Technically, this book of essays from Rustbelt Publishing won’t be out until September 10, but you can pre-order your copy today for $20 here! I’m really excited to have my work included and can’t wait to get my hands (well, mostly my eyes) on it. Following, a description of the book from the publisher:
Chicago is famously a city of neighborhoods. Seventy-seven of them, formally; more than 200 in subjective, ever-changing fact. But what does that actually mean? The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook, the latest in Belt’s series of idiosyncratic city guides (after Cleveland and Detroit), aims to explore community history and identity in a global city through essays, poems, photo essays, and art articulating the lived experience of its residents.
Edited by Belt senior editor Martha Bayne, the book builds on 2017’s critically acclaimed Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology. What did one pizzeria mean to a boy growing up in Ashburn? How can South Shore encompass so much beauty and so much pain? What’s it like to live in the Loop? Who’s got a handle on the ever-shifting identity of West Ridge? All this and more in this lyrical, subjective, completely non-comprehensive guide to Chicago. Featuring work by Megan Stielstra, Audrey Petty, Alex V. Hernandez, Sebastián Hidalgo, Dmitry Samarov, Ed Marszewski, Lily Be, Jonathan Foiles, and many more.
Check out the summer 2019 issue of LongWeekends magazine. The latest issue promises everything us Midwesterners need to plan the perfect long weekend trip this spring and summer.
My short piece is about three must-try tiki bars and restaurants in Chicago: Three Dots and a Dash in River North, Lost Lake in Logan Square, and Hala Kahiki Tiki Bar & Lounge in River Grove (worth the commute out to the ‘burbs, my Chi-town friends; this place has been tiki-ing since 1964 and claims to be the Midwest’s most authentic tiki bar).
Sober pals, don’t let the tiki-theme tempt you into not checking out these kitschy fun spots. Nonalcoholic treats abound. Example: Hala Kahiki’s zero proof Fruit Punch, a mix of passion fruit, housemade grenadine, housemade Orgeat, orange, pineapple, lemon, and lime.
Thumbing through the magazine has already garnered some travel ideas for us to conquer this summer, like taking a trek to Springfield, Illinois, to try the world-famous “hot dog on a stick” at The Cozy Dog Drive In. I guess I’m just a suck for anything corny! (Get it? Corn dog. Ha. Ha.) What are your big (or small) summer plans?
I think of the exact date of my sobriety as a feral-animal-turned-beloved-pet’s birthday. I don’t know it for sure. I had tried to quit so many times before April 15, 2016, and I was tired of “remembering dates” only to be alarmed and disappointed in myself when I found myself hungover yet again. In fact, I figured out about a year ago that my real soberversary date is perhaps a few days before today… BUT I’ve got it in my brain as April 15, so April 15 it shall be.
That means, I haven’t
been drunk since a little over three years ago. < !!!! pew pew pew all the
emojis !!!!>
I have had one glass of alcohol since then. A glass of champagne at my bachelorette party. As soon as I sipped it, I felt gold in my veins. That’s what it felt like—gold. Relief. Escape. Precious.
More-more-more came calling with just one drink.
By the time of my
bachelorette party, I had at least a year and a half of sobriety under my belt,
but it didn’t matter. That voice I hadn’t heard in so long shot its shitty
little self into my ear and said, “OMG ORDER EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW. A WHOLE
BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE, AND AT LEAST TWO BLOODY MARYS. AND SHOTS FOR EVERYONE! OMG
WE’RE fUCk*$g DOING THIS!!!”
But, no, we were not
doing this. It took a lot of effort—too much effort, I thought, considering I
hadn’t drank in so long—to push that voice back in the cage where it belonged.
But I did. I drank sparkling grape juice the rest of the weekend. And my
amazing mother-in-law had some waiting for Justin and I in the hotel after our
wedding.
I’m so happy for that glass of champagne, which the well-meaning waiter had brought me as a surprise when he heard what our group was celebrating. Getting and staying sober was really hard for me, and it was especially difficult my first year, but I had reaped enough rewards of sobriety to know that voice was no good. Being sober for a while had made me aware of that voice so I could shut it up early. Being sober for a while had helped me be in my body in a new way, a way that enabled me to recognize that fool’s-gold feeling for what it was as soon as it hit me.
