The usual: confused about career aspirations

I'm still on the fence about what I want to do in life. Sometimes I wonder what life will be like once I've finished my Master's. Will I continue along with what I'm doing, working in a wonderful environment surrounded by lovely people and fine papers? Will I continue freelancing for Amelie G? Will I have gone into business with Drew? Will I have written anything substantial and worthwhile (i.e., a book)? Will I want to teach? And, if so, what levels? Each of these is a partial desire of mine. I just don't know how to make all of them happen and coincide.

I was just on facebook checking out a random girl that I knew in high school's profile, and I went to her blogspot to see she's teaching ESL somewhere in Africa! I used to want to teach in Africa or Latin America. I taught ESL for a year in New Orleans. I did enjoy it, but it's not really what I want to do longterm, but I would love the experience! At 25, am I now too old to do things for the experience?

I'm working on a piece for Amelie G for which I've interviewed a young, passionate, already well-established artist, and talking to her for more than two hours last Sunday was really motivational for me. I thought, well, she followed her heart and was successful; with a little more planning and will, I can too, right? Hearing her speak about how she's pictured goals and worked toward them, I also felt a little little lazy, but when I get home, I'm usually tired from having been standing up all day. Excuse? My job is exciting for me though; I like the creative aspects and the social ones, and my flexible schedule allows me to do other things like go to her studio space on a Thursday afternoon (which I did this past week).

I'm slowly cutting all the babysitting out of my life although I'm nanny for Adele twice a week for the summer, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. This coming up week, Dr. Garza (former Anthro professor) asked me to babysit, too, which is good because since I quit nannying for Molly (in May), not only have I been out of a substantial amount of income each month, but expenses seem to arise (e.g., car break-in and subsequent window replacement, Pippa's vaccines). Jesse's 30th birthday is next month so I to give him a big present, not necessarily physically big, but something he would really love. I've got something in the works, but I can't say yet lest he actually read my blog. Hopefully, I'll be able to pick up some extra hours to afford it.

Lastly, I need to work on my summer course. Is this Master's the end, or will I want to go to school for Anthropology? Where will I apply? Will Jesse be happy to move again someday? We fit and feel Mid City so much right now. Where will we go? Well, those are my morning thoughts. Happy weekend!

The end of play-by-plays: New directions in blogging

I'm attempting to change my blogging style. Before, and even as I type this, I've wanted to use my blog as more of a journal, an archival place to document all my life's happenings so that I can reflect on the good times and learned from the trying ones. Unfortunately, for many reasons, I have come to find this task impossible with many posts unfinished and promises of updates unfulfilled. I am going to really try to transition my blog into more of a, for lack of a better expression, easy read place for me to give you just the gist of my feelings, hopes, fears and rants.

Here's to that! I know Drew will be proud.

Along with that, I'll be working on my online presence. Neill and I are meeting about my online portfolio, I'll work on Pinterest and twitter, and linkin, too.

Giving Thanks

Today I was reflecting on how very fortunate I am and how unnecessarily negative I can be. Sometimes I complain about my side jobs, how I'm stressed by them to the point that I'm being ungrateful and even critical of my employers. This needs to stop. I'm actually quite lucky to have these jobs and for the way that they treat me. I've become spoiled, I believe, because many times they have been so good to me that I've come to expect that treatment all the time so when they don't shower me with whatever it is I'm expecting, I'm annoyed. This is wrong on my part. That's that, and I'm expressing this so I can change.

I was also thinking about how picky I've been with apartments over the past 3-4 years. I think back to my time in Guatemala and I have to think of the luxury we actually live in! Within our own scope, living in the US, in New Orleans, I've been pick, too. Jesse and I have been together a little shy of three-and-a-half years, and this past week marked a move to our fourth apartment together. About a month and a half ago when we decided to take this apartment in American Can, he made me promise not to bring up moving again (or leave him :D) for an indefinite period of time. He even asked me to write a contract. Well, after actually physically participating in much of this move, I now know why: moving's a bitch! I've never done so much manual labor in my life. My hands ached, and I did far less than Mia and Jes in the move; I wasn't strong enough.

I have taken/take Jesse for granted. When we moved to our CBD apartment, I had just started working at Anthropologie, and I didn't want to ask off of work so early. In retrospect, that was dumb. The time before that, at our second Uptown apartment together, he and his dad moved our stuff in right after I left for my last undergrad semester in Guatemala. The first place we lived, on St. Charles, he and his good friend moved his stuff in because my few possessions (mainly bought from the previous tenant, a graduating, former classmate) were already in the apartment.

I am going to have a new outlook. We love Mid City so far. I'm going to quote Sallie, and hope that "I've never looked back." I hope that when Jes and I finally can buy a house (if we stay in NOLA), that we put our roots in Mid City. It's just this sense of community, warmness, nature. Much, much more, but I'll end here and save an ethnography for another day.

Jessi Arrington

http://luckysoandso.com/

What a considerate, creative and eco-friendly individual! Never buy anything new? I wish I was this confident and considerate. Check her out on TED, too! http://www.ted.com/talks/jessi_arrington_wearing_nothing_new.html

What a weekend!

