I was listening to NPR’s This I Believe during my archiving at work on Monday. If you’ve never caught that show on Weekend Edition, it’s a rip off of an Edward R Murrow show from the 1950’s that features one person each week, be it an everyday person or a celebrity, reading out an essay that reflects one of their great beliefs.

Recently on the show, a woman read out her essay about why “settling” wasn’t a bad thing. She asserted that settling only meant that: “a bird in the hand beats two in the bush.” She believed that a passionate life, a passionate marriage, a passionate career were all fairy tale goals put forth by the media to make you want to be better, slimmer, smarter, sexier.

While I wholeheartedly agree that a person is rarely made happy by basing a life around the “shoulds” that the sales-happy media vomits up, I don’t think that excuses a person from living their life with passion. It’s possible to be media literate enough to understand media manipulation, ignore it, and move past it. There are many people in this world who are creative enough and smart enough to invent their own ideals and goals. And they NEVER settle. If they choose a home, choose a lifelong partner, choose a family, choose a career, choose a life: they are planting roots. Unlike “settling,” roots are never stagnant. Strong roots generate expansion and growth, creating networks and canopies that stretch to encompass the whole of the land. They take and they give and they nurture and they grow strong.

I’ve always thought that “a bird in the hand beats two in the bush” is rancid advice. Why would you advise someone to hold fast to something when curiosity is buzzing and alive in them? Why would you clutch a measly bird in your sweaty fist when you could have an amazing adventure, exploring the bird-wild bush? Those who tromp and tramp off the beaten path are rich in the way the wealthy envy: they are rich in story and life.

Words like “settle” and sayings that equate your dreams, career, or partner with a tiny bird that you are desperately clinging to out of fear are outdated, dangerous models of thinking.

I believe that my generation can bring with it a new way of thinking, one that puts faith in the planting of organic, natural roots, and one that believes that fortune favors the brave.
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What would your “This I Believe” topic be?

::SHINGLES update::
Day 5 of SHINGLES. The boredom is more painful than the angry cluster of pox gnawing at my leg nodes. Movies consumed: 3. Books consumed: 1 1/2. Newspapers rifled through: 3. Blogs read: lots. Sketches made: 1. Journal entries: 2. Creative writing done: ha! Glasses of water/tea drank: countless.

Tomorrow, my step dad is still in town and going to be nearby (a quick, 1-hour train ride into Edinburgh). I think I’ll just saw my leg off and make sure I’m there to see him no matter what. I’m so bored at this point that I’ll need a lobotomy if I stay cooped up in the house any longer, and that is more painful than shingles, I hear. Plus, I am getting better. I don’t feel flu-like anymore. Just annoyed with clothes touching my intolerable leg. If only I lived in a nudist colony, life with my itchy leg would be better. Except a nudist colony in Scotland would be about the most hideous thing you can imagine: pale, potato-fed, gooseflesh. I think I’ll just stick to loose-fitting skirts, painkillers, and pajama pants.

Saturday I noticed a series of red bumps on my upper left thigh and showed them to Shaun with fascinated disgust; I thought I must have rolled over a spider in the night and in a struggle to live, Mr. Spider attacked my leg with bites. I hoped to soon notice super-powers emerging; the agility of an insect and the ability to shoot web out of my wrists. But then Sunday rolled around and instead of feeling like Spider Woman, I felt like I had a hang over, which is never a fun feeling but it especially sucks when you’ve not even had anything to drink the night before. The bites were swelling and turning purple-ish; the left side of my abdomen waned puffy, swollen and tender. “Must be some sort of allergic reaction to Scottish spiders combined with some gnarly menstrual cramps,” I thought. I slathered bug bite cream on my leg, took an ibuprofen, and spent much of the day napping. It hurt to walk.

Monday rolled around and the bumps seemed scabbier. That’s a good sign, right? I limped to work. Since my job is so sedentary lately, the day was fine. Except the bits where I had to walk; then it felt like someone was stabbing me in the tender, node-laden place where the front of my left leg joins my body. Ouchie. I fell to a fitful sleep at 7.30pm.

Today I woke up and called my doctor. My leg/abdomen hurt like a mutha, with the added fun of the chills, sweats, a migraine, and real live menstrual cramps. I described my problem to the GP over the phone and was whisked to an emergency appointment; not an easy thing to do when using National Healthcare.

