Tag Archives: san francisco

Jul 17 2012
21 Comments
Job hunting, One minute read

The Career Search, Living in the Moment, and Ramen Noodles

This picture was taken in January, when it was the same temperature but sunny here. WTF.

Right after I pressed publish last Friday on the blog post about my Reba t-shirt, I realized that I was the worst person in the world. I had complained about getting up at 6:30 am and having one appointment. Poor me.

Most people get up at the booty-crack of dawn and have to work the whole day long, with no time for ditzels, knick knacks, or futzing. For brief moment the length of the time it takes to write a blog post, I forgot that I was incredibly lucky to have the luxury of following my dreams, which I’m still defining at this point. I think it’s kind of a long-term smelting thing in order to figure out what I really want and if it’s good and what I should want and all of that.

I’ve spent so much time trying to figure what I want to do that I haven’t been focusing on what I’m doing in the time I currently have. I’ve been scrutinizing the future so hard, trying to make sure I’m heading in the right direction and towards gainful employ/activities that I both enjoy and find meaningful, that I fell into the trap of believing that the only time that’s valuable is the time you’re paid for.

Once I realized this, I paused for a second and thought “Well, do I enjoy what I’m currently doing?” which is making phone calls, setting up connections, exploring the city, interviewing, hanging out with friends, trying to get my feet on the ground, making networks that will take me into the future, etc. and I thought, yeah, I do. I have what feels like freedom and infinite possibilities. San Francisco is my shiny, expensive oyster that I plan on cracking in order to find the best dive bars and cheap eats.

I am not my to-do list. The things I’m doing right now are also important, and these steps will lead me to a future, but in reality it’s all part of the same thing. So I should savor the whole enchilada because the minutes don’t come back to you in the end, or so I hear.

And today I put a squirt of ketchup in my ramen noodles, which tasted just as good as I thought it would and I felt secure about my future as I slurped the broth down—it was thicker than usual. Ramen noodle innovation is just one of the many signs of nascent success.

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Jul 13 2012
9 Comments
Humorous, Open Letters, Travelling

An Open Letter to My Reba McEntire and Brooks and Dunn T-Shirt

The real heroes.

We’ve come a long way haven’t we? I remember when you were all trussed up in wrapping paper beneath our tree. You were a Christmas gift from my big brother, and you were from a thrift store and a handful of sizes too big. When I ripped the paper off of you that sunny morning in December and saw those three pairs of eyes twinkling from the breast of the shirt, I knew I’d found a couple of buddies that would stick with me for a long while.

Oh Reba, oh Brooks and Dunn, we’ve had a lot of good times. You came with me up to Boston and we showed those people what real Americans are like. I wore you underneath a duck-patterned prairie dress to a formal party and we danced the night away, worrying only about when the music would stop, and not caring about pit stains. Life’s too short to worry about pit stains.

Now we’re here in San Francisco, another city on the bay. And I’ll be honest with you Reba, Brooks, and Dunn: I’m tired. My computer woke me up this morning at 6:30 because it was whirring so loudly, panting like a butcher on the 4th of July. A couple of hours later I went into “the city,” which is what the folks up here call “San Francisco,” and had an interview at 10 o’clock for a job that I’m not sure I even want. While on the way to the train station a young British hippy asked me if I wanted to buy an apple. He had two tiny apples in his hand and I said no and he said thanks for smiling and nice hoodie.

I wish you could have seen him. More strangers talk to me up here than most anywhere else I’ve been, but it’s not too bad. What would you do, Reba? Would you sing them a song and lift their spirits? How did you know what you wanted to do, and when you figured it out, how did you get it? Can you really have it all?

One day I’m going to have it all too, but right now I’m tired. I’m going to finish my coffee while staring at you three, your eyes sparkling back at me and then maybe I’ll get the big idea and we’ll all have to admit my brother is the genius we always knew he was.

You’re the real heroes, you the t-shirt dwellers, the silent inspirers. How many have you cheered on to victory with your never-ending mirth? No matter what the Californians say to you up here, no matter what they think of you or what kind of names they call you because you’re not from somewhere that has a San in front of it or some other liberal name, just remember that to me you are special. I love this t-shirt and am going to wear it more often so people around here can get some freaking cultural education.

I came not a moment too soon.

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Jul 10 2012
16 Comments
Two minute read

My Mind, The Cupcake

A cupcake from the wedding. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?