I’m so grateful today. I’m grateful for the people who loved me unconditionally through some hard times. I’m grateful to the people who find the courage every day to face their addiction problems, who have the courage to try to be their better selves and who fight for it day after day after day. I’m so grateful to the people who recover out loud, too, like the writers and recovering alcoholics who helped me understand what I was going through and helped me feel less alone.
Most of all, today I’m so… like… earth-shatteringly grateful to that sad, disappointed, disgusted, rock-bottomed-out self who decided around three years ago that enough was enough—and that I was enough without booze. Thank you thank you thank you.
That glass of champagne and how instantaneously my old destructive-drinking self presented itself was the final sign I needed to accept that I had to be done drinking forever. There was no controlling it. No nice little bachelorette brunch with one martini for me. I couldn’t drink ever again if I wanted to be happy.
I launched a sober book club podcast with my dear friend Shelley. Obviously, there’s so much power in sharing our individual journeys, but it’s important we never feel pressure to share until we are ready. My first year of sobriety was spent being very, very quiet about it. I didn’t want to talk about my new sobriety for fear of scaring it away. I also wasn’t sure about ~anything~, least of all if sobriety would stick… Take your time. When you’re ready, the sober community has open arms, ears, and hearts.
I started going to therapy regularly. Regularly being the key word here. I was usually a three-visits-and-done kind of client, thinking “OK, problem solved!” Or (more often) “Why am I paying someone to just listen to me talk?” All things considered, I probably need regular therapy less than ever today. Ha! But that’s the point, I think. I’m healthy enough now to ask for help. Even minimal help. Going to therapy now is less about solving an urgent problem and more about reminding myself that it’s important to show up for my emotional self in some kind of physical capacity on a consistent basis. It helps me trust myself.
Year Three definitely brought some brought new challenges, too. This year, the shock of staying sober wore off. A layer of the onion had peeled away. The raw one. And now I was left looking at a whole new me. I had changed and had to get used to it.
When you get sober (from whatever you’re addicted to… doesn’t have to be booze) and want to enjoy being sober, you’re required to give up some additional things. You’re not ready for it. You think, “Well, I quit the number-one-problem thing. Problem solved!”
Alas, recovery is a lifelong journey. There are 12 stupid freaking steps for a reason. You don’t just admit you have a problem and, bam, all is well. It takes work. And constant self-vigilance and discipline — two seemingly scary words that are, I’ve found, the root of all peace.
This year I was able to recognize ways in which the behavioral patterns tied to my alcohol abuse were still showing up in my life. The patterns were just channeled through other outlets, less destructive outlets certainly, but unhealthy ones nonetheless.
They were hard to pinpoint initially. I’m being vague for a reason… it’s still sorta hard for me to explain. The best example I can give is work. Workaholism is real and I got it, y’all. I can sometimes use work and overcommitting myself for the same reasons I used alcohol. As a means of escape, to outrun perfectionism and fear and guilt and shame and imposter syndrome and and and…
Plans for Year Four
I don’t think my intense work ethic is bad. Not at all. It’s one of the best things about me. I am loyal AF to something I say I will do and earn everything I have. That means a lot to me and always will.
I just want to work on working better. Saying no to good opportunities and only taking great ones, for example. Making space for more personal goals and being clear on what those are. Really working on being a better partner and friend and a person who lives every day aligned to her values. Etc.
New-age woo-woo story alert: So, last fall after my art show, I did this meditation where you were supposed to envision your highest self. Then, you were to imagine this highest self presenting you with something you needed. A gift, if you will.
In my vision, my highest self (lookin’ sexay in a white toga because I guess that’s how my mind works?) presented me with… a jug. A freakin’ jug! I was like, ugh, my highest self is one cheap bitch. What is this supposed to mean? I thought maybe water. Like I was thirsty at the moment (highest selves being quite practical), but in hindsight, I think it represents a couple important things: 1) taking a time-out to re-energize and 2) connecting with others over a new drink (ie. I don’t need to hide anymore… I can hang out with people sober and just drink water).
After this meditation, I also kept seeing jugs in artworks everywhere! Particularly in still life paintings, where the message is obvious — be still for bit, Mantey. But also in paintings where the jug was meant to represent community (a jug being something you have on the table when you have people over). I like that one and I think it’s important. I think Year Four will mean coming outside of myself more, now that I’m ready, and connecting with other people in better, more honest ways than ever before.