The doctor looked at my leg and said, “Those aren’t bites. Those are shingles.” Immediately, I thought of something that looked like this…

…and passed out.

I passed out again when the doctor tried to tell me that I would not turn into a deformed chicken, but rather suffer from flu-like symptoms while a painful virus that looks sort of like chicken-pox formed in a band around a cluster of my nerves. GROSS! He said the word chicken. I passed out again.

I passed out a grand total of 5 times and left the doctors office a sweaty, shaking mess. I saw my hunkered reflection in a shop window on the way home and mistook myself for a heroin addict. But no. I just have SHINGLES, a virus that usually only affects people over 60. Immune System – what we’re you off doing while SHINGLES snuck into my body?!? Do your job, will ya?

Anyway, I’m gonna have shingles for up to two weeks. It could be shorter, but it shouldn’t be longer. I got a perscirption for painkillers so that it won’t feel like someone is stabbing me in the loin. I got a doctors note to be out of work for two weeks, but I’m hoping that I’m not out that long. That’s just weird and I get bored at home. I like reading and movie watching, but I also like running and walking and Frisbee playing and seeing friends and going to work and lots of things that you really don’t get any enjoyment out of when you have SHINGLES and it hurts just to exist in the world, let alone be mobile in it.

Okay. End of pity party.

The doctor was amazed that I waited so long to come in and that I’d been walking around on it. “You must have really strong muscles to move you through the pain,” he said. “I’m a runner,” I replied. And I was so, so thankful that I was.

I was less thankful that on my doctor’s note, the GP wrote the Latin name for Shingles, Herpes Zoster. Hello! Nobody wants to call in Herpes to work!!!! Isn’t it bad enough that I have to call in Shingles?!? I wanted to ask them to write a new one, without a word on it that implies that I have a VD, but I was about to pass out again, so I kept my mouth shut.
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Ever had shingles?

I’ve been digging up information on American literary theorist/philosopher Kenneth Burke this morning. Oftentimes, I come away from social situations deeply disturbed. Its difficult to explain, but I often feel like people’s minds are soft, like complacency is king.

This atrophy takes form in a variety of ways, but one particularly dangerous way is the American habit (see footnote) of limiting conversations to the identification of problems (“kids these days,” for example), without having the analytical skills or the articulation to move the conversation forward to explore all the many different contributing factors to why that issue exists, to why they perceive it as an issue, to what people are doing to amend the problem, to what works and does not work, ect. In other words, I am deeply disturbed that many, many Americans show zero interest in solving the world’s problems over a pint, over coffee, while breaking bread. It made me think “why don’t people sit down to a Burkean parlor anymore?” And then it made me think, “who is Burke anyway?” Thus, this morning’s research.

Anyway, I’m hoping that Kenneth Burke might be able to help me understand how to fix the “soft mind” issue. The societal fixedness on problems with no interest in creative solutions is horrifying to me; are we really in that much of a decline? I think we are. We are in dire need of a renaissance. And I think that my future Writing Centre can contribute to it.

Not sure if I’ve ever blogged about it in-depth before, but my long-term career goal is to open my own not-for-profit centre for writing and the arts. The past three years right out of college I’ve been working at not-for-profit cultural enterprises and writing centers to see how they work. I’ve been tutoring composition and teaching writing workshops. I’ve been taking courses in English as a Second Language. I think the next phase of my plan involves working as teacher to understand the need in a deeper way, to plant roots in my community in the way I will need to in order to operate successfully. I will get my masters in something like not-for-profit management or education policy. My centre will be built to last, it will make me feel like I’m contributing in the way I best know how.

I need to get my hands on Burke’s A Grammar of Motives, because I think it will totally help me in developing the pedagogy that my centre will operate on.

According to trusty-old Wikipedia (aka: take this info with a hearty grain of salt), Burke explains in a Grammar of Motives his belief that “language doesn’t simply “reflect” reality; it also helps select reality as well as deflect reality.” Special attention needs to be paid to giving people the very vernacular to be able to even dream of a solution, let alone communicate it and activate it.

Wiki goes on to state: “Burke pursued literary criticism not as a formalistic enterprise but rather as an enterprise with significant sociological impact; he saw literature as “equipment for living,” offering folk wisdom and common sense to people and thus guiding the way they lived their lives.” So true. So scary, since books and plays are now in such tight competition with films with flimsy scripts and video games with stories detached from emotion and any motive other than “kill and score points.”

