I did some Google searching and I’m still not sure what this sign means. But it’s definitely attention-getting. Thank you, Charley? I think?
Sometimes it’s hard to see. But love is there.
Remember that!
And that.
When I first read this copy on our monthly electric bill, I thought it meant they would actually come pick up the gross old food containers I have in my fridge or freezer. Ha! Maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me to do some cleaning…
This sign hangs on the door to the milking parlor of our family farm.
A helpful reminder on my first commute back to a work gig in the new year. You know, when you don’t even remember what email is.
Today begins 2018. Hello! Yay! I hope your headache wears off soon and you get to eat nachos in bed and watch Netflix! (Might I recommend the new Dave Chappelle specials? Controversial, yes, but those headlines aren’t doing it justice. Perhaps we may all dig deeper this year? You’ll notice the beginning of a theme here.)
I love New Year’s Day. It’s an overachiever’s dream holiday. “You mean, we get to be applauded for our outrageous efforts to do/ achieve/ improve/ get better at whatever it is we dream? We get to spend the whole day setting up lists and spreadsheets and myriad assortment of other technological trackers designed for successfully marking things off our to-do lists?”
Yasss, bitch! You’re scratching me right where my neuroses itch. Get. Shit. Done.
Via a Google search for “overachiever problems.”
I’m very aware of the pros and cons of being a “trophy hunter,” as Justin calls me. He and I are complete opposites in this area of our lives, so his c’est la vie attitude is very helpful for me when I need to remember the little things matter most and, well, chill the fuck out.
This year, I’m committed to finding a balance between the two. I don’t want to completely give up my go-get-em mentality, but I don’t want it to push me to extremes anymore either–or, more specifically, I don’t want it to push me to extremes on paths that I don’t give a shit about. Do you know what I mean? When you end up *nailing* the 200-word freelance assignment because you spent six hours on it instead of spending a sane and appropriate three hours and channelling your other two hours into researching for a creative essay you want to write.
There’s gotta be somewhere to rest in the middle, right? Somewhere that I can focus my extremes into achieving my ultimate, singular, soul-igniting goal?
Via a Pinterest search for “overachievers get shit done.”
Well, I think I’ve found a solution. This will be the year in which I attempt the impossible for my extreme perfectionist brain: Consistency.
Here’s an excerpt from my Best Self Co. journal workbook that explains why this works/ why I’m putting faith into trying consistency over achievement:
“If you want to crush your goals and reach greatness, you must focus on consistent and long-term personal performance.
In the book Great By Choice, author Jim Collins shares the story of two explorers, Amundsen and Scott, who each led separate teams on an expedition race to the South Pole in 1911. The journey there and back was roughly 1,400 miles, which is equivalent to a round-trip from NYC to Chicago.
While both teams would travel the same distance through extremely harsh weather conditions, each took an entirely different approach to the journey.”
OK PAY ATTENTION THIS IS WHERE THE GOLD CAN BE MINED:
“Scott’s strategy was to walk as far as possible on the good weather days and then rest up on the bad days to conserve energy. Conversely, Amundsen’s team adhered to a strict regimen of consistent progress by walking 20 miles every day–no matter what the weather. On good days, Amundsen’s team was very capable of walking further, but Amundsen was adamant they walk no more than 20 miles–to conserve their energy.”
WHICH TEAM SUCCEEDED? YOU SHOULD KNOW THE ANSWER BY NOW BUT STAY WITH ME:
“It was Amundsen’s because they took consistent action. And this same principle will be true for your goals.”
We are what repeatedly do, which, like, I know. But this anecdote clicked that knowledge into place somehow. It offers some relief: If I dedicate an hour a day, for example, to writing for my book, or promise to run one mile, and only one mile, every three days at the gym, I take the decision making out of it. It becomes a habit. And, I can’t push my work or goals off to a day when “I feel like it” and then, when I finally “feel like it,” feel overwhelmed by the 48 hours of work and 10 miles I expect from myself in one day.
Patience. Restraint. Courage. That’s what’s going to get me across the finish line. These are skills I haven’t cultivated in my past–and haven’t really needed to. But not knowing how to be truly patient with myself and others and situations has proven a detriment exacerbated by my trophy hunting perfectionism.
It’s probably affected you too, this fast-paced immediacy and expectation of comfort. I think we could all benefit from taking a step back, reading the whole article, watching the special, getting our hot take from something more thoughtful than a tweet, seeking out the facts, embracing the nuance intrinsic in waiting, letting others have opinions different from our own.
See also: We won’t elect a new, non-idiotic president until 2020.
