Collected resolutions.

In no particular order and attributed to no one in particular for these purposes…

- Be less judgmental

- Get out of debt (for real this time)

- Quit smoking

- Get a job

- Prove that cigarette smoking is healthy in the New England Journal of Medicine

- Get married (just kidding!)

- Get a divorce (within reason… welcome to America)

- Be better about posting things of worth to my blog

- Listen to my heart

- Stop picking on [my boyfriend] for his clothes and oversized jackets

- Quit fucking smoking

- Get a job

- Keep things I’m proud of going (maintain)

- Figure it out (!!)

- Stop taking work so personally– less anxiousness and terror

- Continue to grow

- Live fearlessly

(an aside: I have no idea what the above picture was doing on my phone. I think it might have something to do with being intoxicated and feeling sorry for myself. And maybe a little bit curious about what happens to people’s taste when they get engaged: does it disappear overnight like their ability to make out with randoms on New Year’s and go to sleep when the sun comes up…?)

Sayonara, 2008.

Love ya, Linds.

I want this kind of happiness.

I know, I know.

I need to update my blog more than twice a season. I’m bugged about it by needling, annoying (very well-intentioned) friends nearly every day. But c’mon, people, things change. I needed a creative outlet like I needed air when I started this thing in January. I felt like I was dying a slow death working for lawyers and living in a big house on a hill. I was aging like a figure from an Edgar Allen Poe tale– spirited and sprightly one minute, withered and sallow the next. I got my culture and creative fix through a computer screen and stack of magazines, and spit it back out in the form of private verbal explosions and the sometimes blog. Unsurprising to anyone who knows me, it ultimately wasn’t enough. As that great sage Yoda might have said, “learn one must but live must one as well.” So I moved back to New York, got a demanding but very cool job, a bright and airy apartment above the beautiful mess and felt like I was again a fleshy, bloody cell in the vein of the City. The importance of the blog waned as the urgency of the job waxed. There was less desperate need to see and do (create) since seeing and doing became a normal part of my life. I was part of it again.

Well, yes and no.

The great and crippling thing about New York is exactly its bounty of possibility. There’s so much to do but you’re never really doing enough of it, are you? It’s enough to keep you up at night. Part of me craves that activity, wants to be in the thick of it, out meeting new people, seeing incredible things, having random adventures, collecting experiences, down the rabbit hole I tumble. And then writing about it, breathe it in and breathe it out. Constant pursuit. It’s an inextricable part of what makes Kelly Kelly. It’s why I had to leave San Francisco. And the other part of me is never happier than inside on a rainy Sunday (or solo Saturday night, as was the case yesterday– those nights both nourish and terrify me, I simultaneously relish them and am wracked with fear and guilt that I should be out Doing) with a couple books, a dozen meaty magazines, a pot of coffee, an innocuous Pandora station, a completely nonsensical French film that makes my brain hurt. It becomes an exercise in gluttonous consumption, see how much I can soak up, stuff in my brain in a single sitting. An intellectual Thanksgiving. This is the me that has always just wanted to lose herself in a trance of learning. No output, all intake. And these two parts – the collector/creator and the learner – are in near-constant violent opposition with each other.

Which is a long-winded way of getting closer to explaining the lapse. The collector/creator has been busy with work and traipsing through New York and any time left over has been greedily snatched up by that curious, cerebral little girl with her nose in a book.

So no promises for now, but I do feel another change coming. I had a birthday recently (28, holy crap), New Years is coming up, we’ll soon have a bright and shiny new president in office. So many arbitrary reasons to shake things up and tip the scales back over in favor of abundant honest expression. Stay tuned…

I guess I should learn how to darn a sock.

Darling Boyfriend sent this charming little chart to me yesterday. Evidently, I would be approximately the worst wife ever. I send shirts missing buttons to the tailor, go to church only for the odd wedding or funeral, have chronically chilly feet and ‘dress’ for breakfast in yoga pants and flip flops, which I would doubt counts in my favor. I guess I’d earn a few points for being quick to bed, loving children and making a mean Velvetta queso for those unexpected guests… but where are the merits for hating chick flicks and loving beer?

Like a foot rub and a lap full of puppies.

At the end of a long weekend of unpacking and holy grail shopping I finally got to enjoy a beer (or 2… okay, 3) in a frosty glass from the big chair in the corner. Wet hair, a cozy robe, a good book (Falling Man, Don Delillo) and All Was Good.

Home sweet 5th floor walk-up.

My moment of eco-genius came when I posted our many boxes and garbage bags full of paper and bubblewrap for free on Craigslist and Freegans, effectively saving myself 10 trips down the stairs, helping a handful of other broke movers out and bettering the environment in one fell swoop. Now if I could just figure out where to put everything that was in the boxes…

Employment! (of the full-time kind!)

Ever wondered how to design a press kit?

Originally uploaded by asthmatic

Why leave the Good Life behind on the west coast? A super cool new job, for one. I just finished my first week at Wolff Olins, a global brand consultancy most recently in the press for their 2012 Olympics logo but also known for tons of other groundbreaking work like the New Museum identity (press kit pictured above), the creation of (PRODUCT) RED, Wamu’s brand idea and identity and the new NYC logo (though NOT responsible for the mis-execution on the sides of taxicabs all over the city):

I am so happy!

Six little words.

six word storyOriginally uploaded by zen

Very Short List tipped me off to a collection of a different kind of short stories yesterday: those made up of only 6 words. Inspired by Hemmingway’s “For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” the editors of Smith magazine asked contributing writers (“famous and obscure”) to submit 6-word memoirs, resulting in the collection Not Quite What I Was Planning. The sharp, pithy little memoirs (“After Harvard, had baby with crackhead,” “Found true love, married someone else,” Steven Colbert’s “Well, I thought it was funny”) made me wonder: how would my life read boiled down to 6 words? Maybe “Got it together in the end” or “Learned to stop thinking so much.” Hopefully not “Wore heart on sleeve, got screwed.”

Good friends.

Good friends insist that you stay the night in their cozy Brooklyn brownstone instead of going back to your sterile corporate apartment after drinking 100 bottles of wine and pouring your heart out over existential crisis #872.

Good friends sneak out in the morning while you’re still sleeping and return with a new toothbrush and warm chocolate croissants for you to nibble in borrowed pjs while watching Inside the Actors Studio.

Good friends have girlfriends who will get down on their hands and knees on a dirty restaurant floor  to look for your lost lip gloss because “it’s a great color on you!” (good friends ARE those girlfriends!)

Good friends don’t laugh when “This Modern Love” comes on the restaurant stereo and you start silently crying into your wine glass.

Good friends put you in a cab and call 10 minutes later to make sure you made it home okay.

Good friends say they want to hang out the next day and don’t mind when “hanging out” turns into slobbering and snotting all over their Italian cashmere sweater. 

Good friends walk you out in their socks and show infinite patience when good-bye turns into a half-hour conversation by the elevator (“nope we’re good, thanks, we’ll take the next one”).

I have such good friends.