it's the little things

Thanks to my office neighbor, Tina, I'm now obsessed with my new plastic tumbler from Starbucks. Obsessed.


It's doubly insulated so my water stays cold and my ice cubes stay, well, cubes. (And it won't get all wet and leave rings on my desk.) Plus, it's complete with a sturdy straw! (After all, everything's more fun to drink through a straw.) I've already consumed my daily amount of water. . . and it's only 11:30am!

I think I'm in love.

if i only had a brain

It's Thursday afternoon. But it's one of those weeks that felt like it should be Friday by about 2pm on Tuesday. Late nights. Long decks. Meeting after meeting. Deadline after deadline. A to-do-list as long as my leg. But, after a 9am-1:30pm client meeting, I'm finally back to my desk, ready to dive in and all my mind will do is wander. So since I can't concentrate, neither can you, my imaginary friend/reader! Welcome to the space that should be my brain . . .

• I have a bird's eye view of the patio at Sixteen, the chic restaurant/bar in the middle of Trump Tower. And I can't help but wonder. . . who are the people always sitting out there in the middle of the day, sipping cocktails (that's, at least, what I'm assuming), without a care in the world? And where can I apply for their job?
• I wonder if Craig from the Bachelorette ever gets confused for Peyton Manning?
  

• And while we're on it, what's with this new influx of Bachelor-themed E! specials and 20/20s? And why are they on every cover of every trashy magazine? I mean, holy Bachelor overload! (Even for me.)
• If everything continues to heal well, I'll be boot-free as of Monday, August 9th at 8am! I wonder how many days/weeks before I can run again. Or, better yet, wear heels. :)
  
• I would seriously consider buying a Hug-Me-Pillow, if it didn't seem so, well, heebie-jeebies-creep-me-out-strange. But, seriously, what's better than snuggling!? Even if it's with a disembodied arm.
  
• My favorite part of Chad (Ocho Cinco) Johnson's new dating show, cleverly titled "The Ultimate Catch", has to be the presence of Bernard Berrian in a host-like capacity. Especially since Chad's nickname for him is B-Twice. I mean, I want a B-Twice in my life! I'm thinking I may have to nickname my best buddy, Brooke, B-Trice. Get it? Best Buddy Brooke. I can't wait to tell her. She'll be thrilled. (Pretty typical reaction to most of my 'awesome' ideas.)
• Why is it that no matter how many times you check and double-check the technology you're using before a big meeting, something inevitably goes wrong in the IT department? This can't just be coincidence.
• I'm planning a trip to Greece in the next year. There, I said it. (Isn't there some stat about goals being more likely to be accomplished if you write them down? I'm banking on it.)
• How in the world did I become so addicted to textsfromlastnight.com and Chelsea Handler? Both are usually a little vulgar. A little inappropriate. And make me a bit embarrassed, but I love 'em.
  

Okay, back to life. Back to reality. Hopefully my brain will cooperate.

ants in my pants

I feel antsy.

Like something's got to change, I'm just not sure what it is. Or why.

Maybe it's turning another year older. Maybe it's seeing more and more friends get engaged. Move to new cities. Go back to school. Make changes in their careers. Do big things. Or maybe it's that I'm just not sure I'm who, what or where I should be at 27.

At 17 if you would have asked me what my life was going to look like in ten years, I'm not sure what I would have said. I'm guessing 27 would have seemed so far into the future that I wouldn't even know where to start. Married? With kids? Working my way up the corporate ladder? Living in a great condo with stainless steel appliances and granite counter tops in a big city? Uber-successful? I don't know, maybe my current life would be exactly what I imagined. Exactly what I hoped for. But what if, after staring into that fortune teller's magic ball, 17 year old me would be just plain disappointed with future me?

I think 17 year old me would love the view into the heart of Chicago from my 29th floor window-side desk. Would love going out to LA for advertising TV productions. Would love the friends I'm surrounded with. Would love rockin' a killer pair of pumps and smoothly running a meeting with senior clients. Would love going on a variety of first dates with Chicago's eligible bachelors. Would love the feeling of running along the beach on an early Spring morning.

27 year old me certainly does.

But what about the fact that I still haven't had a relationship that's lasted over 6 dates? That I'm sitting here dreaming about reporting from the sidelines of the NFL or being a writer or a realtor or owning my own business instead of doing something about it? That my business card still reads Account Executive despite the actual responsibilities I've been given? That my savings account is what can only be described as pathetic? That, except for the 1996 Honda Accord I purchased from my parents when my brother went to college, I don't really own anything?

27 year old me isn't so sure of these things. (To say the least.) I can only imagine what 17 year old me would think.

And so I'm antsy.

About where I'm at. About where I'm going. About what the heck I'm going to do to get from here to there. About what it's going to take. About what comes next. And about what I might have to give up in order to make it a reality.

in full bloom

About 4 months into my first job I got a plant from one of our new business reps for the holidays. A Christmas Cactus to be exact. Which looked just like this when I received it:


Vibrant shades of green. Healthy. Full of leaves. (Are they called leaves on a cactus?). Overall, pretty beautiful.

And you know what? Despite my inner office cube, harshly lit by the all-too-typical corporate florescent lighting, and the fact that most days I could barely fit in time to feed or water myself, that little bugger managed to survive through-out my entire time working there. Over 4 years. During which, on numerous occasions, I couldn't help but congratulate myself on my responsibility and overall genius as a plant owner. What great watering skills I had acquired! What great attention I had paid!

Well, it turns out Christmas Cacti actually have the potential to look like this:


Who would have guessed, right!?

The night shift cleaning lady, that's who. She took the cactus from me late one night and relocated it to the windowsill of the empty window-office-with-a-view across the hall from me. While I spent a couple weeks wondering where in the world my beloved plant had disappeared to, she was tending to it. Watering it. Keeping it in the sunlight it so desperately needed to reach it's full potential. A few days before my last day at Element, she proudly returned the plant to me, now brimming with gorgeous blooms off of every leaf tip. (I mean, seriously, if they're not called leaves, what are they called!?)

Well, look at that!

I don't know exactly why I thought about that today, but it made me realize something important. Sometimes we think what's sitting in front of us is perfectly good. A success. At it's full potential. The best it ever could be.

And it turns out that we just don't know any better at the time.