So buckle up, loves. The life you’ll be changing this year is your own–and if you do it right, you’ll do it in a way that the change lasts for years to come.
Chicago to Lawrence, Kansas, to Denver to Las Vegas to Phoenix to El Paso to San Antonio to Austin to Memphis to Indianapolis to Chicago.
Whew.
We drove all that in two weeks, with the main purpose of spending Thanksgiving in Vegas wearing matching velour tracksuits and hitting the 24-hour Thanksgiving dinner casino buffet tour.
One of the most memorable moments happened somewhere in Utah, though. Can you tell me the shape of Utah off the top of your head? No cheating! I couldn’t either. (Answer: Utah is shaped like a square with a cute little shelf in the northeast corner. For storing bibles and guns, presumably.) But here we were, making an overnight drive through the state beloved by Edward Abbey, when nature called.
I pulled off into a rest stop area, checked the time—11 pm—and ran into the women’s restroom. Yes, ran, because by nature, I mean I had to, as they say out here, numero dos. Ten minutes pass. I’m humming. I hear a mother and her son come into the restroom. I go mute, as is polite.
My main concern is that it stinks and I feel the familiar poop shame we all share when we do it in a public restroom. This mother’s main concern, though, quickly became me.
Well, not necessarily me as me, but me as what she imagined I was, a conclusion drawn (again, presumably) from my beefy Doc Martens and black pants and the fact that the rest stop seemed completely empty at this time of night because we had parked off to the side and this poor woman with her child thought I was some hoodlum or drug dealer or creepo looking for a beej.
A creepo? Sure. Looking for a beej? Nah.
“Hurry up,” she whispered to her son in the handicap stall. “Stopping here maybe wasn’t a good idea.”
At this point I’m still oblivious, gently humming inside my head. I wonder, “Oh no, why?!”
The handicap stall opens. The child exits. I see his small white shoes make their way to the sink.
“No no,” the mom says, quickly. “We don’t need to wash our hands. We need to go go go.”
That’s weird, I thought. Does it smell that bad?
When I left the restroom ~five minutes later, I asked Justin if he saw a mom and kid leaving the women’s restroom.
“Yeah, they looked terrified,” he said. “They were running. I almost went in to check on you. They looked Mormon maybe? I figured they just were scared because this rest stop is scary.”
When I was finally able to stop laughing, I explained my theory of why they were afraid–it was me and my big boots. They seemed fine until she had time to judge that there was a weirdo in the stall next door. I thought I looked country-punk-chic. They thought I looked like a gang member from “A Clockwork Orange,” thirsting to drink their innocent blood under the bright Moab moon.
If only they had seen me–a small woman with just a smile and a tune on her lips, y’all! A kind person who just likes badass-looking boots and who just had to sit and shit for a long time.
It was apropos. Fear unwarranted and breaking through it. That was the whole point of this trip after all–besides Vegas buffets. Here’s how it went down.
This is somewhere in Arizona. I swear I saw new colors on this trip. Or at least I saw colors I’ve known my whole life organized in totally new ways.
San Antonio Riverwalk.
San Antonio was warm. In a lot of ways.
Kansas. Basically.
More Texas. There’s a lot of Texas.
In Vegas, even the trees seem unnatural.
THIS IS A REAL PHOTO NO FILTER. !!!
Our drive through the Rockies was one I’ll never forget. No wonder people outside the midwest wonder how we can live in a place so flat. It’d be hard to have this drama dominating your view every day and then try to find majesty in a cornfield.
Vogueing at Nevada’s Red Rock Canyon, as one does.
Yes, hi, I’d like to recommend the one-way scenic drive through Red Rock Canyon at sunset. Justin rented us a convertible for the day for two reasons. 1) So he could go from 0 to 80 in seconds on the highway. 2) So we could see this with the top down. Saying it was majestic is cliche, as is saying I cried as we witnessed a mountain tucking in our sun for bedtime. But I don’t give a damn–both are true.
New color inspiration.
Here we are taking photos at Red Rock Canyon and trying not to fall lest we unwittingly become “those people.”
Justin: Comedian, trip planner, BFF. America is for lovers.
Also for lovers? The jungle room at Bonnie Springs Ranch Motel right by Red Rock Canyon. Rawr! We didn’t request this room but they couldn’t have put us in a better one. It even had a velvet painting of a jaguar on the wall.
“Heeeeeeyyy.”
