Whatever Happened to Carpe-ing the Diem?

Get your motor run-nin'. Head out on the highway! Lookin' for adventure, and whatever comes our way! Yea'm gon' go make it hap'pen, take the world at a lovin' embraaaaace... Alright, it's the New Year, wintertime in Chicago with its lack of light, and I'm itching to get out of here, feeling the need to take flight. Call it cabin fever. Call it cold feet. I want to get out and see the world instead of sitting in my seat. It's a good thing the current job ends, for sure, on February 27th. Wow. That'll've made it a little over nine months. Aww, my corporate baby will be born, and I have to say I'm leaving it on the steps of a nunnery and high tailing for some adventure.

I love Chicago, don't you get me wrong. My roots are here; I was born in this city, by the lake, lived my first two years in a house just up the street from where I live now; spent windy Memorial Day weekends in Evanston and at Comiskey Park; tromped around Sheffield and Fullerton finding my newly acquired adult bearings; further discovered my love of theatre and non-profit development work at Chicago Dramatists; fell in love at every glance of the skyline. This is my city, always; past, present and future. I've been as far as Maine, Florida, California, and Washington (among others), but I know there's something out there beyond our shores, and I want to experience it for myself; I want to see what this world has to offer. I'm not getting any younger, and while I'm not old, I don't want to see myself making excuses as to why I shouldn't take chances or risks - this is the most acceptable time to go off and "discover" - and I don't want to live with regret anymore, I can't look back and shake my head over missed opportunities any more. And I can come back here; Chicago isn't like a scorned lover. If and when I leave and return, I know Chicago's wind will swirl around me with the same vigor and excitement as ever before when I stand on its shore.

I've been telling people of my dreams a lot lately, so I'll fill you, dear reader, in too... step 1.) live the good life, recognize the good along with the bad, and be thankful for all of it, cause it's life; 2. Get TEFL certified; 3. Save the dollars and start living within my means; 4. Travel abroad with dollars acquired, new teaching skills possessed and spread the glory of the English language; 5. Rock shit; 6. Travel abroad while abroad; 7. After about a year or so of that, come home and get an MFA? (while being paid preferably) -- and I think that's it right now. My step grandmother told me it's a good idea to have a life plan, but it's hard to get too specific after a few years, so two-to-five year plans seem to work best. Now, since I've already said this current job is ending, I need to get a new job... here's where the stick is thrown into the spinning wheel. Before, I thought it would be a good idea to get another 9-5er, something doing good, something I loved, with benefits and a decent salary.... but then, what happens if I love it so much I don't want to leave it, and I make excuses about staying for a promotion and how I'll travel later, when I have time...? (cliche alert flashes in my head) Time waits for no one. Which reminds me, I watched that Nostradamus 2012 last night on the History Channel, and if the world is going to end, or be significantly altered in December 2012, I want to say I did something with my life.

--Hey, I'm gonna go tangent off this show. This show. The Nostradamus. I only caught the last half, but I get the jist. Everyone has their own interpretations of Nostradamus' prophecies, but all major religions and the astrology charts line up to some sort of galatical alignment with Sagittarius or Aries... I think (I know the galatical alignment part is right)... the Sun's in someone's house, and it hasn't been like that since the last major Earth change. There's either going to be a nuclear holocaust, an asteroid, a even more major climate change, all out war, the Second Coming of Christ, or that particle accelerator will bleep us into oblivion. Basically, after everyone got done discussing Nostradamus' vague predictions' meanings, it boiled down to a closing message of, "Hey everybody, we all live on this planet, and it isn't permanent and neither are we, and we have to take care of it or there's no hope left, and the thing is, it's already changing pretty fast, so it's up to us to slow it down, or get used to eating each other and not having anything to drink, while being worried about blackouts and tsunamis on the daily."

So yeah, I've been pattering around with these dreams for a while, and on a long run this morning (OH! it was frigid, frigid!! and I was stupid, stupid! in that I only wore one layer of pants, while I did have warm long socks, my upper-lower-half turned into icicles) I couldn't help but finding myself somewhere else when The Beatles' "Baby You're A Rich Man" came on and I heard, "Now that you know who you are, what do you want to be?" Something other than what I am right now. "And have you traveled very far, far as the eye can see?" Not really, but I can see myself in far off places, with the sun shining against my face, spinning in the Alps, "How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?" Maybe I'll go to Sweden. "How often have you been there? Often enough to know. What did you see when you were there? Nothing that doesn't show." I want to wear the lines of the world on my face. "BABY YOU'RE A RICH MAN!...." Aren't we all?

Who knows, maybe this is just another extension of the pipe dream that has been my life, and it'll burst one day, when I go out of town in the winter months and turn the heat off. I don't know, I can't say, but I'll hope for it during the day and dream of it through the night.

As life seemed to have gotten stale and stagnant in the end of '08 I'm going to go ahead as use the New Year as an excuse to shake it up and get things done, with a splash of welcoming the changes with open arms; still volunteering with scripts, guitar lessons resume, LASIK, new job, new schedule for tutoring and more 826 volunteer time(?), improving my yoga poses, volunteering with animals, training for the Rock N' Roll 1/2 marathon in May, TEFL certification(?), D.C. for the inauguration, baby! dancing... and more!! Life looks good from here. Oh! So here's to getting things done and not just talking about doing it. CARPE DIEM!

Here's a few cheesy quotes I wrote on my room's door frame in college, to remind me how to live and stuff:

"We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are." -- Max DePree

"Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations, I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow were they lead." -- Louisa May Alcott

"Good things come to those who wait. Be patient, my dear, and the world will work its way." -- I was feeling impatient with a marker in hand.

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together." -- Vincent van Gogh

"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." -- John Lennon

"We need crazy people to think crazy thoughts and do crazy actions so we can discover new things." -- a friend's crazy Russian Astrology professor

"I could have gone on flying through space forever." -- Yuri Gagarin

"The thing we need is never all that hard to find." -- RHCP

"Attitude is everything." -- old camp director

"Do not underestimate the degree of impact your life has on the lives of others." -- my brosef

"Risk more than other think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible." -- some Cadet maxim

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware." -- Henry Miller

So there's that, and "CARPE DIEM" - duh.