Jul 02 2014
4 Comments
Travelling, Wassup USA?

What you don’t know about this Chicago suburb will in no way surprise you.

You might be familiar with the saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” A lesser known version of that phrase is, “When life throws you a Chicago hurricane that strands you in Evanston, IL for an evening, you might as well stay there the next day and judge / be jealous of everyone.” This is the version that happened to me.

Evanston is a Chicago suburb exclusively populated by people without any problems, beautiful churches made from white stone, homes that look like English cottages, and a creepy amount of trees. With a population of 74,000 (as of 2010), and a leaf count of just over 3 billion, Evanston is the home of Northwestern University (also the city’s largest employer), and the Grosse Point Lighthouse (on the National Register of Historic Places.)

I had the whole day to prowl around and figure out this wild suburb. You will not be surprised by what I found.

Here’s the low down on Evanston and its people:

dog-walking

People walk their dogs.

People leave their stuff outside when they go inside Brothers K Coffee to get something to drink.

They leave their stuff unattended.

They trust strangers. Even me.

They trust strangers.

They play badminton with their kids on the front lawn. (See lower left corner. Disregard my face. It's hard to take pictures behind you with an iPad.)

They play badminton with their kids on the front lawn. (See lower left corner. Disregard my face. It’s hard to take pictures behind you with an iPad while you’re trying to not look like a creep.)

They still use the word ethnic. I didn't know that was allowed.

They still use the word ethnic.

They have breakfast with their high school aged son and some of his engineering friends who are in a summer camp at Northwestern while a woman (me) sitting alone behind them eavesdrops on their entire conversation.

They have breakfast with their high school aged son and some of his engineering friends who are in a summer camp at Northwestern while a woman (me) sitting alone behind them eavesdrops on their entire conversation.

They enjoy a good font, especially this one that is popular with Northwestern University and Ye Olde English Pubs.

They enjoy a good font, especially this one that is popular with Northwestern University and Ye Olde English Pubs.

Even the street rodents are adorable and picturesque.

Even the street rodents are adorable and picturesque. (Those are rabbits.)

They have housing to spare.

They have housing to spare.

Which is shocking considering the world-famous board game night at the wine shoppe just around the corner.

Which is shocking considering the free board game night at the wine shoppe just around the corner.

All in all, Evanston seems like a pretty swell place to be. Especially if you like ethnic festivals, trusting strangers, and rabbit meat.

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Jun 30 2014
20 Comments
How to do what you love, Travelling, Wassup USA?

I quit my job to take my hobbies full time. Here’s what happens now.

Future daytime improv star

Future daytime improv star

On June 27th, 2014 I quit a (relatively) cushy corporate job to pursue my hobbies as a career, these hobbies being writing, improv, comedy, acting and amateur clowning. Many people congratulated me on this decision and told me I was brave (read: foolish). Maybe they’re right because the truth is I don’t really know how make this happen. I just needed to do something.

Two days later, I left the Bay Area bubble for a 7 week journey that will take me across the Eastern third of the United States, starting in Chicago and continuing through Nashville, Atlanta, North Carolina (Asheville area), Washington DC, Boston, NY and then Oklahoma City (Edmond area) on a miniature “Wassup USA” tour. I fully expect to get scurvy and lose a couple of teeth on this journey which can only be described as low-budget.

I’m doing this, the quitting and the traveling and the clowning, to test the hypothesis that there are no rules in life and no limit to what I can dream up and do, that nothing is in my way except for my own fear, and it is a formidable opponent that has some great arguments for why my dreams are a bunch of hogwash.

“Why should you be so lucky that you get the chance to quit a pretty good job and pursue comedy for a career? Not everyone has the chance to go after jobs they find meaningful – why should you? You shouldn’t look for meaning in your work, so why don’t you just do something that will get you a good income so you can be secure and figure out a way to work in your passions at nights and on weekends? Improv, really? Can’t you be passionate about something else? What if you fail?”

There’s some truth in these doubts, but at the end of the day they are just fear disguised as practicality, and I can’t convince myself to listen to them anymore. Not yet. But they are interesting questions.

In the next phase of my life and as I’m doing my hobbies full-time-ish, I want to explore these questions of meaning and career, who gets to follow their dreams and why, and who cares about this and does it even matter.

And for the next 50 days, I want to see what’s up with the USA. I want to do an Alexis de Toqueville “Democracy in America” except more along the lines of “Drevets in America.” It’ll just be me, in America, with my vision and dreams along with everyone else’s. Nothing much has changed except my morning commute and my inbox count.

So….what’s up USA?

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May 14 2014
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Modern Life, One minute read

30 Ways to Measure My Life, and Maybe Yours Too

You might be familiar with the poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. If not, you should read it here or listen to me read it here (yes, this happened.) It’s a beautiful poem, and one that might make you think. This is an excerpt I particularly like:

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.

On a related note, I recently started taking calcium every day in the form of a chocolate chew. I take one every morning, after I drink my coffee so my mouth is warm and it makes the chocolate flavor taste better. Every day a chew, every day a wrapper – a little trace of my life. It got me thinking – what else could I measure my life in? What are the other little traces? So you can read them below, and some are measurable and some are less so. As an added challenge, I drew some of these things.

