My friends Billy and Adam are the rap duo SNAKES. They recently won the ECNY Award for Best Musical Act. They are funny and talented. (Yup, they’re also in Harvard Sailing Team.) And I’m in their new video!
You can download their kick-ass album HERE for FREE.
Just before I quit my job back in October I got an email from my good friend Geoff, who has a 5-year-old goofball son named, Otto.
Geoff told me he and his wife, Jenny, were in a bind. They needed someone to pick their kiddo up from school once or twice a week, hang out with him for an hour, and drop him off to one of his parents. Geoff was very sweet and told me he realized this might not be how I wanted to spend my time now that I wasn’t working at a desk job, but that if the commitment was of any interest to me, they could really use my help because they were having trouble finding someone.
Little did Geoff know, I love kids so I jumped at the chance. A little extra cash + play time with a munchkin? YES. I was so down for that and flattered that he trusted me.
I’ve spent the last seven months hanging out with little Otto a couple times a week. We go to the park, we go to the bookstore, we get ice cream, sometimes we get french fries or pizza. (Shh! Don’t tell the parents.) He loves Artichoke Pizza, which means he’s one bad ass New Yorker.
Basically, we have a great ol’ time together. He has a lot to say about life, and I love to listen.
Next week will be my last week with the little guy! Geoff’s schedule is changing and he will be able to pick his kid up from school every day – a delightful revolution in the world of a Dad, I’m imagining.
I will miss Otto, but I hope to get to see him from time to time. If only so he can play my “phone game.” He’s obsessed with Brickbreaker on my Blackberry. “I don’t know why I’m so curious about that phone game! I just love it!”
Yesterday he said out of the blue, “I know why you’re sad.”
And I said, “Am I sad?”
He said, “Yeah my mom told me we’re over soon.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, “I am really sad about that.”
Then he got distracted. “Hey! My name is on that building!”
And just like that, our sentimental moment was over. 5 is a fantastic age.
I stepped out on the front stoop yesterday to use the phone – because my blackberry has quit working in our apartment (FABULOUS!) – and look who decided to join me.
We have them trained not to go beyond the stoop, but I have a feeling they consider that to be a very flimsy rule. They’re cats. They majored in flimsy rules in college.
We had a fun Harvard Sailing Team show tonight at a pretty awesome bar/performance space in Brooklyn called Littlefield.
Swords! improv opened for us, and they were fantastic, as always.
One of their new videos was just featured on Gawker. I love this video! Lucas Kavner (who is also my Baldwins teammate!) is so uniquely funny and Bradford is brilliant too. Click here to watch their video.
While we’re on the subject of videos, here’s one of my favorites from Harvard Sailing Team. It features Adam Lustick and Sara Taylor, who are also both hilarious.
This is so great! Grace N’ Michelle are awesome!
Our comedian friends Brett Wean and Ben Masten are launching a new “culinary themed variety show” and Fanny & Jane is their first guest! We’re so excited.
Also featured this Sunday night at 8pm will be award-winning Hip Hop Comedy Duo (and two of our best friends), SNAKES, award-winning master improv team, Centralia, and live music, snacks and jokes!
Faryn and I will be showing everyone how to make one of our favorite Fanny & Jane specialties. Come for the variety show, stick around for the free sweet treats!
Sunday
8pm
The Peoples Improv Theater
154 W. 29th btwn 6&7
$5
After a successful first month as a writer for Gather.com, I was so excited when they recently told me they’re happy with my work and asked me to help pilot a new Home & Garden program on their site! Yay!
Right now, I write Food/Seasonal stories, and I also write Women’s Lifestyle stuff. I haven’t ever written a ton about home decor, design, or outdoor stuff – there are many more capable home designers out there than I am – but when Gather asked me to help pilot the program, I knew I could certainly give it a whirl. The “keywords” relating to Home & Garden articles hit on a variety of topics, from “apartment design ideas” to “dinner party menu ideas” to “vegetable gardening for beginners,” and all imaginable topics in between. So I’m really excited (and honored) to have the opportunity to learn more about that stuff, try out some ideas myself, and write articles about all of it.
The experience, overall, of writing for Gather these last few months has been a good one. (And no, I am in no way compensated for saying any of this, it’s just my personal opinion and experience.) I am so lucky to have found this gig, because my bank account really needed the extra supplementary income. And I didn’t realize it at the time, but my creative brain really needed the new energy. I have been a writer since I was a kid – something I’ve talked about many times on this blog – and it’s no surprise that I turned to writing this blog to help boost myself up and out of my Corporate Job Rut a year and a half ago. I’m someone who processes things through writing about them.
So having the chance to write for a living is something I’ve always dreamed I’d get to do, something I’ve often (wrongly) doubted I’d ever have a chance to do, and something I’m very grateful to have found. It’s also provided me some mental space and clarity with Fanny & Jane, and an opportunity to let the bakery grow and change at its own pace – which feels more comfortable to me than forcing it to fit into whatever mold or direction I hope it will.
