What?

There are things that I love about my life currently. Oddly enough I am not enjoying them as much as I thought I would. This surprises me to no end. I've pined for city living, an awesome job, and a cool home for a while, some more than others. And here I am in Chicago (loving it) with a job that changes lives, is fun, that I'm learning a bunch, helping others and with great co-workers. Somehow the ecstasy I'd expected isn't happening. "But, Karina, you finally have an easily digestible answer for people when they ask what you do, where are you from, etc." So instead of demanding some final stop, some satisfaction (which is obviously impossible) I'll make a list of what I love right now.

-I love that the noise of the "L". Getting on the Blue Line and heading downtown in the sway of all the other lives, all the other problems. I don't feel alone even on these trains with strangers.
-The gigantic graffiti of curious ferrets only viewable from the "L" near my house.
-I love hanging out with my roommates Grumpy and Matt ("Radditude"-because he has such a rad attitude) who is positivity in a human bottle. Radditude is also a horror movie nerd and heavy/death metal fanatic and our apartment is an archive to every horror movie that's existed in the last 30 years+. Yesterday he blew my mind by mentioning his love of Lady Gaga and insisted that we watch as many of her music videos as possible right then, relishing delightfully at how I was speechless for a good 20 minutes upon discovering this.
-I love my summer school class!!! My latino kids are adorable and excited about reading. They call me "Ms. Vele" because they just can't get Lepeley down. I have an adorable drawing on the fridge that a student made that says "Ms Vele, te quiero mucho. (I love you very much.)"
-I love the people I work with. They all love their work and believe in it. They all support me 100% and the average time a Reading In Motion employee works is 10 years. Most of them have been there for over 15.
-I love my neighborhood, a nice wooded street by Palmer Square in Logan Square. There are a ton of latino families on the block and a group of kids have taken a shine to me. I exit the house for a run on any given day and I hear "Karina!!!!!" I am a Palmer St celebrity.
-I love my walk back from the gym. I jog there getting my warm up in and then either do basic strength training, Zumba or my new favorite Cardio Hip Hop which is basically high school dance team. For serious. It's high school all over again. We learn a dance routine in an hour and it is mad hard, mad fast and mad fun. The instructor looks much more like she should be going to a Phish show and not a Hip Hop show. She is crazier than I was in my early 20's and I love it.
-I love the Italian gelato place a block from my house with flavors like passion fruit, cantaloupe, and my favorite, raspberry.
-I love the old houses on Logan Boulevard like castles that have been split into three/four apartments and house all sorts of families.
-I love that my house is currently filled to the brim with metal heads for "THE metal show of the year" with Nunslaughter and Acid Witch. They are really such a nice and sweet bunch.
-I love that I see people that I don't know every day. People of every shade, old, young, speaking all sorts of languages, eating all sorts of food, with all sorts of realities of how life should be.

I'm also trying my best to be grateful. I suffer from the trials of having choices and of getting what I want and still wanting more. Basically it's the constant dissatisfaction that is life and the mind and the journey of experience/existence. My expansion continues and I am grate, grate, grateful. And patient with the fact that grateful/wishes fulfilled doesn't necessarily mean satisfaction.

Yeah, some days are just shitty. Nothing personal but still shitty, regardless of what you wear or what you do. And then it changes. The one constant in life: change. I'll just keep chugging along while people "ooh" and "aah" over Radditude's horror collection and chat about mad awesome shit in our living room.

New is good.

The Simple Need to Write

So it's been forever since I've written but I'd definitely thought about doing it much sooner than now.

I'm currently happily settled in Chicago with a job that I love and in an nice apartment with two really nice heavy metal dude roommates. They are great and I love our neighborhood. I love the city with it's noise, different languages and the smell of opportunity everywhere. I love the kids I work with, I love the teachers who are struggling fiercely and I love my co-workers who vibrate with how much they love their jobs. There is a lot of love and a lot of opportunity going on for me right now. But sadly, I have a tough time tapping into it.

