offered. All that matters is the timing. The timing is unreal.

So there it is blogger world. Whatever "God" my family and friends have been praying to (they admit this) has more power over my mine. I'm not ready to give in quite yet. Although I have a small garden apartment (I've always had a house prior), no job, no car, no real girlfriends yet, I'm still not ready. I'm stubborn. I have a lot of fight.

This was kind of my dream. (Although the high rise I used to imagine myself living in, as a little girl, over looked the ocean and not a lake.) I am always thinking that there is something bigger out there. Not something to make me happy (because only you can do that), but something beyond the small Iowa towns I have lived in. Give me culture. Provide me with learning experiences. Send me opportunities.

Do I sacrifice a "safe" life in Iowa for the unfamiliar in Chicago?

I choose the unfamiliar. It's so much more exciting.

I've become a night owl. I never wanted to be a night person.

I loved the mornings. I loved the sunlight, creeping in through my windows.

I hate the mornings. I hate the way the sun breaks through to reveal the corners I haven't dusted or the dirt I haven't mopped up. I hate how it reveals everything.

The nights, drenched in darkness, never insinuates anything. It is what it is. It cloaks my walls with a grey shadow. It hides those imperfections. It envelopes and disguises space.

It hides me.

I traded in the office for a coffee shop, for a park, for a couch, for a floor.  I want this. I want my fingers to be placed on this keypad always. I want the words to string out and group together. I want this.

I want a penny for every letter, and a dollar for every word, a diamond for a litany of stories that you haven't already heard.

I can't have this.

I can't wallow for too long. I can't sit in self pity. I can't enjoy a state of depression. I try. I attempt to try, but it never works. Two Tylenol, a few cigarettes and a good non-chick flick movie (Transformers), and some notebook writing and I am back in business.

My girl and I spent last Monday at the beach. I look back now and think I am so glad I got to enjoy myself before my axing. We had a little picnic of food, I bought my favorite magazine (which I only briefly glanced through), I drew pictures in the sand, I people watched, I bought an obnoxious amount of appetizers after the beach outing, and had a few drinks that night. It was one of the best days I had ever had.

That day my bff and I watched couples make out on the sand.  The beach, the water, the sun makes couples throw their inhibitions to the wind. It was like watching soft core porn at moments. A mix of love, bare skin, and alcohol that would make my Grandmother blush.

We move on to catching a drink at our favorite hipster bar and we see the down side of couples that weren't so in love...

I have this curiosity about why couples fight. It's a borderline obsession, I'm always wondering and always asking people... what the fuck do they have to fight about? My bestie and I watch this couple, bellied up to the bar, arguing. Her hands are thrown in the air. He looks fearful. Then she walks off in disgust. He didn't agree with what she was saying.

It's apparently obvious. It's control, I come to the conclusion. It's always about control and power. It's about the ego wanting something you think the other person should give you, the little you. The control and power can be reduced down to fear. That fear can be reduced down to not wanting to get hurt. People want to control the actions of the other person, or their reactions, so in the end they don't have to get hurt. This doesn't just happen in intimate relationships, it expands over almost every situational relationship.

Once you realize you have no control over another person and/or situations, you have a terrific sense of relief. Things that people do, have a minor effect on your life. If I could have only told my early 20 year old self that.

I often revert to Joko Beck's idea about "the promise that has not been kept". We tend to create illusions about how something is going to be, whether it's our job (that's me!), a new home, a new friendship, a new relationship and from those ideals we create a promise to ourselves. Those promises tend to be this situation and or this person is going to make me happy and when it doesn't we begin our search again onto a new life that will fulfill that promise. So we keep searching and searching and searching only to find that "life is a promise that is never kept", desires are never fulfilled completely.

These words have brilliantly altered my life. Life is a series of endless disappointments and it is so wonderful because it never gives us exactly what we wanted or asked for, we never know what is around the corner. How awesome is that? Once you let go of this idea of trying to control what is going to happen, there is an enourmous sense of peace.

I lost my job yesterday. I was told it was coming, but not until July. Plenty of time I had assumed to find a new one. It came earlier and without warning. What I had been preparing myself for a year ago, came when I had wore an adorable new dress and a purple pair of pumps. It was a good day I had presumed.

Shocking news makes me crawl into a cave and hibernate. I have the initial reaction where I tell those closest to me, only the people I love, and then I get mad and completely shut down. I avoid phone calls and people in general.

