leaving

i pick up my rental car and leave evansville in 12 hours and i haven't packed anything except a duffel bag of clothes

another new year (already?)

i swear this year was shorter than the last few, honestly. that's not to say it was easy; even with all the hell 2012 held for me in regards to growing up and growing out and moving on, 2013 was definitely harder and sadder in a lot of ways. but the bright, happy bits of the past year are stunning, white-hot moments in a difficult, blurry year.

in 2013, i:

• went on a lot of dates, knocking down some of the awkward walls i put up inside me. even if nothing really clicked, this is a big thing for me. i am making sure that when i have the time and inclination, i am someone who is comfortable dating.
• produced a zine all by myself, the production of which stirred up and gave closure to a lot of bullshit i didn't want to deal with. i wrote something for this zine that i love, which is rare for me. and at the end of a stressful all-nighter of putting that shit together, i watched a stunning sunrise from the brown line with tj, right before he moved away.
• had two best friends move away and carry on their lives in new places, places where i can't be. and blake and i are always okay, but it put strains on my other long-distance friendship, and (unfortunately) i'm not nearly as close with tj as i used to be.
• took on way too much in my academic life, and didn't crash and burn. granted, i didn't sleep much and i gained a bunch of weight from eating my stress, but i did it when my professors told me i couldn't and my classmates told me i was crazy. and i made some work i'm really really proud of.
• went to ocracoke and watched the sun rise every morning that i could. walked barefoot through a bird sanctuary, held a sea turtle egg, literally saw the shape of the milky way over the atlantic ocean at midnight.
• drank legally, smoked illegally, hooked up with some german guy named dorian in the back of an SUV in louisville.
• started running, stopped running, started running again (it's a work in progess). rode my bike to school all summer. got my bike stolen, and then got a new bike.
• felt closer to my three biggest communities (my family, my chicago friends, my purdue friends) than i have ever felt to any community of people
• finally felt like chicago became my home. i feel uncomfortable here, not disturbingly so, but i miss my apartment. i miss the solitude sometimes. i miss my friends and my independence and riding the trains. for the first time in my life i feel actually grown up and visiting my childhood home, which is bittersweet.

big things happened this year, and it's scary but it's good. today when blake left and i realized i couldn't pinpoint a date when i would see her again,it kind of sank in that i will graduate this year and then i will be moving on, and i'm not sure where i'll be or what my life will look like a year from now.


(and here are my 2014 resolutions!)

• organize design work stuff. get on top of this. this means cataloging computer files and maintaining a calendar for reals.
• be more health conscious in regards to diet, and make an effort to keep exercising. diet is the big thing here, because i'm a pretty active person normally, but i've been eating like shit and it needs to stop.
• save money for something big. this could be a printing press or a car or an apartment in brooklyn or a few weeks backpacking in europe. but i want the options open and i need money to do so.
• do more, instead of just collecting inspiration. make more. 
• reconnect with my spirituality (meditate, talk to spirit, go to church at least every once in a while.) go back to lily dale.

so here's to not knowing. to taking 2014 as it comes. i can't wait to see what this next year has in store for me.

new things

i've been at my parents' 4 or 5 days now and it's nice; i've mostly been drunk or sleeping since i got here (when i'm not wrapping gifts) which has been a wonderful reprieve.

i went to louisville with ivy and dustin for dana's 23rd birthday and i had a really good time; it was just what i needed. and i'm not sure why i'm hesitant to write this here because it's not like anyone is going to judge me for it, but i was kind of drunk and trashy and liked it. i got hit on by several guys; one guy bought me a drink, two boys kissed me, and i kinda hooked up with one of those guys in his car once i started sobering up. scandalous for me, i know.