Burke also has this big theory on something he calls Dramatism, where as the world is literally a stage; when humans respond to a situation, they are rationalizing it in terms of story. They react in a way that makes sense in that schematic. I’m not sure if I buy into this theory in full yet (I need to read the book first!), but I know that I actually think in those very terms; I am aware of Dramatism in my own motivations. I know if a decision feels right if it is the “story” I want to tell of my life. Making decisions feels very much like authoring to me.

Practice in authoring works of writing and works of art is a social enterprise not only in the creative product, but in the very act of practicing decision making skills, analytical thinking and creation. It combats the “soft mind.” So far, authoring and the teaching of it is the way that I can best contribute to the revolution, the much-needed renaissance. Because we can’t keep going the way we are going. The world needs to be awakened. We’ve been asleep for too long and bad things have happened while we slumbered.
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Do you notice the “soft mind” in your community? How do you combat it?

My little footnote:
You might have noticed that I’ve been labeling this as an American problem. This is not to slag off my fellow countrymen and women. It’s just because I have too little experience with the rest of the world (a year in Scotland does not give anybody that authority, least of all young, 25-year-old me) to nit pick at the cultural nuances of the rest of the world. I can say that I rarely encounter “soft minds” while conversing with Glaswegians (and I can even venture to say that this may be due to a culture that favors gathering at the pub to shoot the shit over watching television at home, isolated and alone), but the truth of the matter is that our friends and colleagues in Glasgow are academics, so of course there will be a different tone to our interactions.

Last night I was absolutely ravenous. Fiendish and teeth gnashing. I was unabashed and eager to surrender myself to the most worthwhile of all the seven sins: Gluttony.

Here’s why.

I am doing a lot of boring archival stuff post-festival. While I compile scans of news clippings all the livelong day, I like to listen to podcasts to keep my brain from atrophying. Yesterday at work, I listened to every single episode ever recorded of NPR’s Hidden Kitchen series. If you’ve never had the pleasure of catching this series, click here and dig it. Just try not to drool on your computer.

After hours of listening to stories about how beautiful foods shape our culture and strengthen our communities, I was inspired, amazed but most of all, hungry. The scanner started to look like a good snack. Mmmmm…technology. When the clock struck 5, I was out the door with a gorgeous grocery list formulating in my mind.

Dinner was spectacular, a real feast. We gobbled up goat cheese tortellini tossed with fresh basil, zucchini and cubetti di pancetta. We devoured a baguette, a beautiful ball of fresh mozzarella, and heaps of spinach/red pepper salad with balsamic vinegar. We drank a glorious red wine and finished with a simple, satisfying desert of walnut-stuffed dates drizzled with honey. We nibbled and munched and laughed and watched a spectacularly cheesy 1975 movie called Picnic at Hanging Rock on DVD.

I love my life. I am lucky to eat so well, to be loved so much. And its around the dinner table that I feel it most, that my heart feels gratitude. I’m not a person who prays in a traditional sense, but I do say grace in my heart at dinner. When I cook, I feel a tangible connection to each plant and beast that lived to feed me at dinnertime, and thankful to all of the farmers who’ve busted ass to make it all happen. I feel gratitude to the job that pays me enough to eat healthfully. I feel a commitment to eating locally (and organically, when possible) to sustain the environment in a way that will keep this abundance alive.

Loving food has come as a real surprise to me. As a kid, I hated eating; it meant I had to come inside from playing or stop my latest art project mid-stream. Not only were mealtimes interruptions, but also my taste buds were not mature enough to appreciate the complex, very healthy foods that my mom, a fantastic cook, whipped up. I like rice pilaf now, but as a kid it felt like maggots in my mouth. I eat at least one massive salad everyday as an adult (usually for lunchtime), but as a kid getting to the bottom of a small side of greens took an eternity. So I have few positive food memories.

There was the time at my dad’s house when I ate an entire package of strawberry wafers with my cousin Sheri before engaging in the most hard-core bed jumping session of all time. The result: a roomful of neon-pink puke.

Another time, I tried to hide my salad in a napkin at my mom’s house, instead of eating it all gone as instructed. I threw my napkin away with the trash, thinking I’d snuck out of veggie eating for the night. Imagine my surprise when I was called down to breakfast the next day to find my wilted, balled up salad remains waiting for me to gag on.