I have three ideas for how to achieve this all in Year Four. Recovering workaholics still need a plan:
Hustle with intention. I want to focus on the writing I’ve been planning for a while now but have been pushing to the back burner out of fear. Fear of it not being good enough, and also fear of not taking any paying job that’s offered me (even if I have five others lined up… oy). I want to focus on saying no to things, and I don’t just mean work that is unrelated to my creative writing. I mean saying no to, for example, taking a class that’s wrong for me or taking the time to read a book about craft just because I’m afraid to actually do the work.
Take the emotion out of most decision making. Blah. How many decisions do we make or how many worries do we focus on simply because we are afraid or trying to distract ourselves from some deeper truth? I want to be strategic and responsive, instead of reactive and unreasonable about my time and energy and interests. I want to look at choices as only that: Choices with pros and cons (not right or wrong, black or white, life-changing or life-threatening). Choices that I consider and make a logical decision about based on truth, not feeling. Contingency relationships with an if/ then approach.
Rest. Unapologetically. If I need time, I’m going to not only ask myself for it, but give it. I’m the one who puts myself in these overwhelming situations, for reasons that run the same deep paths that my excessive drinking did. I’ve learned a lot about boundaries the last three years, and I think this year will be about learning to put boundaries on my restlessness, which presents itself as ambition but is actually insecurity and a short-term escapism disguised as a “good idea.” Acting lovingly toward myself and my people is the better idea. Always.
I know I keep writing about how much this winter has been one relentlessly cold yuck, but the silver lining is that it’s got me jazzed for when warm weather finally hits and Justin and I can do full-day sessions of The 10 to 10. I’m so excited about it, in fact, that I recently wrote about the game (from the mind of Justin Golak TM) for Neighborhoods.com. Check out my piece titled “How a Roll of the Dice Helps Me Explore Chicago neighborhoods.”
When you walk a city’s neighborhood with no particular place to go, you end up keeping your eyes open for things to do, more than if you’d arrived at your destination with a set plan.
Out now: the March 2019 issue of Columbus Monthly magazine with a feature article I wrote for the medical guide advertising section. The piece was about the groundbreaking immunotherapy, trials, treatments, and techniques coming out of the city to help cancer patients.
I particularly enjoyed learning more about how CAR T-Cell Therapy works (it’s game changing), but my favorite part was interviewing my friend Sarah who survived breast cancer. The strength and faith on her is truly awe-inspiring.
The powerline danced in the corner of my eye. Usually I wouldn’t
notice this movement, it being one of millions happening outside my double
kitchen windows every day. Above the dusty windowsill, beneath our hastily hung
curtains, another world thrived every day just five feet away and I always miss
it. The world outside, a mere backdrop for breakfast, for the daydreams in my
head.
But on this morning, movement from something other than me
seemed like a luxury. I hadn’t seen anything outside except the constant fall
of soft snow for days. The polar vortex had been keeping everyone inside. The city
had basically shut down. And behind our own windows, we waited. Huddled masses
yearning to be free—free from the drip… drip… drip… of water from our pipes. Grateful
those drips were our only problem on nights of record-breaking cold.
Now, it was 20 degrees warmer than it was less than 20 hours
ago. Everyone and everything, it seemed, was celebrating. Stretching legs out
from fetal positions. Popping toes warming up again on cold hardwood floor. Subtracting
layers down from a hefty four to a daring two. Myself up hours earlier than
usual, witness to this bouncing powerline.
I moved to the window to see what was making it shake. One
by one, I watched three culprits leap from the tightrope—performers fearlessly
ignoring the three-story-drop of certain death—to the oak tree that towers over
the house behind our apartment building.
Squirrels. Looking hungry and ready to camouflage in a pile
of wet leaves, were in a full steam chase up and down the branches. Undisturbed
by the melting ice, ignoring it well, like I was doing now to my preventatively
leaking faucet.
One squirrel scurried and another followed. A third, the
smallest, managed with effort to keep up. It was like they were playing a game
of tag. Just for fun. Squirrel tag. Animalistic antidote to cabin fever. Winner
getting the belle of the walnut ball.