So instead of constantly wanting something in particular, something finite that can be easily taken away or easily change its mind, I just want to be happy. Here I return to my favorite life goal/rule of all time. "I just want to feel good." That's it. Good feelings to feel, share and spread. Good feelings to accompany the new experiences as I stick with the process of missing/sadness/shock.

So maybe I'll come back to writing as well. Finish that book on exes and keep myself tethered to my daily experiences by recounting them in their vivid details instead of letting them slip thru my fingers as I float out into the clouds.

Gently tending the garden of chaos

That was my New Year's resolution for this year. Why am I still surprised to be in constant transition? to ache for new and daring experiences around every turn? Who knows but it's just how it is and I need to quit fighting it in the name of...some sort of sanity because it's making me crazy.

The farm is quiet these heat packed days and I'm just getting the hang of hot. I try to get outside in the early morning and at night but a lot of my time is spent in a haze of decisions that don't need to be made yet. I want to be organized, want to be focused but the target keeps changing shapes and I panic.

Boof! Will I be glad to be on the next adventure soon. I try my best to enjoy the quiet, waiting periods between but it is tough for me.

I'm hoping to take some pictures today now that I have my lovely cousin Marite here for a visit. She takes pictures too and can get my creative butt back in gear.

Much love from the recently tripped, fell and on their way back to standing upright.

Don't forget yourself

Do something today that makes you really happy. If you're going to be alive, you might as well enjoy some of it. Otherwise, life is regrettable instead of unforgettable. And check out this great link that reminds us of what we really want when our time is short. Also, don't forget that I love you. :)

ohdarling.posterous.com/nurse-reveals-the-top-5-regrets-people-make-o

The Nausea of the New

You'd like I'd get used to it, the constant change. It's been a year since I finished my undergrad. I remember I saw myself going to Minnesota for my Masters, then I saw myself staying in Chile, then I saw myself teaching in South Korea and now I am moving back to Chicago. For some reason, I'm still not used to it. There is always new fear that comes spilling out of me, some ethereal nausea of the unknown. But I don't have a choice. When I push against the current of my life there is real nausea, knots of fists in my stomach.

I feel so silly, like a cartoon character forever stuck in a 3 dimensional world, with so many different rules and realities. At the same time, I love it because on the edge there is magic. It's the magic I live for in every new experience. And living with constant change brings me into the present moment where all possibility lies.

I guess I've finally achieved another dream of becoming a super hero. My super power? The gently tending of constant change.

Introducing...THE CHAOS QUEEN!!! :)

A deep spring

I am connected to a deep, cool, quiet spring of love these days. Richly embedded within the intensity of my TEFL certification process is a love that is growing, fossilizing without any forcing or holding back. I am protecting it and holding it close to my heart while watching it with such curiosity, like a new mother watches her first child exploring the world. It seems to be the most natural unfolding ever and I am succeeding at not fixing what is not broken. Instead I make scrambled eggs, listen to recommended Brazilian music, insist on dances in the kitchen and drink coffee in quiet sips between the towering pages of my week long lesson plan. I do not know how this is happening, how all of this is getting done, as if the days have grown an extra 12 hours just to fit in the intense aliveness needed. I do not understand it and so I love it all the more.

Floods

Sometimes regret floods me like a melting spring. It replaces all the synovial fluid of my joints and in turn makes them ache with each effort to move. This blissful forward flow of my current life rewards me constantly but the mind is quick to distract, reclaim me for itself and "what could have been" is an easy tool. It is simply because I love to love people and when there isn't a directly clear focus, there is pain. But how to balance what I want (a life of adventure, expression, creativity, personal growth, freedom) with the life of traditional companionship (settled, home, routine, foundation, safety, relationship growth). I want companionship. I do. If it had to look like staying fixed in one place right now for twenty plus years, I would pull all of my hair out and prove some great guy that I am absolutely crazy.

So the dull stomach ache of regretful floods win out over the hair pulling crazy. That's ok for now.

As my dad would say "You're growing, man, you're growing." Growing like an oak tree. :)