Once someone killed a bear and I was force fed a bear burger. Then there were the tragic pot lucks at my great grandma Pike’s church, where someone’s idea of taco salad was Doritos with 1,000 Island dressing and a few shreds of iceberg chucked in.

But then there were the times when my aunt Dianne noticed that my dad wasn’t feeding me properly when I’d go over to visit, and she’d make a meatloaf, just for me. I liked her meatloaf so much. I needed it.

I remember crunchy fish from my grandpa’s restaurant, dipped in thick, white tartar with relish stirred in. I remember my dad once cooking me a hot dog at the restaurant; it was cut down the centre, filled with cheese, and wrapped in bacon. He called it a Cheesy Weenie. I remember Grandma Render’s rice pudding, her weird fruit punch made with Vernors and sherbet, her fried Spam sandwiches. I remember the first time my mom made us English Curry, with loads of cream stirred in. She’d put the curry in one bowl and rice in another, laying out chicken, chopped peanuts, coriander, coconut, raisins, bananas and all sorts of yummy bits to add in on a separate serving tray.

So I guess I do have a big share of good food memories, but I’m still eager to create more of my own.
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What did you have for dinner last night? What is one of your favorite food memories?

::Random Tangent::
Tonight I am going to dinner with Tony (the dad who raised me), his new girlfriend, her cousins, their spouses and their children. I’ve not met the new girlfriend yet but hopefully the good food will make things smooth and easy. Who can be ill-at-ease with a bottle of Tempranillo and some hearty Scottish food, served sharing platter-style? Lets hope not me…

I knocked fists with him. “You rule for so many reasons,” I laughed. “Thanks. You too,” he said.

The Debut Authors Festival in Edinburgh is a pretty big deal. Writers and agents and publishers come for a two-day schmooze fest. Among many other talk-ey, workshop-ey things, two jam sessions for unpublished work happen over the course of the weekend. Authors enter a pool that is randomly chosen from to read their work in front of a captive audience and a panel of important literary types, from the BBC, Granta, The Sunday Herald arts and books editor, and so on. These plucky authors then get “live feedback” on their work, American Idol style. Does it sound like crucifixion to you? Me too. Shaun thought it sounded fun.

Originally, his name wasn’t one that was selected from the pool to read. But since so one told him officially that he hadn’t been chosen, Shaun-san thought he’d better contact them just to make sure they didn’t need anyone. Low and behold, someone cancelled. And a spot was opened.

At 7 pm, the readings began. About 8 out of the 14 readers read overly written, painful detective stories. One girl shared a fictionalized account of a Nazi princess that read only marginally better than a book report. One man burst out in song. A fascinating gothic horror drew me in. A fab story by a pretty girl my age made me smile. Few were appalling. Some were quite dazzling. And then Shaun read.

He’s shopping around a hilarious novella right now called Pizza Good Times. The characters are endearing and it is by far one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. Better yet, the humor sustains itself throughout, which is a tricky task for any writer. Laugh-out-loud descriptions are casually tossed out one after another for readers to stumble on, making you laugh without hitting you over the head with a heavy punch line. And Shaun reads with enthusiasm, cheer, and the un-cocky confidence that comes with knowing that you busted ass on something so it really is the best that you’ve got. The audience went from dead to roaring. Shaun’s manuscript physically woke some woman’s husband who had fallen asleep during the other readings; the poor bloke was laughing and wiping tears from his eyes. After Shaun finished, the man turned to his wife and said, “That was bloody brilliant!”

The judges went away to convene. The prize was a bottle of whisky and the chance to have your manuscript hand-delivered and recommended to agents by the panel of judges. Pizza Good Times has already visited a few agents this spring, some expressing keen interest but no commitment so far, others letting it get dusty on their desks.

While they convened, I listened to the crowd ask each other, “who is your winner?” And I couldn’t help but feeling a huge surge of pride in my chest when, from the crowd, praise for Shaun bubbled up: “I’d pick that pizza guy. He was great!” “I like that one about pizza.” “Yeah—that American with the pizza story.”

The judges came back. And in true American Idol fashion, they praised the Gothic horror story first and then gave Shaun the winning prize for Pizza Good Times.

