Are You There, Chicago? It's Me, Single

In the mix of all the temperamental weather we’ve been having lately, a friend of mine and I decided to hit up a favorite little breakfast in Lincoln Park. Over coffee and pastries we indulged in some much needed girl talk. We shared some gossip of mutual friends and she shares that after meeting me she was on her way to in afternoon swim in the dating pool. We began talking about all things first dates: ideals, horror stories, and musing what would come of this potential candidate. 

Personally I’ve come to the conclusion that first dates are simply in two categories: perfect on paper, or perfectly awkward. As we discussed her date’s qualifications, it was very clear he fit into the latter and she had doubts. There were so many reasons, but one stuck out. It was then that I heard something so insightful that I never really heard before. 

“There’s just some neighborhoods I can’t date.”

As simple as it is, it really sums up the Chicago dating experience, does it not? There are so many neighborhoods in this city, and so many reasons why some just don’t fit.

We all have neighborhoods we love. They are little pockets of apartments, parks, and people that we connect with. When a lease is up and the first of the month rolls around, it is the first criteria we use to weed out places. Each neighborhood and community has its reputation that defines the area and it’s inhabitants. 

Sometimes we grow out if it and grow into Uptown, and Armitage isn’t worth an arm and a leg anymore. Cheap rent may take us to the Blue Line, and a new job to the Purple Line, and we adapt.

Maybe that first date that was perfect on paper and in person, and that’s the point when we stop looking or studios and look for 1 bedrooms to share…off the Brown Line, because it’s quiet and that person is quite right, even if the neighboorhood isn’t. But that’s sacrifice, and at 22, how many of us are really making that sacrifice? 

I’m not. So until then, I’ll stay where I am. Using the CTA for the same three lines and you won’t find me on the Pink Line or the Green for that matter. 

Hello Followers and Happy New Year!

I for one am beyond relieved that my planner reflectes January 2012.  Year after year I find myself looking forward to New Years more than Christmas. I find the idea of millions of people welcoming a clean slate to be refreshing. Some think New Years resolutions are nonsensical, but I don’t. You see, whether one sticks to their resolution or not, I am always the one that finds them to be proof that we’re all human. We all have one thing that we want to do differently to improve ourselves and our relationships in this big, ever hectic world. 

After finishing up last quarter I headed home and did some much missed and much needed yoga to aid in my rejuvenation from fall quarter. With a private instructor we worked on some visualization and I found that at almost every moment I am either thinking about the past or the future and never living in the present. The past year I have been living life like one of those derps screaming “DO ALL THE THINGS” and well, that is exhausting. Somehow in the last year I have gotten so far away from myself and what I really want. I have focused on what I thought I needed, which coincidentally, is what everyone else wanted. 

In doing some of my own brief, customary reflection, here is what I found: 2011 was a big and busy year. It brought little career milestones, pain, the loss of loved ones, both triumphant and defeat, and even a little bit of hope.

When I was a little girl my mother always said “in order for someone else to like you, you have to like yourself”. Well, when I moved to Chicago I promised to like myself. And the past 2 years, I have. But I haven’t loved myself, which led to this: 

I resolve that in 2012, I will learn to love myself. 

To do so, I vow that every month I will find and embrace a quality that I cherish about myself.  To start, I will work on identifying which parts of myself need some TLC after the past year. I will make that my utmost priority so that body and soul connected as one, I will embark on 2012 in peace and happiness. 

So Chicago, for now, my single self is single and finding a whole new kind of love. 

-Holly B. 

I’m not religious, and so I’ve never been to confesisonal but I do know the purpose of the act. So here I am, confessing to all those tumbl’n. Forgive me followers, for I have sinned: I have lied…about being back on OkCupid. 

It’s been a while, a long while really, but in my defense I have been far from active. That was until last month, and then again, just now. I have a really good reason as to how this all happened. 

It started one night in June. I had been working like a madwoman, all my friends were away, and so I was having one of my getting wine drunk alone in my room nights. After B rated romantic comedies from the Redbox I started feeling depressed and then drank a glass more and started to feel really great about how well I;ve been doing the past few months. I started toasting myself to how well I had ‘moved on’. I’d celebrate by putting myself back on the market: via the damn site. This was all a facade, not a total facade, but in retrospect, me reactivating on OkCupid to prove something to myself was a cry for help, and one that my buddy 2 buck Chuck (trader joe’s, y’all) wasn’t hearing. 

Anyways, I immediately lost my password and because I was tipsy when I created it had no clue what it was. Last month I was reminded of this rdiciulous night by an OKC email notification. I retrieved my password and planned to deactivate…again. I began deleting all the really creepy messages from gross guys that do not actually live in Chicago and are trying too hard. As I scrolled up I found the most recent message, which wasn’t even recent. A super casual and friendly message from a guy that just seemed…nice. A good look at his profile later, I thought that I surely had missed the boat. I contemplated and realized that whether or not it leads anywhere, who says you can’t find friends on OkCupid? (watch that question lead to a post) So I messaged him back and apologized but I had lost my password but should he still be interested in chatting, I was. So I checked a day later: nothing, and then a week later: nothing. And I was ok about it. 