Leave it to me, sentimental and cooped up human that I was
right then, to anthropomorphize my new bushy-tailed bffs. They, I decided with
such certainty, were having fun! Expending pent up energy spent crammed inside
a tree hole for the past two days, Squirrel #1’s beefy ham hock thigh shoved up
against the shivering chubby cheeks of Squirrel #2. Squirrel #3 somewhere in
between, mangy ears tucked in the furry arm pit of a brother.
That’s what I imagined them to be. Siblings. I guess they
just had that kind of energy. Brothers and/or sisters in arms who had just
survived one of the coldest nights on record. As they raced around the
tentacles of our oak tree, all nature and instinctual balance, one thought
raced through my mind: How the hell did you guys make it?
The tree, that masochist rejoicing in the claws puncturing its
alligator bark, lifted face to sun and said, “This is the moment we’ve been
waiting for.” The three squirrels paused. I feared for a second maybe they had
seen me move behind the window, saw my pale ungloved hand reach to the glass as
if to touch them. I just wanted to say hi. To join them, to join the tree, to shed
off something of survival and say, “Yes, yes, I am here too.” But instead, determined
as I watched their heaving chests and give-a-fuck-all of me, they were just taking
a breather. I could almost feel their tiny heartbeats racing, beating out of
their hard chests, through my fingertips on the glass.
This lasted only a few seconds. Then they were off again. Reversing
course, they ran counter clockwise around the living wooden maze this time,
hopping from one raised branch to the other, the littlest one leading now.
To have happy siblings is the greatest gift, right? To know those
people you’ll always know as children, even as they pay their taxes and talk of
401Ks, are happy and loved, with places to hibernate, armpits to cuddle into, thighs
to lean on, and tiny heartbeats to feel through their own fingertips—fingertips
completely unique from mine, but forged in the same walnut tree womb. What a
gift to have them and an even greater one to have the peace of mind that they
are somewhere, surviving, stretching out and playing with their chosen families.
I pressed my naked hand harder on the glass. The cold was beginning
to sting but I wanted my energetic neighbors to sense me before they left for
the next powerline over: “Yes, yes, I am here too.”
I played basketball as a kid/ teenager. Point guard. Fast. Short. Five feet, two inches powered by a burgeoning rage the color of crimson and those little caramel apple suckers.
That is to say: I was a terrible shooter and unreliable athlete, but I was aggressive and determined as fuck, which often went unsuspected by new opponents. I could steal the ball then pass it to someone actually competent at the actual/ main/ most important objective of the game. I’d steal. My teammate would score.
At some middle-school point, though, I must not have been passing enough. My coach, frustrated by my inability to look at anything other than the ball when I was dribbling it—thus missing wide-open teammates who were posted-up undefended directly beneath the basket—had me spend an entire two-hour practice doing drills where I had to dribble with my head up, eyes forward.
That’s exactly what she said.
“Head up, eyes forward, Mantey.”
Over and over again I heard this shouted toward my solitary dribbling practice station. “Head up, eyes forward” rose up above the startling gunshot squeak of sneakers doing suicide drills and basketballs bricking off the backboard (we were, mind you, new to this thing called the three-point shot).
Head up, eyes forward. It seemed so simple a directive. But insecurity mixed with an encroaching need to feel in control of an increasingly uncontrollable teenage body/ mind, kept me turning my face back to the ball. I just wanted to make sure… make sure it was going to bounce back and forth from hardwood to hand… make sure it was still mine, still there, and nobody stole it.
At some point, my coach stopped me and, with head up, eyes forward, I watched her tell me something that has been bouncing up and down in me ever since.
“You have to trust that the ball will come back to you. You have to trust that better results are coming when you keep your head up, eyes forward. There’s no point in having the ball if you’re not going to risk doing something with it. Stop just looking at it.”
I am drawn to the notion of setting a “word” intention for the year instead of a specific annual goal. Specificity, I think, is more effective when it’s applied on a quarterly or monthly basis.
I’ve chosen two word intentions for 2019, one of which is “Focus.” I want to focus on being present with my loved ones; focus the content and tone of my writing; focus my professional work and be more selective in what I take on and why; focus on the shit that really matters to me because, I think, maybe, I’ve finally got the bronze framework of that hammered out into a shape I really like.