As my partner shook hands with impressed, important people on stage, I shook my head and smiled. He wasn’t even supposed to have been there. Thanks to his tenacity, his gentle persistence, his warm, open approach to the world and to new (scary!) experiences: he won. And its those qualities that make me choose to share a life with him.

Tonight, he’s reading at another Festival here in Glasgow. There are no prizes at this one besides the most important one, exposure, but we’re going with friends, some who are also reading, and it promises to be a great night out.

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What qualities in another make you swoon?

He emerged from the womb a red, howling ball of fury. His head was egg shaped and I’d wanted a sister anyhow. Mom brought him home and I got a good look at him and loved him simply, instinctually, right away. He’d do.

He came to my girl scout meeting once, dressed in a furry, leopard printed winter-time baby outfit with footies. I told everyone he was half-cat. I was almost seven. My nose had green snail-ers.

When he got older we mashed our faces against his playpen. His hair was blonde and curly and his skin was warm but stank like baby. When you changed him you had to try not to dry heave ‘cuz you might then accidentally stick him with the pin. The Dydee Diaper man came to our house weekly to collect bags of his used-up nappies.

I got a game for Christmas one year: a soft helmet with Velcro stitched on and felt balls that you’d throw at your opponents head. The winner had the least amount of balls on their heads at game’s end. We played that in the living room, laughing and drooling and galloping on the carpet.

He baked bread once, on his own with a kids cooking video that he liked playing in the kitchen. He took apart a bike and put it back together. He changed the oil in the car. When his friends would come over to spend the night, he’d cook them pancakes for breakfast. He knew how things worked, how to do things. He always knew.

“Funk-ay the monk-ay oolay oolay oolay.” That’s what he would sing with our youngest brother. Together, they were known as The Boys.

The Boys made tapes with our massive 1980’s home video camera. They ate apples on screen and discussed the curse of ‘apple gasses.’ They put mom’s nylons on their faces and arms and squirmed around as Nylon Man, giddy. They stuffed their clothes full of pillows and blankets and rolled down the stairs bellowing, “Fat Boys!” My friend and I were going to use the camera one weekend, and we found these on a tape we were going to use. We couldn’t stop laughing. We played it over and over and over. They were funny. They were perfect. We loved them.

When I left home at 18, the oldest of the boys was 11. When I think of him, he is still a little boy with a smooth face and a devilish grin and grass stained knees. But he looks like this now.

My brother Anthony graduated high school last week. His graduation party was a celebration and a half. It was a struggle for him to stay in school and once he made the decision to do it, it was a struggle to graduate. Like many super smart people, especially those with an inclination towards hands-on activities, high school was not a particularly productive place for my brother. He thrived in non-traditional learning environments. He built a house this year. From scratch. He is amazing.

Currently, my brother is in Florida for a month, attending a certification course in audio sound systems. I can see him with his own custom shop one day, pimping cars. His design-sense is as razor sharp as his engineering and technical abilities. He is reliable and has made a name for himself on local construction crew and in his courses as one of the hardest workers that anyone has ever met. He is in love with a girl I can’t wait to get to know better. Like I said, I always wanted a sister.
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Did one of your loved ones graduate this spring?

Here is a picture of me at work.

Here are some happy weird-os.

More weird-os.

Here is a monkey in Starbucks.

Here is a man. No – a monkey. A monkey man!

To get a mask of your own and to see why my job involves so much monkey-ing around, click here.
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How is your workday going?

Day two of getting back into my life is going good so far. This morning I ate granola at the table like a normal human being. And I got a chance to lounge in my pajamas and look through some of the great pictures we’ve been taking lately. I thought I’d share a few with you Xanga peeps. Enjoy!
 

From 12 – 20 May, Shaun’s mom, aunt, and sister were in town. They swam all the way across the ocean to kick it with us. Very nice people. Very good swimmers. Here’s the gang showing off their sculptures at The Scottish Show 07 opening on 17 May; this was a major exhibition of the festival that I work for and it was cool for them to see the big, beautiful craziness of it all.

While the family was here, Shaun and I drove them to the East cost of Scotland to relax in the gorgeous sea side town of St. Andrews. Here is the boy and his ma. Shiny.

Sometimes I like to lay down with my head  hanging  off of jutting cliffs while Shaun takes a picture of me from above as I pretend to fall into the abyss. It is very funny; while feining horror, my nostrils flare to startling widths. They are almost as big as my mouth!

                                            AHHHHHHHHHH!