 Here we are now, a good month or so later and at 2:08am, I went to delete my OkCupid account…again. And yet again I found myself in the same situation. Several messages from creeps and one rather friendly message from the same guy as before. It’s late, or early, like 3:04am early; I have no idea what I’m doing. I know that I’m in a much better place that I was in February, or June, or even this past Wednesday. I have soberly decided upon my actions. I’ve relunctantly dipped my foot in the water now, typically I’d say let’s see how long it takes before I’m toweling off or swimming, however, I think I need to wade in the shallow end a bit. No floaties attached. 

So delirious I’m using a swimming analogy, 

H. 

I’m not even going to attempt to do my little apology bit and talk about how this blog is “a labor of love and not a day goes by where I don’t feel bad for not posting about the ups and downs of the city gal’s love or even lack there of”. I’ll just say it: I’m busy as shit, ladies. I am. I don’t want to toot my own horn but I honestly think I am Wonder Woman sometimes. I have more classes than usual, a production soon to open, an extremely active campus life, and am now a commuter- oh, and did I mention that I sleep now? Because, I do. I’ve also found time to read a book in the last week. It’s bizarre.

That being said, I don’t think about this blog daily- but I do think of it. Often on the train or rushing through the Loop I will think of my next post but never actually sit and write it, which is why I’m grateful for nights like this. It is Sunday night, 10pm and I should be doing homework but the internet is down, no one is home and so I’m going to do my ‘single things’ like dance to Beyonce while I hang up my trench (if you haven’t watched the videos to Countdown and Love on Top- you’re missing out, so stop reading for a moment and youtube it), eat mini chocolate chips from the pantry, sit in the dark while listening to Belle and Sebastian, and type away on a document. The perfect way to commit some time to this much neglected outlet. 

Where should I even start? So much and yet so very little has happened since the last time I wrote. I guess in terms of our content here nothing much has happened. I’ve been thinking a great deal about relationships and our connection to one another. I was in rehearsal and began speaking with a group of peers about vivid dreams and one girl added how those vivid and reoccurring dreams are sometimes justified as the re-emerging of our past lives. I’m not religious, more spiritual and don’t have any concrete beliefs on the afterlife but I will say life after death intrigues me. This girl continued on to tell me how her mother has often dragged her to several conferences and book readings on the subject. According to this research the individuals we come into contact with are usually those individuals that we had a connection, either positive or negative, with in the past. The girl I was talking to continued to note examples she had seen in these conferences: your mother could have been your husband in a past life- your best friend a former enemy you must rectify your turmoil with. Additionally, she said she once read about how this particular therapist reunited two patients- both single and seeking therapy to handle their discontent- who he believed to have been soul mates separated in a past life. Naturally, I have questions, so many questions.

Who are these individuals that after one look, one conversation, we see something in? Are they “the one that got away” in a past life? Is there a chance that my unrequited love and I might share our mutual love non-profits, skiing, Birkenstocks, assorted cheeses and coffee curled up by a fire one day in a different lifetime?

When does our soul go to rest? Do we have to have mastered a series of achievements? Is having a great love, one for the books a requirement? 

I know this sounds absolutely ludicrous but I can’t deny that I’ve been thinking about it non-stop for the past two days. I really want some sort of answers despite knowing in my core that love doesn’t always have answers- in fact, I don’t know if it ever does. 

That’s all for now as there is nothing I love more than sleeping during a thunderstorm.

Holly

I’m here because I don’t know what to write somewhere else.

See, I’m trying to tell the story of how “Zach” and I met once upon a this-time-last-year.  I’m not trying to tell it because it has some deep underlying message to the masses or because the scene was magnificent and dripping in prose-worthy beauty, I’m trying to tell the story because I’m sick of my classmates writing debbie-downers.  It isn’t that their stories, all non-fiction, don’t matter to me, that I do not feel sympathy for the hardships of their lives.  It isn’t that I want to rub my apparent happiness in their little faces.  My purposes are much brighter than that.

I am trying to write about something uplifting and something I’m sure about among all of the unanswered questions and sob stories that tend to weigh down this type of classwork.

I am trying to write about something that makes me smile.  The weather is dreary and will only get drearier, even with the beauty that is Chicago in the snow, so why add the gloom to the page as well?  Why not take myself to the chilly, November evening when I attended a party I had no intention to attend to meet a boy who I met online while I was trolling for blog-fodder?  Why not write about the unexpected in a positive light rather than life’s less fortunate surprises?

Why not lighten the fuck up?  Yeah, I’m stressed out.  Yeah, I’m freaking out about the impending doom of the real world.  What is a little blogger like me going to do to feed myself? Who is going to hire a quippy, little, twenty-something, right out of college with a stunning F in the middle of her degree.  I do not have a bachelor of arts you silly, little people, my arts are FINE art…now hire me!

These are things I don’t need to think about.  What I’m going to be doing in a year, five, ten; what “Zach” will be doing in those same time integers?  Things I don’t need to think about.

Keep it simple.

Describe the night we met in excruciating detail.

Accept Anne Lamott’s “shitty first draft”.

Vomit it out now, tweak it later.

Live now, worry later.

-Viola