I'm Back!

Ok, so I didn't really go anywhere, but I know it's been a long time since I posted, probably the longest time since I've started. I haven't been too busy, but that's the thing: nothing's really been going on. It's been winter in Chicago, essentially, which means staying in and only leaving when you feel you must. I have done a couple of cools things over the past couple of weeks though, and here are a few:

Chicago Mexican Food: I had my first taste of Chicago Mexican cuisine! I went with a friend to a very small Mexican restaurant called El Mariachi. The food was fantastic, but there were some slight differences in the way things were made. First of all, the chips were made of flour tortillas, I think, because they were a dark brown, thick and flaky, like if you were to make them at home in a frying pan. I think I prefer a thin chip, like at Alamo Cafe or Las Palapas, but the salsa they had was really good. Another thing, which my friend was telling me to be true of all Chicago Mexican restaurants, was that the cheese enchiladas I ordered didn't even have the option of chili con carne as a topping. Absolutely everywhere you go in Texas offers that, so I was surprised to hear that news. That's one of my favorite things about ordering cheese enchiladas! Maybe it's more of a Tex-Mex thing... Anyway, for the topping, I had a list of salsas to choose from, and the cautious side of me told me to stick to the mild red. Plain, I know, but it was really good. My friend went with a mole sauce (which is made from cocoa, I believe), but I've had mole before and I'm not the biggest fan. The rice and beans were delicious (the rice assembled in a pyramid and the refried beans in ice cream scoop form) and now I have a place to go whenever I get a craving for Mexican! Next time I need to satisfy my BBQ itch...

Light Show at the Bean: Another friend and I took a trip to see this light show in Millennium Park which turns the Bean into more of an art exhibit than it already is. Basically, these large projectors on either side of the Bean were flashing lights on the ground, constantly changing and moving, as to reflect themselves onto the metallic sculpture. It doesn't look that great from a distance, but once you got under the Bean it was crazy. The wide array of reflections is enough without the light dancing around, and when you add that extra element it's almost too much to handle. You don't know where to look! This is the first time they've done this and it only lasted about a week so I'm glad I got to see it happen!

Ash Wednesday Mass: Something I really enjoy doing is seeing the way other people and cultures live. While this certainly wasn't an extreme look into the lives of other people, I really enjoyed going to Mass on Ash Wednesday to see just what Mass was all about. When a friend of mine texted me that he was going to Mass that night (uncertain of whether I was Catholic or not) and invited me to come along with him, I thought it would be a cool experience, as I'd never been before except for the few times we went to some different churches with Grandma and Peepaw (I'm pretty sure they were Catholic, anyway... I remember all of the ritual kinds of things that we did). Overall, it was very interesting. It's so different from the Baptist sermons I'm used to, and I could barely keep myself from clapping when a girl sang a solo in front of the entire church. Apparently talent is recognized in other ways at this Catholic church because there was no clapping anywhere in the service. I also felt a little out of place because everyone knew exactly what to say and when, while I fumbled with my words and wasn't sure of when I was supposed to sit, stand or kneel. I don't think too many people noticed, though, and I made it out alright, with a much better understanding of the world around me, I would say.

I think that's about all the major things I've done recently, but I'll be back with more soon! I hope to never let such a long break go between posts, so I'll come up with something! Thanks for reading, everyone!

New Year's Resolutions

So I'm a little late on the whole "resolutions" thing, but when I make resolutions (which turn out to be more like goals), they're generally quantifiable, because that's just how my brain works. I'd much rather have goals like "do this, this many times" rather than things like "eat better" and "exercise", because I can't really measure things like that. So, that being said, here is my list:


1. See six shows

Last year, I made it a resolution  to see five shows, and I did (Young Frankenstein the Musical, Billy Elliott, The Drowsy Chaperone, Wishful Drinking and A Christmas Story the Musical), so this year I'm determined to bump that number up to six. This shouldn't be hard to accomplish in Chicago, where there are about five theaters right in the Theatre District downtown.


2. Visit the Chicago Museums

So this resolution includes the Shedd Aquarium, The Museum of Science and Industry, The Field Museum, The Adler Planetarium, The Art Institute of Chicago and The Museum of Contemporary Art. Lucky for me, I can already cross off the Shedd Aquarium, because I just went a couple weeks ago. These should be fun to go to in the summer.

3. Do two half-marathons

Half-marathons are things that I haven't ever really gotten into, but definitely want to try out. It takes a couple months of training, but when I went to the Chicago Marathon and saw the community atmosphere, it was something I knew I wanted to be a part of. Now, I'm nowhere near ready for a marathon, but I figured some half-marathons would be a good goal for the year.