                                            NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Besides the abyss, St. Andrews also has an old cathedral and castle. This is the cathedral jutting into a dramatic Scottish sky.

This is me pretending to slay vampires.

We also went to the Scottish Wool Centre, which might seem like a drag, but actually it is da bomb. The sheep dogs do tricks and round up animals. The sheep baaaa like they are dry heaving and the whole thing is really funny and sort of smelly.

LOOK AT MY OWL!!!
It’s a Tawny Owl named Furby that I met at the Wool Centre. I love him. I want to cuddle him. But like Twin Peaks taught me, “The owls are not what they seem.” So I did ‘ne cuddle. Just looked.

We also stopped by Loch Lomond one sunny afternoon. I have lots of pictures of the Loch but this one of knarly roots was my favorite.

This is what Scottish people call a Hairy Coo.

This is just a cute picture of Shaun and I waiting for the bus in Chicago. Its from last year and it reminded me of how little the sun shines on this green little island. We were so golden in Chicago! And I am a liberal applier of sun block and a seeker of shade! Here in Scotland we are the color of dough.
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How are you lounging this Sunday morning?

Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Stirling. Round and round the country I went, writing and editing copy past dinner, managing the design process and print production through lunch. I traveled, hauling banners, set dressings, flyers, postcards, and wobbly wheel-ey suitcase stuffed with t-shirts to sell. I wiped the sweat from my brow and hosted events. I shook hands, I smiled pretty, and I went home knackered at midnight with an eNewsletter still to write for the next day, with an email in-box about to burst with public queries and internal crises to solve. I physically hauled hundreds of boxes of print and massive Santa-bags of mail; I rolled enough posters to give a person carpel tunnel. I answered three phones at the same time and when I hung up and they rang again, I answered and I answered and I answered. I sorted Festival Guide distribution bottlenecks on Sunday mornings, I coordinated staffing from hotel rooms, I de-duplicated databases from bed at 1 in the morning. I met brilliant minds from around the globe. I discussed my ambitions towards social entrepreneurship (the writing & arts centre I want to open by my 40th birthday, if not sooner) with the head of strategic planning at one of the biggest companies in the world. I listened to dozens of really engaging thinkers, designers and business people that made me investigate my own ideas and goals and options and investments with a whole new gusto. I got to know this country and its cultural scene in a way I never would have otherwise. I worked so closely with my team for so many hours on end, in so many stressful situations that we became a family; comfortable in a way that you rarely get with your colleagues, in a way I never experienced before. I grew and I grew and I grew. And now its over. The Festival ends Sunday.

I get my husband back. I get my friends back. I get to cook again. I get to run again. I get to write again. I get to sleep and to see movies and read blogs and books and go for walks and do things that normal people do. I get lunch breaks. I get to pee if I have to. I get to think about what comes next.

I am on contract through 21 September. There is a big evaluation process to do and a conference to market. It’s work, but not in the crazy, life-consuming way it has been. And a change is a brewin’.

There are two very real possibilities afloat right now that we are exploring.

Possibility One: Back to Chicago
We like it there. The cultural scene is alive and wholly sustainable but the attitude is working class. Sure, you have rich boys and trixies, but you live in a town that knows well enough to frown on that entitled attitude. The city is diverse and the food is great (I miss real burritos!). Our networks are strong there; we could easily find interesting, satisfying work. Most importantly, we have friends there. I can imagine growing herbs and veggies in a community garden plot with my friend Caitlin, visiting the polar bears in Lincoln Park Zoo with Squee and doing the monthly Critical Mass bike ride with Michelle. I smile to think of running on the lakeshore as the sun comes up over it, I grin to think of riding my bike to work again. I like the proximity to my mom and my family; the Amtrak ride from Chicago to Detroit will feel like nothing after having an entire ocean separating us for a while.

At a design talk earlier this week, album-cover designer Peter Saville said: “The good ones don’t leave home to make more money. They leave to learn more. They know money will happen for them later, but that their youth is the time to invest in the experiences that will get them there.”