but it was good. he was sweet and from germany. it's funny, i wrote a note on my phone before i went to sleep that night about how we are able to direct to us the people and experiences that will help us progress, and how the universe will bring them to us. i feel like this experience was one of those. it just seems like if i'd left the bar with anyone else in that whole place, i wouldn't have felt right about it. i know my instincts, and i'm glad i went with them on this one because i feel like what happened was absolutely supposed to.

he had bought me a drink and been talking to me all night, and we kissed for a while on the porch of the bar. i was freaking out when he asked me if i wanted to leave the bar and i talked to my friends about it; dana was giggly and ivy was egging me on, but i was actually really nervous. dustin just came up to me, without context, and said "he's over you. it's okay. you're allowed to do this." and i think i probably teared up a little and was like "yeah, but it's the sentiment of it, you know?" and he just said "he's over you in that way, too." and it was harsh, but it was sobering and true. (looking back now, dustin was absolutely shitfaced and ended up going home with someone he'd known 5 minutes, so i'm not sure why i took that statement as sage advice, but i'm glad i did.) i am so god damn sentimental about everything and i don't want to be that way about dylan anymore, i haven't wanted to be for a very very long time. so last night helped.

it was awkward and kind of weird, and we were moving super fast and i just kind of freaked out and stopped and told the guy to wait, and he stopped, fixed my skirt, gave me his coat, and just talked to me, hugged me. and he was so sweet. after a little bit, we started kissing again and fooled around for a bit, and ended up talking a lot afterward. he told me it had been a while for him and he was glad i freaked out, that he wouldnt have enjoyed it as much had we had sex, and i agreed (not like i planned on going that far anyways). he talked about his life, how he ended up in kentucky from germany, told me how grateful he was for the generosity of his parents, and asked about my life. and i didn't fucking think about anyone else in those moments except for myself. it was fucking wonderful.

i'm not saying that i want for every night at a bar to be like this, but i didn't realize how empowering and fulfilling it would be just to mess around with some guy and then never see him again. i felt sexy and confident; i was fucking proud for a fit 26-year old guy from germany to whisper "god, you're a good kisser" to me under his breath, to tell me i'm hot. and i feel happier since. less attached to whatever weird headspace i was living in in which i was going to bump into dylan in evansville and actually give a fuck about what he thought. in which i owed it to him or anyone else not to have fun and be a single 20-something.

so it was good. maybe a little scandalous, but good.

peace

friday night was my friend erin's birthday, and we went to this polish bar/club near her place that was absolutely ridiculous. fog, lights, weird remixes of gagnam (sp?) style all night, and the support pillars had been turned into surprisingly realistic fake trees surrounding the dance floor. and it was empty, completely. so we all got pretty drunk and were dancing, then we went back to erin's and had more drinks and danced on her pole (she does pole classes at flirty girl fitness)

the next day i woke up and daniella was still gone. it was overcast and a little rainy out (my favorite weather) but really cold. when i woke up (sore from head to toe and hungover) i wrapped my top half up in a big fluffly towel and drew a bath with the bath bomb blake sent my for my birthday. i listened to music, slept for a while, and then just sat there and thought until the water got cold. it was the most relaxed i've been all semester...maybe even all year.

i'm trying to recreate that now, to work on my final for my type class tomorrow (which i haven't started) but mostly i'm just hot and sleepy and feeling like i need to get up before i ruin my final by sleeping through the few work hours i have left.

but still. that morning makes me excited for living alone, for not being in school. for having a job that allows me to actually have a day off every week (or maybe even just every two weeks), not just guilt-ridden nights of fun followed by 5am work mornings to make up for it. blake has been sending me pictures of her art and talking about her free time and i'm insanely jealous; i want that.

in the last half of this semester i managed to drain my bank account and had to borrow money from my parents to print this week, which makes me feel icky and needy. this semester i slept, on average, 3-4 hours per night. i'm pretty sure i only biked to school three times. i ordered at least 20 pizzas. i either drank or smoked at least once a week. i've gained 10 pounds. i've backslid in my progress with moving on from dylan, lost track of how long it has really been since i've even seen him. i've been a messy shithead of a roommate. i talked to my mom maybe once every two weeks, didnt talk to jaime at all between when i left and thanksgiving.

this semester was hard on me, physically, mentally, emotionally, and i felt out of control and guilty for 99% of it. i felt like i had to be selfish just to get through the week. i am so ready to put this semester to rest, to gain back my peace, to feel like a real human being again.