Speaking of velvet paintings, look at this dream boat in velour. We wore matching tracksuits on Thanksgiving Day in Vegas. A hilarious sartorial choice indeed, but also a strategic move. When one can hit up all the casino buffets with their 24-hour all-access pass and eat a lot of pumpkin pie, turkey, lobster and the ever decadent ham and green bean platter, one needs a waist band with leeway.
A survivor at the Bonnie Springs petting zoo.
Also, ghosts at Bonnie Springs Motel.
But you can’t never leave!
Part of the beauty of doing this trip as full-time artists/ freelance writers, we got to see a lot of touristy things on days not frequented by tourists. Because all tourists except for us suck.
For example, the Briscoe Art Museum along the San Antonio Riverwalk offers free admission on Tuesdays. AND WE WERE THERE ON A TUESDAY.
Taco spots are always busy though. We ate a LOT of tacos on this trip. Are tacos the new hot dogs? The new American staple food? I see nothing wrong with that. I’d rather have a taco at a baseball game than a hot dog, you know? We’re in that weird mid-paradigm shift where what it means to be an American is as varied as the people living in it–and the people who used to…
As we traveled, I recognized that significance of traveling on land some people stole from another people during a holiday where we celebrated and reimagined that theft.
It was best addressed–meaning unflinchingly and truthfully–in San Antonio. The cathedral light show didn’t keep the truth in the dark, and the art museum, where there was a painting titled, no joke, “Last of His Race” honored the cultures that were either squandered or lost to time–black, brown and white alike.
I found this interesting and chalked up points for SA as one of my favorite spots during the trip because it’s also located in Texas, home to The Alamo, no less, and Texas is good at, I don’t know, ignoring the bigger picture unless they’re the star of it. Or at least that’s what I assumed.
Vegas “medicine man.” Yikes. Was there ever a better–and by better I mean worse–visual metaphor for what was done to the Native Americans?
OK, maybe this. No teepees. No tents.
I sent postcards from every state we visited to my niece and nephew of reading age. Of course I tried to subtly express the urgency of my opinions without being an asshole (PLZ HELP ME FIND A BALANCE, BABY JEZUS). I found postcards that showed cowboys and Indians communicating, sharing, bartering. I loved this orange postcard below that listed the symbols some tribes used to write and what each symbol meant (with an Auntie-drawn frown face by the swastika). 🙁
These postcards made me muse on how much has changed since the first Thanksgiving, like the way we talk, how we talk, the words–and sometimes symbols–that are and are not OK in 2017. It’s pretty incredible, the scope of those changes.
I thanked every star under the big, azure Arizona sky for living in a time when I, a woman!, could work and write from the road. With a hot spot connection, G-Suite toolkit and awesome team of understanding colleagues back in Chicago, I worked my dream profession (writing) while exploring America. What’s the native symbol for Fuck Yeah This Is Awesome?
A virgin pina colada on the Riverwalk.
Non-virgin marijuana in Denver. Grape Kush = 10/10, man.
Some very Texas memorabilia. People are different. People are all the same.
We accidentally stopped at this family owned gas station and it was perfect. Although, we did get a couple comments about being from Chicago where “everyone gets shot.” <eyeroll> Southerners stereotyped us just as much as we did them.
But I did get the BEST coffee-infused blackberry jam here. They put the word “organic” all over the label, which I thought was cute. Not because they thought it would sell urbanites on buying the $8 jar of jam–but that it would, in fact, sell urbanites on buying the $8 jar of jam.
Because Americans of all stripes are nothing if not predictable. But they’re mine. And I am theirs. It’s difficult to face the truth of our country’s past and the flesh and bone it cut its teeth on, but like the grandiosity of the Rocky Mountains or the sheer scope of the Red Rock Canyon–it’s better to face the sprawling perspective, reconcile the violence and beauty, and acknowledge the overwhelming depths head on. In person. Side by side. I don’t want to ever be afraid of this place and I want to make it better so others feel safer here too.
These downtown Chicago sidewalks expressed my mood perfectly on the gray gross day.
Absolutely I will.
Sugar.
Cards Against Humanity headquarters’ bathroom. Gender neutral, of course. 🙂
Indeed.
The Grouch must loathe this guy.
Got my nails done at a salon called The Cat’s Meow before our two-week roadtrip out west. I tipped in cash.
While I waited, I read this Georgia O’Keeffe fun fact and realized only someone who becomes famous making beautiful paintings as metaphors for vaginas can walk around the desert in a kimono-like coat and actually pull it off.
Our first stop was Lawrence, Kansas; second stop was Denver. We bought a joint. Legally.
We saw many signs politely telling stupid tourists to stop being so stupid.