I spent yesterday morning in a little coffee shop trying to send out resumes. After ten resumes sent, I became frustrated. There were two dudes sitting next to me, trying to write a screen play. They debated this one scene for over an hour. Their voices growing louder. I wanted to reach over the table and hit them, just beat the crap out of them. I just wanted to take out all this pent up emotion and punch them in their junk. I wanted to take my coffee and pour it over their little trivial movie about something presumably stupid.

So, before I made a mess out of the rest of my day, I walked home. I did what my body told me to do. I went to sleep. I knew the next day I would awake with a clearer head and less, "I hate the world" emotions. I'm not the victim here.

I woke up this morning at my usual work wake up time, around 7.  I had a very zen moment. This is life. This is how it goes. It's the ups and downs that you can't avoid. This is my story. So often, one bad thing often leads to something better. Sometimes something really bad has to happen for something really good to happen. The things in my life that I never thought I would recover from brought even better things in. That gives me an unexpected sense of relief.

I have an apartment to call my own. I have friends who I positively adore, friends to die for. I have this guy who makes me laugh and who I think is absolutely incredible.  I have three besties who are amazing. I have a fantastic Mom. I live in Chicago. I live in Chicago. I live in Chicago.

I have too much happiness in my life right now to feel hopeless. I hope karma gets me back.

I walk home in the rain. I let the water glide down my arms and slide through the tips of my fingers. All the muscles that surround my bones begin to ache, they have begun to cry. The thunder, the destruction of the sky enlivens the little pieces and fragments throughout my cells, it's the chaos of the night.

Every inch of every step brings about a new thought and I begin reciting Whitman's Song of Myself under my breath while keeping pace, "...for every atom that belongs to me as good belongs to you".  I wonder where my brain would decide to go if I left it here in this puddle of water, or if I stopped thinking in terms of tomorrow or the next day, or the next day. What is now has irrelevance to the mystique of tomorrow.

I lie back in my bed, the tart taste of wine still clinging to my pallet, still resting on my breath and I become captivated by the paint that has started to peel off from the ceiling. It's a deterrent, I realize, something to sway me against the ramblings that move in waves through my mind, or the swift motions of the rise and fall of my chest. The whispers of today feel like lead upon my chest.

And these hands, too entirely soft and small, too entirely delicate to be placed anywhere else. Instead, they reach in vain for the coldness of the stones above my head, to feel the antithesis of their own flesh to feel less empty. They'll take anything, anything imperfect, anything less than they are. They are selfish, these little hands, wanting too much and sacrificing too little.

I fall in and out of sleep. The night does me an injustice, waking up the dead with its ceaseless cracks of thunder, making zombies of us all. I slip in and out of a restless dream where you are running, an American soldier, followed by a large group of Nazi soldiers. You slip into a ravine and become covered with rocks and dirt. You become unconscious, saving your own life as they step around you. You are unseen, unnoticed. They cannot decipher the earth from your body. I clear away the debris, wash it clean from your face with my white small hands. How easily the soil moves away from your pale skin. How easily you awake. You lift yourself out of the brush, a WWII soldier with uniform in tact, how easily you become clean, how easily you awake.

I ordered "The Kind Diet" the other day, I should be getting in the mail today. I'm so excited....

I got the photos back from my photoshoot, done by my neighbor and friend. My friend, Ryan who is a graphic designer and in need of photographers, was so impressed by the shoot that he hired my young neighbor to do some work. I got a nice little thank you yesterday and the promise of a pumpkin pie from my little neighbor.... I'll take it.

I have much of the day off today. I enjoyed some time at a coffee shop and did a little reading (new books, yeah!). I came home, stared out the window at the next door neighbor's private (and fenced in) massive yard with an indoor pool. A flower garden is nestled up right next to my window and I find myself longing for an outdoor oasis.

I've designed my cottage, my future home at least a hundred times on paper and even outlined it in AutoCAD. I pulled ideas from a book I got as a birthday present a few years ago on green design. The homes are designed by architectural greats, they are masterpieces, all with distinct and unique features.



I've imagined it to be somewhere in Wisconsin, although I've never been there. A home surrounded by plant life of every kind, tucked in a private and secluded area amongst massive trees. I like houses where you can't tell where nature ends and the house begins, I like the idea of natural elements brought into the home. Frank Lloyd Wright used this same idea to create Fallingwater, his masterpiece, where he built a cantilever over the edge of a cliff. Pure genius.

I like the idea of a home being open and not cut off from the environment. Large open spaces, tons of windows, concrete or earthen structures, wood interiors with a subtle mix of stone work. Something like this...