Well my list has yet to be completed, but I'll be adding to this over the next few weeks. I'll also write about when I can check things off the list! I usually add a resolution about how many books I want to read in the year, but I've been reading like crazy already and I know I don't need a resolution to keep that up. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Forward Motion

Moving to Chicago has been an absolutely life-changing experience for me. I've been introduced to a new city with different laws, seemingly endless vertical growth (rather than horizontal), an almost entirely different set of ideals, and a liveliness unlike anything I've experienced before. I've made new friends (while simultaneously losing contact with old ones, but that's life), tasted new foods, discovered different ways of thinking and completely surrounded myself with the unknown. This move has brought the bad as well as the good, however, and I've fought a major bout of homesickness, more than a few colds, a complex bus system (that I now feel I've all but conquered), people who say “pop” instead of “soda” and a general feeling of strange disorientation with the world around me. The point I'm trying to make here is that life, and mine in particular at this moment, is about changing things up, embracing the unusual and the strange and discovering new things about both yourself and this amazing world we live in, all to achieve inner growth and expand our points of view. My life at this current moment is about the journey, not the destination, which is why I know for a fact that I'm not done yet.

Since my move, I've had stagnant thoughts of life choices, mostly concerning my career and location. I've been in the mindset that I've chosen this for myself, here I am, there's nothing I can do about it now. The actual truth couldn't be any farther from my discouraging thoughts. The truth that I've been enlightened with is that my life is so far from settled, it's almost sickening. Well, maybe not sickening, but I've got quite a few options for myself. When I moved to Chicago, I did so because I thought, “I've got the world at my fingertips, I have no ties, I can go wherever I want.” This (until recently) undiscovered truth is that I still do. Tomorrow, if I so choose, I could put up an ad on Craigslist for someone to sublease my apartment, apply to jobs in Dallas and move to Texas on the next flight out. I could decide Chicago isn't really my bit and look into moving to Seattle. I could decide to save up some money and move back to San Antonio to live with my mom (the least appealing of these choices, considering I don't even really know if she'd let me). The point is that I still have options, just because I opened the door to Chicago doesn't mean that I've closed any at all. I haven't even closed a door or a window or a shutter, and let me just say that the draft feels nice.

All that being said, however, I feel content with where I am. My lease is up in August and maybe by then I'll have a different mindset and I'll take the train back to Texas, eager to be closer to so many of my friends and family. Or maybe by that time I'll have made such strong relationships here that I couldn't possibly imagine leaving. Either way things work out, I need to focus on the here and now. Overall, I love where I'm at, but I'm not in love with what I'm doing. I've often expressed doubts about whether Marriott or hospitality in general is the right field of service for me, and as I go to work every day, I realize my career might not be going down the path I want it to.

I recently picked up a book by Gretchen Rubin entitled “The Happiness Project” in which Rubin, a New York wife and mother who's completely satisfied with her life, decides that she can get much more out of it. To do that, she takes a look at every aspect of her life and decides how she can better manage her time, organize her internal and external clutter, avoid irritation and explore the world around her. I've taken the smallest of tips from her, mostly about little things like organizing my closet space to remove clutter and feel happier at home, acting the way I want to feel (she states that acting as though you have energy (even if you don't) can, in fact, boost your energy levels), and avoiding irritation by not letting the little things get to me. But the big idea that I've gained from this book (which is something that had already been implanted in my brain, but sometimes I just need to hear it from someone else) is that if I'm not happy with my situation, I have the power to change it.

Despite what I feel is wrong with my current job and even my career path, I know for certain that I would like for it to change. Some people might give me advice like “stick it out” or “hang in there, maybe you'll grow to love it”, but my internal question is always “why?” Why push myself into a job I don't wholly enjoy, one that I often dread going to and get no fulfillment out of? I can't seem to find an answer to that, because I have the power to change my situation, and I fully believe that if you aren't happy with your situation, you should change it.

This glorious mindset alone has made me happier on a day-to-day basis. Going to work knowing that I just filled out applications for other jobs that might get me where I want to be makes the work bearable and fleeting. I no longer care to complain about work, and I don't dread it as much because I know there's something else out there, waiting for me to find it. Every day brings new opportunities, and every “unknown number” phone call could be my ticket to the next big thing.

My journey is nowhere near a close. I live in a room with innumerable doors and every single one of them is open to me. I can live wherever I want, work wherever I want and spend my time however I want. It took a little bit of time for me to realize that none of my choices have been made permanent, and that, even if I were to move back to Texas tomorrow, to say I moved to Chicago after graduation is an accomplishment in itself. Whether I move back in August or not, Chicago will not have defeated me or crushed my spirits. This opportunity has been the internal growth experience of a lifetime, and I couldn't possibly be happier with my decision. Every decision I have made up until now, and even going into the future, has contributed to my own personal forward motion.