Breaking “Focus” down is easy.
“One hour of writing each morning.”
“No phone when Justin and I eat dinner together.”
Etc.
The other word I’ve picked for 2019 is “Trust.” That’s a little trickier to break down.
How do we “Trust” when we know we might not win?
10. The truth may set you free, but vulnerability will give you the truth.
9. Assume positive intent of those you love, and you will
get what you except.
8. Letting go can have surprisingly positive consequences.
7. Ball hogs are never heroes because their arrogance is so obviously
fear.
6. Play small, feel small.
5. A game is not a game without the buzzer. A life is not a
life without death.
4. But you can always go get the ball back while you’re here.
3. You have been preparing for this very moment your whole life.
2018 has been my favorite one yet! And one of its biggest moments was my gallery exhibition in September.
I finally started making the embroideries for “Gone, Country” (after, like, a year of talking about it as if I had already started…ha!…) the same month I quit drinking in 2016. I didn’t/ couldn’t allow myself to realize it at the time, but that embroidery work became a physical representation of what I was trying to make happen in my life.
It required humility and fearlessness to just make something, the same way it required humility and fearlessness to make such a huge change. I punched designs into paper one needle-hole at a time, the same way I didn’t drink one day at a time. I made those small incremental holes in the darkness of an image, the same way I slowly began bringing light to parts of myself I had long been avoiding.
Taking time to make an embroidery gave me something to do with my hands while I simultaneously took on the terrifying business of learning to talk to myself in a new way; it took the pressure off. It also proved to myself that I wasn’t just someone who talked about her dreams. I had the courage to try. And, in the meantime, I made some cool shit.
Creativity was means/space/outlet for healing. I recently spoke about this process to the awesome women of The Unruffled Podcast. It’s such an honor to be included in their interviews, and I am thankful for their efforts to create a community for women to talk about these experiences of making art while making a more compassionate way of life. (If you’re interested in creativity and overcoming the nonsense we put in between ourselves and our greatest potential, I highly recommend adding Unruffled Podcast to your pod roll!)
Here’s my episode! I love that it’s the last one for the year. I hope to embrace 2019. To keep getting better, braver, kinder, stiller.
Sending you all so much love into the new year. Thank you for being part of my story. I hope you have THE FUCKING GREATEST 2019 EVERRRR!
P.S. / FYI: I am co-launching Zero Proof Book Club in February with my good friend Shelley Mann. We read and discuss books about sobriety, self-growth, or surviving—and then thriving—in spaces that profit when we numb ourselves, from ourselves. You can go LIKE the page now and stay tuned for more in the future. xoxo
As a kid, I loved the way these “old” phones felt cradled to my ear and the way they would “brrring” real fast after you picked up or hung up with any kind of speed. 📞⚡ Getting to use one that was a cool color made me feel like a movie star… a fancy lady with a rotary and, probably, a metal cigarette case and, definitely, a signature scent she wore pumped from a silver and gemstone colored bottle.
And if being a fly on the wall was an option…
I’d rather be a spider.
A little bit off. Watching from the corner. Untouchable.
During the holidays, I love to send Christmas cards to my family. Immediate family only because, like a wedding guest list or an AIM friend list mid-growth spurt, holiday card rosters can fill up quickly if boundaries aren’t put firmly in place.
But I’m always left scrambling to find their addresses. Yes, addresses I’ve sent postcards and photos and newspaper clippings to a million times. Grrr. Why don’t I ever save them? It’s the same routine: Search, sweat, ask, receive, praise be, write, mail, move on to other shiny things, repeat in two months.
It seems rude at this point to keep asking my grandparents and siblings for their A/S/L (address, street, location) when they haven’t moved in years.
I refuse to load the addresses into my phone, which would be the smartest thing to do, but that just feels so cold and impersonal. Instead, I want to be the kind of woman with an address book. Because that feels like it would be lovely.
Oh, now, don’t be so surprised at my motives.
I am, after all, a Pisces.
This one feels almost right:
A thicc-ass address book wearing a sensibly chic green floral print: $39.03 on Etsy.
I like this one, too:
Vintage. Sixties. Brass tacks, and leather bound: $12 on Etsy.