I have measured out my life with:

  1. Calcium chew wrappers calcium_chew_wrappers
  2. Empty coffee cups 
  3. Used strands of floss
  4. Birthday cards
  5. LinkedIn connections
  6. Pounds gained and lost over the past yearsscale
  7. GPA
  8. Salary
  9. Facebook friends and tagsfacebook_friend
  10. Words written
  11. Email drafts
  12. Journal entries
  13. Ink stains on the bed
  14. Kitkat wrappers found in bed.
  15. Boarding passes
  16. Ticket stubs
  17. Number of pimples popped pimple
  18. Number of emails answered
  19. Protein bar wrappers 
  20. Burned matches
  21. Takeaway boxes
  22. Onion peelsonion_peel
  23. Shopping bags
  24. High fives
  25. Hugs
  26. LaughsIt's laughter, though it looks like vomit
  27. Belly laughs
  28. The kind of laugh where you laugh so hard you cry
  29. Minutes spent living. 
  30. Minutes spent like, actually living. 
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May 05 2014
5 Comments
Most Bizarre Posts

RIP: Fake Epitaphs for a Real Life

epitaph_of_an_improviser

You don’t often get to say “I drew my own grave today.”

R.I.P. Emily Drevets, 1989-2280

What will they say about you when you pass on? Who’s opinion matters the most to you? Do you think you’re on your way to being remembered the way you want to be remembered?

I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, but I came up with some true and hopefully true epitaphs that might adorn my tombstone, even though I’d like to be cremated and have my ashes spread in a vegetable garden. Making epitaphs is more fun than suggesting ash-scattering locations.

She always answered her email.
A consummate professional and friend.
Her emails were easy to read and contained very few typos.
She never dumped her personal life onto her Facebook friends.
She never gave money to the homeless. She just didn’t know what was the right thing to do.
She tried to get what she wanted out of life. She was pretty sure she knew what that was.
She sought out the unknown unknowns.
She called her mom every week.
A frugal dresser.
She wasn’t too picky about the food she ate.
She never spent too much on cosmetics.
Paid little attention to things that bored her.
Doodler.
She never knew quite what to do with Twitter.
Oft more afraid than others knew, she sometimes struggled with asking for help.
She wanted to remember everything, but only remembered some things.
She wanted to do everything, but only did some things.
She enjoyed sharing mundane details of her life with other people.
Mighty consumer of oatmeal and peanut butter.
She never understood fashion.
She had trouble understanding why others might feel differently than her about some things.
She told multiple people she wanted to be a tree but never became one.
She didn’t know what the criteria were for regretting something.
She really liked the sound her iPad made when it closed.
She finally walked on foot through the mountains.
She found love in the end.
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Apr 28 2014
5 Comments
Food

We Worship Thee Oh Coffee, Sustainer of Life

A coffee cup I drew

A coffee cup I drew

Our Lord and Savior coffee hath provided us with much. Whether it is harsh and bitter, too weak, or absent, it rules our life with a brown fist. We don’t control coffee or where it comes from or where it goes. We accept whatever is in the pot in the kitchen and we drink it down dutifully, faithfully, knowing it will give us magic that will make us successful.

It hath given us many things. Oh coffee, how can I count your blessings. Praise thee, oh coffee, sustainer of my office and personal life.

You are a reason to get up in the morning and sweet relief from my office desk prison. You are proof that I am a grown-up, suffering in rages the caffeine-induced angst that driveth me down the fair I-35 in Edmond, OK.

You bequeath-eth me with the power to leave any conversation, providing I seek only you, and you offereth me omnipotence in claiming incompetence for work done poorly as I cry upon your name, saying, “Wherefore were there only coffee in my blood, this email wouldst not have had the typo.”

You are an eternal and everlasting measure of all things, a way to cast judgement upon others through their tastes in your many shades of brown. Should I speak to one who loveth only Peets, I know they haveth not any taste buds. Were I to happen upon one who claimeth Starbucks to be the fairest in all the land, I knoweth then they are capitalists with a bucket of oil for a heart. And should they only partake of Philz, I know them to be of the wisest and most discerning of all your admirers.

Contained within you is the key to my self-realization and my self-destruction, oh addiction of my heart. How many pictures of you have been posted to Instagram! How many statuses updated with your acidic yet endearing flavors! How many people have met and fallen in love over your warm cup, their hearts quickening as they drink down your everlasting spirit!

You are perfect with milk, a calcium chew, and the darkest of chocolates. Whiskey and biscuits are lucky to call you their friend. Were you to be a bath water alternative, that would be weird but not all together disdained.

In the spring I drink of thee. In the summer, I dance in your libations. The autumn calleth me nearer to you, and in the winter, my breath the very clouds of a steamy train, you fill me with your hope.

Oh coffee, oh you berry (delicious drink), oh you natural laxative, you fuelant of revolutionaries and capitalists, of artists and tyrants, you brew not recommended for infants lest their hair curl, oh coffee you are my sustainer and my drink of choice always and always.

You have given us much, and much you have taken away. Your ways are just and your law is a higher law. Though I don’t understand your taste or price, I have faith. I believe that you are perfect and that it is I that must change.  To you, o coffee, be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

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