SAIC

i've been working on this press kit for my school for half of the semester, and today is the final day of tying up loose ends and sending the files off to the printer. it's scary and nerve-wracking and i started off hating this project, but the more and more i've been working on it, the more fond i've grown of it.

i was working on it last night and a friend of mine who left SAIC to go to columbia chicago was sitting next to me, and read over my shoulder one of the quotes "the most influential art and design school in the united states" (which, btw, was quoted from Columbia's (the real one, in NYC) national arts journalism survey) and scoffed, and i got really offended.

i don't know what i'm getting at here, it just pissed me off. i really like this girl as a friend, but she shits on SAIC when she's in Columbia's design program and didn't even know what i was talking about when i was using easy design vocabulary like the rag (the edge of the paragraph where the words don't line up) and leading (the space between lines).

anyway. i was reading over the core values of my school today and i started tearing up. i guess it's just a good sign, that i obviously made the right decision, and i'm not sure i'm ready to be done next semester. the paragraphs are kind of cheesy and self-promoting, but there's something there, and there's something reassuring in saying that i am part of a community of explorers, of artists and scholars, of people making history.

We are explorers

At SAIC, we exceed boundaries. Our commitment to an open structure is embodied in a curriculum of self-directed study within and across a multiplicity of disciplines and approaches that promote critical thinking, rigorous investigation, and playful creativity. Through interdisciplinary practices and in deeply focused media, faculty and students conceive and accomplish exchanges in cultural study, production, and research with artists and scholars around the world. We are a community that challenges the notion that any field is ever beyond rediscovery.

Meaning and making are inseparable

At SAIC, we believe that meaning and making are inseparable, existing as a perpetual and productive cycle driven by experience, research, and critique. Our commitment to a wide range of media and processes supports our assertion that the artist, designer, scholar, and writer are uniquely qualified as makers to provide leadership, creative perspective, and hands-on skill for shaping today's world, as well as contributing to its opportunities. Critique, as a fundamental component of the creative process, provides assessment as well as new ideas, possibilities, and directions that enable our community to sustain argument, rigor, experimentation, playfulness, invention, subversion, and mutual respect.

We are artists and scholars

The students, faculty, and staff of SAIC are engaged and innovative creators of art, design, scholarship, and writing. The faculty drives our curriculum, and each member brings the diverse experiences of his or her practice directly into the classroom and studio. Our students are viewed as emerging peers and full participants in the learning that occurs in collaboration with faculty and each other. Through their diverse practices, the staff participate to support the learning process; promote the overall well-being, growth, and development of students; and enhance student success and the realization of students' full artistic potential.

Chicago

Our symbiotic relationship with the city radiates outward as students, faculty, and staff connect themselves to the diverse communities of Chicago and the entire world. Forming a city within a city, a campus, close and yet not contiguous, we are urban. The city's richness, complexity, and contradictions are the perfect environment for our own diverse community.

We make history

Our major encyclopedic art museum, libraries, special collections, and public programs create an unparalleled environment for maintaining a thoughtful and tangible relationship to history and the ways in which it is continually revisited and represented, fueling our innovation and experimentation and keeping our historical and critical discourse completely active. Students, faculty, and alumni of SAIC have made significant and groundbreaking contributions to the art, design, and scholarship of the 20th century, and continue to do so in the 21st.

lazy day

this is not a real post,
just a reminder of how badly i have procrastinated this semester

December is so much harder on me than November is

how could I have forgotten that?

hashtag blindsided