My mind has turned into a cupcake. I was afraid this would happen. Instead of synapses firing interesting and creative notions from the different loci of my mind, communicating the thoughts that will drive today into tomorrow and allow me to remember to zip my fly, buttercream frosting clogs my mental passageways.

Drooling results.

Sprinkles have taken the place of ideas, and lace wrappers are now in operation instead of my hypothalamus. Keeping physical and mental balance proves more difficult daily.

All acts of thinking, consideration, pondering, and planning that used to occur in my frontal lobe have been replaced with various cream fillings, fruits, and polka dots. The only things I’m really capable of doing anymore are underarm-sweating, head-scratching, and mouth-breathing.

My brain is adorable and trendy but I now need a caretaker.

Oh god will please someone help me. I ate a poptart and peanut butter crackers for lunch today. Is that a complete meal? Who am I? What is this leaking out of my ears?

I’ve heard about cupcake brain syndrome, which results from too much time spent applying to food service jobs on Craig’s list. Letters, numbers, names blur together into a soft, frosting like combination that begins to look tasty to the job searcher. Sometimes electronic equipment begins to malfunction from the surfeit of saliva that drips over the keyboard and is sometimes applied directly with the tongue onto the screen.

The eyes glaze over, the mouth hangs, and a real career seems to drift farther and farther away into the night, which is never ending. Soon, common words take on different meanings. “Experienced,” “Go-Getter,” “Detail-Oriented,” acquire personalities of their own, are thugs that torture the cupcake brain. Nanny nanny boo boo, they say. The mouth drools on.

Yes, dear friend, this is the great San Francisco job search of 2012. How will it end? Will it ever end? Will there be just another college graduate’s skeleton decorating a sunny road near the bay? Will the dress pants ever be worn in an office environment? How long does it take for a poptart-heavy diet to result in malnutrition? Will there be super powers?

Stay tuned, for all shall be revealed in due time. When the hands stop shaking, when the eyebrow stops twitching, when the stomach stops clenching. All shall be revealed. And yes, my sister is married now but who cares? I need a job.

P.S. I will talk about the wedding more, most likely when I can get better juice from my mind grapes.

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Jan 15 2012
8 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Two minute read

Let’s Pulp These Redwoods

As I was in Muir Woods yesterday, gazing up at redwood trees that were decades old, trees that oozed wisdom and earthiness and nature, I thought to myself, “These would make a dump-load of paper.” The pile would be huge! A gigantic pile of paper, a majestic pile of all different kinds of paper: magazine grade paper, cardstock, envelopes, post-its, a mosaic of various types and cuts of paper.

I wonder how many dumpsters all that paper would fill. If you took all the trees in Muir Woods and made it into paper (toilet paper, nose tissue, cardboard), I bet it would take up an entire landfill. So much waste…it would be awesome!

Just one tree would make reams and reams of paper. They’re so tall! Those towering majestic redwoods are so slender and shapely I just want to shove them into a pulper and let the magic happen.

If we made Muir Woods into paper and then took that trash to the moon and littered it everywhere, it would probably cover a large portion of the moon’s surface, or at least fill that place that’s called something like the Sea of Loneliness and we could rename it the Sea of Redwood Trash instead.

And if we took all the redwood paper and dumped it into the ocean, I can’t even imagine how much wildlife we would kill. But it would definitely be an insane amount.

Nature is awesome.

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Jan 14 2012
4 Comments
Anecdotes, One minute read, Travelling

Another Okie Heading West

As I stood on top of one of the Twin Peaks and looked out over the bright city of San Francisco and into the bay beyond with its rust colored Golden Gate Bridge and the lumpy green mountains beyond that, and looked behind me and saw the setting sun and its reflection in the water so it looked like two suns, and glanced down and saw my lengthening shadow on the earth, and felt the coolness coming from the trees, and considered all the combinations of colors of green and blue and brown and bright that lay before me, I thought to myself that there is no other city I have found in this earth that has such a high concentration of everything I love. Creativity, nature, color, coffee, books, floral dresses, and sidewalks all combined and laid out on a grid set between hills on a peninsula in the bay.

And then I thought that I would like to live in California, if it would have me, and especially if it would find me a place to live and pay my bills. But those might have to be personal journeys. I would make the effort, though. It would be worth it to live here.

Here I come, just another liberal arts graduate with a job in retail.

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