Chicago was hard on us for the first few years, as it would be hard on anyone with as few economic resources as we had with Shaun fresh out of college, working an entry level job to pay for our rent, bills and food while I was finishing my undergraduate degree, working only part-time as a barista. My first year out of college, I pieced together full-time work out of two part-time jobs with no benefits, no paid time off, no job security. But once I was promoted and working full-time that security and few thousand dollars more a year provided a whole new world where we could relax and not freeze to death in the winter for fear of the heating bill, where we could afford to eat three meals a day (even meat sometimes!), where we could replace clothes with holes and frayed edges, where we could even take a trip to visit friends every now and again. The city softened, no longer harsh. Soft Chicago is what we’ll go back to.

We don’t have jobs lined up in Chicago. Although we’ve both been applying to jobs in the states (Shaun rigorously, me casually), we have yet to have any luck. It is still early (we’re not planning to go back until late September for an October start). And it is really hard to find a job in a place you are not presently living. We always try to secure work before we move to a place, but its so far proven to be a waste of time; we’ve had more luck just keeping our eyes peeled for opportunities prior to relocating to a place and applying for things once we get there. Plus, Shaun is a writer. He’d make a great editor or instructor, but at the end of the day, those are day jobs. He needs a day job that is conducive to his writing. I am me. I do what grabs my interest and leaves my conscious light. I am trying to get as much experience in not-for-profit work as I can so that I’ll be best prepared to open my own once the time is ripe, but I’m not restricting myself to that by any means. We’d just move and see what happens. And good things will happen.

Possibility Two: Stay in Glasgow for Three More Years.
Shaun has been invited into the PhD programme at Glasgow University. The programme really appeals to him and he’s had so much growth in his writing and the business of his writing by taking this year out to study it exclusively and intensively for his MLit. What could another three years bring besides more good and more growth and more opportunities? We both know that you don’t need a PhD to be a good writer. But we also both know Shaun and how he thrives and grows and is at his best, producing his best work in a rigorous, academic setting.

And I like it here. We’ve made such a great group of friends and such a strong community that I smile to think of more dinners with them, more beach trips. We’d invest in a tent, as we’d have three whole summers to pitch it in the highlands in, dreaming big dreams and telling ghost stories around the campfire with friends. We’d have three more years of a close proximity to the rest of Europe and a better exchange rate from British pound to Euro than the US dollar can presently offer; we’d spend summer weeks exploring caves on the Greek islands, autumn nights in Iceland’s glacial hot springs, spring afternoons biking through the French countryside.

Our visas could be easily arranged and we both could work in Scotland without a problem. This Festival that I’m just finishing up had such a warm reception, despite all odds, that I know finding another job would be fine. I’ve made a strong, good impression on those I work with. I could even get my contract extended again if the newly elected government decides we’re having another Festival. But I’m really interested in trying something new. I like what I did. But it was so massive and so consuming that I have yet to talk to one person who worked on it that is interested in a round two. We all seem to be happy to have done it and happy to try something new.

Plus, a strange agitation at American society has wormed its way into my love’s heart lately. I too have been offended and horrified by the massive shit the American government has squeezed out onto the sacred rites of Habeas Corpus and the way that American media encourages apathy and ignorance, but Shaun’s unrest seems to go deeper than mine in ways that I don’t fully grasp. While I sincerely do not think that this is a motivating factor in his contemplation as to accept the PhD programme offer, I know that it strains him to think of going back to a culture that he finds truly abrasive. I happen to like US culture for the same reasons that I hate it: it’s big and brash and unapologetic. To me, this is the source of all the good that comes from it and all the bad. I love complicated, tangled and messy things like that. They fascinate me. I like to be outraged, I thrive on debate, I like to shout my descent from the mountain top (okay, its really just a soap box). Just speculating here, but I think this might be too much noise for Shaun. It grates on him. Things can be more civilized in the UK, they can be gentler.

So. Those are the options. Both are good. We could have both! Live here for three years, then move to Chicago. We could have neither, depending on if a cool opportunity rears its head elsewhere. The map is in front of us and we are navigating, trying to negotiate getting from point A to point B while still enjoying the scenery and stopping to see weird, funny side-shows along the way. Its tricky and its fun and its ours.

No matter what we do, we’ll be home in late September/early October to visit family and to attend my mom’s wedding. She is marrying a man who makes her smile and glow like the shiny star that she is and we wouldn’t miss it for the world. I miss everybody and I know this: no matter where we live in the world from now on, I’m going to try to never let homesickness get the best of me again. More visits, more phone calls, more, more, more. Because I do miss people, they are such a big part of me, no matter where I am.
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So how about you? What are you deciding on lately?