This past weekend was my quarter of a century birthday weekend! June 5th, Sunday. So the weekend began quite nicely with Jes taking me out to dinner at Domenica, John Besh's Italian restaurant inside of the Roosevelt. We had delicious octopus carpaccio and a clam pizza that all but melted in your mouth. I decided after dinner that I'd want to go to the Sazerac Restaurant (also in The Roosevelt) for brunch on my birthday. We made plans to do that and then preceded to run some errands in the Elmwood area. Best Buy, Michael's, Pier One and World Market. Once I got home, I realized that I had forgotten to swing by Holli's house and walk Balto; I was house-sitting while they were out of town so I went to do that by myself . Returning, I parked the car on the street, on Union right off of Carondelet adjacent to the Hibernia Building. That was at 11 pm.

The next morning I woke up extra early to pick up Mia before we drove to Lake Charles for Kayla's pre-wedding planning and bridal party festivities. Around 6:50, low and behold, I walk to my car and notice that there is quite a bit of shattered glass next to my driver's side in the street. I get closer and realize that two front windows are smashed. Exactly one week before we move out of the CBD, one week before we move to Mid-City, after nearly a year of parking on the street at night. I'm speechless, shocked. In fact, today I'm still in disbelief. I calmly walk back to the apartment after a failed attempt at calling Jesse and let him know what's happened. He walks down with me to check it out and we call the police. All the while I'm still calm because I have yet to realize what a deductible is and that my insurance will actually be covering none of the damages. We wait for the police. We wait and wait and wait some more. I've already called Mia and asked Mia to call Ms. Raven telling her that we won't be able to meet them in BR and follow them to Lake Charles, but rather, we'll be late all together because Mia's gonna have to drive and we're still waiting for the police. Finally, he gets there. He's quite nice so, again, I can't be mad that two other police past me by though I attempted to flag them down, and I've been waiting an hour by now. Thank goodness I had Jesse for all of it and Mia towards the end.

How can anyone be so mean or malicious? It didn't even appear that anything had been tampered with. No signs of any actions toward stealing anything, not that I had anything of value. And, why two windows? Not even on the same side. The CCTV on the Hibernia Building, unfortunately, did not point in my car's direction. The police asked me if anyone was angry with me. I can't imagine so! Anyway, that was Saturday morning for me. I wasn't angry. Sad, annoyed at my lack of financial stability in light of this new development, but not angry. How could I be? The rest of the weekend was so lovely. To this day it is. Other than this last day of 24 occurrence, the weekend was wonderful. Thus, 25 looks like it's gonna be a good year!

Recount of other activities to follow :)

-Oyster Fest

-Baru

-brunch on the house

-the most amazing work birthday lunch ever

-letterpressing

Things to do this evening

Things I want to do this evening:

• talk to Drew
• exercise
• drink a smoothie (which first involves me finding the rubber ring part of our blender)
• practice the piano
• organize another box of hoarded paper
• one load of laundry

Jesse and I have had a relaxing Memorial Day that involved going to John Besh's The American Sector for lunch. We invited Mia, but she had class. What, Xavier, you don't care about veterans? Well, we had been wanting to go there for a while and when we did, we ordered cheeseburgers, a corned beef sandwich, hierloom tomato soup with a side ham and cheese, a devil's food cupcake, and a Bananas "Foster" milkshake. All very good, but we could have done without at least one of our courses because their portions are pretty big. Sans the milkshake Jesse got to go. Boy, did we fail as vegetarians. We try to eat meat only for special occasions, but it's so hard in NOLA lately.

Mia and I went to Paul's graduation party on Saturday night at the Astor Crown hotel. It was a lot of fun and Raymond and Emma went all out for their only son. He got a full scholarship to Emory, and everyone's so proud of him. It was nice to see a lot of our family though. I only wish Mama, Daddy and Jesse had been there, too. Jesse had a lot of pain in his left arm, Mama was working and Daddy's in Missouri.

Well, to my list of things to do.

Am I a dinosaur?

There is such an incredible world of social media out there right now, and I just don't know how to keep up. Between tumblr and twitter, flickr and facebook, fourquare and pinterest, how do I know what I should use and how long I'll be able to use it before the next fad overshadows it? I like the aesthetic of pinterest and tumblr (and is tumblr the new blogspot?). I like the practicality of fourquare. I find "checking in" on sights like facebook and foursquare somewhat big brother/weird to be giving over 1000 "friends" your location. There are so many blogs and newsfeeds or rss's that I'd like to follow, but I don't have the time between work and play, nor do I know where to begin. Anthropologie just launched their own tumblr (powered by Roam--what is Roam), etymologie. There are so great suggestions of other blogs and feeds on the "What we're reading" tab, but I almost feel to keep up with the news and what's going on in social media land, I have to give up my day job. Trust me, not happening. I very much enjoy working in paper retail, making people happy one piece of stationary at a time; not to mention, I can barely support myself with a job. Anyhow, I just thought I'd put this out there, vent on my lack of internet intelligence, and hope sometime soon one of my friends will be able to take me under her wings and give me a good, sit-down crash course in Social Media 101.

Here's an example of a nice suggestion from etymologie:

http://www.businessoffashion.com/2011/05/fashion-2-0-the-trouble-with-ipad-magazines.html

Another question, which of the following phones do I get?

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/devicesController/viewCompareDevices.do?item=phoneFirst

In other news, 6 days til I'm 25.