An apple a day keeps the rabid diarrhea away. Theater bathroom in Austin.
Roots like mountains. Dive bar in Kansas.
But he HATES parentheses! Wal-Mart in Texas.
Just in case you missed it, we’ll tint your windows. New Mexico.
One of several hybrid names for cities along state lines that we saw. My other favorite: Kanorado. (Kansas + Colorado)
Denny’s mug. In Utah? Somewhere like that.
Another diner. This one called Banjo’s. Perfect for a short story set in Kansas.
No MSG. No aspartame. Food truck in San Antonio.
No MSG. No aspartame. Gift shop in Chicago.
This is in front of a shuttered and dilapidated storefront in our neighborhood. How I long to know what this lounge was like!
Isn’t this photo incredible? It’s from our recent roadtrip to Vegas and back. This is at Red Rock Canyon Nevada. We rented a convertible to take the “scenic drive” that winds through this brilliant, accidental mashing of plates and ended up there at sunset. I cried.
Not all our driving was so smooth though. Have you tried taking a speeding bullet down a Rocky Mountain in the middle of the night? I cried then also. But for totally different reasons.
As I embark on yet another trip–a flight this time, which is loaded with its own special brand of travel anxiety mostly rooted in my lack of control over timing and metal tin can speeding bullet–I pulled up these meditations I used on our roadtrip. Thought I’d share.
Key idea: The timing in your life is perfect. You’re exactly where you need to be.
Read: It’s OK if you don’t have everything done yet. You’re exactly when you you need to be.
Read: Yes, crying again.
You are safe. Where you are headed you will arrive right on time.
Don’t tell off the TSA agent.
Don’t tell off the TSA agent.
Don’t tell off the TSA agent.
I mean, how wonderful that you even have the opportunity and luxury to travel so fast in the first place? Even if your seat is right by the plane’s pooper. I can find something new and worthwhile in this experience.
Soda would be such a good last name for a short story character.
There he is… Don Soda
“I give this place a five star.” I’d like to change my vote to “Children.”
This was before their torrid love affair became public and the project’s funding ended.
I have so many good bathroom art pics in this series, but this is the most interesting thing in my office building bathroom. AKA Damp hands mean sick days mean 14-hour days trying to catch up. Wash your hands, you sick fuck!
What is the difference between a yard sale and a rummage sale? I want to attend the one most likely to sell Don Soda’s socks.
Spoiler: I already almost-finished this one and have some… thoughts. I was hooked until 3/4 of the way through when she switches to a new character and I checked out harder and faster than I ever have reading a book! The Goodread reviews confirm I wasn’t alone in thinking this. Egan’s writing is exquisite and she’s definitely a must-read. Just check this one out from the library before you buy.
I loved listening to Emil Ferris talk about her work at the Chicago Humanities Festival. The Chicago book community has been buzzing about her graphic novel, set in Uptown, for some time. I’m excited to finally read it and get lost in its illustrations.
Wishful thinking. Though I love the #faceinplaces Easter egg in no_one.
More wishful thinking. Though I, too, want to live in that world.
More more.
Author and illustrator Emil Ferris at the Chicago Humanities Festival. Super pumped to read her graphic novel “My Favorite Thing is Monsters.” Some of my favorite Emil quotes from her appearance:
On Chicago “There are a lot of survivors here.”
On whether she’s a political artist “I don’t know that anybody isn’t a political artist.”
On writing fiction “You can propose ways to solve everything in fiction. So why not?”
On being an unorganized artist “Everything goes to hell regularly. … I’m an Italian driver as an artist.”
On getting older “That’s the great thing about being old. You’re ornery. And you feel gratitude for everything.”
Thank you for your work/ being your ornery self, Emil!
I love everything about this building… except those glaring “your” and “you’re” errors but I choose to ignore them.
Slut boy!
Foreign boy!
This poster looks so ominous because of its decay. Like some shifty Groupon lackey tried to remove it or scrape of its message in the cover of darkness.
It’s been three years since a Chicago policeman shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in the back 16 times. Black lives matter.
Get it?
These quotes about famous people’s perseverance are on the outside of a Family Dollar, which is a pretty perfect location to spread the message to never give up.
This is from a show at the Slate Arts and Performance space. Liu’s work is bright and immersive and reflects her narrative search for memory and emotional recovery following a terrible head wound. It’s interesting to see how visual artists find ways to express their story through color and form, not words.
And here’s the Slate bathroom. It’s glorious and this post series seems to be where I, ahem, dump all my good bathroom photos. You’re welcome.