I’m feeling very content lately, but also very antsy. It reminds me of being a little kid – when you want to fast forward your life to find who you will be and how things will look when you’re an adult. I am dreaming of business trips around the country, weeks spent on location shooting something, traveling for research. I’m dreaming of vacations to interesting places – all the photos I’ll take and cuisines I’ll try.
(Speaking of different cuisines, my dear friend Marina just got back from a business trip to South Korea, of all places. She’s literally a celebrity there now, if you can believe it. She starred in a feature film a while back that just opened a film festival over there last month. She had to buy a fancy gown, was flown in to attend press conferences, walk the red carpet, and schmooze with the fans. She took it all in stride and came back with amazing stories to tell. I’m so proud of her – just had to share that.)
The point is, I’m dreaming of what is possible and what’s to come.
In that vein, you’re probably going to see some changes coming soon to follow my bliss. My personal experience will still be the central thread of this site. After all, sharing my story is why I started this blog to begin with, why it’s grown, and it will be a key piece of how it continues. But there’re a lot of other things I’d love to write about and explore too.
I’m not sure exactly what that will mean or how things will end up, but I’ve been having some meetings about where to take this site and where my creative impulses lie, and I’m so excited about what’s possible. That’s all I’ll say for now, so let’s just see what happens!
It’s a gloomy, cloudy, windy Mother’s Day here in NYC. I slept for 13 hours last night, after two days of lotsa work with Harvard Sailing Team (which was, as always, fun, exciting and exhausting), but now I’m feeling sluggish and a little under the weather. So I’m going to take this day to relax, rest, and snuggle in with the cats. And maybe I’ll make some notes and do some daydreaming about what’s to come!
The photos in this post, by the way, are a handful of older, random photos I’ve taken in the last couple years.
(p.s. One more thing – speaking of what’s to come, my web friend Kathleen, has recently made over her blog and I love her new site! Check it out. Yay, Kath!)
Look who has been secretly eating the leaves of these tulips I just bought. I discovered her this morning.
I have been adoring my kitties lately – what else is new – and also my boyfriend, who is my best friend. Awwww, cheesy and sweet, etc. Spring is here, the light pours into our living room in the morning, we both work from home and we make breakfast together and we have our morning rituals with our cats and life is good.
What else? I will turn 30 six months from today. Yikes! Please be prepared to roll your eyes at the frequency with which I might mention that I’m about (“about”) to turn 30 over the next few months. I am probably going to be one of those people. I guess I thought I’d never turn 30, that it wouldn’t happen to me. I know, I know, it’s not a big deal, it’ll be great, blah blah blah. Just let me have my mini drama over it.
I’m with Harvard Sailing Team on Long Island right now. The two members of our team who are living in LA right now are back in New York for the weekend. We did two shows today, had a couple rehearsals, and now we’re out in the burbs tonight and tomorrow. We’re shooting a video and working on some other scripts and projects that are in the works.
Long day. I’m beat, but happy and loving spending time with my friends.
You guys, I’m exhausted. Since Kevin and I got back from Chicago last week we have both been going non-stop.
It dawned on me the other day – this first year of having quit my job is going fabulously so far, I could not have imagined it would work out the way it has – but once it’s over, I think I will look back on it as a hard year too. Sometimes, it’s hard.
There’s a certain sense of pressure to make it all work, to succeed, to accomplish this thing I set out to do. Of course, I’m already doing it, so there’s no sense dwelling in places that aren’t happening now, but we all know that’s easier said than done.
I am so lucky to have so much support and unconditional faith from my mom, my stepdad, my boyfriend, my friends, my cousins, my aunt and uncle, even my therapist. I am a lucky young lady. And I would not be able to do this all without their undying encouragement.
I don’t feel pressure from them to succeed, interestingly. The pressure is from the inside out. I know this life – one I’ve built for my own fulfillment – is possible. So I try to prove it to myself daily.
Even though the next month, with all of its unknowns, always lurks around the corner, I’ve got to remember to check in with where I am right now. I’ve been pleasantly surprised so far, so there’s no reason to assume that won’t keep happening.
I’ve been working long hours and I’m tired. I go non-stop most days. I lay on the couch at night for maybe 30 minutes, if that, before I pick up the next task or project that I work on until early in the morning. These aren’t complaints, just observations. Nobody else has created this but me, so it must be how I work best. Better to turn off the judgment.
This tired is a good kind of tired, though. Tired to the bone from having worked hard for what I want.
You guys. I’m tired and I need a haircut. Otherwise, all is well and I’m looking forward to falling into my bed tonight, knowing that my life today looks more like I’ve always wanted it to look than it did 7 months ago when I was still working at my boring desk job.
The world has been racing and whirring around me and past me for the last ten days. More has happened in this short amount of time than occured in my life in the entire months of January and February combined. Hmm, that might be an exaggeration, but that’s definitely how I feel. I’m not sure if it’s slowing down quite yet – plenty of stuff looms including my kitchen is a mess and I’m desperate to exercise. But tonight, I will sleep well.
And tomorrow is a new, beautiful day.
follow my bliss 